Iran's blogfather: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are killing the web

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/29/irans-blogfather-facebook-instagram-and-twitter-are-killing-the-web

by jameslk • 5 years ago

134 52 5 years ago

anoncow• 5 years ago

So true. Endless distractions taking up countless man-hours.

marcinzm• 5 years ago

So? You can argue that this form of distraction doesn't bring net-happiness but what is wrong with pointless distractions that make people happy? Before this we had TV and before that Radio and before that Books and so on and so on.

DoingIsLearning• 5 years ago

I genuinely dislike Apple but their CEO has just shared some insights that very much go against your premise of social networks as just another harmless entertainment industry.

"At a moment of rampant disinformation and conspiracy theories juiced by algorithms, we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that says all engagement is good engagement -- the longer the better -- and all with the goal of collecting as much data as possible"

"What are the consequences of seeing thousands of users join extremist groups, and then perpetuating an algorithm that recommends even more?"

"Will the future belong to the innovations that make our lives better, more fulfilled and more human? Or will it belong to those tools that prize our attention to the exclusion of everything else, compounding our fears and aggregating extremism, to serve ever-more-invasively-targeted ads over all other ambitions?"

JohnJamesRambo• 5 years ago

Those things weren’t proven over and over again to lead to massive depression and mental health issues.

TV ok somewhat bad but not all bad. It made us all on the same page, believing the same facts and entertained. Radio had to be pretty much all good. A kid listening to old radio shows laying in front of the console was in pure heaven. Facebook, etc. is purely detrimental to humanity like cigarettes or meth.

I’d post the references but there are simply too many. I’ve never seen a study that didn’t find Facebook, Twitter, etc. detrimental to mental health.

sudosysgen3• 5 years ago

Radio, books and TV often bring a lot more intellectual development and perspective than engagement-optimized content.

sn_master2• 5 years ago

And only accepted speech is allowed. No longer your own private blog space to say whatever you wanted..

tomjakubowski• 5 years ago

Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have had content moderation from the beginning. They're just like web forums. They were never "private blog spaces to say whatever you wanted". There's been a "Report" button on all these sites for years.

Even Myspace routinely banned users and groups over content issues. Here's one from 2008. https://web.archive.org/web/20111011112224/http://www.secula...

bartart• 5 years ago

I wonder how many of his original blog's visitors were just bots. Also social networks have really lowered the barrier to entry for posting your thoughts online. The marketplace of ideas is much more crowded.

asciident• 5 years ago

That seems a bit unfair to jump to thinking about bots, as he noted he had a lot of engaged visitors that commented and sent him emails.

While the marketplace is more crowded, the number of markets has shrink. To continue your analogy, each marketplace vender used to be its own market, so you had a lot of options. Now there were really only 2-4 giant marketplaces, and vendors with a good location have made it really difficult to set up shop.

aminozuur2• 5 years ago

I too am Persian. But I don't think we can blame Facebook for making a consistent user experience, where people can get whatever information/memes they want, sorted algorithmically to the users' taste.

StavrosK• 5 years ago

Can you blame tobacco companies for making something so addictive and harmful? It seems like we can and do.

polynomial4• 5 years ago

That's the beauty of it. Harm from smoking is considered (by most accounts) objectively, medically, measurably bad. Harm from social media addiction isn't quantified in terms of cancer and death.

"No one ever died from browsing Facebook" is likely false, but would be generally accepted as arguably true. "No one ever died because of Facebook" should be understood to be obviously untrue to a well-informed person.

codetrotter• 5 years ago

sorted algorithmically to the users' taste

But Facebook isn’t even doing that. They are optimizing for “engagement”, and for keeping people on the site so they can serve more ads to them.

Just because they are highly effective at this does not mean they serve what we really would like to see.

This is why I stopped browsing Facebook a long time ago. The only reason I have an account still is for people that talk to me on Messenger, and for occasionally checking on upcoming events. Now in the Corona pandemic I haven’t even had a reason to check on upcoming events so I haven’t almost gone onto Facebook at all.

Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, is doing a better job however, at providing me with content that I am interested in. So even though I dislike Facebook as a company I am actively using Instagram almost daily still.

aminozuur2• 5 years ago

"They are optimizing for “engagement”"

How else would they know which pages, friends, posts, you want to see the most?

Nasrudith2• 5 years ago

Who the hell /doesn't/ optimize for engagement with a popular publication? Nobody. The metrics for engagement vary by publication and may be more base or positive but they all do it by definition. I thought we already learned that from Yellow Journalism and all of the stupid moral panics like Rainbow Parties, Satanic Ritual Abuse, and Y2K fearmongering that didn't remotely make any sense even if every computer affected bricked itself.

Kye• 5 years ago

(2015)

Bakary2• 5 years ago

His blogging golden age was in reality a time where there were simply far fewer users in general, and they were far more likely to be the type to seek out this sort of content and the activist relationship with the online world that he describes.

Most people aren't really interested in that sort of discourse, or in changing the world, or in intellectual biodiversity and alternate views. The web wasn't killed by companies, it selected the companies that catered most to what most people actually want out of the web.

He confuses his loss of status as a sign of the web's destruction but it is more a case of failing to capture the interest of changing demographics.

emilsedgh• 5 years ago

This is absolutely the correct read into this. Kudos for seeing this matter so clearly.

tomaszs• 5 years ago

It is tempting to discuss demographics, however it is still true there is a group of people, that still enjoys reading, and this part is left behind by social media.

Since you can not link from insta and tiktok, you can not share longer meaningful articles. And even if you do, external links are ranked lower by social media platforms.

Maybe, authors should create videos, however it seems people who have important things to say shy from video form. The question is if really video is the right choice for valuable content, or is not.

Personally I think it is not a right medium for valuable content, therefore social media lacking features supporting text are just forcing not only enthusiastic readers, but also new demographics to consume brain fast-food.

And it really is sad considering how much value has the Internet. I am thus glad that this place still exists.

nicbou• 5 years ago

There are still places to share those links, places that didn't exist before, and that reach a larger demographic.

Blogging is getting a smaller share of a much larger pie, but in absolute terms, it's not going anywhere.

graeme• 5 years ago

Pretty much everyone I followed as a blogger circa 2006-08 is still writing. Generally they’ve moved on to greater prominence. A substantial chunk of them are on substack now.

You don’t have blogrolls anymore nor a blogosphere, but the writers are all there. It’s just those of us who follow that are now a tiny fraction of users. But the rewards to that kind of writing have actually increased.

Bakary2• 5 years ago

I don't think it's a zero-sum game where people would consume quality, in-depth content if not for the existence the shallow sort.

These authors you describe could try to change the format for a broader audience, but their work would still be fundamentally uninteresting to the latter. Even if there were very few alternative options available, most people would still not generally pursue an interest in such content. The current torrent of content that they do like just turns what is already a very unlikely proposition with perfect conditions into a near impossibility.

The underlying mechanism is that the group you describe as still enjoying reading doesn't have much use for social media to begin with. It's not just them being left behind, but rather having better options elsewhere for what they want to experience. I would go as far as to say that social media is probably anathema to them as it runs against many of their core ideals and instincts.

But let's be honest: most content defined as high-quality in direct opposition to what is found on social media is often not that insightful or actually helpful in shaping lives for the better. I believe it is a trap to consider HN as better than brain fast-food, to name one example.

osacial• 5 years ago

That is too simplified look about what he is complaining about.

Internet in current state doesn't offer meaningful way for humans to communicate and connect with each other - it has turned from Agora into a dog walking space with erected poles to urinate on them - that is a great way to communicate for dogs, but a really big setback from the hopes that internet initially gave(for humans).

facebook demographics has changed a lot as well - it is getting popularity in non-English speaking world, but it is on a path of decline. I do not use facebook(and many friends are off facebook as well), but my mother interestingly does use facebook a lot, because it is a great tool to do marketing - even if the marketing consists of spreading ideas. The problem about mentioned social apps is that facebook, twitter, instagram can't be treated as something more than tools for marketing and approaching them as communication tools is a failure. Blogs initially offered more as a tools for communication, though most of them nowadays have evolved into online TV, to better serve the audience. Even some journalist I was following and reading articles now does regular podcast on youtube - though most of the reason for it is that this way is easier to earn money.

"The web wasn't killed by companies, it selected the companies that catered most to what most people actually want out of the web." That is false statement from the marketing point of view, where people actually do not know what they want. There are many clones of apps out there and even with better functionality and all the problems fixed that are present on current apps an we can wonder why no one uses them... There are also too many examples of how some of the great companies were killed off by intent and has nothing to do with how web is functioning whatsoever.

nine_k• 5 years ago

But the old ways of communication haven't gone anywhere.

There are still blogs, in a better shape than ever, with Patreon or Substack to help financially support them.

There are still forums for specific topics, standalone, as subreddits, all the way to stackexchange.

Three is a ton of IMs for any taste, as decentralized as you may want.

Even the old Fidonet is born again as Mastodon, you can run your own node, or take a "point" on an existing node.

The thing is, of course, that 99% of the audience are in the swamps of Facebook, or in the gladiator arena of Twitter, or the beauty contest of Instagram.

These 99% were not online in 1993. They have little interest in blogs, forums, detailed discussions on deep topics, botherations about privacy, any technical details. They just want to talk to their relatives, share some vacation photos, listen to music, watch videos of funny cats. This is the norm. This is fine.

When the 99% moved in, the old internet did not disappear, it just was shown the scale: "nerds" (not necessarily computer nerds) vs "the rest of the population".

Deal with it.

sidpatil• 5 years ago

(2015)

zoobab2• 5 years ago

Twitter and Facebook have been filtering the content they don't like, like the Assange trial reports:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/10/people-need-...

We need a way to end this TOS feudalism.

mro_name• 5 years ago

indieweb.org/POSSE for the masses?

foxhop• 5 years ago

If you run a blog and are considering adding comments to allow for discourse outside of social media, checkout out my software and service called https://www.remarkbox.com/ I made it pay-what-you-can today. works anywhere that supports HTML.

tomComb• 5 years ago

In a different vein, Twitter is actually pretty good in that it really embraces the web (links), whereas Facebook tries to replace the web and keep you in is proprietary platform.

Maybe that's why Facebook makes so much more money.

djohnston• 5 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean, FB doesn't do anything to URLs except occasionally add a thumbnail preview if you post it. Google is the one trying to kill URLs with their AMP garbage.

raviisoccupied• 5 years ago

Facebook and LinkedIn are well known for de-emphasising posts with links to external websites in their users' feeds.

Iran's blogfather: Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are killing the web

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