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Why social media bosses don’t use social media
- hknd 9y agoGoogle executives use our social media platform Google+. ...and they are probably the only once.
- bryanrasmussen 9y agoonly once is even funnier than only ones.
- tmnvix 9y agoMaybe that wasn't the typo. "...and they are probably there only once"
- dredmorbius 9y agoPage, Brin, and Pichai use G+ publicly with extreme infrequency. Brin's two most recent posts are from six months ago. Those broke a drought dating to August, 2015. https://plus.google.com/+SergeyBrin https://plus.google.com/+SergeyBrin Page hasn't posted since August, 2015, a re-share of Brin's post then: https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage https://plus.google.com/+LarryPage Google CEO Sundar Pichai hasn't posted publicly since March, 2016: https://plus.google.com/+SundarPichai https://plus.google.com/+SundarPichai That's not an overwhelming endorsement.
- ddorian43 9y agoCause they have better things to do than watching your friends spiritual enema/yoga experience in Cambodia ?
- blocked_again 9y agoLike figuring out all possible ways to make billions of people spend more time and concentration on their website so that they can get richer and richer by generating money through ads? God only knows what social media is doing to our children's brains.
- jlebrech 9y agoWhy ~~social media~~ bosses don’t use social media ftfy
- gtirloni 9y ago“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’ That means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments,” he said I wish it was possible to disable showing points in HN for this exact same reason. Both in stories and my comments. I'm sure Greasemonkey could help but I'd like this embraced by HN, if possible.
- fapjacks 9y agoI've written a dumb extension to do this on Chrome [0]. All points disappear and all shades of grey become black. [0] https://github.com/fapjacks/antihnbs https://github.com/fapjacks/antihnbs
- vog 9y agoThis would have been a great bookmarklet, no need for a browser extension. Unfortunately, bookmarklets no longer work as easily and as reliably as they used to work.
- davchana 9y agoNot sure, but is it not that bookmarklets need to be clicked by user on every page visit, whereas Extension can auto process every page visit without user intervention?
- vog 9y agoGood point. Although a bookmarklet can also ignore the current site and just open a new tab, it can't embed custom JavaScript into that new tab. But at least it can open a new tab with a full-page iframe, which was just enough for me to implement my autoreload bookmarklet. [1] Apart from that, I believe there are meta-extensions which provide a generic way to inject JavaScript into every page. This is just one extension, but manages multiple bookmarklets (or whatever they call these snippets). [1] https://vog.github.io/autoreload/ https://vog.github.io/autoreload/
- pgsandstrom 9y ago> Over at Twitter, the story is the same. Of the company’s nine most senior executives, only four tweet more than once a day on average. Say what? Tweeting once per day seems like a lot of tweeting to me. But I guess things are relative...
- dkersten 9y agoYeah, agreed, although I consider once a week to be high...
- chippy 9y agoI think the authors point was that the companies are advocating for people to be using their services for as long as possible, and yet the bosses of the companies are using it minimally or not using it at all. Once per day may indeed be a healthy usage but it's not the level of engagement desired by the companies.
- i_cant_speel 9y agoIs it safe to assume that's because they don't like using the service or because they are too busy to be spending all day on social media sharing posts and tweets?
- nsgi 9y agoThat's a good point. It would be useful to see a comparison to executives of non-social media companies.
- chippy 9y agoThe article points out that ex-executives of these companies say that the services were designed to capture people's attention and act like a drug, and that they now disagree with it. The implication of this (and to answer the title, I guess) is that current executives know this and "don't get high on their own supply". Whether that's the actual case or not is the question, and we could compare other executives of technological but non social media companies to see the level of how much of their own dog food they eat. There's a further question which is whether eating ones own dog food is a good measure.
- mmjaa 9y agoIts the same reason psychiatrists tend to not use pharmaceuticals: they know the dangers.
- dudul 9y agoAnd the same reason mobile app publishers don't let their kids have a tablet.
- w1kt0r 9y agoHow do you develop immunity then? Might be wise to have limited exposure as a kind of "vaccine"?
- gaius 9y agoI read that as pushers Jobs didn’t let his own kids use an iPad, Tim Cook discouraged his nephew... these people know exactly what this tech is designed to do.
- 52-6F-62 9y ago> these people know exactly what this tech is designed to do. I think that's a little stilted in this case. I read voraciously as a kid. My parents often took my book away and kicked me outside. By the same rule, they knew exactly what books are designed to do. I don't think it's so nefarious as that when it comes to [this]technology. They weren't designed to rake in ad dollars from childrens' misinformed taps. I think they thought kids just need moderation. And kids are horrific at moderation. So until they learn, they get told what to do, or no cookies at all. Hell, before tablets and user-friendly computers, it was video games are the devil, before that TV was the devil, before that the radio and the talkies are the devil. Social media is a different animal. It's making use of the technology to a certain end. Sort of like how some TV talk shows and old kids radio adventures were really just disguised advertising that profited the most from bringing you back every episode.
- cateye 9y agoI'm also not using social media often, is this a sign that I will become a social media boss? :)
- zelos 9y agoTime for one of them to pull a Ratner? [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner
- gaius 9y agoThe emotions that most drive engagement with social media are all negative ones: gloating, FOMO, jealousy, outrage, schadenfreude. Even if the humans running didn’t know this perfectly well, their ML would have independently discovered it. Social media by its very nature CANNOT be good for anyone so long as engagement or time on the site is used as a success metric. Which means, at all.
- bby 9y agosocial media FOMO --> crypto bubble?
- iliketosleep 9y agoThank you for this insight. These problems are reflected in modern media which push stories often source from social media (i.e. any sort of "outrage" on twitter is headlines these days). Such news stories are then also consumed via social media, creating a perverse sort of feedback loop that amplifies all the ugliest aspects of humanity. I find it insulting, and it astonishes me the number of people who sheepishly just go along with it.
- FanaHOVA 9y agoWhere does it say that they don't though? Some Twitter execs tweet more than once a day, Facebook's exec profiles are private so you can't see their activity. Am I missing something? Quotes like this: > Facebook’s locked-down nature means mere mortals can’t see the private posts on Zuckerberg’s timeline, but it is hard to imagine him getting into arguments about a racist relative’s post of an anti-immigration meme. Make it sound like the article is just about bashing social medias, without having an answer to the question in the title.
- prepend 9y agoI think the author may just be unfamiliar with the different social media sites and assumes that everyone uses them as he does. I don’t use Facebook much, but I’ve never made a public post and my friends aren’t visible. But you wouldn’t know this without asking me. My goal is to never be the subject of an article, but if I was, it would be lazy on the part of the author to assume that I don’t use Facebook because I have no posts visible to the author.
- yakitori 9y ago> Where does it say that they don't though? It doesn't. > Make it sound like the article is just about bashing social medias Every day the media releases propaganda against social media. On HN, we get a "social media/facebook" is responsible for all the ills of the world nonsense routinely followed by the same suspicious "I quick facebook and I won the lottery" style comments. If you feel like, check HN on the waybackmachine or any other archive site and you'll see. The obvious reason social media execs don't use social media as much is because they are too busy. It's the same reason that movie execs don't watch many movies, it's why football execs don't' watch too much football games, it's why newspaper execs don't read much newspapers, etc. Most top execs are busy running a company to be doing anything else. But theguardian along with the rest of the media has to spin everything for their own agenda.
- nablaone 9y agohttps://www.impactbnd.com/blog/manipulation-matrix-are-you-improving-lives-or-peddling-your-product https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/manipulation-matrix-are-you-i... So Zuck is no longer an Entertainer, his a Dealer right now.
- philfrasty 9y agoSame goes for YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg7fzx4PEk96-7Ec2Ol2dJA/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg7fzx4PEk96-7Ec2Ol2dJA/vid... Uploaded her first video 3 months ago (following the monetization outcry). Seems very hard to me to really understand the platform and its problems/opportunities without fully embracing it from a creator and viewer perspective.
- dx034 9y agoYou don't know if she's a viewer. And to be a creator you need time which she won't have. Just uploading a few videos won't help her understand the creator's perspective. But I'd be surprised if she didn't use Youtube regularly.
- tremendulo 9y agoIsn't there a danger here of blaming social media for the fact that the rest of your life apparently sucks? I remember I used to get annoyed at people who were noisy when I was trying to study. Then I realised I was blaming them for my own sense of inadequacy. Yet neither was it my fault: it's simply that the material was boring. Lack of focus really implied that I needed something harder, more important (and thus more exciting) to do.
- UweSchmidt 9y agoIt could be related. But human psyche is always there and systems must accomodate it. Building systems that hurt you mentally is not unlike trying to hurt you physically. Say the library was designed to be noisy - would that be acceptable?
- tremendulo 9y agoGood point -- but then, is it acceptable for winemakers to choose the best and most alluring grapes? And for there to be a distribution point within easy distance of my house, supported by local government planners and so on?
- UweSchmidt 9y agoWinemakers can use any grapes and set up shop anywhere they like. Alcohol is of course problematic and reasonable restrictions may be put into place. Pretty straightforward, really. (Your hypothetical argument based on false moral absolutisms is familiar around the internet, usually used to excuse unethical behaviour. Don't fall for it)
- tremendulo 9y agoHow is the system that has evolved for wine consumption not an example of 'building systems that hurt you mentally'?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- OliverJones 9y agoI suppose this is the same reason TV executives didn't spend all day watching "As the world turns" and "the $64,000 question" back in the day. They're the merchants, not the product. The people who watch all day are the product. The people who obsessively check their instagram feeds for uplikes (or whatever they're called this week) are the product. I too am a social media conscientous objector. Partly because FB said they won't always offer information I create to my "friends." So why should I create it? Partly because I've really come to dislike getting sucked down a rabbit hole of stuff the social media companies machine learning knows will snag my attention. Partly because fake nuz is worthy of protest and boycott. Mostly because the charge humans get from accumulating "uplikes" is a soul-corrupting addiction. I could rant on about professor René Girard's mimetic theory and human yearning to think we're better than the next guy, and how one Peter Thiel helped FB corrupt Girard's work. But, bah. Back to work.
- Allower 9y agoits not hard to not use social media. actually its hard to get myself to use it. social media provides zero value, not to mention it costs way too much time and mental energy.
- YTGRK 9y agohttps://youtu.be/VIoEpU7GUoE https://youtu.be/VIoEpU7GUoE
- agumonkey 9y agowho believes in the principle of dog fooding ?
- dkns 9y agoHere's my wild guess as to 'why social media bosses dont use social media': they're too busy running biggest companies in tech industry to have time to spend on twitter/facebook.
- wu-ikkyu 9y agoDoesn't seem to be the case for the POTUS
- devit 9y agoAren't Reddit and in general forums much better at that? With Facebook, you are using your true identity resulting in the pressure of having to post perfect content, you often have to post photos which are extremely time consuming to get right, the number of people who can "upvote" is very limited and the lack of a "downvote" button makes trolling for downvotes impossible. On the other hand, a short but effective text post on Reddit or a forum can be done in a minute and potentially generate a huge flamewar and thousands of people upvoting or downvoting, and it doesn't matter if it turns out to be dumb or ineffective or otherwise bad. And all you need is to just express the most controversial and hyperbolic take possible on a given existing subject, while on Facebook you'd need to come up with original content. Finally, while Reddit might be accused of doing it intentionally for traffic, the web forums and newsgroups where this behavior started most definitely did not, so it's more of an intrinsic property of public one-to-many communication systems than something evil that Facebook came up with.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mxschumacher 9y agoHere's how I protect myself from addictive sites: I have a (fairly bad) smartphone and no data plan (just a small 200mb/mo emergency contingent). I have deleted all social media apps (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Messenger, all Games). On the go, I use apps with offline capabilities. Pocket Casts for Podcasts, the Kindle app for my books, Spotify for music. Those get synced on Wifi If I use any apps of this kind, I do so on my Laptop: Here, I have more control by using three Chrome extensions: - Stay Focused (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...) which gives me a few minutes per day on a set of blacklisted sites. - Newsfeed Eradicator ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicat... ) - does exactly what the name suggests. Still possible to use Facebook for events and to talk to friends - Distraction Free Youtube (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-youtube-distraction-fr/mjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-youtube-distrac... ) deactivates the features that suck you down the Youtube rabbit whole of by clicking on recommended videos. On top of that, I use uBlock which blocks all the ads that I would have to endure on my phone. A little lower level, I have a modified hosts file which blocks social media sites: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts Obviously it is possible to circumvent all of these self-imposed obstacles, but taking a couple of seconds to "take the safety off" is often enough to remind me why I have blocked those pages in the first place. It is enough time to let my prefrontal cortex reign in my dopamine seeking reptile brain. Taking these measures has allowed me to drastically reduce my time spent on distracting sites.
- fredley 9y agoI tried these approaches, but it never worked for me. I find the best way to kill these things is by breaking the things that make them addictive. E.g. I unfollowed (not de-friended) everyone on Facebook. I can still use it to send/receive private messages and organise events, but my newsfeed is totally blank. I now never go on Facebook unless I have something to do there. After a month or so the stimulus-reward loop was removed from my brain. I use browser extensions to block the tracking side of things, uninstalled the apps from my phone, and I'm now pretty happy with my relationship with Facebook and the impact it has on my life (~0).
- inertial 9y agoIt sounds fairly reasonable to me. You design a cool app but it evolves into something much more than what you envisioned. You are still passionate about it but it doesn't mean that you have to be a compulsive user. Same story with several employees / key executives. There are there to perform a role, maybe manage engineering, run finance etc. They really don't need to be immersed in the app to do that, neither should they be expected to.
- zerr 9y agoInteresting if pg checks HN daily...
- pavelludiq 9y agoFrom The 10 crack commandments: "Never get high on your own supply"
- philipodonnell 9y ago> “In general, when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information – reading, but not interacting with people – they report feeling worse afterward,” two Facebook researchers said in a review of the existing literature. On the other hand, “actively interacting with people – especially sharing messages, posts and comments with close friends and reminiscing about past interactions – is linked to improvements in wellbeing”. Its rather unsettling how easy it is to replace some of these words with 'mdma' and make it sound like a drug dealer encouraging you to go to raves with other people on mdma and not do mdma by yourself at home because you won't enjoy it as much.
- workthrowaway27 9y agoThis is an absurd argument. Humans are social. Take two activities at random, one social and one not, and you'll probably find people feel better on average after doing the social one. (Obviously, there are counterexamples, but I'm talking about averages here).
- Chaebixi 9y agoI think that's false. Humans are social, but that means social activity is rewarding. You can build a Skinner box out of "social" rewards just like you can build one out of money rewards (e.g. slot machines). Success for a social network is not "people feeling better on average" it's people coming back more often on average. Their actual level of enjoyment or well-being is irrelevant to the platform.
- philipodonnell 9y agoI would argue that feelings of well-being are not just irrelevant, they are actually directly contrary to the goals of our current advertising-driven social networks. Happy contented people aren't as influenced by advertising intended to capitalize on insecurities, which is really most of it. A social network's ideal audience would be a group of people who are relatively discontent with their lives and provide a series of small improvements to that state of being, but ones that quickly fade, and then encourage them to repeat that cycle as often as possible. That way the susceptibility to advertising remains high and boosts advertiser ROI, which raises the social network's value as a platform. Come to think of it, that sounds pretty familiar.
- montrose 9y agoThe Acceleration of Addictiveness (2010): http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html
- jabot 9y ago... They probably value their time too much.
- Simon_says 9y ago> ... a racist relative’s post of an anti-immigration meme Nice way to conflate anti-immigration opinions with racism, Guardian. You probably don't even know you're doing it.
- calimac 9y agoWhy are these companies not haul off in front of Congress to testify as to why we shouldn’t completely regulate thOrr user interface design. We have the largest invention since the telephone that it hurts society and our representatives have done nothing. Maybe it’s time for us to publish a list of elected congressman who receive big campaign funding from The social media companies
- yakitori 9y agoWhy doesn't theguardian bosses read newspapers so much? Because they are too busy running the company and trying to make money? Do I get to write an article for the guardian now? The obvious reason social media execs don't use social media as much is because they are too busy. It's the same reason that movie execs don't watch many movies, it's why football execs don't' watch too much football games, it's why newspaper execs don't read much newspapers, etc. Most top execs are busy running a company to be doing anything else. But theguardian along with the rest of the media has to spin everything for their own agenda. Would be great if we went a few days without the standard "I hate social media" from the toxic "traditional media".
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y agoThis shall upset the narrative: I don't use social media, and I'm not a social media boss.
- Mc_Big_G 9y agoI post this in every related thread but can't help myself as I really believe it's important. Delete your facebook/instagram/whatever account. Get off of Google services. If and when a distrubuted, encrypted, open source social network gains traction that cares about privacy as much as duckduckgo, then maybe consider using it. This will almost certainly never happen because joe interweb clicker doesn't give a shit.
- misterbowfinger 9y agoThis article makes a huge assumption that the "social media bosses" don't have fake or anonymous accounts. I can't imagine that they don't.
- ralphc 9y agoIsn't texting and social apps where kids "hang out" and make friendships today? It might be noble to keep your kids off of the platforms but if you're the only one your kids are going to be lonely.
- ponderatul 9y agoI found Taleb's perspective on things terribly refreshing. "Each one should eat his own turtles" - seems to be a terrific heuristic for everything consumption related, even if it errs sometimes on the precautionary side. Zuckerberg doesn't seem to eat his own turtles, Dorsey doesn't, Spiegel most likely does the same. I don't need anymore examples. Take this principle elsewhere, it works the same. Safe to assume, the casino owner doesn't gamble, or the gambling site owner doesn't as well. Does any tobacco exec smoke regularly? I'm not even going to look for a factually accurate answer. It seems this principle seems extremly robust. http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf