3w ago

What do you think about this approach to social networks?

We never message each other because this isn’t about connection. It’s about keeping tabs.

What do you think about this approach to social networks? I think she is right in this, for me the social networks don't make much sense any more as it doesn't lead to any real interaction, which was the purpose of having online connections in first place.

https://caoilainn.substack.com/p/just-delete-them

16 comments

I've never like social media based on following other people. I care more about following a topic not a person.
Ie Lemmy/Reddit vs Mastodon/Facebook.
- On my Mastodon I follow ... maybe a dozen people? Total?
  I follow, like you said, topics in the form of hashtags. This gives me a much better feed than Xhitter or Farcebook ever did.
- Apparently, i’m not the only one who feels that way. I tried to use Mastodon, but couldn’t find anyone worth following. People always post random stuff I don’t care about.
  
  Don't follow people. Follow hashtags. It's a much better experience.
- Quora used to have a fantastic crowd-edited question topic ontology/taxonomy for feed shaping, but they enshittified the system away, and now it's all LLM misunderstandings of what the question topics should be. The bot thinks a question is about apples when the question is a mathematics word puzzle; "How many apples...". The excuse for AI tagging was "tags can be abused" when in reality the crowd corrected the abuses quickly. With the new AI tagger, my feed turned into viral trash from Quora-celebrities, mostly about recent news.
  They never made the obviously needed features of being able to topic tag answers, not just questions (for when the question is general and the answer is specific, like "What do you think everyone needs to know in 2025?"), and the ability to follow a topic from a user, because most people write about many topics, so a follow brings uninteresting topics to my feed, but not all people write well about that topic I follow, so I'd need to follow a topic from a user.

That's essentially how I used fiction Facebook back when I still used it at all.
Didn't accept friend requests if it wasn't someone I actually wanted to maintain contact with, and would remove anyone that wasn't in contact. Too damn much bullshit to sort through otherwise.
- im the compete opposite. facebook and linkedin is to keep contact with folks where our lives have diverged. people I see all the time there is no need for social media stuff.
  
  I get what you mean.
  But I meant that if they aren't using Facebook to keep in contact, then they're was no point in them being connected.

Due to the explosion of AI generated content I feel this applies to the Web in general. I rarely read or engage with anything anymore because what's the point.

This seems like obvious advice.
I mean, way back when Myspace was new (I'm old) I looked at it and thought "This is going to make me sad." Like, if people post fun stuff without me I'm probably going to feel left out. If people post sad stuff about their life, I'm going to feel sad. If people don't interact with me at all, I'm going to feel lonely. There's such a narrow path forward on that kind of thing that's a consistent, net positive.
People could keep in touch with email, or texts, or even ancient modes like phone calls and letters. Would probably be happier. The social media stuff is a black hole.
Also remember that time Facebook tried to see if they could just make people sad? And they could? And somehow no one went to jail or anything?
- Now, instead is reaching out to have conversations with folks, you're expected to just read up on what they're doing and thinking for yourself. That's not interaction. It doesn't make for a fulfilling friendship and honestly most of us aren't really interesting enough to study up on.

What are these "connections" you speak of?

Why is there are hot girls in the thumbnail, and then no bweebs
Blasphemy

Basically you need social stuff here too find a job.

16 comments