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Nachimir

Ello.co

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It seems really good for imagery, for which I've really been enjoying following Hogg and Cabbibo. Shift+1, shift+5 and shift+0 all do useful things to the layout/visible notifications.

 

For all it's flaws, the primary thing Ello has underlined to me is that I'm really tired of people rushing to have lengthy, important opinions about any new thing on the internet. This isn't in reference to anyone in this thread. More the windy articles floating about Twitter ranging from "It's design is so gauche" to "I LIKED ELLO LAST WEEK BUT NOW IT CAN GO FUCK ITSELF FOREVER".

 

Possibly the saddest thing is a friend who said "Oh, I forgot that new social networks are basically loads of random guys following me because I'm a woman". Minutes later she blocked a rando on Twitter who @ed her with "Follow me xxx". Ello could really do with working on those privacy features.

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So I'm probably going to use Ello as a microblogging kind of thing; thoughts that don't fit on Twitter, little essays, that kind of thing. The problem is that this seems to basically be the job of tumblr and maybe I should just have a tumblr? Except from the outside the user interface of Tumblr seems a nightmare, with the 'notes' where reblogs and people who comment on what you've said are intermingled, and it doesn't seem like there are enough people of interest on tumblr to sustain a feed. Are there people who use Tumblr that can give me a comparison?

So I recently started a Tumblr to host some Skyrim screenshots I had been taking and found everything about the Tumblr dash infuriating. So much so, in fact, that I deleted my account.

 

Ello may fill the same space, but at least it's friendlier. They just need to make it work more consistently and integrate a few things, like Youtube embedding or better text editing. I could get CTRL+I to italicize text last night from home, but can't manage that this morning from work.

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I suddenly have an influx of follow-back-fishers. Unless some of you guys somehow have thousands of followers already.

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I keep getting follows based solely on my username. Which is funny because all these architects are going to be real disappointed when all I do is post my thoughts about video games.

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I suddenly have an influx of follow-back-fishers. Unless some of you guys somehow have thousands of followers already.

Yeah, that's really picked up over the last few days. I've followed a couple back because I'm an idiot, but only things that seemed half-way interesting (music I like well enough AND SO ON). More than one of them has then re-followed me, which I found kind of amusing.

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I was reading that people liked this thing I heard about a few days ago, and now today are apparently hating on it. What happened to trigger the attitude shift in the community?

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I was reading that people liked this thing I heard about a few days ago, and now today are apparently hating on it. What happened to trigger the attitude shift in the community?

 

It's only benefits are aspirational and their funding almost definitely comes with strings attached that will cause them to betray their users.

 

I have a few followers I wish I could block already!  I can't imagine what it would be like to be harassed/stalked/etc. on there.

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It's only benefits are aspirational and their funding almost definitely comes with strings attached that will cause them to betray their users.

 

I have a few followers I wish I could block already!  I can't imagine what it would be like to be harassed/stalked/etc. on there.

 

Ouch.

 

I'd love to see a company be more transparent but still have ads. I have some ideas on how you could do that but I also have no interest in starting such a thing, so perhaps I should shut my yap.

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The problem is that there's a fundamental conflict between your audience as product and your audience as customers. Ads mean your audience is the product, and advertisers are your customers. With that model, you have an incentive to treat your free users as product, and force them to behave in ways that make them more valuable as a product that you'd never ask a customer to do. Facebook's recent insistence on real names, and Twitter's non-response to attacks by their users are both borne out of this problem.

 

There have been examples of services that are free for personal use but have a 'business' version that keeps the lights on, where the personal version is to get people invested with the product enough to consider it in business. The two big successes I can think of are Dropbox and Trello; what they have in common is that it's not hard for them to ensure that their paying customers get the lion's share of resources. Either free users are either limited in a way that the service is still useful but can't be too much of a drain on resources (Dropbox) or that it's more useful for business and creative work, which the punters aren't going to do much of (Trello).

 

I'm not sure you can sustain a social network on the same model because your initial audience is going to be full of punters.

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The problem is that there's a fundamental conflict between your audience as product and your audience as customers. Ads mean your audience is the product, and advertisers are your customers. With that model, you have an incentive to treat your free users as product, and force them to behave in ways that make them more valuable as a product that you'd never ask a customer to do. Facebook's recent insistence on real names, and Twitter's non-response to attacks by their users are both borne out of this problem.

 

There have been examples of services that are free for personal use but have a 'business' version that keeps the lights on, where the personal version is to get people invested with the product enough to consider it in business. The two big successes I can think of are Dropbox and Trello; what they have in common is that it's not hard for them to ensure that their paying customers get the lion's share of resources. Either free users are either limited in a way that the service is still useful but can't be too much of a drain on resources (Dropbox) or that it's more useful for business and creative work, which the punters aren't going to do much of (Trello).

 

I'm not sure you can sustain a social network on the same model because your initial audience is going to be full of punters.

 

I think this is a really pessimistic view that doesn't acknowledge the last few years. Look at Kickstarter, Twitch.tv personalities, Reddit- places where communities help fund and keep things alive. How? By working together.

 

Reddit Gold has been a huge success- no, it isn't paying for their staff, but it's cut into costs for the company significantly. Twitch.tv personalities get subscribers in the hundreds, sometimes thousands- each giving $5 a month for nothing more than to encourage that personality to keep going. Kickstarter also works off of this.

 

It shows that people are more than willing to help you out when you develop a strong community, and a sense of trust between the organization and its fans. In the case of a social network, what if they were up front and honest about the kinds of advertising you could get, and work harder at providing an ad platform that isn't just shoved on people, but in fact is a way for the community to take ownership over the product itself.

 

I'm not going into a ton of detail because it's a lot of little things- no one singular idea is going to make it work, but I'm fundamentally opposed to the idea that you can't make users feel like they can trust you with their best interests.

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I really don't think Reddit is a great example. Given their handling of the Fappening, I come to the same conclusion re: Reddit that I do Twitter, namely that it's in their best interest to host the shittiest side of the internet until the exact moment it isn't in their best interest. Harassment and abuse brings traffic from both the perpetrators and the people up in arms about it. If the harassment and abuse get bad enough, the Reddit admins "do something about it" and ban some people or donate to charity. And then once the microscope finds another target, it's all fair game again - sure, they banned the Fappening subreddit but now there's a "Fappening discussion" subreddit that's alive and well.

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Reddit did try an ad network that gave users control over what was seen, and it's only when they started putting a bar up on the front page that filled up when they broke even for the day that they started to make enough revenue. Kickstarter take their cut from the deal between content creators and backers, and while they've been slow to deal with some abusive kickstarters they generally get to them before the funding period finishes.

 

I wouldn't treat either of them as ad-supported in the way that Twitter or Facebook are. Their users are their customers, and that makes it a lot easier to treat their users with respect. (With the exception that JonCole points out, where everyone who's not on Reddit can go fuck themselves apparently.)

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I really don't think Reddit is a great example. Given their handling of the Fappening, I come to the same conclusion re: Reddit that I do Twitter, namely that it's in their best interest to host the shittiest side of the internet until the exact moment it isn't in their best interest. Harassment and abuse brings traffic from both the perpetrators and the people up in arms about it. If the harassment and abuse get bad enough, the Reddit admins "do something about it" and ban some people or donate to charity. And then once the microscope finds another target, it's all fair game again - sure, they banned the Fappening subreddit but now there's a "Fappening discussion" subreddit that's alive and well.

 

I honestly think this is a pretty big sidetrack to the fact that it's got a strong community that goes out of its way to support it. I'd also say that if you think the majority, or even a significant amount of Reddit was taking part in The Fappening, or approved/condoned of/it, that you couldn't be less familiar with the overall community. It has its shitty elements for sure, and they're large and loud, but they're primarily the latter, and rarely the former. And you can similarly say the same about any popular service, when you cherry pick like that.

 

But it still doesn't get to the fact that they are a community that takes part in making sure the business stays afloat and grows. Now to get that to work via an ad-based methodology is definitely difficult, but it's one of those things where execution is everything.

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I'd also say that if you think the majority, or even a significant amount of Reddit was taking part in The Fappening, or approved/condoned of/it, that you couldn't be less familiar with the overall community.

 

If reddit can't or won't ban/delete/nuke that shit from orbit the instant it goes up and people continue to support reddit by using the site, I'm going to say there is a degree of complicity there. Besides which, that has hardly been the only gross thing to come out of reddit.

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If reddit can't or won't ban/delete/nuke that shit from orbit the instant it goes up and people continue to support reddit by using the site, I'm going to say there is a degree of complicity there. Besides which, that has hardly been the only gross thing to come out of reddit.

 

This isn't me endorsing everything they've ever done. It's saying that it can be done better, and could possibly be a good business model.

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I honestly think this is a pretty big sidetrack to the fact that it's got a strong community that goes out of its way to support it.

Yeah I think that's fair enough, let's get back onto fundin--

I'd also say that if you think the majority, or even a significant amount of Reddit was taking part in The Fappening, or approved/condoned of/it, that you couldn't be less familiar with the overall community.

Whoa ho ho hold up pardner

 

If it's a tiny minority on Reddit how come, for instance, Anita Sarkeesian attack videos can get up to the front page of general subs like /r/gaming? While they might not have condoned of The Fappening, there was a lot of unrest over ViolentAcrez being unmasked. Reddit's most observed rule is 'no personal information' (except private images don't count somehow) which is well in front of something like 'don't be a douchebag' or even 'don't harass other people'. That is not cherry-picking: Reddit does have a problem with the way it allows people to use its service, and it's disingenuous to claim that it doesn't or that it shouldn't be considered a problem.

 

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Has anybody read this article on Ello's funding and flaws?

 

Frankly, the place seems deader than Google+, I know it's in Beta, but it looks ugly, doesn't allow to embed videos and I really don't like the "visibility factor", I don't know the algorithm they use, but it's obvious the more people you have, the higher it is? What's the point, you already know your follower count.

 

It looks like everybody I know is just there to keep their username and aren't doing anything with it.

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To be honest, most complaints that I've heard about how existing large social sites work largely stems from the fact that the sites are so fucking huge rather than their business model. I really don't think that how sites make money is as big as deal as some make out, and the whole you are the customer!!!!! thing being taken to the point of people saying an ad-supported product can't possibly not be corrupt seems ridiculous to me. In almost all cases it comes down to the ethics of the company; a large organisation that makes money on ads isn't inherently evil. If it were, our ad-driven western world would be in a much worse state.

 

I'm still yet to see how Twitter is really bad, apart from its ability to handle abuse being imperfect which — again — I feel is more down to its unbelievable scale rather than its funding. To put it into perspective, even if only one in every 1000 tweets were flagged as abusive, that would still be 500,000 reports per day to deal with! Reddit is another example of a site becoming a victim of its own size. Trying to be principled when dealing such such obscene numbers of users and posts can't ever not lead to accusations of cherry picking or inconsistency.

 

I mean, this is a real problem. How do you get on top of this kind of stuff? If Ello were to become even a hundredth as big as Twitter overnight, poof — it'd be a crumbling mess within hours. Ello is no better equipped to deal with the horror of free public speech than any other site, and how it's funded isn't going to make an ounce of difference once it's got thousands of ad bots, spammers, abusers, and general assholes signing up every minute. Similarly, if Twitter were to remove all ads overnight it'd still be what it is due to the god damn size of it.

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I don't think that anyone is making the assertion that advertisement makes companies evil, but I do really think there's something to be said for the fact that priorities shift based on who the actual paying customers are. I also think it would be silly to expect that these companies could handle all or most of any abuse or harassment for the very reasons you say.

 

However, I don't think it's unfair to expect that as these companies are presumably growing, they shouldn't be more proactive and more efficient in dealing with such issues. Regardless of the scale of the userbase, there must be solutions that are sufficient to deal with that scale. From what I can tell, there are effectively zero advancements in Twitter's dealing with such issues. There are no policy changes, no apparent shift in how they deal with reporting, etc.

 

I've been thinking about Twitter specifically, especially with the rise of BlockBot and other such services that help manage trolls and whatnot. BlockBot is opt-in and appoints people in the community who can add people to the Block List that is applied to all users of the service. The nominations are ranked based on how certain the reporter is that the account in question is in fact trolling and users can determine what Block List they want to opt into based on that rank. There's a veto system in place so that if one reporter seems to be abusing the system or made a nomination in error, any other reporter can veto that appointment.

 

It's clearly not an ideal system, but it shows actual promise in how to deal with community reporting. What is stopping Twitter from initiating such a system or something similar to it? Undoubtedly such a big company that's spending millions on developing their product can work with that idea, make it more nuanced, and scale it to appropriately deal with the whole population of Twitter. If you need appointed community members who could act as these reporting authorities, there are already verified accounts that could act in that capacity.

 

My point is, as the scale goes up so does the responsibility. I don't think the scale excuses them from that responsibility, but I think it's reasonable to take it into account and give them the benefit of the doubt. But at least in my perception, big companies like Twitter and Reddit aren't making great strides to scale their abuse management to the size of their audience.

 

(Also re: Ello, I literally think that nobody in this thread is holding them up as social media paragons who are doing everything right and would continue to do things right if they suddenly lucked into some Twitter-like scale.)

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Right now Ello doesn't represent the next big thing, nor does it represent "Twitter done right".  What Ello is and will become is still very unclear, much like Twitter was in its early days.  The current appeal of Ello is that they are trying something, anything.  It might be good, it might be terrible.  But the fact that so many people are seriously considering switching Twitter for something like Ello is fairly telling about how Twitter handles (or in this case doesn't handle) its user base.  I personally don't see Ello being significantly better than Twitter in a meaningful way but its too early to say for sure.

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Twitter annoyed me when it started pulling a Facebook and showing me shit out of order. Ello doesn't do that, yet, so it's winning!

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My issue with Twitter primarily stems from their bait-and-switch on developers for their API. I've sunk $300 into App.net over the past few years just because at this point I'd do near anything to tell Twitter to go screw themselves, but it's the only social network that actually encourages being social and talking to people so I use it anyway.

 

And I think most of the complaints about Twitter's harassment stuff has more to do with the fact that blocking and reporting in cases of harassment require filling out long, involving forms, making it more difficult than it needs to be to protect yourself from harassment. I don't think it's even a case of scale, it's more a case of a bad toolset and there's been no movement on it for years, in the same amount of time Twitter's overhauled the profile page three times.

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