In real life, you gain trust slowly and lose it quickly.
On social media, you gain followers quickly and lose them slowly.
Why is this a desirable outcome? It seems entirely backwards to me.
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31 sats \ 2 replies \ @BitcoinErrorLog 23 Apr
If you lose followers you are losing relevance (or the platform is).
Optimizing for followers is a generalist/popular approach, but specialization is what is valuable. So, I prefer attempting to design ways to connect users with the URLs they are looking for.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr OP 23 Apr
Interesting. Does it make sense to entirely remove the "Follow" button with a design like this? Or does it still serve a purpose on platforms designed for specialization?
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @BitcoinErrorLog 23 Apr
Well, I would (and we have) certainly include a social graph into the design. It's how you deal with sybil/spam/noise inherently (WoT).
Whether to call it "follow" or connect or such matters less when you can also semantically tag your contacts as a another dimension for grouping a filtering URLs.
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10 sats \ 3 replies \ @grayruby 23 Apr
Good observation. I do think you can lose trust on social media quicker than followers. People may no longer trust you but still follow you.
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40 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr OP 23 Apr
Yeah it's a weird dynamic. Every now and then you come across some celebrity who totally implodes and it seems like their follower count doesn't dramatically drop (even though their reputation might).
I guess it might be related to the idea of "there's no such thing as bad press".
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10 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 23 Apr
Do you often unfollow people. I have done it but rarely. Even if I begin to ignore what they are saying.
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20 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 23 Apr
I unfollowed everyone on Twitter a while ago.
The 'For You' algorithm already does a decent job of filtering content for me, and whenever I feel like I've consumed too much social media, I just switch from 'For You' to 'Following', and my entire timeline is blank.
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10 sats \ 3 replies \ @Undisciplined 23 Apr
It probably isn't ideal. I wouldn't assume anything about social media is properly calibrated, yet.
How would you try to change this?
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31 sats \ 2 replies \ @kr OP 23 Apr
Good question, I've been thinking about it all evening and don't have a great idea yet.
I wonder if flipping this switch might help a startup social platform to take on larger players...
One crude way to make social media look a little more like the real world is if the "follow" button required you to click it on multiple posts over multiple days for it to work. Meanwhile the unfollow button would remain a one-click button.
Not a good UX, but you get where I'm going with it.
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52 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined 23 Apr
Most of the ideas that immediately came to mind for me were obviously and dystopianly toxic.
Your idea, or something like it, is interesting. Maybe a web-of-trust could determine how likely the follow is to work.
Building on the Stacker News core premise, perhaps following shouldn't be free. And, further, perhaps following additional people should be increasingly expensive. That at least provides incentive to be conscientious about who you're following.
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29 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 23 Apr
I like your train of thought here
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @Car 23 Apr
I think a name is more important than a follower count or views. That’s usually what I trust first.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @flat24 24 Apr
I do not imagine, at least for a moment the opportunity to be someone public with followers.
I do not imagine the mental burden that a person who lives constantly living looking for ways of being visible and obtaining followers, trying to maintain their relevance. (All this in the rapid world in which we live, where people are shortly and everything is constantly changing) 🤯
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @orangecheckemail_isthereany 23 Apr
One can also think about how micropayment streaming and orange checks could add another dynamic and new fodder for statistics. In addition to thinking in terms of how many followers someone has we could also think in terms of how many incoming payment streams the person has, the volume etc.
Would the latter be more informative for gauging true popularity / real engagement?
I am reminded of the distinction from economics between professed/stated/imagined preference and demonstrated preference.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Nzowashua 23 Apr
For sure its possible to lose influence in social media very quickly, and this actually basing on the series of the content you creat, some times lack of consistency also quickly change of content
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @LibertasBR 23 Apr
On social media, the weight is different. There are followers out of hate, envy and interest, just as there are those who follow because they like and appreciate the other person's work. The scale is different.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Cje95 23 Apr
For me I tend to trust people first before they lose it. Granted I dont tell them everything but I will give them bits and pieces and if it leaks I know its them
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Coinsreporter 23 Apr
While I agree, recently I saw that one of my favourite youtubers had suddenly lost more than 500k followers (down to 2.7M from 3.2M. I'm still trying to figure out what could have caused this massive and rapid loss of followers.
One assumption I made is that YT deliberately slashed the followers. Perhaps Google slashed many inactive gmail accounts.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 23 Apr
That's wild. I've never seen anyone experience a drop like that from being "canceled" or any other viral faux pas, but I can see how a bot-detection algorithm might do that.
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