Younger/older divide on social internet vs. social media
April 26, 2018 8:44 AM   Subscribe

The way you value social media may have a lot to do with your age. "...Young progressives grew up in a time when platform monopolies like Facebook seemed inextricably intertwined into the fabric of the internet. To criticize social media, therefore, was to criticize the internet’s general ability to do useful things like connect people, spread information, and support activism and expression. The older progressives, however, remember the internet before the platform monopolies..."
posted by Miko (50 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
I do feel like there's almost as big a gulf between those of us who grew up with the pre-Facebook internet and those who don't as there is between those of us who grew up with the internet at all and those who didn't. Maybe even bigger.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:47 AM on April 26, 2018 [27 favorites]


I've seen this sentiment a lot (wary oldsters vs. social-media-brainwashed youngsters) and I'm quite skeptical of it, especially given that when actual quantitative research is done, the idea of young people spending more time on social media than their immediate elders is not borne out.

Of course, it doesn't help that here we are using vague terms "younger" and "older". Am I "younger" or "older"? Than whom?
posted by inconstant at 8:52 AM on April 26, 2018 [28 favorites]


That being said, I don't think the author's proposed solution is... anything. It's barely even a handwave, he might as well have jumped up and shouted "BLOCKCHAIN!"
posted by tobascodagama at 8:53 AM on April 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


My son, 15, is a digital native. Will not use Facebook, and instead spends most of his time on Discord, Reddit, Snapchat and Instagram. I tend to think he's too young to fully comprehend the inherent problems of social media platforms, but I'm sure one day he will.

While I like the author's 'Social Protocols' solution, I think he frames this argument ("This split was defined largely by age") in a totally subjective and arbitrary way, and it's too bad he didn't use data to support his introductory thesis.

Or maybe the data would have proved him wrong?
posted by JamesBay at 8:54 AM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


I dunno, I will say that in the activist spaces I've frequented, the people who are the most likely to put, like, their illegal rave or demo on Facebook are the people who grew up with Facebook.

This is a thing. Because I have access to insider information, I know that the most surveilled form of activist communication locally is Facebook - the cops basically troll Facebook for unlicensed events like dance parties or unpermitted marches, and if you promote your events even on flyers posted in front of god and everybody they are much less likely to be spotted. Every time I've shared this information with a younger person who is in a position to minimize the use of Facebook to promote sensitive events, they've responded basically by telling me, "that can't be true, we held this past event and we weren't busted, so the cops obviously don't look at Facebook".

And I'm all like [here is my inside information, I literally know things you do not because of connections] and the response is "shrug".

It really gets me down, actually, because we're basically the DIY Stasi because we put every little burble of a political thought or plan on god's own surveillance site.
posted by Frowner at 8:59 AM on April 26, 2018 [50 favorites]


self-censorship is its own form of diy stasi, comrade
posted by entropicamericana at 9:02 AM on April 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


That being said, I don't think the author's proposed solution is... anything. It's barely even a handwave, he might as well have jumped up and shouted "BLOCKCHAIN!"

Blockchains: is there any problem they can't not solve?
posted by solotoro at 9:03 AM on April 26, 2018 [13 favorites]


BLOCKCHAIN!

FTFA:
While reading the Johnson article, keep in mind that I don’t necessarily share its conviction that blockchain technology is somehow fundamental to implementing these social protocol visions. As a computer scientist who specializes in the theory of distributed systems, I’ve become increasingly wary of the arguments that lead blockchain enthusiasts to believe that “trust” requires the disintermediation of any formal organization or institution in the design of a distributed system. But this is a different conversation for a different time…
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:12 AM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Well if "social protocol" = "a platform neutral way for a single person to present social media information using an open standard presentaiton protocol, and anyone else can see it by using a platform-agnostic viewing tool", congratulations, you have reinvented the home page/blog.

In which case, the future is yesterday for me. Already have a home page, maybe I should reactivate my Blogger profile.
posted by caution live frogs at 9:14 AM on April 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


As a computer scientist who specializes in the theory of distributed systems, I’ve become increasingly wary of the arguments that lead blockchain enthusiasts to believe that “trust” requires the disintermediation of any formal organization or institution in the design of a distributed system.

I prefer Infosec Taylor Swift's formulation, which was about certificate authorities but IMO still applies in this case: "Trust does not scale because trust is not reducible to math".
posted by tobascodagama at 9:32 AM on April 26, 2018 [10 favorites]


I’m 43 years old and everyone my age can’t remeber how to use a phone to reach out me because the only way they know how to contact anyone anymore is Facebook it seems.

My daughter though, she’s the baddest best at lighting my phone up all damb day with allthebestspotifystuff I ever wanted to hear. So anecdotally in my circles I dunno.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:02 AM on April 26, 2018 [6 favorites]


I'm 44. Most of the people my age I know are aware of many/most/all of the problems with Facebook and social media in general, but either don't care or choose to ignore them because social media has become basically their only point of contact with their friends and family.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:09 AM on April 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


I'm 43 and I left all social media because it's filled with zealots of every political stripe who think it's a virtue to harrass, insult and shame the people they don't agree with. Consequently, I am in contact with pretty much nobody my age except the people who infrequently text back. So the Gen-Xers and Millennials in my life seem to all prefer social media. My dad, a Boomer, posts important life news (like his move to another country) on Facebook but doesn't contact his actual children, who he knows aren't on FB.

And mostly I'm way happier.
posted by eustacescrubb at 10:21 AM on April 26, 2018 [9 favorites]


I was on Facebook early enough that the concept that FB has news links and politics and paid trolls is still absolutely wild to me. FB is a politics-free zone, i posted my address and class schedule, now get off my lawn.
posted by Yowser at 10:26 AM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


I'm a child of the 90's and my parents just transitioned from trying to get me on Facebook to trying to get me on WhatsApp. It will be a dark day when they discover Discord.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 10:28 AM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


Heck im so out of touch that i still think video calling is verboten. And you'd better get used to my voicemail message if you try (yikes) calling me and im not expecting a call.
posted by Yowser at 10:28 AM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


I'm 43 and I agree with Annika Cicada and The Card Cheat. I tried to give up Facebook about a month ago and failed because I had no idea what the fuck was going on. I might be invited to a birthday party via text, but all the updates and discussion would be on Facebook. No one's going to text me every time someone posts. My three closest friends kept in contact, and I saw others in person, but everyone else pretty much disappeared. Things like "hey, anyone want to go hiking this weekend?" are impractical to impossible without a platform like Facebook (unless you want to piss off everyone you know with a group text).

So I surrendered and signed up again yesterday. I only accept requests from local people I've met before and want to hang out with again, so my friends list went from ~200 to 25. By definition there won't be any vitriol or drama because I don't hang out with those types of people.

Note: I was shocked that even though I signed up with a different email address after clearing my cache and cookies multiple times, Facebook knew exactly who was on my friends list and suggested them all back to me. NONE of my friends know that email address and I never gave FB access to my contacts (I didn't even have it on my phone at that point). The most disturbing thing is that they know who I talk to on Twitter. I've never given them my Twitter handle, and a particular pseudonymous account is locked. Now I know that person's full name and where they work, which I'm certain they didn't want made public.

In conclusion, if you've ever been on Facebook at any point in your life, the cat's out of the bag and it doesn't matter whether you currently have an account or not.
posted by AFABulous at 10:33 AM on April 26, 2018 [22 favorites]


Also, is it me or did Facebook's algorithm get SO much worse in the last month? Even with "most recent" turned on, my feed looks like this:

Jane, April 22
Jane, April 14
Jane, April 23
Jane, today
Jane, April 18
Bob, April 10
Jane, April 16
posted by AFABulous at 10:42 AM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


if you've ever been on Facebook at any point in your life, the cat's out of the bag and it doesn't matter whether you currently have an account or not.

Give it enough time and that data will get stale.
posted by eustacescrubb at 10:53 AM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


AFABulous, I have noticed the same thing. Twitter is only marginally better.

I'm sixty. Because I used to work with youngsters back in the 00s I was early on social media. But it is frustrating. I have a significant amount of family and friends who are on FB, my brother and my baseball friends are only on Twitter, my friends in Sweden only use Instagram, my old coworkers are best reached by their company email addresses, and then there's a significant amount that only use text. I'm not just old. I am fucking exhausted with all of you.
posted by Ber at 10:54 AM on April 26, 2018 [7 favorites]


I balked at getting a Facebook page. I deliberately made it difficult to find me by using for a birthday an important date 27.5 years after my birth. I posted no picture of myself, the same image I use here on my profile. On the "wall" or whatever it's called, I wrote "I have plenty of friends and plenty of walls in real life, and I don't want any here. xxxxxxx_xxxxxx@hotmail.com is my email address. If you want to contact me, send me an email. Thanx!"

Over 70 ppl have tried to friend me or whatever it is.

One shitbird that I knew in grade school and high school hunted me down and then sent many others that he is connected to over to me -- I hope he dies in a car fire.

Facebook will find you. I put up a dummy page, just to be able to have a page to check things out that I cannot otherwise see -- in short order I began getting hits, Facebook asking me do I know this person, do I know that person. and they've got a lot of ppl that are in my life here in Austin, though it seems no family members and none of the ppl who found me because of that dickbrain who sought me out and then told everybody that he is connected to that I might remotely remember.

I don't want to be contacted by some clown I was in third grade with. The ppl that I want in my life are in my life. I keep it trimmed down -- what do I care that in a Chicago suburb I lived in 40 years ago Melvin married Myrtle. Yeah, okay, I hope they're happy. I also hope they leave me alone.

~~~~~

I got to thinking about being tracked, my whole bike ride last night I spent considering it. Apple is not in my life -- I see iTunes as one of the biggest viruses on the internet. No. way. would I put that garbage on my machine again. No way would I ever want to live in Apples walled garden. But here's the news -- many ppl that I know *do* want to live in that walled garden, and they send me emails from inside that walled garden, and Apple has me again, to whatever degree.

Microsoft -- I have had the same Hotmail account for over 20 years. It is tied to many, many businesses that I deal with, all of my family members. Microsoft knows every step I make. They know every email address that is in my address book, which is to say, my entire life.

Google has kept every. search. I. have. ever. made. on their platform, which goes back to the "Don't Be Evil" bullshit, 2001. And I use Google Voice for my phone, thus they have the name and phone number of every person I call, and it's an android phone so I'm positive that they are digging around in it. Google Calendar for my calendar -- Google knows that today is the day I clean and lube my bicycle, including a deep clean of the chain and all gears.

So now we have Microsoft and Google pretty much knowing every breath that I take. And: Amazon. Increasingly, they know all about my purchases. I have an Amazon VISA card -- with that they know of other purchases that I make in other places. I thought last night, on that ride: How can I use Amazon and not have them know every step I take? Maybe set up a business, and have the account tied to the business, and not to me personally? But then I can no longer send items free (I of course have Amazon Prime) and I'd have to have all purchases sent to some dummy location, and then I'd have to mail them myself.

Audible. Oh man, do I love to be read to! Having Barbara Kingsolver read "The Lacuna" is just so great. Hearing the author read their own work, I get to hear it as they heard it in their mind as they wrote it, all of the inflections, all of the pauses. Luxury at a price I can afford. I have hundreds of books from Audible. And by golly it's just so dang spiffy except ... Amazon knows what I like to read. They know what I have absolutely no interest in.

And on and on it goes.

~~~~~

I don't think that there is any going back. Read Orwell, 1984 -- his assumption is that ppl would be governed by fear and coercion. But you've also got to read "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley -- Huxley shows ppl who are just in thrall of the wonder of all of the technology, they willingly strap the yoke upon themselves. I think of that every time I use Strava, the app that tells me how many miles I've gone, how fast. But it's also tracking every goddamn move I make, to within four foot of where I sit on this couch. Sweet. So I personally think that what has happened is that Orwell and Huxley were both correct, their visions both accurate.

Okay, gots to stop here, gots to meditate to calm my head from thinking about all of this jive, I'm gonna use my meditation app ... Oh ... Google knows how flippin' long I meditate. Holy shit! We're all just screwed....
posted by dancestoblue at 10:54 AM on April 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


My in-laws don't understand the whole smartphone thing period (it took a long time to convince them to even get wifi in their home) and begrudgingly have a non-Apple tablet for a reason I can't discern. I would say that it's because of their age (70s) but my mum is going to be 65 this year and she has taken to her smartphone like a duck to water. I suppose it is in all how you plan to use it or what you want to use it for. (My mum and I text each other pictures of our cats and make plans to for phone call chats.)
posted by Kitteh at 11:08 AM on April 26, 2018


I'm 56, and my attitude toward Facebook has always been "why the hell would people do that to themselves?"

It really gets me down, actually, because we're basically the DIY Stasi because we put every little burble of a political thought or plan on god's own surveillance site.

On the upside, a recent local burglary was solved because the young perpetrators were thick enough to post a photo clearly depicting the label on a relatively rare brand of Scotch that was part of what was known to have been stolen.
posted by flabdablet at 11:29 AM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


gots to meditate to calm my head from thinking about all of this jive, I'm gonna use my meditation app

My meditation app is a wind-up kitchen timer.
posted by flabdablet at 11:33 AM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


I’m 43 years old and everyone my age can’t remeber how to use a phone to reach out me because the only way they know how to contact anyone anymore is Facebook it seems.

Right. Actually, I think the biggest place where TFA fails (and I repeated this mistake as well in my first comment) is that it makes the divide about age. Really, the key factor is when you started going on the internet.

Young enough people have literally not been alive long enough to have known the pre-Facebook internet, to be sure. But other cohorts like Boomers and their parents contain a mix of people who got on the internet before Facebook and who only ever got on the internet because of Facebook.

So I think the difference is between people who know it didn't have to be this way because they saw it with their own eyes and those who don't.
posted by tobascodagama at 11:39 AM on April 26, 2018 [18 favorites]


Data point: as well as being 56, I've been using the Internet - and before the Internet, direct remote access via modems - since before SMTP became the standard mail transport protocol.
posted by flabdablet at 11:53 AM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


How does this square with the data that younger and older people choose different social media and modes of interaction?
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 12:04 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Blockchains: is there any problem they can't not solve?

"If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem."
posted by theorique at 12:11 PM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


How does this square with the data that younger and older people choose different social media and modes of interaction?

You mean things like Instagram and WhatsApp, both of which were acquired by Facebook as soon as they started getting big?
posted by tobascodagama at 12:33 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


You mean things like Instagram and WhatsApp, both of which were acquired by Facebook as soon as they started getting big?

Sure, one part of the equation is that monopolies are going to monopolize services. I was more speaking to the generalization that younger generations are loyal to old services rather than becoming early adopters of new services.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:08 PM on April 26, 2018


Also, is it me or did Facebook's algorithm get SO much worse in the last month?

It's done that to me every so often for a while. Suddenly it decides I must be interested in every damned thing someone on my friends list does, whether it's responding to trolls on some news page or liking posts about vaping accessories or whatever -- and that those are more important than maintaining chronological order or showing me posts by people I actually know.

Rather than quitting FB, I disabled it on my phone and cut my friends list down to about 1/4 of its former size. I already wasn't using it on my work PC. So now sometimes I don't check it until after work, and it doesn't seem all that important anymore.
posted by Foosnark at 1:10 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Although I admit, I found the article to be really weak, combining a badly supported "millennials do it wrong" opening with an vague appeal to open systems.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 1:29 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


I got burned early on. It took me ten years to get off my Kaypro word processor and get hooked up to that new fangled Windows 95. Way cool, even at dial-up speeds, and then bliss arrived in the form of ICQ, so me and a bunch of my newly found buddies could whistle at each other, or show a blind eye to everyone who wasn't in our club. I found a chat room with a bunch of like minded folks and that went well for a while. Yeah, that lasted a few years, before the trolls started getting their wings. I had to quit all that chat room stuff because of that.

BBs worked. Then the trolls hit again, and I quit all that shit until MetaFilter showed up on my search engine. I was trying this Facebook thing, but it got too stupid too fast, and the exponential growth in the circles of my secondary and tertiary friends list made editing it impossible. I go there now only when I get a hit in email from one of the relative's kids. I'm guessing Putin has already done whatever damage he's going to do, but to tell you the truth, to me it's like seeing storm clouds on the horizon and I'm in a leaky boat in the middle of the ocean. Not much to do but ride it out.

I'm pretty sure my son's kids won't have a clear notion of what a telephone used to be. Already I'm losing the sense of too many references. I never got past: he's okay, but he's got a Read Only Memory. Tweets are not for me, so the rest of it turns into so much noise.

I know I'm not redeemable, because I've already turned down offers for a cheap land-line. Mrs mule talks into her smart phone to send text messages. This drive me nuts.

Now you guys are trying to figure whether to put lipstick on it or carve it up for the barbecue. Lots of luck. You can't put any of this back in the box.
posted by mule98J at 1:32 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


I feel like Abe Simpson in my house: Older, befuddled, and has no idea what's going on outside his small circle of friends. Nuked Facebook, abandoned Twitter, Instagram, Reddit.
Chose a few interests (Bernie Sanders, Daredevil, Star Trek Discovery, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Creature from the Black Lagoon) for Google News to capture.
Chose a few select RSS feeds for my Feedly.
If I happen to come across something interesting, it goes in Instapaper or Evernote, and I go on my blissfully ancient unaware way.
It's like being a coelacanth in a world of remora, and it's wonderful.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 2:09 PM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


My internet is basically somethingawful at this point, it's a great filter for an ever-dumber world.

I made a facebook page with a fake name years ago and while facebook did a good job of finding people I know, but since I never post on it it's started to go a little insane and is throwing increasingly random friend suggestions at me. No Facebook I don't know Emilio Loquat from South Bolivia, but thank u for asking.
posted by Sebmojo at 2:11 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


I would love to see stats on whether queer people use social media more than others, and I theorize that age makes a huge difference here. It's gotten much better in the last 20 years, but queer kids, especially trans kids, are still comparatively isolated. They can find community online in a way that's often impossible in person. Queers often used to suffer in silence through school and then meet each other in bars and bathhouses, both of which can lead to harmful behavior. It was and is hard to make non-queer friends IRL because you run into a Schroedinger's Bigot situation; at least online you can vet them and not have to deal with looks of disgust or whatever.

Most of the social media shunners I know are cishet folks with an established social circle. It's an often unacknowledged privilege. I met every. single. one. of my friends via social media, either directly or via an event I would never have known about but for Facebook. I have no idea how we would disseminate information about activism or social events offline, especially for trans people. We're not centralized anywhere; not everyone can or wants to go to the LGBT center or bars. The LGBT center here predated the internet (barely) but trans groups were only made possible by it.
posted by AFABulous at 2:33 PM on April 26, 2018 [11 favorites]


For autistic people, social media and online communication has been a godsend.
posted by Lexica at 4:13 PM on April 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


I will be honest with you, I find it difficult to care about what Facebook knows about me. Mainly I suppose that's because I'm not stupid enough to put anything on Facebook that I don't mind the entire world knowing about. I don't care if Coca-cola pays Facebook money and gets a list of names of people likely to drink Coke and my name is on the list. It floors me that anyone in this world could think Facebook is the right venue for promoting illegal activity or sharing any details about themselves they wouldn't be comfortable shouting about in public. I don't think it's Facebook's problem that people can be dumb, though I'm obviously not thrilled at their willingness to facilitate people's stupidity.

It does bother me that people can use the information shared on Facebook to craft lists of people who are likely to be swayed to vote to blow up their country because racism and bigotry. Again, I don't think it's Facebook's fault these people exist, but the degree to which Facebook has facilitated identifying and targeting these people is alarming. The degree to which Facebook has facilitated people targeting lies and propaganda to people susceptible to lies and propaganda is alarming. I don't know that there's a way to stop this, since identifying people for targeted paid content is literally Facebook's business model. This is the real problem with social media. I couldn't care less how much Facebook knows about me personally, it's how much Facebook knows about everyone else, and how easy Facebook makes it to misuse this knowledge, that is the problem.

There's not really a solution to this problem. Monolithic social networks like Facebook are going to collect people's information, by definition. Almost all the older forms of social interaction that existed on the internet before Facebook still exist. There are still instant messaging apps, there are still internet forums, there are still chatrooms. There are still options for social networks where your information is kept private and encrypted and only the people you want to see it can see it. Facebook is what it is because everyone uses it. The only chance of seeing Facebook ever change is if people stop using it.

A facebook-like solution designed with tight privacy would have its own problems. Would you want a Facebook where everything is peer-to-peer encrypted for privacy that becomes a haven for pedophiles? Where white supremacist groups gather and plan and there's nothing you can do because Encryptbook just shares their encrypted data and washes their hands of guilt? Reddit doesn't care as deeply about having your personal information as Facebook, but it's got its own share of hideous problems. Pure anonymity can be just as bad as too much sharing.

Maybe ultimately the problem Social Media creates is making it too easy for people to find and talk to each other.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:12 PM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


The internet was certainly a godsend for me; I'm sure I would be in a very, very bad spot or possibly not alive at all if not for it. But the one good point of TFA is "social internet != social media", in particular != Facebook And Twitter. To conflate modern panopticon-style social media with the entire internet is to fall into the corporations' trap. There are websites, social websites even, which are not Facebook or Twitter.

But hey, you want to talk being queer and a non-drinker? I confronted my sexuality on an imageboard, hashed it out on Livejournal and was supported there when I was being threatened with disownment, learned that "yeah, well, I don't feel like [birth gender]" meant something more than I thought it did in the comments of a nonbinary writer's independently hosted personal blog, practiced asserting my identity and playing with my presentation on a forum (with the help of accessories purchased online), met my best friend on Tumblr.

I left some of these websites because of objectionable corporate decisions, and others simply because I grew out of the community. So it goes. But you know what isn't required in any of this? Facebook. Hell, I barely dared say anything on Facebook because you know who was on Facebook? My sibling. My classmates and some of my teachers. Most of the kids from church, some of their parents, and the goddamn pastor. I'll tell you what that place was like -- kids in my age group were counterprotesting the Day of Silence by wearing "Day of Truth" shirts to talk about how homosexuality is a choice; a year or two ago when I went to visit my mother, the church uncle who was also around made snotty comments about how people with gay children were particularly prone to being misled by celebrities into supporting marriage equality. Meanwhile Facebook kept changing its privacy functions left right ana kata so that you never knew when a "only for the eyes of people you are Sure About" vent post might suddenly be visible to all and sundry. I'd basically only been using FB to "keep in touch" lightly with classmates after graduation, but it got too much and I deactivated.

And hey!! I feel like elaborating on "people you are Sure About"!!!! Because there were very few people I was actually sure about. Because they also didn't want their relatives and their church fellows and their teachers and their classmates and their potential goddamn employers finding these things out!!!!!!! In other words it's harder for people whose physical social networks are full of bigots to do anything on Facebook, a website which require[sd] your legal name and also prioritizes those kinds of connections!!!!!!!!!!!

The Internet Is Bigger Than Facebook And Facebook Is Not Some Kind Of Queer Lighthouse, the end, I guess I felt more strongly about this than I expected when I first began to write this comment.
posted by inconstant at 5:55 PM on April 26, 2018 [8 favorites]


Mainly I suppose that's because I'm not stupid enough to put anything on Facebook that I don't mind the entire world knowing about.

It doesn't matter. Facebook tracks you across sites. It knows that you went to xxxpornsite.com. They know you took the Which K-pop Star Should Be Your Boyfriend? quiz on Buzzfeed. They also know anything about you that your friends know. If Jane has "Mr. Encyclopedia, 123 Main St, eats steaks with ketchup" in her contact entry for you, Facebook sees that, if she's allowed access to her contacts (and you know someone in your friends list has). I'm sure there are a lot of other things I'm missing.
posted by AFABulous at 6:52 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


"I left all social media"

...we're on social media right now.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:40 PM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


I don't think that there is any going back.

Where's the science behind the equation:
'tracking' people == more sales ??
I haven't seen it. Probably most of the 'OMG I talked about x and immediately saw an ad for x' anecdotes are purely coincidental.

I'm convinced that this 'social era' is a delusional fad ... or (at best) a zeitgeist thang. Once the spell is finally broken, it *will* go away. SM engaging *the whole world* (in the hands of a mighty few) makes utterly no sense. Means will arise (again) where exposure is limited by personal choice. The data will rot (of linkrot if not just neglect) and the drives will quiver to a stop.

I.e., we'll go forward to a cleaner 'sanity', not back.
posted by Twang at 7:46 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


The Internet Is Bigger Than Facebook And Facebook Is Not Some Kind Of Queer Lighthouse, the end

It's weird that saying something this simple marks you out as some kind of fucking hermit weirdo these days, but I guess it's Zuck's world and the rest of us just live in it.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:56 PM on April 26, 2018


Data point: as well as being 56, I've been using the Internet - and before the Internet, direct remote access via modems - since before SMTP became the standard mail transport protocol.

Discovered the Internet in 1990, was all over BBSes almost as soon as there were such things. You're all newbies, get off my lawn. Except flabdablet, he can stay. I miss Usenet.
posted by scalefree at 8:18 PM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


"I left all social media"

...we're on social media right now.


No, we're on the social internet, as defined in TFA.

I'm convinced that this 'social era' is a delusional fad ... or (at best) a zeitgeist thang.

you know, I think you may be right. I've been reflecting on this lately. Will [these forms of] social media be like cars - we adopt them so heavily we can't imagine a world without them - or be like world's fairs, which blew people's minds for 50 years and then just kind of wound down. There's something about the novelty of "HEY I CAN CONTACT ANYONE I EVER KNEW AT ANY TIME WITH ANY THOUGHT" that has been captivating for 20 years or so. But at some point the gee-whiz of that will wear off, and I doubt we'll be spending as much time liking and sharing as we do now. It's way too time-consuming, for one thing. I like knowing what's going on, but hate being tied to a device to do it.
posted by Miko at 8:29 PM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty sure my son's kids won't have a clear notion of what a telephone used to be.

There was a story that made the rounds a few years ago about a kid who remained physically trapped somewhere - don't recall exactly where - who had to wait a very long time to get rescued because it took many hours for somebody to notice his Facebook-posted plea for help. And at the time, the notable point of this story was the kid's failure to just call 911, given that his phone clearly still had service.

In 2018, I suspect that the notable point of any similar story would be that this kid's Facebook page was not monitored 60x60x24x7 by somebody.

It's a little ironic that the standard shortening of "telephone" is "phone" rather than "tele", given that modern telephones are in fact telefuckingeverythings whose phone dialler is just one app among the hundreds installed on the average personal fondleslab.
posted by flabdablet at 10:02 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


I met every. single. one. of my friends via social media

In the long distant days of my own youth, we socially isolated types constructed our own social media. My own BBS started out as a notice tacked to the wall of the terminal room that a text file with open read and append permissions existed at such-and-such a location on the college mainframe, and it is how I met the handful of people I still count as my closest friends.
posted by flabdablet at 10:10 PM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


No, we're on the social internet, as defined in TFA.

Dr. Newport's attempt to define social media around consolidation and commercial interests is idiosyncratic to him and possibly a growing #dumpfacebook movement. It's not representative of how the term has been used elsewhere by people who study and design social media on scales ranging from small classrooms to worldwide audiences. For example, Facebook started as a collegiate walled garden, and many of its flaws can be attributed from applying campus principles on an international and long-term time scale.

I'm strongly supportive of Dr. Newport's advocated goals, but his attempt to create a media/internet dichotomy around what are, to some degree, accidents of market history is muddying the waters. Open protocols are also vulnerable to monopolistic network effects. Google mediates huge volumes of SMTP and HTTP traffic, and arguably helped Usenet into a grave and undermined RSS.
posted by GenderNullPointerException at 10:18 PM on April 26, 2018 [4 favorites]


Metafilter: I felt more strongly about this than I expected when I first began to write this comment
posted by eustacescrubb at 5:47 AM on April 27, 2018 [6 favorites]


attempt to define social media around consolidation and commercial interests is idiosyncratic to him

I can understand that. I still think the distinction is useful, if not precise enough for specialists. As someone who doesn't get into depth about media theory, I found the issues he raises really interesting, even if his point of view is off a little. It does make a difference that I remember both life before internet, and how we built social networks then, and life in the pre-Web and more open-Web internet, and also am involved in how things are managed now. These are different experiences/tactics with different effects, and it does seem worthwhile to consider how they differ.
posted by Miko at 6:40 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


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