
Social networks are no longer social - spking
https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/23/the-year-social-networks-were-no-longer-social/
======
pcurve
The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know
strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early
days.

For me, social network stopped being social as soon as reasonable assurance of
anonymity when out the window once companies started pressuring people use
their real identity, and that became the norm.

~~~
reaperducer
_The article mentions of days when you were anonymous_

It's funny how in the early days of the internet, everyone was so open and
honest about who they are that it was very common for their e-mail messages,
Usenet posts, finger plans, etc... to have their real names, home and/or work
addresses, and home and/or work phone numbers.

Then the scammers discovered the internet, and everyone had to dummy up about
who they are.

Then the corporations got involved, and decided to use "AI" unmask everyone
and sell that information back to the scammers.

I wonder what the next move is. Maybe we should all go back to blatantly
stating who we are to make the corporations' information gathering worthless.

~~~
kardos
> Maybe we should all go back to blatantly stating who we are to make the
> corporations' information gathering worthless.

Well yes, that would devalue your name/address details, so they'd shift to
more invasive approaches like reading your emails and messages, bugging your
person and/or home, tracking your financial transactions, etc.

~~~
laumars
Not sure if that’s intended to be taken sarcastically or not but some of those
things do already happen like reading your emails/instant messages and
tracking your financial transactions.

~~~
reaperducer
I think it was sarcasm, since he described most free e-mail services, Facebook
messenger, Google Home, and whatever the name is of Google's in-house org that
thinks it's entitled to the records of 80% of the world's credit card
transactions.

------
rrebelo
> Watching distant cousins fight about politics

I've long been cautious to step into the WhatsApp hysteria going on here in
Brazil. But the last (disgraceful) election here was the last straw. The level
of stupidity in the memes from both sides was far beyond repulsive.

A solution that is working so far: automatic regulation. I created a Telegram
group with a bot that censors the most common names and expressions on
Brazilian partisan politics, using regular expressions. It is surprisingly
effective, in a "no broken windows way": if you block the small infractions
people don't come close to big infractions.

Breaking rules is a second national pastime in Brazil. Therefore, at the
beginning people found it amusing to try to cheat the censoring regular
expressions (e.g.: B0150N4R0, etc) After a while the trick only sharpened
these expressions and now they just don't mention politics in the most
partisan terms. We do see postings about issues (e.g.: education, fiscal
crisis, etc) but not the stupid partisan dogfight. Politics is mostly a tribal
thing, not an ideological one.

EDIT: I'd like to stress the "automatic" aspect of it. When you make the
regulation/moderation algorithmic you gain 2 big psychological benefits:

* A fast feedback loop: because the post is immediately removed the association between cause and effect is much stronger. People understand much more that they are breaking a rule when the consequences of it are certain and immediate.

* Algorithmic solutions are "rules based" for most people that don't understand them. They perceive it as "the way things are" instead of an arbitrary decision by the person that wrote the algorithm.

~~~
iagovar
Hmmm, this is an interesting take. I may apply it to one of my communities.
I've been playing with the idea of banning politics entirely, but that's what
most people want to talk about.

Did you notice any improvement on the level of discussion? Or do they just
reacted different with each other posts?

Also, do you just censor the keyword or remove the post entirely?

~~~
rrebelo
Beware: the devil is in the details. The trick is to choose the most
provocative, trolling or insulting words. I let people discuss generic terms
such as income distribution, fiscal crisis, education, etc. But I filter out
terms such as "comunist", "fascist", "Bolsonaro" (the Brazilian version of
Rodrigo Duterte) etc.

> Did you notice any improvement on the level of discussion?

So far, people are still on a "treading the waters"/"sensing the environment"
period. But I sense that:

* The posts tangent to politics don't immediately trigger a knee jerk reaction. Surprisingly, when people discuss politics in a more abstract way, there is a lot more "I agree with you" between people that used to fight a lot. I count this as an improvement, although it is too early to see an increase of depth of understanding on the issues.

* In the beginning some people complained about my heavy-handed approach, calling it censorship and authoritarianism. I just didn't engage in their complaints. My standard response was "my house, my rules".

* There is a lot more of light-heart, especially among the younger ones. Childish jokes and memes are still around, but nothing offensive. In friends and family groups it is ok, these are habits I don't want to break.

> Also, do you just censor the keyword or remove the post entirely?

I remove the post and post a standard bot answer. Often, the bot gives some
false positives, but people find it funny (e.g: "PT" is the acronym for both
the main opposition political party and for "total loss" in Portuguese).
Because I use regular expressions, people started a game of trying to outsmart
the bot. Since it was for fun, it only helped sharpen up the expressions.

~~~
iagovar
Thank you, i may use your approach.

------
evrydayhustling
I love this take. When we can get past the breathless danger of social
networks (which, to some, spells "opportunity"), we can treat their failure
modes for what they are: systems acting as boorish neighbors.

The most scalable defenses against exploitation of social networks will be
distributed cultural notions of etiquette, self determination and even hygiene
- not instantly-out-of-date regulation or even technological solutions
(although a strong cultural take on owning your information landscape will
inspire it's own technical opportunities)

I hope my kids will find it kind of gross and embarrassing to be caught up in
somebody's disinformation, rather than lending it credibility as enemy action.

~~~
PavlovsCat
from
[http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/](http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/)

> Right now the social networking sites occupy a similar position to
> CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL in the mid 90's. At that time each company was
> trying to figure out how to become a mass-market gateway to the Internet.
> Looking back now, their early attempts look ridiculous and doomed to
> failure, for we have seen the Web, and we have tasted of the blogroll and
> the lolcat and found that they were good.

> But at the time no one knew what it would feel like to have a big global
> network. We were all waiting for the Information Superhighway to arrive in
> our TV set, and meanwhile these big sites were trying to design an online
> experience from the ground up. Thank God we left ourselves the freedom to
> blunder into the series of fortuitous decisions that gave us the Web.

> My hope is that whatever replaces Facebook and Google+ will look equally
> inevitable, and that our kids will think we were complete rubes for ever
> having thrown a sheep or clicked a +1 button. It's just a matter of waiting
> things out, and leaving ourselves enough freedom to find some interesting,
> organic, and human ways to bring our social lives online.

~~~
Swizec
> some interesting, organic, and human ways to bring our social lives online.

Let me introduce you to The Private Group Chat where 90% of online social
activity happens between people under 30. It’s rrally quite fascinating.

It’s everything Google+ wanted to be, but totally organic, apread over dozens
of chat apps and services, and without the big brother oversight.

~~~
evrydayhustling
This is a really good point and something an over-30 like yours truly would
have an easy time missing even as it happened around us (my most meaningful
groups are now distributed over WhatsApp, Slack, and good 'ol email). Happen
to know any sources quantifying this phenomenon?

~~~
icelancer
> Happen to know any sources quantifying this phenomenon?

Perhaps the best answer you can get here is "no." That's exactly what the
privacy advocates would want to hear, yet the phenomenon is very real.

I'm in my mid-30s but almost all of my social networking with younger
colleagues/friends is done via ephemeral group chats (Snapchat) and Signal. I
keep a business Twitter and personal Facebook like everyone else, but any
substantial communication is moved offline to encrypted and less-trackable
methods.

The younger crowd figured out how to use the encryption technologies we've
been wondering how everyone will adopt all while we've been missing it. Are
they perfect implementations? No. But a lot better than what standard
communication looked like years ago.

~~~
PavlovsCat
It has nothing on the free spirited forums "we" had 20 years ago. How would
random people find out about and get into private, encrypted groups? Not at
all. It's not the same thing in any shape or form.

If anything, a generation gave up even _wanting_ to have a public space and a
spirit of tolerance, and retreated into purely private rooms, moderated by
private tyrants. Ancient Greeks had a word for people who restrict themselves
to the private, and aren't interested in public offices and affairs, which
today is an insult -- while what it used to describe is viewed as desirable,
something people brag about.

Many people gave up, they aren't even part of the discussion anymore. They
cannot fathom what is under discussion, because they never had it. It's not
that I'm not aware, it's that I weighed it, and found it too light.

------
fgandiya
I'm not sure how to feel about this. From social media I've been able to
connect with old friends, enjoy good memes and keep up with current affairs.

It's also been useful at times where I've found people willing to put in a
good word for a job, mentor me and there are a few people who are really good
at providing a fruitful environment for discussion (even controversial topics)
that makes me sad to leave.

Unfortunately, it just got too extra for me. I mean, there is a lot of
bullshit in the world, but at times it looks like people just want to get mad
for the sake of it. While I'm not a big proponent of don't feed the trolls, I
doubt quote tweeting some asshole to score a satisfying dunk does any favors.
It just seems to import garbage into other people's timelines.

Also, they'll be done people going about their day, or writing something
intended for their like-minded friends and it catches wind far beyond where it
was supposed to go, setting you up for an unwanted roast.

Even though I deleted my social media, I'm hoping that it becomes less extra
because there can be a lot of value in it.

Sadly, it's hard to see that happening, especially with how social media is
becoming the whole internet and IRL for many people in the world. The Telecom
operators in my home country insist on selling unlimited social media packages
rather than just giving us cheaper internet even though they can somehow
provide 2GB of data for $5 that has to be used in 24 hours.

~~~
ricardobeat
Can you explain ‘extra’ in this context? #oldfart

~~~
sixstringtheory
Too much to handle; over the top; not worth the effort.

Synonyms: ratchet, trifling.

~~~
emsal
I don't think extra is a synonym of ratchet. Ratchet is a mostly-sexist way of
saying "trashy".

------
osrec
Facebook described in 50 years: a network where real world relationships were
gamified and users competed for popularity. The network eventually died
because the relationships it represented became meaningless in the eyes of its
users, and the perceived value of the "game" fell to virtually zero.

~~~
elliekelly
Meaningless at best. For some users the relationships and one-upmanship is
detrimental to their mental/emotional wellbeing.

~~~
icelancer
Why would people think that this is unique to Facebook? For a lot of people,
relationships and one-upmanship is detrimental to their mental state...
offline.

~~~
zapzupnz
Heck yeah. For instance, Tall Poppy Syndrome is a national sport in New
Zealand unless rugby is involved.

------
wybiral
I vote we return to the age of late Geocities, forums, and early blogs. Less
conformity in design, less "social" by modern definition, but more people who
just liked one topic enough to build something about it and communities
forming around them.

~~~
RileyJames
When I was in high school, this was MySpace. I remember all my friends
learning HTML, or at least enough to copy and paste sufficiently, to build out
their custom profiles.

It was a constant process of landing on a friends profile, being amazed by
some feature or design and then going back to work on your own.

It also felt more like people’s profiles expressed through design, or music,
or gifs, or other media, rather than what they had to say or any form of
posts. I don’t really remember “posting status updates” at all, but I’m sure
it was a feature.

And then at some point Facebook wiped it all out.

I can’t see people wanting to manage their own homepage. But then again, I
remember we all did in high school for MySpace... maybe we will again.

~~~
thatoneuser
Only thing is I think MySpace was far too catered to youths. I really don’t
imagine my parents customizing MySpace like they do Facebook. Facebook has
evolved into an interface that can be ingested by pretty much anyone. No
matter what you do, you’re not going to make html intuitive to everyone.

------
barbs
Has anyone else noticed that Facebook notifications seem intentionally broken?
So many times I've noticed that the number of new notifications go out of sync
between FB on my desktop browser, mobile browser and messenger app. Even
viewing the notifications on the desktop and navigating somewhere else seems
to make some notifications new again. Anything to make that red dot appear
again to get you clicking and engaged.

~~~
clubm8
I've noticed a larger trend where notifications used to be notifications of
something a human sent, but now it means "$SOCIALNETWORK wants your attention"

For example if I don't tweet for a few days Twitter will give me a
"notification" that several high follower count accounts I follow have
tweeted.

That's not a "notification". I'm well aware frequent posters post frequently.

~~~
thatoneuser
Totally. I wasn’t on Facebook for the last month or two. Get on and I had
around 75 notifications. Literally 3 of them were non repeats or something
that I was interested in receiving from someone. But it’s cool - it reminds me
how pointless Facebook really is.

------
Reedx
Facebook's slogan, "Bringing the world closer together", reminds me of
cigarette companies purporting health benefits.

------
werds
Surprised that he doesn't mention Reddit, where the lost communities he
described certainly do exist and thrive.

~~~
yifanl
Reddit's a bit different than forums as far as I can tell. There was a forum I
used to frequent, even years later I can recognize someone's avatar, crack
inside jokes with them.

Reddit's a little too open to have that kind of connection.

~~~
ryanmercer
That depends on the sub. If you join some massive sub sure but in
/r/silverbugs for example we have a Monday thread where we talk about what's
going on in our lives as well as similar, newer, Friday thread and several
people have even met up offline. We've got a lot of shared jokes and stuff in
/r/mysteriousuniverse too related to the podcast by the same name and are
pretty tight-knit.

~~~
txcwpalpha
I've noticed this in a lot of smaller subs and I agree that there is a much
better sense of community, and in general, a much better experience. With the
smaller community tends to be higher quality content and less of a propensity
for small, minute details to launch a vitriolic argument.

However, being attached to the larger reddit "network" can easily ruin those
communities. All it takes is a single front page r/AskReddit thread where a
top comment says "check out r/[small_community_here], it's great!" and that
pretty much spells the end of that small, tight-knit community.

It's the age old problem that's not at all unique to online communities:
everyone wants to be part of the cool, fun communities/bars/neighborhoods. But
if everyone crowds in, that community/bar/neighborhood isn't as cool or fun
anymore.

------
noer
I really get what this article is talking about. Most of the friends I've had
the longest I met on the internet. I went to a small private high school far
from my home and had interests that none of my classmates had, plus it was
difficult to socialize after school because I lived far away.

I was into Punk & Hardcore and found a local Punk & Hardcore music
messageboard (powered by PostNuke!). I definitely remember being at a show
(probably in 2003 or 2004) and someone saying, "Wow, most of the people I hang
out with, I met _on the internet_."

When I went to college I met a bunch of friends on a bike focused messageboard
I'm still active on. I met people who went to the same school as me, but what
was probably the most odd is that I met them online, not at school.

------
jesperlang
But what does it mean to be "social"? I've been thinking about this alot
lately and it's not easy to define. But social media's version of social is
making me more and more uncomfortable. I have so many unfinished thoughts
around this but here goes..

I can say that a good social experience is usually in a very small group,
dynamic, immersive, thrilling, you can feel it in your entire body, you loose
your sense of time. On some social media the interactions are relatively slow,
shallow, fragmented, in some sense performative because you know potentially
alot of people can read what you're posting. It's like a totally different
kind of social, which of course can have it's value but it becomes a problem
when most of our social interactions are like this.

Take the experience of sharing your vacation pictures. On social media it is
like you are packaging your memory to present for a broader audience. Imagine,
in contrast, how you would invite your friend over and share your (printed)
pictures over a coffee. Depending on what your relationship looks like you
will present your trip differently. This shared memory will be woven into your
relationship in a unique way, giving it yet another layer.

It's like the word social has been hijacked. It was never about making a
"social media". It was about changing our idea about what social means..

~~~
smallnamespace
> what does it mean to be "social"

It sounds like you're making a distinction between 'public' and 'private', a
distinction with a very long history in the West with sharply differing sets
of norms.

Early social networks were intensely private, even though you were dealing
with individual members of the public.

As networks grow and try to vacuum up connections, the actual connections
weaken and social networking becomes either quasi-public (the circle of
friends' friends could be hundreds to thousands of people), or if something
goes viral then it's just public.

Our norms for public discourse are _sharply_ different from private
conversation—you can say lots of things in the privacy of actual friends and
family that presumably you wouldn't say in the middle of a town square.

But social media today means that every interaction you have targeted just to
friends has a low, but non-zero probability of being judged also by all your
neighbors and faraway strangers who have less context. Of course that's
uncomfortable—you don't know ahead of time which set of rules are going to get
applied to you.

~~~
jesperlang
yeah, the public/private thing is a biggie for me I think. But maybe it's also
the speed / "dynamic-ness"? I imagine an open panel discussion can be quite an
intense, immersive and interesting social experience :)

------
nukemandan
I have moved off of social media to find myself in these kind of channels much
more and other semi-private communities to find and grow social connections.
It is so much more fulfilling and refreshing to not be all about capturing my
attention to keep me hooked and make ad revenue. Thank you all for being there
and spending your most valuable resource - _your attention_ \- on this smaller
and more connected community.

------
jaked89
Reddit is almost perfect in avoiding these issues.

The only thing missing: allow assigning _exclusive_ psuedonames per group.
Users shouldn't be allowed to associate one name to another across group.

It currently allows multiple accounts, but this still makes users worry about
accidentally responding from the wrong account.

------
zby
OK - so now everybody feels that there is something wrong with Facebook and
maybe other big social networking sites. There is the widespread feeling that
there were better online times. This article did nothing to further my
understanding of this subject - it is just repeating stuff we already know.

------
revskill
It's all about advertising. Social network is about advertising in the end. To
CEOs: top using "social network" vocabulary for your business, when in the
end, it's about advertising. Or you're liars.

~~~
pyr0hu
Okay, lets say I am developing a "social network" for a specific group of
people, its a pretty closed one so not for everyone. The main revenue is not
coming from advertisement, because there is nothing we can advertise to the
users. So am I a liar? Or what? I can use social network for marketing without
implying that we use and/or sell user data

~~~
revskill
If you build an app for advertisement purpose, call it an Advertising App, not
Social Network.

------
IronWolve
Usenet newsgroups use to have moderated lists to stop the offtopic and flame
wars. When perl moved to the web, that was the last time I used newsgroups as
a daily discussion. (mostly...)

I can't even enjoy tech without the invasion of politics, use to like a bunch
of sites that I found out are gawker writer staffed like jalopnik. Every 10 or
so car articles is an anti-trump article. They can't even leave politics out,
social media is 100x worse.

I remember the days, I could read linux news and not once would politics be
mentioned, that is no more.

------
buckysock
I don’t think this is the endgame and another paradigm shift needs to and will
occur. Fb is going to be around and relevant about as much as Microsoft is
around and relevant.

------
yooooooooopoo
The year media were no longer media.

------
danielbigham
Found this article very insightful -- the universe when it is working well is
like a giant pattern matcher operating at every level of abstraction, bringing
together those things which make a good match. The converse is exemplified by
what we call "spam" in our email inbox -- signals which have an extremely high
false positive rate. Facebook by its nature seems to tend towards a high false
positive rate, which diminishes its utility.

------
mistrial9
there have been pundits and intellectuals all along that predicted the current
state of affairs (to a greater or lesser extent). When Facebook arose in the
beginning, it caused (and still causes) quite a bit of anguish in those
circles. Some of the less-stable people had actual despair and negative life-
outcomes, seeing what was basically their "worst-case scenario" come true, and
the wealth that went with it.

------
annadane
Zuckerberg, in his hearing about the election thing, said "you control your
feed on Facebook", or something.

I find that hard to believe. I find that VERY hard to believe. Either he is
completely ignorant, or he has no problem lying to the general public. Because
between forcing Top Stories and broadcasting things you never meant to
broadcast... well, it's a bald faced lie.

Why can't these companies either listen to their customers directly or if they
absolutely must make user hostile decisions, say that they must do that
because the venture capitalists demand it? I'm getting very tired of the
"feedback matters to us" when it clearly doesn't.

~~~
elliekelly
> Why can't these companies either listen to their customers directly

They do listen to their customers. We just aren't their customers.

~~~
annadane
Pedantic. You know what I meant.

------
beat
The one thing that jumps out at me when thinking about those older network is
friends-of-friends... I have cool friends, and my cool friends have cool
friends. So I'd wind up friending people on whatever network because I liked
how they interacted with my friends.

But yeah, common-interest groups are way better than the de-anonymized social
graph of Facebook.

------
asdkhadsj
I'm still convinced that I want _something_ for a social network, but I don't
know what that is..

------
40acres
I think there is a balance to be struk but I don't know what it is. As someone
who frequented gaming forums in the late 2000s I've seen the dark side of 100%
anonymous forums: there is definitely a lack of humanity that comes across in
communities where anyone could be a dog. There is no repercussion to speech
and there is very little context to conversations.

When humans interact we not only process the words that are communicated but
the context: what is our social history, what facial expressions and micro-
expressions are being displayed, what is the race and/or social standing of
the people involved. All of this is lost in anonymous conversation.

Now, this definitely has it's perks, it allows for communication on a neutral
platform, where racial and sexual discrimination is less likely to occur and
individuals can choose which parts of themselves to reveal, but humans are not
really built to communicate this way, and it shows if you've ever been on an
online forum or in a chatroom of an online FPS.

~~~
zanny
Except participation on anonymous forums is wholly voluntary and you have no
immutable paper trail to stalk you across the whole Internet. You can at whim
make a new account and be a new person, and avoid the parts you didn't like on
your last romp around.

Widespred persistent harassment only grew in popularity as real identities
were plastered all over the popular sites.

------
Liriel
I think that developers can safely migrate to communities such as Hashnode
instead of wasting their time scrolling through numerous groups on Facebook.
All the features are already there without the tracking system in place.

~~~
halbritt
Any idea what software hashnode is running on? I like the features.

I'm looking to setup a private community and I'm not totally stoked on the
features of mastodon and diaspora and I'm not exactly looking for a forum.

I suppose this could be an AskHN...

------
sanoojm
These are expected when people run behind instant gratification instead of
creative happiness. For me, it's like chain smoking, everyone says to quitting
smoking, you know it's not making any good for you, you know it's you paying
cigar industry to make yourself sick. Still you can't give up. But once you
give up, you will start seeing the world differently. I Uninstalled Facebook
and insta from my cellphone. I am counting that as a small step.

~~~
tendel
Nice analogy.

------
lazyjones
This article brought to you by the Oath network, a faceless media conglomerate
that slaps a hostile privacy policy in your face when you dare click on such
links and asks you to agree to their dubious handling of personal information
and preferences.

The social aspect of the Internet used to be about people communicating with
people. Today it's about large corporations deciding how you interact, who
gets to know about it and what consequences it'll have for your life in the
following decades. Disgusting.

~~~
mtgx
Rejoice, Verizon's content acquisitions have turned into complete and utter
disasters and Verizon announced that it will exit the content business (A
Reuters article I can't seem to find now said so):

[https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-
its-y...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-yahoo-
aol-divisions-are-almost-worthless-n946846)

The funny thing is Marissa Mayer made more from the deal than Yahoo is now
worth for Verizon:

[https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-
may...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-mayer-
severance-stock-verizon/index.html)

And she got a severance paycheck that's also worth 10% of Verizon's content
business now.

~~~
snovv_crash
The money she made was due to the Alibaba investment, not the content
business.

------
rblion
What is anyone going to do about it?

------
AJ007
File this under design anti-patterns: scroll to the bottom of the article and
Techcrunch sends you to their front page.

~~~
Y7ZCQtNo39
"Increasing engagement" is probably a KPI in nearly every consumer-facing
product these days. And as time goes on, it becomes more obvious, desperate,
and frankly, annoying. Like when I receive FB notifications since I haven't
posted in awhile. Really de-values the functionality of what a notification
is, and now I don't care about them much since receiving a notification
doesn't mean I've had an interaction with a FB Friend.

------
stackzero
What's new?

------
paraditedc
Err, the tone is way too personal. This kind of editorial rants reminds me of
articles on medium.

~~~
j45
Thoughts alone aren't relevant, feelings have a valid place too.

------
baybal2
I believe we should start calling them as antisocial networks from now on

------
starchild_3001
The biggest benefit of social media over forums or email lists is ML-based
ranking. You save a ton of time reading the most crucial, while skipping the
rest.

The platforms are addictive not because they're designed to be, but because
they pick out the best and most interesting content!

FB, YouTube etc represent a revolution about how content is created and
consumed. You no longer need to browse through 10s of posts or emails (or
videos) to find something you really like. Algorithms do the curation for you.

I learned _so much_ by hanging out in FB forums (much more so than any other
old-style forum). And my favorite pastime these days is YouTube Red.

Don't believe in the scare or the negative hype. Social media and AI curated
content aren't going anywhere. They might evolve as required.

~~~
taurath
> The platforms are addictive not because they're designed to be, but because
> they pick out the best and most interesting content!

The best by the users interests or the best for the advertisers? I think
ignoring the personal and societal effects of social media is something you do
at your own peril.

~~~
starchild_3001
As a broad response, let's just say not everything is perfect. These systems
can be and are abused (by publishers, malicious actors). Yes, let's fix those.

But let's not overlook why these things have become popular in the first place
(from a utility point of view). Google made the whole web searchable and
digestable. Facebook made social & forum content much higher utility than
before. YT did the same with billions of mostly-uninteresting videos.

Going back to an old style forum & email-list experience is a step backwards.
Well, be my guest, do it if you like :) I won't.

See Reddit, Hackernews etc regarding how social cues can be used for
ranking/curation. Yet, those platforms do a bare minimum (imo not quite
enough). E.g. Google Feed is more engaging, interesting, and informative (in
my experience).

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nqi
[https://twitter.com/romaindillet/status/1067418103452192768](https://twitter.com/romaindillet/status/1067418103452192768)

Of all the things to complain... What a lousy article.

