Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

I feel that even if everybody who cared went on strike, the difference in daily visitors would probably be in the error margin.

I think most people who really care have already left the centralised social media or scaled it down to the point that a non-strike day is an exception.

I do not disagree with the message, but I seriously doubt that this will have any effect.

What is social media!

I'm sure many class this very forum as their social outlet media wise. For some, wiki itself has become a social media outlet.

But strikes upon social media which will involve less than 1% of users will gain no traction, hardly a blip.

Wouldn't it of been better than instead of a strike that they had a statement with a hashtag that all those striking people posted that day and that was all. That would get traction. The fawning lazy news media who slurp up hashtags as a metric and source for news would pick up upon it. It would grow like a snowball down a snowy hill. The strike approach, given how few in relation to the social media user-base that this will appeal. Would be like a snowball rolling down a hot summer mountain. Nobody will know, apart from those who was there at the start, no traction, no momentum and more so. No sign that it ever happened upon those social media platforms in a noticeable way at all.

Hence, I totally appreciate the sentiment, just mindful that the message will be lost with this approach, as it has been lost previously by such actions upon the likes of facebook, twitter and ....that's it as far as the World media counts for its news.

FWIW, I don't do twitter anymore, never done facebook and Google+ striked all its users. Hence for me and many others, creating a social media account just to take part by not posting, would play against the intent and into social media hands. But I certainly wish them luck. Though equally, I would not be supprised if a decentralised social media platform suddenly sprung up from wiki origins. But then, the inner cynic in me is very strong in today's digital world.

EDIT ADD Had a quick look for `related` interests and see that he is CIO of Everipedia, which is decentralizing encyclopedia writing from an article in March: https://www.wired.com/story/larry-sanger-declaration-of-digi... But I'd not cry foul even if they did produce their own decentralised social media platform; Kinda hope they do actually. Competition does have its upsides.

Interesting how he chose the word "strike", commonly used to refer to workers, as if to imply users are working for Facebook or Twitter.

Every time a user submits something to them, it is arguable she is doing work for those companies. The companies do not produce content, yet they depend on it in order to draw traffic. What they provide is a centralised distribution channel. They rely on users to do the work of producing/submitting content.

Is HN a form of social media?

I feel like most folks haven't read either link. The strike calls for striking against traditional, centralized social media, _not_ other social media (such as the Fediverse).

This is laudable as a way to draw attention to the decentralized media. This is not the typical "social media is bad for you get away". Of course i very much doubt it will work. The best way to make decentralized systems work, is to kick a lot of smart people outside corporate media. Smart people will improve the decentralized platforms and influence others to use them. It will be sort of like what happened with the birth of Bitcoin.

I think we should be asking for swift regulation and more censorship on corporate media. It is the kind of thing that really puts off smart people, and will push those early adopters to use the decentranet.

Is there a reddit-like decentralized alternative?

It never held any power over me. I was always skeptical of it from the start. That’s why it is hard to imagine something like a social media strike. For many of us it has no power over our minds.

The social media strike, as organized on Hacker News, Twitter, Facebook, etc. I honestly don't think people have much interest in striking these days if they can't post it on social media, but maybe this will have legs. It's a little telling though that this really can't be organized any other way besides social media these days, and I suspect there will be a lot of people throughout those 2 days checking in on social media to see how it's going.

This strike does not seem very well thought through.

In an action of this kind, you want to demonstrate organization, capacity, and that you have real numbers behind you. Having people silently not use the internet on a major U.S. holiday achieves none of that.

If the goal is to get people to share the hashtag, then that should be the focus of the action.

A failed strike is much worse than not striking at all. But frankly, this seems more like a vanity effort than a serious attempt at change.

Strike accepted. I deleted my social media accounts in 2016.

I love this. Ironically, a great way to spread the word is via social media.

This reminds me of the campaign to get people to give up shopping on the day after thanksgiving. Not gonna happen.

I fully support it. Hopefully it will not become a social media event and lead to more consumption.

I'll see your Social Media strike and raise you an Internet strike.

Why not do a no Internet day? Will be easier to communicate that. Give people a taste of normal life. They will automatically quit on social media. Like every Sunday no Internet day.

This will have zero effect. If you take any kind of public transportation, even glancing across peoples' screens as you sit down (and ~everyone'll be looking at a screen), 95% will be on fb or instagram.

I wish it were different, but by now these apps, and all social media, are extremely good at feeding their users' addictions.

Social media is hard to define so participants are more likely to cheat. Should be an internet strike which is "as simple as" going camping without your phones/computers for 2 days, which honestly would be great practice for a newly decentralized world.

I created Timelines - a social network that allows people to own their data.

Timelines stores your data in a specific folder on your Google Drive which is sandboxed from all your other data on Google drive.

Check it out!

https://www.timelines.co

Eh? There already are decentralized social networks available to use. This doesn’t add up.

And as others have pointed out, what networks are eligible for this forced decentralization process? Should some networks be allowed to be centralized? Which ones, if so?

Let’s not be too hasty.

Perhaps an idea to make a substitute profile pic that people can use to show they are in.

By the way, July 4-5 (before the weekend) seems unfortunate timing because many people will want to check for events.

I’m running ads on Instagram right now. Might be fun to pause my campaign for 2 days in addition to not using social media personally

What about decentralizing the Wikipedia empire?

The only way this is going to move forward is through open standards. Something something webfinger, mail 2.0 and trusted recipients.

What would you achieve with a 2 days strike anyway? The idea is so ridiculous in itself it's not even worth writing about.

social media strike on July 4th?

I'm betting Facebook has a huge spike. The people I know on Facebook:

- Aren't going to know about the strike

- Won't be able to resist posting gratuitous food-fest pics

This is an awesome idea

I'd be willing to close all of my accounts instead

For decentralized social media to happen, there needs to be sufficient motive to leave centralized platforms collectively within a cohesive network of individuals, so that if a tipping point is met to overcome activation costs, most of the network will move over so the new decentralized platform has similar value to the old centralized platform that the network was previously on. A few incentivized individuals in a wider network of apathetics won't work -- it needs to be a cohesive network all switching together in order for the value to remain competitive with the old platform, due to Metcalfe's law. And since we're talking about decentralization, the network transitioning will ideally be incentivized to choose a decentralized network to migrate to, vs another centralized one (even though the usability and quality of experience on the decentralized one is likely to be inferior.) This combination of factors is what makes it so difficult to bootstrap these networks.

Here's the thing: there is such an opportunity now, if anyone is willing to take it. Conservatives in the US are outraged against perceived censorship and de-platforming by centralized social media platforms. Regardless of the validity, there's a deep seated hatred of these platforms forming and an incredible sense of urgency to move elsewhere. Since the motivation for leaving is overcoming centralized control, this audience is particularly attracted to accepting decentralized platforms. Given that approximately half of the US aligns partially with the views of some of these voices, this is a large potential network. The catch is that we are also living in an era where if someone develops and delivers such a solution for this market, they're going to be under vicious attack and be labelled as sympathizers to the extremist, minority voices of that audience. Most likely their careers will be destroyed by choosing to build for such an audience, regardless of how much the extremist voices are actually present on the decentralized platform.

I predict that if we are ever going to see a decentralized social media platform emerge for any of these services, it will begin with a critical mass of marginalized voices who have been censored and de-platformed, and their audience, moving to it. Instead of beginning as a "toy", it will begin as a "place for undesirables." Today that could mean conservative voices in the US, tomorrow it could mean something else. If the network is able to garner sufficient growth, over time, as it always goes, the nature of the "average user" will be diluted away so the network is no longer perceived as a community of like-minded individuals but instead as a general, global platform. (Similar how most mainstream global social network sites today began in a similar way: Twitter was for techies, Facebook was for college kids, etc.)

Look out for these leading edge behaviors, and don't just dismiss them if the early adopter audience has the perception of being unsavory to you. It seems somewhat inductive that, given the current existence of the global centralized platforms, any long-run successful decentralized platform likely could not start any other way than with groups of people who both want to leave collectively, and who will get no benefit from staying (in other words, the people on centralized platforms will all want them to leave too.)

This is great. Celebs need to be on boarded more than Geeks. Getting an Obama or Kim Kardashian to show support would have major global impact. A cascade would start.

Is not email and SMS already a decentralized form of social media?

I doubt the existence of decentralized social media would mean the end of centralized social media. How do you build a video sharing platform that's anywhere near as full-featured as Youtube without centralization?

Here is a suggestion for the strike as well...launch a decentralized anti-libra coin.

There are already options for decentralized social media. So clearly the majority of people is not in favor of using them, or they would simply do so (without a strike).

Therefore, this is about a minority trying to force the majority of people to adapt to their preferences.

I can not sympathize with such a cause, even though I personally would prefer decentralized solutions.

It reminds me of the town that voted to ban Amazon - when they could just have shopped locally to begin with. Weird, really.