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Comment by caseyross | Hacker News Reader

It really is weird, isn't it? To have what was essentially a solved problem 10 years ago become... what you described.

On Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn, I still have tons of people I'd be interesting in passively keeping up with. Maybe even actively, sometimes. But all that latent sociality is increasingly just dead out of the gate, seeing as I no longer use any of those platforms regularly.

My closest friends, the ones I will actually put in effort to talk to? Group chat. The polar opposite of the public social media ecosystem that we used to have. A closed, private space that admits no outsiders, marketers, or clout chasers, but strongly discourages developing relationships with new people or expanding one's horizons.

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> A closed, private space that admits no outsiders, marketers, or clout chasers, but strongly discourages developing relationships with new people or expanding one's horizons.

Sounds wonderful. This is how the vast majority of humans have experienced socialising for the vast majority of human history. And they were happier for it.

No, it was definitely possible to meet new people. The propagation of these closed spaces worsens the loneliness epidemic, which is way worse than at any point in history.

The closed space of a group chat with friends worsens the loneliness epidemic? And arguing with random strangers on Reddit alleviates it? It's very much the opposite. Big, open and often anonymous social spaces are terrible at making you feel part of a group. Spaces with few people who you actually know and like and can depend on are key to not feeling lonely, and yes they tend to be closed.

Exactly, the reason that people feel so alone is because of void "interactions" on social media.

Closed doesn't mean undiscoverable. The biggest closed group chat I'm in is the Telegram channel for a podcast I listen to, and it's plugged in every episode. Discord has issues, but group chats there are still mostly fed by public activity like subreddits or YouTube channels.

Closed just means you can't open a page and read the full history like a forum. It doesn't mean it's only knowable to people currently inside and people they invite.

Maybe a social network where you can only have (or follow) a maximum of 30 (or similar) people?

I think a social network that combines something like Discord and old Facebook timelines would be interesting. Basically group chats would become first class citizens, and the platform should help you discover group chats that your friends are in. That was the missing piece from Facebook messenger group chats. They tried to introduce "Rooms" but it failed since other platforms had already taken over that space. Maybe it is still too late.

I agree. I setup a Discord server for a few friends and it turned out to be infinitely better then current social media platforms when it came to keeping up with what everyone was up to.

+100. I have different slacks and discords for different groups. One for extended family--we share pix there.

I sometimes post the same content to two groups, but it's pretty rare.

I do miss the broader reach of classic Instagram where I could follow friends without them needing to be in a close circle with one another. Lots of them are unwilling to join the chat.

But I don't miss it enough to put up with f---ing TikTok behavior.

if only someone could make a discord that wasnt owned by an adtech corp

> A closed, private space that admits no outsiders, marketers, or clout chasers, but strongly discourages developing relationships with new people or expanding one's horizons.

I find it much better. If I want to, there are hobby groups like discord, anonymously, not show off to all for likes and follows kind of social media.

There should be no need to passively know what people are doing all the time. If anyone do that, it becomes addiction.

>A closed, private space that admits no outsiders, marketers, or clout chasers, but strongly discourages developing relationships with new people or expanding one's horizons.

I've been thinking about these exact tradeoffs in building Haven[1]. Completely private, self-hosted or paid-hosting so no ads, or tracking. Built on RSS so you even get interoperability with the rest of the web.

But also no discovery.

I haven't decided yet if there is a reasonable way to do discovery which doesn't turn into a cesspool of promotion--I think it would have to lean on peer recommendations of some form, kind of a pseudo curation. Or maybe we just leave discovery to FaceTok.

[1]: https://havenweb.org

Agree. I still check FB from time to time hoping to see something from friends and acquaintances, but my main "social media" has become a family group chat on WhatsApp.

Interesting take. Me and my friends also moved to group chats. Probably unconsciously to avoid the intrusion.

I guess FB overextended by invading out feeds with ads and "recommendations" rather than gossip about friends.

I think "recommendations" are polarising rather than exclusively a (business) mistake. some people, like me, you and probably most of HN, see them as an intrusive waste of time and go out of their way to avoid them; however, I would imagine there is a very large slice of society that doesn't actively moderate how they spend their free time, or really question the things they're presented with online, to whom "recommendations" will have become a very engaging way to find new content and spend their time. that description isn't a euphemism for "stupid" either. I know plenty of intelligent people who scroll through a feed endlessly when they want a way to occupy their mind

Recommendation feed engines probably gives encouraging numbers in the beginning, until the users realize that they are fed BS clickbait instead of baby pictures and other gossip.

While I am quite sure some are hooked on the feed, the core of Facebook (friend gossip) is gone.

>Me and my friends also moved to group chats. Probably unconsciously to avoid the intrusion.

I guess that's why they have ads in Messenger now.

Ye. I wish Zuckerbergs adds them to Whatsapp too, so I can convince people to use e.g. Signal.

Me too, accelerated by lockdowns. I love it. I'm so much more connected to them than I ever was through FB. Mostly just text. Banter.

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