Moose

@M00se0nTheLoose

Dr. h.c., Reverend, Lord

he/him
steventanzi.carrd.co/

Just a dude looking for better Social Media

Profile Gif from @Shalmons

last fm recently played music

Personal Website

tanzi-media.com/

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose11/22/2022, 12:28 PM

The Issue

With all the cool stuff happening with Social Media (Mastodon being decentralized, Co-Host allowing for HTML Posts, wt.social being news focused), the most popular social media app among the creators I follow is Hive -_-

Primarily an iOS app and no web version yet. The android app seems recently out of beta and is still glitchy. As far as I can tell, the "contact us" part of their site just doesn't tell you how to contact them. Me or my friends can't create an account via email, you have to sign in with Google. It couldn't access my phone's gallery (a known bug though). There's no web version currently (though that's apparently in their plans for the future).

It just feels disappointing where there was a lot of neat, new things happening with Social media and the one that has become popular is the one that is mostly the same. That and, to me, might go the same way as twitter or other social media with selling your data or ads for money, one day.

With all that said, some positives:

Funding

Mastodon, CoHost, and wt.social have not figured out funding themselves (as far as I know). Mastodon I think is Inherently hard to advertise on given it's not centralized, as well as have enough people on one server to meaningfully sell data. But servers and maintenance have a cost. While wt.social I'm sure will take the Wikipedia approach (given that like, it's made by one of the founders I believe), it's unclear what the future for Mastodon and CoHost is if funding isn't secured somehow. Sure they can rely on donations but I'm personally not convinced enough people are willing to pay for social media for that to be viable.

App Design

Mastodon is a bit confusing for the new person. The way servers work can be daunting and is usually what has kept people away (at least, from friends/ family I've spoken to). It kept me away for a long time too. CoHost and wt.Social are too "basic" looking for most people I think. While I absolutely *love* the fact I can use HTML or Markdown to make posts, I don't think the average person *cares* at all.

Hive, alternatively, looks amazing. Definitely looks like an iOS app, which is a compliment here. It has bright colors and looks very sleek. There are little touches here and there that younger people will enjoy- You can put music on your profile that will autoplay (Well, on android at least, this is coming soon). You can toggle your Astrological sign. It's neat.

Conclusion

So... yeah I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that something that is primarily focused on iOS has taken off, as that's what most people here in the US have. It's easy to setup and use (well, as long as you don't have Android which has a handful of glitches right now). And, Hive's backstory is also pretty neat- started with just two college students.

But yeah... Also disappointing because it seemed like a new type of social media was coming, but Hive just seems like more of the same

#rant #mastodon #cohost #HIVE #hive social #wtsocial

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in reply to @M00se0nTheLoose's post:

brl @brl11/22/2022, 6:25 PM

"Popular."

The next chapter of social media has not yet begun IMO. These aren't serious projects. The nice thing about Cohost is that seems to be by intention for them.

Moose @M00se0nTheLoose11/23/2022, 11:42 AM

Yeah for sure, and what I'm seeing as "popular" is a bit subjective given it's just within my own circle of people I follow. I'm a bit lost on what you mean CoHost isn't a serious project- From that post at least it seems they aren't really trying to become #1, but this is more of a passion project for them that they hope works out.

What are sort of the signs you're looking for with the next chapter of social media?

For me personally, going back to when I could mostly stay in touch with friends, and not see mostly ads, has been a goal. Plus increased security in the sense of not selling data to advertisers. I think these are things in the tech world people have been talking about for a while, but I don't think the mainstream has cared that much (other than non-algorithmic feeds)? But with Twitter circling the drain, it seemed like people were at least starting to search out options that were a bit more "Secure" in their design. So for me, it felt like maybe we'd start seeing a shift away from the standard social media, and sort of back to their original goals of keeping people connected. And there does seem to be growing pushback against things like Facebook and so maybe as time goes on and more younger people get into these development positions we'll see change. But yeah, I think Colin put it well in that post you linked that:

"and even if another platform wins for now, we think there's a pretty decent chance that their users are going to realize that they left in haste for somewhere that still suffers from the same fundamental problems"

brl @brl11/26/2022, 4:24 PM

What are sort of the signs you're looking for with the next chapter of social media?

For me personally, going back to when I could mostly stay in touch with friends, and not see mostly ads, has been a goal.

See, I’m looking at a more macro and more urgent view. Journalism, activism, crisis response and general information sharing are being rapidly degraded in real time by Elon Musk. Not to mention the vast grim societal effects of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. that had already been happening for many years now. Read The Chaos Machine by Max Fisher sometime if you have the time.

A major new general-purpose network isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s an existential necessity.

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