/tech/ - Technology

what would be the ideal social network site???

Imageboards (ex: 4chan, *chan “alt chans”):

Pros:
• Anonymous
• No registration
• OP requiring attachment forces content/memes to be produced
• Pruning catalog keeps server space needed to minimum
• Lack of upvote system reduces groupthink and disincentivizes non-originality
• Anonymity + siloing by board centered board identity over personality
• Linear reply structure that requires minimal interaction to read
• Effortposts that do happen are often phenomenal quality
Cons:
• Attracts schizos, racists and “free speech” people who have been banned from other SM for good reason
• Dated UX/UI (mid 2000s approx.) loved by users but retro looking and unappealing to “normies”.
• Dumb curation based on last bump time, incentivizing bait posting (probably this problem shared with other SM)
• Effortposts rare and disincentivized

Notes: Imageboards are in theory fantastic as the fact that they have a limit (usually around 350 threads per board) reduces hosting costs, and also incentivizes people to make interesting posts, because posts that do not garner replies will quickly sink and “fall off” aka get pruned from the catalog. This is also likely what gives chans their edgy character as a “provocative” or edgy post will be more likely to garner the replies needed to keep the thread near the top of the catalog. This can be a problem for quality as a well thought out long form “blog” style post may garner less responses and be far more effort than a 1-2 line “bait” post with an intentionally bad or controversial opinion. In this sense “trolling” and “baiting” are nearly built into the incentive structure of imageboards by definition. Some imageboards try to combat this by imposing a minimum character count for new threads (ex: 200 characters) but this seems like a bit of a hack and is contrary to the overall logic of the medium. Many of the “cons” of imageboards are pros in the eyes of long time users, such as its dated, non mobile friendly UI, and edginess, are seen as needed to preserve the status of imageboard users as outsiders. This creates a unique and culturally prolific space but at the same time dooms imageboards’ mainstream appeal.

Facebook:
Pros:
• Algorithmic timeline microtargets content to users, increasing engagement.
• Social connections keep people tied to platform.
• Makes a ton of money
Cons:
• Reveals personal information about name, job, location, gender, personal relationships status, friends, family etc.
• Incredibly personality centric

Facebook’s business model is pretty simple. Get people to sign up with their personal information and connect with friends (and maybe someone attractive you briefly met at a house party). Then take that detailed personal information and use it to microtarget advertisements at exactly the right demographic for advertisers and political campaigns. Mark Zuckerberg does not believe in privacy. Before facebook, people mainly used screennames and aliases online. It was facebook that changed this, so that people used their real names and faces online. Which is what he considers one of his big accomplishments. Needless to say, I hated this development and I’ve hated the culture it created ever since. Zuckerberg says he made the world more “open and connected”. Another way of saying that is more surveilled and more bothered by busybodies. Anonymity is freedom. There’s a reason every year young people leave small towns across this land to move to big cities, because living in a place where everyone is in your business all the time and a bunch of gossiping people is a prison-lite environment. In a small town, even if you change, evolve, and become a totally different person, people will still remember and think about the things you did as a teenager or when you were twelve. I hate facebook because he’s turned the whole world into one big small town, from which there is no escape. People say the internet is making the world a smaller place, but has anyone ever stopped to ask if its getting too small? But yes, it does make a lot of money. And all they had to do was ruin the internet and possibly break politics to do it. Probably the only thing facebook does well is the algorithmic timeline which increases engagement.

Twitter:
Pros:
• Mobile friendly design
• Decent discoverability
• Hashtags
• Decent editor UI for posting
• Diverse OP content (images, animated gifs, videos)
• Pseudo-anonymity, except for blue checkmarks
Cons:
• Personality centric
• Meme ideologies
• Character limit incentivizes un nuanced “hot takes”
• Forced mobile style UI on desktop (“mobile first”)
• Nonlinear reply structure confusing, forced clickthrough
• Quote Replies
• Notifications mechanic incentivizes performative takes for subs/likes

Notes: Marginally better than twitter but still bad. Character limit makes sense from a mobile first perspective, after all who’s trying to read a 20,000 word thesis on a smartphone screen, however has the side effect of making people reduce their takes to the shortest, most un nuanced, un supported version of itself, which in effect reduces takes to “X bad, Y good” or sarcastic or cryptic one liners. Trump was a master of twitter due to his brain being small enough that his thoughts only require 240 characters anyway. Workaround is creating a twitter thread which is less readable than unbroken text and looks bad anyway, plus people have been trained by the platform to only read short takes and will tune out essay length twitter threads anyway due to twitter induced ADD. Non linear tree style reply structure is confusing and requires too much clicking to read through. The positive thing is the infinite scroll provides a constant stream of content, if the person limits their interaction to scrolling and liking only (not replying or reading replies). Editor for posts is far superior to any non facebook platform. Quote retweet allow “dunking” and incentivize leaching off original content, “reply guys” who quote tweet someone else and add their own vapid or sarcastic commentary. Read somewhere that the twitter engineer that invented the quote retweet regrets it (as he should). Even regular retweeting is pretty lazy. If the only purpose of retweeting is outsourcing discoverability to the user, a better mechanism is needed. While imageboards incentivize creating content that gets a lot of replies, twitter incentivizes getting lots of likes, in fact a high reply to like ratio is considered a bad thing “getting ratio’d” as a reply with no like is a proxy for dislike. So while imageboards do not distinguish between positive and negative interaction, twitter and all other like based systems implicitly encourage “performative” content creation/takes a.k.a users saying the things that they think other people will like, to therefore increase their own visibility, celebrity, etc. Rather than saying their honest opinion, if indeed they have any. Exporting Los Angeles style “trying to become famous” culture to the rest of the world. This is a cancerous dynamic. Should avoid like/dislike systems at all costs, esp. as complex feelings are reduced to a binary attribute (like/dislike). Possible side effect = polarization?.

Reddit:
Pros:
• Pseudo-anonymity
• Communities based on interest not personality
• Generally medium to medium-high quality content
Cons:
• Post History visible reduces anonymity
• Branching reply structure
• Terrible UI
• OP too short (as a “link aggregator” its often just a link to a news article)
• Likes/Dislikes, Karma, Gold, Silver, and the rest of that bullshit

Notes: Reddit is a website with a decent concept but a bad UI and worse userbase. Yes, as a channer the typical image of a “redditor” comes to mind. A limp dick neckbeard soyboy with a rick and morty t-shirt. Reddit is the Thomas Edison of websites, its users steal all their content from people that actually make original content, repost it, and then act like they invented the whole thing. A perfect encapsulation of middle class bland yuppie suburban consumer culture, a circlejerk which produces nothing original and never will. Part of the broader disneyfication and pg-13ification of a sterile and desexed pop culture, with a good dose of smarmy smarter than thou smugness and milquetoast center-left politics thrown on top. Peak midwit. Certain subreddits are niche and good. Reddit evolved to replace a lot of the old school bulletin board forums for niche gaming/auto/etc interests. At least its based on shared interests and not personality based drama. Like/Dislike and karma system encourages the same hivemind and performative posting BS as with twitter. At worst as a “link aggregator” it simply acts as a comment system for articles on websites that don’t have their own comment section. Not much to be borrowed here mechanically, except maybe allowing users to make a http link as their op as an alternative to videos/images.

Blogs:
Pros:
• Pseudonymous option
• Potentially very high quality content
• High word count
Cons:
• Low discoverability
• Bad on mobile

Notes: Blogs and blog-like sites like Tumblr are actually surprisingly good. Unlike the transient nature of twitter posts, people tend to put effort into blogposts and even include sources from time to time. The only problem is that blogs tend to be separate websites and even when on the same domain (ex: wordpress.com) they tend to lack discoverability. Tumblr at its peak in the early 2010s seemed like a transitional website, a sort of nu-myspace. The downside of high character count is that blogs, regardless of “responsive” design, tend to read badly on phones and don’t lend themselves well to casual use.

Tiktok:
Pros:
• Extremely potent mandatory recommender system driven content
• Short video clips lend well to casual use
• Video format more accessible to dimwits and tired people than walls of text
Cons:
• Often cancer tier ultranormie content, on par with instagram
• Primarily consumed by children and teens

Notes: Tiktok’s content may be cancer but it’s format is genius. The most addicting app of the modern era. Instead of allowing people to search for content but adding recommender systems like youtube, tiktok leans in and puts it on steroids by making the recommender system the main way to access content. This is like increasing the nicotine content 3x.

Youtube
Pros:
• Audiovisual and audio content easier to digest
• AV/A content easier to listen to while moving (i.e. commuting or walking)
• Works for both long and short content
• Recommender Algorithm very good
Cons
• Video storage takes a ton of space on disk.
• Streaming content in a timely manner tricky, practically mandates CDN use
• Responses text-only

Notes: The second most popular social media network. Takes way too much storage for video. On the plus side the recommendation engine is scarily good and addictive. AV content can be consumed with walking, driving, etc. while reading text for that is pretty difficult. Object storage and delivery (files, videos, images) is a usually overlooked aspect of these sites. Responses being text only is listed as a con, but it can be a pro in the sense that it saves storage space and it encourages being OP-centric in an r9k-ish way.

Runner ups:

Linkedin – facebook for jobseekers, professionals, and hustle culture psychopaths.
Snapchat – fancy texts that delete themselves.
Pinterest – Not familiar enough to comment but looks like a glorified booru for middle aged women
Telegram/Signal/Whatsapp/etc. - Texting that’s ““secure””.
Medium – Blogging for people who are too lazy to set up their own blog. Often mistaken for legitimate “news”.