#social-media-networking

[nando161mando]

Unbelievably dire.. how did we get here

[sreegs]

there's just no sustainable model for moderation at scale for social media. we really were better off with forums.

i will acknowledge the forums heyday was a time before everyone was On Line with smartphones. You had to go sit down on The Computer or the laptop to use it. Times have changed.

there was simply a smaller chud to moderator ratio back then. and i accept that you cant go back to less people online, but that just demonstrates the issue of scale

forums were small enough that the moderator team were people who knew each other and were accountable for their moderation decisions. they werent unknown people in an offshore content moderation setup. they had an investment in being part of the community and the context to make decisions. plus the lower volume of reports to be able to dedicate time to make a more measured judgement

social networks today have a completely unmanageable chud to moderator ratio. moderators are largely contractors with no connection to the place they're moderating. and the worst part: social networks prioritize DAUs over everything else. they will go easy on banning chuds because chuds look at ads and the network gets money. who cares if they make other users miserable? they keep coming back!

look how much had to happen to twitter to get people to start leaving. the rot in that place set in YEARS before elon bought the place yet there's still holders-on.

on a forum, someone breaks the rules they get banned. you get a big fat "USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST" on the post that did them in and i will bet my balls that reprimand did more for keeping the place civil than any "community note" ever has

[always-a-joyful-note]

People are wondering how Jinu found the other members of the Saja Boys, and I'm here wondering how Celine found Zoey and Mira. And even after she found them, how did she look at this Korean third culture kid in America with anxiety and undiagnosed ADHD and this chaebol child rebel and go, "Ah, yes. They are just what the half-demon child I'm raising out of guilt and duty needs. They'll make incredible demon hunters who are also international popstars."

And she was actually right.

[cryptosocialnetwork]

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[incognitopolls]

If you still use Twitter but ALSO are active on another of these sites (as a replacement/supplement to specifically Twitter), select the newer site that you're active on.

–

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[ef-1]

In the vein of calling out our favs I'll tell you what Max did:

Max was racing in an iRacing event yesterday

Also racing in the same event is Jaden Munoz who is a Williams driver for their iRacing academy. Jaden is 19 years old iirc

Jaden was a Max fan and there are multiple tweets of him from 2021-2022 praising Max

Max and Jaden started close to eachother at the beginning of the race and were battling for the lead. Max was ahead. Max defended very aggressively, honestly too aggressively, and made two left-right manoeuvres to hold the lead. The contact would not have been so bad but Max was swerving and he dropped right to the back of the grid the moment their cars touched while Jaden kept his position

At this point Jaden says: "Look how dumb he is. He doesn't change, ever. He's so dumb" about Max. This is not a random insult, contrary to the way it was framed. Max had crashed Jaden out 2 weeks ago in the first lap of the 2024-25 GTP IMSA Global Esports Championship season finale. I think it's very important to point out that Jaden was leading the GTP IMSA championship and that was the last race of the season. He would have won it if Max hadn't crashed him out. Max was completely at fault and received a drive-through penalty for that collision

Back to our race from yesterday, Jaden drives a great race and keeps 2nd position

Towards the end of the race Jaden encounters Max again to lap him. The moment he sees that Max is the next car to lap he says "Oh no. Oh no, no, no." Implying that he thinks Max is about to crash him out as retaliation. And that's exactly what Max does: he purposefully crashes out Jaden.

Now we get to the only part of the story that anyone seems to care about which is Jaden's reaction when Max crashes him out which was: "Yeah, I knew it, I knew it. This is why you were gifted everything in your life, Max. You're a spoilt brat. You'd be nothing without your father. You'd be nothing. You'd be a nobody."

That's the totality of what happened. Since then Jaden has been getting a lot of hate on all his social media for saying Max is a spoilt brat who would be nothing without Jos. Honesty had it been anyone else besides a 19 year old Mexican-American kid I wouldn't have written this up. But as a Mexican-American experiencing Trump's Amerikkka I think the reaction towards Jaden is fucked up and unwarranted. He's a teenager with working class parents, gaming is literally his career. He was going to be champion two weeks ago and Max crashed him out, there was clearly residual resentment from that. The prize money for iRacing is probably what Max spends on a dessert in Monaco but again it's Jaden's career, it's his whole job, it's how he makes money. He anticipated Max would crash him out and then Max proved him right. I don't think it's the crime it's been made out to be for a hispanic 19 year old to bitterly point out that Jos was a millionaire who helped Max progress in his career. Again Max is a fav and maybe I'd feel a different way about this if the political climate was different but it just made me very sad and very bitter

thank you sm for writing all of this. Def call out your favs and you're definitely valid in how you feel

[in4newz]

Don't forget, Trump was the one who tried to ban TikTok in his first term, and Republicans voted to pass the TikTok Ban Bill.

He didn't save it. He just flipflopped when he realised it made him look bad with young people.

And now TikTok are sucking up to Trump and effectively acting as an ad section for him.

Don't fall for it.

[beautysnake]

I am once again wishing tumblr allowed drawn nsfw images 😔

[conceived-angel]

heyyy @/fx networks... got anything you want to share with the class?

[patetic-club]

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ʷᵉˡᶜᵒᵐᵉ, ᵗʰⁱˢ ⁱˢ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵒʳˡᵈ ⁿᵒʷ🖱

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀

[nando161mando]

Disabling features to make money

[reasonsforhope]

"Is social media designed to reward people for acting badly?

The answer is clearly yes, given that the reward structure on social media platforms relies on popularity, as indicated by the number of responses – likes and comments – a post receives from other users. Black-box algorithms then further amplify the spread of posts that have attracted attention.

Sharing widely read content, by itself, isn’t a problem. But it becomes a problem when attention-getting, controversial content is prioritized by design. Given the design of social media sites, users form habits to automatically share the most engaging information regardless of its accuracy and potential harm. Offensive statements, attacks on out groups and false news are amplified, and misinformation often spreads further and faster than the truth.

We are two social psychologists and a marketing scholar. Our research, presented at the 2023 Nobel Prize Summit, shows that social media actually has the ability to create user habits to share high-quality content. After a few tweaks to the reward structure of social media platforms, users begin to share information that is accurate and fact-based...

Re-targeting rewards

To investigate the effect of a new reward structure, we gave financial rewards to some users for sharing accurate content and not sharing misinformation. These financial rewards simulated the positive social feedback, such as likes, that users typically receive when they share content on platforms. In essence, we created a new reward structure based on accuracy instead of attention.

As on popular social media platforms, participants in our research learned what got rewarded by sharing information and observing the outcome, without being explicitly informed of the rewards beforehand. This means that the intervention did not change the users’ goals, just their online experiences. After the change in reward structure, participants shared significantly more content that was accurate. More remarkably, users continued to share accurate content even after we removed rewards for accuracy in a subsequent round of testing. These results show that users can be given incentives to share accurate information as a matter of habit.

A different group of users received rewards for sharing misinformation and for not sharing accurate content. Surprisingly, their sharing most resembled that of users who shared news as they normally would, without any financial reward. The striking similarity between these groups reveals that social media platforms encourage users to share attention-getting content that engages others at the expense of accuracy and safety...

Doing right and doing well

Our approach, using the existing rewards on social media to create incentives for accuracy, tackles misinformation spread without significantly disrupting the sites’ business model. This has the additional advantage of altering rewards instead of introducing content restrictions, which are often controversial and costly in financial and human terms.

Implementing our proposed reward system for news sharing carries minimal costs and can be easily integrated into existing platforms. The key idea is to provide users with rewards in the form of social recognition when they share accurate news content. This can be achieved by introducing response buttons to indicate trust and accuracy. By incorporating social recognition for accurate content, algorithms that amplify popular content can leverage crowdsourcing to identify and amplify truthful information.

Both sides of the political aisle now agree that social media has challenges, and our data pinpoints the root of the problem: the design of social media platforms."

And here's the video of one of the scientsts presenting this research at the Nobel Prize Summit!

-Article via The Conversation, August 1, 2023. Video via the Nobel Prize's official Youtube channel, Nobel Prize, posted May 31, 2023.

[omeletcat]

So i was talking to my friends about how sad it is that art and media is seen as content these days, and not as art. mostly just to consume adn then scroll past, and i was thinking hey wouldn't it be cool if people had their own little websites? people used to do this but now everything is done on big platforms. and i had this cool idea of a website that hosts little websites that you can customize and instead of having a feed, you'd share websites YOU like on your own website so people look around!!!!

and then my friend told me THIS ACTUALLY EXCISTS

ITS CALLED NEOCITIES

ITS A FREE WEBSITE, ITS OPEN SOURCE, NO ADS BECAUSE ITS 100% DONATION FUNDED AND ITS BEAUTIFULL

ITS ALL I EVER WANTED, its a perfect space to set up all you're creative endevours and art! to make galleries or to just have your own website!!!

but some people do INSANELY cool things on here!! like

They made a beautifull and unique website thats fun to explore! just messing around clicking on stuff brings you to unique and interesting places!!!!

it is perfection, look at how interesting it is!!!!! there is even more that i couldnt fit into 1 screenshot.

compare this to the boring websites you scroll on daily, wouldnt you much rather find and explore websites like these? i feel it would be much more rewarding to "explore" artists, then to scroll past them. you genuinely have to DO something to enjoy it and thats amazing.

the only thing that is holding Neocities back is the fact you have to know a bit of html and css to make a website BUT THATS SUPER EASY TO LEARN!!!!

SO GO NOW, MAKE YOUR OWN CUTE AND COOL AND INTERESTING WEBSITE PLEASE, LETS GO BACK TO A TIME WHERE WEBSITES LOOKED COOL AND INTERESTING

ALSO FOLLOW MY WEBSITE I ONLY JUST STARTED SO ITS SHIT BUT THATS THE BEAUTY OF IT

TO REPEAT ONE LAST TIME, A FREE, ADLESS, OPEN SOURCE, WEBSITE HOSTING PLATFORM, THAT LETS YOU MAKE AND HOST YOUR OWN WEBSITE FOR FREE, WITH A COOL AND UNIQUE COMMUNITY

[aewon]

yang jungwon- ache for you

jw x f!reader ☯︎ fluff, angst ☯︎ cursing, suggestive ☯︎ wc 842 ☯︎ not proofread

You considered Jungwon one of your close friends, having grown up next to each other and your families being close.

Where you were, he was.

And you hate to admit it, but over time, you grew to have a crush on him.

You can’t help it! He’s grown to be such a good person, not to mention handsome.

You’re certainly not the only one either.

It’s almost everyday you hear one girl or another talking about Jungwon.

You know they envy you for being close to him, but even so, you think he only sees you as a friend.

So, you’ve kept your feelings secret.

There have been numerous times where you’ve wanted to confess, but chickened out every time.

You can’t help but swoon whenever Jungwon talks about you to others, which is why when you hear him mention your name, you can’t help but listen around the corner of the hallway.

“She’s so fucking annoying. I get we’ve been friends since we were kids but it’s like I can never escape her. She’s always there, always clinging to me somehow, I wish she’d just back off.”

You feel your heart crack as you take in his words.

Is this how he’s felt about you all along? Or was this a recent feeling?

Either way, tears prick your eyes as you take a step back.

Without warning, someone turns the corner, coming into direct contact with you.

You look up and see Jungwon, a confused look on his face.

He sees the tears in your eyes and knows.

“Y/N…I-”

You put a hand up, telling him to stop.

Turning around, you begin walking away.

“Y/N, wait!”

His hand makes contact with your shoulder, but you shrug it off.

Making your way into the girls bathroom, somewhere he can’t follow you, you sit on the sink and let the tears flow, trying not to make any noise.

Jungwon stands outside the bathroom, trying to coax you to come out and talk to him.

Only when the bell rings do you hear footsteps leaving the area.

You freshen yourself up, splashing some cold water on your face before heading to class.

You spend the next few days completely avoiding Jungwon who is still attempting to talk to you.

Why? You’re giving him what he wanted.

He even came to your house, asking to see you but you told your parents you didn’t want to see him, to their surprise.

They begged you to tell them what happened but you refused.

Despite everything, you don’t want Jungwon getting into trouble.

Jungwon feels like his world is crashing down.

He knows that what he said was true, he did feel suffocated by you, but he didn’t go about it the right way.

He only started feeling this way recently, wanting space from you for a while.

No, he doesn’t hate you, he just wanted to spend some time apart.

Now he feels terrible for what he’s done.

He didn’t miss the side eye your parents gave him, wanting to know why their daughter refused to see him. He wanted to confess, tell the truth but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

As he lays in bed after another unsuccessful day of trying to talk to you, he thinks about the past 18 years of his life.

You’ve always been there, by his side through everything.

And now, he’s possibly ruined everything.

Jungwon reevaluates everything.

Why did he say what he said?

Because he felt suffocated by your presence.

But why?

He’d never had a problem until recently.

As he scrolls through your instagram, he looks at your most recent post.

You’re beautiful, you always have been.

Even at a young age, Jungwon thought you were pretty.

You’ve grown into an amazing, beautiful young woman.

He feels an ache in his heart at the thought of losing you.

He thinks about you, about your smile, your laugh.

Without realizing, he’s begun to ache somewhere other than his heart.

Looking down, he groans.

Now he has to go take a cold shower.

The next morning, you make your way to school, headphones in not hearing the footsteps behind you.

Jungwon throws himself in front of you, grabbing your shoulders so you stop.

Looking up at him, you try not to lean into his touch that you’ve missed so much.

“What,” you say, giving him a cold stare.

“I realized why I said what I said. It’s because I’m so infatuated with you, that I thought pushing you away would push my feelings away. I love you and I’m sorry.”

You freeze up under Jungwon’s hold, processing his confession.

“What?”

“I. Love. You.”

You feel tears begin to cascade down your cheeks, yet this time they’re not sad tears.

“Jungwon, you idiot.”

“I know,” he pulls you into a hug.

Wrapping your arms around him, you squeeze him tightly.

He pulls away, cupping your face and kissing you gently.

You kiss back, sighing in content.

When you walk into school, hands intertwined, you feel revived.

sorry for not posting for so long, hehe

tagging @pshbites cause she wanted me to ☺️

[sreegs]

gonna start this post upfront by saying tumblr's fuckin up bad with moderation right now, regarding the wave of trans people being targeted. but i'm not here to discuss that issue, i'm going to talk about the nature of large and small social spaces on the internet

as this post rightly points out, examining our existing social network structure reveals the crux of the problem: we are tenants on someone else's service. extrapolating from that, we're the source of revenue for someone's business. under that model, there is no incentive whatsoever for a social network to apply a "fair" or "just" moderation scheme. their goal is to maximize the number of people using the service and minimize blowback from advertisers regarding "what goes on" on the site

there will not be an alternative social network that gets this right at scale, unless it meets the following criteria:

1. Has ample moderators to thoughtfully deal with user moderation cases

2. Has terms of service that you agree with

3. Has a moderation team that understands how to apply moderation according to the terms of service, and amends it when necessary

4. Does not rely on external income source to pay for the site

Number 1: An ideal social network is one that has numerous, well-treated moderators who are adept at resolving conflict. Under capitalism, this is a non-starter, as moderation is seen as a money sink that just needs to be barely enough to make the site usable.

Number 2: An ideal social network has terms of service you agree with. Unfortunately there's no set of rules everyone will find fair. While this is not a problem for the people who want to use the site, it will inevitably create an outgroup who are pushed away from the site. The obvious bad actors (nazis, terfs, etc) are pretty straightforward, but there are groups that do things you might find "unpleasant" even if you support their right to do it. Inevitably this turns into lines drawn in the sand about how visible should that content be.

Number 3: An ideal social network has moderators who have internalized the terms of service and consistently make decisions based on the TOS. If a situation comes up where there's no clear ruling in the TOS, but users need a moderation decision regarding it, the moderation team must choose how to act and then, potentially, amend the TOS if the case warrants it. Humans, though, are not robots, and no, AI is not the solution here jesus christ. There will always be variance in moderation decisions. And when it comes to amending the TOS, who's the decision maker? The sites' owners? The moderation team? Users as a whole?

Number 4: An ideal social network does not rely on an external income source to pay for the site. The site pays for itself, and its income flow covers the costs necessary with reserves for unexpected situations. Again, under capitalism this is a no-go, because a corporate social network's only goal is to maximize money. Infinite growth, not stasis. A private social network paid by members requires enough paying members to be sustainable, and costs will generally go up over time, not down. A social network that has some lump sum of cash just generating wealth is also unreliable because, first you need a large lump sum to begin with, and that mechanism is tied to the whims of the investment market. And, again, costs of the site will go up, not down.

As you've read through these you're probably reaching the conclusion: making a large-scale social network that is fair and sustainable is very, very difficult, if not impossible with our current culture and economic systems. There might be a scale where you can reach "almost fair" and "barely sustainable", but then you have to cap its growth.

So the "town square" social network is rife with problems and we need to abandon it's model as the ideal network. Should we go small instead? We have a model already for that with message boards and forums. Though they weren't without their problems, they didn't have the scale that exacerbated those problems to crisis levels. Most of the time.

If you're thinking maybe you need a small network like this, free from a corporate owner (like Discord), the tools are out there for you to accomplish it. However, before you try, keep the above points in mind. Even if you're not out to create a large-scale social network, an open network will run away from you. And all of those points above are guidelines for a good online community.

You and your network of 50 friends and friends of friends might all get along together, but every single person you add increases the risk of creating moderation problems. People also change, or simply have episodes of irrational behavior. You need a dedicated team of moderators who are acting coherently for and agreeably to the community.

And you absolutely must keep this in mind: inevitably, as you add more people, someone will do vile shit. CSAM and violence type shit. You have to be prepared to encounter it. You have to have a plan to see and handle that, and the moderators who are part of your moderation team must be prepared to see and handle it too.

There's been a steady trickle of new alternative social networks (or social media networks) popping up, but you cannot expect those to be perfect havens. Tumblr was once the haven for weirdos on the internet. Now it's hostile to its core members. This is not trying to rationalize staying here because "hey, it could be worse". This is just trying to warn you to temper your expectations, especially because new networks that suddenly get a huge influx of new members hit a critical point where many falter, change, or fail.

Examine who's running those networks closely. Think critically about what they're touting as the benefits of those networks. And if you decide to join them, do not, under any case, expect those new homes to be permanent.