So you probably saw two posts (1, 2) one of Diaspora core developers Dennis Schubert wrote about past and future of Diaspora and alternative social media in general and how he feels about all that. He brings up a number of great points in there although I can't say I agree with him 100%.
#TLDR - you can safely skip to the next post from here.
And there is also something else mostly written between the lines. It feels like he is disenchanted in social media and their users. To be honest it felt like that for a while.
Can't say I don't get the feeling. I won't say social networks are dying but they didn't quite work for me for some time now. It is lucrative to blame technical reasons for it - privacy problems, blocking not efficient enough, can't upload cat gifs in 4K resolution, whatever - but it is not it. What I miss more and more in social networking is "social" part. "Networking" is there all right.
For me social networking always was about getting to know people. It is not just about getting news, memes or tech advice - there are better easier and better ways for all that. It is not about trends either - these are easily manipulated and generally have zero value. What is special about social networking (at least for me) - it is knowing and feeling the actual person on the other end. What they see and think and why.
My first social network contact happened shortly after I got into the Internet. Her name was Chris and she was from the United States. She liked to draw and rock music. She had a couple of nasty health conditions. She lived in the middle of nowhere. She was poor. When she drove home it was a long slope down so she sometimes turned off the engine and coasted. She thought it was saving some gas. She was alive. We didn't have sophisticated talks as we both weren't sophisticated people and my English sucked back then but as I was reading her stream or talked to her over MSN something magical happened - the US stopped being just an area on the map. There were living people there. With supermarkets, car troubles, bitch neighbors. What she talked about was something she was part of and this had so much more meaning because of that. It was no longer "news" but "part of life".
Social networks brought me many more people both at home and abroad since then. Connecting with them was enriching even if I disliked some of them. Like that one guy who was really annoying Putin fan among other things. However he was real. Also clever. Getting to know him allowed to see the world through his eyes - and once or twice it provided much needed reality check. Because we all tend to be biased and getting carried away with it. We argued a lot but it wasn't about bringing someone down or making sure someone had the last word or most likes. It was more like trying to figure out what the fuck was happening and what others thought.
But then something started to change. Around the time Google launched Plus I think. Maybe earlier. Social networking became much less about social and more about "sharing". Share, share, share. Share this article. Share that picture. Actually share just the picture, who cares about captions. Reshare everything. Like and dislike. Get that shit trending. Be the loudest or help someone else. If you can't do that, at least share some interesting content so you contribute.
It was only logical for trolls, bots and misinformation to appear and start to matter. I mean everyone became a bot of sorts. Automation to reshare content to get maximum coverage for whatever cause they support - or just for the sake of it. And of course real bots are winning - they are simply better equipped. Who is to question them when the only question these days is who has the tallest soapbox?
Don't think I am riding the high horse here - it seems I am also much less of a living person on the Internet these days. I often find myself just scrolling down and when something catches my eye I think "I should ask about this... later" and then it gets drowned in ever-growing pile of new posts. And then I remember I wanted to write something too but there is little time and little reward too so here is cat picture instead.
Not that I dislike cat pictures. I am subscribed to "caturday" tag even. Chris liked cats too. Once she sent me a little plush one for my birthday. I still have it, it is in the picture. Touch of life from somewhere far, far away.
#LateNightThoughts #SocialNetworking #Internet #life
