I wonder if it would be possible to devise a different/better version of LinkedIn?
Could you create a social media platform that takes the positive aspects of LinkedIn (large network of users that are, at least ostensibly, targeting ambition, hard work, and self-improvement) but that leaves behind the accompanying parade of inauthenticity, brand names, buzzwords, tropes, and recycled posts?
I wonder what this would look like? Would it be possible?
One idea… a social media platform where people promote, share, and encourage meaningful projects :)
I'd hoped it might get better when Microsoft bought it; there'd really not be any need to actually turn a profit by resorting to scummy tactics and dark patterns. But it seems to be following more of the Yammer route, where it is still left to muddle along in benign neglect on the same path as pre-acquisition.
I agree - it seems that all social media platforms suffer from this. Original/useful content seems to lose out in the battle for user engagement. I wonder if you could create a new type of social media platform that overcomes this problem?
How are you going to overcome a problem that we are structurally ingraining into our youth? If the kids are on TikTok by 10 years old, you know, this is a losing fight. The next 3-4 generations will not even recognize that there is a severe vanity and narcissism problem.
For me the ideal social media feed would look a lot like Hacker News. Literally every day I find something interesting here. Something technical I didn't know, something new I never heard of, something that makes me think. Rather than social media sites that keep trying to spiral me into their bubbles of things I looked at before. When in fact I come here to see stuff that I didn't know. I don't want more of the same but yet that seems to be considered the holy grail of engagement algorithms.
It's amazing how free sharing works when it's not constantly fiddled with by algorithms. There is user voting of course but I read the 'new' page a lot too.
For me seeing pictures of what friends far away are up to, a la facebook, is actually pretty nice. And twitter is best when a quick thought is linked to a more in-depth article or post. Plus news links to some objective source. And no promoted content. I'm not holding my breath.
In two words: “thoughtful” and “good-faith”. Content should be interesting and thoughtful rather than optimizing for clicks (obviously this isn’t compatible with an ad-based model). Dialog should be civil, charitable, kind, etc and strong norms for objectivity and neutrality. Low tolerance for overt ideological advocacy, authoritarian rhetoric, flame baiting, etc.
That’s “what it should look like”. To get there, I expect it’s “establish the right norms from the start and incentivize the right content and behaviors along the way”. To monetize, I don’t know and I don’t especially care.
Off the top of my head, it would have the tone of Facebook before they allowed public accounts outside of schools and right after they introduced news feed, it would be aggressively moderated, and it would cost enough money per month that people would think twice before engaging in a behavior that led to an account getting banned or using bots. There would be an initial setup fee of at least $100 along with a monthly subscription fee, and getting an account banned would result in a total loss of your payments and deletion of your profile.
* Users would explicitly agree that their profile posts are subject to moderation.
* Profiles would be private and users would be heavily discouraged from using a real name. Friending someone else would require an out of band secret key exchange. A new key would be required to add each person to a group and the entire group would be informed when a new user was added. The only people with real visibility would be the mods.
* There would be no advertising or tracking.
* The service would be located in a country that doesn't immediately bend over for Five Eyes, China, or Russia.
* There would be no org pages or corp accounts.
* Anyone holding public office, running for public office, or affiliated with a political campaign would be explicitly banned from using it at the EULA level. Group pages with more than X members would automatically be flagged for periodic review, and obvious attempts at political organizing for a campaign or movement such as BLM or the Proud Boys (chosen purely as examples of political movements) would result in a ban for all affiliated accounts.
* Egregious (as in obviously intentionally hostile rather than ignorant or inadvertent) racism, sexism, bigotry, etc would result in a ban.
* Any attempt at bullying would result in an immediate ban.
* Any attempt at bulk data collection would result in your account being suspended and flagged for review.
You get the idea. Social networks should be about sharing fun content with your real life social network. They should not be about self promotion, BS drama, politics, disinformation campaigns, advertising, influencing, branding, etc.
I don't think it would work on a platform on which people can organize to bully. That's an advantage of HN, it is hard to build such a community because of the lack of communication between users out of topics.
I pretty much don’t use unmoderated forums. (he said, on an unmoderated forum) But on any forum, the rotting stench of money draws many flies. That’s a lot of the problem.
BYW, how much do I get for posting this valuable wisdom?
You say you haven't seen a single post there that added value to your life. Hypothetically, if you saw a post that DID add value to your life, what would that post(s) look like?
Many post on HN added value to my life, and it happens on a regular basis. As for posts shared on LI, I mainly feel awkward reading them. You know that when someone suddenly got active on LI they either got fired or are looking for prospects. It's just a kind of weird game, more so that people basically have to use their real names and reveal their employment history in order to benefit from the site, so they're particularly vulnerable. Everybody knows this, so they refrain from poking fun at them.
It’s amazing how antithetical this is to requiring real identity.
Proponents say anonymity is the cause of spam and all sorts of unwanted content online. Yet using one’s real identity can end up just being terribly inauthentic.
I never say anything I really think or feel under my real name which isn't utterly benign and uncontroversial. There is a profound sense of unsafeness when you're in full public view like that. It seems almost unavoidable that the end result is almost entirely watered down blathering.
I don't really see any antidote to this in our current environment other than operating as much as possible on platforms allowing pseudonymous accounts. If some unbalanced rando decides they really hate something I said, I'd prefer if they had to jump through at least a hoop or two before being able to tie it to my location or my family.
I use LinkedIn as a professional identity placeholder and online resume for HR groups. I ignore pretty much all the posts because much of what I've sampled has been trash.
I think anonymity is the real key here. It gives power back to those in leveraged positions to be critical when they otherwise wouldn't. Once you connect back to your real identify, you become as leveraged as you really are and act accordingly. You're not going to be as critical of information you really are because socially speaking, you may close off a bridge of opportunity. It becomes this ridiculous networking and social climbing game instead of focusing on content.
Anonymity is a double edged sword because it can certainly be abused and give garbage but I feel like you get better information through anonymity than actual identity. Both require sorting and filtering, one just seems to have more insightful information.
It's not unique to LinkedIn of course. LinkedIn posts often remind me of cringe worthy corporate meetings where you have disjoint groups in the same meeting or disconnected higher level people. It's often in your interest to say nothing at all than be critical, so you get all these sort of ridiculous discussions about nothing where everyone prices each other or some effort. LinkedIn posts embody this worthless grandstanding nothingness--that and just general advertising/marketing. We have a business culture problem, IMO.
It's interesting to see some people feel this way. I don't really filter my views in posts on the web compared to conversations with (not very close) friends. It does feel like that could very well come back and bite me, maybe I'll lose jobs over "supporting hacktivism" or whatever. I guess it's a risk I'm willing to take to share my ideals.
Yes, this depends on many factors, like how strongly you feel about the case, how controversial it is, if you have kids, mortgage and so on.
I'll never forget when many years ago my boss, by that time a CEO of some major publicly traded companies, called me to his office and kindly asked I moderate my Usenet activity on some niche group. It turned out he was a lurker there and foresaw certain things I said might cause problems - it turned out he was right. And that was a long time before the Twitter era.
My bar for adding value to life might be lower than GP's but I do get value-adding posts in my feed. It's basically boring updates from people but made less boring because I know these people.
A friend from a previous job now leads a project for company X. Someone else switched their tech stack to Y. Another person migrates from cloud back to on-prem.
It might have to do with my policy of not adding random people as connections.
I wonder what people consider to be good quality content?