Wyld.Media

Digital Product Design & Innovation Consulting

Design Inequality- Effects on Users on Social Media Platforms

 

This post “Design Inequality” first appeared on my personal blog: Howlite and coffee on August 21, 2021
How social media stopped being fun: Design inequality and it's effects on user engagement

This idea for this post came form the discussions on tumblr allowing (a selected small number of) users to monetise their posts. It was a pilot to try out a potential new feature.

The pushback for this had many points, but the most interesting was:

The best thing about this platform is that everyone is the same. We all get the same experience.

This got me thinking.. is design equality a hidden feature in some social media platforms?

What is the impact of design inequality on our experience of the platforms?

What is Design Inequality?

Design inequality is the difference in platform features and behaviour for different users based on status.

It can be a status that is determined by staff, like the manually approved blue checkmark and “verified accounts timeline” on Twitter, or it can be “earned”, like swipe up links for people with 10k followers on Instagram.

It might be self-selected, like the different options available to influencer or business accounts over “normal” accounts for Facebook and instagram.

It could be different standards by which some accounts are suspended or shadowbanned based on who the user is, not the content posted.

What is the purpose of design inequality?

For the platform:

  • The main drive is to incentivise users to “strive” for influencer status, encouraging more engagement. Engagement is the lifeblood of social media apps.
  • Encourages big accounts to stay and use this platform as their primary social account because of the reach/ results. Social media platforms are in competition with each other for being the main platform. No one has time to be on all platforms equally.

For the users

  • Ability to monetise from the platform.
  • better reach and engagement for their investment of time and money

Effects of Design Inequality: net harmful

Design inequality is degrading the experience of the platform and user engagement with the platform over the long term:

  • Creates cynicism and distrust in the users. Even during their recreation time, they have “elites” and “have nots” status shoved in their faces, and different outcomes for the same behaviour depending on clout. Their “escape place” behaves too much like the real world to be a real escape anymore.
  • Influencers have disproportionate power to sway opinions over more qualified people who don’t have the same features due to followers.
  • People who are more qualified must first spend many days attempting to build a following before being able to counteract misinformation. While still not having the reach and ease of clicking external links as influencers.
  • This has the effect of strengthening cancel culture (as opposed to simply unfollowing). Because a post with a link is not just “an opinion” when shared by someone with powers “regular” people don’t have: their opinion is a show of power and with that power, users expect responsibility. The pushback can be justified at times, but can also be driven out of spite at the “elites” in other times.
  • This manifests as arguments in comment sections. The platform simply sees “engagement” and boosts the problematic accounts further.
  • Controversial, covertly racist and/or misleading accounts are thus favoured over more thoughtful content creators.
  • This is fatiguing for the users, since working to create nuanced and simple but informational content is less rewarding than simply sharing polarising content or hot takes.
  • Positive reinforcement for increasingly toxic behaviour, through algorithmic boosting for controversy and arguments. Likes and follows from bad behaviour act like clicker training. People double down because it works.
  • B.I & POC creators are leaving insta and clubhouse for platforms like patreon and fanbase.

 

When your escape place is no longer fun and light, you seek out a new escape place.

Enter tiktok. Where everything feels a little unpolished. Less salesy. The algorithm feels fairer. Everyone gets a little sunshine on their content.

Instagram sees this and thinks “reels are the solution”. Not recognising the emotional need for fairness.

Twitter sees the growth of clubhouse and “twitter spaces” are the solution.

But reels and spaces are just the medium of platforms that feel rich with opportunities to grow.

Platforms where cracks of inequality aren’t yet visible. Until they are. And the illusion of that level playing field is broken again.

When insta adds reels to their platform, the reels carry ALL the same problems that all content on Instagram does. It’s not cute or fun like on tiktok, it’s just more noise.

It’s more ways to be sold to.

It’s being asked to do more work on a platform that doesn’t feel fun anymore.

As of time or writing, fanbaseapp has reported a quarter of a million account migrations from insta in 2 days.

A post on Fanbase that reads BiPOC activists and creators are leaving Instagram en mass. Here’s why

Design inequality is what’s ruining this experience. Not the features.

Update. Fanbase has since secured it’s second round of funding this march, at 2.6 million. Instagram is still holding it’s number 2 position as a social media site -after Facebook- but is expected to lose that in the Middle East and Africa to tiktok. Mastodon has gotten a lot of interest lately, with the European commission creating a european instance for official EU bodies. I don’t expect it to replace twitter, however, as it’s less intuitive, and because it’s less easy to have a big following, making it less attractive for businesses, celebs, and trolls – the Twitter trifecta.

The Ownership Economy We Left Behind: Web 3 Can’t Fix What Greed Broke.

 

image of a cowboy on a horse. behind him is a horse carrying the bitcoin symbol on his back. image has text that reads: the ownership economy we left behind. text is written in handwriting font.

“If the last generation of software was built upon a foundation of user-generated content, the next generation of software will be user-owned, with digital ownership leveraged as a building block to enable novel user experiences.”

li’s newsletter: the ownership economy and upcoming era of content ownership

This article missed one thing: content ownership isn’t some new future utopia, it’s what is what blogging was.

Web 2 is thought of as the era of social media, with dynamic, “live updating” applications fuelled by JavaScript and Ruby on Rails in place of clunkier php and (god help us all) perl web applications.

But web 2 was also defined by open APIs that allowed people to post from their tumblr to their twitter, insta and FB directly, or vice versa. As in the raw text or image appeared as if it were posted from that platform, not as a link back to the originator platform.

These open APIs died in favour of siloed websites and apps – because it was imperative to keep eyeballs on only their site in order to make these “free” services profitable by snapping up all the data.

I can’t speak to the “novel user experiences” li mentions –which sound a bit like when enough discord users boost a server and get new emojis, or like when insta only allowed people with 10k followers to have links on swipe up – but what I can say is:

Before we posted all our content for free on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, insta, TikTok, medium, and substack, people did own their content.

You paid for webhosting, you installed blog software on your server, and you owned your own domain and pop email account tied to it.

No one could de-platform anyone, because email list data was (and still is) ours by law. Freely transferable to any new email service.

You could (and still can) export your blog content and reimport to a new blog platform or to a new host without issue if you posted content that was somehow against your web hosting t&c’s.

The reason we gave up ownership was for attention, to put it bluntly. Before “for you” pages and discover pages, you had to either rely on people searching for your content (and that created the culture of awful click bait headlines we know and loath), or you had to network. You got followers by following other blogs and building real relationships with their owners.

You chatted on message boards and subreddits about whatever niche interest brought you there and if you so happened to blog about it and you were more or less liked, then maybe you got followers there.

You counted success as when someone new added your blog to their blog roll (RIP) : a list of links in the sidebar of their site for their followers to follow. A smaller success was a link in a blog post.

People kept up to date with all these different sites with an RSS reader.

It took graft and time and as close as real person to person contact as is possible with online experiences. It was slow.

Social media came along and boosted the early adopters to the top of the attention pile. Making others think “oh, it’s so easy. I can do that”.

As the platforms grew and more creators arrived, it was careful to mete out that every new creator would get a slice of attention early on, to help keep them hooked.

Yeah, the algorithms had a favoured content style you had to learn after a while. And each seems skewed to an idea of what “good content” is that can be manipulated. But it allowed people to grow faster than before with much less two way interaction.

And that how the culture of internet idols was born. How it set the stage for them to shill everything from “slimming tea” to cheap swimsuits to disinformation, unquestioned.

When we gave our content and data away for attention and greater discoverability, we gave these platforms power to influence us in ways that people who work in behaviour studies are still trying to understand.

My chat app is connected to the app I scroll each morning and the ads and new accounts it shows me, and that’s connected to my music app and the playlists and podcasts it suggests- all of which work in the background to create my current state of mind, form my opinions, and how I see myself.

“In a new study published in the Journal of Consumer Research, researchers have found that aside from enabling you to reach a more targeted audience, behavioral marketing may also have the capacity to alter a users’ perception of themselves”

Social media today: new study shoes targeted ads change self perception, boost interest

If I believed that I was immune while others might be influenced, I would be delusional. And so would you.

Monopolies didn’t break the internet– greed did: greed from companies trying to squeeze as much money out of our data and attention as possible, and creators who wanted to squeeze as much revenue out of their followers by giving the illusion that – for example- their lip kit was the reason their mouth suddenly looked like it had fillers in it. Or that they didn’t need to be vaccinated because of this vitamin they sell.

Adding more businesses and more creators with the same mindset that broke the web 2 isn’t going to make web 3 any better.

You can’t fix something with the same mindset that broke it.

Am I excited about designing new, unique experiences with VR and AR?

Absolutely.

Do I think this is the cure to what the current state of affairs is?

Absolutely not.

It doesn’t matter if no one company has all our data. Companies sell user data to each other, to political actors, and to governments – domestic and foreign. Increasingly, it’s the last two who value this data the most.

That may not sound scary to you, but it is scary for the most marginalised people in societies.

Creators are about the maintaining aspirational illusions that appeal to their audience: whether it’s an illusion of health, relation or business expertise, beauty, or finding spiritual peace.

Web 3 is simply adding an additional “finders fee” for bringing those servers more user data and keeping it topped up with a fresh supply of fresh souls new visitors.

While that might translate into fewer online courses and paid partnerships being shilled from creators, it doesn’t de-incentivise them for wanting to appeal to the broadest possible base by any means necessary – deception included. And I don’t believe anyone would give up those extra revenue channels once they’ve got them set up.

Finally, giving those people payment/ownership in a currency that can be destabilised by a tweet, feels like being paid in beanie babies*.

It could be worth something down the line. or the bubble could burst and it might not.

By all means, get excited about the new experiences web3 will bring us.

But you can and should take back your web presence and content right now.

* Beanie babes: plushy collectables from around web 2 era that people scrambled to buy because it was an investment, and later it turned out the whole thing was a hyped up stunt and then the bubble burst. Seemed like that might ring some bells.

Follow different platforms all in one place – with RSS & RSS.app

 

I’m going old school – just tired of endless pinging and increasingly repetitive ads – with RSS. Using feedly on my laptop or iPad, and Reeder on my iPhone.

Did you know you can get the RSS feed from any twitter account, including it’s likes, using RSS.app?

Did you know you can subscribe to YouTube accounts, subreddits and instagram accounts the same way?

It’s actually really nice to be able to read a whole recipe or article without all the floating video ads, retargeting ads and other promotional stuff. And I get all the other content I care about in the same place.

Do you use rss anymore? if so, what your reader of choice?

If not, are you curious to try?

Adding activity pub/Mastodon integration

 

I’ll write up a more detailed post / how-to later. But I feel it’s time to stop talking about how web 3 will save us and move to a more decentralised, indyweb. To that end, I’m on mastodon, and have installed acitivty pub plugin to turn this blog into it’s own mastodon account that can be followed anywhere in the fediverse.

Community as a Feature in Apps – Design for User Engagement

 

This is part of a series on design for user engagement (or addictive design) patterns, and good and bad examples of implementation of these patterns.

Today’s is about digital products using “community” as a user engagement strategy. community for user engagement in app design

See Previously:

“Community”, The Feel Good Sauce ✨👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏽👩🏻‍🤝‍👨🏽👭🏽

Lately, it feels like the word “community” is the secret, feel good sauce that promises to make every app, digital course, or even co-working space special.

And it’s alluring. If you’re learning a new skill, hobby, or habit – chances are you’ll want people to talk to, buddy up with and ask questions.

Dedicated digital communities can be a product unto themselves, but today I’m looking at apps that include online communities as supplemental to the main offering.

Ones that utilise the dopamine hit we get from upvotes, comments and likes to increase user engagement and retention.

 

Good example of community as as a user retention feature

Shine app

screenshot of shine app, showing a question and comments underneath. This is how the app builds user engagement through community
Solid community plan and content strategy

Shine describes itself as a self care app, with daily tips, mindfulness exercises, mood trackers and courses to help their users “live their best life”. Launched in 2018, they added community as a feature to their app in December last year (2019).

What makes it work

The community feature is

  1. strongly related to the content of the day (‘daily thought’ image & meditation)
  2. The community question is primarily designed to reinforce of the message of the day through self reflection..
  3. ..and to receive community support as a secondary, addictive, benefit.

Shine cleverly ties in our desire for “likes” with an activity that reinforces learning, which means the users are more likely to positively rate the app as being beneficial to them, thus upgrading to a paid plan, or continue subscribing.

The positive wording of the community post encourages people to say on topic in a positive or even vulnerable way.  You’ll also notice there are no negative reaction options to shared community comments, and no ability to follow up with a snarky comment. There are only different positive reaction types, to give a sense of variable reward to those receiving feedback.

In short, Shine have done a great job of planning their content and community strategy and keeping the community aspect healthy.

This is a great implementation that adds value to their product, encourages positive behaviour changes and increases the likelihood of subscribers. 🤓👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

 

The Cons of Adding Community

Because the in-group dynamic is so addictive,  established community users don’t want to hurt the feelings of another established community poster and risk being an outcast, even when the question posted is a huge red flag.  This is the 8chan effect, where identification with the group as a whole becomes a bigger priority than any question or topic that might harm someone offline.

I don’t want to name and shame specific apps, but I’ve seen some terrible implementations of community apps in the last months, particularly those aimed in the mental/physical health and wellness or pregnancy related audiences.

In all the bad cases I’ve seen, the community feature felt like it wasn’t thought out beyond being an inspirational buzzword on a pitch-deck. It seems like there was no resources available for dealing with real-life scenarios, like:

– What happens when people prefer to ask the group questions that should be asked to drs because asking the group feels comforting while drs are scary?

– What happens when the top advice posters on the group prefer to offer platitudes rather than tell someone to go to the ER because their baby hasn’t kicked for 24 hours? Advice which is easily findable on the NHS, or from any hospital, website.

– in the above app for pregnant women to meet others like them locally, what ID or safety checks are available? Let’s take a moment to imagine the kind of user who has so few local contacts that this is their primary way of making friends (as I couldn’t help but wonder while using the app). It’s a vulnerable subset of users. No ID or verification was asked of me. The incidence of catfishing is probably pretty high in a ‘community’ like this.

Community Neglect Hurts Product Uptake.

The communities above felt….trashy. I deleted the apps right away.

Even though the people posting on the community tab and the people available locally to meet are almost certainly quite different demographically (US based for the message board, Madrid based for meet-ups), the kinds of posts I saw made me think I wouldn’t want to meet anyone from the app.

If your online community posters were in a room, would you want to go and hang out there for a few hours every week? If the answer is: no, then it’s not a selling point. It may even degrade from the overall app value.

Secondly, allowing these kinds of conversation to take place isn’t freedom of expression; it puts people’s lives at stake in some cases.

It also lowers your brand.

When google started to include “Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness” as SEO ranking signals, they weren’t just demonstrating some bleeding heart ethics; they understood that the value of their brand was being lowered by people posting quackery and still floating to the top of search results.

The Take-Home

Online communities have been used as a lure to bring users back to commercial websites since the early 2000’s, when they were php message boards on commerce sites or blogs with sponsored content.

They persist as a feature in many apps today because they work. Because people want to feel part of a community and want a gang.

But much like a garden, a community is only attractive when it’s well maintained.

It needs vigilant full time moderators, strong but context sensitive community standards to be enforced, and clear community guidelines. Key words and phrases may need auto replies, like “see a dr”.

You may need to design around people’s negativity and tendency to argue, like shine does.

Complaints procedures needs to be clearly stated and trustworthy. Troll questions and behaviours need to be weeded out.

How to implement community features in apps when your team is small

For many startups, this kind of full time admin isn’t possible, or isn’t scalable as more users join, and that’s where the problems arise.

If that seems like a problem that may face your idea, I’d advise one of two moves:

A. Don’t include a community until you can afford to get enough experienced admins to moderate and monitor it as it grows.

B.  Open the community in small batches at select intervals during the year to onboard and “domesticate” newbies into how things should be done. It’s easier to weed out any problem users in batches this way, as older users tend to be pretty stable in their posting habits.

This approach won’t appeal to apps that are looking for that coveted hokey stick growth pattern, but for bootstrapped or crowdsourced funded ideas, it allows the community to grow at a sustainable pace at the budget you have available.

Thinking about adding an online community to your digital product or app, and would like more specific advice? Book a call with me

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