11 ms·

Note I wrote my father in law when he had gone too far down the rabbit hole and legitimately worried about the poison it spreads around his demographic: I left

by jwally 8y ago

Note I wrote my father in law when he had gone too far down the rabbit hole and legitimately worried about the poison it spreads around his demographic: I left Facebook when I read some press release about it being designed from the outset to make you feel bad because it keeps you engaged; hoping someone agrees with something you liked or shared and the dopamine hit it releases. I don’t like feeling manipulated and manipulation is facebooks modus operandi. All to track everything I do around the internet to sell me ads for $12/person/year in revenue. I left Twitter for basically the same reason and when I’d stick on the site refreshing it all day hoping someone noticed the well thought out point I spent 3 hours putting together only to realize no one cares. Leaving both after about a week feels like when I have taken breaks from caffeine. It sucks at first but after a week, you feel refreshed and clean. I’m sure drug abstinence feels similar. My father went down the rabbit hole of Facebook and shares political crap constantly, flooding peoples news feeds. There’s a feature on Facebook that lets you silently unfollow people so they’re on mute. Everyone of my family members who are Facebook friends with my dad have done this to him and don’t see anything he posts. He’s shouting into a black hole thinking the whole world is paying attention while in reality no one is. He has said things that the man I grew up with would never have said and Facebook/ talk radio is to blame. We’re all vulnerable to it, which is why I try and stay away from it. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/dont-believe-lies-just-people-repeat/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/dont-believe-lies-just-people-...

Endy 8y ago
So you're saying that Internet radicalization happens across all age demographics?
duxup 8y ago
I don't even know what Twitter is for except mutual high fives over the most superficial "look at me" memeish stuff. It's worse than facebook as far as the "get attention" vibe. Granted all social media is about getting attention, and I don't think there is anything wrong with it necessarily. Attention is nice, there is good reason for it, but when the message is so tailored to just that and there isn't anything else, I don't know what the point is. I recently switched careers from a long networking career to web development and thought I'd take another spin on Twitter, but rather I just get sites that paste a link to their website, and hordes of people posting programming truisms or career / resume / coding lifestyle fodder .... so little feels like that person wrote it, so much feels like what those people thing "a commercial about me" should be. --- As for your other notes about the impact on people. It is horrifying. I see some relatives posting terrible things and I wish saying "but you've never met any of those people" had the impact that it should... but it doesn't.
- rotskoff 8y ago
  I have found that the machine learning research community uses twitter pretty effectively. I don't tweet myself, but I do follow a good number of other researchers and often find interesting papers and results through the venue. It's much more effective than scouring the arXiv.
  - duxup 8y ago
    Yeah it's hard to curate a feed, I'm sure there are good groups out there (there has to be). I just struggle to find them.
    - vslira 8y ago
      Maybe the machine mearning community is particularly good at curating feeds, heh
    - modeless 8y ago
      I get a lot of value from Twitter's AI and computer graphics communities, but I used to see a lot of retweeted political garbage too. I found that Twitter's "mute words" feature works wonders. After muting about 100 words ("trump", "obama", "republican", "democrat", "evil", "lied", "nazi", that obnoxious hand clap emoji, etc) it's like a whole different place. Much less rage-inducing. You can also disable Twitter's annoying engagement-boosting features by muting special undocumented tokens like "suggest_recycled_tweet_inline" and "suggest_who_to_follow". https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/09/19/twitters-annoying-features-can-now-turned-off/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/09/19/twitters-annoying-f...
  - dotancohen 8y ago
    You should write a bot in Scikit / Python to scrape Arxiv for interesting articles!
- spectre256 8y ago
  Twitter is really useful for sharing content at conferences or other events with a clear hashtag. Other than that, and perhaps sharing more substantive articles/blog posts/etc to a wider audience, it's at best silly, and at worse, well...much worse.
unethical_ban 8y ago
Yep. I've heard of this movie but haven't watched it yet - though my sibling assures me it is a copy of our experience with our parents. They were conservative/moderate at one point, but now regurgitate radical right-wing talking points without defending them, and say that "everyone just reads what they want to believe" but applies it only to me and my New York Times, moreso than them and their literal fake news peddling outlets. The Brainwashing Of My Dad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXTjz2H57rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXTjz2H57rE FWIW I now have my own blog (not associated with HN, yet) that I use to type out my thoughts on things. I've shared it with a few people in my life that I think might care. The act of it being a blog instead of posts on Facebook is very intentional, and I don't care that not many see it. It is more of a journal.
- randycupertino 8y ago
  That movie reminds me of my own family and it is so sad. I think they got radicalized when they retired and had nothing to do other than sit around watching Fox and listening to Rush Limbaugh. They used to be normal, reasonable people and now they're absolute nutters.
jorblumesea 8y ago
This is actually why I don't visit facebook often, I had to spend so much time curating all of the echo chamber effects and political posts. My entire feed got flooded with crazy stuff and none of it was anything I actually wanted to hear about. I wanted to hear about people in my life but those who posted popular shares got all the exposure. It has become a platform to yell at people and to echo chamber each other. Having real conversations is impossible. It became work to make Facebook worthwhile.
EvilMonkeyMat 8y ago
Wow. Thanks for the way you put this out. This is exactly how I was feeling / what I was experiencing. So I went ahead, and installed my own MatterMost instance with friends. What I realized recently is that Facebook is built in a way that makes it really hard to have a real conversation. People only share links and shout their opinions with no real place for exchange.
- spiritcat 8y ago
  Turns out people don't always wan't their conversations shared with [ramifications of current privacy settings unknown, assumed to be everyone]
  - EvilMonkeyMat 8y ago
    I understand that. My Facebook profile is mostly empty to an outsider, and even to many of my so-called friends. Hehe! I said that because the more I think about it, the more I find social media platforms don't really help me stay in touch with anyone. I mean, yeah, I can see they got a third kid or that hunting season was great this year, but nothing near a real conversation around a coffee or a beer. That's why I started using MatterMost ,an open source Slack clone, or like I tell my less tech-savvy friends: IRC on steroids. (IRC was the go to choice when we were teens)
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    That's why I personally like Twitter. 1. There is no private (there is, but ignore that) 2. Choose a topic to post about. Further that and none else. 3. Post topical discussions only. 4. Don't involve yourself in screeds. There will be a sentence that is taken out of context. Doing these creates a really cool group over $thing. And that positive attraction pulls more in :) This is the good side of social media: connecting people with similar interests from around the world.
    - EvilMonkeyMat 8y ago
      I experienced the same with Google+ and D&D over the past years... But they're closing now. :-p
ChuckMcM 8y ago
It would be uniquely refreshing if Facebook would apply an overlay to every post that gave it a true/false and hate/love rating. This makes an interesting 2 x 2 box score and for a while I was looking at some NLP to pull out common themes and rate them, but I realized that if you just used a bi-variable version of the "like" widget you could have people moderate. Such a signal, combined with actual research on the veracity and tone of the post could be combined to highlight places where people need help and where bad actors might be plying their wares. But I don't honestly expect anyone in management at Facebook to advocate such a system.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- mschuster91 8y ago
  > It would be uniquely refreshing if Facebook would apply an overlay to every post that gave it a true/false and hate/love rating. It would instantly be weaponized. Already, right-wing groups specialize in taking down antifa and LGBT pages on Facebook or Twitter by abusing the report feature. To make it worse, Facebook apparently automatically locks pages upon getting a high number of reports in a short timeframe. You can bet that anything not from Fox News or Infowars would be flag-abused as "fake news" in an instant.
kadendogthing 8y ago
"He has said things that the man I grew up with would never have said" It's an uncomfortable topic to broach, but you can't blame everyone else but your father for the opinions he holds.
- lotsofcows 8y ago
  No, of course not; my upbringing, the people surrounding me, the cards life dealt me have no impact on me in way whatsoever. Poster should call him out. Say you find it unpleasant. If the online echo chamber extends into real life as well he's got no hope.
starpilot 8y ago
My sister has gone down the same rabbit hole. She really thinks she's "fighting the good fight" by posting a fresh outrage every day. She's glued to a changing handful of posts, replying rapid-fire to anyone who disagrees. I used to post (4-5 times per year) photos of my vacations, but I don't want to feed the whole lifestyle porn/envy cycle.
- octorian 8y ago
  > She really thinks she's "fighting the good fight" by posting a fresh outrage every day. I have a few people in my feed who do this, from both sides. It almost feels like they've turned into nothing but meme/share-bots. It gets so annoying that I should probably block them already. If you try to call out the content, you either get childishly shouted down because you're on "the other side", or called out as "the problem" because you don't agree with their group-think.
  - newsbinator 8y ago
    > or called out as "the problem" because you don't agree with their group-think. It feels good to have someone verbalize this. I can't enjoy much social media anymore because there's an expectation that discussing anything opinionated requires a preface about what side you're on. Making a politically neutral statement means you're with the enemy (where the enemy is on the side opposite whoever reads your neutral statement). I'm not even referring to politics or discussion of world events: even more futurist/what-if thoughts about how society works/could work. HN is the calmest place to have a discussion with someone, because no one's looking for clues about your personal beliefs and what side you're ostensibly warring for. 9 times out of 10, only the content of your comment seems to matter. As it should be.
    - gammateam 8y ago
      > HN is the calmest place to have a discussion with someone, because no one's looking for clues about your personal beliefs and what side you're ostensibly warring for. just scroll to the bottom where everything is downvote-collapsed already, anything that isn't Silicon Valley political echo chamber isn't really discussed holistically and garners the same "you're the enemy" or "you're not in the middle if you don't already agree with me" response as other networks need a patch for this My thoughts are that Americans need a credible external threat for unity, and currently we don't have one. The Cold War thing jumped the shark decades ago and just doesn't have unifying consensus as being a problem for America, the religious extremist story has fallen apart with everyone knowing its all part of our cozy relationship with the House of Saud. So here we are
Spooky23 8y ago
IMO talk radio is far worse than Facebook. It’s just a constant stream of vitriol and nastiness with no end.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  What stations / networks / personalities, specifically?
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Pretty much anything AM. The one my in-laws have on all day is Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Levin. It's a constant stream of angry/crazy white guy. Even the late night isn't a refuge. Whatever the show is that used to be Art Bell is quasi-political now.
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      Thanks. About what I'd expected, though it's handy to put some names on it. I've ... accidentally ... tuned in to Hannity on occasion. I thought I'd tuned in to the local lunatic asylum.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Do you have a source for that extraordinary claim that Facebook was designed from the outset to make people unhappy, and that people use Facebook more when they are made unhappy?
- colllectorof 8y ago
  Nothing extraordinary about it. I don't know whether Facebook was deliberately designed to make people unhappy, but it does: https://www.upmc.com/media/news/lin-primack-sm-depression https://www.upmc.com/media/news/lin-primack-sm-depression "Social Media Use Associated With Depression Among U.S. Young Adults" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477910/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477910/ "There is increasing evidence that the Internet and social media can influence suicide-related behavior. "
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
andresp 8y ago
Exactly. The manipulative and unproductive nature go hand in hand and were the two things that made me quit all social networks except for LinkedIn (where I see the value that I get is higher than the time that I invest there). I think some people unconsciously know this, but they fail to act on it due to the addictive nature of the product, creating false excuses to justify their account (it doesn't matter how important you think you are, no one cares really). Others are completely oblivious to what Facebook is doing to them. I don't think there is any hope for them. Facebook will continue to use them to squeeze every bit of free time they have into pointless egocentric activity.
allthecybers 8y ago
It astounds me that Facebook still has as many users as it has but that there isn't also an exodus of employees from Facebook. You have to be really drunk on the koolaid to think that your company is doing anything good in the world. Twitter the same. How is it with all our technology, the cutting edge are these digital septic tanks (or sewers if you live in the city)?
- pandapower2 8y ago
  >You have to be really drunk on the koolaid to think that your company is doing anything good in the world. Or just willing to take the paycheck while pushing everything else to the back of your mind.
gordon_freeman 8y ago
But what's the point of traveling to places if you can't tell all your friends about all the places you are traveling to? Or books you're reading? Etc.
- kamaal 8y ago
  Not sure if you are being sarcastic. But if that is the reason why you are reading or traveling, you might as well not. Travel or read book to get new perspectives, experiences and learn new things. Not to tell others to make yourself feel superior over others.
  - gordon_freeman 8y ago
    I was trying to be sarcastic. :) Some of my friends keep posting pics and status updates and sometimes I realize that all they think while traveling is... Letting their friends know where they are and what they are doing.
- pandapower2 8y ago
  Although I suspect this is sarcasm you do raise a good point. Even as someone who has traveled a lot including pre-Internet, now that I have gotten used to the idea of essentially live bragging about where I am, its hard to turn that reflex off.
mikorym 8y ago
It is stark how the older demographic is hit as hard as the younger demographic.
ycombinete 8y ago
Have a look here [0]. It's a personal essay, but there are a lot of resources, in the links especially, which go into detail about how your worries around manipulation etc. are in fact true. http://matthewbrecher.com/socialmedia.html http://matthewbrecher.com/socialmedia.html
bliblah 8y ago
This is basically how I felt back in 2014 after I pretty much stopped using all social media. I have my facebook only to announce big events and let immigration officers know that I love my wife very much by having a detailed photo album of all our interactions over many years. It's incredibly annoying that at this juncture I have to keep it because of what other people / entities want rather than myself. This is why I refuse to use LinkdIn instead of job boards or the career sites for the company. The aggressive commercialization of Social Media has been the greatest failure to be borne out of the internet and our society will be suffering its effects for many years. At least the stockholders (who are probably too darn old to use the site) are very happy. Edit: I also very much appreciate the irony of spending so much time and energy on posting on Hacker News!
incompatible 8y ago
It sounds like he is infected with something very similar to a religion. Religious ideas are very hard to change. For every rational argument, there's a doctrine-based reply.
calvertdw 8y ago
I'd be really interested to know how you got to "$12/person/year". I would be interested in the values for other platforms. I think it builds a more tangible argument when explaining the hidden costs of using various "free" products.

by jwally 8y ago

Endy 8y ago

So you're saying that Internet radicalization happens across all age demographics?

duxup 8y ago

I don't even know what Twitter is for except mutual high fives over the most superficial "look at me" memeish stuff. It's worse than facebook as far as the "get attention" vibe. Granted all social media is about getting attention, and I don't think there is anything wrong with it necessarily. Attention is nice, there is good reason for it, but when the message is so tailored to just that and there isn't anything else, I don't know what the point is. I recently switched careers from a long networking career to web development and thought I'd take another spin on Twitter, but rather I just get sites that paste a link to their website, and hordes of people posting programming truisms or career / resume / coding lifestyle fodder .... so little feels like that person wrote it, so much feels like what those people thing "a commercial about me" should be. --- As for your other notes about the impact on people. It is horrifying. I see some relatives posting terrible things and I wish saying "but you've never met any of those people" had the impact that it should... but it doesn't.

rotskoff 8y ago
I have found that the machine learning research community uses twitter pretty effectively. I don't tweet myself, but I do follow a good number of other researchers and often find interesting papers and results through the venue. It's much more effective than scouring the arXiv.
- duxup 8y ago
  Yeah it's hard to curate a feed, I'm sure there are good groups out there (there has to be). I just struggle to find them.
  - vslira 8y ago
    Maybe the machine mearning community is particularly good at curating feeds, heh
  - modeless 8y ago
    I get a lot of value from Twitter's AI and computer graphics communities, but I used to see a lot of retweeted political garbage too. I found that Twitter's "mute words" feature works wonders. After muting about 100 words ("trump", "obama", "republican", "democrat", "evil", "lied", "nazi", that obnoxious hand clap emoji, etc) it's like a whole different place. Much less rage-inducing. You can also disable Twitter's annoying engagement-boosting features by muting special undocumented tokens like "suggest_recycled_tweet_inline" and "suggest_who_to_follow". https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/09/19/twitters-annoying-features-can-now-turned-off/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/09/19/twitters-annoying-f...
- dotancohen 8y ago
  You should write a bot in Scikit / Python to scrape Arxiv for interesting articles!
spectre256 8y ago
Twitter is really useful for sharing content at conferences or other events with a clear hashtag. Other than that, and perhaps sharing more substantive articles/blog posts/etc to a wider audience, it's at best silly, and at worse, well...much worse.

unethical_ban 8y ago

Yep. I've heard of this movie but haven't watched it yet - though my sibling assures me it is a copy of our experience with our parents. They were conservative/moderate at one point, but now regurgitate radical right-wing talking points without defending them, and say that "everyone just reads what they want to believe" but applies it only to me and my New York Times, moreso than them and their literal fake news peddling outlets. The Brainwashing Of My Dad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXTjz2H57rE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXTjz2H57rE FWIW I now have my own blog (not associated with HN, yet) that I use to type out my thoughts on things. I've shared it with a few people in my life that I think might care. The act of it being a blog instead of posts on Facebook is very intentional, and I don't care that not many see it. It is more of a journal.

randycupertino 8y ago
That movie reminds me of my own family and it is so sad. I think they got radicalized when they retired and had nothing to do other than sit around watching Fox and listening to Rush Limbaugh. They used to be normal, reasonable people and now they're absolute nutters.

jorblumesea 8y ago

This is actually why I don't visit facebook often, I had to spend so much time curating all of the echo chamber effects and political posts. My entire feed got flooded with crazy stuff and none of it was anything I actually wanted to hear about. I wanted to hear about people in my life but those who posted popular shares got all the exposure. It has become a platform to yell at people and to echo chamber each other. Having real conversations is impossible. It became work to make Facebook worthwhile.

EvilMonkeyMat 8y ago

Wow. Thanks for the way you put this out. This is exactly how I was feeling / what I was experiencing. So I went ahead, and installed my own MatterMost instance with friends. What I realized recently is that Facebook is built in a way that makes it really hard to have a real conversation. People only share links and shout their opinions with no real place for exchange.

spiritcat 8y ago
Turns out people don't always wan't their conversations shared with [ramifications of current privacy settings unknown, assumed to be everyone]
- EvilMonkeyMat 8y ago
  I understand that. My Facebook profile is mostly empty to an outsider, and even to many of my so-called friends. Hehe! I said that because the more I think about it, the more I find social media platforms don't really help me stay in touch with anyone. I mean, yeah, I can see they got a third kid or that hunting season was great this year, but nothing near a real conversation around a coffee or a beer. That's why I started using MatterMost ,an open source Slack clone, or like I tell my less tech-savvy friends: IRC on steroids. (IRC was the go to choice when we were teens)
- crankylinuxuser 8y ago
  That's why I personally like Twitter. 1. There is no private (there is, but ignore that) 2. Choose a topic to post about. Further that and none else. 3. Post topical discussions only. 4. Don't involve yourself in screeds. There will be a sentence that is taken out of context. Doing these creates a really cool group over $thing. And that positive attraction pulls more in :) This is the good side of social media: connecting people with similar interests from around the world.
  - EvilMonkeyMat 8y ago
    I experienced the same with Google+ and D&D over the past years... But they're closing now. :-p

ChuckMcM 8y ago

It would be uniquely refreshing if Facebook would apply an overlay to every post that gave it a true/false and hate/love rating. This makes an interesting 2 x 2 box score and for a while I was looking at some NLP to pull out common themes and rate them, but I realized that if you just used a bi-variable version of the "like" widget you could have people moderate. Such a signal, combined with actual research on the veracity and tone of the post could be combined to highlight places where people need help and where bad actors might be plying their wares. But I don't honestly expect anyone in management at Facebook to advocate such a system.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
mschuster91 8y ago
> It would be uniquely refreshing if Facebook would apply an overlay to every post that gave it a true/false and hate/love rating. It would instantly be weaponized. Already, right-wing groups specialize in taking down antifa and LGBT pages on Facebook or Twitter by abusing the report feature. To make it worse, Facebook apparently automatically locks pages upon getting a high number of reports in a short timeframe. You can bet that anything not from Fox News or Infowars would be flag-abused as "fake news" in an instant.

kadendogthing 8y ago

"He has said things that the man I grew up with would never have said" It's an uncomfortable topic to broach, but you can't blame everyone else but your father for the opinions he holds.

lotsofcows 8y ago
No, of course not; my upbringing, the people surrounding me, the cards life dealt me have no impact on me in way whatsoever. Poster should call him out. Say you find it unpleasant. If the online echo chamber extends into real life as well he's got no hope.

starpilot 8y ago

My sister has gone down the same rabbit hole. She really thinks she's "fighting the good fight" by posting a fresh outrage every day. She's glued to a changing handful of posts, replying rapid-fire to anyone who disagrees. I used to post (4-5 times per year) photos of my vacations, but I don't want to feed the whole lifestyle porn/envy cycle.

octorian 8y ago
> She really thinks she's "fighting the good fight" by posting a fresh outrage every day. I have a few people in my feed who do this, from both sides. It almost feels like they've turned into nothing but meme/share-bots. It gets so annoying that I should probably block them already. If you try to call out the content, you either get childishly shouted down because you're on "the other side", or called out as "the problem" because you don't agree with their group-think.
- newsbinator 8y ago
  > or called out as "the problem" because you don't agree with their group-think. It feels good to have someone verbalize this. I can't enjoy much social media anymore because there's an expectation that discussing anything opinionated requires a preface about what side you're on. Making a politically neutral statement means you're with the enemy (where the enemy is on the side opposite whoever reads your neutral statement). I'm not even referring to politics or discussion of world events: even more futurist/what-if thoughts about how society works/could work. HN is the calmest place to have a discussion with someone, because no one's looking for clues about your personal beliefs and what side you're ostensibly warring for. 9 times out of 10, only the content of your comment seems to matter. As it should be.
  - gammateam 8y ago
    > HN is the calmest place to have a discussion with someone, because no one's looking for clues about your personal beliefs and what side you're ostensibly warring for. just scroll to the bottom where everything is downvote-collapsed already, anything that isn't Silicon Valley political echo chamber isn't really discussed holistically and garners the same "you're the enemy" or "you're not in the middle if you don't already agree with me" response as other networks need a patch for this My thoughts are that Americans need a credible external threat for unity, and currently we don't have one. The Cold War thing jumped the shark decades ago and just doesn't have unifying consensus as being a problem for America, the religious extremist story has fallen apart with everyone knowing its all part of our cozy relationship with the House of Saud. So here we are

Spooky23 8y ago

IMO talk radio is far worse than Facebook. It’s just a constant stream of vitriol and nastiness with no end.

dredmorbius 8y ago
What stations / networks / personalities, specifically?
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Pretty much anything AM. The one my in-laws have on all day is Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, Levin. It's a constant stream of angry/crazy white guy. Even the late night isn't a refuge. Whatever the show is that used to be Art Bell is quasi-political now.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Thanks. About what I'd expected, though it's handy to put some names on it. I've ... accidentally ... tuned in to Hannity on occasion. I thought I'd tuned in to the local lunatic asylum.

fjsolwmv 8y ago

Do you have a source for that extraordinary claim that Facebook was designed from the outset to make people unhappy, and that people use Facebook more when they are made unhappy?

colllectorof 8y ago
Nothing extraordinary about it. I don't know whether Facebook was deliberately designed to make people unhappy, but it does: https://www.upmc.com/media/news/lin-primack-sm-depression https://www.upmc.com/media/news/lin-primack-sm-depression "Social Media Use Associated With Depression Among U.S. Young Adults" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477910/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477910/ "There is increasing evidence that the Internet and social media can influence suicide-related behavior. "
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

andresp 8y ago

Exactly. The manipulative and unproductive nature go hand in hand and were the two things that made me quit all social networks except for LinkedIn (where I see the value that I get is higher than the time that I invest there). I think some people unconsciously know this, but they fail to act on it due to the addictive nature of the product, creating false excuses to justify their account (it doesn't matter how important you think you are, no one cares really). Others are completely oblivious to what Facebook is doing to them. I don't think there is any hope for them. Facebook will continue to use them to squeeze every bit of free time they have into pointless egocentric activity.

allthecybers 8y ago

It astounds me that Facebook still has as many users as it has but that there isn't also an exodus of employees from Facebook. You have to be really drunk on the koolaid to think that your company is doing anything good in the world. Twitter the same. How is it with all our technology, the cutting edge are these digital septic tanks (or sewers if you live in the city)?

pandapower2 8y ago
>You have to be really drunk on the koolaid to think that your company is doing anything good in the world. Or just willing to take the paycheck while pushing everything else to the back of your mind.

gordon_freeman 8y ago

But what's the point of traveling to places if you can't tell all your friends about all the places you are traveling to? Or books you're reading? Etc.

kamaal 8y ago
Not sure if you are being sarcastic. But if that is the reason why you are reading or traveling, you might as well not. Travel or read book to get new perspectives, experiences and learn new things. Not to tell others to make yourself feel superior over others.
- gordon_freeman 8y ago
  I was trying to be sarcastic. :) Some of my friends keep posting pics and status updates and sometimes I realize that all they think while traveling is... Letting their friends know where they are and what they are doing.
pandapower2 8y ago
Although I suspect this is sarcasm you do raise a good point. Even as someone who has traveled a lot including pre-Internet, now that I have gotten used to the idea of essentially live bragging about where I am, its hard to turn that reflex off.

mikorym 8y ago

It is stark how the older demographic is hit as hard as the younger demographic.

ycombinete 8y ago

Have a look here [0]. It's a personal essay, but there are a lot of resources, in the links especially, which go into detail about how your worries around manipulation etc. are in fact true. http://matthewbrecher.com/socialmedia.html http://matthewbrecher.com/socialmedia.html

bliblah 8y ago

This is basically how I felt back in 2014 after I pretty much stopped using all social media. I have my facebook only to announce big events and let immigration officers know that I love my wife very much by having a detailed photo album of all our interactions over many years. It's incredibly annoying that at this juncture I have to keep it because of what other people / entities want rather than myself. This is why I refuse to use LinkdIn instead of job boards or the career sites for the company. The aggressive commercialization of Social Media has been the greatest failure to be borne out of the internet and our society will be suffering its effects for many years. At least the stockholders (who are probably too darn old to use the site) are very happy. Edit: I also very much appreciate the irony of spending so much time and energy on posting on Hacker News!

incompatible 8y ago

It sounds like he is infected with something very similar to a religion. Religious ideas are very hard to change. For every rational argument, there's a doctrine-based reply.

calvertdw 8y ago

I'd be really interested to know how you got to "$12/person/year". I would be interested in the values for other platforms. I think it builds a more tangible argument when explaining the hidden costs of using various "free" products.