this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
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I don't think the reddit, twitter, etc will "die" the way most people expect them to. (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by eu8@lemmy.world to c/general@lemmy.world
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I do think they will essentially die. They will morph into completely different websites, but I think they will be around for a long time, and I think their userbase won’t shrink even a bit.

Big websites are slowly adopting the facebook model: All the content is hidden and requires you login to view it. Creating an account requires some sort of personally identifying information like a phone number, photo of ID, mailing address, etc.

The old model simply turned out to be unprofitable. It was always done under the motto of “bring the people and the money will come” and so they made it as easy as possible to build up a large user base, but it turns out that motto is false on the internet, and investors have finally realized it. There is no point in having a massive user base if they don’t actually generate a profit for you. Anonymous internet users do not do this. They are indistinguishable from bots. If they don’t use adblock, they don’t click on ads. They don’t donate money. Yet they use up the majority of the server resources.

It used to be that you at least needed anonymous users to generate content for you, but (in part thanks to facebok) non-anonymous usage of the internet has become normalized. If anything the best content will come from someone who has their real name, and profile picture attached to the content they submit. The anonymous nobody is much less likely to post anything valuable.

I think the internet as we know it is dead, and tbh I don’t even blame big corporations for this. I blame mass tech illiteracy, and people’s willingness to sacrifice their privacy for some dopamine hits.

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[–] Zeppo@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I agree with some of your conclusions, but not others, and also not the overall concept. Yes, Reddit is not going to die or disappear. Twitter, I'm not sure how it will be thriving in the future, but it will likely still exist.

Essentially your main point is that the style of Facebook, mainly, a walled garden with profiling and targeted advertising, has beat more open commercial models. In terms of profitability, that is true. Companies based on that model, Google and Facebook, have been making a lot more money for years than companies less focused on user identity and advertising, like Reddit and Twitter. As far as whether there is profit in anonymity, I definitely don't agree that non-profiled users are "indistinguishable from bots", but yes, companies can make a lot more by abusing user privacy. Some people are growing tired of this, but not enough or for long enough. I also don't agree that anonymous people are 'nobodies' who don't post anything useful. Some of the most popular members of reddit either have no public identity, or it's superfluous. Did I ever need to see a photo of gallowboob? No. Do I know who PoppinKREME is? No, and I don't need to, other than their content. Anonymous content does make money for social media sites because even if those people had their 'real names' and profile pics, it would make no difference at all. Consumers? Sure, but only because ad profiling and selling data of real identities is more profitable. This is not even close to new as Facebook has been doing that to the tune of billions for over a decade.

Facebook as a product is not really thriving, and the only way Zuckerberg has found to grow his company is to buy and imitate other companies - bought IG, Whatsapp, copied Snapchat, now copied Twitter. I'd call that the Microsoft Model. Microsoft still exists and does quite well, but not to the same extent they did 20 years ago. Time will run out for Zucka when someone makes a new hit product that he can't purchase or copy. We don't know yet what that will be. Another interesting issue is Reddit, Twitter and Facebook have tried to move to charging money monthly vs only advertising.

The internet as we know it is not dead because my internet was not Twitter. I mean, you're posting this on Lemmy. The internet does not have to be about making investors and CEOs billions of dollars.

[–] DogMuffins@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 1 year ago

Agreed. I'll add though, I'm weary of the "internet is dead" rhetoric.

There's a lot more spammy content on the Web now, but all the actual people are still around and still producing content. The only thing that's really changed is where the actual people can be found.