I wish more of those bright engineers would try to solve problems for other users rather than re-re-re-re-re-optimizing the life of their colleagues. But writing code for users involves, among other things, knowing something about users, which is more bogged down and less fun.
also you seem to have fallen for the same fallacy as the people who complain about open source devs not working on what they consider sufficiently important problems. trust me, there are no shortage of engineers willing and eager to work on end user problems, and the dev tools work enables them to deliver solutions to those problems faster, and makes those solutions work more reliably. it's a rising tide that lifts everyone's boats, not a zero sum game.
Out of interest, what is? (In your opinion)
I would rather a good engineer put their skills towards helping others use their skills more effectively than put that same engineer in a place where they don't like the work and produce below par results.
So I'd selfishly adjust it to 'solve other problems for the same users'! Asahi, for example, awesome stuff - I've lost count how many times I've had to explain (to both colleagues and non-engineer family/friends/etc.) 'no no, absolutely agree, love Mac hardware [...]'.
I know all of that is a lot to ask of anyone. But you might find you learn things you have in common with people you don’t expect to. And it might make your job less frictionful too.
I love animals in real life, but that doesn't mean that I love watching videos of animals on a screen, for me it's not the same experience.
The main goal that I see social networks addressing with many people is entertainment, but I feel that it takes away from my social life with people, that's why I have aversion to short videos for example.
Facebook didn't have these short videos forced on me, but just a few months ago it started to show video reels for me, and I couldn't stop myself watching them.
After bringing the settings back to just showing what's happening with my friends, the next time I opened it, it started showing addictive videos to me again.
Youtube disabled showing downvotes, which was the best signal for me to see if it's worth to see a 15 minute video, or if it's just a spam talking about nothing for 15 minutes just to optimize content length for the algorithm. And shorts are not a solution, as they don't have any depth either. Also it started spamming me with new channels that reupload videos of interesting people from years ago just to make me think that it's new content.
The main problem for me working on social networks is that making profit can't be separated from making people addicted to the lowest forms of entertainment (I'm a Xoogler).
Having a different idea of fun than another person is very common. My partner and I, whom I share a lot of personality traits with, have some different definitions of fun. I can spend hours working through math problems and find it fun while plenty of others would find that horribly boring. To _judge_ other people for having a different idea of fun than you is to be condescending; it deifies your idea of entertainment while putting down the others'.
> The main problem for me working on social networks is that making profit can't be separated from making people addicted to the lowest forms of entertainment (I'm a Xoogler).
Is it that hard to accept that other people have different ideas for what being social means? Does everyone have to be like you or you judge them negatively? Your take isn't uncommon on certain parts of the Web (especially the anti-social-media parts) but I've always found it trite and judgemental exactly for the reasons I expressed above. Not everyone has to think and feel the way you do and that's okay. Humanity is large. Some of us like to go to hyper-commercial malls, some like to go on challenging hikes, and others are at the club dancing and imbibing their hearts out. Sometimes people even change what they like to do for fun as they age! That's okay, it's human.
I think this is the wrong question - it isn't about being different, its about not even having a customer to empathize with. I can't empathize with a product, no.
As for users, you can be so unfamiliar with a demographic that you have no conception how to help them. I haven't touched facebook seriously in over 10 years (probably close to 12 now), in the world of manufactured FB problems I wouldn't have the foggiest to start.
Now, ignoring the fact FB is absolutely not in the business of helping their users, the question becomes, can or should I become enough like something I see no value in?
I think the answer is probably "no" - if people are busy walking themselves off of cliffs, I have no moral or ethical obligation to help them walk off cliffs, and I really don't have any obligation to walk myself off of one.
My only real feedback, for whatever it might be worth, is that this comment—discussing how you feel about these social networks—invites a lot more sympathy, at least to me, than judging how others value them differently.
> It's not like I don't understand their problems/goals. Just yesterday the person I was spending time with showed a cat video from Facebook, and as I seemed half interested only, she asked me if I like animals.
> I love animals in real life, but that doesn't mean that I love watching videos of animals on a screen, for me it's not the same experience.
I’m also not very interested in animal videos, and even fairly seldom interested in animal photos on social media. Videos I pretty much only watch if I’m pressured, and I’d say I skip by probably 80% of photos too.
And I’m an enormous hypocrite about this (I don’t really think so, but I would forgive anyone for thinking so). I post photos (and again occasionally video) of my pup almost daily. Partly this is because I am absolutely in love with her and love to share insights into our life, and adorable things she does.
Another part is there’s a small but very interested subset of my friends and family who, I’m certain, gets real joy out of seeing these updates and feels more connected with me through them. They take a different pleasure and emotional experience from not just my posts, but others I see when the algorithm surfaces them. And every one of them, like all of us, needs and deserves more joy in life.
My pup and I also have, I believe, a fairly unusual origin story which I intend to write about more at length, but I’ll share briefly here. I will not be offended at all if you decide to stop reading here (if I have any point in sharing this here, that’s my point).
I have a fairly light touch on social media these days, for a lot of the same misgivings you describe. A few years ago, not so much. I was on Facebook a lot, and Twitter quite a bit more.
I’m pretty much a nobody on Twitter, but I became first friendly and then eventually romantically involved with someone who’s what they call “Twitter famous”. That fact wasn’t a particular attraction for me or a romantic goal, and still not of much interest to me other than it makes the whole thing feel still surreal to this day. In all honesty, of all of the times I’ve been star struck… well let’s just put it this way, “Twitter famous” means about as much to me as finding out some wealthy person I’ve never heard of was in the next town over. It’s just what happened in my life.
Anyway, we dated for a while and we eventually moved in together. I moved to a very cold place at the start of a very cold winter. And we adopted a puppy! Like some people do when they’re in love. It eventually didn’t work out between us (the humans, I hope it’s obvious pup is still with me and well loved). Sometimes things don’t work out with romance. That’s okay.
I’m ever grateful that she decided it was best if pup went with me. I’ve since had—and continued to raise, and grow with—the best companion of my entire life. All because I implausibly connected with someone on Twitter of all freaking places at (IMO) its absolute worst most toxic point, and completely despite a zillion reasons it would be even more implausible (some not in detail here, but some will be written when I’m ready to tell a more full story).
Why am I telling you (and others who might be reading), of all people, this abridged version? I don’t know. I hope maybe it’ll be more valuable to you than if I just found some way to send a video of my pup? And I guess maybe because if you (or anyone) finds this story interesting, I hope one of the things that stands out is… several important life events and one incredible bond came out of me just being open to and pursuing a connection that feels still so unrelatable to me.
I’m not saying you should ask me for a pup video (but you can!), but just… okay yeah the actual point. People are experiencing a much more complex world of social media than you might see. Give them some grace, please?
Facebook originally started as a social network where I could see my friends' lives, babies, family life, puppies, and it was awesome and interesting, as it's something that I could talk with them about.
The problem with looking at friends' lives from Facebook's point of view is that it's not as addictive, and ads don't integrate naturally.
I loved the book, ,,Chaos Monkeys'', as it explained how impossible it was to monetize the huge active Facebook userbase in the early days, while users were prioritized and making money was just a secondary afterthought that Mark didn't care about.
It turns out that making assymetric relations, where some people/content creators have tens of thousands of followers and hundreds of thousands of views, and not usually friends with (except the case you are talking about) are much more addictive for people, and much easier to monetize as well. At this point though social media gets more media than social, and gets the same problems that other type of media had: creating unhealthy expectation for people whose brains don't really distinguish between what they see there and real life.