POST @joyoftech@mastodon.world
This isnt right, mostly because facebook was never great.
Reddit was great, but it could have been so much better. They left so much money on the table that users would have happily given them but they just kept missing the point and taking the site marching towards being of mediocre appeal to as many people as possible.
This isnt right, mostly because facebook was never great.
There was a period of time that I had numerous relatives who literally could not navigate the internet outside of facebook.
The wife of a cousin would literally start her session at the computer by typing “facebook” into google and then clicking the top result. That search on google in lieu of bookmarking it or typing facebook.com or literally any other way of getting to the site was the one thing she did on the internet that was not internal to facebook. FOR YEARS.
And yes I’m old, but I’m not that old. We’re talking Gen-X.
During that odd period where the web was getting more sophisticated but people still joked about needing their twelve year old relative to fix their computer for them, many, MANY people thought facebook was great.
It was the same period of time when Apple was pushing hard on “Buy our very expensive, sleek looking, low-value, walled garden computers and everyone will know what a trendy creative counterculture person you are” as their marketing approach.
It was always going to go that way. Any social media site is going to go that way.
Even Lemmy will one day go that way.
Here’s the program:
- Build a platform that people like using.
- As more people use it, the creators will need more money to keep it up.
- Realize there’s much monies to be had.
- Hire marketing and sales people
- The platform becomes a company, sell to the highest bidder.
- The platform implements algorithms that make them more money.
- The algorithms make people hate the site.
- Do many unpopular things to kick out the real content creators that once made the platform thrive.
- The company is left with casual users that don’t know anything about the platform, they’re just there to find out what burger joint to go to in San Antonio or which caulk is best to use for an outdoor shower.
- The company is very successful because they can push anything to the casual user and they will accept it as advice instead of what it really is - ads or algorithms to enrage them (because thats where the real money is - social media platforms keep you online longer if they piss you off)
- Make huge profits for a while then become a latter-day digg
Is it possible to commercialize lemmy?
Capitalism uh… finds a way.
How is Lemmy paying for the servers they need to serve content? I have no idea, but someone is footing the bill.
I think eventually what we will see is companies hosting their own official instances where they have absolute admin/moderation privileges (which is bad) but they will wind up paying to host their own propaganda/tech support which is good. Probably governments too, which sounds like it sucks but they have a twitter and facebook pages already so its really no different.
I think some of the larger instances accept user donations. And smaller instances are just paid for by the owner.
does it matter? can’t people do anything for the love of the game anymore?
Meta seems to be trying to commercialize ActivityPub, so maybe???
It all boils down to looking down on the ‘lowly’ people they deem inferior, because they are higher up now.
Being the first, so that it has a foothold on older generations.
MySpace: am I nothing to you?
Tom would never sell my data. He was my friend.
😅
You have to do the bad things slowly, over time, so people forget each one before the next happens. Twitter and Reddit decided they could make everything worse all at once.
That’s due to VC money drying up because of the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates. Operating at a loss is no longer profitable, especially in the short term.
Are we pretending Facebook is not a dumpster fire?
It is a dumpster fire, but it’s also profitable
So is meth.
Meth is a product that was found, and then developed and improved in order to be better at what it does. The expertise demonstrated in the creation of Meth shouldn’t be compared to Facebook, which is just the first product to come out of a market. Facebook hasn’t developed further as a social media platform, it has developed further as a money making device.
You could say Alcohol is the Facebook of drugs. Drugs have developed over a very long time unlike social media, so the history is much greater for this case, but the point is that alcohol, despite not being the best in all categories, is the most popular drug simply because it’s not as harmful as others (such as meth) and has been around for longer than the new, less risky alternatives (such as weed). I’m not considering coffee as a drug for this metaphor. Alcohol is making the most money not because it is good, but because the rest is mostly illegal, and/or less ingrained in social norms and traditions.
Point is, I kind of lost myself along the way and started rambling, comparing Facebook to Meth is not fair because Meth is not socially accepted while Facebook is, maybe compare Reddit to Meth, idk
I enjoyed this rambling analysis
5/5This is a very confusing analogy.
If I leave Facebook,I will lose access to all my high school and college acquaintances. People I may want to contact in the future, but don’t care enough about them to create other communication threads with.
Does Facebook have statuses? I’ve never used it, so I’m not sure.
If yes, you can post your new preferred contact info there. Anyone who cares enough to talk to you will. Anyone who doesn’t, won’t.
