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A comment on Tinybox of tinygrad by George Hotz is finally entering production. Parent comment

Re:Tinybox of tinygrad by George Hotz is finally entering pr... by ajb on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @06:49AM (#41366131)
Social media sites are the collective equivalent of a "dollar auction"[1]

In the dollar auction, each immediate choice isrational, but the overall process inevitably results in you losing value once you've decided to participate. But at each step, you lose more by quitting than by keeping going.

Social media is the same, except that it's collective: if you want to keep in touch with certain people, you don't have a choice other than to use the social media site they are using, so leaving is a collective action problem.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction

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Re:Tinybox of tinygrad by George Hotz is finally entering pr... by robin_reala on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @06:58AM (#41366176)
> you don't have a choice other than to use the social media site they are using

Hence federated social media. No one’s pretending the current implementations are perfect, but they’re far more interesting than the existing closed platforms.

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Re:Tinybox of tinygrad by George Hotz is finally entering pr... by ajb on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @02:45PM (#41371244)
They are, but I'm not sure what will cause a critical mass to switch. Short of the EU mandating that the existing platforms federate, which could be problematic.
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Re:Tinybox of tinygrad by George Hotz is finally entering pr... by paretoer on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @07:35AM (#41366428)
As someone who doesn't use social media this analogy strikes me as a rationalization for something you know is bad for you and a waste of your time but you can't stop so you make up this fiction about how you would lose more by stopping.

An alcoholic who can't stop going to the bar because they will lose their drinking buddies is not a dollar auction.

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Re:Tinybox of tinygrad by George Hotz is finally entering pr... by biorach on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @07:50AM (#41366528)
It's not a rationalisation, and you're missing the point.
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Re:Tinybox of tinygrad by George Hotz is finally entering pr... by monkpit on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @08:51AM (#41366987)
Your comment has the exact same message if you remove the virtue signaling “As someone who doesn't use social media”.
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Re:Tinybox of tinygrad by George Hotz is finally entering pr... by paretoer on Tuesday August 27, 2024 @07:34AM (#41366423)
As someone who doesn't use social media this analogy strikes me as a rationalization for something you know is bad for you and a waste of your time but you can't stop so you make up this fiction about a dollar auction.
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