8 ms·

Isn't it known that Facebook is aware the more enraged you are, the more engaged you are. You have an entire outrage culture of if it bleeds it leads, you can

by 41209 5y ago

Isn't it known that Facebook is aware the more enraged you are, the more engaged you are. You have an entire outrage culture of if it bleeds it leads, you can either be a part of this or not. In the last few years I've had to cut out most social media and online dating because it made me very miserable. With the time I've gained back I've improved my career, dated absolutely amazing people, and found more peace. Feeling good about yourself is free, but if you feel good about yourself you don't need to argue on Facebook about things which ultimately affect you very little if at all.

afavour 5y ago
I feel as though a comment similar to this appear on every Facebook-related topic. And don't get me wrong, you're absolutely right! I've also cut out Facebook from my life as much as I can and I'm happier for it. But "everyone just needs to cut out that bad stuff!" doesn't really work on a societal scale. Not to sound hyperbolic but I do feel as though the social media era has caused widespread addiction to the dopamine hits these apps provide and I don't think everyone is going to stop doing it just because someone tells them it would be good for them to do it. IMO society is far better off for the concerted campaigns that were fought against smoking. Maybe something similar is needed here.
- vanderZwan 5y ago
  Not only that, but putting the responsibility on the individual is a classic narrative used by companies to pass buck onto the consumer. It's basically a divide-and-conquer tactic, because it undermines the concept of taking collective action.
  - x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
    How does "everyone should use Facebook less" undermine collective action? Isn't it a call for collective action?
    - vanderZwan 5y ago
      Because it suggests that the only course of action against these kinds of practices requires individual choices to not use Facebook.
      - x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
        Isn't that what collective action is? Individuals all agreeing to take action?
        vanderZwan 5y ago
        You're confusing one ingredient in a dish for the dish. I agree that it's an important ingredient though. Where it falls short is that individual choices cannot fix systemic issues larger than the individual. That requires a systemic fix pushed for by collective action. And sure, collective action is built on individual choices to join that collective action but there's more to it than that. Moving away from Facebook is good, but it does not protect you from the next predatory practice unless collective preventative measures are taken.
    - dabbledash 5y ago
      But it’s not a call for coercion. People can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves because cigarettes / alcohol / social media / sugar / pornography is addictive. And since their bad choices have negative consequences on third parties because of health care costs / bad politics / family breakdown, we should get to tell them what to do.
      - 41209 5y ago
        Exactly. I consider social media to be largely harmful, but so is beer and soda. Life is too short to be angry about what others chose to do.
      - arbitrary_name 5y ago
        So you're against age limits on alcohol purchases? You're against banning or limiting advertising tobacco products in public spaces?
  - eloisius 5y ago
    It's the "reduce, reuse, recycle" of this generation.
    - slipframe 5y ago
      This was a fine enough message until corporations got us to forget that it was meant to be applied in that order. Reduction of consumption is paramount, but bad for corporate profit, so corporations promoted the idea of recycling being just as good if not better than reduction.
      - eloisius 5y ago
        Agree. I believe in a short while, maybe after some more congressional inquiry, or maybe another political fiasco, questioning the mental health effects of social media is going to be a mainstream idea. Tooter, Fakebook, et al will be on the defensive, but it will be the modern care-y feel-y corporate message version, encouraging us to use social media “responsibly” while still manufacturing an addictive and harmful product.
- barbazoo 5y ago
  I'm sure we can have both. A call for collective action and change through regulation or legislation. For many it would be very easy to just cut down on social media or stop altogether and find alternatives for the few things that are good about fb. I did it and I surely don't have any more willpower than the average person. For the rest, let's help them make the right choice to break the circle of addiction, talk to your friends, talk to your family, maybe reconsider what's important for you and whether you need that job at a company that makes many people's lives miserable even if it pays well. On top of that, let's try to convince lawmakers to introduce legislation and regulation. You need to do all the things, and everybody needs to, otherwise nothing will change.
  - andreilys 5y ago
    Can you elaborate on what legislation and regulation would yield positive effects with no negative externalities/regulatory capture that prevents any new companies from competing with Facebook?
    - barbazoo 5y ago
      I'm obviously not an expert but what I can imagine is - requirement of social media companies to correct the record and show people where they were the target of misinformation - childhood development informed minimum age requirement for social media use - banning of ultra-specific targeting the way it is done right now - banning of political advertising The list goes on and, again, obviously I'm not an expert in all the externalities, I just see a problem and would like to see it addressed. I have suggestions but am open to other suggestions. Anything that's not "the market will fix it".
      - andreilys 5y ago
        show people where they were the target of misinformation Ah perfect, let Dorsey and Zuck be the arbiters of truth. That definitely has not backfired during covid right? As I recall both platforms suppressed any mention of a lab leak theory as “conspiracy”.
- handrous 5y ago
  "The medium is the message". The message of the current Web is the death of local journalism, deep moats of pillaged user-data protecting monopolists, internationally "democratized" propaganda, and no privacy anywhere. If you want to change the message, the medium will have to change.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ixacto 5y ago
Got rid of all social media after COVID and political chaos of the last year. Just too much now and a waste of time.
gaws 5y ago
> Isn't it known that Facebook is aware the more enraged you are, the more engaged you are. It is. With how much Facebook makes and spends on "consultants" and lobbyists, do you think the company cares?
JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago
I share your conclusion. The feed is so horrendous these days, the only choice is to be part of it, or not. Having left the app over a year ago, I don't feel I'm missing anything. Anyone who wants to be part of my life can text, call, or e-mail (you likely can speculate who these people are before leaving FB, and you'll be right in retrospect). It's nice to not know, and save catching up for IRL. I am told I'm a "bad texter", but truthfully I 110% prefer when people tell me their stories in person, because texting misses out on the non-verbal aspects.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  I deleted it too! I still talk to the same people I was talking to before and eliminated a bunch of B.S. Literally zero loss to my life.
gooeykabuki 5y ago
What did you change your dating strategy to?
- cvwright 5y ago
  People use FB as a dating site?
nradov 5y ago
I love Facebook. It makes me feel good. It's the best way to publicly share my nature photography, and keep up with distant friends and family. The key is to "hide all from" pages for news, politics, memes, etc so they don't show up when your friends share posts. If I wanted to read biased garbage from the likes of Breitbart or the New York Times I would follow those pages myself.
- dr-detroit 5y ago
  Its not normal. Its not natural. Its not good for you. When you check facebook its activating the same brain areas as someone who is addicted to gambling having a pull on a slot machine. These addictive aspects are well documented and intentional.
- lucasmullens 5y ago
  Why is this being downvoted? It's okay to like Facebook, folks.
  - redonkulus 5y ago
    ELI5 how do you know it’s being downvoted?
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Posts turn grey if downvoted enough. It seems to have rebounded now, though.
  - dont__panic 5y ago
    Probably because Facebook is full of dark patterns and slowly tries to force this kind of content back onto you all the time so you're constantly fighting a riptide of ads, political garbage, and memes when all you want to see if updates about the lives of friends and family. I know that I have trouble fighting that riptide. My family doesn't stand a chance. Too many friends and family members who are too old to fight that effect have been slowly polarized politically because they're helpless against Facebook's engagement metrics.
EGreg 5y ago
This is the inevitable result of Capitalism. Journalism adapted to being disrupted by the Internet, by serving one sided audience with one sided outrage articles. The market selects for those. If FOX news admitted liberals weren’t that bad, they would lose much of their audience. And social network algorithms select for “engagement” which once again prioritizes ones sided outrage clickbait.
- api 5y ago
  It's a result of capitalism, but only because capitalism is a "greedy optimization algorithm" that opportunistically hones in on whatever works consequences (and sometimes ethics) be damned. The root cause is that humans have a powerful negativity bias. I once heard someone who'd been an editor at a major paper say that negative articles get as many as thousands of times more clicks than positive articles. It would be very hard for any media business not to prioritize negativity and conflict. They would not survive. I've seen it myself. I once penned a very combative blog post about the usability flaws in IPv6. It got hundreds of times more hits than anything else I have ever written combined. The big difference seemed to be the negative, combative, snarky tone. If you write like a snarky narcissistic asshole, you get 10-100X the attention. (I ended up taking it down because I didn't like the tone after thinking about it for a while.) This bias likely has an evolutionary root. "If you mistake a bush for a lion, you're fine. If you mistake a lion for a bush, you're dead." We came of age in an environment of scarcity, predation, and conflict, and are hard-wired to pay close attention to anything that even remotely smells like a threat or induces negative emotions.
  - EGreg 5y ago
    I think the biggest reason isn’t even the evolutionary root, but people’s tendency to chime in when they disagree, whereas they MAY hit the like button if they agree. I would even say the number of comments shows how controversial something is while the amount of likes shows how uncontroversial it is. Comments take more effort than hitting a like. You want to add your 2c and before you know it, others want to address what you said, too. And you get endless repetitions of the same arguments buried deep in chats and threads. Finally, there is nothing more addictive and compelling than the notification “Someone just replied to your comment”
code_duck 5y ago
Their systems either work like that by intention or as a side effect. Perhaps they get more engagement by showing me content I don’t like. I grew frustrated enough to entirely stop using Facebook around 2016. I would unfollow, block, hide posts and indicate lack of interest in anything political, and then the next items on the next refresh would be the same sort of political topics from people I didn’t even know were on my friends list. Meanwhile, the content I actually wanted to see such as conversation and events in the life of my friends hardly ever came up. I assume that Facebook’s system is sophisticated enough to conclude that if I have hidden, removed friends, and blocked people repeatedly as actions related to certain political posts that I don’t wish to see more of the same.
snarf21 5y ago
Outrage is the tool that FB, Twitter, Fox News and CNN use to sell more ads. They won't stop because it is insanely successful. This is why we need taxing of digital advertising. This the root of all this evil. We need to make these behaviors a lot less profitable.
samename 5y ago
How did you find amazing people to date?
- clockwork123512 5y ago
  I had a similar experience to 41209 on quitting online dating and drastically reducing social media, and developing better relationships in my life. I spent more time on private Discord/Slack channels of hobby groups, clubs, and a non-profit as a volunteer. I felt better spending time and energy with people I've grown to care about, versus worrying about the attention of strangers via online dating optimization (nice photos that tell a story, worrying about the wording of the biography, and being overly clever with the chat messages) or, frankly, semi-strangers with loose connections on social media. Dating a co-volunteer is almost like dating a coworker, but without the potential harm to your career. Just like a workplace, you tend to share similar interests and similar/complementary skillsets. It's also natural to approach another person, and ask to hang out or work on something independently of the organization. These relationships also seem more stable than people I'd meet through online connections. These people are amazing to me, though it's more precise to say that I enjoy interactions with these people more than people I meet through online dating. I'm less likely to run into people who play games, e.g. who optimize response times and lengths to messages. It feels human, versus my experiences with online dating. The main caveat is to avoid dating fellow volunteers/contributors when either of you are in a position of power (relatively less impact as no pay is at stake, but poor communication can still cause a negative organizational environment). I also avoid getting to know anyone with the intention to date them when I first meet them; though I don't hesitate to show interest in them as a person, and have created valued friends along the way. I moved to make it romantic, if I think we can work out long term (similar age, medium-term plans, and compatible personalities).
blisterpeanuts 5y ago
I'm another data point of overusing Facebook then deleting it entirely, after downloading all my stuff for archival purposes. I quit Twitter as well. Really, the only social networks I use today are a couple of old chatboards I've been on for years, LinkedIn rarely, and HN. One realizes after a while that most of these platforms, while seemingly benevolent and innocuous, actually thrive on turmoil and strife. You are not the customer; you are the product. Turn these things off and starve the beast. There's a place for social media and online discussion, but it has to be used judiciously. Don't let it take over your life.

by 41209 5y ago

afavour 5y ago

I feel as though a comment similar to this appear on every Facebook-related topic. And don't get me wrong, you're absolutely right! I've also cut out Facebook from my life as much as I can and I'm happier for it. But "everyone just needs to cut out that bad stuff!" doesn't really work on a societal scale. Not to sound hyperbolic but I do feel as though the social media era has caused widespread addiction to the dopamine hits these apps provide and I don't think everyone is going to stop doing it just because someone tells them it would be good for them to do it. IMO society is far better off for the concerted campaigns that were fought against smoking. Maybe something similar is needed here.

vanderZwan 5y ago
Not only that, but putting the responsibility on the individual is a classic narrative used by companies to pass buck onto the consumer. It's basically a divide-and-conquer tactic, because it undermines the concept of taking collective action.
- x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
  How does "everyone should use Facebook less" undermine collective action? Isn't it a call for collective action?
  - vanderZwan 5y ago
    Because it suggests that the only course of action against these kinds of practices requires individual choices to not use Facebook.
    - x3n0ph3n3 5y ago
      Isn't that what collective action is? Individuals all agreeing to take action?
      - vanderZwan 5y ago
        You're confusing one ingredient in a dish for the dish. I agree that it's an important ingredient though. Where it falls short is that individual choices cannot fix systemic issues larger than the individual. That requires a systemic fix pushed for by collective action. And sure, collective action is built on individual choices to join that collective action but there's more to it than that. Moving away from Facebook is good, but it does not protect you from the next predatory practice unless collective preventative measures are taken.
  - dabbledash 5y ago
    But it’s not a call for coercion. People can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves because cigarettes / alcohol / social media / sugar / pornography is addictive. And since their bad choices have negative consequences on third parties because of health care costs / bad politics / family breakdown, we should get to tell them what to do.
    - 41209 5y ago
      Exactly. I consider social media to be largely harmful, but so is beer and soda. Life is too short to be angry about what others chose to do.
    - arbitrary_name 5y ago
      So you're against age limits on alcohol purchases? You're against banning or limiting advertising tobacco products in public spaces?
- eloisius 5y ago
  It's the "reduce, reuse, recycle" of this generation.
  - slipframe 5y ago
    This was a fine enough message until corporations got us to forget that it was meant to be applied in that order. Reduction of consumption is paramount, but bad for corporate profit, so corporations promoted the idea of recycling being just as good if not better than reduction.
    - eloisius 5y ago
      Agree. I believe in a short while, maybe after some more congressional inquiry, or maybe another political fiasco, questioning the mental health effects of social media is going to be a mainstream idea. Tooter, Fakebook, et al will be on the defensive, but it will be the modern care-y feel-y corporate message version, encouraging us to use social media “responsibly” while still manufacturing an addictive and harmful product.
barbazoo 5y ago
I'm sure we can have both. A call for collective action and change through regulation or legislation. For many it would be very easy to just cut down on social media or stop altogether and find alternatives for the few things that are good about fb. I did it and I surely don't have any more willpower than the average person. For the rest, let's help them make the right choice to break the circle of addiction, talk to your friends, talk to your family, maybe reconsider what's important for you and whether you need that job at a company that makes many people's lives miserable even if it pays well. On top of that, let's try to convince lawmakers to introduce legislation and regulation. You need to do all the things, and everybody needs to, otherwise nothing will change.
- andreilys 5y ago
  Can you elaborate on what legislation and regulation would yield positive effects with no negative externalities/regulatory capture that prevents any new companies from competing with Facebook?
  - barbazoo 5y ago
    I'm obviously not an expert but what I can imagine is - requirement of social media companies to correct the record and show people where they were the target of misinformation - childhood development informed minimum age requirement for social media use - banning of ultra-specific targeting the way it is done right now - banning of political advertising The list goes on and, again, obviously I'm not an expert in all the externalities, I just see a problem and would like to see it addressed. I have suggestions but am open to other suggestions. Anything that's not "the market will fix it".
    - andreilys 5y ago
      show people where they were the target of misinformation Ah perfect, let Dorsey and Zuck be the arbiters of truth. That definitely has not backfired during covid right? As I recall both platforms suppressed any mention of a lab leak theory as “conspiracy”.
handrous 5y ago
"The medium is the message". The message of the current Web is the death of local journalism, deep moats of pillaged user-data protecting monopolists, internationally "democratized" propaganda, and no privacy anywhere. If you want to change the message, the medium will have to change.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ixacto 5y ago

Got rid of all social media after COVID and political chaos of the last year. Just too much now and a waste of time.

gaws 5y ago

> Isn't it known that Facebook is aware the more enraged you are, the more engaged you are. It is. With how much Facebook makes and spends on "consultants" and lobbyists, do you think the company cares?

JMTQp8lwXL 5y ago

I share your conclusion. The feed is so horrendous these days, the only choice is to be part of it, or not. Having left the app over a year ago, I don't feel I'm missing anything. Anyone who wants to be part of my life can text, call, or e-mail (you likely can speculate who these people are before leaving FB, and you'll be right in retrospect). It's nice to not know, and save catching up for IRL. I am told I'm a "bad texter", but truthfully I 110% prefer when people tell me their stories in person, because texting misses out on the non-verbal aspects.

nickthemagicman 5y ago
I deleted it too! I still talk to the same people I was talking to before and eliminated a bunch of B.S. Literally zero loss to my life.

gooeykabuki 5y ago

What did you change your dating strategy to?

cvwright 5y ago
People use FB as a dating site?

nradov 5y ago

I love Facebook. It makes me feel good. It's the best way to publicly share my nature photography, and keep up with distant friends and family. The key is to "hide all from" pages for news, politics, memes, etc so they don't show up when your friends share posts. If I wanted to read biased garbage from the likes of Breitbart or the New York Times I would follow those pages myself.

dr-detroit 5y ago
Its not normal. Its not natural. Its not good for you. When you check facebook its activating the same brain areas as someone who is addicted to gambling having a pull on a slot machine. These addictive aspects are well documented and intentional.
lucasmullens 5y ago
Why is this being downvoted? It's okay to like Facebook, folks.
- redonkulus 5y ago
  ELI5 how do you know it’s being downvoted?
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Posts turn grey if downvoted enough. It seems to have rebounded now, though.
- dont__panic 5y ago
  Probably because Facebook is full of dark patterns and slowly tries to force this kind of content back onto you all the time so you're constantly fighting a riptide of ads, political garbage, and memes when all you want to see if updates about the lives of friends and family. I know that I have trouble fighting that riptide. My family doesn't stand a chance. Too many friends and family members who are too old to fight that effect have been slowly polarized politically because they're helpless against Facebook's engagement metrics.

EGreg 5y ago

This is the inevitable result of Capitalism. Journalism adapted to being disrupted by the Internet, by serving one sided audience with one sided outrage articles. The market selects for those. If FOX news admitted liberals weren’t that bad, they would lose much of their audience. And social network algorithms select for “engagement” which once again prioritizes ones sided outrage clickbait.

api 5y ago
It's a result of capitalism, but only because capitalism is a "greedy optimization algorithm" that opportunistically hones in on whatever works consequences (and sometimes ethics) be damned. The root cause is that humans have a powerful negativity bias. I once heard someone who'd been an editor at a major paper say that negative articles get as many as thousands of times more clicks than positive articles. It would be very hard for any media business not to prioritize negativity and conflict. They would not survive. I've seen it myself. I once penned a very combative blog post about the usability flaws in IPv6. It got hundreds of times more hits than anything else I have ever written combined. The big difference seemed to be the negative, combative, snarky tone. If you write like a snarky narcissistic asshole, you get 10-100X the attention. (I ended up taking it down because I didn't like the tone after thinking about it for a while.) This bias likely has an evolutionary root. "If you mistake a bush for a lion, you're fine. If you mistake a lion for a bush, you're dead." We came of age in an environment of scarcity, predation, and conflict, and are hard-wired to pay close attention to anything that even remotely smells like a threat or induces negative emotions.
- EGreg 5y ago
  I think the biggest reason isn’t even the evolutionary root, but people’s tendency to chime in when they disagree, whereas they MAY hit the like button if they agree. I would even say the number of comments shows how controversial something is while the amount of likes shows how uncontroversial it is. Comments take more effort than hitting a like. You want to add your 2c and before you know it, others want to address what you said, too. And you get endless repetitions of the same arguments buried deep in chats and threads. Finally, there is nothing more addictive and compelling than the notification “Someone just replied to your comment”

code_duck 5y ago

Their systems either work like that by intention or as a side effect. Perhaps they get more engagement by showing me content I don’t like. I grew frustrated enough to entirely stop using Facebook around 2016. I would unfollow, block, hide posts and indicate lack of interest in anything political, and then the next items on the next refresh would be the same sort of political topics from people I didn’t even know were on my friends list. Meanwhile, the content I actually wanted to see such as conversation and events in the life of my friends hardly ever came up. I assume that Facebook’s system is sophisticated enough to conclude that if I have hidden, removed friends, and blocked people repeatedly as actions related to certain political posts that I don’t wish to see more of the same.

snarf21 5y ago

Outrage is the tool that FB, Twitter, Fox News and CNN use to sell more ads. They won't stop because it is insanely successful. This is why we need taxing of digital advertising. This the root of all this evil. We need to make these behaviors a lot less profitable.

samename 5y ago

How did you find amazing people to date?

clockwork123512 5y ago
I had a similar experience to 41209 on quitting online dating and drastically reducing social media, and developing better relationships in my life. I spent more time on private Discord/Slack channels of hobby groups, clubs, and a non-profit as a volunteer. I felt better spending time and energy with people I've grown to care about, versus worrying about the attention of strangers via online dating optimization (nice photos that tell a story, worrying about the wording of the biography, and being overly clever with the chat messages) or, frankly, semi-strangers with loose connections on social media. Dating a co-volunteer is almost like dating a coworker, but without the potential harm to your career. Just like a workplace, you tend to share similar interests and similar/complementary skillsets. It's also natural to approach another person, and ask to hang out or work on something independently of the organization. These relationships also seem more stable than people I'd meet through online connections. These people are amazing to me, though it's more precise to say that I enjoy interactions with these people more than people I meet through online dating. I'm less likely to run into people who play games, e.g. who optimize response times and lengths to messages. It feels human, versus my experiences with online dating. The main caveat is to avoid dating fellow volunteers/contributors when either of you are in a position of power (relatively less impact as no pay is at stake, but poor communication can still cause a negative organizational environment). I also avoid getting to know anyone with the intention to date them when I first meet them; though I don't hesitate to show interest in them as a person, and have created valued friends along the way. I moved to make it romantic, if I think we can work out long term (similar age, medium-term plans, and compatible personalities).

blisterpeanuts 5y ago

I'm another data point of overusing Facebook then deleting it entirely, after downloading all my stuff for archival purposes. I quit Twitter as well. Really, the only social networks I use today are a couple of old chatboards I've been on for years, LinkedIn rarely, and HN. One realizes after a while that most of these platforms, while seemingly benevolent and innocuous, actually thrive on turmoil and strife. You are not the customer; you are the product. Turn these things off and starve the beast. There's a place for social media and online discussion, but it has to be used judiciously. Don't let it take over your life.