All about social networks
shit you should read if you are building or care about how social networks are evolving
sari and
All about social networks
A more sensible way to think about where conversations need to be broken up, that’s not topic, is format. In a physical space, the analogy might be—if half of my guests are drinking wine from expensive stemware and half of my guests are playing Twister, I might send the Twister players into another room so they don’t elbow-knock a glass of Chablis.... See more
noeleflowers • Three (Platform Agnostic!) Best Practices in Online Community Architecture
That might be an inevitable consequence of “enshittification”, but the solution isn’t to avoid all algorithms, but just to avoid algorithms you can’t control.
Algorithmic ranking is unfairly maligned
with tiktok temporarily closed, maybe it’s time to rethink how we use the internet. imagine if instagram shut down at 9 pm, like a grocery store, or X closed at 11 pm (open late, but not 24/7).
we might all feel a little less pressure—to read, to post, to exist online all the time. maybe we’d sleep better, feel calmer, even be happier. a digital ... See more
We can immediately rule out reproducing the current system in which a tiny number of companies govern permissible speech and what safety means for billions of people. We don't want social media that's like Twitter except without a demented owner. You cannot fix social media by having a non-profit run it or by guiding it with some ethical principles... See more
Decent Imaginaries
In preparing for change, many of us talk about decentralisation (or "decent" for short) but that's an abstract word that fails to evoke just how thoroughly political a project it is. There is no technical solution that can produce decentralisation on its own; decentralisation cannot be technosolutionist and succeed at the same time. The "decent" pr... See more
Decent Imaginaries
Neely Center Design Code for Social Media
docs.google.comRavi
Social Media Algorithms Can Shape Affective Polarization via ...
arxiv.orgThere is widespread concern about the negative impacts of social media feed ranking algorithms on political polarization. Leveraging advancements in large language models (LLMs), we develop an approach to re-rank feeds in real-time to test the effects of content that is likely to polarize: expressions of antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity (AAPA). In a preregistered 10-day field exper- iment on X/Twitter with 1,256 consented participants, we increase or decrease participants’ exposure to AAPA in their algorithmically curated feeds. We observe more positive outparty feelings when AAPA exposure is decreased and more neg- ative outparty feelings when AAPA exposure is increased. Exposure to AAPA content also results in an immediate increase in negative emotions, such as sadness and anger. The interventions do not significantly impact traditional engagement metrics such as re-post and favorite rates. These findings highlight a potential pathway for developing feed algorithms that mitigate affective polarization by addressing content that undermines the shared values required for a healthy democracy
While Meta’s paid messaging tools brought in about $1 billion last year — peanuts compared to the whopping $132 billion the company earned from ads — paid messaging revenue is growing far faster than ad revenue and has more than doubled since early 2023.
Issie Lapowsky • How WhatsApp ate the world
WhatsApp initially achieved that global dominance in large part by doing just one thing very well: enabling cheap, private, and reliable messaging on almost any phone, almost anywhere in the world. But in the decade since Meta acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $22 billion in 2014, the app has been transformed from a narrowly focused utilitarian... See more
How WhatsApp ate the world
Every notification ping holds the possibility we have merit. When we scroll, what are we looking for?