[btheshoe]

It seems to me that the deaths of Twitter and Facebook are being greatly exaggerated (by this article, and by the vibes generally). A decrease in users is not the same thing as a mass exodus. And I'm frankly skeptical of any claims that Twitter is facing an existential decrease in users.

[Gigachad]

“The great resignation”, “quiet quitting” and now “social quitting” are all instances of the media turning tiny observed trends or even normal operations in to some great names social shift when the reality is not much has changed.

[antipotoad]

Yet.

The builders of the next generation of social tools are doubtless already busy. I’d venture to say we’re looking for the wrong thing, if we’re expecting the Facebook-killer to be another giant platform.

[Lio]

My bet would be that the next big social platform will come about when Apple and Google agree an open messaging platform for Android and iOS.

That will at a stroke provide an alternative network to Whatsapp available on every phone and desktop.

Apple is currently resistant but I think they'll come round to the idea once they realise that that they can pretty easily displace Meta from day to day messaging.

[antipotoad]

Hmm. Think you could be right. Question to me is whether they can provide anything compelling beyond stability of identity / ease of connection. That would itself be pretty huge though, so is maybe enough to displace WhatsApp and the like.

[Gigachad]

It won’t be HN user freedom social. It’ll be super tiktok. The platform of the year changes but they only get more invasive and more addictive.

[antipotoad]

My wish is that this big tech cycle has been long enough for us to have collectively learned at least some lessons about what’s desirable and what’s not in such vital communication infrastructure.

Is it really good for human psychology to have these hyper-connected, star-maker platforms so prominent in our lives? Online fame does very strange things to people, warping the way they interact with their actual physical surroundings, and the real people who inhabit them. Brings to mind the girl doing her TikTok dance in the middle of a lecture. It’s quite bizarre, but worth trying to understand.

Anyhow, none of this is to disagree with you, sadly. Except to say, I think there is also appetite for more humane technology, which doesn’t try to sink such deep hooks into us.

[moe091]

> My wish is that this big tech cycle has been long enough for us to have collectively learned at least some lessons about what’s desirable and what’s not in such vital communication infrastructure.

This is how progress usually works. Advancements are made, there are pitfalls / consequences, we learn from those, then new advancements are made.

The modern age is progressing too quickly though, it's just "advancements are made, people just barely begin recognizing the downsides, new advancements are made way before we adapt to the previous advancements". The life of someone from 1700 vs someone from 1850 is more similar than the life of someone from 1990 to 2020

[antipotoad]

This is essentially why I decided not to give up on all these years of experience building tech.

Not to claim any special insight, but taking just a couple years out has been enough to see that the flaws of the current generation are not inherent to the tech, that things can be built differently, and that I can be a hopefully more mindful builder.

[Existenceblinks]

Yeah good luck wishing for people to stop liking likes and showing off. That's the eternal engine the article missed.

[andirk]

Similar to when a couple people move out of San Francisco and they call it an "exodus" and there are handfuls of articles making up these stupid claims based on a couple interviews of people moving to Austin or Portland or, in more fringe cases, Colorado.

[Tangurena2]

People are tired of being abused. The powers-that-be don't like it and are trying to change the narrative to things like "people don't want to work" or "quiet quitting".

[thecrash]

As Doctorow says, the permanence of these institutions is taken for granted until it starts to unwind - and very quickly downfall becomes obvious and inevitable. It's not obvious to everyone yet, but he's saying it soon will be.

"Hyperstition is a positive feedback circuit including culture as a component. It can be defined as the experimental (techno-)science of self-fulfilling prophecies." https://www.orphandriftarchive.com/articles/hyperstition-an-...

[btheshoe]

I'm sorry but I'm unable to take anything nick land says seriously anymore

But in general I don't think I'm taking the permanence of twitter or fb for granted - they both fill a clear need and I don't see any new players emerging to dominate the niche they fill (mastodon is not going to replace twitter)

[onion2k]

And I'm frankly skeptical of any claims that Twitter is facing an existential decrease in users.

I agree but mostly because I think the exodus happened years ago. If you look at the view counts for tweets that don't 'go viral' most of them get seen by about 10% of the account's followers. Even a popular account like Elon's doesn't get more than 20 or 30% of the followers seeing the tweets most of the time. Whacky timeline algorithm fun aside, that implies a large number of users aren't regularly checking their accounts any more. Twitter probably peaked a long time ago.

[nailer]

> Twitter got bought out by a low-attention-span, overconfident billionaire who started pulling out Jenga blocks to see whether the system would fall over, and when it did, we all got crushed by the falling blocks.

I’m not sure how consistent application of moderation rules, refocusing on actual user safety like CSA instead of preferred pronoun use, and transparency when it comes to government manipulation of political conversation is ‘pulling out the jenga blocks’ but Musk can certainly done a better job with Twitter than Doctorow did with Boingboing.