

MySpace now a “digital ghetto” - sho
http://www.inquisitr.com/27998/myspace-now-a-digital-ghetto/

======
sharpn
Utter nonsense. Overlaying a racist agenda onto the shift from Myspace to
Facebook is ridiculous. Neither have any barier to entry. Abandoning Yahoo!
for Google might also shadow the population changes the author alludes to, but
does that make google users racist? No. EDIT: the new original link provides
more reasoned context - but even then, the data appears very, very weak [~4
anecdotal data points, all 17-year-olds]. If the point _were_ valid it would
be troubling, but I'm not convinced on the evidence provided.

~~~
calambrac
First, read the actual article, not this poorly regurgitated bullshit
(<http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html>). Second, recognize the fact
that Danah Boyd does actual research and generally knows her shit. Third,
understand that she specifically says that we wouldn't expect to see the
problem because there's no barrier to entry, yet we do anyways, which makes it
that much more disturbing.

~~~
InkweaverReview
Thank you for sharing the original article. It is considerably better than the
article that was submitted.

I believe that the URL of this news item should be switched to point to the
original paper.

~~~
quoderat
I submitted the original several days ago. No upvotes, maybe due to the time I
submitted it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=682172>

------
abossy
Isn't the reason behind this obvious?

Facebook started out by targeting the Ivy League. Who is more likely to be
upper-class and white than those whose social roots are at Harvard University?
The restricted registration of Facebook, coupled with the importance of the
network effect (making the site valuable only if you are already friends with
educated Ivy League students) clearly dictates the direction of the site's
demography as it grows.

~~~
jgilliam
MySpace started in Los Angeles, and its first users were mostly from the local
club scene. Very big difference from the Ivy League.

------
tpowell
I graduated HS in '02, and everyone that went to college (.edu email address)
was eventually on Facebook, everyone else was on MySpace. That (huge)
demographic difference coupled with the poor and unpredictable interface for
MySpace signaled their fate a long time ago in my opinion. This paper from a
couple of years ago tackles the issue of class division between the two:
<http://bit.ly/classdivisions>

~~~
redorb
I agree; facebook at first had to have similar differences being a 'college'
only community - but since it has opened up I bet it has came back to a
similar balance to any other site.

~~~
kragen
No.

------
aberman
Is the article attributing a racist agenda? Or is it talking about an
empirical reality. If the average facebook user is indeed more educated than
the average myspace user, it's certainly worth talking about. Even if it is
not the case, it certainly seems to be the general perception--as a friend of
mine recently said: "myspace if for pedophiles and dropouts, facebook is for
everybody else."

------
wayt
I'm old enough to remember white flight. To make an analogy with MySpace
migration to Facebook is absurd.

~~~
calambrac
Why? The only difference was that white flight had a quantifiable cost barrier
preventing minorities from leaving decaying inner cities as well. She's saying
that this is disturbing because it's still happening, even without that
financial barrier.

~~~
enjo
What if I reject the premise? I've yet to see a compelling argument as to why
this type of self-selection is truly harmful. Why is it a problem if folks of
similar culture choose to utilize the same tools? This idea that we should all
live in close exposure to diverse opinion is nice, but goes against my basic
instinct. I don't want to spend my time defending my cultural choices to folks
who disagree. I don't need my life to look like an internet message board.

~~~
calambrac
The fact that you think close proximity to another culture involves spending
all your time defending yourself proves the point to me...

------
jhickner
Why do we pretend that it's some sort of virtue to be unconcerned with those
we surround ourselves with? It's no virtue.

After all, why are we here on HN instead of Digg or Reddit? I'm sure a
demographic analysis of that switchover would yield similar results.

~~~
kragen
Well, because class stratification denies opportunities to people who are born
to the wrong parents, drastically reducing the pool of innate talent that can
actually be applied to solving society's problems, maybe. Or because lack of
interchange between social groups brings those groups to misunderstand and
fear one another, leading to violence between them (Japanese internment camps
being an example inside the US in living memory). Or because groupthink
results in intellectual stagnation and collective delusions.

It's true that there are a disproportionate number of upper-class twits on HN,
while the twits on Reddit are mostly lower-class. But I don't hang out here
because of the upper-class twits. I hang out here because it's a little less
vulnerable to, among other things, delusional groupthink than Digg or Reddit.

~~~
Tichy
"debies opportunities" - seriously? I think everybody can sign up on MySpace
or Facebook.

Though I suppose as a researcher you could have some fun by creating fake
accounts with different profile pictures and start adding friends randomly.

~~~
kragen
First, Upper-Class Chad uses MySpace. Later, he switches to Facebook, but he
doesn't delete his account. His acquaintance Lower-Class Rodney is his friend
on MySpace. Rodney worked as a line manager for a construction firm until
getting laid off a few months ago. Rodney still only uses MySpace, because
Chad didn't post on MySpace about Facebook. Chad links to all his upper-class
friends on Facebook; many had never joined MySpace in the first place. If
Rodney were on Facebook, he would occasionally interact with them, but he
doesn't. He also doesn't see when Chad updates his Facebook status to say that
his dad's company is looking for experienced line managers in their bill-
collection firm.

That's the sense in which social stratification denies opportunities, whether
it's manifested through YASNSs or other means.

~~~
Tichy
But access to Facebook isn't denied to Rodney, and why would Chad not add him
as a friend on Facebook, too?

I am also not friends with everyone on Facebook, so I guess a lot of
opportunities are denied to me (because Chad doesn't tell me about the job
offers either). It's a cruel world.

~~~
kragen
Yeah, danah points out that even though there isn't an economic reason for the
segregation, it's happening anyway.

~~~
Tichy
Wouldn't the most likely explanation simply be that the connections on social
networks tend to mirror connections in real life? I think there was a study
posted to HN recently that basically said instead of connecting to everyone
and their dog, connections tend to stay local.

------
petercooper
When Facebook first started becoming _really_ popular (as in, internationally)
I was very pro-Myspace exactly because of its "ghetto"-ness (not in the racial
sense, but in terms of atmosphere). Facebook was dull and sterile, whereas
MySpace had music, you could look at profiles of people who hadn't friended
you, you could put crazy layouts on your profile, and.. well.. MySpace was
just 101x more interesting.

Thing is, it's still true. Facebook is dull and sterile, MySpace is still
fertile and full of musicians.. and yet now I'm on Facebook and never use
MySpace. Go figure!

~~~
philwelch
Everyone thinks it's cool to live in a neighborhood where your neighbors blast
hip-hop all hours of day and night until they have to sleep. Everyone thinks
MySpace is cool until your browser crashes or slows down, or you strain your
eyes reading yellow on orange, or you hear the first 3 seconds of some crappy
hip hop song that clashes with what you already have playing on iTunes.

Sadly, Facebook isn't dull and sterile anymore. I can't spend a _minute_ there
without someone asking me to join their mafia or pushing some dumb "which care
bear are you" quiz on me when I just want to chill out and exchange messages
with my friends and comment on my fruit smoothie this morning.

~~~
Tichy
" Everyone thinks MySpace is cool until your browser crashes or slows down, or
you strain your eyes reading yellow on orange, or you hear the first 3 seconds
of some crappy hip hop song that clashes with what you already have playing on
iTunes."

So you are saying that black MySpace users tend to have a bad taste in colors
and music, and therefore the white users leave? Whereas surely white users
only create tasteful profiles?

Or maybe MySpace in general sucks, and therefore people are leaving
irrespective of race.

One thing though: MySpace seems to be the standard site for music and bands,
so perhaps "races" who are more preoccupied with music would tend to hang out
there more.

~~~
Kadin
MySpace sucks because it gives users far more control than they ought to have
over their pages.

Facebook maintains high quality and a coherent feel by realizing that most
people couldn't design their way out of a paper bag, and only giving users
very basic, high-level control over their page.

IMO, everything flows from that. MySpace feels like Geocities: total amateur
hour. Even if you had the exact same group of people (and I do agree there are
demographic differences between MySpace and FB, I just don't think they're
that relevant), Facebook would still be easier and more pleasant to use.

~~~
Tichy
I thought it was a given that MySpace is the epitome of ugliness. So my point
was, maybe the "migration" has just the superficial reasons of ugliness and
suckiness, not the huge society-psychobabble reasons.

------
diN0bot
original paper is here: <http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html>

~~~
zach
FTFY: <http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/07/31/106-facebook/>

------
prodigal_erik
From the notes of the talk which others have cited: "If you don't know people
who are different than you, you don't trust them. Think about this in the
context of the politics around gay rights. The #1 predictor for how someone
will side in issues of gay rights is whether or not they know someone who is
gay."

Even if causality works in that direction, and you could eventually make
bigots into better people by hanging around with them, who would want to spend
their time that way?

We spend time with people we like and respect. If you regard that as a
problem, what's the solution?

------
shaunxcode
OR it's just the new geocities. This article doesn't even provide numbers -
just hunches and hearsay. What a crock.

------
CaptainMorgan
I'm with the initial commenter's: this is crap.

What I find ironic and laughable at the same time is the article doesn't
mention usability of the software deployed by the two sites and how that might
actually factor in. Assuming it has a racial connotation is absurd. IMO,
Facebook has a better interface, making it easier on the eyes, makes use of
less ads, etc. etc. -- any part of that racial? I'd like to answer by using
more derogatory words in this space because the assumption by this author is
simply ignorant, but then I'd be lowering myself to this author's level.

~~~
crux_
You should read the original, not the craptastic blog summary.

It does indeed mention the usability differences between the two sites, then
goes on to discuss how the prime deciding factor between a teenager using one
site or the other is rather: "Simply put, they go where their friends are."

Further it's not ascribing racist motivations to anyone's choice of social
network, instead making the observation that, by going where their friends
are, existing socio-economic divides are being perpetuated into social
networks.

------
strlen
That's an argument that's in a way true, but it's also a non-sequitir
comparison: in order to live in a middle class suburb (or especially a
middle/upper class section of an urban area, e.g. Pacific Heights in San
Francisco) there's a very high monetary barrier to entry. There's no monetary
barrier to entry for Facebook (especially since it's no longer just for
college students-- which may have been the seedling of the current
phenomenon).

~~~
calambrac
Which is why it's that much more disturbing that the separation is taking
place anyways.

~~~
Kadin
Is it really surprising, though?

I can think of lots of situations where people self-segregate along economic
or cultural lines, without much in the way of external pressure to do so. I'd
imagine it has a lot to do with viewing oneself as part of a group, and
wanting to spend time with people whose interests and background are similar,
have similar values, etc.

I'd think this is something that academics have studied already; it shouldn't
come as a great surprise that when people are released into some new
environment they gravitate towards others similar to themselves.

------
paul9290
Some of this maybe true...

I say this because in a marketing sense when you look the marketing cycle -
innovators, early adopters, late adopters, early majority, late majority and
early and late laggards you would see with new tech products that those who
are economically challenged do not fall (they are not the majority) into the
first two or three stages. It's more economic and educational status is the
factor over race.

Also has anyone ever did a race poll here at Hacker News? I went to TechCrunch
event and 95% of those in attendance were white dudes, while rest of
percentage split between women and minorities. I'm not trying to inflame
anything here but there is a huge disparity of the minorities this article
speaks of in Silicon Valley.

------
dtf
I've always suspected Facebook was run by fascist white supremacists. How come
you're not allowed to change your background colour from the prescribed
white?!

Seriously though, nobody leaves a social networking site because "it's
overcrowded with blacks". You wouldn't even leave such a site if it was
overcrowded with trolls and racists. It's not a forum or some shared community
resource - you only ever interact with your friends, and there's no such thing
as overcrowding (as long as the servers keep up). The fail is strong in this
report.

~~~
ubernostrum
"Seriously though, nobody leaves a social networking site because "it's
overcrowded with blacks". You wouldn't even leave such a site if it was
overcrowded with trolls and racists. It's not a forum or some shared community
resource - you only ever interact with your friends, and there's no such thing
as overcrowding (as long as the servers keep up). The fail is strong in this
report."

Sigh. How do allegedly well-educated, intelligent, open-minded people end up
jumping to conclusions like this?

Read the original talk and the history of the research behind it. There are
racial and class-based divides on social-networking sites, but the implication
is not that anyone's (necessarily) a racist or a fascist or whatever
convenient strawman you'd like to set up instead of actually using your brain.

I'm honestly not sure there _is_ an implication, aside from pointing out the
obvious fact that access to the Internet is not a panacea for existing social
divisions. People online seek out and interact with people like themselves,
just like people offline.

~~~
dtf
"Sigh. How do allegedly well-educated, intelligent, open-minded people end up
jumping to conclusions like this?"

Who's alleging anything about being well-educated, intelligent or open-minded?
Keep your prejudices at the door, thank you.

Seriously though, Boyd suggests "a modern incarnation of white flight". An
incendiary accusation! What is "white flight" if not racism? "Oh no, don't get
me wrong, I'm not a racist. I just want my kids to grow up in a neighbourhood
with people of their own colour." Is she deliberately using that term to court
controversy?

------
chaostheory
There may be some basis for the racial argument, but in my opinion a lot of
people weren't interested in MySpace because it used to be just a fancy online
scrapbook. Before I joined Facebook, I had the wrong impression that it would
be the same thing. Fortunately I was happy to find that Facebook wasn't a
scrapbook, but instead some tool that lets you know the exact stuff people are
doing, feeling, and thinking everyday by the hour. To me this was the main
reason for the migration.

------
Tichy
Somehow I never get to read real numbers from Dana Boyd. The only number is
"... who has spent so and so many years of studying kids on social networks".

I think she hit on one thesis that makes for good "linkbaity" newspaper
articles and now she is milking it. In other words, it is marketing, not
research.

~~~
calambrac
The paper is a transcription of a talk. Email her, and I'm sure she'd be happy
to send you numbers.

~~~
Tichy
Since I am not researching the subject, I really don't want to bother her. But
since that thesis has been around for quite a while now, surely she has
published some papers somewhere?

It is just that I remember the original "article", which was just a blog entry
(was it mnths ago, or years already?). But the press loved it and eventually
what just was some musings in a blog became "scientific research" in the media
- that is what I mean by linkbaity, it is just the kind of think newspapers
love to write about. That is not Boyd's fault of course - it's just that after
all that time, I would have expected to really see the blog article be turned
into something more solid.

If she can make a living that way, also I don't have anything against it. I
just felt it lacked substance for Hacker News.

Edit: these are her papers <http://www.danah.org/papers/> \- I tried one that
sounded like it might contain numbers, but I didn't find many. Some words on
methodology, though (for Friendster, but still). Anyway, her kind of research
just is not my taste (too much talking).

------
swolchok
from original article: > The #1 predictor for how someone will side in issues
of gay rights is whether or not they know someone who is gay.

Why couldn't one conclude that the #1 predictor for whether or not someone
will meet someone who is gay is how they side in issues of gay rights?

~~~
pj
People meet each other before their thoughts on gay rights, or really any
thoughts are known. I would say physical location would be more of an
indicator of whether or not you'll meet someone gay. If you go to the Castro
for example, it's much more likely you'll meet someone gay than if you are ...
well, I dunno, somewhere there aren't a lot of gay people.

~~~
Tichy
"If you go to the Castro for example, it's much more likely you'll meet
someone gay"

No idea what "the Castro" is, but it sounds as if somebody who doesn't like
gay people would be less likely to go there.

