Social media is on the decline. Instagram is all ads. No one’s posting on BeReal. TikTok is for influencers. The new place for sharing: group chats.
Social media in general is in the following stage of Enshitification:
- Launch
- Growth at all costs, user focus
- Use size to bring advertisers
- Gradually shift focus to advertisers and money bringers
- Ensure users are way too invested to quit
- >> Sell out <<
It’s no surprise that people only end up seeing “carefully curated” content, it’s what “sells”, or rather, ensures people stay in the stupid app. From TFA: “While sharing has tailed off, consuming content hasn’t slowed”
I have an Insta account for some of the part time 3D printing I do, but since I’m not a “content creator”, my stuff has almost zero reach. Whenever I open the app, it’s roughly 1:1:1 posts of “recommended”, someone I actually follow, advert. 2/3 of everything shown to me is stuff I didn’t ask for, not to mention when the advertises are actual scams or fucking pyramids
I first heard the term ‘enshitification’ on the last episode of On the Media. Perfect description
It was coined by Doctorow and his article about it is very popular on the fediverse.
Yup, here’s the tasty salsa - https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
I redownload insta like a month ago because I thought fuck it. Other than reels from old friends from highschool, it’s all adds and the same regurgitated memes and stand up comics.
It was creepy that after nearly 4 years of being inactive it knew that I liked golf, and drink too much.
Those platforms are business media now, not social media anymore.
This is really interesting to think about. On my photography IG the one users who are still having good reach are the ones who are promoting their patreon/presets/editing services, are constantly trying to earn money in some way and are posting a million reels every day.
More casual photographers like me are getting zilch. I used to get 1000 likes on 95% of my stuff with some going viral. Now I get 200 if I’m lucky, my reach in general is in the hole and I refuse to spend hours editing reels and begging for the algorithms attention. I’m close to shutting it down but I help mod a page right now so I’m hanging on for a bit yet.
The fediverse, while still social media, has a level of authenticity unrivaled by most major social medias in my opinion. Hopefully it stays that way!
Has any communication system managed to do that? Once certain types of people catch the scent of profit, they tear the medium apart searching for every penny of it.
Letters became junk mail. Email became spam. Newspapers and magazines became mostly ads and shilled content. Television became for-profit news and reality content.
That authenticity is just going to make it more appealing to astro-turf.
we need to shitpost more. a neighborhood that is high in crime does not appeal to advertisers. like north korea, they live in paradise whilst convincing the rest of the world that it’s a shithole.
Weirdest NK take I’ve seen
Weirdest NK take I’ve seen
I think it’s kinda true for like…a couple very specific people there.
ah i guess that’s in the process of changing. you can see this happening right now. more right-wing memes, more “look at this cool movie/toy/outfit… i found. it’s really me, a normal human being just like you!”
Lol I would bet the majority of that crap is from just normal people.
yes. normal people getting paid to post that.
Seems extremely unlikely. There’s very little reach on here compared to elsewhere. It’s not easily quantifiable nor can it be easily verified. It’s extremely easy to hack metrics. There’s no business sense to pay someone for posts on the fediverse yet. Don’t be paranoid and don’t become conspiratorial.
Edit: added “yet” because those things could possibly change.
Anyone who disagrees with you is a bot amiright?
… wait, am I a bot?
We’re all bots.
beep boop
Bad bot.
I also noticed how my social media usage (even on Lemmy and Mastodon) is consistently declining, I haven’t opened the clients I use for either platform in days (or possibly more than a week). It’s bad because I was pretty invested in the fediverse, but it’s good because now I can actually do something productive, or even go outside.
It’s not bad… it’s actually healthy. I think that feeling that you must post on social media isn’t really good for the head.
Go on social media when you feel like it, but it’s best if the default is to not use social media.
Good point
Agreed, this experiment should be able to last by itself without feeling obligated to post something. If that’s the case then it’s failed.
Same. Good stuff.
No one’s posting on BeReal
Nobody has heard of BeReal
BeReal is pretty popular with a lot of the people I know- you might not be in the right social circles who know about it
What is BeReal?
Rapper in Cypress Hill. Oh, no, that’s B-Real.
I believe it’s an app, where you randomly get a notification and mist poat within then and 2 minutes. It takes a pic of both the front and back cameras on your phone. The idea is that you can’t make yourself look good, like with Snapchat filters, or even Instagram where you can find a nice angle or whatever.
What if I’m taking a shit???
I’m having trouble imagining a worse social media experience and I’ve used both Facebook and the new Reddit site.
It feels like it has a similar stance to what BeMe had but is somewhat successful. Less about you attempting to look perfect and more about every day life. The BeMe idea was to set your camera to record, hold it to your chest to record what ever you were looking at, and before you knew it the video was uploaded to the servers.
I still visit Reddit but I no longer engage in any way, other than reading comments. No up/down voting, not commenting, no reporting spam. Nothing but reading with multiple layers of ad-blocking.
PS: the overall quality/value has dropped precipitously
I deleted my main Reddit account but still find myself going back there occasionally for specific topics. For example, I haven’t found a good place on Lemmy to ask travel questions.
place on Lemmy to ask travel questions.
Good luck. One poster would ask if you like sex and travel, then tell you to “Go and get fucked.”
Another would accuse you of being a bourgeois lib who is killing the planet with your capitalist excesses.
Another would go on a rant about privilege and how your very ability to ask such questions in a public space speaks to your total lack class consciousness and your ignorance of “The Movement” or something like it.
In short, check out Vang Vieng in Laos and have a great time.
Where the fuck are y’all hanging out?? All I see are memes and Star Trek…
oddly specific, but go on…
People like this infuriate me. They don’t clue in that travel decreases the fear and antipathy toward other cultures.
Did you not enjoy your tenth fight video of the day?
I read AITA on Lemmy via a bot, that is the last vestige of Reddit I haven’t dropped.
Also, if no one is posting on social media, then what the hell are we all doing right now then?
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The internet has been almost entirely enshittified by large corporations and government overreach. I really do wish there was a way to get back to Web 1.0 of mostly user-generated, self-hosted content, without the slow internet speeds or crappy web design motifs.
Might be possible if everyone is forced underground due to adblockers possibly getting killed off.
Lemmy is one of the ways back to internet 1.0.
Web 2.0 was the advent of user generated content. Web 1.0 was not. It was site-generated content for the most part. Some forums possibly. But it was extremely static and was very poor way to find user generated content.
I blame javascript. If it weren’t for people fucking with the time travel machine WE’D be the ones in the original timeline, and no one would have to suffer in this timeline where javascript got invented.
Let’s focus on Rampart.
No. Only MY movies are allowed to be promoted on Lemmy.
Not during the strike they’re not…
Well, not by me… but somebody else.
My Facebook is only memes, only from the large meme pages, not the ones I like that I have to check manually since they’ll never end up in my feed. And news articles.
It started with Facebook just hiding what your friends are posting. It still happens that someone shares a photo once a year or so, but I will never get shown it. I just browse my friend’s profiles manually.
That was extremely dissatisfying about Facebook. I’d see an endless stream of crap from people that I barely knew and didn’t care about at all, and then when I’d look at a profile of someone I actually knew and did want to keep up with, I’d see posts about significant and interesting things that happened in their lives which Facebook never showed me. I tried to get them to stop showing me irritating posts about politics - unfollow people, block people, mark “show less posts like this”, then it would come up with more political posts from people I didn’t even recognize. Meanwhile, oh, colleague got married…. sure, just never show me that post and show me 15 idiotic political memes instead.
and we’d voice our opinion AS THESE CHANGES WERE HAPPENING and people would cry “things change you just don’t like change hur durr i’m so progressive”
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I don’t consider this or reddit social media. I don’t know anyone, nor do I care to.
Instead it is like a collection of forums since forever like in the bbs days.
I pick and choose what rooms to go in and learn something. But it isn’t about me, or staying connected. You know, the social part.
This and Reddit are 100% social media. Right now, writing this, we are socializing on this media.
Maybe I’m wrong, but this is how I’ve viewed it for years
No, I don’t think so. Not in the sense that social media became defined. Web forum, and bbs rooms, existed long before the term. The key difference and turning point was removal of anonymity, and the concept of self promotion. I know they are similar and overlap, but the evolution from one to the other did occur. Reddit and Lemmy still have more in common with news aggregation and forums than say a Titter, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. Most of the content here is in reference to something else, end then discussion are on that.
nah. Social Media has a sort of implied entertainment attached to it, which is not a good description of, e.g., this very discussion. This -can- be social media if you’re just lurking, but for us conversing here this is now a forum. We’re sharing thoughts and discussing.
…for entertainment. For fun.
I don’t think many of us would come here if it wasn’t fun.
This is literally social media lmao
No, I don’t think so. Not in the sense that social media became defined. Web forum, and bbs rooms, existed long before the term. The key difference and turning point was self promotion, and the removal of anonymity. I know they are similar and overlap, but the evolution from one to the other did occur. Reddit and Lemmy still have more in common with news aggregation and forums than say a Titter, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. Most of the content here is in reference to something else, end then discussion are on that.
If you look up the history of the term the turning point is definitely the change to having real personas and real people connect. That is where the “social” part comes from. The term “social networking”. But we are not social networking here. Do you actually know anyone here? Do you want to?
preach. If anyone wants an example of what is meant by “forum” if you’re too accustomed to modern takes on it, visit places like news.ycombinator.com or just browse reddit using old.reddit.com and go in some less “popular” subs that aren’t just people posting random pics and videos.
That’s basically how most of Instagram works and is what the article is about. No one knows folks on those platforms either. They aren’t “social” anymore. No one shares anything personal, it’s all “content” created for millions of followers by influencers and the like. This is probably more like social media than current platforms are. It’s closer to what social media was when it started.
I’m assuming you’re just here studying nerds for your next blockbuster where you’re playing Ada Lovelace or something.
… I don’t know what you’re talking about.
On a purely coincidentally note, how likely would you be in watching an Ada Lovelace biopic? No reason, just asking.
With you playing her? 100%.
Depends. Is it written by Sydney Padua?
🤐
You’d better make this happen or some anonymous nerd on the Internet will be marginally disappointed, and I don’t think you want that on your hands.
I see your point, but I only used Reddit for a long time and the difference was the anonymity, so it’s social media but minus the personal brand.
This is why I hate when “journalists” write titles like these because they’re just stupid bullshit. Why not just say “social media use is in severe decline”. Oh, because it’s not clickbait, that’s why.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=4JkIs37a2JE&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Lemmy isn’t social media, it’s content aggregation, like reddit used to be
Might as well say Instagram isn’t social media either, nor is Facebook or Twitter. Social media is just a platform where one of the biggest parts of it is the commenting system. Its a social media platform for content aggregation. The commenting makes it social.
There are tons of “but Lemmy isn’t social media because blah blah blah!!!” comments here by the kids who think they are too cool to be lumped in with the instagram / facebook crowd.
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it’s interesting how many comments show that people like to read the headline and are content with that to form an opinion. literally the first paragraph says that it’s not “THERE ARE NO POSTS” but it says that the “feed is swamped by a combination of perfectly curated photos and professionally created content.” - the problem is that the paid content creators have become GOOD. so many of them really look like they are just opinions and casual mentions of movies/clothes/…things. viral marketing is really at a point where so many fronts that have been established have been broken down in the guise of “irony” or “sarcasm”. “I’m only buying the Barbie merch ironically” etc.
it’s interesting how many comments show that people like to read the headline
I read articles about India landing on the moon, ancestors of humans nearly dying out, tech employees being dissatisfied in Austin, etc. I don’t care about social media enough to read an article. That’s probably a lot of people here.
Are those articles shown to you by Google News (the thing built into Android) by any chance? I’ve had those exact ones recommended to me in the past few days and it’s a little unnerving seeing someone else mention reading them all lmao.
I do check Google News daily on the web from my computer. And I also read news stories posted to Lemmy. I also have a bunch of RSS feeds on my phone, but that’s typically nerd computer stuff unless someone happens to comment on a news article on their blog.
It’s not just about content creators becoming good though, the article also explains how the algorithm pushes that content over others.
Granted, the quality of the content is still a big part of it, another point it makes is that people refrain from posting things because it’s not “good enough” compared to others.
Isn’t that what the summary above pretty much says with even less words?
My following on insta is dominated by meme pages, influencers, and that one person in your social group who practically shares their life on social media.
The only followers I’ve been getting on tumblr lately are porn bots. I don’t even follow porn bots or look at their pages, I’m only there to shitpost.
Same. I hate how often I have to block them.
I even wrote into tumblr staff and they acknowledged it was an issue in the ticket but won’t say anything publicly which is annoying.
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I dont even want to talk to half the people I know anymore lol. I stopped using FB but keep it running because there are many years of pics and what not for family. And when I bring it down people freak out and think something is wrong with me. Other than that, it has been stripped of any identifying information, only has people I know and I never use it anymore. That was the only real ‘personal’ place I had on the internet. Everything else is fake names and whatnot, always has been.
download all your facebook data to get all memories locally, then you can delete
They let you transfer it to other services now, too. That’s what I did for my photos and videos before deleting them from Facebook.
Could I ask why you don’t want to talk to half the people you know? I have the opposite issue where I try to talk to people I know but they don’t reciprocate, I’m finding it hard to imagine the inverse.
To add an additional perspective, it’s not that I dislike these people, some of them I love, but my time has so many asks as it is, and I just cannot maintain active relationships with that many people who have no other impact on my daily life. There are a few I would make time for when the opportunity comes around, but I can’t keep sustained things going with more than a few people. I say can’t, but what I mean is that I prefer to spend the vast majority of my time with my wife and kids, and I will use just about any amount of time that I can spare for parents, siblings, and their kids. I have a few friends who fit into the same group as the family. After that, it’s occasional messages, Christmas cards, and the rare visit/meet up. If you are there for the good, you should be prepared to be there for the bad, in my opinion. I cannot offer that to too many people beyond immediate family. Also, I certainly don’t have the money to support some of those folks through their rough patches, and saying “no” to people you care about sucks.
Interesting, thanks for the response. Robin Dunbar is a psychologist and anthropologist who studies friendship. His claim to fame is ‘Dunbar’s Number’ which is a general statement of how many friends a person can have. It varies from person to person and is influenced by one’s environment, age, beliefs, etc.
He has a way of expressing how relationships manifest themselves based in closeness, I have an
here.This seems to map to what you’re saying. Another thing he said was that the more close friends you have, the less acquaintances you’ll have, and vice versa. There are limits to the number of people you interact with and it can be seen as a sort of hierarchy.
I wanted to ask to get a better understanding: Why do you prefer more time with your kids and wife? Is the idea that your time is better spent to positively affect them and yourself (i.e. enjoying your time with family) and it’s better to ‘put your eggs in one basket’ so to speak? That there is an investment required to have some kind of benefit to make it worthwhile to spend time with others and with family there is a predictable outcome? Do you ever actively engage in criteria to evaluate the methods, reasons, or heuristics you use to determine who to spend time with or who to allocate resources to?
My notion is more investment is given to those who we are closer to due to some perceived positive effect but those heuristics are only ever rules of thumb and wholly influenced by reasons outside of our control. The conclusion is made and then we work backwards to find justification.
I have a friend who spends every weekend with their family, in the infrequent times we do see one another they complain about their parent’s misunderstanding and causing them distress. Rightfully so, as their parents are a bit old-fashioned to say the least. What confused me was, this is a bit machiavellian, they have already seemingly reaped many of the benefits from engaging with their parents and they may be better suited to distributing their time intentionally so as to have a better outcome for themselves and even their parents who are a bit reliant on them and whose ways are set-in further as the friend plays their part in the pattern. They are acclimatized to their environment (with their parents) and the extent that they can predictably or intentionally cause meaningful improvements or positive outcomes is set.
I always thought it would make sense to continually test alternative strategies because at any point one can become ‘comfortable’ at a given local minima or maxima more or less arresting any further development or change. The violent refusal when the topic is broached, and the absolute certainty to which they claimed their current method was superior caught me off-guard and made me confused.
Very interesting! Thanks for that Robin Dunbar info!
Of course! Here’s is a link I have more resources as well if you’d like.
A quote from another article I have saved:
According to John Cacioppo, a social neuroscientist who specialized in the study of loneliness (he died in 2018), humans would have evolved a built-in bias against easily making friends because avoiding an enemy would have been more important than making a friend. “If I make an error and detect a person as a foe who turns out to be a friend, that’s O.K., I don’t make the friend as fast, but I survive,” Dr. Capiocco said in a 2017 interview in The Atlantic. “But if I mistakenly detect someone as a friend when they’re a foe, that can cost me my life. Over evolution, we’ve been shaped to have this bias.”
A link for the second article here
Getting older. Lots of drama. Lots of political bullshit I can’t stand anymore and don’t want to hear about. Not saying my situation is the healthiest in the world but that is how I am feeling these days.
Ah, ok makes a ton of sense. Thanks for the response.
There are people I liked a lot in earlier stages of my life, that I no longer have the desire to talk to not due to anything they did, but just them being from a period in my life I’d rather forget or move on from. In some cases it might be people whose main shared interested with me was what we did for work, which I no longer do.
I hear you. I always found it to be very unfortunate :/
Wtf is bereal
It’s a breakfast food item that you pour beer over.
Bereal is great, you get a notification and take a picture, front and rear camera, that’s all you get for the day, then you can see what your friends are up to.
By far my favorite social media.
I get it but man, I’d never want to post pics of myself on the Internet for anyone to see. I also don’t think anyone would wanna see me anyway. ¯\(°_o)/¯
Default is only your friends see. You opt in to make it public.
You don’t actually have to take a photo of yourself. If you’re quick enough you can just move the front facing camera to take a photo of the ceiling.
That’s what I do on days I don’t want to take a photo of myself.
This sounds so bizarre to me. “If you’re quick enough”? What happens if you aren’t? What kind of insane, voluntary 1984-esque nightmare is this app?
I mean like you take a photo with your rear camera and once that’s taken it’ll load up your front camera to take a photo but you can move it so it doesn’t take a photo of you. Kind of like a countdown timer.
If you’re not quick enough you just don’t post a pic that day.
Prove to me you’re still alive today.
The principles are cool but none of my friend wants to bother with another social network
My thoughts exactly… This might be why nobody is posting there
We’re just to old, my niece and nephews in their teens are all using it.
I’m 24 and a lot of people in my friend circle are definitely using it. I’d say it started off niche but it’s becoming mainstream.
It’s the only social network I don’t hate right now
Give it a year or two
Must be an age thing. Mid 30’s and I can’t fathom why this is a thing based on the description in this thread. It just sounds so voluntarily invasive, like leaving your door open.
Does Lemmy count as social media?? lol
Yes but I’d classify it as a different category more akin to old school forums. It’s less a place to post photos of yourself and more one to discuss and read about stuff you enjoy (or memes). I just want a place personally to discuss movies, video games, technology etc
In broad strokes, yeah. I’d even consider older, more traditional forms like forums and IRC/BBS to be proto forms of social media. As long as the internet exists there will be social media, what form it takes is malleable depending on the desires of the userbase at hand.
At that point the operational definition is just “website where you can post stuff”
Not to me.
Just like Reddit, it’s more anonymous and the people you are interacting with don’t really matter, you don’t know them, they don’t know you.
You just interact for a few minutes and never see each other again.
I’m not sure “they don’t matter” is something I could get behind. We still have every reason to remember that there’s (probably) a person on the other end, one we should extend common courtesy to, and with whom we might exchange perspective-changing ideas, even if rarely.
That said I agree the “reddit” format is the one I always liked best. It just makes more sense for people who want to discuss the same things, to group up online, rather than into arbitrary parasocial masses around a select few persons, as well as the people you know IRL and may or may not have any interest in actually interacting with.
Hi, bye.
Yeah the way you describe it makes it sound like we could build an AI forum where each user is the only one in there and all the rest are ai bots whose only purpose is to generate the content and interaction we’re looking for.
I think Reddit is just the beta version.
I prefer it not be this way.
I kind of hate getting replies here and I can tell the person I’m talking to isn’t paying attention to who in the thread they are talking to. It’s like people aren’t seeing each other as people.
I’ve been trying to cut down social media use ever since 2020. I don’t blame people for not posting most social media platforms are either boring or a toxic shit holes.
George Floyd showed me that the hope I had for this nation is lost. People are just argumentative assholes and have zero perspective. Hearing people defend the police and everything that followed made me dump it.
Granted I know there are those trying to do their job. It wasn’t them. It’s the keyboard warriors that have never been close to a cop, trying to defend a dude killing another over a written check just got to me.
If a company ever puts ads in my group chats I will jump in a volcano
No no no… We need to throw the CEO’s in the volcano. We don’t need CEO’s but I’m sure someone needs you.
I’m the CEO of ExxonMobil but thanks anyway
Well then please by all means go jump into a volcano. I’m so sorry I even suggested you do differently.
Lol die plz 🤣
Sent by my iPhone™
Don’t use a MIUI phone then.
please dont give them ideas, maybe some CEO is seeing this and decides to implement it
So? Jumping in a volcano is completely harmless if you dive in the right way.
Don’t mourn social media. It was always too easily astro-turfed.
