Expanding ScubaBoard to social media

[letterboy]

Lol.

SB is a publically searchable forum.

Anyone can search a dive destination and come across a trip report on SB.

Have y'all ever read the entire tos here on SB?

 

[100days-a-year]

Nope, not never. Don't like it.
One of the draws of SB is the gentle tone and moderation. I like certain aspects of social media and am on several platforms but it is not kinder or gentler.

 

[Centrals]

I only use FB to check the latest news on certain dive operator that I am interested. Quite useful.

 

[DBPacific]

My family is often solely reachable through social media, so I keep a few connections now that we're all in different states (or countries). I follow a few diving organizations on Instagram, including DAN, and they often share interesting diving science articles, links to upcoming events or seminars, and trip photos.

The r/scuba reddit does get attention by younger crowds but is more prone to, shall we say, less tidy divers sharing their advice. On SB if I see someone dragging fins in a picture, there's sure to be at least 5 people calling them out on it and giving tips on how to correct it.

Social media can do a lot of good to keep people connected, but it's always, always a balance of managing the echo chamber and moderating your userbase appropriately

 

[AfterDark]

How about none? That should have been a choice, don't you think?

It would have worked for me.

 

[tep]

I vote for none. I left FB behind years ago.

A former student intern worked at both of them, left in disgust.

FB internal memos boil down to "controversy drives anger, anger drives engagement, engagement brings pageviews, pageviews mean ad views, which pay your salary, so shut up and work".

Twitter off the record around the water cooler - "our business model is rage. rage brings tweets, which brings pageviews, which show ads, which make us money"

Does SB want to be on those platforms?

I do like Instagram for the way they show art and photos. But FB and Twitter? Launch them into the Sun.

 

[drrich2]

Does SB want to be on those platforms?

If that's where users you want to reach are, probably so. Social media is a cup half-full, half-empty thing. Yes, we can find fake news, misinformation propagation, people one might question being allowed out in public without adult supervision and so forth on Facebook.

There are also wonderful people of commendable character with wisdom to share.

Much of what's 'wrong' with Facebook is what's wrong with the human race. Facebook essentially gave a public publishing platform to maybe most of the human race? Without much censoring of content or policing who is allowed on the platform. A vast international public experiment in free speech gone wild. Decades ago, you could annoy family, friends and co-workers with your opinions, but that's as far as it went. Now, you can network with like-minded people! Businesses prosper in part by giving the customer what they want. Most people don't want their feed packed with memes and snarky quips from the opposing political party, or a different religion incompatible with their own beliefs. By giving people what they're interested in, of course it creates ideological echo chambers and polarizes people.

Not everybody there stops with that. I'm a conservative; each morning I get the New York Times' free 'Morning' e-mail digest, and via Apple News+ I sometimes read articles from The Atlantic. I listen to some liberal sources to break out of the ideological echo chamber, and because I know not everybody with brains and something of value to share also shares my religion or politics.

P.S.: I think the purpose of the poll is to get a sense of which social media sites are used by people who use social media sites. If they add 'none' to the poll, it may be interesting to see the %, but how is that going to help them determine which social media outlets more divers use?

 

[drk5036]

Just as facebook is an echo chamber, scubaboard is also one, just to a different subset of people. I'm also younger than the average age of people on here, and am probably comfortable using the forum format because I was involved in online forums from too-young of an age (early teenage years...glad it didn't warp my brain).

Scubaboard is like Japan. The average age is much older than every other social media platform listed (and make no mistake, as @drrich2 mentions, scubaboard is also "social media"), and is getting older every year. The question is, do you view that as a bad thing? Are we willing to keep letting scubaboard age as one more or less homogenous racial/age/orientation block, or do we want to try to garner interest in a sport we care about amongst a younger generation with different ideals and interests? If we want to be good towards the future of scuba diving, it makes sense to reach out to people who use other platforms who wouldn't find out about scubaboard organically.

I think using facebook as a way to advertise interesting threads that exist here is a good idea. We don't necessarily want competing threads on both the forum and facebook, but having a way for younger people to access the wealth of information that exists on the forum is a good idea, IMO.

Or I can be the last person to turn out the lights when we all get old and move on to the next adventure.

 

[NothingClever]

I think the whole expansion of ScubaBoard into prominent social media platforms is aimed at increasing site traffic and therefore ad revenue. Our claim to fame is the “largest online community”. Let us ponder that for a moment…not the “most reliable”, not the “most trusted” and not “highest number of industry professionals” but simply world’s largest.

Great…we’re like Wal-Mart or Starbucks.

Whether that revenue is strictly for server maintenance or to pay the rent, I can’t tell. Whatever the case may be, the FB and IG traffic-increasing modus operandi doesn’t seem all that foreign when I see silly bickering on ScubaBoard allowed to run on and on. I recently heard open endorsement of folks posting wrong information or wild conjecture so that others can come in to correct the record.

I think there’s enough marketing for diving as it is. Even if ScubaBoard’s intentions were more altruistic, I don’t think ScubaBoard’s expansion to social media (past this forum) is going to usher in a new era or tip the balance of the industry and bring about a quality control revolution in training. Has ScubaBoard coalesced any observations into vetted conclusions and influenced the outcomes of any WRSTC’s proceedings? Increased scrutiny of licensing organizations? Doesn’t appear so.

Besides, I don’t think the world really needs to expand diving to a broader audience; it’s not like driver’s training. I think we just need more proficient divers who dive more often.

 

[Nemrod]

None. Never.

I have noted the atrophy or death of forum after forum in multiple subject areas as they are displaced by or shift content to so called social media platforms that are increasingly monitored and controlled by the man. Leave me out.

James