People aren't posting on social media as much
wsj.com
wsj.com
When arguing is limited to people I see in person, it's a somewhat time-boxed and constrained operation. I typically can only argue with one person for N minutes, and eventually both of us get tired of it and we move on with our lives, but there's always someone wrong on the internet, and a lot of those wrong people love to be wrong publicly on social media. I would always end up arguing with a stupid post that a stupid person on Facebook had, and then someone would chime in in support of me or the person I'd argue with. Before I knew it, a not-insignificant percentage of each day was being dedicated to responding to idiocy on social media.
Eventually, it started getting annoying and I deleted my Facebook, and never really looked back. I run a Mastodon instance that I almost never use (but I had to justify the server I bought somehow), I briefly worked at Reddit, and obviously I post a bit on HN which is basically social-media adjacent, but despite all this I never really felt compelled to go back to constantly posting on social media.
I suspect a lot of people have come to similar conclusions. I enjoy talking to my friends, and I do pretty liberally on Signal, but I feel that's sort of in a different category than "social media".
It was making me feel like shit even when I wasn't participating. Even when I stopped liking stuff it was visible that it was fucking with my mental health. Walking away from reading two people arguing completely drains my energy.
Reddit is not that different. I don't have an account and just go there to get updated on my favourite hobby, but even that will show me a lot of people arguing and things getting heated, and it makes me a bit anxious after reading.
Mastodon is going in the same direction IMO. It is a bit of an echo chamber the people I follow (I don't mind this tbh), but 60% of the things that get going are fucking powderkegs where a single disagreement becomes too heated. I've seen people piling on others because of opinions I agree, and vicariously reading makes me feel like shit.
I'm perfectly fine with conflict and with discussions, but it doesn't really work for me when lots of topics are treated as if it was as high-stakes as we do online.
I recently created a new account, adding only programming and professional connections, and it's actually quite good! If you don't click on any of the "trending" stuff, it functions like a microblog should: it's a way for me to keep up with the projects and OSS personalities I want to, without the fuss.
I did something similar with YouTube: I simply turned off "watch history". The youtube home page is literally empty, because without data the algorithm offers nothing. (In fairness, there's a big contingency message saying in bold letters "Turn watch history back on? Pretty please?") The only time I see content on youtube is because someone I subscribed to posted something. It's glorious. No more doom scrolling because the content is finite once again. I find that the creators I like (and the comments) have enough references to other content that I don't feel cut off. And there's always search. It's just that default empty screen that seems like the magic sauce.
This is my "middle path", and it seems likely that if it catches on they'll do something to disrupt it. In which case I will truly leave. It would be such a waste though, and why we can't have nice things.
They might be wrong but they are just acting in the way they believe is best, and even if they have some impact it's ultimately just a tiny effect in a vast universe.
This was my view when I was younger. People acting/saying stupid things will just be stupid people and it doesn't really matter.
Then I realized many of these same people were ending up in positions of power...
I stopped using Facebook 5 or so years ago, and almost instantly felt better day-to-day. I hadn't realized how upset Facebook was making me. Sometimes it would just make me sad (as in, "it's so disappointing that people believe garbage like XYZ") and other times actively angry. Sure, I did occasionally change people's minds by arguing with them in Facebook comments, but that was pretty rare; usually people would just dig in and everyone involved in the argument would end up angry and frustrated.
And it wasn't just that: even when I felt no desire to wade into some sort of contentious conversation, just seeing those sorts of arguments stressed me out and made me upset. Even as I started pulling away from participating in discussions and arguments on Facebook, I realized the root of the problem was still there: divisive crap promoted by algorithmic engagement metrics. Even dialing back my participation wasn't really helping.
So I just stopped, and I feel so much better for it. On occasion (maybe once every 4-6 months) I'll sign into my Facebook account for some specific purpose (to find someone's birthday or email address or something like that), and I'll (as detached as possible) scroll down the news feed a bit for a minute or two. It's so liberating: I realize that I actually don't care about 95% of what my friends and acquaintances are posting. For the most part, I learn about my friends' lives by actually interacting with them (either in real life, or 1-on-1 or small-group chats). There are some friends who I have lost touch with, and that does make me a little sad, but the negatives of using Facebook again just aren't worth it for me.
I pretty much limit my arguing with people on the internet to HN, and while I probably do spend more time doing that than is healthy, I think I'm doing a lot better than when I was actively on Facebook.
My life improved substantially after I dropped Facebook, but the frustrating part now is that LinkedIn (more or less a necessity to find a job in 2023) has started to attract the same morons posting their conspiracy theories, and now I feel like somewhat of a hostage audience. At that point I'm in this kind of uncomfortable position of "do I let these potentially harmful posts go completely unchecked, or do I risk future employers knowing my political beliefs?"
Mostly I've opted for the former, but as you said, the issue is that I am still exposed to these arguments. The second that I find a job that I am confident I won't be laid off from, I'm never logging into LinkedIn again.
I really hope I never have to look for a job again without a recruiter helping me through the process.
I feel like this is an addiction, the high from noticing "Oh my god, you god damn idiot, let me write why you're so stupid, oh I'm so glad I'm not as stupid as this person!". Getting the validation from other people is even more thrilling. I guess it's why social media mobs are so "popular" too, there's even a book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You've_Been_Publicly_Shamed
Or should that be "were popular"? Luckily Twitter is close to death now.
I have a feeling it's related to loneliness epidemic ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=loneliness+epidemic ) and people looking for their connections not through friends ("I need to be vulnerable? no way!") but by anonymous participation in online communication/shit-flinging-fest of every comment section.
Covid was also interesting, you got to walk around in public and think "What a fucking idiot, I'm glad I'm better than that person", and it worked both ways, someone wearing a mask? What a sheep! Someone with no mask? "Must be a stupid Trump voter!". Someone with their nose showing outside their mask? Etc, etc...
I am 33 years old, born in 1990. My parents were kind of geeks so we got the internet pretty early, around 1992~1993 (give or take a year…it was 30 years ago!), so for pretty much my entire life I have had the internet and have been using it for about as long as a person can have used it. As a result, while cool, I think the internet isn’t as cool to me as it might be to nearly anyone older than me.
Social media came to prominence when I was around 15 (~2005/2006), and it was a novel and unique thing that 15 year old Tom thought was pretty cool, but I wonder if the people born into a world with social media are somewhat immune from the novelty of it.
- older gens (50+) getting on socials (cool kids club vanishes)
- raise of influencers and post quality (comparison anxiety)
- change to algos (fewer people will see it)
I can't but think that plain old vBulletin/PhpBB topic-based forums are still the pinnacle of internet discussions.
I don't like the fact, e.g. that interesting discussion on hackernews end up in a day and you don't have long threaded discussions.
discord is a perfect example, you can fairly easily maintain relationships with 10 groups of 50 people, but 500 people is a chore
"Less is more" has never been apt. I don't want to be able to connect to a billion people :/
Too soon to call this good or bad for any singular reason, but what sucks as a result is how hard it is to build an audience now. The network effects are shattered. It’s a shame because I think the Instagram creation tools are kind of neat. If that service was just a digital community bulletin board where every post expired after 30 days or something… idk, could be cool.
Or a massive pendulum swing back to more analog, offline groups.
Social media was literally what it was named - a way to interact, socially, with rich media. Post a photo, all your 'friends' would see it. Write something, all your friends would see it.
Now they don't see it because the algorithm doesn't show them anything that doesn't either push the platform agenda or make money. There's not (enough) money in showing people pictures that their friends took while out for a walk. You can make a buck or two, but you can make 10x as much if you show them celebrity crap instead. Or just straight up push genocidal urges.
You want people to see your pictures? Make a livejournal or a blog and email it to your friends.
I don't want to sound like a drama queen but If you use these platforms in any way shape or form you are aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes and your hands are literally soaked in blood.
If I had to guess they're getting annoyed at the rapid enshittification push at some of the big platforms. We may see federated mastodon model become more popular once a few celebrities figure it out.
At least for me, social is exhausting because rage bait drives engagement and I’m tired of being angry all the time. It’s 1984 and the Two Minutes Hate. Instagram was a lot more fun when it was just food and travel. Even without algorithmic feeds, the introduction of revenue sharing and sponsorships means that creators would eventually make the same hateful content to increase clicks and revenue.
Unless of course, you consider revenue sharing enshittification.
(This was intentionally flippant , to point out the lack of nuance in parent)
Maybe less so for B2B or "serious" things like WSJ, but for B2C it still sounds like a serious contender. For your dropshipping doohickies or crafted niche fandom doodads, where else do you go? Etsy and Pinterest aren't the norm everywhere. Then there's always the hope of "building a following" around either yourself or your product, or perhaps hitting a viral moment ("use this app to help you ABC 2x faster" by some influencer). Does one just SEO their way around and hope someone with a following gives you a boost or asks for an affiliate program?
E.g. a post on Instagram would previously reach 40% of your followers and is now closer to 5%. So the value for a business also went down dramatically.
You might as well just invest in advertisement rather than a social presence beyond the minimum.