Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

The funny thing about Facebook is that it's got a perfectly good social network in there, I think the only one that exists. In the menu is "Feeds" which is what you want. It only shows friends and followed things. If they made that the default when you go to facebook.com I don't think I'd have any complaints feature-wise, though an ad-free option would be nice. It's a genuine social network.

Of course, then there's the question of who decides how and what is moderated, and the question of who can access your data, and Facebook definitely leaves a lot to be desired in that area just in terms of Meta not being a particularly trustworthy entity to have control of those decisions.

I was always perturbed by the shift from calling them "social networks" to "social media". It signalled a friends-to-famous shift (plus ads) that I didn't particularly want.

Why fill my personal feed with stuff I normally get on dedicated discussion/news sites? (Rhetorical; it's obvious why.)

They still call it SNS (social networking service) in Japan. We need to keep moving to a new iteration of this - hopefully one that funnels less money and influence to a small group of players. (I'm working on my own ideas for this.)

Mastodon really isn't the answer. You frequent enough servers and you realise social media has taught people bad habits..not everything needs to be expressed online. Genuinely I think people need something else. The format fails.

What's the alternative? I don't know. But I'm trying to figure it out. Why? Because walking away from it all isn't the right answer. Why? Because we leave behind all those people addicted to it. So I think there are new tools to be created but they strip away the addictive behaviours and try to avoid the forms of media that caused the issue in the first place.

I’m quite literally experiencing a physical reaction whenever I need to browse some algorithmic timeline. Even YouTube, what used to be a couple of related videos is now a wall full of “recommendations” - the unskippable ads on every video are more relevant than the actual videos…

Mastodon and related (for me Loops mainly) are a breath of fresh air and I wish more people can (re)learn to enjoy that.

I will admit, one thing the crowd attention model does exceptionally well is surface the best comments on content. Whether it's HN, Instagram, YouTube, etc... the top comments are usually the "best", depending on how best is defined in the given context. On the silly Instagram meme videos my algo serves up, the top comments are invariably hilarious, often funnier than the actual content, and as you scroll it's impressive how the ordering by like count matches hilarity quite well.

"Over time, my timeline contained fewer and fewer posts from friends and more and more content from random strangers. "

It still baffles me that Facebook fills up my feed with random garbage I have no interest in. I barely use it now because their generated content gets in the way of the reason why I opened facebook to begin with. These algorithmic feeds clearly work for someone but its not what I am looking for, I want to see what I follow and nothing else unless I explictly go looking for it.

This might be controversial. Please disagree with me.

When these were social networks, I remember my friends and later myself too, changed our profiles to public, send requests to random strangers, messaged them to like our pictures. We were teenagers and we were competing on who's more famous by having a bigger number next to our friends list or likes. There was no influencer culture back then yet everyone was trying to be this new thing. There were rarely any influencer type features on these platforms.

So I won't blame facebook or Instagram for being what it is today, moving away from friends to social media stars. They saw what people were doing and only supported them. People did what people did.

IMHO, any social network that offers an "explore" section (i.e. a feed of strangers' posts) is doomed, independently of whether it is algorithmically filtered or chronologically. I ultimately dropped Mastodon because the "dumb" feed from my instance was already enough to waste my time.

To prove this, just use Instagram or Facebook from your browser with the proper extensions and they'll stop being absolute worthless time sinks

I myself started making the same distinction when I talk about these things in English, except it's "social media" vs "social networks". Though I have no idea how to make that distinction in Russian, social "media" never caught on as a term there.

An extra annoying problem about social media for me is that while I can make most of the platforms give me a chronological feed of content authored only by people I follow, most other people see mine in an algorithmic feed. This includes people I have zero social connections with. For example, I just gave up trying to discuss politics on Twitter, because every time I post anything political, that tweet ends up in the feeds if hundreds of people who hold the radical version of opposite views, with predictable results. And there's nothing I can do. I can't opt out of being recommended.

I'm surprised there's not more discussion here and in general about symmetric- vs. asymmetric-relationship networks. Facebook worked in the beginning because relationships were symmetric and there was no concept of getting "follows" -- friendships are modeled after real life ones, where the friendship is between two people.

I can see why the big networks moved away from that: pushing "content" has a lot more friction when relationships are symmetrical. What I don't understand is why there is no upstart trying to bring that back.

I still think it's worth reflecting which of the toxic patterns we want to, or don't want to reproduce on non-commercial networks like mastodon. Infinite scroll, quote reply, the like button... all these aren't neutral, and discussions were rightly heated about introducing them.

FB is still a social network, but seemingly only when you use groups. And you actively need to moderate those. Public pages, and things like that? AI/bots and ads wasteland.

i find this sorta thing very interesting because not only have i never experienced the 'early' social networks as described (too young), i've never even considered using one of these sites as described - why would i voluntarily forgo pseudonymity on the public internet? I don't think this was fully a generational thing, i remember being genuinely baffled when i discovered my peers/classmates were using their real names, posting pictures/videos of themselves, and interacting with each other on these public platforms; wasn't internet safety 101 "Don't Do That?"

Having moved to Mastodon, I also recovered some faith in the Internet (of old). You control your timeline. You are not the consumer being fed stuff, you choose what you want to see.

As a side note, I keep hearing people recommend threads, bluesky, or other corporate media machine du jour and I cannot understand how people can't learn a lesson. If you touch a hot stove once, you normally don't touch one again. And yet here I see people around me hoping (against all reason) that this time it will be different, really, this corporation is good, this service will not get progressively ensh*ttified like every other service that came before. It baffles me.

Mastodon is different. It is not owned by a single corp (nitpickers get your engines started) and can't be turned into a machine that juices your attention span for money.

I have never used mastodon, but why is it so much better than X (twitter)? I also follow a small group of people on X that I find interesting and I get a chronological feed of their posts in the “following” tab. I know that the “For You” tab abyss is right there. I opened it once, was shocked by all the crap the system assumed I would like, and never went back. The good thing is that nobody forces me to use it. I am perfectly fine in the “following” feed and not exposed at all to recommender systems trying to grab my attention. Only the ads in the feed annoy me - and they are so bad that I wonder how X makes any money.

Unrelated to the topic described in the blog itself, I overall like the theme of `susam.net`. The name itself reminded me of a sesame seed in Turkish for a while. (I think author had recently mentioned one of the recent posts that they wanted to get susam.com but that was already taken by a Turkish company selling some spices...)

The content (that shows up in HN) is also good. Since I am on mobile device, I cannot tell the exact font used, but seems like Georgia to me. While https://github.com/susam/susam.net hosts the actual source code of the website.

Another remark: Would be really nice to have a same theme adaptation for BearBlog and similar places.

The final transition happened with the death of online forums. I still miss those dearly. I've met extremely interesting and competent people with a true desire to interact with passionate peers. They thought me how to ask for and give advice, how to express opinions in public, the value of growing a community around common interest, and the joy of laughing and getting angry on the OT section.

>It feels closer to how social networks used to work originally. I hope it stays that way.

Is there something about it (it's architecture or the company behind it) that is fundamentally different than other social networks? If not, it is doomed to follow them all eventually.

Any other platforms like Mastodon which are doing things well - are you guys on lemmy?

Substack has been a welcome alternative in this space as well. It reminds me of my experience on web blogs back in the 2000s. A real sense of community and substance.

My family has moved to group chats. It's great.

I was active on FB, Insta, Goggle +, and Orkut during their early days. My brother and I were the first few people from our circle to have these social media account.

Looking back, the incentives have changed. Back then, there was some openness, rawness, and genuine curiosity about people and things. And of course, the signal-noise ratio was much higher.

Influencer culture ruined everything, consciously or subconsciously. I still use Insta for photography. But, it's a sinking ship. Insta could have made a different app for reels.

I struggle to see anything "social" about social media. Looking at short videos of others and ads is anything but social activity.

My mental model for all of this is that my attention is valuable. I can choose where to spend my attention and it should cost something to these platforms and their advertisers to command that attention. Unfortunately, these platforms have figured how to lower their cost by triggering lizard brain reflexes. The best solution is to simply remove any pathways they have to command that attention: uninstall apps and turn off all notifications. My attention is more under my control in this way.

Recently I realized something. Back in the day in the early 2000s people were talking about this thing called social media that didn't really exist but would be the future. (That and micro transactions) I never got what was so hot about it.

Looking back I am realizing that the techno elite did not coopt something that used to be nice. This whole narrative control and private information funnel was designed from the beginning with what it became today already on their crosshairs. We just went through the phases and ate all of it up.

Social Networks ⊆ Attention Media.

But which social networks aren’t attention media these days, and will they remain thus after a few more investment rounds?

as someone who makes video content, the attention media framing is spot on. the platforms don't care about your craft or your audience relationship, they care about watch time metrics.

what's wild is how this distorts the creation process itself. you end up optimizing for the algorithm instead of for quality. every creative decision becomes "will this get recommended" instead of "is this good." i've found that the best content comes from having strong human creative oversight and not just chasing whatever the algo rewards this week.

the no-code tools that promise to automate content creation for these platforms are even worse -- they just produce generic slop that feeds the attention machine. you need to actually care about what you're making, and that means stitching together your own pipeline where you control the decisions.

Modern large platforms are no longer social networks in the original sense, but media platforms optimized for attention. Real social networks are characterized by the fact that users themselves determine whose content they see.

This reminded me of this video from a more optimistic time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

friction is underrated as an attention design pattern. blocking feels punitive, friction just makes you notice the reach instead of being on autopilot. not saying it solves algorithmic feeds, but the pause before opening apps changes the math for most people

The problem is that a functional social network is a bad business model.

A chronological feed has a "stop" point. You catch up, you feel satisfied, and you close the app. Meta’s revenue depends on you never feeling caught up. That’s why the "Feeds" tab is buried three menus deep—it’s there so they can say it exists, but hidden so you stay stuck in the algorithmic slop.

Even if they made it the default, you’re still left with the trust issue. You aren’t the customer; you’re the data being mined. At this point, the brand is probably too far gone for a simple UI tweak to fix the underlying rot.

Though that's where a lot of people get their news, ironically.

I wonder why the author did not mention bluesky as his critisism is on the timeline algo and bluesky allows to create custom timelie algos

The title of the article is arguing semantics. Like it or not, the term “social media” is what we use to describe scroll apps like TikTok.

The content makes sense, though. It’s nice to just follow people you actually know and see nothing else.

I think this is what keeps YouTube usable for me: the subscriptions tab stays in its lane. I only use the home (algorithm) tab when I want to.

Why won’t their stock crash and burn already???

they try hard to obfuscate this

Luckily, the EU is tackling the most impactful feature — the infinite scroll "slot machine".

https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-meta-facebook-instagr...

> I stumbled upon Mastodon and it reminded me of the early days of Twitter. Back in 2006, I followed a small number of folks of the nerd variety on Twitter and received genuinely interesting updates from them.

Personally, I never got into Twitter. I'm on the Fediverse now, and check in on it occasionally, but it never draws me in. I don't connect with people on that kind of platform.

Some forums work for me, mostly because there's a small enough number of participants, or, importantly, there's a place I can go to read content from specific people. Even if we don't become friends (or IRL friends), I still feel like I know them to some degree. The people matter.

Twitter / Fediverse / Bluesky seem to be about topics, and as such, I lose interest quickly. Because no matter how much I like photography, birding, cars, board games, computers, software, etc... I don't really care what the masses have to say on those topics. I want to know about Alice, Bob, and Carol have to say on things that interest me.

Early Facebook was, as described in the article, people you knew, who held some sway in your life, sharing their life events (however inane), or their opinions. I care more about that than I care about a celebrity or complete stranger declaring some thing as good or bad or interesting.

But the network effect was always going to matter. LiveJournal/Xanga/MySpace all had some network effect where some of your friends were there, and you wanted to be there, too. But Facebook figured out monetization, and they still seem to hold the greatest network effect despite how terrible the experience has become. I can post photos there, and dozens will respond, all people I know. If I post in literally any other place, I will get less than dozens of responses, and almost none of them will be from people I know.

There is no new place like early Facebook, or even current Facebook. But of course what I want is a place where I can share with the people I know, and no one has to pay for it, but the monetization doesn't drive the service towards enshittification. This isn't a very realistic desire. Discord has been the closest for me, where I have dozens of contacts in a shared space, and very frequently get interaction with people I know about things I care about. But it also feels like enshittification of Discord is also inevitable even though there's a paid subscription option.

The failure of Mastodon to thrive even when Twitter itself became very vulnerable unfortunately tells me that people actually want this pathologically bad behaviour. Lots of friends who slagged Twitter and Facebook etc for its anti-social aspects turned around and tried Mastodon for a few days and then came back to me with a "there's nothing happening there" and it's "boring" etc because they were fundamentally expecting to be force fed entertainment just like Twitter. Lots of comments on hackernews to that effect, too.

That's fine. I never liked Twitter anyways, but I do think it's interesting how two faced we can be about this.

The engagement hackers found a market and met it. Not good, but true.

I would tend to agree with this, I vibidly remember when facebook had a feed on the top right that told you what your friends were doing, playing games, listening to music on soundcloud, etc.

That was social media, not whatever the hell we have today... it's antisocial and attention grabbing.

This post has convinced me to give Mastodon another try.

Eh, watch as HN comments slowly become exactly the thing you don’t want to participate in.

That's why I am so glad to only be on Mastodon these days, the true social network, without any rich sociopath billionare or some vulture crapitalist behind it. That keeps Mastodon form becoming the attention/propaganda platforms that all these for profit platforms really are.

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Sure, the modern Twitter/X feed is not like the original reverse chronological timeline but the latter is still available right next to it. Maybe it's the power of the default but I find the algorithmic feed much better.

The chronological timeline is only manageable up to a point. I follow just under 2000 accounts on Twitter. They at least occasionally at least in some period in the past must have been posting interesting stuff or I wouldn't have followed them. But not all of them all the time. Algorithmic feed surfaces the good stuff, or at least popular, but lately it picks some very niche stuff successfully. Same on TikTok.

The modern feed is a clever generalization of the previous age tech. And sometimes you just like the previous gen more but there is a reason the new version got traction.