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Comment by ReverseCold | Hacker News Reader

The usefulness of a general "social network" is how many people it has. If I can't find almost everyone I know on it, and they are on a different platform (Facebook) it's easier for me to just use the other platform. People feel like they need it to keep in touch with others they don't see often (or even just others in general).

I personally don't have any major social media accounts, just small ones like HN - but I understand why people feel the need to use larger ones.

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Are general social networks actually useful though? In mature markets, you have a huge chunk of people that have logged off Facebook permanently.

What matters is the people I want to interact with, and in Seattle they are on Mastodon. Not everyone needs to be on it, and frankly if close to everyone were on it you'd potentially drive away a good subset of users. That being said, by design I can retain my feed of friends on Mastodon without fear of some corporation or eternal spring of new users wrecking it.

A lot more common than logging off permanently is logging off except. I've logged off Facebook, except there are some Groups I'd be sad to lose touch with. For some people, they're off Facebook, except there are people they only contact through Messenger. Some are off Facebook except they like to see what Grandma says. As long as there's an 'except', Facebook still has that user.

That's something for Facebook (the company) to fear rather than hold dear, I think.

I too was 'logged off except' a wealth of university-related groups. Then I was 'logged off during' writing up my dissertation, and finally just 'logged off'.

(And now I'm still contributing to user count, while continually thinking I should just log in to delete my account, as I've heard a couple of times from people that thought I was 'on Facebook' or 'what happened to your profile' and maybe more people that think I'm just ignoring them than I'm aware of.)

> Are general social networks actually useful though

I'm not a big Facebook user, but my parents have been caught up in the bush fires currently raging in Australia and got cut off from power and internet (no power for satellite internet, and the mobile mast ran out of backup power), and finding a local Facebook group created to discuss the fires was fantastically helpful, I got in touch with their rural route mailman and people in the local village and found a bunch of good local news sources.

In comparison there was nearly nothing on Twitter (one Sydney reporter who was tweeting from her dispatch for two or three days). Main-stream news sites were utterly useless with no detail in their reports. Without Facebook I would have had drastically less information and more worry.

This all happened once before. Compuserve, AOL, prodigy, all had mail systems that were walled gardens. Eventually gateways were established. When the users want it it will happen.

matrix.org is best modern gateway to date.

I remember MySpace being a place where I could explore the ideas I wanted with people all over the world.

There was a clear, forum-inherited structure to most groups. It kept me coming back, day after day.

Google+ had a similar appeal - I dont know you, I dont care. I like what you have to offer, so I'm getting to know you.

Bridging that into meatspace relationships by frontloading them first? Was straining - I realized how little my peers cared for what they even do. Flooding that feed with game-spam? Negated the premise. And turning it into infinite-scroll of bad takes to drive engagement just turned me temporarily, but deeply misanthropic.

Turning online into afk relationships and friendships made all of this worthwhile. Facebook had that for a bit with their "events" features... But those got nerfed into being useless without an advertising firm's budget.

I, for one? Am happy to join somewhere that respects my time.

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