Is BITOG just a version of social media or is it something else?

[Astro14]

There is a social dimension to all of the threads here. Even mechanical questions and topics have human interaction, language, and, sometimes, things are incorrectly interpreted.

But threads like, what are you eating, what’s your favorite song, post a picture, etc. are purely social. Many of those threads have been started by one member, and we have had some moderator discussion about the merit of those purely social threads.

They have, deliberately, I would argue, turned BITOG from a purely automotive forum into a social media platform. Not pure social media, of course, but those particular threads themselves are purely social. For some folks, this platform is their social media.

Ultimately, those threads have lots of views and lots of posts. So, because of their popularity with the membership here, they have been allowed.

But let’s be clear; BITOG doesn’t track members, or monetize their activity here. This isn’t a money-making platform.

So, it is fundamentally very different than social media.

 

[AmBeRnEcTaR]

My roadside food pictures.

The pictures I will post here are nothing but pictures of food I have consumed during road trips, excursions, and joy rides. This is a very good brie and prosciutto sandwich from the Oakville Grocery store in Napa Valley. If you care to see pictures of the store you can find them in this thread.

bobistheoilguy.com

Coffee - Your Current Brew

What's in your cabinet? You guys seem to have pretty good taste... One of you guys, I forget who, posted that the Eight 'o Clock Colombian was pretty good, so I picked some up today. It's pretty good - not my favorite, but definitely drinkable. Kinda has what seems to me to be a "vintage" or...

bobistheoilguy.com

All food consumed in one day

I won't be able to document this every day. I will make one post for every day I document. I will include smoothies and shakes but I will not include water, tea, and coffee. I define a meal as a substantial quantity of food. I define snack as a small quantity of food that can't be considered a...

bobistheoilguy.com

Caprese Salad theory- the salad will predict how your meal will be

Caprese salad is a simple Italian salad, made of sliced fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and sweet basil, seasoned with salt, and olive oil. It is usually arranged on a plate in restaurant practice. Like pizza Margherita, it features the colors of the Italian flag: green, white, and red. In 2006 I...

bobistheoilguy.com

Those are just a few of the current (updated in the past 1-2 days) threads here.

Then there's the "What are you reading..." threads or "What are you listening to..." threads and so on.

Oh I get that I post in them more than anything but I don't necessarily think that makes BITOG tantamount to Facebook.
I'm on bodybuilding forums, car forums, travel, cooking. They all have various sections.

Facebook is just different to me. Never had an account and never will.
Simply not interesting to me and far too self absorbed from what I've seen.

 

[ZeeOSix]

My roadside food pictures.

The pictures I will post here are nothing but pictures of food I have consumed during road trips, excursions, and joy rides. This is a very good brie and prosciutto sandwich from the Oakville Grocery store in Napa Valley. If you care to see pictures of the store you can find them in this thread.

bobistheoilguy.com

Coffee - Your Current Brew

What's in your cabinet? You guys seem to have pretty good taste... One of you guys, I forget who, posted that the Eight 'o Clock Colombian was pretty good, so I picked some up today. It's pretty good - not my favorite, but definitely drinkable. Kinda has what seems to me to be a "vintage" or...

bobistheoilguy.com

All food consumed in one day

I won't be able to document this every day. I will make one post for every day I document. I will include smoothies and shakes but I will not include water, tea, and coffee. I define a meal as a substantial quantity of food. I define snack as a small quantity of food that can't be considered a...

bobistheoilguy.com

Caprese Salad theory- the salad will predict how your meal will be

Caprese salad is a simple Italian salad, made of sliced fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and sweet basil, seasoned with salt, and olive oil. It is usually arranged on a plate in restaurant practice. Like pizza Margherita, it features the colors of the Italian flag: green, white, and red. In 2006 I...

bobistheoilguy.com

Those are just a few of the current (updated in the past 1-2 days) threads here.

Then there's the "What are you reading..." threads or "What are you listening to..." threads and so on.

What's wrong with subject matter like that (and other OT subjects that don't break board rules) when it's posted in the appropriate forum(s)? Now if someone is posting food photos in the UOA forum, then that's a different situation.

There are a lot of forums here focused on non-oil related and many other "off topics". This board may not be as big and popular without some of those forums. Guess Admin and Mods could remove all forums and posts that are not 100% related to oil, etc and see what happens, but I'd bet member activity would go down significantly. A huge cross section of subjects brings a huge cross section of members.

 

[TiGeo]

FB (and other social media sites) exist, by their very nature to collect data on people and sell that data for $
FB is active in recruiting people to join others, make new friends.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
These are the two distinguishing characteristics of what I call "social media"

BITOG and other web forums (you name it, Tacomaworld, AKFiles, plasticwirenutchat.com, etc) just don't do that. Sure they both make money from ads, fine. But not seller user data and owning our images and such.

If you want to call the above "social media" you are free to do so, but these web forums are NOT social media companies.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I will also add, sure they all have rules, but it seems like most web forums have fairly straight forward interpretable rules. OTOH: FB posts up content warnings in the manner of fact checkers, really quite regardless if the facts are true or facts, actually - and they have very strange enforcement of said rules, depending on the skin color of content of the member. Some parties constantly threaten violence, and nothing comes of it. Another posts a gag meme that goes against the feelings of one person and bam, poster gets FB jail time. The real capriciousness of this came into the open with the Twitter files.

So to rebut NO - they are NOT 100% the same just because there is back and forth.

I agree with some of your points - I'm focusing on the online social aspect/similarities between old-school boards like this and an auto-based FB group. Yes, BITOG isn't much of what your concerns are nor is golfmk7, vwvortex, vwatlas, mtbr, and others I'm a member/mod on. I think a lot of what folks, here at least, don't understand is the groups and how good they *can* be depending on moderation, subject matter, etc. Many run just like this place but you have the over-watch by FB overall which is a bit different. I mod a few groups - most of the issues I have to deal aren't member-to-member reports, they are FB algorithms automatically flagging things that are almost always a non-issue/within the group's rules. The admin of those groups can however turn off the auto nannies which is a nice feature.

Your clearly politically-based concerns w/FB...no clue man, I'm not a conspiracy guy and I'd be careful posting as such around here based on the rules and making assumptions like that. I like to go there and talk about my cars, I get my news where I get my news as an educated person that understands sources and bias and how to figure out what is real and what isn't. I could say some of the same for this site, the enforcement of the rules is quite pick or choose at times.

 

[TiGeo]

What's wrong with subject matter like that (and other OT subjects that don't break board rules) when it's posted in the appropriate forum(s)? There are a lot of forums here focused on non-oil related topics. Now if someone is posting food photos in the UOA forum, then that's a different situation.

The food comment came form a post I remember here at some point where someone was making fun of folks that use social media and made the comment to some wording to the effect that "it's just folks posting pictures of their food" among other things which of course is funny considering there is a sub-forum about food.

 

[TiGeo]

There is a social dimension to all of the threads here. Even mechanical questions and topics have human interaction, language, and, sometimes, things are incorrectly interpreted.

But threads like, what are you eating, what’s your favorite song, post a picture, etc. are purely social. Many of those threads have been started by one member, and we have had some moderator discussion about the merit of those purely social threads.

They have, deliberately, I would argue, turned BITOG from a purely automotive forum into a social media platform. Not pure social media, of course, but those particular threads themselves are purely social. For some folks, this platform is their social media.

Ultimately, those threads have lots of views and lots of posts. So, because of their popularity with the membership here, they have been allowed.

But let’s be clear; BITOG doesn’t track members, or monetize their activity here. This isn’t a money-making platform.

So, it is fundamentally very different than social media.

Nicely said and I agree.

 

[rlabutis]

Its a BB system because of the way it works. There is no manipulation of posts by an algorithm.

 

[TiGeo]

Also another big plus of the FB groups vs. this type of platform is....videos. Man it's so easy to help folks when you grab a quick 30 sec video and post it.

 

[TiGeo]

Its a BB system because of the way it works. There is no manipulation of posts by an algorithm.

Have to define that a bit - yes, FB algorithms manipulate/control the order of what you see/when you see it/who it's from etc. BUT, that's really isn't so much the case in the groups that I've seen, more your normal "feed". The groups can be adjusted so you see them in order like a BB or newest first etc. etc. FB isn't altering the content of your posts and even mods as far as I know can't adjust them like they do frequently here...you can just delete it basically.

 

[Pablo]

Your clearly politically-based concerns w/FB...no clue man, I'm not a conspiracy guy and I'd be careful posting as such around here based on the rules and making assumptions like that. I like to go there and talk about my cars, I get my news where I get my news as an educated person that understands sources and bias and how to figure out what is real and what isn't. I could say some of the same for this site, the enforcement of the rules is quite pick or choose at times.

Conspiracy guy? What is that?

You are smart to get your news elsewhere.

Stick with facts. Twitter had a solid relationship with the FBI. They had ex-FBI on staff and banned people by political leanings with FBI back and forth. Not violent people. YET known violent groups were allowed to exist. It goes beyond even that. Twitter had requests from congress people to ban folks. This isn't conjecture. Now FB wanted/wants to be a news organization, but they purposely suppressed facts and news that impacted elections and took input from political groups and FBI to do so. That is not how forums operate.

 

[AmBeRnEcTaR]

The food forum is my favorite! I look forward to seeing different foods and the ones I can no longer cook for myself.

Why can you no longer cook them?
Cooking is like riding a bike, once you're good at it you never forget the fundamentals.

The three most important things I learned working in well run kitchens are knife skills, method, and treatment.

Once you've got those under your belt you're set for life in the kitchen.

Or is an injury or condition preventing you from being able to do it?

 

[Jdeere562]

Why can you no longer cook them?
Cooking is like riding a bike, once you're good at it you never forget the fundamentals.

The three most important things I learned working in well run kitchens are knife skills, method, and treatment.

Once you've got those under your belt you're set for life in the kitchen.

Or is an injury or condition preventing you from being able to do it?

Bad knees. Can't stand up very long or hardly walk. Daughter bought me a walked after the last fall.

 

[SaberOne]

If I even remotely looked at this forum as a ‘social media’ site, I wouldn’t be here. Vehicle forums or derivatives, are fairly well managed by moderators in order to keep the ash and trash to a minimum.

 

[Hall]

What's wrong with subject matter like that

Where did I say they were wrong ? People try and argue that this isn't a social media site because people don't post pictures of their food.

But let’s be clear; BITOG doesn’t track members, or monetize their activity here. This isn’t a money-making platform.

So, it is fundamentally very different than social media.

turned BITOG from a purely automotive forum into a social media platform

Which is it ? Just because a site monetizes and one doesn't, doesn't mean one is social media and one is not.

 

[Hall]

FB isn't altering the content of your posts and even mods as far as I know can't adjust them like they do frequently here...you can just delete it basically.

No group admin on Facebook can edit other people's posts like is possible here. Admins on FB can lock commenting or delete everything entirely. One interesting option on FB, though I'm not sure if it still works, is an admin can hide a user's comment from people but when that person looks, they still see their comment. No one else can though, so no one comments/replies, and the person doesn't know they're muted.

 

[Pablo]

Which is it ? Just because a site monetizes and one doesn't, doesn't mean one is social media and one is not.

It definitely defines what a social media company is.

 

[Hall]

That is not how forums operate.

If they're big enough, they'd be targeted no different than Twitter. Read the site's rules:

Enforcement
We will comply with all legal requirements regarding any mandated disclosure of any Submitted Material or other postings on the Website, including to law enforcement agencies and parties making lawful civil legal requests. We will also comply with any other legal requirements regarding disclosures relating to your use of this Website.

 

[Hall]

It definitely defines what a social media company is.

Find a definition that says this.

Find a reference to monetize here: https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/social-media-platform

Or here - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/social-media.asp

Or here - https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/social-media-platform

I didn't pick and choose those results either, they are the 1st (3) that Google gave for "what is social media platforms".

 

[Pablo]

If they're big enough, they'd be targeted no different than Twitter. Read the site's rules:

Sure, with a warrant.

Not a phone call from a representative.

 

[Hall]

Not a phone call from a representative.

You mean from a corrupt politician who has forgotten what the 1st Amendment says