For similar reasons it’s possible for new networks to show up which disrupt the old, such as TikTok.
The point is as individuals we are way less dependent on social media than we imagine.
In the not-so-distant past if you wanted expert help and non-astroturfed suggestions (or even just memes), that's where you went. Those places still exist for a lot of fields and the experts still hang out (and often are better than Reddit), but you still have the problem of finding them and managing identities across boards. In many cases the moderation is superior. Reddit now suffers from the problem where it's so big that people can run very subtle advertising campaigns to push products. It's still much better than blogspam, but you can still only really trust the negative/critical reviews.
Walled garden sites and apps are the enemy. The only way social media works for certain people is if they are off the main exploited niches on platforms. They take our words and ideas and give nothing back in return. They lie to us about what they can do for us in terms of creating a brand, or company, and they exploit our input and hinder growth.
We have to remember that each of us has a different perspective and purpose for using the web and for using social media.... It's not just people pushing motivational content and drop shipping, it's promoting music, or promoting a restaurant, or even turning their pet into a personality for movie roles. This is why too many people have just the narrow view of the matter that suits them most of the time... We need to understand that one mega platform with only one script and template for success dimply doesn't work, and it actually opens the field for exploitation and gaslighting about how to succeed on social media... That's also exactly what makes social media toxic, along with scams, fake users, cheating for followers, and the manipulation of visibility to encourage users to pay to promote their posts.
It's long overdue for everyone to wake up and take back their individual power in creating personal web sites and not looking back at social media. The ideal that large for profit companies care about individuals is bogus, and by the time people realized they've spent years building communities of profit for others, it's far too late. Time is money. Work is money. Social media does not pay for what you invest into it.
I wonder if it would work if there was a good aggregation tool that could talk to old platforms like phpBB or vBulletin (which I think is still a big chunk of the communities that are running). I can't imagine it would be that difficult and probably existed.
That's basically the major paint point for me at the moment. Reddit made finding subcultures related to my hobbies and interests very easy. I don't know where to find communities about things that interest me now. I thought maybe Mastodon but finding hashtags has also been difficult.
You need a dedicated website/forum with people that understand the subject, to get though the ceiling. You get very specific advertisers, organize your own in person meetings.
Maybe we need to hard sell Xenforo on a shared login model…
Filter these out with an LLM based adblock.
If this isn't how you're using reddit, discord, etc, and it's easy to disconnect from them, then yeah just leave them. But they foster meaningful interactions too.
But I think the recent happenings are a good reason to ask how good it is to invest so much in communities that can disappear overnight.
I’ve enjoyed my time on Reddit over the (many) years and I’ve made real friends who I now know in real life. But many of the communities I once valued have crumbled or no longer provide the same positive experience. What remains are those real friendships.
Social media in general is a gigantic experiment and we’re still just beginning to learn about the psychological and sociological impacts.
Shifting focus to local in-person interactions and creating solid and sustainable relationships that don’t depend on the whims of the latest social media platform seems increasingly important.
And I still think there can be value found there, but not as a primary form of social connection.
I agree with this completely. I have formed many online relationships particularly in the music community starting during the COVID lockdowns and it has really struck me how ephemeral they are compared to IRL friendships. It’s so much harder to connect in a deep way. It’s also so much easier to walk away. You can just kind of slow down your online engagement and the relationship dries up.
I’ve also noticed how I tend to develop a certain impression of someone just based on their online artifacts (avatar, style of writing, emoji, etc) that often turns out to be gravely inaccurate when I finally encounter them in a “realer” format such as a video call. Sometimes I end up realizing that I’d likely not hang out with that person IRL. It’s disconcerting.
Lastly, I find I often feel uncertain about the connection I have in ways that I never feel with people IRL. For instance, wondering if my tone is off, wondering if the person isn’t perhaps as interested in whatever endeavour we are working on anymore, etc.
I am fortunate in that I have not been much of a feed-based social media user for many years, but my belief that community-based social media (eg Discord) might be better has been tested by these observations. As per your comment, I think RL is where it’s at.
The magic however is indeed as you pointed out discussing various topics: - Gear in baldurs gate - How to create a hardware clone of R2D2 - Books that you couldn't put down - What is the best present I can give to my friend - Summary of Hubermans protocols - Etc.
thats the beauty of it and I would miss it.
That said, do not dismiss the need for long-term, in-person friendship. IRL forces you to confront the uncomfortable/mismatched parts of others. In other words, the whole person. It enables you to comfort and support in a way that is impossible online. This is all both uncomfortable and necessary to form the most meaningful and worthwhile relationships, not to mention vital social skills.
The Internet is an incredible tool to connect like-minded people, but it will not bring happiness in the same way the flesh and blood presence of consistently physically present people can.
In undergrad I once befriended and flirted with a classmate for a few weeks and only realized, when I was putting her number in my phone, that I had no idea what her name was. It’s like connection so intoxicating that you just enjoy it for itself.
Not the end of the world but as a kid who only could find other people to talk about certain hobbies with online up until college sounds like a lot of pepole will be more bored.
Did all these previous generations find less satisfaction in life? Well who knows but I argue not.
We don’t have to structure our lives so that we are dependent on the internet for entertainment.
But also, if you have to pay a small $ fee, okay that seems like a good trade too, if the value is what you are ascribing to it.
Last month was the 150th anniversary of the introduction of the first government "postal card", in New York City. They cost a penny each and sold 200,000 in two and a half hours.
https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/america%E2%80%99s-mai...
If so can we just pretend I said 200 instead of 150? I feel like that’s pretty much the same thing given that both are but a drop in the ocean of total human existence.
Heck yes. I lived half my life in a non-Internet era. And I can say with absolute certainty, that it was horrible. Finding community, especially for specialized interests, was virtually impossible. Finding specialized information -- completely impossible, unless you had access to a University library. There weren't even efficient ways to find out what specialized information you could have but don't.
Encyclopedia Britannica is not remotely a substitute for Wikipedia. And the same holds for pretty much every other form of information, every other form of communication, and every other form of community except family.
If you want to go back 100 years... all my ancestors worked 18 hours a day in the mines, starting at the age of 6, and died young from Black Lung Disease. Which is considerably less satisfying.
By that logic you live in absolute hell compared to the future humans of the year 3000. Doesn’t feel like it though does it?
I’m illustrating the existence of the hedonic treadmill. However much we get in life, somehow it’s always just okay or slightly not good enough.
I am personally for some financial incentive changes (though I think that we can somehow figure out how to build communities that don't cost as much to run), so it's not like reddit in its current form has to exist. I just think that we can acknowledge that online communities are a nice to have for many people.
And to expand on that, online communities can complement offline communities in very interesting ways (See how chess has grown thanks to things like chess.com, and all that feeding into an increase in people participating in social chess events. Or things like board games being complemented by things like BGA)
Now I find reddit rarely shows up in DDG results. Searching directly on reddit is futile. Posting queries is also futile as many mods have implemented features to limit infrequent posters.
It's been an old boys' club since EKP left.
I was on Reddit to talk about Math, programming, books, etc. There are several subreddits from which I was helped. And I helped a lot of other people, too.
Quora had a refined userbase. I liked it there. Got ~30mn views on my answers.
In these places, I didn't have to dumb myself down and could be myself.
There are properly moderated FB groups in which I have made connections, and have a community.
On Discord, I am in so many valuable communities- where I can discuss things I like- be a part of something.
And I depend on YouTube for learning things about programming, deep learning, etc.
So, internet is worthless if you watch cat memes. But for me and millions others, it is a lifeline.
And it saddens me very much to see how deeply I depend on these.
I dramatically reduced my social media time a couple years ago by getting some casual games on my phone. Current favorites are NYT crosswords and solitaire.
Some innocuous mental stimulation to pass time that doesn’t come with the toxicity that social media can.
I catch myself thinking wayyy to much about whatever news article Fb shows me.
I also listen to fiction audiobooks, but none of the healthy things are also low brain energy like Reddit is.
Otherwise is just a lot of AI generated results with close to 0 information.
So I disagree.
I agree with this sentiment. I left Facebook and don't miss it in the slightest. Left Twitter long before it was fashionable and don't miss it. It's just a bummer that Reddit is going that direction as well. I've tried to leave Reddit a number of times and then remember it's the only place to get direct, responsive support from my ISP and most of my Google searches include Reddit to see what other people think about a product, service or idea. But would I miss Reddit a year from now? Nope, probably not.
We could do away with all the surveillance capitalism using us as a product and life would probably be fine.