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For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "Nort

For most people there exists a news headline that will ruin their day or at least disrupt their morning e.g "Young child decapitated at amusement park" or "North Korea moves one step closer to nuking Western US" or "Bacon Gives You Cancer". Facebook heavily encourages people to write and share headlines like this (true or not) and then promotes them prominently in your news feed. This can take a heavy emotional toll on people over time and gradually make them more unhappy

gamblor956 9y ago
I've never seen stories like that in my Facebook page? Either your have horrible friends or you've responded repeatedly to this type of article in your Facebook feed, resulting in the algorithm promoting those posts. You can remove posts like that from your feed by clicking on the little gear in the top right.
p1esk 9y ago
Funny, I probably saw all three headlines you mentioned, here on NH. I just don’t click on ones likely to upset me.
- ballenf 9y ago
  HN is a social media platform, albeit a niche one. Which is why I think the article was rather overblown, clickbait hyperbole.
evfanknitram 9y ago
Is there some study showing that your first sentence is correct? The reason I ask is that I never ever see stuff like that in my feed. Is it your friends who share that kind of stuff or is it showing up as ads or? And why are those people encouraged to share stuff such as bacon giving cancer? In my feed I only see the stuff from friends, such as travel photos, various fun experiences, poems and sometimes comments on local political events. And of course intermittent flooding of happy birthday messages.
- mygo 9y ago
  facebook has this “trending” section where they show ~3 trending news headlines with a little blurb under each. It’s usually near the top. On the right sidebar on desktop. And yeah it’s often times very depressing headlines such as those. You don’t get that?
  - evfanknitram 9y ago
    No I don't. I'm typically using Facebook app on android and I never see any news. Logged on to desktop version now and none there as well. Scrolled through about 100 items on my feed and the only thing I see are posts from friends and intermittent ads from companies which are "liked" by my friends. I'm guessing maybe it's because I'm in/from Sweden and they haven't set up newsfeeds for this place. I do see how showing negative news to people would have affect on what people post. And maybe it's a cultural thing as well - one of the hot topics in Sweden is immigration but very few people post about it, probably just because it's such a divider and few good things will come out by starting a Facebook discussion.
    - mygo 9y ago
      > I do see how showing negative news to people would have affect on what people post. Get this. Every single time you visit facebook, right above the fold is some depressing news. Every. Single. Time. It has an effect on some.
      - evfanknitram 9y ago
        Maybe you misread what I wrote. I wrote that I do understand this.
        mygo 9y ago
        Ah yes I did misread. Good catch.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
delerio 9y ago
I've never seen stuff like that, but then again I heavily control my fb feed by only following "close" friends and select family members. I don't follow any news sites, and pretty much only follow art pages/ and a few programmers that have public profiles. This has more to do with people who have family/friends who enjoy stuff like that, but it's easily possible to never run across articles like that on fb. I sure haven't.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Not everyone is lucky enough to have thoughtful relatives, yet not horrible enough to completely shun.
  - Kadin 9y ago
    Isn't that what "unfollow" is for? For people who are obnoxious and you don't want to hear from, but you don't want to actually go all the way to unfriending (which would make it impossible to interact with them at all, basically, and also be noticeable to them). That's how I use it anyway. I've also noticed that FB now has a "snooze for 30 days" option that you can select, instead of just unfollow/unfriend. Not sure how long this has been around (I'm a very casual FB user) but it seems designed with those people who can't help spouting off over and over about a particular current event in mind.
    - mixmastamyk 9y ago
      Yep, what I do as well.
dfmooreqqq 9y ago
But that seems like more of a problem with news in general than Facebook - nightly news/news websites include headlines and stories like that - but we shouldn't encourage people to just put their heads in the sand...
malvosenior 9y ago
I feel like we should be doing a better job educating people on what a healthy relationship with the media should look like. If a headline can ruin someone’s day that says to me that the affected person doesn’t understand that media companies profit from outrage. This isn’t even a Facebook problem, it’s an independent thought problem. Don’t let the media tell you what to worry about.
kragen 9y ago
The bacon thing is maybe a good example of Hamming's Closed Door Paradox: I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html In this case, as it turns out, bacon does give you cancer. The relative risk of high "processed meat" consumption is in the neighborhood of 20%, i.e. RR of 1.2, for colorectal and lung cancers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16991129/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16991129/ In the US, there are about 200k deaths per year from these two cancers, out of 2.7 million total deaths. So your chances of dying of one of these two cancers is about 7.4%, if you live in a place somewhat like the US. And that increases to about 8.9% if you eat a lot of processed meat. It seems to me like a 1.5% chance of dodging a death by cancer, and thus living an extra 5–20 years, is worth a single disrupted morning.
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  I'm always perplexed by these contrived scenarios used to demonstrate some point or other. Work with the door closed some of the time, when you need to slog through a task uninterrupted, then open the door to allow the serendipity of uncontrolled interruption.
  - minikites 9y ago
    I didn't make the comment you've replied to but in my opinion, it's less about the specifics of the scenario and more about providing food for thought about _why_ you're working with the door open or closed and in what circumstances you make those choices. If you do one or the other particularly often out of habit, it's helpful to think about why and adjust your habits if necessary.
JKCalhoun 9y ago
This is true I think. I have not had broadcast/cable TV on in the house in perhaps 18 years. And yet when I take the family to a hotel and there's CNN/Fox/etc. running in the breakfast room it always seems like the world decided, at that precise moment, to inch close to the brink of Armageddon. Fires blaze in the background behind the reporter, a palpable tension and urgency is heard from the talking heads.... And then I remember that it is just what the news "does" these days — and then realize that the beeping I am hearing is my waffle that is done.
_mrmnmly 9y ago
when I receive even single information like this, I see after the author (a.k.a. person who shared it so it is visible on my timeline) and mute his account (or remove it from my contacts). I even take struggle to mark EVERY SINGLE advert on facebook as a spam or inappropriate - I think that may make me a facebook user with most unrelated adverts to my actual interests - and I recommend everyone to do the same.
briffle 9y ago
We all convinced Grandma and Uncle Phil to stop sending those emails that end with "forward this email to 5 people today, or you will have bad luck". Unfortunately, they now put the exact same amount of thought into resharing some crap they find on Facebook about government conspiracies, and whatever political party is opposite of theirs.
- kolpa 9y ago
  And Cousin Nancy and Brother Mohammed and Daughter Svetlana. It's not an 'old people' disease, it's an anyone disease.
npsimons 9y ago
> This can take a heavy emotional toll on people over time and gradually make them more unhappy. This is precisely why I stopped paying attention to news and am not on social media.
sverige 9y ago
While I agree that pretty much all news media is toxic, the reason Facebook makes people unhappy is that 1) people put on their best show there, and 2) others compare themselves and become discontent. It's the constant comparing of your life to the perception that others have it better that causes all this unhappiness. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-out-your-mind/201409/the-unexpected-way-new-technology-makes-us-unhappy https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-out-your-mind/20...
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Don't agree. The ugly politics makes me much more unhappy than a friends Hawaii trip.
swat535 9y ago
I don't understand your argument... These headlines are all over the news. It's not like not logging to facebook will magically prevent one from seeing them. All you need to do is turn on a local news channel and voila..
- mygo 9y ago
  I don’t use facebook and I didn’t even know that stephen hawking died before someone texted it to me. Same with that famous pastor who died last month. same with the bridge that collapsed in Miami near Florida International University. The thing about it is, I don’t watch the news much already. I lost all respect for the news during the election when they would literally spend a week covering some sensational / gossip topic. It’s not news it’s entertainment with the occasional coverage of actual news topics. So without social media beaming every trendy headline into my eyes the moment I log in, I am ignorant to a lot of depressing stuff. Someone has to go out of their way to text it to me or I probably won’t see it. And that’s fine by me. (Yet somehow Tomi Lahren still finds a way to make it onto my SMS conversations -_-.) In any case, aside from the depressing sensational media, facebook is also toxic because it can make you compare every aspect of your complicated life to other peoples’ highlight reels.
- Kadin 9y ago
  That's a pretty good argument for never turning on local news. It's garbage, just the video version of clickbait "journalism" in most cases. (There is some good investigative journalism still being done on TV, but it's overwhelmed by "gotcha" stories and naked if-it-bleeds-it-leads sensationalism.)
spondyl 9y ago
As horrific as it was, the NYT's "Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards, Indictment Says" bizarre headline actually made by day :) I had to do a double take and check that I hadn't been redirected to The Onion.
- jacobkg 9y ago
  Maybe because I have a young son but the headline was so gut wrenching I still haven't been able to read any of the coverage.
magic_beans 9y ago
I immediately unfollow or unfriend people who post things like this. I also use the News Feed Eradicator extension. The result is that my mobile feed is full of happy baby photos, and my desktop feed is completely blank.

gamblor956 9y ago

I've never seen stories like that in my Facebook page? Either your have horrible friends or you've responded repeatedly to this type of article in your Facebook feed, resulting in the algorithm promoting those posts. You can remove posts like that from your feed by clicking on the little gear in the top right.

p1esk 9y ago

Funny, I probably saw all three headlines you mentioned, here on NH. I just don’t click on ones likely to upset me.

ballenf 9y ago
HN is a social media platform, albeit a niche one. Which is why I think the article was rather overblown, clickbait hyperbole.

evfanknitram 9y ago

Is there some study showing that your first sentence is correct? The reason I ask is that I never ever see stuff like that in my feed. Is it your friends who share that kind of stuff or is it showing up as ads or? And why are those people encouraged to share stuff such as bacon giving cancer? In my feed I only see the stuff from friends, such as travel photos, various fun experiences, poems and sometimes comments on local political events. And of course intermittent flooding of happy birthday messages.

mygo 9y ago
facebook has this “trending” section where they show ~3 trending news headlines with a little blurb under each. It’s usually near the top. On the right sidebar on desktop. And yeah it’s often times very depressing headlines such as those. You don’t get that?
- evfanknitram 9y ago
  No I don't. I'm typically using Facebook app on android and I never see any news. Logged on to desktop version now and none there as well. Scrolled through about 100 items on my feed and the only thing I see are posts from friends and intermittent ads from companies which are "liked" by my friends. I'm guessing maybe it's because I'm in/from Sweden and they haven't set up newsfeeds for this place. I do see how showing negative news to people would have affect on what people post. And maybe it's a cultural thing as well - one of the hot topics in Sweden is immigration but very few people post about it, probably just because it's such a divider and few good things will come out by starting a Facebook discussion.
  - mygo 9y ago
    > I do see how showing negative news to people would have affect on what people post. Get this. Every single time you visit facebook, right above the fold is some depressing news. Every. Single. Time. It has an effect on some.
    - evfanknitram 9y ago
      Maybe you misread what I wrote. I wrote that I do understand this.
      - mygo 9y ago
        Ah yes I did misread. Good catch.
mixmastamyk 9y ago

delerio 9y ago

I've never seen stuff like that, but then again I heavily control my fb feed by only following "close" friends and select family members. I don't follow any news sites, and pretty much only follow art pages/ and a few programmers that have public profiles. This has more to do with people who have family/friends who enjoy stuff like that, but it's easily possible to never run across articles like that on fb. I sure haven't.

mixmastamyk 9y ago
Not everyone is lucky enough to have thoughtful relatives, yet not horrible enough to completely shun.
- Kadin 9y ago
  Isn't that what "unfollow" is for? For people who are obnoxious and you don't want to hear from, but you don't want to actually go all the way to unfriending (which would make it impossible to interact with them at all, basically, and also be noticeable to them). That's how I use it anyway. I've also noticed that FB now has a "snooze for 30 days" option that you can select, instead of just unfollow/unfriend. Not sure how long this has been around (I'm a very casual FB user) but it seems designed with those people who can't help spouting off over and over about a particular current event in mind.
  - mixmastamyk 9y ago
    Yep, what I do as well.

dfmooreqqq 9y ago

But that seems like more of a problem with news in general than Facebook - nightly news/news websites include headlines and stories like that - but we shouldn't encourage people to just put their heads in the sand...

malvosenior 9y ago

I feel like we should be doing a better job educating people on what a healthy relationship with the media should look like. If a headline can ruin someone’s day that says to me that the affected person doesn’t understand that media companies profit from outrage. This isn’t even a Facebook problem, it’s an independent thought problem. Don’t let the media tell you what to worry about.

kragen 9y ago

The bacon thing is maybe a good example of Hamming's Closed Door Paradox: I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame. http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html In this case, as it turns out, bacon does give you cancer. The relative risk of high "processed meat" consumption is in the neighborhood of 20%, i.e. RR of 1.2, for colorectal and lung cancers. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16991129/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16991129/ In the US, there are about 200k deaths per year from these two cancers, out of 2.7 million total deaths. So your chances of dying of one of these two cancers is about 7.4%, if you live in a place somewhat like the US. And that increases to about 8.9% if you eat a lot of processed meat. It seems to me like a 1.5% chance of dodging a death by cancer, and thus living an extra 5–20 years, is worth a single disrupted morning.

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
I'm always perplexed by these contrived scenarios used to demonstrate some point or other. Work with the door closed some of the time, when you need to slog through a task uninterrupted, then open the door to allow the serendipity of uncontrolled interruption.
- minikites 9y ago
  I didn't make the comment you've replied to but in my opinion, it's less about the specifics of the scenario and more about providing food for thought about _why_ you're working with the door open or closed and in what circumstances you make those choices. If you do one or the other particularly often out of habit, it's helpful to think about why and adjust your habits if necessary.

JKCalhoun 9y ago

This is true I think. I have not had broadcast/cable TV on in the house in perhaps 18 years. And yet when I take the family to a hotel and there's CNN/Fox/etc. running in the breakfast room it always seems like the world decided, at that precise moment, to inch close to the brink of Armageddon. Fires blaze in the background behind the reporter, a palpable tension and urgency is heard from the talking heads.... And then I remember that it is just what the news "does" these days — and then realize that the beeping I am hearing is my waffle that is done.

_mrmnmly 9y ago

when I receive even single information like this, I see after the author (a.k.a. person who shared it so it is visible on my timeline) and mute his account (or remove it from my contacts). I even take struggle to mark EVERY SINGLE advert on facebook as a spam or inappropriate - I think that may make me a facebook user with most unrelated adverts to my actual interests - and I recommend everyone to do the same.

briffle 9y ago

We all convinced Grandma and Uncle Phil to stop sending those emails that end with "forward this email to 5 people today, or you will have bad luck". Unfortunately, they now put the exact same amount of thought into resharing some crap they find on Facebook about government conspiracies, and whatever political party is opposite of theirs.

kolpa 9y ago
And Cousin Nancy and Brother Mohammed and Daughter Svetlana. It's not an 'old people' disease, it's an anyone disease.

npsimons 9y ago

> This can take a heavy emotional toll on people over time and gradually make them more unhappy. This is precisely why I stopped paying attention to news and am not on social media.

sverige 9y ago

While I agree that pretty much all news media is toxic, the reason Facebook makes people unhappy is that 1) people put on their best show there, and 2) others compare themselves and become discontent. It's the constant comparing of your life to the perception that others have it better that causes all this unhappiness. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-out-your-mind/201409/the-unexpected-way-new-technology-makes-us-unhappy https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/get-out-your-mind/20...

mixmastamyk 9y ago
Don't agree. The ugly politics makes me much more unhappy than a friends Hawaii trip.

swat535 9y ago

I don't understand your argument... These headlines are all over the news. It's not like not logging to facebook will magically prevent one from seeing them. All you need to do is turn on a local news channel and voila..

mygo 9y ago
I don’t use facebook and I didn’t even know that stephen hawking died before someone texted it to me. Same with that famous pastor who died last month. same with the bridge that collapsed in Miami near Florida International University. The thing about it is, I don’t watch the news much already. I lost all respect for the news during the election when they would literally spend a week covering some sensational / gossip topic. It’s not news it’s entertainment with the occasional coverage of actual news topics. So without social media beaming every trendy headline into my eyes the moment I log in, I am ignorant to a lot of depressing stuff. Someone has to go out of their way to text it to me or I probably won’t see it. And that’s fine by me. (Yet somehow Tomi Lahren still finds a way to make it onto my SMS conversations -_-.) In any case, aside from the depressing sensational media, facebook is also toxic because it can make you compare every aspect of your complicated life to other peoples’ highlight reels.
Kadin 9y ago
That's a pretty good argument for never turning on local news. It's garbage, just the video version of clickbait "journalism" in most cases. (There is some good investigative journalism still being done on TV, but it's overwhelmed by "gotcha" stories and naked if-it-bleeds-it-leads sensationalism.)

spondyl 9y ago

As horrific as it was, the NYT's "Water Slide That Decapitated Boy Violated Basic Design Standards, Indictment Says" bizarre headline actually made by day :) I had to do a double take and check that I hadn't been redirected to The Onion.

jacobkg 9y ago
Maybe because I have a young son but the headline was so gut wrenching I still haven't been able to read any of the coverage.

magic_beans 9y ago

I immediately unfollow or unfriend people who post things like this. I also use the News Feed Eradicator extension. The result is that my mobile feed is full of happy baby photos, and my desktop feed is completely blank.