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I'm at a point where I do not understand why social media is such a big deal™, with the exception of the prioritization of sharing breaking news and things like

I'm at a point where I do not understand why social media is such a big deal™, with the exception of the prioritization of sharing breaking news and things like that. Otherwise, I'm at a loss trying to figure out why talk over platforms and protocols is significant. Much of it must have something to do with liberal ideals over the right to self-expression/speech and social media as the premier communications method. Yet still, I remain at a loss...

throwaway894345 2y ago
For me it’s that it seems increasingly absurd that a handful of companies control such a large share of speech. I’m not a leftist even by American standards, but I see the current social media landscape as a privatization of the public square and this actually is a problem space that can be solved by the right protocols. We were blessed with open networking and web protocols many decades ago; we should also have open social protocols IMHO.
- tmottabr 2y ago
  The problem is that social media is not and was never designed to be a replacement to public square.. Social media started as tool to allow people to stay in touch after their time together came to an end and eventually evolved\merged with forums as a tool to bring people with similar interest together. The thing we have today that kind resemble a public square is a side effect of then needing to make money, that they decided to do by using ads. In order to make more money with ads they need to keep people around for longer so they started taking content and spreading around to random people. Kind like a public square but not really because you need to keep advertisers happy, so you cannot allow any speech in your platform that displeases the advertisers, or at least you need to ensure ads will not show next to speech that make advertisers unhappy or else they are going away and you now have a money problem (exactly twitter situation). Public square is a end to end relation.. You go somewhere and speak and whoever is in ear shoot listen, if they don't want to listen they get away, if a lot of people that does not want to listen get together they make you leave, but you can always come back later. The moment you add any kind of platform in the middle, specially one with an algorithm that decide what you should see, you are now bound to the platform rules and biases. And that is no longer a public square. Social media today is, in my opinion, more akin to personal ads or letters to the editor in a newspaper then to a public square. It will spread your speech further then a public square but is bound to the rules and biases of the newspaper publishing then. And I don't think any protocol can solve this. All a protocol can do is allow you to created biased silos where different types of speech live and they might or might not federate to other silos. Basically federation allow you to turn social media in glorified forums, but it will never really replace public square.
  - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
    > Social media started as tool to allow people to stay in touch after their time together came to an end and eventually evolved\merged with forums as a tool to bring people with similar interest together. This actually isn't really true. It may be true for social media in it's current incarnation but the origin of social media, the bulletin board systems/BBS (and their progenitor the Community Memory) started as a means for hobbyists to share information and coordinate projects. It would only be as BBS grew in popularity that they became a kind of digital public square/3rd place. Then with their decline, the graphical web/http based hobbyist forums (and eventually image boards) would rise repeating the pattern. It would only be the modern incarnation of social media that would originate as an attempt to serve as a "digital rolodex for friends and family" but really out of all the incarnations of social media that would be a relatively short lived oddity before folding back into the hobbyist forums -> public square pattern.
    - tmottabr 2y ago
      But what is being discussed is social media current incarnation and that is exactly what i talking about. I even kind address your point when i said that it evolved\merge into forums, that were themselves an evolution of bulletin boards that in turn were evolution of older concepts. But i don't see BBS or forums really as a digital public square anymore then current social media is. They were really silos were you would find people with similar interest, but was ultimately subjected to the will of the board owner or its moderators. I see those more as an digital version of clubs then a public square. Also the modern social media version of hobbyist forums\bulletin boards was also a short lived one and has being replaced by the addictive algorithm aimed at capturing our attention as much as possible that we have today. I do not see anything in the past that could resemble what we have today, the closet parallel would be addictive drugs. Surely some of the old community building aspects are still there in some platforms, but the biggest problem is that now we are seen a new generation of platforms being born from start aimed at the single goal of capturing our attention and get us hooked.
  - throwaway894345 2y ago
    Semantic arguments about what is and isn't a public square aside, the salient point is that an enormous share of our national and international dialogues about culture and politics take place on a handful of social media platforms. Those platforms have sufficient power that state actors _indirectly_ use them to influence elections (and if the platforms can be _indirectly_ manipulated to influence elections, then the people with hands directly on the levers of these platforms can necessarily directly influence those elections). The goal isn't, as you suggest, to eliminate bias, it's to democratize control. Consequently "all a protocol can do is allow you to created biased silos where different types of speech live which may or may not federate" is a perfectly good outcome! The goal posts are not and never were "eliminate bias" or "force everyone to hear opinions they don't want to hear".
j45 2y ago
Some people before social media arrived wondered the same thing. Having so many people in one place was a spectacle and something to see, but before that smaller communities whether they were forums or something else were generally a lot more fun.
CuriousCosmic 2y ago
A list of reasons from my POV: - The loss of the 3rd place in America due to commercialization of public spaces - A lot of communities depend on social media for their existence. Ex: artists depend on social media networking for their livelihood. Traditionally they'd depend on a wealthy patron to support them but nowadays they support themselves off of a bunch of moderately well off patrons. The same applies to many types of musicians, content creators, etc. - Social media presence and networking is weirdly important in the FOSS space for patronage so nowadays a lot of devs lean on it as well. - Social media has become a support network for a lot of people. Jokingly said where everyone lends around the same 20 dollars. - Niche communities only really exist on social media. Before "big social media" they existed on forums and before that they existed on the one big social media, the BBS. Without the internet these communities would just wither over time. - Social media is really important for Open Source Intelligence.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  That feels like a list of the best things social media offers, but not the typical use case. The typical use case seems to be arguing, trolling, toxicity, and showing off.
  - CuriousCosmic 2y ago
    Sure but your average user isn't sticking around for that. At least on Bluesky, Twitter, and Mastodon. The average user doesn't really post all that often. They don't even necessarily retweet or like posts that often. The average user is consuming content produced by your "high quality content" users. The artists, musicians, youtubers, streamers, journalists, blog writers, podcasters, and other types of content creators. They are the actual value add to the platform. The make content that the average user cares about consuming and maybe the average user pitches in their 2p here or there. There are other types of users of course but by and large, you are going to expect that your average user is mostly consuming instead of contributing. Some platforms (like instagram) may encourage users to post their own content for their close friend groups but platforms like bluesky aren't really about that in practice.
petre 2y ago
Propadanda, ads, marketing, oragnising meetings and protests, breaking news.

throwaway894345 2y ago

For me it’s that it seems increasingly absurd that a handful of companies control such a large share of speech. I’m not a leftist even by American standards, but I see the current social media landscape as a privatization of the public square and this actually is a problem space that can be solved by the right protocols. We were blessed with open networking and web protocols many decades ago; we should also have open social protocols IMHO.

tmottabr 2y ago
The problem is that social media is not and was never designed to be a replacement to public square.. Social media started as tool to allow people to stay in touch after their time together came to an end and eventually evolved\merged with forums as a tool to bring people with similar interest together. The thing we have today that kind resemble a public square is a side effect of then needing to make money, that they decided to do by using ads. In order to make more money with ads they need to keep people around for longer so they started taking content and spreading around to random people. Kind like a public square but not really because you need to keep advertisers happy, so you cannot allow any speech in your platform that displeases the advertisers, or at least you need to ensure ads will not show next to speech that make advertisers unhappy or else they are going away and you now have a money problem (exactly twitter situation). Public square is a end to end relation.. You go somewhere and speak and whoever is in ear shoot listen, if they don't want to listen they get away, if a lot of people that does not want to listen get together they make you leave, but you can always come back later. The moment you add any kind of platform in the middle, specially one with an algorithm that decide what you should see, you are now bound to the platform rules and biases. And that is no longer a public square. Social media today is, in my opinion, more akin to personal ads or letters to the editor in a newspaper then to a public square. It will spread your speech further then a public square but is bound to the rules and biases of the newspaper publishing then. And I don't think any protocol can solve this. All a protocol can do is allow you to created biased silos where different types of speech live and they might or might not federate to other silos. Basically federation allow you to turn social media in glorified forums, but it will never really replace public square.
- CuriousCosmic 2y ago
  > Social media started as tool to allow people to stay in touch after their time together came to an end and eventually evolved\merged with forums as a tool to bring people with similar interest together. This actually isn't really true. It may be true for social media in it's current incarnation but the origin of social media, the bulletin board systems/BBS (and their progenitor the Community Memory) started as a means for hobbyists to share information and coordinate projects. It would only be as BBS grew in popularity that they became a kind of digital public square/3rd place. Then with their decline, the graphical web/http based hobbyist forums (and eventually image boards) would rise repeating the pattern. It would only be the modern incarnation of social media that would originate as an attempt to serve as a "digital rolodex for friends and family" but really out of all the incarnations of social media that would be a relatively short lived oddity before folding back into the hobbyist forums -> public square pattern.
  - tmottabr 2y ago
    But what is being discussed is social media current incarnation and that is exactly what i talking about. I even kind address your point when i said that it evolved\merge into forums, that were themselves an evolution of bulletin boards that in turn were evolution of older concepts. But i don't see BBS or forums really as a digital public square anymore then current social media is. They were really silos were you would find people with similar interest, but was ultimately subjected to the will of the board owner or its moderators. I see those more as an digital version of clubs then a public square. Also the modern social media version of hobbyist forums\bulletin boards was also a short lived one and has being replaced by the addictive algorithm aimed at capturing our attention as much as possible that we have today. I do not see anything in the past that could resemble what we have today, the closet parallel would be addictive drugs. Surely some of the old community building aspects are still there in some platforms, but the biggest problem is that now we are seen a new generation of platforms being born from start aimed at the single goal of capturing our attention and get us hooked.
- throwaway894345 2y ago
  Semantic arguments about what is and isn't a public square aside, the salient point is that an enormous share of our national and international dialogues about culture and politics take place on a handful of social media platforms. Those platforms have sufficient power that state actors _indirectly_ use them to influence elections (and if the platforms can be _indirectly_ manipulated to influence elections, then the people with hands directly on the levers of these platforms can necessarily directly influence those elections). The goal isn't, as you suggest, to eliminate bias, it's to democratize control. Consequently "all a protocol can do is allow you to created biased silos where different types of speech live which may or may not federate" is a perfectly good outcome! The goal posts are not and never were "eliminate bias" or "force everyone to hear opinions they don't want to hear".

j45 2y ago

Some people before social media arrived wondered the same thing. Having so many people in one place was a spectacle and something to see, but before that smaller communities whether they were forums or something else were generally a lot more fun.

CuriousCosmic 2y ago

A list of reasons from my POV: - The loss of the 3rd place in America due to commercialization of public spaces - A lot of communities depend on social media for their existence. Ex: artists depend on social media networking for their livelihood. Traditionally they'd depend on a wealthy patron to support them but nowadays they support themselves off of a bunch of moderately well off patrons. The same applies to many types of musicians, content creators, etc. - Social media presence and networking is weirdly important in the FOSS space for patronage so nowadays a lot of devs lean on it as well. - Social media has become a support network for a lot of people. Jokingly said where everyone lends around the same 20 dollars. - Niche communities only really exist on social media. Before "big social media" they existed on forums and before that they existed on the one big social media, the BBS. Without the internet these communities would just wither over time. - Social media is really important for Open Source Intelligence.

EA-3167 2y ago
That feels like a list of the best things social media offers, but not the typical use case. The typical use case seems to be arguing, trolling, toxicity, and showing off.
- CuriousCosmic 2y ago
  Sure but your average user isn't sticking around for that. At least on Bluesky, Twitter, and Mastodon. The average user doesn't really post all that often. They don't even necessarily retweet or like posts that often. The average user is consuming content produced by your "high quality content" users. The artists, musicians, youtubers, streamers, journalists, blog writers, podcasters, and other types of content creators. They are the actual value add to the platform. The make content that the average user cares about consuming and maybe the average user pitches in their 2p here or there. There are other types of users of course but by and large, you are going to expect that your average user is mostly consuming instead of contributing. Some platforms (like instagram) may encourage users to post their own content for their close friend groups but platforms like bluesky aren't really about that in practice.

petre 2y ago

Propadanda, ads, marketing, oragnising meetings and protests, breaking news.