All these people complaining about social media, on a social network called Hacker News... Every platform you use to communicate with other humans is a social

All these people complaining about social media, on a social network called Hacker News... Every platform you use to communicate with other humans is a social network, they're not new. Slashdot was an early 'modern' social network, after regular old forums, as was Usenet and the BBS. All these networks had very similar properties to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram - they just didn't have pictures, and were restricted mostly to computer nerds. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is what happens when you open up these services to the whole world, add media, make it easier to share, and more addictive to use. The 'highest upvoted story' is a picture with a quote and a lot of likes. Our old flame wars about text editors and OSes are now caustic rants about vaccinations or politics. The only significant change is the subject matter, and the number of people involved. As a 'disease', FB, Twitter and Insta are just a more evolved form of something that's always been here. They reflect and amplify humanity. You can focus on the bad, or you can notice the good. But it's a mistake to think these products are somehow uniquely different than everything else, or even inherently bad. They're inherently human.