> This in turn makes the platforms less useful and more hostile to users and presumably at some point that will cause users to leave the system.

People always seem to brush off this kind of comment when I see it discussed, usually the argument is "well, you're a software developer / superuser, normal people don't care about these things." It will be interesting to see where the breaking point actually is; I've always felt that platform users deserve a little more respect than that. The linked identity thing is especially frustrating for me.

I stopped posting to facebook in 2010 (still using it to keep in touch via messenger and see event invites, and to avoid alienating extended family), but I used to have an instagram account with a fun theme that I only shared with a few friends. What was fun and relatable for my friends was confusing and obtuse to my family. Even the account username was embarrassing in that context. So I always kept them separate, explicitly saying "no, I don't want to attach this to my facebook account." Then one day, it just sort of happened? I can't remember if I was tricked by a dark pattern or if they just forcibly fused the accounts YouTube-Google style, but that day instagram immediately lost all usefulness to me and I haven't been on since. For me as a user, social media has always kind of felt this way.

I'm curious to see what will happen to reddit and its communities, and even more curious to see whether the next generation sees internet anonymity as a cool feature. When I was growing up, it felt like being able to form an alternate identity online was almost the whole point, but I guess back then there were fewer avenues to cultivating your identity as a personal brand for profit.

> It will be interesting to see where the breaking point actually is; I've always felt that platform users deserve a little more respect than that.

I read your comment as a really strong case for platform co-operativism -- multi-stakeholder democracy for online platforms: not just owners making decisions, but users and maybe employees together with owners. Generally, democratic currents (whether government or corporate) only emerge through changes in our collective sense of "how things should be".

I'm hoping we all start to realize we're serfs on all these platforms, and start wondering "hey, we're generating most of this wealth... why aren't we given a say in decision-making?"

Crypto-social platforms promised to solve this -- but we've seen how that's gone.

It's the same thing that happens to all "free"/ad-sponsored/VC-backed services. Unless you're FB or Twitter or YouTube, your ads aren't profitable enough to run your business. The business model is unviable unless you get that big. So you lose a bunch of money until you find a way to monetize or close. This always takes the form of user-hostile anti-features. Currently that's forcing users into your special apps, where they can't install an ad-blocker. Historically it's been stuff like increasingly scummy ad behavior, and/or requiring paid accounts to access features that used to be free. Your platform gets less useful and gets replaced by the next "free"/ad-sponsored/VC-backed money loser and the cycle repeats.

It's happening to imgur and Reddit now. Time to find the next big thing.

I call this the dismal equilibrium. Anything free that provides value is, in brute economic terms, mis-priced. Thus, it tends to degrade due to attempts at monetization until a balance is reached between its inherent value and the pain one must endure to use/access it.

> Anything free that provides value is, in brute economic terms, mis-priced.

Damn, that's a good way to put it.

I assume value includes non tangibles, otherwise open source wouldn't work.

> otherwise open source wouldn't work

This is more a case of non-open-source software trying to force physical-world business models into a world where physicality has no meaning. Most open source development is paid for by paying for the work to be done. In other words, much open source software is not free; rather, it's already been paid for.

> in brute economic terms, mis-priced

Is this necessarily a bad thing? Or are you saying this is basically an arbitrage opportunity waiting for someone to exploit it?

How would we structure something free that provides value, and keep it free in the long term without degradation?

Well, not really saying it's bad in a moral sense or making a value judgement (though it does tend to be "bad" from a usability perspective), just noting what I've observed. And it applies even to things that aren't free, but which you pay for via some fixed initial cost.

For example, I bought Words with Friends a long long time ago, and for a while it was great. But now they've added tons of gamification features like powerups that bypass game rules, social, awards, etc... to try to get you to engage more and pay more money. Now, various awards screens pop up and waste seconds of my life after every move.

I just want to play standard Words with Friends with my wife like I have for the last 10 years. But one can see that folks like me aren't making Zynga any (new) money, hence the other inducements.

In your example, it seems the app was not mis-priced for you. In fact, it was the perfect price, until the company decided it was mis-priced for them.

So now they add all these unfriendly features, which now makes the app mis-priced for you.

My point is that mis-pricing can be different depending on who's perspective we look at. So in an economic sense, when we say something is mis-priced, from who's perspective is it?

What if the thing provides maximum value only when it's free? Monetizing via advertising implies losing the speech the advertisers don't approve of. If we had discussion forums that didn't allow free accounts to post, we'd lose the speech of people who can't or won't pay.

Would be interesting if some rich benefactor randomly decided to run such a community.

Another side of the same coin: anything "free" that you wouldn't use if you had to pay for it isn't providing value.

That's a great term that really captures the dynamic. It's sad to see it taking effect on so many previously useful platforms.

> increasingly scummy ad behavior [...] It's happening to imgur and Reddit now

And Stack Overflow: [Why is StackOverflow trying to start audio?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20288768) [Ads on Stack Overflow are increasingly \[terrible\]](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329547/ads-on-se-si...)

I just fail to see how old Reddit could not have been a sustainable standalone business. Conde Nast had a huge opportunity once they acquired it as it no longer needed "VC growth" but they failed. I wish I had the opportunity to acquire it for 10-20 million[1].

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/25/the-1st-thing-alexis-ohanian...

I'd caveat this very slightly, as sometimes a business model turns out to be existentially viable, but lacks the kind of scale, revenue, or exponential growth that VCs want to see.

If your business model doesn't include paying back your investors, it's not viable. If your business model does pay back investors, or doesn't require them, then congrats! You've avoided the dismal equilibrium and have a successful business that serves its users instead of abuses them :)

Which means the business never should have taken VC funding, because it just puts the whole venture at risk while adding zero value.

It's like image hosting sites.

I can't comment on the fact that the whole field is imploding, but there is only room for finite growth.

A lot of these platforms seem VC-funded or publicly traded, and they are based on growth. So they probably see growth slowing down, and this is an effort to squeeze more numbers out of it. Hopefully for them, they can pivot their business plan on to something not growth-based.

This is a common pattern: growth is like a drug for tech startups. Cut it, and they will do all they can to have it again, even if they have to alienate their current user-base for this.

As I often browse reddit in private mode, this probably just means that I'll waste less time on that website; I'm not going to bother logging in if I didn't already.

Not just you.

My $0.02 is that it is a shift from ad-driven approaches (as in showing ads) to consensus shaping approaches that focus on data mining.

The huge quantities of bad actors -- idiots, assholes, paid trolls, blatant propagandists -- also requires mitigation.

We've had locks and walled gardens for hundreds of years, and human nature hasn't changed. No surprise the same thing is happening on the intrawebs.

> but I'm not sure what people could move to if Reddit becomes non-viable. but I'm not sure what people could move to if Reddit becomes non-viable.

In the past, a lot of non-technical people posted to usenet newsgroups and connected to IRC for online chat.

How non-technical are we talking here, though?

The layperson used to use WordPerfect 5, a non-WYSIWYG word processor which required typing 'codes' using modified function keys to change styles. It came with keyboard templates so you could remember which key did what.

IRC and USENET are simpler than that.

The userbase at the time was a few millions of computer users, unlikely more than 20 million and quite possibly closer to 10.

"Wordperfect" as a Google Ngram term peaks in the early 1990s:

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Wordperfect&ca...

Microsoft Windows 3.1 was released in 1992, selling "over a million copies" in the first two months of the year. That would an annual sales track of ~6 million or so.

In 1980 there were 2 million computers in the US, doubling every 2 years. By 2000, there were 168 million computers, only 6 doublings rather than the 10 the 1980 estimate would have provided. That suggests about 16 million users as of 1990, possibly 24-32 million by 1992.

As of 1995, total worldwide Internet usage (then largely in the US, though also Europe) was 16 millions. As of 2019 it's 4.5 billions.

https://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm

That would have been the more educated, wealier, and generally professional class of users, for the most part. For better or worse, computer use has democratised tremendously. The capabilities of the typical user have all but certainly fallen correspondingly.

https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2004/DianeEnnefils.shtml

https://www.computerhope.com/history/1992.htm

The average WordPerfect user wasn't a layperson, really. WordPerfect proficiency was listed on resumes, and looked for, as a serious differentiator (unlike today, where "Word proficiency" is a meaningless non-differentiator on resumes.) People took courses in WordPerfect to get that proficiency in order to get hired into secretarial roles. There were training courses given to employees who were users of previous technologies, to bring them up to date, rather than assuming they would just catch on. It was a whole "thing." (Even moreso for its companion Lotus 1-2-3: accountants did not just suddenly understand how to use an electronic spreadsheet.)

Just because it was a Commercial-Off-The-Shelf software package with a home-user license that any individual could buy, doesn't really mean that they were targeting the "layperson" market in the way that e.g. Windows Home Editions ever were. They were targeting professionals who had home computers, who had already learned the software due to previous corporate-sponsored training. Big difference.

The equivalent today would be the sort of software used by Hollywood screenwriters to format their scripts. Even if you buy a single-seat license of it, that's not because you're a layperson/hobbyist; that's because you're a freelance professional who works from your home-office.

In the 80s, sure, when everything was more complicated and only techies actually had computers. The "layperson" of the 80s is the poweruser of today. Nowadays, but nobody is going to willingly spend the time to do it when far easier alternatives exist.

Nobody is going to go from Reddit to usenet/IRC. That's a massive UX downgrade and the modern layperson isn't going to deal with that when the next Tiktok or other social media craze is a tap away.

Based on my experience, people who were in university level classes and people in high school. Back then, one could download mIRC and connect to IRC or use any mail/news client like Outlook Express or Netscape Mail & News to connect to usenet and check their email.

I think some of it is just you, and you're right to an extent. Normal users will tolerate a lot of annoyances, including hostile approaches, unfortunately. Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Imgur, LinkedIn have all repeatedly demonstrated that versus their very large user bases. These are not shrinking networks. Instagram's new cut-off on non-logged in viewing is hostile, it won't dent them at all though. These networks know their users will largely tolerate it, because what they're using doesn't cost them actual dollars.

I think the most interesting story in social networks is the collapse of core Facebook as the prime mover. I think there is still a lot of room for more Pinterests and Snapchats yet, which could further diversify the space and dilute core Facebook's mind share. The young people not caring about Facebook thing, has clearly graduated to a permanent setting, it's not going back (the next group are not going to suddenly care about FB). TikTok has demonstrated some of what is possible most recently.

>It also feels like social media platforms are starting to die faster than they can be replaced.

Very well can be. Social media in their current form belong to corporations rather than users. Therefore sooner or later they start making decisions that are hostile to users. To make an analogy, these online societies are not stable because they resemble a monarchy, where a corporation (the monarch) must use its own judgement on how to govern its online society. Which proven to be a rather unsustainable governance model.

Until online societies switch to self-government similar to modern democracies (elected government, elected judges, payment collection, public expense reporting, etc.) they will likely continue to be unsustainable and rather short-term.

If you have thick skin, anonymous imageboards have been here forever, altough the quality of discussion varies.

The board that shall not be named was very interesting back in the day. There was always garbage, but even a simple battle toads thread could be a lot of fun to follow.

I never knew if the interesting people found a new home, or disbanded, but I sure miss when fun stuff happened there.

lainchan used to be a decent way to avoid the big chans once they got vile, but still find decent people outside of meatspace. A well curated set of subreddits used to be find, but I'm feeling less and less motivated to continue on with keeping it organized. Private discord servers have taken over as the default hangout space for most of my friend groups with telegram and small forums starting to take root now as well.

That's kind of what I figured was happening, but I guess I'm getting too old to keep up with where the action is at on discord. I get why keeping it private has become so popular, but I struggle to find the flavor there. Reddit seems to have successfully killed everything that was fun.

People want to share and be social. It's inherent to our nature. People are now realizing they don't want a down to the bit extremely searchable archive of what they've shared. They see it ruining lives and they do not want to be a part of it. Talk to any kid. Facebook is "old", "creepy", "dead", but they will use tiktok/snap because it's fun and seemingly ephemeral.

Is Reddit social media? Are usenet newsgroups and IRC channels social media?

The differences that I see between Reddit and, for example, traditional forums are:

- The ability to use one login and interface across multiple boards/subject areas.

- The ease of communicating between different boards either via links, cross posts, or some form of aggregation.

- Features that over time allow a post to become one that can be recognized as well regarded by the community. These could include good support for listing important posts in the subreddit information, the ability to tag posts, and the ability to archive posts.

- The natural support for media and links. Although to be fair, the media support is actually provided by sites that grew up around Reddit like Imgur.

Reddit may not be social in the sense that, as another poster points out, it is built around following topics rather than users. However, the degree to which it allows different topics and communities to interconnect allows relationships to form that function as a society. For example, a post on the Male Fashion Advice subreddit on how to be more presentable might link to a series of posts on the Male Hair Advice subreddit that have become well regarded in the community.

By way of comparison, on conventional forums there is often little interaction even between sub-forums in the same forum let alone between different forums. Support for media also tends to be more limited.

Yes.

And HN is social media too.

I think there's a distinction between systems where users follow people and systems where they follow topics, I think of the former as social media, not the latter.

Twitter, Instagram - social media. Reddit, Stack Overflow, HN - Not social media.

StackOverflow? LinkedIn? Is any website with user accounts "social media"?

Here is a definition from dictionary.com

"websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking."

So having a user account doesn't make it social media.

Stackoverflow seems like a "no" but you can definitely promote yourself and there is a "community" there.

LinkedIn is virtually all about social networking, so yes.

And Wikipedia? And email? AOL? Compuserve? Citadel BBS? Finger?

dictionary.com defines social media as "websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking."

So the common use case of wikipedia, reading about things, is not. But digging deeper into the editors\editing section there is definitely social media happening both in forming networks and creating content for others

I don't think email qualifies. While you can share content and network with it, it seems to be more of a delivery mechanism than a destination that users would seek out.

"AOL" is too ambiguous.

I always though of Compuserve as a service provider but maybe they did have some social media features

BBS might be the original social media

Finger is interesting as you could create a "profile". myspace and other social media seem to be a combination of finger and bbs packaged into an endpoint

I've always thought the key characteristics of social media is sharing to a social network. When I post here or on Reddit I have no idea who it's going to.

Facebook and Twitter are social networks because I share stuff and there's a definite social graph that I'm part of.

In the past, a social platform was replaced by another one that did basically the same thing but better, in the eyes of users. Today, we're seeing real issues with social media, but there's no viable platform which fixes the problems with these platforms we want to leave.

I think the demand is still there. There's a power vacuum just waiting for someone to fill it. But the replacement can't just be "like Facebook but run by people slightly less creepy". You've got to fix some other root issues.

Even my mother realizes how lame Facebook is now. It's what her generation is familiar with, so it'll take an act of Congress to get them off of it.

Facebook was always lame, it was a utilitarian communication tool. It's like calling hammers or wall calendars or trash bags lame.

It's similar to the argument you here when people say "they youth arent into facebook anymore, now they use xxxx." That's nice and all, but as long as they get facebook when they graduate high school or go to college, facebook wins. It doesnt need to be hip and cool if its the network gluing everyone together. Did the white pages or yellow pages need to be cool to be useful?

I was on Facebook back when you had to have a college email to be on it. It was were you could go to find out the name of that cute girl in class. It was also when social media was still a new concept. MySpace was a much bigger deal at the time, but Facebook was the first place where I could meet people my age nearby, organize a party, find out what was happening around campus.

I have not doubt Facebook will continue to win for a long time. But I think kids retreated from social media to avoid their parents. Everything is owned by a handful of companies now, so it doesn't really matter where they go I guess.

Facebook wasnt cool. The people on facebook were cool. I believe facebook took off for two reasons. One is the one you mentioned, that it was exclusive. Two was that it was the anti-livejournal/myspace. No css, no glitter, no strobing, no sound, no hard to read colors, no moving elements around the page. IT standardized where and what functions looked like, and acted more like creation software (photoshop) than the output of the document layout tools. Facebook was utilitarian in that you couldnt customize its look, you couldnt express yourself. It took itself as a white pages, not a portfolio.

One of the best features of that era was the network pages - your college email gave you access to an area solely for your college, where events could be organized, had a posting board, I think its own gallery, etc. When it went public-access this was among the first things to go, replaced with the more generic groups.

The hostility of existing large sites towards pseudonymity is also interesting in conjunction with the general insistence that sides really shouldn't implement their own account system, and with the ever-increasing legal overhead required to spin up a new site.