I have quite an experience with forums. Ten years ago, I created one for my class which endured successfully for three years. But as a high schooler in 2007, the hype fell quite quickly, as people around me were “migrating” to social networks. It was then that I realized a communication technology’s worth depends exclusively on its users, as formulated by Metcalfe’s law.
I have always been quite sceptical about social networks. Studying Snowden’s revelations and the new forms of political gatherings in the digital age made me realize however prominent and influent they are, they should not be considered as our only means to communicate. While my previous posts relied on privacy and anonimity as well as democratic safeguards against intrusive technologies, I wanted to go back to the roots of my interest for the digital world. I believe one seminal issue here is how we define the flow of information.
Of topics and people: from Avatar to Persona
Forums encourage their members to use an avatar with a nickname, as a token of equality according to hacker’s ethics for the common good. Forums abide by the Net neutrality principle valued by the Internet pioneers according to hacker ethics: the only individual distinction shall be made according to one’s participation to the community. The individual is a member whose publishings are taken as contributions to detailed discussions supervised by moderators.
Social networks are all about “publishing”, about how we make ourselves public. So to say, a digital persona – the mask one wears to expose the most appropriate dimensions of the self that would earn social recognition (see Carl Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology). This mask matches individual interest but presents the risk to invade the user’s daily life because of the social networking deadlock.
Seeking Information
A forum’s tree structure and internal search engine make it easy to find a relevant thread – if not found, it can be created. One topic, one thread, no overlap. Social networks are more evanescent, using a linear chronological data feed filled with publications whose visibility relies on the amount of “likes” or “shares/retweets”. One classification could be Twitter’s hashtag, which successfully conquered Facebook. However it proves more useful for a database than for the users, who mostly use it to show support or to use memes.
The Web of pioneers hinged upon a clear separation between general posts (forums, blogs) and personal conversations (instant messengers or email). This frontier enabled to distinguish valuable intellectual data from trivia, thus easing the flow of knowledge. Social networking destroyed this wall and replaced the public/private antagonism with degrees of visibility. The frontier became an informal continuum.
Furthermore, a news feed is anything but neutral. For instance, social networks favour certain publications depending on submitted interests (pages, subscriptions, likes/shares), thus orienting the browsing experience and violating the neutrality principle, may it be for commercial purposes or for some psychological experiment. This illusion of serendipity and bottom-up interaction only delegates the top-down process to the users themselves, relaying publications. On the contrary, forums have a very low tolerance for self-promotion or advertising, for it most likely contradicts accurate information.
New users, new divides
Last decade’s democratization of the Internet is an exponential phenomenon: from 394 million users in 2000 to nearly 3 billion in 2014.
The social networking boom resulted in a huge sociological swerve. Not only did social networking broaden the Net surfers assembly, but it also shifted the structure of the conversation by putting an end to anonimity, thus reproducing real-world inequalities. The fact is, Facebook was literally meant to reproduce social divides, for it was first meant for upper-class students to get laid. A telltale New Yorker cartoon sums it up pretty well (as quoted by The Guardian): A girl introduces her boyfriend to her parents. “Don’t you think he’s a little bit MySpacey for you, dear?”, her mother replies.
Social networking gave metadata a whole new significance, that changed the data itself: traces of real life, pictures, live stories, likes, impressions… Every information posted must be true because it is socially assessed by the others. Internet becomes a daily conversation between several people like in a bar, open to the neighbour’s ears. It made communication less selective and more accessible, but people who do not use social networks must accept they are let on the side of the road, as if cast away from society. We should be able to choose.
Two shades of information
We could argue one type of social networking became the new standard: there are new opportunities. The reason why Facebook-killers (Diaspora’s failure or the already criticized Ello) failed is because it already exists, succeeds, and keeps on growing. Indeed, Reddit embraces social networking interactivity by incorporating liking (“up/down”), subscribing (“subReddits”) and sharing features (posts or links), but preserves the equality standards of forums. On the long run, effective alternatives do exist. Reddit is a bliss for those who want thorough discussions on specific topics, and could become a new model in future years.
Forums are about topics ; social networks are about people. One just cannot replace another. Social networks embody a centralized, top-down mercantile approach to information while forums favour detailed and orderly bottom-up interaction. Nostalgia is no panacea, but learning how to deal with several definitions of seeking information is capital if we want to get the most of the Internet’s potential.
Present Day. Present Time. 