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I must be part of an A/B test where I only see baby pictures from friends and family, updates from local businesses, and videos of cool construction equipment f

I must be part of an A/B test where I only see baby pictures from friends and family, updates from local businesses, and videos of cool construction equipment from TechInsider. Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels could improve on the margin, but realistically, the problem with social is us. Ask friends and family to go back to sharing their unhinged political views in the form of badly punctuated emails, as God intended. If they continue to share, unfollow. Social media can be as polarizing or as pleasant as you make it. Foisting blame on Facebook might feel good, but it won't solve the problem.

creep 9y ago
This is true. The psychological effects of anything are due to how one uses it. It doesn't matter how addictive something is made to be because a good deal of the addiction is psychological. Opioids are very addictive, but most hospital patients don't use outside of the hospital after their pain has been treated. It's because their pain is not psychological. People can become addicted to Facebook, and yes it was designed to be this way, but I can use Facebook for the purpose I intend if only I am self-aware and know my limits and can stay within those limits. It's really like anything you can do-- anything. The threshold is defined by the person. The absolutist claim that anything is 100% bad is dangerous and false. The tools we make and use are defined by us individually. The "mob" is the collection of people in certain echo chambers, and I'm sorry but if those people don't realize they're in an echo chamber, it's not the fault of the tools. We can't be going around limiting everything because the majority don't know how to use it. The majority will always be that way-- though I will note that I think this "mob" majority are better-equipped psychologically with each passing generation.
cryptoz 9y ago
> the problem with social is us. No. Facebook proudly does specific psychological experiments on its users. Facebook intentionally decides that it will make some users sad or depressed, just to see if it can. And it can. And it is proud of it. Facebook is proud that it knows how to make you depressed, so much so that they published a paper describing how they made hundreds of thousands of their users fall into a depression. Facebook is a fucking poison. The problem is not with us. The problem is with large scale propaganda networks and centrally-controlled social networks with misaligned incentives. The problem is Facebook and the core problem is the structure and incentives of corporations in our current not-well-enough-regulated capitalism.
- lorenzq 9y ago
  [citation needed]
- pkalinowski 9y ago
  That's actually very interesting, never heard of it. Can you link the paper? Or did you just made that all up, hmm?
  - wongmjane 9y ago
    Emotional contagion through social networks Adam D. I. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory, Jeffrey T. Hancock Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2014, 111 (24) 8788-8790; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1320040111 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111
    - pkalinowski 9y ago
      Thanks. I'm aware of this report and it's definitely awful what they did and they should be shamed for many years forward. But there is big difference between comparing moods induced by negativity and "Facebook is proud that it knows how to make you depressed, so much so that they published a paper describing how they made hundreds of thousands of their users fall into a depression." OP statement is misleading and tabloid worthy. The goal was not to cause depression. It lasted one week and they didn't try make someone depressed or kill him.
Bartweiss 9y ago
This is my experience also. I've largely stopped using Facebook, but my experience had nothing in common with the author's. The content was fine, I followed things and people I actually liked and made adjustments when that changed. I felt no addiction loop, my usage time was limited, and it was honestly quite a nice site. Sentiments like "In the absence of human interaction we cling to whatever dark simulacrum is available" are absolutely alien to me; Facebook was a source of real social interaction, and almost entirely additive with other sources of real interaction. I stopped because advertisements, autoplay videos, and timeline changes slowly made Facebook unusable as a site. Content I liked was consistently buried in favor of content I didn't like, in ways I couldn't fix with settings or following preferences. The discussions of Facebook usage time rising baffle me; my experience was of a good, usable site that destroyed its usability by trying to monetize.
dfxm12 9y ago
realistically, the problem with social is us. Ask friends and family to go back to sharing their unhinged political views in the form of badly punctuated emails, as God intended. If they continue to share, unfollow. This is certainly a problem, but I think more important than this is the illusion of having control over what you see on social media. You may think you can curate your social media feeds by unfollowing people who share things you don't want to see, but as long as a social media service's feed/timeline (and primary revenue stream) is still based on an easily gamed algorithm and paid ads, you're mistaken. Social media sites will cater access to their API's to groups who are willing to pay for it. So, even if you can unfollow your uncle who shares "unhinged political views", you can't hide cleverly disguised, hyper targeted, ads, advertising both products and ideas.
- replicatorblog 9y ago
  All good points. I would take issue with "cleverly disguised, hyper targeted, ads" as it relates to a lot of the discussion around FB's influence on the election. I'm guessing the person "swayed" by an ad depicting Jesus arm wrestling Satan to settle the 2016 election was not really on the fence to begin with.

creep 9y ago

This is true. The psychological effects of anything are due to how one uses it. It doesn't matter how addictive something is made to be because a good deal of the addiction is psychological. Opioids are very addictive, but most hospital patients don't use outside of the hospital after their pain has been treated. It's because their pain is not psychological. People can become addicted to Facebook, and yes it was designed to be this way, but I can use Facebook for the purpose I intend if only I am self-aware and know my limits and can stay within those limits. It's really like anything you can do-- anything. The threshold is defined by the person. The absolutist claim that anything is 100% bad is dangerous and false. The tools we make and use are defined by us individually. The "mob" is the collection of people in certain echo chambers, and I'm sorry but if those people don't realize they're in an echo chamber, it's not the fault of the tools. We can't be going around limiting everything because the majority don't know how to use it. The majority will always be that way-- though I will note that I think this "mob" majority are better-equipped psychologically with each passing generation.

cryptoz 9y ago

> the problem with social is us. No. Facebook proudly does specific psychological experiments on its users. Facebook intentionally decides that it will make some users sad or depressed, just to see if it can. And it can. And it is proud of it. Facebook is proud that it knows how to make you depressed, so much so that they published a paper describing how they made hundreds of thousands of their users fall into a depression. Facebook is a fucking poison. The problem is not with us. The problem is with large scale propaganda networks and centrally-controlled social networks with misaligned incentives. The problem is Facebook and the core problem is the structure and incentives of corporations in our current not-well-enough-regulated capitalism.

lorenzq 9y ago
[citation needed]
pkalinowski 9y ago
That's actually very interesting, never heard of it. Can you link the paper? Or did you just made that all up, hmm?
- wongmjane 9y ago
  Emotional contagion through social networks Adam D. I. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory, Jeffrey T. Hancock Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2014, 111 (24) 8788-8790; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1320040111 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111
  - pkalinowski 9y ago
    Thanks. I'm aware of this report and it's definitely awful what they did and they should be shamed for many years forward. But there is big difference between comparing moods induced by negativity and "Facebook is proud that it knows how to make you depressed, so much so that they published a paper describing how they made hundreds of thousands of their users fall into a depression." OP statement is misleading and tabloid worthy. The goal was not to cause depression. It lasted one week and they didn't try make someone depressed or kill him.

Bartweiss 9y ago

This is my experience also. I've largely stopped using Facebook, but my experience had nothing in common with the author's. The content was fine, I followed things and people I actually liked and made adjustments when that changed. I felt no addiction loop, my usage time was limited, and it was honestly quite a nice site. Sentiments like "In the absence of human interaction we cling to whatever dark simulacrum is available" are absolutely alien to me; Facebook was a source of real social interaction, and almost entirely additive with other sources of real interaction. I stopped because advertisements, autoplay videos, and timeline changes slowly made Facebook unusable as a site. Content I liked was consistently buried in favor of content I didn't like, in ways I couldn't fix with settings or following preferences. The discussions of Facebook usage time rising baffle me; my experience was of a good, usable site that destroyed its usability by trying to monetize.

dfxm12 9y ago

realistically, the problem with social is us. Ask friends and family to go back to sharing their unhinged political views in the form of badly punctuated emails, as God intended. If they continue to share, unfollow. This is certainly a problem, but I think more important than this is the illusion of having control over what you see on social media. You may think you can curate your social media feeds by unfollowing people who share things you don't want to see, but as long as a social media service's feed/timeline (and primary revenue stream) is still based on an easily gamed algorithm and paid ads, you're mistaken. Social media sites will cater access to their API's to groups who are willing to pay for it. So, even if you can unfollow your uncle who shares "unhinged political views", you can't hide cleverly disguised, hyper targeted, ads, advertising both products and ideas.

replicatorblog 9y ago
All good points. I would take issue with "cleverly disguised, hyper targeted, ads" as it relates to a lot of the discussion around FB's influence on the election. I'm guessing the person "swayed" by an ad depicting Jesus arm wrestling Satan to settle the 2016 election was not really on the fence to begin with.