[onion2k]

Nobody needs a social network anymore

This sort of comment is why people in tech are very often seen as being incredibly bad at solving non-trivial social problems by people outside of our industry. Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to use one regularly. There are plenty of problems with the way networks work, and what they do to our mental health, but the notion that no one should use them any more is plain stupid.

[swsieber]

Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to have signed up for one at some point.

Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth use a product designed to addict them.

I agree in general though - they can be useful, and they can fill a real purpose.

[mayniac]

I think a better argument is that between a third and a half of all people on Earth see enough value in some elements of social networks to sign up for them.

A lot of people I know only use Facebook for messenger. Some only use it for private groups. Some for events. Some for the newsfeed. Those people use twitter, instagram, whatsapp, snapchat, or discord for the features they don't use on Facebook.

IMO instead of looking for a service which could distribute the back-end servers of a single social network we should be encouraging the distribution of features, and make sure they can interact with each other smoothly.

[onion2k]

Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to have signed up for one at some point.

I was referring to daily- and monthly-active-users numbers. That's people who sign in and interact with their accounts at least once a day or a month respectively. Those are the important numbers, and they're a fairly accurate representative of the number of people who currently use social media. I think it's fair to say people who stop seeing any positive value in their accounts stop being monthly active users.

[cryptoz]

> Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to use one regularly.

That's a logical fallacy. You cannot possibly interpret the reasons why people use the social networks. They very well may feel forced to use them in order to get a job or otherwise be socially accepted. You call that "value" perhaps - they use it to get a job, therefore providing value. But that is an intentionally misleading line of thought and leaves the reader less informed than when they started reading.

The situation is a lot more complex than "providing value". People use social networks because they have been artificially forced into society as a near-necessity. Our society does not actually need them. But because we have them, people must use them. That they use them does not mean they derive value from them. They may not see it that way (I don't), and in aggregate, it does not seem to provide value to society at all. I would even argue that social networks have provided detrimental effects to society overall, and produced negative value.

[krapp]

>People use social networks because they have been artificially forced into society as a near-necessity

I mean, I don't think my mother chats with her COPD support group or shares pictures of her grandchildren on Facebook with our relatives because society has artificially forced her to do so, but OK. I guess she's just a slave to the machine, then.

> That they use them does not mean they derive value from them.

It kind of does, though. Social media is just an umbrella term for platforms that allow integrated, multimedia communication between a network of accounts. All other valid and legitimate criticisms aside, people find value in social media because of the people they network with, and because social media platforms tend to be more user friendly and accessible to the mainstream than were forums, email and telephone.

[qeternity]

> That they use them does not mean they derive value from them.

Yes it does, necessarily. This is basic biology, economics and self preservation. It may be temporal (i.e. good in short, bad in long) but nonetheless, people do not do things they do not value.

[bobwaycott]

> ... people do not do things they do not value.

They most certainly do. You are confusing doing X because one values doing X with doing X because they really want Y. Be it biology, economics, or (especially) self-preservation—among many other possible rationales—it does not follow that seeking any of those Ys means one values doing the X one believes necessary to get to the Y.

[toomim]

Exactly. It's called "revealed preferences" in economics: the theory that what humans value (their utility function) is revealed by their behavior -- what they choose to spend time on.