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For island nations, it's not as bad an idea as it might sound. For all the bullshit about connectedness, the basic physical human urge social media stimulates i

For island nations, it's not as bad an idea as it might sound. For all the bullshit about connectedness, the basic physical human urge social media stimulates is for conflict. All the other things like sentimentality, status signalling, attention seeking, are parts of the underlying addiction to conflict because in a lot of hind-brains, that sensation represents opportunity. It's a vice. Outright bans are clumsy, but imposing a cost or bar to entry, like most societies do with alcohol and drugs, might be constructive. I'm tired of meeting friends and family in person and listening to them spend 20mins one-way unloading all the shit they read on the internet. They're so indexed on things that aren't physically present in the moment it's like talking someone through a psychosis or reasoning with someone with schizophrenia. It's a mass hysteria machine. When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. We've basically invented language cancer, nice one guys.

pjc50 6y ago
> language cancer Verbal coronavirus. Snow Crash was rather ahead of its time on this, although derailed by the author infodumping ancient Sumeria in the middle.
- garbagetime 6y ago
  The info-dump was one of the few enjoyable parts of the book.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. It's what they call a humanoid interface to the Data Integration Thought Entity.
- dane-pgp 6y ago
  I can't imagine Yuki Nagato getting all her news from Facebook.
solarkraft 6y ago
> I'm tired of meeting friends and family in person and listening to them spend 20mins one-way unloading all the shit they read on the internet. They're so indexed on things that aren't physically present in the moment it's like talking someone through a psychosis or reasoning with someone with schizophrenia. It's a mass hysteria machine. When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. We've basically invented language cancer, nice one guys. It's easy to imagine this being about the news (in whatever format: TV, radio, newspaper) or even ideas in general. This very forum is dedicated to talking about things that aren't physically present. Maybe I didn't understand your argument, but to me it sounds a lot like you're complaining about human nature.
- lainga 6y ago
  Do you spend 20 minutes expounding on HN articles to your friends and family without waiting for a response?
  - sixstringtheory 6y ago
    Anyone doing that is just a bad conversationalist. I bring up stuff all the time that I read about on HN/Internet, but I do it to foster discussion and keep things interesting, not to lecture people. Conversely, I know people who will talk for 20 minutes or longer on end, despite clear signals that I'm no longer interested, to the point where they have to be firmly interrupted.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  There's a difference that's tricky to define. But when we talk about things "that aren't physically present", a good percentage of that talk can be useful to one or more of the participants; though we also do a lot of what the parent is complaining about. That said, I do know what they mean. I also hate to see people getting almost traumatized by the random crap they find on social media. Especially if it's bullshit - and it's obvious that it's bullshit, but you can't say it, because that would invalidate the other person's feelings. So yesterday, it was "did you know our government wants to XYZ?!?!!" (no, they don't, the news article was lying, as usual). Today it's maltreated pets (could you please unsubscribe from the feeds that trigger you every couple weeks like clockwork?). Tomorrow it'll be a YouTube drama (between a very niche vloggers). Perhaps it is human nature, perhaps it was also present with the old media. But what seems different is isolation. I remember that before the web became truly mainstream, people would talk a lot about bullshit they've heard on the news. But they would all talk about the same bullshit. People would ultimately take comfort in an understanding that they share the knowledge about the story. Today? Everyone has their own isolated social media feed. So you end up having people unload completely random and unexpected stuff at whoever is willing to listen to them.
kspacewalk2 6y ago
In corrupt hellholes, conflict is a good thing. There will be no change, no reform, no improvement ever without conflict. The key of course is to prevent violent conflict, but banning Facebook isn't gonna address the underlying causes of discontent, it'll just make things simmer under the surface until they explode into violence anyway. You're thinking about this from a prism of a country with a generally functioning, competent government (i.e. any rich Western country). Solomon Islands isn't that.
SuoDuanDao 6y ago
>Language Cancer I like the term 'autocult' myself, though it might be too pessimistic for what we're actually facing. Language Cancer implies there could be a cure, which is worth considering.
lostlogin 6y ago
> For island nations, it's not as bad an idea as it might sound. In this context, what is so special about islands? The porous nature of borders doesn’t relate particularly strongly to the presence or absence of water barriers. This comes up a lot with pandemic arguments too.
- nstj 6y ago
  They’re small
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    That hasn’t helped an awful of a lot with COVID (the UK and Hawaii come to mind), and in terms of blocking Facebook, I’m not clear on the relevance? I think I need an eli5.
eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
> Outright bans are clumsy, but imposing a cost or bar to entry, like most societies do with alcohol and drugs, might be constructive. With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. So you're essentially demanding: - that every social media account is easily connectable to the real citizen ID behind it. - that governments should assist social networks in their already rampant tracking of users by even enforcing it through legislature. - by that also that governments build infrastructure which can be used to track the political opinion of every citizen, because that's what they can do if every user account is linked to a real person. I can understand that the goals behind what you say are noble, but please take notice of this: When I use FB or whatever, I want to be completely anonymous. I neither want FB, nor random strangers there, nor the government to track what the real person behind my pseudonym posts on FB. And that should be the right of everyone. Mundane things such as posting your opinion on the internet should not have huge barriers of entry and possibly individual consequences attached to them. To not become a fascist country, you cannot regulate social media access.
- adewinter 6y ago
  1) why are you defending Facebook? 2) Facebook demands and aggressively enforces that your profile represents you and has your real name and other credentials associated with your identity. If your pseudonym gets reported it will definitely get banned. 3) > With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. Yes that's true for literally every transaction on the internet when done with a credit card. Not sure why that's a problem. > And that should be the right of everyone. Facebook is a company selling a product. You do not and definitely should not have any "rights" on their private platform. Just like you do not and should not have the right to force a local business to trade with you if they do not want to.
  - eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
    > 1) why are you defending Facebook? Because once such laws are enacted they surely will NOT only apply to FB but to all other social networks as well. Classic "pandora's box". > 2) Facebook demands and aggressively enforces that your profile represents you and has your real name and other credentials associated with your identity. If your pseudonym gets reported it will definitely get banned. How does FB doing a bad thing currently justify demanding the government to even one-up them and make it legally mandatory to do that bad thing? - I was aware of them doing this, and if that were the subject of the discussion I would have in fact demanded that they're legally forced to stop doing it. > Yes that's true for literally every transaction on the internet when done with a credit card. Not sure why that's a problem. Did you have to use your credit card to write this post? To post on any other forum for the past few decades? Would you be happy to give me your credit card data in real life before I start listening to anything you say there? > Facebook is a company selling a product. You do not and definitely should not have any "rights" on their private platform. Just like you do not and should not have the right to force a local business to trade with you if they do not want to. FB has taken possession of a now essentially public space of which the participation therein is a central component of having a social life. Try finding a party or any other kind of event to attend without FB access. If you take possession of a part of the commons along with that possession comes the duty to provide proper access to the citizens which are reliant upon it. E.g. if you own a piece of land below which there is an aquifer, the government will force you to provide access to the water so the public can drink. There is no reason why this should be any different in cyberspace.
jariel 6y ago
Governments only interest in banning facebook is protecting their own corruption. Facebook is not nearly as bad as the narrative driven tabloids would have us believe. Most people get along with it just fine, it's mostly just social media. It can have a downside, but it's better than having communications restricted.
dsign 6y ago
> I'm tired of meeting friends and family in person and listening to them spend 20mins one-way unloading all the shit they read on the internet... One data point: I have family who have never logged in into Facebook or used the Internet. And they spend hours unloading all the rehashed sh*t that happened in their lives, in a one-way monologue.
- tubularhells 6y ago
  Yes, but that's their life, not random internet shit.
- mullen 6y ago
  That's called connecting with people. They unload their shit, and you unload yours.
zehnfischer 6y ago
To quote Niklas Luhmann: "Everything we know about the world we live in we know from mass media" He wasn't thinking about Facebook, but what would you expect people to talk about? Most lifes are not exciting enough to fill a whole conversation.
zarkov99 6y ago
Yes, but I do not think it had to be this bad. Thoughtfully mediating the communication of billions of people is a massive challenge but one that could be tackled by the sort of highly intelligent and well funded teams that abound in places like Facebook. Unfortunately Facebook leadership lacks the character to try to fix a problem that is making them billions of dollars. Even if that problem is making the whole world worse off. I think history will judge them harshly.

pjc50 6y ago

> language cancer Verbal coronavirus. Snow Crash was rather ahead of its time on this, although derailed by the author infodumping ancient Sumeria in the middle.

garbagetime 6y ago
The info-dump was one of the few enjoyable parts of the book.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago

> When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. It's what they call a humanoid interface to the Data Integration Thought Entity.

dane-pgp 6y ago
I can't imagine Yuki Nagato getting all her news from Facebook.

solarkraft 6y ago

> I'm tired of meeting friends and family in person and listening to them spend 20mins one-way unloading all the shit they read on the internet. They're so indexed on things that aren't physically present in the moment it's like talking someone through a psychosis or reasoning with someone with schizophrenia. It's a mass hysteria machine. When I talk to some people, it's like I'm not even talking to people anymore, I'm talking to some node of the internet. We've basically invented language cancer, nice one guys. It's easy to imagine this being about the news (in whatever format: TV, radio, newspaper) or even ideas in general. This very forum is dedicated to talking about things that aren't physically present. Maybe I didn't understand your argument, but to me it sounds a lot like you're complaining about human nature.

lainga 6y ago
Do you spend 20 minutes expounding on HN articles to your friends and family without waiting for a response?
- sixstringtheory 6y ago
  Anyone doing that is just a bad conversationalist. I bring up stuff all the time that I read about on HN/Internet, but I do it to foster discussion and keep things interesting, not to lecture people. Conversely, I know people who will talk for 20 minutes or longer on end, despite clear signals that I'm no longer interested, to the point where they have to be firmly interrupted.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
There's a difference that's tricky to define. But when we talk about things "that aren't physically present", a good percentage of that talk can be useful to one or more of the participants; though we also do a lot of what the parent is complaining about. That said, I do know what they mean. I also hate to see people getting almost traumatized by the random crap they find on social media. Especially if it's bullshit - and it's obvious that it's bullshit, but you can't say it, because that would invalidate the other person's feelings. So yesterday, it was "did you know our government wants to XYZ?!?!!" (no, they don't, the news article was lying, as usual). Today it's maltreated pets (could you please unsubscribe from the feeds that trigger you every couple weeks like clockwork?). Tomorrow it'll be a YouTube drama (between a very niche vloggers). Perhaps it is human nature, perhaps it was also present with the old media. But what seems different is isolation. I remember that before the web became truly mainstream, people would talk a lot about bullshit they've heard on the news. But they would all talk about the same bullshit. People would ultimately take comfort in an understanding that they share the knowledge about the story. Today? Everyone has their own isolated social media feed. So you end up having people unload completely random and unexpected stuff at whoever is willing to listen to them.

kspacewalk2 6y ago

In corrupt hellholes, conflict is a good thing. There will be no change, no reform, no improvement ever without conflict. The key of course is to prevent violent conflict, but banning Facebook isn't gonna address the underlying causes of discontent, it'll just make things simmer under the surface until they explode into violence anyway. You're thinking about this from a prism of a country with a generally functioning, competent government (i.e. any rich Western country). Solomon Islands isn't that.

SuoDuanDao 6y ago

>Language Cancer I like the term 'autocult' myself, though it might be too pessimistic for what we're actually facing. Language Cancer implies there could be a cure, which is worth considering.

lostlogin 6y ago

> For island nations, it's not as bad an idea as it might sound. In this context, what is so special about islands? The porous nature of borders doesn’t relate particularly strongly to the presence or absence of water barriers. This comes up a lot with pandemic arguments too.

nstj 6y ago
They’re small
- lostlogin 6y ago
  That hasn’t helped an awful of a lot with COVID (the UK and Hawaii come to mind), and in terms of blocking Facebook, I’m not clear on the relevance? I think I need an eli5.

eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago

> Outright bans are clumsy, but imposing a cost or bar to entry, like most societies do with alcohol and drugs, might be constructive. With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. So you're essentially demanding: - that every social media account is easily connectable to the real citizen ID behind it. - that governments should assist social networks in their already rampant tracking of users by even enforcing it through legislature. - by that also that governments build infrastructure which can be used to track the political opinion of every citizen, because that's what they can do if every user account is linked to a real person. I can understand that the goals behind what you say are noble, but please take notice of this: When I use FB or whatever, I want to be completely anonymous. I neither want FB, nor random strangers there, nor the government to track what the real person behind my pseudonym posts on FB. And that should be the right of everyone. Mundane things such as posting your opinion on the internet should not have huge barriers of entry and possibly individual consequences attached to them. To not become a fascist country, you cannot regulate social media access.

adewinter 6y ago
1) why are you defending Facebook? 2) Facebook demands and aggressively enforces that your profile represents you and has your real name and other credentials associated with your identity. If your pseudonym gets reported it will definitely get banned. 3) > With requiring payment comes the ability to trace where the money came from. Yes that's true for literally every transaction on the internet when done with a credit card. Not sure why that's a problem. > And that should be the right of everyone. Facebook is a company selling a product. You do not and definitely should not have any "rights" on their private platform. Just like you do not and should not have the right to force a local business to trade with you if they do not want to.
- eMGm4D0zgUAVXc7 6y ago
  > 1) why are you defending Facebook? Because once such laws are enacted they surely will NOT only apply to FB but to all other social networks as well. Classic "pandora's box". > 2) Facebook demands and aggressively enforces that your profile represents you and has your real name and other credentials associated with your identity. If your pseudonym gets reported it will definitely get banned. How does FB doing a bad thing currently justify demanding the government to even one-up them and make it legally mandatory to do that bad thing? - I was aware of them doing this, and if that were the subject of the discussion I would have in fact demanded that they're legally forced to stop doing it. > Yes that's true for literally every transaction on the internet when done with a credit card. Not sure why that's a problem. Did you have to use your credit card to write this post? To post on any other forum for the past few decades? Would you be happy to give me your credit card data in real life before I start listening to anything you say there? > Facebook is a company selling a product. You do not and definitely should not have any "rights" on their private platform. Just like you do not and should not have the right to force a local business to trade with you if they do not want to. FB has taken possession of a now essentially public space of which the participation therein is a central component of having a social life. Try finding a party or any other kind of event to attend without FB access. If you take possession of a part of the commons along with that possession comes the duty to provide proper access to the citizens which are reliant upon it. E.g. if you own a piece of land below which there is an aquifer, the government will force you to provide access to the water so the public can drink. There is no reason why this should be any different in cyberspace.

jariel 6y ago

Governments only interest in banning facebook is protecting their own corruption. Facebook is not nearly as bad as the narrative driven tabloids would have us believe. Most people get along with it just fine, it's mostly just social media. It can have a downside, but it's better than having communications restricted.

dsign 6y ago

> I'm tired of meeting friends and family in person and listening to them spend 20mins one-way unloading all the shit they read on the internet... One data point: I have family who have never logged in into Facebook or used the Internet. And they spend hours unloading all the rehashed sh*t that happened in their lives, in a one-way monologue.

tubularhells 6y ago
Yes, but that's their life, not random internet shit.
mullen 6y ago
That's called connecting with people. They unload their shit, and you unload yours.

zehnfischer 6y ago

To quote Niklas Luhmann: "Everything we know about the world we live in we know from mass media" He wasn't thinking about Facebook, but what would you expect people to talk about? Most lifes are not exciting enough to fill a whole conversation.

zarkov99 6y ago

Yes, but I do not think it had to be this bad. Thoughtfully mediating the communication of billions of people is a massive challenge but one that could be tackled by the sort of highly intelligent and well funded teams that abound in places like Facebook. Unfortunately Facebook leadership lacks the character to try to fix a problem that is making them billions of dollars. Even if that problem is making the whole world worse off. I think history will judge them harshly.