The Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

See also the privacy-invading aggressiveness of most platforms, and the political ads and propaganda inundating people’s feeds. If social media had just remained a way to keep in touch with friends and post pictures, it would probably have remained popular.

It pretty exists ai. While it was novel and actually social, it was fun and a good way to keep up with friends that you see less often.

Then they started pushing influencers and people starting posting an idealised version of their life. Then the feeds all devolved into junk, even before AI slop.

Its because they took the joy and monetised it while making people trust them less and less. Post about an engagement, get wedding ads. Post holiday photos, then find out they were data mined. Wish someone happy birthday and find it's just a stream of 100s of cookie cutter messages on their page.

So people moved on or became lurkers that don't post. A lot of engagement moved from social onteractuin with people you know to Facebook community groups which became effectively ragebait and clickbait.

More like "no thanks". It's so bad that Greasemonkey scripts are needed to fix.

If I ate something new or interesting, my friends actually cared. Unfortunately Facebook decided no one wants to interact with the people they know and started pushing news posts down everyone's throat. It's not a social network if you actively work against me interacting with my social network.

You have an @lemmy.world account We already know what you ate.

Beans.

What about your shit after lunch?

What did you eat for breakfast?

No ads and no "algorithm". That's all I ask for

I use vernissage rather than pixelfed, but yeah, it's the only one I deliberately try and post to every day!

For me, it's the death of the chronological view. That's when I stopped using social media. I'd see random, irrelevant stuff from weeks ago instead of what my friends were up to today.

That was what got me off - I kept feeling like I had to scroll much farther back to see the updates from friends I missed past what FB decided I should see, until I decided Facebook had made it no longer worth the effort

What happened to Facebook is happening to Instagram. What used to be just a feed of my friends is now a bunch of suggested posts from accounts I don't follow. It gives me a feeling of having my own friends used as bait for them to churn more content, souring the whole experience.

You can still get chronological posts on there if you tape the “Instagram” button at the top and tap followers instead of recommended. Not well labeled but still possible

"gluten for punishment", thanks autocorrect for another genius coinage

the article actually says the opposite - that it's the random nature of pushing internet algorithm-chasing influencers that pushes people away instead of it being a way to keep in touch with people you know and love.

That's how I felt when I tried bluesky. I missed the boat on Twitter and it'd already gone down the shitter so I never tried it. Figured bsky would be an opportunity to try the whole tweeting thing for myself.

And even still, it was just nothing but political bitching, navel gazing, and glorified (or actual) advertising. Like... what's the point of it all? Deleted my account within the month.

Lemmy has its share of faults but at least people are willing to have actual discussions and conversations here. On bsky it felt like talking to a bot. People talking past each other instead of actually communicating.

Facebook died to me when the timeline was no longer linear

when instagram changed the algorithm a decade ago to no longer show your friends' recent posts, that's when they lost me. prior to that, it was actually useful for sharing trips and events with friends.

now it and Facebook are entirely ads / sponsored posts, and random shit fb thinks I'll hate

SAME. Seeing posts from a week later it because a certain friend is shadow banned just ruined the whole experience.

Yup, I fought it for a while by clicking the appropriate tab or sort button, but they kept changing where it lives until I gave up and never logged on again.

Now it's just here for the community, and youtube for the consumption - at least they let you just look at your subscription by new without any junk mixed in (yet).

There's a certain merit to posts with high interactions getting a higher priority to posts that were sent more recently. I didn't enjoy the Facebook spam that started popping up as people gamed the system. 10,000 "Your friend is playing Fart Hospital! Your friend just pooped himself in Fart Hospital! Your friend has made an Epic Fart at Fart Hospital!" posts because someone didn't realize the game they were playing was posting to their feed.

But they got the Reddit disease, where engagement was everything. And then you started losing sight of media you cared about under a pile of Shrimp Jesus clickbait.

I think, at the end of the day, the Facebook internal metrics changed from "Are our users happy?" to "Are our users meth addicts?"

Reddit is even worse on mobile. They’ve moved to putting up a banner that tells you to use the app. On iOS, it kills the scroll, and swiping to go back doesn’t work. Go to the app? Fuck you, log in. Desktop mode is rough on mobile and they’re already talking about nuking old.reddit.com now.

maybe we could help handing them nails to their coffin. Lets start demanding they add even more obnoxious things. Like for reddit, make even more posts no visible to those who are not logged in, have premium members be even more exclusive and away from the view. That should be a decent blow to any new people considering to join there since why would they want to do it if they cant even see what is there. And lets say they do it anyway and maybe even pay something, they will just get shit that isnt worth their money or they are kind of people that make it even worse place.

it could be sold to the crazier users as a way for them to be oh so exclusive and vip users so they would join in too. The executives would likely be extatic to see people demand same kind of shit they would want to put in anyway.

I dont know enough about facebook or shitter to have any ideas how to make them even worse, but for sure there is room there too.

Worse commercial social media becomes the better since it will push people away and eventually make it crumble.

You're lucky then. For me there was at least a double digit percentage of just plain racism.

Photo of black man walking: "ANYBODY KNOW WHO THIS IS?!"

Car broken into: "I BET IT WAS THAT MEXICAN".

Absolutely vile place. Boomers talking to other boomers with no filter, an HOA board given a social platform.

Mine was 75% commercial ads and 15% DOES ANYONE KNOW WHO THIS IS PARKED ON THE PUBLIC STREET IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE I NEED TO BE ABLE TO PART THERE ITS TOO FAR TO WALK

And let's not forget the racist curtain-twitchers. "I saw a brown person walking down the street near my house this morning. Should I report it?"

But I hate Nextdoor even more because I don't see any reason to put my real name and address into any social-media app.

I've heard enough about Nextdoor that I never want to have an account for their site

This exactly. I like the thread style formatting, because then I'm following a topic, and not an individual person, because I really don't give a shit what you had for breakfast, and don't need your food pics lol. I'm not into that, but if you post something interesting in a technology forum, then I'm quite interested.

I miss webforums terribly. phpBB boards were everything back in the day. Reddit/Lemmy isn't remotely the same.

I keep hoping some of the new old web stuff will manage to strike a spark again.

also the best way to disseminate propaganda.

From what? Is my mom clicking on that many ads and buying their shit?

Spoiler: >!Yes she is.!<

Facebook shows an after every two posts in my feed.

From scams

There's a (possibly apocryphal) story about Zuckerberg originally being very resistant to turning Facebook into another Yahoo or MySpace or similar ad-swamped interface, on the grounds that it would scare people away and create a drag on growth. It even got a send-up in The Social Network movie.

Whether this was an intentional business strategy or a second order effect, Facebook was originally one of the cleanest Web 2.0 sites. They did a genuinely pretty good job of focusing on media you were flagged as caring about and showing you activity of friends and family who you wanted to follow. More savvy early users even commented on how creepy Facebook could get, precisely because it could find your friends better than you could and bait you with interactions that drew people together.

The modern iteration of the company is so far away from what it was originally designed to be. The Shrimp Jesus clickbait era Facebook might as well make it a different website. I cannot imagine anyone seeing this site coming into college Freshman year and finding anything that makes it appealing.

Yes the far-right astroturfing is becoming very blatant lately. I've noticed a recent worsening trend

I may be wrong (I left the algorithmic social medias when they abandoned linear timelines [kept reddit until about a year before the exodus, since only fedi]) but:

Is that not because that is the content you interact with (argumentatively, likely, but still) or hover over longer with their eye movement sensors, or all the other ways they track you, and so they think "ahh he 'likes' (hate engages with) this content so send more!" in a loop to keep you engaged and keep making money for them through advertisements?

Like, if you ignored that shit (and iirc there's often a way to "reset" your algorithm in some settings, after all, they want the data they sell to be accurate, it's more valuable to sell...) and started only liking/lingering on family shit and cats (how can you ignore the kitties after all), they'd send primarily that, yes?

I could be wrong about that, this is my understanding as an outsider, but I'm curious. At the end of the day I'll forever advocate for the end of such algorithmic practices entirely long term, and the end of one's individual involvement with it in the present moment: "Bruh get off that shit it is rotting your brain. Like actually, by design, and it wants to keep you locked in. Don't look at the Basilisk."

What are the federated "replacements" available so far? Obviously Lemmy replaces Reddit, I think Mastodon is a Twitter replacement? Has anything tried to tackle the myspace/TB/LJ kinda thing?

And then you've got the "new old web" stuff like Neocities and CozyTalk I guess.

On top of that if you open Facebook or Instagram, you won’t see a single one of your friend’s posts. You’ll see AI slop, random propaganda or “Influencera” and an ad every two posts.

You have to search for a friend if you want to find them.

Reddit's just so swamped with bots anymore. And even in the small subs where you're reasonably sure no one's wasting bots on, the people are just weird.

Discord was also grabbing your data. Matrix servers are supposed to be better.

the sooner we all start calling it fakebook, the sooner it will die

Oh hey, you can still get views! You just need to open an advertising account with them, and them pay them anywhere between $50-$1000 and they'll then show your one sponsored post to anywhere between 2 and 50 percent of people who like that kind of thing, for anywhere between 3 days and two weeks. Just select how much you want to spend to get that sweet exposure!

What's that? You want to reach all your friends and followers? All of them? For free? Sorry, they don't do that kind of thing anymore.

You can unfollow everyone but your friends

To be fair, engagement bait works.

Look how much Twitter ragebait gets upvoted here on Lemmy.

Whenever I go to check the source for the posts, they aren't even real; it's a bot account posting 24/7, or at the very least a dedicated engagement farmer. But people don't care, they just want that feeling.

I don't think there is any use in reducing all internet conversations to just seeking social acceptance. you could just apply that to all conversations whatsoever. then why speak with others, and why go out of the house, it's all just seeking fame or whatever right?

I don't think it works that way.

Eightfold path, my dude.

Basically blogging to your friends.

It was a lot more fun before all of the advertising, really

Is it out yet?