[haburka]

I think that social media has been a massive experiment where we asked, what if we let capital interests subvert our desire for community to get us to watch ads? And we have learned that it’s just not a good idea. I think perhaps Digg was one of the better ones but I solemnly wish social media was mostly illegal, especially advertising based, for profit sites.

I think hacker news manages to be ok since it doesn’t rely on advertising which makes it much more palatable.

[phailhaus]

This doesn't make sense, since it's advertisers who are the ones putting pressure on sites like Twitter to stop spreading extremist content.

The problem is that humans are extremely willing to enter echo chambers where they are told they are right all the time. That's what they will do by default. So if you optimize for engagement, they will radicalize themselves very quickly. If you figure out how to power a social network without ads, you will get something a hundred times worse than Facebook, because there will be no pressure to moderate content at all.

[ecocentrik]

Wrong take. The social or political positions that advertisers take are all strategically calculated to maximize sales and they take those position regardless of the advertising platform.

Correct take: Monetization pressure creates engagement pressure which is unnatural for human social communities outside of temporary fads and social upheaval events. In social terms Facebook, X, Truth Social... are thirsty and can only continue to grow if they convince you to be thirsty too.

[bognition]

People forget that there a billionaires at the helm of these companies putting their feet on the scale of what is shown.

They are not impartial nor are the benevolent. They have a vested interest in influencing the content people are exposed to. They can hide behind the “social” components and say “we’re innocent here we just show the content people engage with” meanwhile they directly influence what content gets a chance to be interacted with.

[amy_petrik]

problem is that humans are extremely willing to enter echo chambers

and the walls of the echo chambers are built of addicting infinite feed algorithms, that's the core of it, outrage exchanging outrage amongst people who agree on one thing - THIS OUTRAGES ME

[tempfile]

Case in point, 4chan

[xp84]

> if you optimize for engagement, they will radicalize themselves very quickly.

Agree completely

> without ads, you will get something a hundred times worse than Facebook, because there will be no pressure to moderate content at all.

Disagree: without ads, moving the needle from “quite enjoyable” to “utterly addicting” doesn’t make your site twice as profitable. With ads it does. So the need that all social media has today, to promote ragebait and drive them to obsession is far, far less if you weren’t on an ad-based monetization.

> pressure to moderate content

We didn’t have censors in every living room in America before FB making sure you don’t say anything doubleplus ungood and yet political discourse is horrifying now compared to before. I question the need for “moderators” to combat wrongthink by deleting it.

[netcan]

Im not sure that advertising specifically is the issue.

I think a lot of the ills of social media are ills of the medium itself... once it reaches "everyone scale," game theory maturity and whatnot.

Anyway the way past it is probably to go past it... and onto the next medium. Back is rarely an available option.

On that note... its curious that Digg now describes itself as a "community platform," not a social network. Ironic, considering they bought the name "digg."

Speaks to the "late stage social media" meme.

[bee_rider]

Hackernews remains mostly ok by focusing on a niche that’s always been easy on the Internet for obvious reasons: tech. Once it strays even one step away, like the intersection of tech and policy, or the intersections of science and humanities, guaranteed you will get some totally ridiculous takes.

And, HN can only not-rely on advertising because it exists as a sort of funny pseudo-advertisement thing for some startup incubator.

[sapphicsnail]

I think the lack of notifications is also a big factor. It's harder to get addicted and harder to start fights.

[ryandvm]

Hackernews mostly survives because it's the Y Combinator sponsored boardwalk over the incessantly sucking carp of tech bro daydreamers hoping for success by osmosis.

[gct]

Let's just start shifting the overton window: let's make all paid advertisement illegal y'all.

[Nextgrid]

Hard to get the political momentum to do that now that we've surrendered humanity's social fabric to the advertisement industry.

[giancarlostoro]

I've thought about how I'd build one and I keep landing on content based ads, give me ads that target page content. You are already interested in the content you see, so why not. Generic "show everyone you can" ads should also be fine, and slightly discounted. But I do wonder if it would even be enough to keep the lights on.

[coldpie]

The trouble is that ad-based business models incentivize maximizing engagement, because more engagement gives you more places to put ads. It turns out maximizing engagement is the primary driver of all of the bad things about social media, and honestly the modern internet as a whole. Regardless of how the ads are chosen, ad-based models will always end up at the same place: pushing extremist content in order to maximize engagement.

[nemomarx]

you'd think Reddit could handle this, since subreddits are very narrow and coupled to interests. but I guess you'd also think a PC review site would be able to do the same thing and not show car ads or etc

[jtbayly]

HN has advertising too. I don’t claim it’s the same, but let’s be accurate.

[rchaud]

Not remotely the same thing. HN's ads are text-only job postings for companies in YC's portfolio. "Online ads" on the other hand are an unregulated wasteland of scams, dropship brands, misinformation, titillation, and culture war ragebait.

[southwindcg]

True, but how many sites allow users to down-vote or flag the advertisements? A lot of the blatant ad posts wind up flag-killed and only people who have "show dead" enabled ever see them.

[_DeadFred_]

Hacker news is not an app for cheap entertainment. Social media is. Hacker news is predominantly used by professionals, entrepreneurs, and/or tech interested/adjacent people. Social media isn't. Internet access and historical self selecting of people who sought out online spaces for interaction/community (it was not the norm, nor as acceptable, in fact often considered weird) acted as a gatekeeper that previously skewed early social media to have a different user base than today.

[babypuncher]

I think algorithmically curated social media feeds should be regulated the way we do tobacco. Massive education campaigns and obnoxious labeling laws so that everyone and their dog knows it's toxic. Maybe take away their safe harbor while we're at it. The algorithm is a form of editorial control after all, so it can no longer be argued that these sites simply function as a "public square".

[IgorPartola]

Digg was more of a news aggregator than “social media” which I see as user generated posts + profile interactions. As far as I remember Digg didn’t have followers or any major original content or influencers.

I do think you are right about the rest as it applies to Twitter and Facebook.

[Shog9]

Digg rather famously did have both followers and "influencers", though not in quite the same sense that those creatures are known today. Arguably its failure to limit the impact of both are what led to the forms we see today.

There's been an awful lot written about all of this over the years, much of it overly simplistic and some of it just straight-up wrong; we all want to believe that we're just plain smarter than the ancients, even when those ancients were us.

If you're interested in (ahem) digging into this, start by searching for things like "Digg voting network".

[bee_rider]

Social Media and News aggregation are not entirely different things, right? I mean, in the sense that News (and other link) Aggregation was one of the things that grew into Social Media. I think you are right to say it is more of an aggregation site, but also it’s worth nothing that in Digg’s heyday, Social Media was barely a thing.

Social networking was a thing. Social networking, link aggregation, discussion boards—it’s like pouring milk, hot sauce, and vodka into a vat to get Social Media.

[andrewinardeer]

MrBabyMan was a pre-influencer influencer.

I'm convinced he was paid to post stories to drive traffic to sites.

Of course I don't have evidence to support this. It was over 20 years ago.

[linker3000]

> As far as I remember Digg didn’t have followers or any major original content or influencers.

Yep, some personalities on Digg had their groupies and if they posted something, all their followers would vote it up the listing, in effect the post was influenced.

That's when I bailed because genuinely interesting stuff not posted by the 'right' people had no chance of exposure.

[AlecSchueler]

> I think hacker news manages to be ok since it doesn’t rely on advertising which makes it much more palatable.

It's also worth considering that you could just be part of the right demographic that finds it palatable. I know in certain circles the HN groupthink on women's issues for example are seen as a meme.