Comment by skwee357 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skwee357 | Hacker News Reader

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Technological craftsmanship aside, I’m wondering, what’s the use case for these platforms?

I don’t debate the value of long form written content (blogs) and video content (YouTube), but even these are mainly polluted with SEO garbage articles, or the same idea in 100 different videos, because the content creation machine needs to keep going.

But what’s the real value of short form content like twitter/instagram/tiktok? You can’t convey a meaningful message in a limited amount words/seconds; you can’t use them as a diary or for sharing moments with people you love (I was toying with the idea of staying in instagram just to share pictures with my family, but there is no way I’m going to explain them how decentralized alternatives work); and they don’t have any decent monetization strategy other than ads, which means “influencers”, which means the same thing over again.

So why do we keep recreating the same tools but with a twist of “decentralized” (which has no appeal to the average person, aside from some online “anarchist”/people who like technology [myself included])? What’s the value other than “for fun”/“decentralization”?

>You can’t convey a meaningful message in a limited amount words/seconds

You most definitely can convey meaningful messages in a limited amount of time, and that's exactly the point, enforcing conciseness you end up with higher information density.

Decentralization provides the additional value of resistance to censorship and algorithmic biases.

I disagree with your first statement. The amount of times I saw an opinion/statement/fact posted on Twitter, which required me to write a response longer than 120 characters, can't be counted on both hands. At these moments, I just give up because it's impossible to have a discussion in a chain of 5 Twitter replies to yourself.

Now, because these opinions/statements are not debated due to the fact that not everyone is willing to pay Elon for a set of blue pixels and the ability to post longer form content, they stay there, fueling the echo chambers of opinions that the authors' audience holds, never to be questioned again.

I exaggerate a bit, but I hardly believe I'm the only one who thinks "fuck this, I don't have time to spread my message to multiple tweets/restructure it to fit the character limitation/etc".

I agree with the parent about conciseness being a welcome feature in the character limit. However, I recognize many people don't like it and have observed people cheating it with chain replies. Making everyone sum up all of their thoughts up into a few sentences however fun for some (me) can be overly restrictive or impossible for others.

Probably also depends how comfortable you are sharing deep or personal thoughts with others. Also how much you are interested in reading about a particular person's thoughts. In my case I don't know enough people that care about the things I'm enthusiastic about so I've built up a habit of being direct and to the point.

Being able to express yourself with limited words, is a skill everyone should aspire to master.

Having said that, the idea of social networks like twitter, is to spark a discussion, otherwise you would write a blog. Discussing ideas in twitter is very painful with its limited number of characters.

Unless, of course, all you want is a 2-3 sentence “revelations”, in a form of motivational posters we used to see around 2010, which you accept without questions. But then, is twitter really that different than 9gag for example?

I find this such a backwards question.

Which is to say -- the "use case" is "people REALLY obviously like it."

Similarly, it's absurdly conclusory to say things like "You can't convey a meaningful message" just because, perhaps, YOU'RE not the one receiving it.

Anyway, even as a bit of an old-timer (48), as a Black man I've definitely seen some very good use cases; there are (were?) a decent number of kids out there making VERY INTELLIGENT Black political and historical commentary in this bite-size form.

I find argument like “people love it” a bit weird. People obviously, based on various historic references, REALLY liked gladiator games in Ancient Rome. Would you propose we bring those back to the masses?

I meant, shouldn’t we decide what’s good for our society based on some moral values and principles, and not based on things that the majority like?

As for the second part. Could you share some of those bite-sized historical comment and the discussions they sparked? I’m really curious to see and learn more, and perhaps even change my initial opinion.

On your first argument; we don't have to because we have e.g. football, and I would ABSOLUTELY argue that -- even if you don't like it -- it serves a DEEPLY important purpose in society (namely, a NECESSARY outlet for the weird tribal fighty instinct a lot of people, mostly men, have.)

Funny, I can't find the guy I really like, but -- stuff like this:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/young-tiktok-users-making-activism...

>But what’s the real value of short form content like twitter/instagram/tiktok

For users: dopamine hits.

For producers: attention, money received from marketing bureaus, free stuff sent to them to advertise, eventually hopefully enough popularity to kickstart whatever career path they may discover later. Many YouTubers used their YouTube viewership to launch books, for instance, and plenty of Tiktok famous people launched their own brands/scams.

So for users, it's just another alternative of slot machine / time-wasting activity.

And for producers, yet another ticket to continue engaging in the capitalist system for the sake of capitalism itself.

Putting on my most charitable hat on:

- people hate being bored more than ever and don’t want to “invest” even 10 minutes into entertainment, short form videos can be a great way to kill time - it provides a creative outlet for people who don’t want to invest money and time into creating something longer (filming, writing, research…)

Now, I believe that in reality most of the consumer side is afflicted by addiction and reduced attention span, and most creative side is fueled by egoism and grift. But like everything, the reality is mix of both.

I'd assume that most people wouldn't mind a little alcohol in order to easily navigate social interactions. Now, it doesn't mean I should run a business of offering alcohol stands to social gathering events (at least according to my moral views).

Boredom used to be a real thing that humans needed in order to function properly, and be creative. I remember that as a child I used to stare at the wall, used to go outside. Nowadays, I can't leave my phone in another room. I can't watch an old movie because my brain is not able to process the slow pace of events. I blame, in part, social networks and short from content.

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