Social Media is broken. Can we fix it?
youtu.be
Most people agree that Social Media is broken and that we need to find new solutions. Max DeMarco embarked on a journey to find out more about a new invention called NOSTR. This is his documentary about that journey and his interview with key players.
I've actually been on Nostr myself a few months (and did my own video about it). As with most alternative networks, you see who you put in your feed.
Watch at https://youtu.be/aA-jiiepOrE
My own anthropological pet theory.
Dunbar's number is the concept that a person can only have so many meaningful relationships. Another way of thinking about it is that we, as a species, feel most comfortable in tribes with a certain number of people.
Which makes sense. I hated, hated the little rednecky town that I grew up in. But when I moved to a larger city, the first few weeks were spent overcoming the loneliness of not knowing everybody around me.
What massive online social media does is essentially short circuit the behavior that we developed when we began urbanizing.
Now a person can be a member of twenty tribes without ever needing to leave their homes. If we are, in fact, only capable of a finite number of close friendships then every close relationship that you have online is energy that won't be spent on a physical one.
True story: I left Facebook in 2016. I had been miserable but didn't even think to relate the two. About a month after I jumped ship I got adopted by a group of fellow nerds nearing midlife. We hang out at least twice per week. Pub trivia, bowling, hiking. Those interactions are so much more meaningful than anything you can get on social media. By our nature, humans crave physical company.
Social media isn't going to "break" us. But, if nothing changes, it will further dramatically alter society.
Well I'm on 17 social networks but yes it does not make me suddenly happier. But like alcohol, fear of heights, firearms, etc I think social media affects different people in different ways. I use them more for sharing knowledge than any actual "friendships".
Nostr? Isn't that just for crypto bros, Nazis, and Jack Dorseys?
I checked it out once and the chats I dropped into were all about people giving each other "sats" (nanobitcoins) and there were also some far-right weirdos.
Conceptually it seems kinda neat but if somebody says they're a big fan of nostr I'm gonna wonder about them
Yes, it does have Sats if you want to use those to get tips. But it is not required in any way to use the network. What you see depends on who you follow. So I don't follow Jack. For those who want to tip, or receive, Sats is better tan using your own credit card I reckon.
Lol no I'm not buying cryptocurrency so I can give or receive microdollars for tweets
Your link is missing, FYI. We're currently discussing a Getty collage.
That is really weird. OK fixed that now in the OP I hope. The pity is this video does not really go into the actual mechanics of how Nostr works, and that was what got me interested in it (as my 17th social network). I did this video myself at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSyMCJlSwA after trying it out, to help highlight the actual differences as I understood them.
Which issue are they trying to solve? The censoring and control issue goes away with federated systems but there is the cost of having a running network. The corporate networks charge you the fee of personal info so it doesn't cost actually money.
In all honesty the biggest issue I see is that social media eventually leads to us seeing what most of society is really like... boring, bigoted and stupid. This exists everywhere, it's only that smaller networks like Lemmy just dont have the numbers to make those issues be so prominent.
Reminds me a little bit of Tragedy of the commons.
Right? Stuff from the "old days" is still popular and usable. We can still email people, create private groups on WhatsApp/Signal/whatever to avoid algorithms, and subscribe to blogs by RSS (or email newsletter if unsupported, usually). In fact, it's never been easier.
Just delete Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever and move on.
Well, I'd certainly see it still more like ActivityPub. Only different is there are no actual login servers. You get 8 default relay servers that help relay your messages, and there are over 200 I think. Nostr is a different way of doing ActivityPub, but your identity stays with you (not on a server). A week after I tried it, I did this video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSyMCJlSwA trying to explain some of the differences and similarities (like I did before for Lemmy, Mastodon, etc).
Sure there are differences but my question was really about what the new problem they are trying to solve. The local storage of your identity seems to he that big thing and I wonder who was asking for this. Seems like more of a nuisance than anything else, having to manage that data yourself.
How is this different to ActivityPub protocol that the fediverse uses? Seems like its trying to accomplish very similar things? Like how KBin and Lemmy can interact with the same content and have different layouts, apps, etc.
I suppose it's good to have alternative protocols for decentralized communication, but wouldn't it be better to focus on one and put more effort into improving it?
I tried to explain that in my own video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mSyMCJlSwA. This documentary did not really go into that. But in summary they don't have servers to log into where your ID is kept. You own your identity/profile and that stays on the client side. Every post is cryptographically signed so it is your post that no-one can alter. You send posts to a usual default of about 8 relays that pass posts on to who is following you. If one relay blocks you, or disappears, there are hundreds of others. So there is no server to delete your posts. But don't lose your public/.private key as then you've lost your access to your profile. There is no password reset by a server owner. They actually do have a bridge relay with ActivityPub so I was able to follow and reply to some Mastodon users.
Thanks for the clarification! That does make it more interesting than just an ActivityPub clone
It has some technical differences but it is basically the same. I think the Fediverse is too far ahead for it to ever catch on. I don't think enough people care about extreme censorship resistance.
Why would we? Do we actually need it? I feel like it has done more damage to society than actually being useful...
Solutions for what? Algorithmically driven "content", made by people who don't care about the material they're churning out, as long as it gets them in front of eyeballs and lines their pockets?
The problem with social media, tech, and most of our other ills in society, is capitalism. Greed. MegaCorpX isn't building a social platform so that you can have a community. They're doing it to make money. You're just a cog in that machine for them, but they make YOU feel like you can be the star of it, and exploit you in the process. Along with it you create parasocial relationships that make literally no one happy, a fertile platform for mobs and harassment, constant self image issues, FOMO, doomscrolling, etc. etc. Not to mention giving a platform to bigots, white supremacists, nazis, etc., and feeding those ideologies, all while pretending like you have to let them be there because of "free speech" or "town square/public commons/whatev"
Social media is a MASSIVE net negative, and the answer shouldn't be "how do we make new ones after the old ones collapse?", but rather "how to we move on from the idea that social media is necessary, and just let it die?"