zlacker

>>pseudo+(OP)
I live in an immediate suburb of Boston, and joined Nextdoor and joined to see what features were attracting so many folks to a new social media platform. Wow! Anyone with a tattoo, going to your door for any reason was considered "suspicious" and reported. One alarming thing, is that NextDoor is feeding on our fears about outsiders who look different, and creating a loop out of this for higher engagement when people post pictures and engage their camera feed.

It's too bad, I think idea of organizing a social network based on proximity and centered around community information is a viable idea, It's just that NextDoor is doing that with our worst instincts.

>>wespis+8g
> I think idea of organizing a social network based on proximity and centered around community information is a viable idea

NextDoor and Craigslist and Reddit's /r/{city} communities just prove that it may be viable but it's pretty undesirable. I think it's best to not give the most neurotic, ill people of your community the loudest voice, but these social networks also create this neuroticism and illness.

You also create a scenario (NextDoor especially) where all the sane people are driven out by the crazies. Back when NextDoor was new, after a year it would come up in conversation and sure enough, anyone normal would admit they tried it and had to delete it.

Social media is messing us up. I don't think we're missing some new take on it that's going to make it all better. I think the vestigially tribal parts of our brain make it a non-starter. We need to get back to the face-to-face -- it seems to be the only way we keep in mind that there's a human at the other end of the line, not some nebulous automaton that we craft into everything we hate in the world.

>>hombre+Zp
>> I think it's best to not give the most neurotic, ill people of your community the loudest voice.

People say that it's the outliers but the reality is that in many cases, this is the silent majority driving the behavior.

>>icelan+5r
Good point. I actually added a sentence to that to clarify: I think this kind of social media only bolsters and broadly spreads (if not creates) that neuroticism and illness.

Frankly I just don't think we can handle social media. We're trying to do this whole technological civilization thing and we've made progress that is absolutely mind bending, but it wasn't long ago that we were using fur and bones and would only meet 100 people our entire life. And our brains are still there mentally, lagging behind the rest of our progress.

>>hombre+Gr
IRC, Slashdot, niche communities hosted on phpnuke instances, free/open source software. The early 2000s convinced me the power of sharing knowledge freely online would solve many of society’s problems.

I still can’t reconcile just how wildly wrong i was. I didn’t appreciate that it’s not common to want to know truth, common is titillation and tribalism - which always existed anyway, it’s not that the internet increased it or made it more popular, it’s that i was a geek hacking away in my bedroom and didn’t see much of real society.

Although my biggest hangup contrasting then vs now is that Microsoft is my favourite tech company these days.

>>CraigJ+6z
>> I still can’t reconcile just how wildly wrong i was.

You weren't wrong. Sharing knowledge freely absolutely solved many of society's problems.

It uh... created a few more too...

Wouldn't be so hard on your past self.