[pcarolan]

I’ve noticed my kid (12) primarily uses group chats over social apps. Some of his chats have several dozen kids in them. It could be social media got so bad that the protocols became the best alternative. An old programmer like me sees a glimmer of hope in a sea of noise.

[hylaride]

It's been that way for awhile, though they do use instagram and/or tiktok for consumption.

iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with android get cut out of chats. There's nothing worse for teens that exclusion.

The kids have been taught the dangers of sharing things on the internet, so the risk is minimized sharing in private chats (though obviously still there).

[FireBeyond]

> iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with android get cut out of chats. There's nothing worse for teens that exclusion.

Craig Federighi fought against supporting iMessage on Android and RCS for a long time saying, quote, "It would remove obstacles towards iPhone families being able to give their kids Android phones."

[handfuloflight]

> iMessage is (was?) a very sticky product for Apple as kids with android get cut out of chats. There's nothing worse for teens that exclusion.

Are kids really that simplistically divided?

[serial_dev]

Whenever I hear this iMessage thing I’m surprised. Is that a US / Canada thing?

Here in Europe, everybody uses WhatsApp and/or similar products for chat and they are all multi platform.

[kjkjadksj]

It literally works seamlessly though? Just converts to MMS and you don't notice outside the "liked BLABLABLA" sort of messages that trickle in without the imessage emoji system.

[bognition]

Group chat has always been the killer social app. 6 years ago I convinced my browser friends group to adopt Telegram and since then we’ve all abandoned FB, Instagram, etc… We have a ton of different threads all with different topics: kids, food, gardening, exercise, pets, memes, and a bunch of serious topic threads as well.

It’s been incredibly effective at keeping us connected and engaged as we’ve all moved across the country and grow in an apart physically.

The take away is; what people want from social media is to be connected with their real friends. However that isn’t as engaging as a random feed, so the companies push people away from that.

[wintermutestwin]

I guess group chat would be fine if all your friends are friends of each other. High School and college ages maybe, but as an older adult, I have so many different groups of people that I interact with that it would be obnoxious to deal with. I also find that there are certain people in group chats who are lonely and spam crap.

[foobarian]

I'm in a similar group but using Discord. It seems that lack of advertising or any kind of algo feed is the common feature. Who runs your Telegram server?

[pookha]

I hate group chats (hate). It's a cliquey childish high-school cafeteria mode of communicating (thus why highschoolers use group chats). It's a clear step backwards and is representative of the covid-era stazi-like mentality people developed where they felt it was unsanity to share their views or life with the world at large (and maybe, given what we've learned about social media and nation-states, that's not without merit -- i.e the UK). Perfect world social media is a means of forming connections and expanding your little room(s).

[jjani]

I never understood why they became less popular when mobile phones took over. Even in the 00s so many people were already in group chats through MSN, ICQ and so on.

All Microsoft had to do was make the former into a proper mobile app. Instead they wasted billions on Skype to replace their golden opportunity.

[ksec]

>?All Microsoft had to do was make the former into a proper mobile app.

I begged Microsoft to make MSN on Windows Mobile and later on Android or iPhone.

They just dont get it nor do they care. Whatsapp wasn't even a thing on Smartphone. Its dominance came a little later.

And without a smartphone or mobile network, people keep in contact especially those not in close group via Social Media aka MySpace and Facebook or Friendster.

Now smartphone ubiquitous in most places. The contact list has taken over. Social Media became a news feed.

[sanderjd]

This is actually one of the great entrepreneurship lessons of my career, which I think about a lot.

Around 2009, as smart phones were on their exponential leg up, and when I was still pretty new in the workplace, I remember thinking (and talking with my coworkers) about how messaging and chat rooms were really well suited to the technology landscape. But I lamented "too bad the space is already too crowded with options for anyone to use anything new.

But all of today's major messaging successes became household names after that! What I learned from this is that I have a tendency to think that trends are played out already, when actually I'm early in the adoption curve.

[kalleboo]

I think those networks never figured out how to make money off of it. Without the tracking (and piles of VC cash) that modern social media got, the ads were not worth enough. Microsoft and AOL just saw them as cost centers so when the mobile ecosystem didn’t support their legacy persistent-connection-style protocols they saw no value in investing in rewriting everything.

[makeitdouble]

Wasn't Skype a proper mobile app decently early ?

The core issue was of course being a second class citizen on iOS, using a Skype phone number purely on mobile was real PITA for instance.

Personally I put a lot more blame on Google for everything they did on the messaging front.

[hnuser123456]

Feels like it went myspace -> facebook -> snapchat and never went back to such "public profile" ideals and stayed in chat apps. When I was in college in the early '10's, it seemed like everyone was obsessed with the "temporary chat" idea and actually believed that you could guarantee a message or picture could be temporary.

[burkaman]

Did they become less popular? I think they are just less visible by nature, they've always been pretty common. I guess some people switched to Facebook Groups for a time, but even that is sort of a form of group chat.

[foobarian]

They never worked properly on phones, including images/video and history. Same for SMS chats on top of being hideously expensive because the phone companies thought it was still the 1960s.

[wijwp]

Data? SMS limits?

Am I misremembering the timeline of real access to SMS and data? I feel like most of the 00s most people had limited of both without spending a lot of money.

[morkalork]

Group chats are: free, have no ads, and sharing is with exactly who you intend. When I want to send a photo to direct family and in-laws I don't blast it on social media, I send it to the group chat that has direct family and in-laws in it. That's it, easy-peasy. Even my 70-something mother in-law participates in it.

[gwd]

...but you have to share it specifically with each separate group. When I take a cute photo of my son doing something, I have to share it with the family group for my side, and that of my wife; and none of my friends or random extended family get to see it. If my wife's fam shares a photo of my son that I think my fam wants to see, I have to manually port it over. Back in Facebook's heyday, I could just share it; or if my wife's fam tagged me in the photo, my family & friends would see it as well.

And, of course, in group chat, your different friend groups never interact. One of the coolest thing about Facebook in its heyday was when two of your friends who didn't know each other had a cool conversation on your wall and then became friends themselves.

Unfortunately there really doesn't seem to be a proper replacement -- BlueSky and Mastodon are replacements for Twitter, not Facebook. Group chats aren't as good, but they're the closest thing going.

[misswaterfairy]

Really makes you wonder if/when Discord goes IPO, that Meta would buy a controlling stake in it?

Fortunately there are open source alternatives even if they aren't as popular as Discord at the moment, such as Revolt Chat: https://revolt.chat/

I miss the days of self-hosted forums; sadly it seems that algorithms, and the need to satisfy the need for 'instant' connection/information are ruining forums for young newcomers...

[mcflubbins]

Revolt looks neat thanks for sharing.

[WhyNotHugo]

It’s the same for me (in my thirties). A decade ago, Instagram showed me photos that my friends shared. Today it’s ads, memes and other crap with a small proportion of photos of friends. The noise:signal ratio is so high that I don’t even bother.

Facebook was the same a long time ago.

Social media in the form it had 10-15 years ago has died. But I don’t think it’s an inevitable path: I think Meta has iterated in their services in a way that killed what was previously there.

[nottorp]

Even facebook basically started as a group chat.

Back when we all had pet dinosaurs in our back yards and you only saw what your friends post.

This is a useful function as opposed to what the engagement algorithms push these days. So no wonder everyone moves to other options for group communication.

You mean you don't have a "where do we go out this saturday" chat group with your friends circle?

[junto]

I see similar too. Both my teenagers got WhatsApp because we as parents had WhatsApp. They have slowly started using Signal in their friends groups. Now as a family we use Signal because the kids started us on it. We are based in Europe and iMessage is almost never used. I’m only on WhatsApp now because other parents are still using it. Sadly my oldest uses Instagram (on a strict daily timer), but apparently “it’s still cool to have an insta” and the killer feature there is that is super easy to network without sharing your phone number (I know signal also has this feature but it’s a bit hidden).

[pier25]

The kids are alright. They are going back to IRC.

[the_clarence]

I think you're right, but also groupchats allow you to create cliques which facebook never really offered as a feature. What they did offer was broadcasting lists which is not the same as a clique. Groups didn't really integrate cliques well IMO as they were more "public oriented" but they are probably the closest thing.

[selfhoster]

I would totally welcome IRC back and USENET.

[immibis]

They're both still alive.

IRC: irc.libera.chat, irc.efnet.org, something rizon something; there's technically ircnet but don't bother

Usenet: eternal-september.org - you might find others after a while but there are no other major free text servers. If you pay another company for binary access (these are mostly used for piracy) you can also use it for text though.

[Aeolun]

I have chats for the parents in the class, parents from kindergarden, all the dads, my family, extended family. The list doesn’t end. It’s far, far better than Facebook though.

[DoneWithAllThat]

I go to sci fi cons and telegram has become the de facto method of coordination for everything. Party, meal, event we all want to attend, any kind of meetup we create a channel for it to be used ephemerally and invite everyone who’s going. It’s a million times better than any event invite functionality of social networks, absolutely frictionless and without all the frankly stupid stuff social networks add.

[MarceliusK]

Kids shifting to group chats feels like a quiet rebellion against the algorithm-driven chaos of traditional social media

[Gormo]

My "social media" in the '90s consisted largely of hanging out in IRC channels. Everything old is new again!

[arrosenberg]

It's kind of obvious, right? Most of us grew up on AOL Instant Messenger (or, heaven forbid, MSN Messenger).

[dan_quixote]

I've seen the exact same and immediately my mind thinks of IRC :)

[comboy]

I bet kids these days don't even know how to do a hostile channel takeover with a bunch of eggdrops.

[trbleclef]

*** Ja mata!

[dev_l1x_be]

Say hello to iRC