Social Media not Social Anymore

[Randy Jennings]

Saw an intersting post on X today talking about how social media isn't social anymore. It links to an interesting paper. I think this explains a lot of talk about monetization incomes going down (for those who ever got it).

https://twitter.com/x/status/2061064850361516360

 

[JamesCaruso]

Yeah it’s ridiculous, I never see content on Instagram or even LinkedIn from people I even know anymore. It’s all just algorithmically “selected for you.”

 

[Dave C]

Sad, but unsurprising.

Every platform is beholden to stockholders and data brokers who would rather squeeze every penny they can from users. Quality, connection, positivity...none of that matters one fraction to these people. When everything is a commodity, there is no life to be found in such a system.

The dumbest part is that it will never be enough, platforms will keep enshitifying everything even when soon AI bots will be the only ones both making and viewing content. The algorithms appear not to care about anything but metrics of clicks and time scrolling. To the soulless powers that be, this is success.

 

[Sean Ramsey]

And yet everyone is still there on every platform. Maybe the long term unintended consequence is that people will wake up and get their nose out of their phones and start valuing "in person" interactions again, but probably not.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

Yeah, it's been going on a long time. I barely use Facebook anymore, never been on Xitter or any of the others. I did start a Bluesky about a year and a half ago, but it's disappointing how many of the meteorologists who opened accounts around that time don't bother posting on there. I see posts they make on Xitter get frequently shared to another weather forum I frequent, go to their Bluesky and they haven't posted in 3 months.

That platform didn't take long, either to try to push users to algorithmic content despite initial pledges they wouldn't. I keep my app on the "Following" feed, but it periodically gets switched back to the "Discover" feed without my doing so manually.

 

[Warren Faidley]

There have been several papers written on this subject (Bucher 2012, Gillespie 2014 and Zuboff 2019), covering a broader range of topics including monetization. In my opinion, social media is akin to slavery. You have a few people at the top who are heavily promoted and protected, while the peons at the bottom do most of the heavy lifting by contributing free creative labor.

 

[JamesCaruso]

Every platform is beholden to stockholders and data brokers who would rather squeeze every penny they can from users.

And yet everyone is still there on every platform. Maybe the long term unintended consequence is that people will wake up and get their nose out of their phones and start valuing "in person" interactions again, but probably not.

It’s amazing that so many people are willing to give away their time and attention so someone else can make money off them. Yeah, you can say that about any commercial transactions where we pay to spend time on experiences provided by companies (such as even subscribing to an online publication). But the difference is that these social media companies are making money off of *other people’s* content, and the originators get nothing for it.

Another reason the chaser community should be here on ST! Social media is not curated. You can’t even be sure the posts you are interested in are going to show up timely in your feed. Yeah you can go directly to the people you want to see. But going to all the individual feeds is not convenient. Suppose you want to read everybody’s accounts of May 18, 2026; would you rather go to 10 separate feeds to see what each person did that day, or go to one Reports thread here on ST?!?

I’m probably preaching to the choir, but please make these points to chasers you know that are not on ST. Sometimes I’ll even post a comment about this on their social media posts.

 

[Andy Wehrle]

It’s amazing that so many people are willing to give away their time and attention so someone else can make money off them. Yeah, you can say that about any commercial transactions where we pay to spend time on experiences provided by companies (such as even subscribing to an online publication). But the difference is that these social media companies are making money off of *other people’s* content, and the originators get nothing for it.

Another reason the chaser community should be here on ST! Social media is not curated. You can’t even be sure the posts you are interested in are going to show up timely in your feed. Yeah you can go directly to the people you want to see. But going to all the individual feeds is not convenient. Suppose you want to read everybody’s accounts of May 18, 2026; would you rather go to 10 separate feeds to see what each person did that day, or go to one Reports thread here on ST?!?

I’m probably preaching to the choir, but please make these points to chasers you know that are not on ST. Sometimes I’ll even post a comment about this on their social media posts.

They broke the very reason a lot of people migrated to SM 15-20 years ago, to the detriment of personal chaser websites. It was supposedly more convenient to find everything all in one place. Now it takes just as much, if not more effort as it did to visit all those bookmarked websites.

 

[Adam Adkins]

Yeah, it's been going on a long time. I barely use Facebook anymore, never been on Xitter or any of the others. I did start a Bluesky about a year and a half ago, but it's disappointing how many of the meteorologists who opened accounts around that time don't bother posting on there. I see posts they make on Xitter get frequently shared to another weather forum I frequent, go to their Bluesky and they haven't posted in 3 months.

That platform didn't take long, either to try to push users to algorithmic content despite initial pledges they wouldn't. I keep my app on the "Following" feed, but it periodically gets switched back to the "Discover" feed without my doing so manually.

I hate the politics with bluesky and twitter. I used to be able to connect with masters and doctors in atmospheric science fields on twitter and then when Trump was elected half of them went to bluesky and it does seem like everyone lost connections to an extent and it made everyone post less. I wish we could all stay on twitter and everyone could just connect with everyone. Like state climate centers and stuff some are only on bluesky now or maybe the head meteorologists behind them are just on bluesky or twitter etc.

 

[Dan Robinson]

It's as bad as ever, and likely to get worse. I'm most concerned for the younger generation, who hasn't known anything else and is particularly vulnerable to the whims of these giants. The vast majority of the world population has been completely captured by it. I don't know what the solution is or if there ever will be one.

 

[JamesCaruso]

The harms of social media go well beyond anything we’ve been talking about here. The endless scrolling occupies so much of so many people’s time, young and old. Nobody is ever alone with their own thoughts anymore. Nobody does any deep long-form reading; information is consumed in sound bites, without depth or nuance. People have lost the ability to focus or to think, because of the constant digital distraction.

I do think there is starting to be a backlash. It used to be only luddites that resisted social media, but now more are doing so. And the harm to adolescents is being recognized, thanks largely to the recent book by Jonathan Haidt. https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Gene...s&qid=1780408801&sprefix=Haidt,aps,122&sr=8-2

 

[Boris Konon]

The harms of social media go well beyond anything we’ve been talking about here. The endless scrolling occupies so much of so many people’s time, young and old. Nobody is ever alone with their own thoughts anymore. Nobody does any deep long-form reading; information is consumed in sound bites, without depth or nuance. People have lost the ability to focus or to think, because of the constant digital distraction.

I do think there is starting to be a backlash. It used to be only luddites that resisted social media, but now more are doing so. And the harm to adolescents is being recognized, thanks largely to the recent book by Jonathan Haidt. https://www.amazon.com/Anxious-Generation-Rewiring-Childhood-Epidemic/dp/0593655036/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2QJZ0B5TXZAET&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.v8yHXjrkjHQj2wUrxVTCnKpjA05tRJPML-myTsVmukJf_mdoppMxG7wNILGd-wPkdFpWEq1L0m4kfdmjFOqgeJyMDmBBvFoEtESOdLetNsVD0f9TOqTZJ687Ej9AK3kAweF6DR5Gv4NKq3RU82Bee2gHLDfv6kfOYa4mehppkUlUrneSqoCn3CO0hsemiZ5kuwfcJ59_I6QzKC51UXIbBkKc3VyUoRcqjQXmfnG4baY.jdIHenAekaDyO3I45I_lT0opMpWnXB_k_kSUWEFFAuc&dib_tag=se&keywords=jonathan+haidt+books&qid=1780408801&sprefix=Haidt,aps,122&sr=8-2

Re: backlash -- I also like the rejection more of digital media. Young ppl are realizing that buying physical media is a good thing! In last few years, company buyouts/mergers have resulted in ppl's entire digital library lost when they already had paid in full for each movie/show. One example was Sony buying Crunchyroll and Funimation (both anime) and merged them under the Crunchyroll brand, and those w/ pre-existing librarys were SOL.

And who would have though vinyl records would make a comeback (been 10 years now)? And look at what one person did w/ 60 Pizza Huts recently. Making them like they were, an enjoyable venue to eat. So many fast food restaurants have been made into sterile-looking, generic stops now (Taco Bell redesigns inside look like a minimalist Apple Store!). So the demand for what was better in the past is there.