| ▲ | alexpotato 5 hours ago |
| Back in 2005-ish era, I helped reboot a college club (I was the coach/advisor). We started out using forum software to co-ordinate what we were doing but eventually (2008-ish) switched to Facebook as the president of the club pointed out "Alex, everyone is already on Facebook and the notifications from us are in the middle of the notifications for when the next party is" etc. Fast forward to today and the club is rebooting again. I asked the current club president "What social network is everyone on these days?" His response: "Really there is no one place where everyone goes anymore." I then asked him how clubs share their info etc and he says "The bulletin board at the student center?" While social media definitely has its downsides (echo chambers, extremism etc) I do feel like it's a bit of a net loss to not have a "commons". That model makes it super easy to start up new organizations, get the word out etc. Part of me hopes that we got back to the late 1990s dedicated websites/forums. That seems to be the Discord model but let's see. |
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| ▲ | rustcleaner 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| I always hated how everything moved off independent forums and onto facebook. Zuckerberg was right about with his early idiots comment. |
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| ▲ | Eric_WVGG 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is what the Bluesky “AT Protocol” is meant to solve, though I fear it might be a bit too late. |
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| ▲ | dbingham 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Except AT Protocol can't do the very thing that made Facebook the commons: privacy. There's a proposal to add privacy to the protocol (private posts, private groups), but I don't think anyone has solved the real root problem with trying to implement privacy in a federated system (as opposed to P2P), which is the bad administrator problem. The proposal I saw still relied on trustworthy app administrators to respect a post's privacy settings. And that's a huge flaw. Friendica and Diaspora both have the same problem, and to my knowledge don't have a good solution for it. They both just sort of hand wave it away. I'm waiting to see if someone comes up with a good solution for the unsafe admin problem, but so far I haven't seen one. |
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| ▲ | adjejmxbdjdn 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The terminology explains what happened. The Zuckerberg movie was called The Social Network. At the time we saw the likes of Facebook as networks intended to build 1-1 communications. Since then, it’s become social Media. It’s now about centralized structures broadcasting messages to subscribers and followers. The only difference from the past is who the broadcasters can be, but it’s no longer about building networks between people. |
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| ▲ | SkyPuncher 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think we’re seeing a similar thing pan out with AI. When the barrier for something is too low, people realize that it’s not actually worth the other party’s effort to communicate it to them. For me, physical communication is quickly becoming a signal that someone actually put effort into things. |
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| ▲ | varispeed 22 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Part of me hopes that we got back to the late 1990s dedicated websites/forums. That seems to be the Discord model but let's see. Well, thanks for lobbying, that's got regulated away. One must be mad today to run a forum. |
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| ▲ | jafitc 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | "thanks to lobbying". if you use "for" it sounds like you are adressing the OP and he did the lobbying that you don't like. | | |
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| ▲ | dartharva 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I tried hard but am failing to see how what you say couldn't just be fulfilled by a chat group today (or even back then). |
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| ▲ | ericbarrett 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | But which one - SMS/RCS? iMessage? WhatsApp? Signal? Telegram? Discord? | | |
| ▲ | CatMustard an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Funny, every time I've joined a new group for dancing or art classes or DnD or anything it's always 100% of the time a WhatsApp group, no questions asked. (This is in Ireland). Never occurred to me that Americans wouldn't have a common group chat app everyone uses. Do Americans not all use iMessage, since pretty much everybody has an iPhone there? | | |
| ▲ | ethersteeds 22 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Around 58% of American smartphone users are iPhone. It's a lot, but not enough to be universal. In my family there's 5 iPhone users and 4 Android users, amusingly similar to the national ratio. Apple has famously made its strategy to use iMessage to enforce exclusivity. If you want to reach everyone, it's not iMessage. And Whatsapp in the US is worse, closer to 1/3. | |
| ▲ | radiorental 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >Do Americans not all use iMessage, since pretty much everybody has an iPhone there? I'm Irish and travel back and forth a lot. First, not everyone has iPhones, Android has 40% of the market. Older generations use Facebook to manage their clubs. I'm increasingly seeing Whatsapp and occasionally Signal for younger and more tech-savvy social circles. Facebook is non-existent in sub 35 year olds. Its just taking longer to switch over (or away from) Facebook given how tech savvy older folks are here compared to Ireland. | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 33 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm probably the wrong person to answer since I don't and never have used any social media, but it seems like groups here mostly use Instagram. Or just iMessage with fallback to SMS for those not on iPhones. Unlike most of the rest of the world, iPhones dominate in the USA. |
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| ▲ | bawolff 29 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think there is less cost to being in multiple chat platforms than multiple social media platforms. | |
| ▲ | alexpotato 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Exactly this. Plus the notifications for chat groups are basically: - show me everything - don't notify me at all | | | |
| ▲ | Symbiote 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | When I ran a student society we used an email mailing list. You can have two if necessary, one only for announcements and one for discussion. | |
| ▲ | soramimo 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | E-Mail! :) | |
| ▲ | joe_mamba 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I have messaging fatigue at this point (where I live). - Doctors offices and official services use SMS. - Some of my close family and friends use Signal (on my pressure). - The distant boomers use Facebook Messenger - With the younger people they use Snapchat. - Almost everyone else in the country uses Whatsapp. - Online communities for tinkering and foss projects require Discord. God I miss the 2000s. | |
| ▲ | erichocean 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Whatever the group owner picks, same as it's always been. No one cares about the actual choice, only that it is made. | | |
| ▲ | tanseydavid an hour ago | parent [-] | | > No one cares about the actual choice, only that it is made. If the actual choice requires me to install an app then I care quite a lot and will probably decline to join in. I don't think that I am the only one who feels this way. | | |
| ▲ | bawolff 27 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Then life moves on without you in the club. Unless they are chosing something super obscure and sketchy, most club members are going to be fine with the leader just saying, we're picking whatsapp, either join or dont. |
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