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.
It’s not just you — no one is posting on social media anymore::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.
My big take away is that social media as we know it is likely generational. Like real time broadcast TV, it may just not be a thing at all in the future, at least not with the centrality we’ve become accustomed to.
Polls run here and especially on masto bare this out. Mastodon, for instance, leans x-gen/boomer with some millennial in its demographic. It’s hardly a young persons thing. Once you realise so much of the praise and enjoyment of the Fedi is that it reminds people of the older days of the internet, the generational picture becomes pretty clear. 15 year olds today were born after Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Forums, Usenet, old Twitter are probably like black and white tv to them.
At the moment, I think it’s a major flaw of the Fedi, that it’s fundamentally backwards looking, trying to preserve older big-social designs rather than doing something more diverse or at least different.
An obvious example being private or closed spaces like group chats and the like including public versions if desired. This seems to be a growing form of online interaction, that is in a way more humane or eusocial. But apart from matrix, which sits separately, the Fedi is still stuck redoing Twitter and Reddit.
I think you have a point. However, my 13-year-old and most of her school are all on Snapchat and use it constantly. They’re also regularly posting TikTok videos. Kids get in trouble for doing them at school all the time.
Interesting! You think TikTok and Snapchat are counters to my closed group chat observation?
If so I didn’t mean to suggest that that’s where everyone is going. Not at all. TikTok and Snapchat would be examples of the generational factor I was talking about.
No, I said you had a point. I was just addressing the idea that, while it may be generational, even the current generation is still addicted to social media. Maybe less so, but still addicted to it.
a very similar phenomenon is visible in Bluesky, but in that case it skews heavily towards older millenials who are trying to recreate a culture that used to exist on Twitter, and is now dead. Bluesky is fundamentally even more backward looking than AP-fedi, as ATProto really cannot do much else than microblogging
its been striking for me for a while that the fediverse developer community isnt able to become an actual community, and instead has been trying to reinvent community initiatives outside of fedi for a while, and they all bleed out. Think there are lots of reasons for that, but if the people building a social network cannot manage to use their own tools to use that social network to become a social community, than that usually does not bode well
there is a very loosely defined ‘community’ of people who are interested in talking about fedi on a meta (not Meta) level. youve been involved, so you know most of the names. Again, its striking to me that this group (me included) hasnt really transformed into an actual community, and instead its fleeting ephemeral posts on a feed that only some of the regulars see and comment on.
God … so sorry … just had a coffee and mashed the keyboard … looooong rant … IN SHORT … yes!!
Interesting thoughts here!
The BlueSky situation makes a lot of sense. In another thread on here I was discussing with some people how the psychology of leaving a big long term social media staple like Twitter/Reddit is non-trivial. Someone interestingly suggested that most of the “rage” or “rudeness” you see here isn’t from a bad Reddit culture coming across but a side effect of the anger and frustration felt and expressed through the whole migration event.
Beyond that there’s probably more to unpack about the idea, where, I’d guess that building a culture based on leaving a “bad place” is always harder than doing it based on a starting “new and good place”. A lot of the “culture problems/frustrations” over on masto seem to resonate with that idea. For me, personally, though I’m not really a social media person and have never really been committed to any platform or anything, masto and ActivityPub kinda feel like let downs, and I think the psychology of “migrating” off of a “bad place” and the way it plays out and affects culture is a major factor behind that. The others being aligned with your other points!
I didn’t really know the developer community had failed to coalesce … I’d always figured it happened somewhere I didn’t know about. Interestingly, from what I’ve heard, the lemmy admin/developer community has kinda coalesced on a few matrix rooms and discord servers and it is working well so far. Lemmy is much smaller than mastodon though, so it might just be that there’s less room for drama/splits (though obviously it does occur).
On the other hand … how much of this is mastodon culture? I’d bet some of it is … ?
More generally though … a very scathing critique IMO! I’d imagine people who know about community management would have something to say about it. My intuition thinks about the lack of shared software which means no developer has any reason to cooperate with any other. If there were for instance a commonly used generic AP server or stack, or reference implementation, then there’d at least be a common development forum for people together. But, having just a common protocol and then completely diverging projects building decentralised systems means that separation and independence are the key social structures between developers and admins. Lemmy devs for instance are not fans of mastodon devs due to allegedly poor documentation and the resultant difficulties of federating with masto.
Beyond that, I think of where communities have developed in tech, with particular languages being an obvious example, and I think that you need a commonly loved central tool (such as a language, framework, kernel, OS, app etc). ActivityPub is probably not that tool? And masto creating its own de facto standard that other platforms have to begrudgingly work with probably doesn’t help at all. I wonder how devs of mastodon forks feel about the code base? Have masto fork devs not formed a community, and if so why not?
And then of course is your point which is bang on. I’ve said it before and also elsewhere in this thread … the lack of chat rooms on the fedi is probably getting kinda bad now. Your argument is pretty scathing (what are the initiatives you mention … places on discord/matrix?). I noticed the same when I looked into some defed drama and found the only meaningful conversation to have happened on a Discord server. But beyond that so much stuff is happening on Discord (and matrix and the like), it seems, with IMO plenty of arguments for why such a model is a good form of social media (IMO, (micro-)blogosphere-link-aggregator + chat-rooms (optionally closed) seems like an obvious mix), that the fedi might look a little stuck in the past, especially given that it still doesn’t have decent private messaging (apart from dansup’s venture).
As for whether current fedi platforms are insufficient for facilitating communities … if true, why is that? How did communities form on Twitter for instance? Is the lack of algorithmic feeds part of this … like, can we now say that as problematic as they were they actually had pro-social effects by disproportionately promoting posts by those you have stronger connections too??! I feel like I’ve seen the community/group format work ok with the !lemmyapps@lemmy.world, !fediverse@lemmy.world and !fediverse@lemmy.ml communities.
As to your last point … yea that’s interesting. For my experience, part of that is that I’m strewn across 3.5 different platforms (lemmy, masto, firefish and occasionally checking but not really using kbin) and that there’s no real place to go to check up on “that community”, in large part I feel because masto and the microblogs don’t have groups/communities and in the absence of any sort of algorithm that’s honestly fatal for true community development. I often wonder how much masto as a twitter substitute will be an overall “bitter victory” for the fedi at large and those who’ve bought into it. For me, the ideal of the fediverse is to give people what they need to organise online, and, IMO, masto is not that and the ecosystem, because of the reasons you highlight, hasn’t worked out how to provide the necessary diversity.
I signed up for Facebook for the first time ever, to comment on a local page about a local issue, and was first banned by Facebook for nothing in particular. Had to put in a phone number to reactivate. Also found I wasn’t able to post if I included a link, a link to a government website, but I guess that’s a very basic spam filter for new accounts. Then made some comments back and forth with no one really talking to me. Then about a week later with no activity, my account had been banned again, and now Facebook wants a photo. I don’t even have photos online, and I don’t see how they could use that to verify my identity, so that’s where I stopped.
My mum was briefly banned on FB the other day and she’s the most inoffensive person on the planet. This is an account that’s maybe a decade old. They reinstated her account after she appealed so something seems broken with their banning system.
At the start of each school year some niche social media gains popularity, simply because each year wants something new and “untainted”. Last year BeReal benefitted from this. It likely won’t survive for long as they’re losing users now
My Fantasy and SF book lovers goup on Facebook has more posts per day than I can read and gets new members every day.
My music groups on Facebook have even more posts and content.
Linkedin has more and more social posts (not a good thing, but hardly on the decline)
Article is clearly written by someone with no initiatve or personality or insight.
Megalomaniac billionaires ruined social media in their effort to control the narrative and ruin privacy. It was a neat idea when it was just a way to keep up with people you were interested in.
For a long time I’ve posted actively to Facebook and then at the end of the year I have my pictures and top posts printed up in a nice “yearbook.” There’s a service that does this (but I’m not here to advertise them). Anyway I am raising kids through these years so sharing milestones and pictures with faroff friends and family is very rewarding.
But I’ve stopped posting so much that I don’t think there will be a yearbook for this year. It’s just not worth it anymore. Not enough people are going to see my posts, either because they’re no longer visiting or the fucking algorithm has something catchier to show them. Whatever I put up gets the same likes from the same 8 arbitrary people and that’s it.
It’s sad because my kids love those books and leaf through them all the time, like a kind of family album. I guess it’s time for another solution.
Related footnote: the “people you may know” feature is just pure comedy now. It’s been forever since it actually connected me to anyone real. It’s showing me coworkers’ adult children now and my neighbor’s dentist and realtor and shit like that. I still look at it, but only for the laughs.
Yep I will probably go for something like that. The Facebook based one offers more than just the pictures though. Also comments and text posts and link posts, etc.
I quit looking at Facebook so, so long ago and stopped posting anything myself well before I stopped visiting. In my experience the only people still posting are people I didn’t want to see anything from or just sponsored content, ads and people pushing their businesses. Everything’s so monetized, curated and awful.
That’s not true. I post on Lemmy and Mastodon, which I consider social media. I don’t think that websites that communication based on algorithms aiming to serve unsocial purposes should be considered social media.
At this point facebook is like a needy ex that won’t let go. I haven’t posted or logged on there in a long time but it keeps on sending email and push notifications
I know, I can turn that sort of thing off, but omg will it STFU already
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
English
removed by mod
If you need something to talk, I’m all open ears.
User nutsack needs to confide in user Mcballs1234
I didn’t even noticed their username, its balls time
This was a very interesting read. Hard to predict how social media platforms will look in 10 years
My big take away is that social media as we know it is likely generational. Like real time broadcast TV, it may just not be a thing at all in the future, at least not with the centrality we’ve become accustomed to.
Polls run here and especially on masto bare this out. Mastodon, for instance, leans x-gen/boomer with some millennial in its demographic. It’s hardly a young persons thing. Once you realise so much of the praise and enjoyment of the Fedi is that it reminds people of the older days of the internet, the generational picture becomes pretty clear. 15 year olds today were born after Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Forums, Usenet, old Twitter are probably like black and white tv to them.
At the moment, I think it’s a major flaw of the Fedi, that it’s fundamentally backwards looking, trying to preserve older big-social designs rather than doing something more diverse or at least different.
An obvious example being private or closed spaces like group chats and the like including public versions if desired. This seems to be a growing form of online interaction, that is in a way more humane or eusocial. But apart from matrix, which sits separately, the Fedi is still stuck redoing Twitter and Reddit.
I think you have a point. However, my 13-year-old and most of her school are all on Snapchat and use it constantly. They’re also regularly posting TikTok videos. Kids get in trouble for doing them at school all the time.
Interesting! You think TikTok and Snapchat are counters to my closed group chat observation?
If so I didn’t mean to suggest that that’s where everyone is going. Not at all. TikTok and Snapchat would be examples of the generational factor I was talking about.
No, I said you had a point. I was just addressing the idea that, while it may be generational, even the current generation is still addicted to social media. Maybe less so, but still addicted to it.
Right! All good!
Strongly agreed.
Some other loose thoughts related to this:
Somewhat relevant thread I saw on masto: https://social.coop/@smallcircles/110195840314469391 (which you may have seen yourself already).
God … so sorry … just had a coffee and mashed the keyboard … looooong rant … IN SHORT … yes!!
Interesting thoughts here!
I signed up for Facebook for the first time ever, to comment on a local page about a local issue, and was first banned by Facebook for nothing in particular. Had to put in a phone number to reactivate. Also found I wasn’t able to post if I included a link, a link to a government website, but I guess that’s a very basic spam filter for new accounts. Then made some comments back and forth with no one really talking to me. Then about a week later with no activity, my account had been banned again, and now Facebook wants a photo. I don’t even have photos online, and I don’t see how they could use that to verify my identity, so that’s where I stopped.
My mum was briefly banned on FB the other day and she’s the most inoffensive person on the planet. This is an account that’s maybe a decade old. They reinstated her account after she appealed so something seems broken with their banning system.
Wait, what the heck is BeReal? I’ve never heard of it before?
Does that mean I’m old now?
Even us old people should know that he’s the guy from Cypress Hill
At the start of each school year some niche social media gains popularity, simply because each year wants something new and “untainted”. Last year BeReal benefitted from this. It likely won’t survive for long as they’re losing users now
It’s a new Chaturbate.
My Fantasy and SF book lovers goup on Facebook has more posts per day than I can read and gets new members every day. My music groups on Facebook have even more posts and content. Linkedin has more and more social posts (not a good thing, but hardly on the decline)
Article is clearly written by someone with no initiatve or personality or insight.
Megalomaniac billionaires ruined social media in their effort to control the narrative and ruin privacy. It was a neat idea when it was just a way to keep up with people you were interested in.
Well people turning out to be mostly idiots didn’t help
For a long time I’ve posted actively to Facebook and then at the end of the year I have my pictures and top posts printed up in a nice “yearbook.” There’s a service that does this (but I’m not here to advertise them). Anyway I am raising kids through these years so sharing milestones and pictures with faroff friends and family is very rewarding.
But I’ve stopped posting so much that I don’t think there will be a yearbook for this year. It’s just not worth it anymore. Not enough people are going to see my posts, either because they’re no longer visiting or the fucking algorithm has something catchier to show them. Whatever I put up gets the same likes from the same 8 arbitrary people and that’s it.
It’s sad because my kids love those books and leaf through them all the time, like a kind of family album. I guess it’s time for another solution.
Related footnote: the “people you may know” feature is just pure comedy now. It’s been forever since it actually connected me to anyone real. It’s showing me coworkers’ adult children now and my neighbor’s dentist and realtor and shit like that. I still look at it, but only for the laughs.
I get a yearbook from my iphone camera without posting to anything, just from taking photos. Social media isn’t needed for that feature.
Yep I will probably go for something like that. The Facebook based one offers more than just the pictures though. Also comments and text posts and link posts, etc.
Finally, some good news.
I quit looking at Facebook so, so long ago and stopped posting anything myself well before I stopped visiting. In my experience the only people still posting are people I didn’t want to see anything from or just sponsored content, ads and people pushing their businesses. Everything’s so monetized, curated and awful.
But I don’t know anyone to be in a group chat with! That’s why I use social media 😭
That’s not true. I post on Lemmy and Mastodon, which I consider social media. I don’t think that websites that communication based on algorithms aiming to serve unsocial purposes should be considered social media.
At this point facebook is like a needy ex that won’t let go. I haven’t posted or logged on there in a long time but it keeps on sending email and push notifications
I know, I can turn that sort of thing off, but omg will it STFU already
Non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/wXMp5