There’s Something Rotten in the State of Social Media

I've said it a lot on HN, but in my opinion, there's nothing rotten in the state of social media. Social media itself is inherently rotten.

Twitter, Facebook, et al taking away users' rights, pushing crappy updates and changes, while at the same time using creepy advertising tactics to make money and addictive functionality to keep you involved is Twitter, Facebook et al doing exactly what they were designed to do. Their job is to make their shareholders money by exploiting the people who use their service, and they're doing, I'd say, pretty well.

I think Facebook knows full well that nobody likes Facebook Messenger, the newsfeed, the fact their data is never deleted, the obnoxious Zyngames, and so on. They don't care. People will use their service anyway and they'll make money. Twitter knows people probably wouldn't like curated lists, and they'll still do it if they think it'll make them money (just like they know that developers have no choice but to accept their draconian API terms).

I have a lot of objections to social media - on a philosophical basis and a business one - but I don't feel it's reasonable to say it's "dying" or "getting worse." From the perspective of the people running the companies (the only perspective said companies care about), it's doing just fine.

I quit Facebook years ago. I stay on Twitter because paradoxically it feels like less of a commitment than Facebook. I stay on LinkedIn because... actually I don't know why. I keep joining and leaving Google+. I keep joining, sometimes by accident. I always leave deliberately.

I was at a conference recently and someone asked why Second Life didn't go global. And I answered that it was because it wasn't open and federated. They was a bit of bluster but that is the why.

Postal (snail mailing), PSTN (phone-calling), SMS (texting), email (uh, emailing), IRC (chatting?) ... These are all open and federated and have lasted and lasted. No corporation, no matter how massive is ever ever ever going to become 'the social medium' which is what they all want.

Eventually we are going to have open federated online social communication. I thought identi.ca had a chance then I thought Diaspora* was going to do it. Maybe I need to invest in setting up some of these services, maybe all us techies do. Maybe what we need is a movement, we probably already have the tech stacks.

Also, we need single-sign-on, like yesterday :(

Every time these articles come up it's the same ol' same ol'. Actually you know, I'd pay for a Twitter account at this point if only to say, "I trust you, you can keep having my € while I trust you, but as soon as I don't goodbye!"

I don't get why he is more emotionally connected to Twitter than Facebook. I find Facebook to be a lot more personal. I know this is a dumb thing to say in 2014, but I still have no idea what the value propostion of Twitter is. Facebook was a 100% complete social network doing everything I ever needed about 6 years ago. Everything FB and their competitors have done in the interim is iterate on the same few ideas trying to squeeze out a few more pennies of ad revenue. And some of them are successful for some reason.

I dunno, I think media of all kinds can get rotten.

Take CNN.

The other day I was watching CNN after the events that went down in Fergurson. For once they sent somebody out of the studio to go look around, but they can't talk to the cops because the cops have PR people that won't let them to talk to the media. They can't talk to ordinary black and white people because they'll say nasty things.

Instead they end up having some geek argue with the dead guy's lawyer about how hard his case is going to be for hours. And then they interrupt to say that they have important news that the third and fourth cousins of somebody famous just died in a car crash.

A week before that there was some woman who looked like Oprah Winfrey who was aghast that a child that was kept in a basement was forced to EXERCISE. She looked like she could do some sit up and push ups herself.

Then before that there was a bounce house accident out in wind gust country in Colorado so they have to go on Youtube and find all the Youtube videos about bounce houses blowing away.

Then they wonder why nobody watches CNN.

This trend of social networks turning to shit when investors run out of patience for their returns really sucks. It was bound to happen with Facebook and Twitter, and seeing it with Soundcloud (when they already had a revenue stream as well) just depresses me.

I guess all "free" services that have investment from purely profit orientated VC's/Angels are bound to turn to shit eventually. But maybe now the service exists and is part of everyone's day to day world, a useful paid for social network could pop up that reaches critical mass. I'd gladly pay a small monthly fee for a non-creepy, no advertising, no privacy invasion Facebook... If all my friends got on board too of course ;)

The article doesn't mention it but the latest trends in advertising has moved beyond 'behavioral' targeted advertising, where a user is served specific content because they may have browsed something similar in the past (ironically I once searched over hundreds of shelving products to find one that met some very strict weight/size/height/load requirements and was rewarded with months of completely irrelevant shelving ads).

The new trend is to use social networking models to discover 'influencers' in social groups and use those people's reputations to recommend products to other people. Take for example object (a) versus (b) on page nine of the following paper: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.4327v1.pdf

Lindex 'Enterprise SEO Software' has this to say: "Our latest innovation Linkdex Networks enables you to visualise and analyse these groups of relevant influencers. The objective is to enable digital marketers to gradually identify the right personalities and build relationships with them, spreading along those networks for maximum exposure.

If someone within your network has lots of relationships pointing to them you know that they are perceived as trustworthy sources. The aim is to find influencers who are passionate on a niche topic, have strong relationships with the group and are receptive to new ideas with plenty of reach." [1]

It's on fire everywhere in marketing and advertising and there are lots of variations being tried and tested at the moment, and also publicly funded research at universities [2]. Marketers will drop prices online when they detect influencers, in an attempt to encourage them to speak highly of their product to their friends and family (who will need to buy at full price). The Marketing Science Institute has a whole section dedicated to social networks and influencing them [3][4].

Just searching for the term "social contagion advertising" or "advertising influencers" reveals media research arms with nifty tables that map out ways of influencing social groups by targeting information strategically at certain members. For example you can get people to change their view of the "legitimacy of an item" by "encourag[ing] influential targets to adopt the item" or create the idea of a "status disadvantage of not adopting" by "Emphasiz[ing] activities of close connections in a social network to influence behavior". [5]

Perhaps a side note, but the DoD "MINERVA initiative" [6] studies social contagion strategies to track, create or lessen political instability in other countries (although the initiative studies a lot of other things too). The USAID Cuban Twitter project sought to (and nearly succeeded in) creating mass unrest by appearing to be a grassroots movement in Cuba to overthrow the government. You can bet that other countries have these capabilities, or analogues to them, as well (Snowden documents and leaked HB Gary memos show that both the NSA and GCHQ engage in astroturfing and social media manipulation) [7][8][9]. The giant meta-data graph created by the NSA is also particularly valuable for 'influencer' and 'social contagion' analysis.

These sorts of forces are abound on social media websites, as can be seen in the recent Wired article "I liked everything I saw on Facebook for two days" [10]. What's more, the role that social media has begun to play in political races is incredible. If you have the time and interest, look up the capabilities of incumbent Obama's "The Cave" for social media evangelism and tracking. Real time social estimates of support across dozens of major social media platforms with the ability to influence and target any of them at will. Interns scrambling to be "first to post" on online discussions in news media articles.

To be a member of online social media is to be surveilled by both governments and by corporations, to have your content curated for financial purposes, and to have your information sold to the highest bidder. It is also to be influenced not just by direct advertisement, but also indirectly through information that gets carried word of mouth. On the internet nobody knows that you are a dog. This is often an inconvenience and it allows trolls and other unsavory social behavior. Unfortunately it is now also true that on social media, those with the right perspective - those that can see social media at the thousand foot view - not only know that you are a dog, but also know how to make you drool when they ring a bell.

[1] http://www.linkdex.com/blog/social-contagion-why-ideas-and-p...

[2] http://icos.umich.edu/sites/icos6.cms.si.umich.edu/files/lec...

[3] http://www.msi.org/reports/distinguishing-among-mechanisms-o...

[4] http://www.msi.org/articles/what-drives-social-contagion-in-...

[5] http://socialmediaandmobileresearch.com/2014/03/10/social-co...

[6] http://minerva.dtic.mil/

[7] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...

[8] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun...

[9] http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The...

[10] http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-fac...

I hope that Twitter does not algorithmically curate Lists. The proposed changes are ostensibly for ease of use. Newbies who don't know how to follow someone would never create lists. Please leave lists alone!

Is there any alternative that could handle a mass exodus within a few quarters? Twister (http://twister.net.co/), Sublevel (http://sublevel.net/explore/), federated HN clones, ...?

There's absolutely nothing rotten with social media, at least as far as social media's primary userbase is concerned. The small minority of people complaining on TC or HN about the "decline" of social media don't understand that the average Joe doesn't give two shits about FB requiring a separate app for IMing, or Twitter adding advertising to your feed. They just accept it as a fact of life.

I'd love to see a non-profit replace Twitter.

It's a long shot, but Wikipedia replaced Britannica. Perhaps, there's hope.

Could Twitter afford to buy Flipboard? They have a better user experience, better business model (premium ads), a user interface which already has "channels" and they now own the excellent curation algorithms of Zite.

Flipboard UX would enable users to have the best of both algorithmic and human/social curation.

What drove lots of people in my friend circle away from Facebook was the lack of being able to entirely disable all those stupid game invites.

Every day there's a new fad for the kids and they flood their entire friendlist with invites - and you can't unfriend them e.g. because they're family or work colleagues.

This is taking the "website made a minor change that I dislike, they are evil" to the absurd extreme. Algorithmic filtering is amazing and necessary and A/B type testing isn't "evil AI controlling your life for profit".

It's the users fault! App.net was a alternative to twitter, but a paid one. Failed. So users are in no position that they are the product sold to advertisers. They actively decided to be the product.