All photos were taken by me and were posted here before as well
I came across this video on Youtube titled Why did our friends stop posting on social media? and I have the same sentiments and been thinking about it for months now.
Let's go back a little bit to 2010 where I think social media mainly Facebook were really popular that almost everyone around me had one. I was about maybe 13 and I remember just going on Facebook to play games - Pet Society, Tetris Battle, Nightclub City, and all the likes. Me and my friends would also post about our random trips to the mall or some random school stuff, and we would laugh at each other's silly photos. I also was able to see my other 5,000 friends' posts and be updated on whatever's going on with their lives.
There were few ads. Not even on games. We just genuinely post stuff we are proud about and something we can laugh about. Privacy wasn't really heard of lol. We can post that we are currently in this location without worrying about someone taking photos of us or whatever.
Then came the Instagram time which I remember probably on 2014-2016. I see colored hair everywhere. The fashion inspirations are all over the place. People started 'curating' their profiles and only show the nice VSCO edited photos on their Instagram. Less posts about life were seen on Facebook. I wasn't on Reddit yet so I didn't know hahah. A lot of achievements by friends were posted and we were proud.
Then on 2018. Youtube influencers were pretty big already during this time. A lot of Youtube Beauty Guru dramas around. Not a lot of streamers yet and certainly didn't really see a lot of nuisance streamers yet. Ragebaits here and there maybe but not a lot.
Pewdiepie was battling T-series and fighting Youtube's unfair policy on bots and their shitty algorithm favoring big corporations that barely have real engagements than independent creators. I think this was really the time that it has been highlighted that social media platforms don't care about genuine people connections anymore.
Even Facebook which is supposed to be 'normal' people social media has become infested with pages that spread fake news and propaganda.
I was on Hive this time so luckily I didn't really see a lot of mainstream social media activity since I was focused on curating as well.
Then of course, COVID came. That's when people have been looking for alternative incomes on the internet since a lot of them have lost their jobs.
After the lockdowns, it feels like ads are literally everywhere.
Since people have learned they can do affiliates, even memes can edited to become an affiliate link later to trick people into clicking them and the poster earns commission whenever the user buys something from the platform later on. A lot of the supposed to be 'genuine' reviews on the big social media platforms are apparently ads or sponsored content and sometimes you won't notice that until you read the description. A lot of ragebait and disgusting content because these 'content creators' are desperate for views.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with affiliate links and sometimes it in fact benefits the users too. As long as the reviews aren't being faked for the sake of the sales. I also use these affiliate links and codes sometimes if I genuinely think it convinced me and helped me with making smarter decisions.
Going back to the main topic, since everyone is trying to be a content creator on social media, I barely see genuine goofy friendship photos anymore. Even on Instagram, I don't see a lot of my friends' posts on my feed anymore and if there are, the posts would be something that looks really good or careful - in a way that only the best photos should appear on their profile.
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame them and I am guilty of this too. It just sucks how social media has become and how the platforms cater to the profits more than the actual users.
I do see a lot of the real moments on Stories though, which disappear after 24h, but still.
Looking at the recommendations tab, it's also ads ads ads. Even memes have ads nowadays.
A lot of them are also content creators as well. There's rarely someone I see on my feed that only has 1 good viral moment and return to being their normal average user. Most of the profiles on my feed are ones who do this type of content as a daily basis or as a career.
Not everyone goes viral so why wouldn't they?
This has led me to think how lucky I am to be able to find Hive on 2018.
Not only did I make genuine connections with this platform, it has kept me grounded and allowed me to see daily life posts and genuine comments as well. I realized scrolling mainstream social media made me burn out too since everything is about ads, I kept thinking "I could also do that!" or "maybe I should buy that as well!".
Seeing random writings, daily blogs, goofy gameplays, normal people stuff on Hive has been so refreshing. I mean of course I enjoy the really good photos or professional looking ones and really good writing here, but there is a balance of serious blogs and goofy relaxed posts here and there.
The nice thing about this is also that you are able to read reviews about something from an average user. Not everyone here is a professional screenwriter or critic who writes movie reviews... or a professional gardener giving you the best advices. It is very refreshing to see from the average users' perspective because you rarely see that in mainstream social media nowadays.
To conclude, this isn't the users fault tho. Platforms can do something if they want to. The current algorithm favors the ones with most engagement and views because that gives them the most profit. Of course, the users follow that.
I don't have the solution to it either... but I think they will really love Hive for the reasons I mentioned above. Maybe at some point they will realize they had enough of the ads and come here or to other platforms that probably offer the same thing.
That is of course, if we keep things the same - or not 100% same, we can always improve things but keep the main point of it being author/user first.
And also, these were photos that I took and posted here because I genuinely am proud of them and wanted my friends to see. There is no other platform that I think would be a nice place to post these at, except maybe on IG occasionally. I didn't see the point in having a dedicated photography account or page to post these at because there's barely any real users engaging and they also probably wouldn't be seen anyway. So yeah, that's why they're only posted here and not anywhere else.