Forget growth, lets enjoy what we have
There is a huge emphasis I see on just growing community size and creating an alternative to reddit.
Back in the day we used to hang out in irc chats with 5-10 active users or forums with few thousand users max. I made friends there I visted across countries. Years after Id log in and people would ask how you've been.
I had a reddit account for over 10 years and I dont think a single person would recognize my username. Its always felt like people aren't talking to you but trying to appeal to the whole audience for points. Reddit exploits our psychology for attention but nothing humane is gained there. The super massive "community" ends up as a void where 99% of posts go completely unseen and any discussions suffer heavily from mod mentalities.
If this a place where even just ten people call home but feel good doing so, that is more good than a million being miserable. Maybe the best alternative is not to be reddit altogether.
Besides, good things have a natural tendency to spread, we don't need to focus on it.
Tinder. It was and probably still is, a great place to work. One day at the height of BLM, someone posted an article how another one of Match's companies was removing ethnicity filters in their app to keep out racists. I said wait, who are we to making these kind of societal decisions? Why are we removing users personal decisions because we don't like it? It turned out into a huge argument but it got me really thinking. Were not philosophers, sociologists, etc. Its a couple people from a very certain background making decisions that affect millions of people globally. Who are we to decide?
Then I thought about the fact that these kind of decisions were not even made for ethical reasons (which I don't even trust them to get correct), but were fueled entirely by money. Every single decision was entirely based on how much money it earns Tinder, with zero regard as to how it affects its users, in a very personal and important aspect of their lives. All the KPIs were money, internal projects called "Project Whale", zero discussions on relationships, experiments to get users addicted to the app as possible, etc.
If there ever was a decision that would help people but would compromise profits, profits will win, and if there ever is a concern that a decision is hurting users, it wont ever enter into the discussion.
Reddit, facebook, Tinder, Twitter, etc is all the same in this regard. Corporate tech is a terrible future.
Damn, I knew dating apps were a shitshow and that corporations rigged them to make them as addictive as possible, but this is a whole another level of sinister. Tinder is known for being engineered from the ground up to keep people dependent on it with all sorts of dark patterns and obscure algorithms. This is just a reflection on how big tech's business model is ruining Internet and society as a whole.
There is nothing explicitly sinister there. I liked everyone there, everyone was really nice. In a sense that highlights the issue that this is an inherent problem with corporations. No one was explicitly trying to do harm, in fact people were trying to do good in terms of bringing saftey for women, advertising for racial/trans equality, etc. The problem I see is everyone is so focused on growing the platform and profits, that no one is thinking about what theyre doing wrong.
There are no explicit algorithmic tricks either, and there doesnt even need to be. The matching algorithm is actually dead on simple. But because the core metrics are profits and user engagement, even the corp running random experiments will end up naturally turning the platform more and more into a cash cow, with no regard or care as to what its doing to people.
What I mean is there doesn't need to be a room full of people thinking about how to exploit peoples psychology to use the app more, just the fact that the core goal of the whole organization is to make money, any actions it takes will naturally lead to that. If there's ever a compromise between humane values or profits, it will be profits.
Very insightful points. You're essentially identifying one of the mechanisms by which capitalism allows people to benefit from unethical behavior without taking responsibility. The corporation is a black box which takes in well intentioned individual work and input, and spits out dystopian corporate products and systems. No one person can be held responsible and the corporation becomes the scapegoat for the collective unethical behaviors of it's constituents.
Most people participate in this transmutation unknowingly, but some sharks fully understand that they can afford to be extremely shady and dodge the consequences through the corporate shield. Thus you end up with perfectly good people who become complicit in horrible shit.
That's why I don't have a job š (But I actually do and that seems worse to admit rn)
Oh one more example.
Tinder advertised a ton globally with the message of "Single, Not Sorry". Does Tinder know if being single is actually good for everyone? Is this a message you'd blatantly tell all your friends without knowing them? If there was a study saying this was harmful, would they care enough, cut back and tell people to use the app less/more considerably? No because like I said, if it interferes with profits, these kind of considerations will never be talked about.
Few other things. We released a feature where you pay $3 to see if someone responded to you, and the other user would know. Clearly you're fucking yourself over doing that but they don't care. We released a feature where you can see if someone is online, because it increases engagement.
You'd never see shit like this in any organization or community run by people.
You're goddamn right. I've been single until very recently for a real long while and I didn't enjoy it at all. Profit driven business and infinite growth is harming everything.
How the fuck can you paywall LIKES? Tinder seems not too different to gacha games and lootboxes. This is why I'm so blatant on actually moving to federated services. These do not need to be run by megacorps since costs can be distributed through instances.
Small services that aren't federated eventually become too expensive to run and that's why I dislike Tildes in favor of Kbin/Lemmy. What is the next step? You already know.
Me too, really hoping this stuff works out.