PSA: do not use services that hate the internet

November 29, 2022 12:18 PM

As you look around for a new social media platform, I implore you, only use one that is a part of the World Wide Web. If posts in a social media app do not have URLs that can be linked to and viewed in an unauthenticated browser, or if there is no way to make a new post from a browser, then that program is not a part of the World Wide Web in any meaningful way. Consign that app to oblivion.
posted by mecran01 (62 comments total)

From that article, this includes Signal.
posted by aniola at 12:36 PM on November 29, 2022 [5 favorites]

I’m on mobile, and was suddenly baffled that Metafilter turned neon green and had images.
posted by leotrotsky at 12:38 PM on November 29, 2022 [7 favorites]

Ahhh it's been so long since I encountered the shitty, dismissive, fuck-you-for-asking tone of the Original Internet. Nothing that replaced it has been great, obviously, either, but man oh man do I not miss my old RSS feed full of "come here and be yelled at, idiot" blogs.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 12:38 PM on November 29, 2022 [26 favorites]

Fucking love an RSS feed.
posted by Artw at 12:39 PM on November 29, 2022 [28 favorites]

PSA: Do not use green-on-black-themed websites that hate eyes.

This comment is best viewed in Internet Explorer
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:39 PM on November 29, 2022 [19 favorites]

Also I'm baffled by singling out Signal as app-only...as opposed to what other messaging app, exactly?
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:41 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

That's one ugly-ass website.

Seriously though, I'm old AF and nowhere near as curmudgeonly as jwz.
posted by tommasz at 12:42 PM on November 29, 2022 [7 favorites]

jwz definitely has a tone.

His essay is a little misleading about Post; they do have working URLs, for example this post of mine. Large parts of Post require login right now, I suspect because the product is so underdeveloped. But specific posts are legitimately part of the WWW. I'm also a little sympathetic to Post's efforts to do micropayments since they are so journalism-oriented. I think it'll fail but I'm glad they are trying. So far I haven't seen any cryptocurrency nonsense (tips are in a simple points system, you buy points with dollars via a credit card). But yeah, the involvement of Marc Andressen is troubling for several reasons, his VC firm's scammy crypto angle being one of them. I'm not that excited about Post but I think they deserve a little more credit than given in jwz's livejournal entry.

Signal deserves calling out because of their involvement with a shady cryptocurrency thing. I've heard nothing about that recently though.

jwz's old man status is confirmed by his failing to talk about Discord or Slack. Perhaps I should ask him about that in whatever irc channel he hangs out in.
posted by Nelson at 12:45 PM on November 29, 2022 [9 favorites]

Post and Hive, which this seems primarily a reaction to, both seem incredibly underbaked and with unclear ownership or terms of service or terms of service like “rich people are a protected class”. Lack of website to kick the tires on would seem a similar problem.
posted by Artw at 12:47 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

IIRC Discord and Slack both have robust web interfaces. Slack is basically a web app in a window.
posted by Artw at 12:48 PM on November 29, 2022 [6 favorites]

In particular, I'm looking at you Pinterest with your SEO shenanigans, and your un-downloadable images.
Also Pinterest. And probably every mobile app (except OG facebook, which is pretty good about URL sharing and image downloading, oddly).
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:49 PM on November 29, 2022 [9 favorites]

I don't know about Slack, but Discord (like Metafilter), doesn't let you easily bulk delete your comments.
posted by aniola at 12:54 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

I’m not really buying the “Signal wants to be social media not messaging” - unless I’ve missed something I see no inclination that way?
posted by Artw at 12:56 PM on November 29, 2022 [4 favorites]

IIRC Discord and Slack both have robust web interfaces.

I think the article means that any content in these walled gardens can't be viewed without creating an account. I can't send you a link to a specific Discord message and you can read it without some song and dance. The URL cannot be saved by the Internet Archive, for example, without violating some TOS. This is the whole "data must be free!" of the Web 1.0.

It is also funny that Nelson mentions IRC because it doesn't natively do this either but is usually a hack of some kind.
posted by meowzilla at 1:08 PM on November 29, 2022 [5 favorites]

Yeah, um, neither are for that.
posted by Artw at 1:10 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

I’m not really buying the “Signal wants to be social media not messaging” - unless I’ve missed something I see no inclination that way?

I think it's the way people use it. Discord doesn't strike me as relevant here, or when discussing forums either, as it is a chat app, but damn if its users don't try to shoe horn it into doing the jobs of forums and social media, just really fucking badly.
posted by Dysk at 1:10 PM on November 29, 2022 [10 favorites]

Yeah, nope, not seeing that. Maaaaybe forums, for discord/slack, but really it’s just IM with groups and channels. And Signal is just IM.
posted by Artw at 1:13 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

i figure the concern is less that everything should be available via http and more that everything should be accessible via open standards
posted by jy4m at 1:13 PM on November 29, 2022 [5 favorites]

Am very pro slapping RSS or activityPub on everything, so in that I guess I am in agreement.
posted by Artw at 1:14 PM on November 29, 2022 [5 favorites]

Similar to Discord and Slack there’s Matrix. Matrix has the advantage of being self-his table and federated, so there’s no company with a centralized server that can take the whole thing down. And it’s also encrypted. Like Discord you can chat with anyone, they don’t have to be on the same servers as you. Runs in the browser, and there’s also a mature, full-featured app, Element, for it that has iOS, android, macos, linux, (and I assume also windows?) clients. We migrated everyone from our small community onto it and the European tech conference crowd has been using it for years for organizing.
posted by antinomia at 1:16 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

jwz's concerns with Signal: March 2017, August 2018, Feb 2021.

A few things that do make Signal more social network-y than it may seem at first glance:

* default behavior in how it acts re: your phone's contact list when you first install it; the last time I looked into this, Signal basically keeps an eye on your contact list and checks Signal's server for "are these folks on Signal yet?" then if someone in it joins Signal then you get a notification so you can Signal-message with them.
* trademark, centralization, etc. that reduces the ability of others to meaningfully fork the open source code so you have to use the official Signal app to talk with others on Signal
* (not something jwz mentioned): Signal recently introduced "stories" which are, I gather, a bit like time-limited Snapchats or Instagram Reels? You can send a message, video, or photo to all of or some subset of your Signal contacts and they have 24 hours to view it before it disappears.
* (not something jwz mentioned) Soon, you won't be able to use Signal as your main SMS/MMS messaging app on Android anymore which makes it harder to talk with your Signal and non-Signal contacts all in one place.
posted by brainwane at 1:17 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

I actually like curmudgeonly jwz. I even like green-on-black! But they're sort of wrong about what social media is, or should be. Social circles are by their very nature limited. They are meant to be different than the wider internet! They are intended for people to have insular conversations. The whole "broadcast your thoughts to the whole world" thing was a shitty side effect of the way twitter et al were implemented and monetized.

"You should be able to access public media without an account" is sensible. "Social media is public media" is just nuts.
posted by phooky at 1:18 PM on November 29, 2022 [14 favorites]

Ok. I'm back to calling my mom on a landline. I can't say that this is the best solution, but at least I don't have to hear her rant about how our conversations don't have permanent URLs.
God knows don't get her started on Microsoft owning Github.
posted by a complicated history at 1:20 PM on November 29, 2022 [6 favorites]

I find the whole “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, regardless of their net worth” phrase fascinating. People are dunking on it because they think it means that billionaires are, I guess, whining about getting dragged, but that means that people think that the voices of the poor and downtrodden have some kind of greater pull than those of the rich. That’s true in some contexts, but certainly in society as a whole the rich have way, waaay more pull. If you told me that a radical leftist had folded that line into a speech at a protest I wouldn’t be surprised for a minute. Unlike “regardless of gender” or “regardless of race”, there’s a huge amount of swing in distinguishing the in-group from the out-group.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:24 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Yeah, nope, not seeing that. Maaaaybe forums, for discord/slack, but really it’s just IM with groups and channels. And Signal is just IM.

Yeah, they're shitty shitty e.g. wikis, because they are just IM apps, but entire communities are replacing all their documentation and wikis with discord links. That makes it relevant to discuss discord in the context of forums and documentation and wikis, and point out its shortcomings in those regards.

Similarly, if people use Signal predominantly for large group organising in giant "group charts" that de facto function more like Facebook groups for its users, then you have to discuss Signal and its shortcomings in the context of social media. It's profoundly shitty social media, since it was never designed to do that, but real people are actually using it that way, as insane as that might strike you.
posted by Dysk at 1:28 PM on November 29, 2022 [7 favorites]

Back when Zuckerberg was promoting his Metaverse thing (huh, he's still doing that?), one of the things he's said is that an "an open, interoperable Metaverse built by many different developers and companies is going to be better for everyone". This commitment to openness and interoperability would be more believable if not for one, simple, ubiquitous three-word phrase: link in bio. Facebook, for all its faults, started in the Web era so, while it is a bit of a walled garden, it still recognizes the utility of URLs. But Instagram's origin is in the early mobile app world and they've never really accepted that URLs should exist, even to this day (TikTok is similar). Like, consider how difficult it is for an IG post to refer to another IG post; even an internal, non-URL/HTTP-based custom hyperlink system would be better than the status quo.

While jwz's tone is, uh, let's just say very jwz-ish, I definitely would agree that something has been lost when we moved from the relative openness and interconnectedness of Web 1.0 to whatever it is we've got now.
posted by mhum at 1:30 PM on November 29, 2022 [7 favorites]

BTW, one new social media platform that does use public addressable URLs is a work in progress, Cohost, that resembles Tumblr -- example post.
posted by brainwane at 1:30 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yeah I may use that for a blog if I get to it, but probably just as a blog.

Also using IMs as your organizational history… I’m not sure it’s IMs at fault if you do that.
posted by Artw at 1:33 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Cohost also has another point in its favor on this scale, imo, in that it allows more room for people to experiment & find joy in HTML & CSS. It's far from required to be a part of the site; but it's neat seeing the things people are able to express when given a bit of trust.

I don't think it's a Twitter replacement, nor is it intending to be; but it gives me the most Metafilter-y vibes of any of these new sites; without being specifically tied to MeFi and its origins.
posted by CrystalDave at 1:36 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

Minor externality of allowing room for people to experiment and find joy in HTML and CSS: more websites with black backgrounds and green text.
posted by shenkerism at 1:38 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I’m not really buying the “Signal wants to be social media not messaging” - unless I’ve missed something I see no inclination that way?

They did recently roll out a "Stories" feature.
posted by BungaDunga at 1:39 PM on November 29, 2022

They say that Twitter appears to be effectively systematically shutting down antifa-aligned accounts and progressive organizing in general.

A web platform can delete you, but the deletion will be obvious, because the larger web will be full of now-dead links. A walled garden would be able to make you disappear like you had never existed.

Has Facebook ever had a way to link to a specific post on Facebook?
posted by Western Infidels at 1:48 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

"You should be able to access public media without an account" is sensible. "Social media is public media" is just nuts.

Yeah, I see this disconnect come up a lot in conversations about how much FB or Twitter etc. are trash fires and how "there's better places and ways to get your news." Friend, I have never used social media to get my news, I use it to get my SOCIAL, it's right there in the name. I don't want a reprise of the weird parasocial relationships to bloggers or content creators that characterized blogging in the early aughts, I wanna see what my goddamn nephew is up to.

I don't know if this is a generational divide maybe or what, as I don't think I'm necessarily much younger than jwz, for example. I just kind of feel like there's a lot of discussion around social media that focuses on the tiny percentage of Extremely Online folks without really addressing how most internet users use internet.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:51 PM on November 29, 2022 [11 favorites]

Has Facebook ever had a way to link to a specific post on Facebook?

It has a "copy link" option in the share section of every post (on mobile Web at least, think its the same for desktop browser). Timestamps are also links for every post. Random example from my feed as proof
posted by Dysk at 1:52 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

(made an FPP about Cohost)
posted by brainwane at 1:59 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

It turns out that I have no idea what "social media" even means now, thanks MetaFilter!
posted by meowzilla at 2:00 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

(Sorry, my last comment contained a link to an event not a post. This is a link to a post. Everything else I said applies exactly the same.)
posted by Dysk at 2:06 PM on November 29, 2022

Ugh. God. JWZ.

Look, it’s not personal - dude seems cool, I’d love to visit the pizza place - but I do. Not. Need. Some old codger coming in and telling me how to do things, because their use case is wildly, radically different.

Generally, people know that app stuff like instagram, or whatever, is bad. The same way they know that driving to the supermarket is bad. They might not know how bad, but they have an idea that it’s not great. Also, as mentioned above, not everybody can live their life on blast, projecting everything out online. But this level of finesse isn’t interesting or relevant to jwz’s schtick.
posted by The River Ivel at 3:14 PM on November 29, 2022

I still feel a mild sting about the time JWZ called me "earnest" on LiveJournal.
posted by latkes at 3:27 PM on November 29, 2022 [13 favorites]

But they're sort of wrong about what social media is, or should be. Social circles are by their very nature limited. They are meant to be different than the wider internet! They are intended for people to have insular conversations. The whole "broadcast your thoughts to the whole world" thing was a shitty side effect of the way twitter et al were implemented and monetized.

I would say broadcasting your thoughts to the whole world was the premise of the world wide web, geocities and livejournal included.
posted by one for the books at 4:07 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

... and it was never the premise of friendster, or Facebook, or LinkedIn, or Gmail and so on. What I'm trying to say is that the protocol should not be mistaken for the purpose.
posted by phooky at 4:50 PM on November 29, 2022

I thought for sure this was going to be about Discord but it's about some other new fangled things hoping that twitter is going to die.
posted by 3j0hn at 5:15 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm not very social. MetaFilter has been my primary outlet for such urges for over a decade. But when Musk assaulted Twitter I decided to see what was happening on the sdf.org Mastodon instance (read: server). It was and is an absolute sh*t storm of refugee Twit-ites trying to adapt, spamming left and right and asking a zillion questions. I was on the verge of throwing in the towel when sdf announced a private, members-only instance (I've been on sdf.org even longer than on MetaFilter). Much more to my liking and I think I might stick with it. There is a link in my profile...
posted by jim in austin at 5:45 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I only know Signal as “encrypted text app for protests” so it’s pretty interesting to read that anyone considers it a social media network. Different use cases I guess.
posted by curious nu at 6:06 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

(And that’s really more for organizing, because if you brought your phone to a protest you have lost opsec in any case)
posted by curious nu at 6:07 PM on November 29, 2022 [2 favorites]

Well. Some of us communicate with all our friends and relatives on Signal to make traffic analysis harder. /s
posted by clew at 6:29 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

The whole "broadcast your thoughts to the whole world" thing was a shitty side effect of the way twitter et al were implemented and monetized.

I'd say Twitter is a bad example for this argument. Twitter's whole deal is being a "bird in a tree" sending out "tweets" that anyone can "hear". It was absolutely modeled as an "access for all" sort of thing, with protected tweets being a later feature (because of course the devs didn't anticipate abuse).
posted by explosion at 6:43 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yeah, they're shitty shitty e.g. wikis, because they are just IM apps, but entire communities are replacing all their documentation and wikis with discord links. That makes it relevant to discuss discord in the context of forums and documentation and wikis, and point out its shortcomings in those regards.

I can definitely understand why this happened, because most of those other community sites don't do discussion well at all (yes, I'm looking at you, forums, with your assumption that all discussion must be arranged around a narrow topic decided in advance). Like, it's just easier to pin things when someone makes a post rather than having to send them to another site to write stuff down, and you don't have to worry about permissions as much because anyone can post and the only thing you have to do is, effectively, approve, and if someone's a nuisance you can ban them and they won't just IP dodge to come back. Running a website is kind of a nightmare these days, and Discord means you don't have to.

But, of course, good luck fucking searching for anything from that community, it's an absolute black box.
posted by Merus at 6:56 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

I only know Signal as “encrypted text app for protests” so it’s pretty interesting to read that anyone considers it a social media network. Different use cases I guess.

It's not just Signal. WhatsApp fulfils the same function in a lot of the world, despite being equally poorly suited to the task. I've never used Signal, but I use WhatsApp extensively, and it is just IM. I just use it to send silly messages and photos to friends. But if IM can be pressed into service as a forum or fucking wiki replacement (and it can - Discord) then it's not that big a stretch to see people using IM as a kind of social media.
posted by Dysk at 7:30 PM on November 29, 2022

I think the article means that any content in these walled gardens can't be viewed without creating an account. I can't send you a link to a specific Discord message and you can read it without some song and dance. The URL cannot be saved by the Internet Archive, for example, without violating some TOS. This is the whole "data must be free!" of the Web 1.0.
I think this evolved out the privacy panic of people sharing stuff publicly that could identify them. This classic springs to mind.. "Here is a [location-embedded] pic of my lovely new garden, I really hope it's okay while we're away on holiday for the next 2 weeks".
posted by gible at 9:21 PM on November 29, 2022

Ehh. I remember the internet before the World Wide Web, and frankly I'm not at all convinced that everything must be webified. I think it's much more important that 'net services be interoperable than be required to display everything they have to the world.

IMO was my go-to and favourite instant messaging tool until MS bought Skype and then stopped letting anyone else play with their messaging system, then Signal, WhatApp etc started up with no interoperability at all. When IMO gave up and stopped trying to interoperate, I stopped using it and pretty much all the people I'd been talking to - on IMOs own messaging system - moved to Google+.

Before that there was Trillian, and Miranda. They've never lasted.
posted by gible at 9:31 PM on November 29, 2022 [1 favorite]

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon filled with AOL disks.
posted by Artw at 11:13 PM on November 29, 2022 [3 favorites]

Soon, you won't be able to use Signal as your main SMS/MMS messaging app on Android anymore which makes it harder to talk with your Signal and non-Signal contacts all in one place.

Good. I think if you're using Signal as an SMS app you're kind of missing the point of Signal.
posted by fullerine at 1:09 AM on November 30, 2022

In 2021 security expert Dave Walker posted on Twitter with a screenshot of Zuckerberg's leaked phone number which said, "Mark Zuckerberg is on Signal."
However Zuckerberg's phone number was among the leaked data of 533 million Facebook users, so just adding a contact with that number allows you to see that he has (or once had) Signal.

So if you have a stalker, and you keep their number in your contacts so you can notice/block them, then signal will alert them (assuming they already have your number) of your account.
From reports it also sounds like, if you have a contact with just an email address, and they have your number, then Signal will again make the link and send an alert.
Convenient for many, dangerous for a few.
posted by Lanark at 2:32 AM on November 30, 2022

So if you have a stalker, and you keep their number in your contacts so you can notice/block them, then signal will alert them (assuming they already have your number) of your account.

My understanding is that whether you have the stalker’s number in your contacts means you’ll get a notification that they are on Signal, and can preemptively block them. The stalker getting a ‘now on Signal’ notification is dependent on the stalker having your number in their Contacts.
posted by zamboni at 6:15 AM on November 30, 2022

I think if you're using Signal as an SMS app you're kind of missing the point of Signal

I used this feature. It was useful because I really don't use SMS directly much anymore, most of my conversations are over Signal proper, one or another messaging app, or SMS-via-Google Voice. So not needing a separate SMS app for the occasional SMS to/from my carrier number was convenient.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:22 AM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Re Signal: I agree it was really weird when they started pitching some kind of crypto - is that still happening? - but I'm also confused about how they should continue to exist without some kind of money. They get grants, right? But like, nothing can exist for long in capitalism without money.

Like, I don't expect Signal to be perfect: anyone with something very illegal to communicate should absolutely do that with their phone in a different room. But for stuff that you want some basic level of privacy about, Signal seems very useful and functional. I also find it perfectly fine for small and also large-ish (about 100 person is the biggest I've experienced) single-thread (like Metafilter!) group chats. What's the beef?
posted by latkes at 6:26 AM on November 30, 2022

that they are on Signal, and can preemptively block them.

It looks like you can also block arbitrary numbers before they even join Signal.
posted by zamboni at 6:26 AM on November 30, 2022

curious_nu: And [using Signal] really more for organizing, because if you brought your phone to a protest you have lost opsec in any case

we used to all buy used phones in cash each week from a range of differing shops uphill both ways in the snow ... as opsec and we liked it.
posted by k3ninho at 7:19 AM on November 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Bring back one time pads!

(DO NOT, under any circumstances, bring back your one time pads after use)
posted by Artw at 7:31 AM on November 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

blogging about their switch to Hive on the basis of user experience or some other vacuous crap

Yeah, how DARE people want to use a service that is ... enjoyable to use. How vacuous.
posted by lunasol at 11:24 AM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

ActivityPub is, I think, the future. But things running on activityPub with smooth user experiences are going to be crucial.
posted by Artw at 11:45 AM on November 30, 2022 [1 favorite]