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naraburns  nihil supernum  3yr ago (text post)   35041 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022

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Everyone wants to be where everyone else is, and once everyone is somewhere, how do they get to be somewhere else?

Worth noting that we've seen people move platforms before. In particular.

  1. Digg to Reddit. It wasn't instantaneous, but it says something that we talk about Reddit, not Digg, in our own history.

  2. Facebook to other platforms (Youtube/Instagram/Snapchat). This was primarily young people who left for, among other things, a place where their parents weren't going to switch to as easily. Especially with Snapchat, having a place where the default is that nothing lasts is godsend to teenagers who do things they don't want adults knowing about.

Fundamental differences do exist people platforms (Facebook/Twitter are text, Insta/Snapchat are pictures, Youtube/TikTok are video), and these can be enough to drive people between them. Not to mention that these platforms appeared at roughly the same time mobile phones became miniature computers in their own right.

Didn't Digg fuck up somehow? I was old enough to kind of remember that happening, but too young to really be participating at that time. And how could you forget to mention MySpace to (The) Facebook? Instagram definitely took a bite out of FB, which is why they were bought, but Snap and YouTube are completely unrelated IMO. Snap is so marginal and YouTube, in my mind, is really the king of Social Media.

Digg fucked up, yes, and it triggered enough of a mass response that people just shifted to Reddit.

I used Snap as an example of what can motivate people to leave. It's feature of not permanently retaining posts and allowing users to select who sees their stuff is appealing to some people.

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