It's not just you — no one is posting on social media anymore

And yet, after joining Lemmy and Mastodon, I post a lot more.

The concept of "influencer" as a career needs to die a quick death.

Talking to real friends more interesting than arguing with strangers? Shareholders flummoxed! News at 11.

I've seen the birth of it in my lifetime, I'll see the death of it in my lifetime. Way to go, evolution!

Social media in general is in the following stage of Enshitification:

• Launch
• Growth at all costs, user focus
• Use size to bring advertisers
• Gradually shift focus to advertisers and money bringers
• Ensure users are way too invested to quit
• >> Sell out <<

It's no surprise that people only end up seeing "carefully curated" content, it's what "sells", or rather, ensures people stay in the stupid app. From TFA: "While sharing has tailed off, consuming content hasn't slowed"

I have an Insta account for some of the part time 3D printing I do, but since I'm not a "content creator", my stuff has almost zero reach. Whenever I open the app, it's roughly 1:1:1 posts of "recommended", someone I actually follow, advert. 2/3 of everything shown to me is stuff I didn't ask for, not to mention when the advertises are actual scams or fucking pyramids

I still visit Reddit but I no longer engage in any way, other than reading comments. No up/down voting, not commenting, no reporting spam. Nothing but reading with multiple layers of ad-blocking.

PS: the overall quality/value has dropped precipitously

Those platforms are business media now, not social media anymore.

The fediverse, while still social media, has a level of authenticity unrivaled by most major social medias in my opinion. Hopefully it stays that way!

I also noticed how my social media usage (even on Lemmy and Mastodon) is consistently declining, I haven't opened the clients I use for either platform in days (or possibly more than a week). It's bad because I was pretty invested in the fediverse, but it's good because now I can actually do something productive, or even go outside.

No app better defines the changing nature of social media than Instagram. The app started as a digital scrapbook — a place to keep up with real-world connections, close friends, and family. While other networks had more users (Facebook) or generated more news (Twitter), Instagram seemed to define the ideal form of this era of social media. Instagram became a verb, an aesthetic, and a generational signifier.

huUURP! BLAAaahhriifgghhh. . .

Garbage marketing platform dies horribly. Thousands of clueless "journalists" bereft.

No one's posting on BeReal

Nobody has heard of BeReal

Also, if no one is posting on social media, then what the hell are we all doing right now then?

if someone posts on social media and nobody reads it ... does the poster even exist?

I almost never use Facebook anymore because whenever I’m on it, all I see are posts from groups I’m not even in, ads, videos, and interspersed in all that algorithmically chosen content, the occasional post from people I actually follow and know. Social media isn’t social any more.

Even fricking tumblr now has videos on it, and you can only shut “tumblr live” off for a week at most before they come back.

it's interesting how many comments show that people like to read the headline and are content with that to form an opinion. literally the first paragraph says that it's not "THERE ARE NO POSTS" but it says that the "feed is swamped by a combination of perfectly curated photos and professionally created content." - the problem is that the paid content creators have become GOOD. so many of them really look like they are just opinions and casual mentions of movies/clothes/...things. viral marketing is really at a point where so many fronts that have been established have been broken down in the guise of "irony" or "sarcasm". "I'm only buying the Barbie merch ironically" etc.

I dont even want to talk to half the people I know anymore lol. I stopped using FB but keep it running because there are many years of pics and what not for family. And when I bring it down people freak out and think something is wrong with me. Other than that, it has been stripped of any identifying information, only has people I know and I never use it anymore. That was the only real 'personal' place I had on the internet. Everything else is fake names and whatnot, always has been.

My following on insta is dominated by meme pages, influencers, and that one person in your social group who practically shares their life on social media.

Does Lemmy count as social media?? lol

Wtf is bereal

Big shock considering everything we post online is being weaponized in various ways.

I've been trying to cut down social media use ever since 2020. I don't blame people for not posting most social media platforms are either boring or a toxic shit holes.

If a company ever puts ads in my group chats I will jump in a volcano

Group chats were for sharing before social media. It just out lasted them.

Don't mourn social media. It was always too easily astro-turfed.

The fuck even is BeReal? LOL

I would argue that the quality of content is in decline more than numerical users. Also, the quantity of ads are much much higher, which hides what little good content there is.

Mix that in with political splits in social media sites (from left leaning Lemmy to the Facebook right), and you generally find yourself in an echo chamber with little to surprise you, and a lot of things confirming what you already know.

I've been enjoying using Signal for "social media". I can share things with my friends without being subjected to ads or having my data mined.

There's also a promising Alpha app called Circles from Futo that uses Matrix to do something similar.

Every popular social media wants to maintain complete control and just shove content down your throat, rather than allow you to curate your feed at all. Even subscription-based ones like Strava give you absolutely no control over what's in your feed.

The three things cited in the post summary? Never been on them. I never ever heard of one of them. It seems to me that it's more that these few platforms are struggling, and other (twitter/x, reddit, facebook, and other) just keep sailing smoothly.

Indian aunties were on the group chat trend before it was cool.

I don't post because I know no one will see my posts, and I don't want to give them my data without feeding my narcism in return.

I deleted all my big tech accounts, and lots of people are posting on the fediverse.

I have Instagram installed but frozen with "Ice Box" android app.

I open once per day or 2 days to catch up with some friends status. But I don't see those neverending reels anymore.

Social media was fun until my family joined and scrutinized my posts, and then I lost all my friends

Noticed this on reddit's All/Hot in the last two years or so. Not even just the posts but the comments in particular were very Bot-like. Front page was almost all recycled reposts and thinly veiled marketing.

Before doing Lemmy full time I scrolled through Red with the official app just to see if I could compromise somewhere, but it smelt of Dead Internet to me.

Dead Internet Theory in short is a conspiracy theory that most of the Internet is just algorithms and bots posting back and forth at each other for marketing purposes and to nudge people's beliefs. It's dead because theres hardly any humans posting.

Well, it sucks. A certain South African Dutch chump with a Napoleon complex is 90% of the reason why.

Good. Let it die.

Twitter's so annoying, they constantly show me the same ads. Was it different before Musk?

I don't get group chats. It seems like the worst parts of IRC had a baby with the worst part of internet forums and created a thing destined to make you always late to the party.

I have been wanting to get back to making stuff on social media but due to work and no longer being the IDGAF teenager I get nervous on what to talk about.

Like I was hoping to do a podcast for my Facebook friends but I only uploaded one episode cause I want to do a few about how work sucks. But then I worry it'll be depressing.

I really like that Signal let's you do group stories, it works really well for this.

Some of my groups have great participation and it's a great place to send all the random links we send.

Take me back to MSN Messenger.

Who posted this

We've run a private chat server for friends 10+ years now with channels and that's where most sharing goes on, whatsapp chats with some, and I've basically moved to Discord for other interests and still use forums for some. Public social media is more for profile curation, displaying a highly curated identity.

Hopefully interest in forums starts to pick up again. Not be the main thing, but at least an alternative.

*For specific definitions of "no one."

Are these social media or scam media?
I consider kbin, Lemmy and Mastodon (or better, the Fediverse) so much healthier.

I see tons of posts. What is this about ?

Why does this seem to only be about Instagram?

More people need to know about pixelfed. It is basically very much the old IG.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Other apps like Dispo, Poparazzi, and Locket have all used various gimmicks to try and recapture social media's halcyon days — each had a moment in the sun at the top of the US Apple app-store charts — but none have truly broken through.

For instance, the content creator Nina Haines launched a group called SapphLit, a self-described "sapphic book club born out of the queer BookTok community."

Victoria Johnston, a 22-year-old software engineer, imagines the ideal social-media platform as a "safe space where people can just connect and you don't feel pressured to have a big following or a presence or be really well known."

And as more users and creator communities migrate toward closed spaces, the behemoths like Instagram are also trying to capitalize on this reality by introducing features like paid-subscription services that offer exclusive group chats.

Lia Haberman, an adjunct professor at UCLA Extension and an advisor for the American Influencer Council, said that Gen Alpha, the age cohort of 13 and younger, are "not embracing traditional social-media platforms and customs."

It's hard to know how the change will affect the online atmosphere over the long term — some evidence suggests the shift will create a healthier digital experience, but it also risks further dividing people into like-minded echo chambers.

The original article contains 2,197 words, the summary contains 214 words. Saved 90%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Mostly repost of things they didn't make in an attempt to grab some ad revenue...

Like why do I need to see 2 or 3 arborist reposts from ~3 accounts not owned or affiliated by such arborists?

Is it? Don't like to play devil's advocate but I'm pretty sure my Instagram is pretty much alive and my BeReal feed is an at all all-time high, with several new joins lately too.

I agree that it's much worse, that on anything that isn't BeReal it's harder to find your friends posts, that the ads got way too many - but at least here people are absolutely not stopping to create content for them.

What are we all doing here then?

tiktok copied be real with tiktok now

What's the over/under on this having been posted and inspired posts on literally every social media platform within an hour of publication, thus proving the headline ridiculous?

All my homies hate Business Insider