6 ms·

I see it a lot particularly with regard to facebook. People take "I have a problem" and turn it in to "this thing is a problem".

by Trundle 10y ago

edoceo 10y ago
This
kakarot 10y ago
But Facebook is a problem. Social media has its place somewhere in society but Facebook in particular is definitely a problem, for a multitude of reasons.
- hilbertseries 10y ago
  Care to list some?
  - nkristoffersen 10y ago
    As a digital nomad for the past several months, Facebook has been crucial in keeping in touch with friends and family back home, but also a perfect platform for staying in contact with new friends I make on my travels :-)
    - jimmies 10y ago
      I am an immigrant. I've been living mostly away from home for 10 years. I have people (friends, relatives, family, people that I know and love) that are easily reachable on Facebook. I deleted my facebook account and realized that I can still reach all the people I want to reach if I had really wanted to. Stuff that is "on Facebook" seems optional to me. When the only way I know them is their Facebook profile then I'm fucked. Now I learned to ask people for their email addresses, I personally think it will live far longer than Facebook.
      - h2hn 10y ago
        are you american or what? That's really insane man. Take care of yourself. :)
    - jimmies 10y ago
      Sorry, I can no longer edit my comment, so I am adding another comment here. I'm in no way criticizing your way of communication. I think Facebook is an excellent communication tool. However, to me, there is something special about emails that makes them a much personal way to communicate. When I send an email to a friend, I feel like I made a personal connection. I feel I like the person a lot more when I write an email to them and get an email back. When I commented on/liked a facebook status, it just feels like it's some shit I have to do when I am bored. Since I deleted my facebook, it turns out that there are very few friends/acquaintances that I added on Facebook that I feel like I need to connect on a personal level. That's very strange.
      - kakarot 10y ago
        I'm a few months into the no-facebook game and it certainly is strange to realize how vacant most of our interactions on the platform were. In some ways it feels like I've never been this lonely before. It makes me realize just how superficial most of my connections really were. I moved around a lot and had a sizable group of friends I would interact with on facebook, but now that it's gone... only three of them still make the effort to text or call me at least once a week to catch up. Sure, I have more friends who are simply indisposed and busy, but because they have social media they don't seek much interaction outside of it and so we don't talk. It honestly hurts and the last two nights I've actually broken into long crying fits over how lonely I feel, because I feel like I don't connect with anyone, even the people I do talk to. I know facebook wasn't providing that level of connection I desired, but I realized it had tricked me into thinking it did. I realized that in the past, when I felt this kind of loneliness-induced depression creeping up, I would get on social media just to look at other human beings and remind me I'm not on a rock by myself and other people are dealing with the same emotions. Decent short-term solution for getting rid of the symptoms, but it did nothing to address the problem itself. Incentivised social media like Facebook is really not healthy for the developing psyche. It's shaped the way I think and feel, and what triggers my brain's reward systems, and now I'm suffering for it.
  - franciscop 10y ago
    It's not a problem per-se IMO, but Facebook is highly optimized for being addictive. They A/B test the addiction out of it! There's a GREAT book that I am careful recommending as indeed I think it explores ideas that can be abused easily: Hooked, how to build habit-forming products ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/0241184835 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Prod... )
  - kakarot 10y ago
    I'll list two because I've been on HN too long today already. 1) Facebook is part of an initiative to lay down internet infrastructure in Africa, with the catch being that access to Facebook, Google, et al. is heavily subsidized. They are attempting to trap an entire continent on their platform, with subsidized tax money, knowingly simultaneously creating the most advanced social monitoring tool ever to exist. The CIA already has "social unrest" prediction mechanisms and, regardless of what some people involved think they're doing it for, this tool will be used to enslave the continent, continue preventing its people from achieving economic parity with the West, and provide better data for three-letter agencies to use in their sociopolitical and economic targeting (targeted propaganda, red herring social issues, media blackouts, even full-scale political coups) I have not read this article but I was in a hurry to find a source to give you. I'm hoping the Guardian doesn't let me down here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-free-basics-internet-africa-mark-zuckerberg https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-free-... 2) They have better data than anyone else with respect to gauging addicting user behavior, and instead of taking the Nintendo approach ("Why don't you take a break and play outside?") they actively exploit these behavioral patterns to increase user engagement. 1/4 of the world's population exists on an insulating platform that does not have their interests in mind. They are unwittingly paving Facebook a permanent highway over our social systems. This creates negatively-reinforcing social vacuums and a massive chilling and normalization effect. But even worse than this normalization is the ideological reinforcement and mass hyper-emotional response that tends to result from an network of humans all checking their emotional response against others in a social vacuum. To make things even worse, Facebook capitalizes here as well and exploits users' emotional response mechanisms. Here's a paper from a few years ago exploring this concept. I wanted to find a more recent article that was quite good but I couldn't locate it with a quick search: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full The article I wanted to find mentioned one of the ways Facebook would exploit peoples' emotions to provoke their addictive behavior: Facebook knows John spends about 10 minutes going through his feed at a time. During work hours, this number is 3 minutes. Right when Facebook thinks John might be about to put his phone away, they will suddenly show him a post from a friend he likes. He might stick around a little longer and comment. He scrolls a little more just because he is used to the behavior, and when Facebook thinks he is about to leave again they show him a post from someone he doesn't like. Bonus points if Facebook has determined the post is positive in nature. This triggers a negative emotional response in John and he scrolls a while longer, looking for a post that will give him another dopamine rush and return his "happiness" to him. It's disgusting. It's predatory. It's abusive. It's no different than the CIA knowingly spreading crack and fentanyl to control the population and create pockets of crime that call for increased enforcement.
  - dandelion_lover 10y ago
    http://stallman.org/facebook.html http://stallman.org/facebook.html Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981496
wpietri 10y ago
One big difference is that alcohol was not engineered to be addictive. Whereas at Facebook and many other companies there are a lot of smart people continuously trying to improve metrics like DAU, UAM, response frequency, etc. And they do it with no apparent regard for the impact on users' lives. Heck, many game companies proudly advertise how they are the most addictive thing you can get right now.
- diminoten 10y ago
  Well okay sure, but engineered or not, alcohol is very addictive. There are probably more addictive substances, but alcohol really is up there on that list. You could probably engineer a better addictive substance, but not one nearly as pervasive in global culture. There's something truly unique about alcohol that isn't true of any other addictive substance on the planet.
  - wpietri 10y ago
    Huh. It looks like alcohol is in the middle of the common drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence#Dependence_potential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence#Dependenc... I'm not sure about pervasiveness, though. In the US, a lot more people are caffeine dependent. And Facebook's MAU is way higher than alcohol's.
    - r00fus 10y ago
      pervasiveness is a factor. If you think of the addiction as an "infection" then relapse/reinfection is a lot easier when the reinfection vectors are pervasive.
  - tcj_phx 10y ago
    > There's something truly unique about alcohol that isn't true of any other addictive substance on the planet. Alcohol is a viable a substitute for carbohydrates for feeding nerve cells. Ethanol -> acetate -> ATP. Some research was published a few years ago about how the brains of heavy drinkers switch to running on acetate.... https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/joci-eba030113.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/joci-eba0301...
exergy 10y ago
What you're both implying is that, unless something is EVERYONE'S problem, no one should share their experiences. The author constantly makes the case that maybe this is too extreme for you, and you can choose not to do it. But for a lot of us here, as is clear from the activity on this thread, this IS a problem, and I'm glad the author made the post.

I see it a lot particularly with regard to facebook. People take "I have a problem" and turn it in to "this thing is a problem".

by Trundle 10y ago

I see it a lot particularly with regard to facebook. People take "I have a problem" and turn it in to "this thing is a problem".

edoceo 10y ago

This

kakarot 10y ago

But Facebook is a problem. Social media has its place somewhere in society but Facebook in particular is definitely a problem, for a multitude of reasons.

hilbertseries 10y ago
Care to list some?
- nkristoffersen 10y ago
  As a digital nomad for the past several months, Facebook has been crucial in keeping in touch with friends and family back home, but also a perfect platform for staying in contact with new friends I make on my travels :-)
  - jimmies 10y ago
    I am an immigrant. I've been living mostly away from home for 10 years. I have people (friends, relatives, family, people that I know and love) that are easily reachable on Facebook. I deleted my facebook account and realized that I can still reach all the people I want to reach if I had really wanted to. Stuff that is "on Facebook" seems optional to me. When the only way I know them is their Facebook profile then I'm fucked. Now I learned to ask people for their email addresses, I personally think it will live far longer than Facebook.
    - h2hn 10y ago
      are you american or what? That's really insane man. Take care of yourself. :)
  - jimmies 10y ago
    Sorry, I can no longer edit my comment, so I am adding another comment here. I'm in no way criticizing your way of communication. I think Facebook is an excellent communication tool. However, to me, there is something special about emails that makes them a much personal way to communicate. When I send an email to a friend, I feel like I made a personal connection. I feel I like the person a lot more when I write an email to them and get an email back. When I commented on/liked a facebook status, it just feels like it's some shit I have to do when I am bored. Since I deleted my facebook, it turns out that there are very few friends/acquaintances that I added on Facebook that I feel like I need to connect on a personal level. That's very strange.
    - kakarot 10y ago
      I'm a few months into the no-facebook game and it certainly is strange to realize how vacant most of our interactions on the platform were. In some ways it feels like I've never been this lonely before. It makes me realize just how superficial most of my connections really were. I moved around a lot and had a sizable group of friends I would interact with on facebook, but now that it's gone... only three of them still make the effort to text or call me at least once a week to catch up. Sure, I have more friends who are simply indisposed and busy, but because they have social media they don't seek much interaction outside of it and so we don't talk. It honestly hurts and the last two nights I've actually broken into long crying fits over how lonely I feel, because I feel like I don't connect with anyone, even the people I do talk to. I know facebook wasn't providing that level of connection I desired, but I realized it had tricked me into thinking it did. I realized that in the past, when I felt this kind of loneliness-induced depression creeping up, I would get on social media just to look at other human beings and remind me I'm not on a rock by myself and other people are dealing with the same emotions. Decent short-term solution for getting rid of the symptoms, but it did nothing to address the problem itself. Incentivised social media like Facebook is really not healthy for the developing psyche. It's shaped the way I think and feel, and what triggers my brain's reward systems, and now I'm suffering for it.
- franciscop 10y ago
  It's not a problem per-se IMO, but Facebook is highly optimized for being addictive. They A/B test the addiction out of it! There's a GREAT book that I am careful recommending as indeed I think it explores ideas that can be abused easily: Hooked, how to build habit-forming products ( https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Products/dp/0241184835 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hooked-How-Build-Habit-Forming-Prod... )
- kakarot 10y ago
  I'll list two because I've been on HN too long today already. 1) Facebook is part of an initiative to lay down internet infrastructure in Africa, with the catch being that access to Facebook, Google, et al. is heavily subsidized. They are attempting to trap an entire continent on their platform, with subsidized tax money, knowingly simultaneously creating the most advanced social monitoring tool ever to exist. The CIA already has "social unrest" prediction mechanisms and, regardless of what some people involved think they're doing it for, this tool will be used to enslave the continent, continue preventing its people from achieving economic parity with the West, and provide better data for three-letter agencies to use in their sociopolitical and economic targeting (targeted propaganda, red herring social issues, media blackouts, even full-scale political coups) I have not read this article but I was in a hurry to find a source to give you. I'm hoping the Guardian doesn't let me down here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-free-basics-internet-africa-mark-zuckerberg https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-free-... 2) They have better data than anyone else with respect to gauging addicting user behavior, and instead of taking the Nintendo approach ("Why don't you take a break and play outside?") they actively exploit these behavioral patterns to increase user engagement. 1/4 of the world's population exists on an insulating platform that does not have their interests in mind. They are unwittingly paving Facebook a permanent highway over our social systems. This creates negatively-reinforcing social vacuums and a massive chilling and normalization effect. But even worse than this normalization is the ideological reinforcement and mass hyper-emotional response that tends to result from an network of humans all checking their emotional response against others in a social vacuum. To make things even worse, Facebook capitalizes here as well and exploits users' emotional response mechanisms. Here's a paper from a few years ago exploring this concept. I wanted to find a more recent article that was quite good but I couldn't locate it with a quick search: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full The article I wanted to find mentioned one of the ways Facebook would exploit peoples' emotions to provoke their addictive behavior: Facebook knows John spends about 10 minutes going through his feed at a time. During work hours, this number is 3 minutes. Right when Facebook thinks John might be about to put his phone away, they will suddenly show him a post from a friend he likes. He might stick around a little longer and comment. He scrolls a little more just because he is used to the behavior, and when Facebook thinks he is about to leave again they show him a post from someone he doesn't like. Bonus points if Facebook has determined the post is positive in nature. This triggers a negative emotional response in John and he scrolls a while longer, looking for a post that will give him another dopamine rush and return his "happiness" to him. It's disgusting. It's predatory. It's abusive. It's no different than the CIA knowingly spreading crack and fentanyl to control the population and create pockets of crime that call for increased enforcement.
- dandelion_lover 10y ago
  http://stallman.org/facebook.html http://stallman.org/facebook.html Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11981496

wpietri 10y ago

One big difference is that alcohol was not engineered to be addictive. Whereas at Facebook and many other companies there are a lot of smart people continuously trying to improve metrics like DAU, UAM, response frequency, etc. And they do it with no apparent regard for the impact on users' lives. Heck, many game companies proudly advertise how they are the most addictive thing you can get right now.

diminoten 10y ago
Well okay sure, but engineered or not, alcohol is very addictive. There are probably more addictive substances, but alcohol really is up there on that list. You could probably engineer a better addictive substance, but not one nearly as pervasive in global culture. There's something truly unique about alcohol that isn't true of any other addictive substance on the planet.
- wpietri 10y ago
  Huh. It looks like alcohol is in the middle of the common drugs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence#Dependence_potential https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence#Dependenc... I'm not sure about pervasiveness, though. In the US, a lot more people are caffeine dependent. And Facebook's MAU is way higher than alcohol's.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    pervasiveness is a factor. If you think of the addiction as an "infection" then relapse/reinfection is a lot easier when the reinfection vectors are pervasive.
- tcj_phx 10y ago
  > There's something truly unique about alcohol that isn't true of any other addictive substance on the planet. Alcohol is a viable a substitute for carbohydrates for feeding nerve cells. Ethanol -> acetate -> ATP. Some research was published a few years ago about how the brains of heavy drinkers switch to running on acetate.... https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/joci-eba030113.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/joci-eba0301...

exergy 10y ago

What you're both implying is that, unless something is EVERYONE'S problem, no one should share their experiences. The author constantly makes the case that maybe this is too extreme for you, and you can choose not to do it. But for a lot of us here, as is clear from the activity on this thread, this IS a problem, and I'm glad the author made the post.