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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   35715 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 20, 2025

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I think some of this was inevitable as social norms became established, but Facebook definitely missed the chance to shape those differently. I know quite a few who, say, don't post pictures of their kids on the internet. I don't think they could have prevented anyone from adopting that norm, but they could have tried to make it feel "safe" to share things before the last decade of, I dunno, whatever this has been. No amount of "Trust and Safety" can restore naivety, but maybe we could have been let down more gently.

The norms that existed before became the issue. Facebook didn’t implement any sort of system to separate your social networks. If you posted to “friends” anyone you friended could see it. So you couldn’t keep your coworkers from finding out about your drinking binge or your granny from seeing your post that’s slightly racy and meant for your twenty-something friends. The norm that developed was “only post stuff you’d tell your boss about and feel comfortable talking about in front of granny” because they could see it. Of course this creates a fairly safe-space vibe where only the most boring stuff gets posted and you have to be absolutely on your office manners the whole time.

The fun part of social media is that on a really good space, you get to be yourself. You don’t have to worry about what someone will report to the boss and so on. Facebook sucks because it’s basically part of a social network score alongside your credit score that determines how well you fit in mainstream social structures.

Google Plus at the time tried to make "circles" happen, but that lost to network effects and IMO explicitly separating your social networks is more work than it sounds like. Which I think explains why people are adopting different networks for different content: think LinkedIn versus a Discord between gaming buddies. Or my pseudonymous shiteffortposting account here. Although some still shout unprofessional takes into the Ether with their real names.

Yeah, I remember thinking that Google Plus had some good ideas, but it was just too much work to use it properly. It's easier and more natural to just think like "LinkedIn is for work, Instagram is for hot pics, twitter is for politics." Facebook is for baby pics and connecting to my elderly relatives.

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