We Aren’t Posting on Social Media as Much Anymore. Will We Ever?

encouraging people to post to a more intimate audience

Google+ circles was just ahead of its time.

Love it! I did feel uncomfortable with 2010s-Facebook-style excessive public sharing. Most of my friends, with me included, abuse the close friends Instagram feature and I'm all for it. I know a couple of people who deleted their old Facebook accounts because digital footprint was too frightening – particularly, the shit they posted during their teens in private Facebook groups that they have long left.

All of this is obviously not related whatsoever to data harvesting; this fight is against individual stalkers rather than corporate ones. But it's a blessed one non the less; stalking shouldn't really be a thing.

It's a crisis of their own making.

Content moderation is too expensive, too hard or just free speech absolutism. Huh, uses don't like the toxic environment anymore.

We're feeding every user only the stuff we want, with lots of ads and sponsored posts. Now users complain they feel like a goose being prepared for the foie gras harvest.

Meanwhile the algorithm relentlessly pushes high profile people drowning out their own friends. Now users feel like shooting into a storm and stop engaging as much. Unfathomable.

They go further with enshitification and are greatly surprised users don't like their crap as much.

The problem social media has is twofold.

People like open social networks. Laugh all you want, but that includes Lemmy. Many people don't have active social interactions in their life, and social media allows them to talk, share, and discuss with people. The problem is that the users ARE the network, and even the best social networks took years to get their user base up. The monopoly on social media is very hard to break, and most newer networks either rely on gimmicks, or are closed to smaller networks.

The second problem is that the world is so polarising that moderating is expensive. In-person moderation is still by far the best way to do this, but it doesn't scale well, and companies have no incentive to keep their networks hate-free. Furthermore, the sort of person that is going to own a social network with a holding company floated on the stock market is likely going to have polarising opinions themselves - so good luck getting them to do the right thing and spend money on tens of thousands of people worldwide that will need to sift through the shite reported on social media, and good luck in doing this in a way that is high quality.

Honestly, I think social media won't die out. I think we'll see newer networks emerge over time, but they will work around people and work on these problems first, instead of launching and hoping/praying for traction.

These general users are shifting to Discord. The people I actually WANT to interact with are moving to indie social platforms (i.e cohost, fediverse, spacehey) and revitalizing forums. I strongly recommend against seeing this as a systemic issue against social networks/media; it's an issue with VC funded ones that prioritize growth above a better platform and community. For the health of the internet, please do not flee to walled garden discord servers. Use social media for what its for; make connections with random people. Using it just to follow famous people you'll never directly interact with will isolate you.

Yeah I feel the future of social media is gonna be more private self moderating chats. Especially as AI generate content will fill ppl feeds with more and more clutter it's bound to happen. I don't have the stats on me, but most ppl lurk and rarely post, I read. So with less posters and more lurkers it's becoming less interesting .

Like I only recently started posting a couple of years ago not daily or even weekly but occasionally because, I realized that some body has to post, and why not it me?

Big tech social media is for exploiting users and driving psy ops campaigns. People should stay away from that shit.

I've been using Signal stories and telling people to follow me there. I know it gets lots of hate but honestly it's the only form of private social media. It has no ads or bots. My "posts" get sent to exactly who I want them to and no one else. Then truly disappear from existence.

There is another similar project called Circles from FUTO that uses Matrix but it's very Alpha right now.

I don't think for myself, it's primarily the fault of bots, misinformation and ads. It's.... Us. We're not as interesting as we like to think we are and I have just gotten exhausted slogging through the "look what I can do" posts.

It's much more rewarding for me to follow videos or threads of people actually creating something that interests me than it is to scroll through feeds consisting of online acquaintances posting memes, pics of purchases, food and locales.

My preferred medium is YouTube subs via freetube of channels whose content appeals to me(carpentry, car builds, mtb, etc). I don't use any social aspects of the platform, I just like to watch the content.

Turns out we actually did not need nor want to hear so much from other people.

It would be nice if regulations were stronger and privacy actually cared for. Then I would consider it.

If you take the time to make / share something good, it usually gets little traction compared to bots, misinformation, astroturfed bullshit, etc. Your stuff gets lost in a sea of nonsense.

I used to make good posts on a favourite subreddit of mine. But because of poor moderation, the sub basically got drowned with low-effort stuff from drive-by posters who weren’t regulars. Mods refused to ban those posts, even though users really wanted them to.

The end result? I no longer post good content there. Why bother when it gets drowned out?

The other end of the spectrum is that some platforms are too heavy handed with moderation, taking any sort of flavour out of it. You need a bit of spice to make a platform enjoyable. Sadly, that’s also what’s been happening over at Reddit in general: discourage content that doesn’t fit the desired advertiser / IPO profile. Which again drives people away from posting things.