Maybe this question is so basic and clearly understood that there's no point in even asking, but what is the problem...
Maybe this question is so basic and clearly understood that there's no point in even asking, but what is the problem with starting new groups or activity in places like Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter?
The implied answer is that people liked Google + for not being those places, that every site or platform has it's own strengths and drawbacks, and in particular dislike for Facebook was part of the Google + appeal (maybe related to perceived privacy issues too, or because friends and family are on there?).
All the same I see people asking about how to establish group functions in other places that are very straightforward in Facebook (privacy options, control of membership, sharing features, free access, etc.). Reddit is limited for functionality, with an odd structure, and I don't like Twitter at all, so I guess it reduces to what is seen as wrong with FB.
The implied answer is that people liked Google + for not being those places, that every site or platform has it's own strengths and drawbacks, and in particular dislike for Facebook was part of the Google + appeal (maybe related to perceived privacy issues too, or because friends and family are on there?).
All the same I see people asking about how to establish group functions in other places that are very straightforward in Facebook (privacy options, control of membership, sharing features, free access, etc.). Reddit is limited for functionality, with an odd structure, and I don't like Twitter at all, so I guess it reduces to what is seen as wrong with FB.
Facebook routinely treats its users as products, not as customers. Need any more be said?
ReplyDeleteWould you rather be treated as a product, or as a customer? I don't know about you; however, I'd prefer the latter.
You can't use a pseudonym and people generally don't make substantive posts/comments.
ReplyDeleteBenjamin Russell We weren't treated as even products worth keeping on G+, let alone customers, or loyal users...
ReplyDeleteI think in the end, it's just where you feel comfortable using and where you can find people you like to interact with. I just find it hard to do on facebook and twitter. But the other choices aren't really looking any better from that point of view.
Throwing in the whole privacy and platform ideological stances tends to complicate things more from an ethical and moral standpoint of should we be supporting platforms that tend to be oppressive or ones that then to allow for too much.
wara zashi > We weren't
ReplyDelete> treated as even products
> worth keeping on G+, let
> alone customers, or loyal
> users...
Facebook provides certain services, such as Timeline, that provide benefit chiefly to companies at the expense of user privacy. Google+ didn't do this.
Facebook serves chiefly companies, not users. Google+ at first tried to compete with Facebook, but eventually failed, and then Google simply lost interest in Google+ and decided to abandon it as quickly and inexpensively as possible.
In a certain sense, Facebook feeds on its users by using them to benefit companies.
Conversely, Google+ was simply abandoned by Google because it was not profitable.
I get it that Facebook benefits from Facebook users in ways that aren't really always fair, balanced, and consensual. I was also never convinced that Google isn't doing the same kinds of things, selling data of different types, or at the very least adjusting use of advertising from data inputs that amounts to about the same thing. I'm on Facebook myself, and Reddit, so I guess I'm not as concerned as some others about those types of issues. It has been an interesting idea that emerged here that eventually people should have the option to move locations in social media site use in such a way that their own content and history goes with them.
ReplyDeleteJohn B That's not all. Facebook also tracks users, often in subtle ways without their specific consent, using multiple cookies that remain cached in a browser until manually removed. In fact, Facebook even tracks Android users without a Facebook account via apps on Android that report user data to Facebook. Combining this aspect with Timeline creates an overall Orwellian aspect to Facebook that simply does not exist on Google+.
ReplyDeleteOn Facebook, a user can never escape the feeling of being watched, not just by companies, but also by Facebook itself, even when offline.
Facebook functions, essentially, as a modern Orwellian Big Brother.
Personally, I find this aspect to be extremely unnerving in a way that I never found Google+ to be.
It is odd that I don't feel more troubled about that, but I don't. Somehow an individual learning things about another person and acting on it always seemed like more of a real risk, and even that I don't put a lot of effort into avoiding, since why it would become a real issue isn't clear, at least before it actually becomes one. For people who are more concerned using pseudonyms and not sharing personal content at all seems the way to go. Even if you did that Facebook could probably piece back together who you really are, since they're monitoring so many different kinds of links and background details.
ReplyDeleteJohn B > Somehow an
ReplyDelete> individual learning things
> about another person and
> acting on it always seemed
> like more of a real risk....
Have you ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell?
Ever heard of Minitrue?
Ever heard the phrase, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely?"
Sure, I've read 1984. That warning would seem to apply to what the NSA is doing as much or more as to Facebook, but it was still a work of fiction. Things really could change, and the current potential to sell data or target advertising could transition to something much darker. On the other side of that we kind of have to pick our spots related to worrying about worst cases; those "preppers" hoarding food and planning to live off earthworms underground aren't completely wrong about there being very limited risk of high impact outcomes. I'm more concerned about general economic problems occurring on a new scale than Facebook controlling my life in some way or society collapsing.
ReplyDeleteIMHO you nailed it, big-picture. G+ was not Facebook, forcing glaring privacy and data-mining issues on anyone who care(s/d). G+ was the "don't be evil" alternative. (In theory, of course.) And the platform is excellent, from publicity to integration across apps and apis, Hangouts, Communities, casual scrolling, marketing, promoting, sharing cat memes or music vids, whatever....
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I revert to a colleague's standard disclaimer: YMMV.
And my own insistence on being mindful of "context and perspective". I'd add that Flickr has been around for 15 years (in Feb), and is seeing a great bit of migration or re-activity among G+ photographers, while other "communities" are enjoying the chat and group album/event functions on MeWe (within the still "walled garden") or the diaspora*s etc, which can accommodate bloggers' relocating &/or reconstructing. You know the issues around "takeout" and rebuild, and we all know, those "here" for any time, that this has been a wonderful one-stop 'community'.
So again, I think you have ID'd the main dynamics and choice-points, in that "not Facebook" is still important for some, even if it too is "one-stop-does-it-all", same as people are longing for in their new "homes".
I also see a lot of "spreading ourselves around", blogs in one (findable) place, chat/posts by easy phone app, drawing many to MeWe, and diaspora* and Fediverse a solution for some with the appeal of non-centralization and public posting (but how well indexed/findable?). And there's a return to, along with first tastes of Flickr, for serious photography exhibits (groups too). Many great G+ photographers there.
I'm seeing many G+'ers, with introductions, list of places to be found under what pseudonyms, etc. etc. Being bulldozed out of existence by our own beloved "parents" (Google) sucks. But those who plan will find life go on for a lot of favorite activities, and people too, though some longtime friends and destinations clearly will be back on the FB farm.
https://plus.google.com/+ericpeacock/posts/fnGFPVobem9
ReplyDeletePretty much says it all...
Benjamin Russell Generally speaking, I don't know about you; however, perhaps because of my exposure to Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four, I am extremely suspicious of any form of government in general, and of any world government in particular.
ReplyDeleteTo me, Facebook seems to function as a potential tool for surveillance of its users, not only for the use of corporations, but primarily....
Need I be more specific?
To me, the worst possible nightmare would be a world government keeping a detailed log of every action and every statement by every individual in society.
Can you see where Facebook's technology might be extremely useful in any such system?
John B > the current potential to sell data or target
ReplyDelete> advertising could transition to something much darker.
Really? Surveillance is not about capital; it is about control. Thought-control.
> it was still a work of fiction.
Nineteen Eighty-Four was not written merely as a work of fiction, but as a warning for the future. The whole point of the novel was to describe what could happen if surveillance went amok.
Personally, if I had a choice between targeted advertising and thought-control, I would choose the former. Companies do not exercise thought-control. Guess who does?
John B Generally speaking, the more that is known about a person, the easier that it is to control that person's thinking and behavior.
ReplyDeleteKnowledge is a form of power. Greater knowledge = greater power. Power = control.
Controlling a person's thinking and behavior is trivial once one knows everything about that person.
This is called "thought-control."
I'm not all that worried about thought control either. It is funny how people in general seem to be losing track of what should be important, how collecting likes on FB and Instagram, following and reactions here (in the past), upvotes and views in Quora, etc., steers people to keep doing more of whatever it is that works towards those ends. It's not usually pushing someone to buy something or adopt a political stance but it's all senseless and random enough as it is.
ReplyDeleteI started into more active social media use around 5 years ago related to a subject interest, in tea. The main concern for groups and online participation has been where everyone else is. Google + tea groups died of disinterest years ago. I still post to some sometimes, reaching out to stragglers, but I've not seen anything like an online discussion from any post for years. A small group actually started an old-style forum about year ago (Tea Forum, not very creatively named), but in general photo posting occurs on Instagram, video content is on Youtube, and the most activity and discussion by far is on Facebook. For that reason it's odd even hearing about these other start-up social media sites that I've never heard of. I kind of do hope one of them gains some traction.
John B > I'm not all that
ReplyDelete> worried about thought control
> either. It is funny how people
> in general seem to be losing
> track of what should be
> important....
In other words, you are more worried about being inefficient than about being manipulated.
Well, that's your choice.
Personally, I would rather be inefficient but free than efficient but manipulated.
If I were a ruler bent on making people do my every bidding, I would not tolerate any form of inefficiency. I would simply introduce some imaginary external enemy, tell everyone to follow me or risk getting killed by that imaginary external enemy, and force everyone to work maximum hours at minimum wage to help me fight that imaginary external enemy.
If people are allowed to be inefficient, then Big Brother is not performing very well.
Personally, I would take that as a positive, rather than a negative, sign: It means that people are free to goof off, rather than being manipulated to serve.
Inefficiency is an obstruction to total control.
It is efficiency, not inefficiency, that should be feared: Efficiency makes control more worthwhile. Conversely, if everyone goofs off most of the time, then control becomes almost meaningless.
In a nutshell: People do not exist to serve society; society exists to serve the individual.
John B Here's the tl;dr version: A life that isn't fun isn't worth living.
ReplyDeleteEverything else follows. Efficiency isn't everything.
One of the primary reasons not to go to FB is the 'culture' on (not 'of': 'on') the platform. This very stream of comments is very unlikely on FB. The 'culture' there has moved towards short comments. If you're lucky, you can still find some meaningful threads of short-but-many comments. Usually, you just find threads where the conversation dies out quickly.
ReplyDeletePart of the strength here was also its weakness: a (relatively) low level of activity… which gave time to people to read, to respond, to engage. On FB, the stream of most people is going so fast that conversations become rare (too slow).
And the culture on FB has turned quite a lot towards name calling, etc., which is a common side-effect of short comments. This was never as tolerated (by the users) here as it is there. Hence, why I speak of 'culture'. The crap on FB is now seen as acceptable ("you just ignore it"), by its users, a lot more than an equivalent crap ever was on g+.
And this 'culture' topic is significant: it's one of the main reasons for some to e.g. avoid MeWe.
Everyone has valid points. I have 2 small private communities that I didn't want to leave behind and several other members were already on FB so I decided to set up private groups there till another option opens up.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good point; I wasn't really thinking along those lines in weighing it out, but that seems fair and accurate. It depends on the group there on FB too, to some extent, but at the same time there is some consistency across the overall scope.
ReplyDeleteThe subject and group scope I was most familiar with here on google +, related to tea, never developed enough to have much of a clear culture. Activity level never ramped up. I'm active in a tea group on Reddit too, and although that local group culture is a lot more positive than the rest of Reddit this comment and critique applies there even more than to Facebook.
It's not as if there is a better alternative for groups or discussion related to the subject of tea anywhere online outside of Facebook. An old dedicated forum, Tea Chat, had been better, but those types of forums seem to live out a life-span, and that one leveled off some years ago.
Early on in participating in such groups it seemed likely that interest in such a benign subject (tea) would lead to pleasant, reasonable conversation, but differences of approach, preference, and experience level countered the shared-experience theme. I saw the other forum-theme and specific forum I was active in, related to being an expat, run its course too, and the dedicated forum I was active in terminated.
All this makes me consider, what really is the best-case for any online group? I've participated in dozens (I waste a lot of time online) and being relatively tone-neutral is more or less an optimum. Platform is relevant related to overall culture but I've not experienced that as a main cause, since groups vary. Except maybe in some negative cases; Twitter culture is kind of awful.
Both Twitter and Facebook have one huge advantage. That's where the people are.
ReplyDeletePersonally I quite like Facebook using the web interface. Adblocking plus a small amount of Stylish hides all the ads. Lists are a reasonably good match for circles both for posting and reading. Groups just work. The one layer of comment threading works. You can use follow and the page feed to follow things and people without friending them. The one thing that is not as good as it should be is search. content seems to drop out of the search index. I don't find the people to be any more stupid or annoying than anywhere else. Ignore the trolls, block early, block often and it's no problem having sensible conversations.
I wish Twitter would just die. There are lots and lots of really annoying aspects to their UI with no way round them because some of them are intrinsic to the platform. But the people are there and content gets posted by them. Again Lists are useful and serve to filter content by person but not for posting.
So I find both platforms useful and can just ignore the surveillance. Most of what I post is for completely public consumption anyway. But in both cases, just as with G+ two key things make them bearable. 1) Stay away from the firehose. 2) Block early and block often.
I have moved my communities to private groups on Facebook and they are a great success. Facebook works for my business and networking. It is no where near how good Google Plus was in 2014, but it is where I am moving to. We each have to find what works for us.
ReplyDeleteWi aM hEFF! YMMD I do see 'nyms on FB. The substantive quality again, depends on the groups and friends you have chosen to follow.
ReplyDeleteI use a blog page for public posts.
I follow many citizen science groups there for breaking news. Already I have more quality content on FB than G+
Without this G+MM community my G+ is down to a few posts a day.
Do any of you remember a post on G+ many years ago?
ReplyDeleteSomeone posted a photo from his hotel room window. Someone else set out to prove I know ... exactly where you are. And he did. At a conference in ... this hotel ... facing this way.
And not in one of the huge cities like NY or London or Tokyo.
That was just a casual photo.
I don't use apps on my phone and location is turned off. Zero interest in announcing to Big Brother I am now at XYZ.
In an ironic loop there is a CCTV camera just above the 'George Orwell lived here' blue plaque.
The lab rats have lost / eaten their cheese at G+. We need a new maze.
Zuckerberg called everyone that uses FB 'dumbfucks' for willingly giving their information out lol.
ReplyDeleteAs I've posted elsewhere - but probably not where you've seen it - I just avoid F******k because of the incipient air of mass hysteria that accompanied its opening to the general public. Anything that "everyone's" doing, I avoid.
ReplyDeleteOne of my friends has recommended Reddit, and I'm there, but I can't figure out for the life of me how to use it effectively. I may not last long: I'll just stick with the blog and the Instagram (and, of course, LinkedIn).
For me FaceBook was never going to work when I heard a few interesting facts:
ReplyDelete• They created an algorithm that could predict with ~80% accuracy when someone would change their relationship status from "In Relationship" to anything else (mostly "Single".) They did it for fun. They thought it was funny.
• They admitted to using techniques commonly used by casinos to create addictive behavior in users. Now we have users who can't quit.
• When the terms of service got incredibly dense to the point that reading them made me nauseous and made me second guess why I would ever put an image on that service. Ever. Particularly of my children.
• I realized that there was almost no archival use for Facebook and that the majority of my time spent on it was to argue. Oh, mind you, they were great arguments... but that's not what I want for my life.
Twitter great for political content. If you do not agree with their politics or question their politics. It can become an issue. Reports are some Twitter accounts are changed if you don’t tow the line.
ReplyDeleteWould not discourage using any social media for sharing thoughts & brain storming.
Am still trying to transfer content off Twitter. However, no longer have access.
Reddit is a strange case because anyone can set up any type of their own forum on that platform whenever they want, they just pick a theme and go, as easy as starting a FB group. It's stranger yet for the culture on there; mostly not positive, but it varies by group. And the scrolling of posts in any group with moderate traffic sweeps them away in half a day or so. On the Facebook groups that are active (a minority), and civil (a smaller minority), it's odd how people spit into cliques within a shared interest theme. A lot of the problem with groups, past the sketchy Big Brother platform aspects, is how ordinary human nature plays out. To me that input-based theme goes badly on Twitter, and not generally well on FB, but the exceptions are nice. As someone else mentioned, the people are there; that helps.
ReplyDeleteJohn B There's technically no problem with that from the PoV of this community. And in fact there are existing FB meetups for G+ alums on numerous sites, including Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit:
ReplyDeletehttps://social.antefriguserat.de/index.php/Established_G%2B_Exodus_Communities#Reddit
As Julian Bond mentions above: Facebook and Twitter especially have critical mass. Facebook itself is not only the largest social media platform on the planet, it is the largest media entity the Earth has ever seen. That might strike you as a good thing, attractive, or not....
As for why to choose or not choose Facebook, Twitter, or Reddit specifically....
Though long, I'd VERY strongly recommend the two-part PBS Frontline investigation "The Facebook Dilemma", from October 2018. It is based on interviews with present and former Facebook employees, executives (including Zuckerberg), journalists, analysts, and critics. And it is to my mind evicerating. Watch this if you can:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=T48KFiHwexM
https://youtube.com/watch?v=EuA4qxPbpQE
Site: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/facebook-dilemma/
Many of the entries for Facebook at #PlexodusReddit are ... strongly critical. If you're looking for reasons not to use the site, you'll find plenty here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/search?q=facebook&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all
Twitter has seen comparatively less coverage, though it's also tended toward the negative. Again, Twitter is large, and certainly the largest microblogging platform available. This means both reach and competition.
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/search?q=twitter&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all
You'll note that both those links point at Reddit, which I've used for over seven years. I've come to know both its strengths and weaknesses over that time. Those being listed here:
https://old.reddit.com/r/plexodus/search?q=twitter&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all
Allons-nous disparaître ? Devenir invisible ? Redevenir un stupide animal ?
ReplyDeleteI agree with Julian Bond, who wrote: "Groups just work. The one layer of comment threading works. You can use follow and the page feed to follow things and people without friending them." The platforms I like are the ones with groups.
ReplyDeleteLe Lapin Blanc not stupid - we will each seek out our tribe, our village.
ReplyDeleteLe Lapin Blanc This isn't my first rodeo. I've been doing social networking since Usenet. I've reconnected with people from numerous prior experiences here, and of course, made plenty of new acquaintances.
ReplyDeletePeople are social creatures, we seek out connections, we seek information and exchange. So long as there are sufficient means and visible beacons to do so, it'll happen.
The means are the platforms and channels, the beacons are the people and groups who foster community and conversation.
One interesting twist came up with Facebook a few months ago; they seemed to adjust feed filtering (what posts gets seen), at the same time they announced that and I noticed it, and the blog posts I mention on there dropped to a fraction of their past viewership. It's possible that bot filtering on the blog itself (adjusting stats) just got better but most likely FB decided to adjust what they show and it cut my readership by more than half. It doesn't matter so much; I don't get revenue from the blog anyway, and those reader numbers are just a loose scoring system. On the other side FB decided that personal blogs aren't as important, kind of an arbitrary decision, and carried out cutting them back as an input. In theory it tied to limiting political propaganda influence but as to the real cause for the change who knows. They probably wanted to increase sales of paid link boosting.
ReplyDelete