7 ms·

I don't want to quit social media What I want is for interactions with other people in online social spaces to be less destructive.

trutannus 5y ago
"I don't want to stop using drugs, I just want drugs that are not going to harm me while I use them" Unfortunately, social media by its nature is going to be harmful. It was never designed to consider the world we live in now.
- colecut 5y ago
  What you're looking for are the illegal drugs
- scarecrowbob 5y ago
  What exactly is wrong with that? We decided we wanted to derive cars, but without the harmful effects of being in crashes, so we decided to create safer vehicles. I like some drugs, and a lot of them are okay in some situations with some boundaries... even if a lot of the users are using them for unhealthy reasons in situations that make the drugs problematic. I like social media-- I'm literally using it right now to communicate with you. But I do that because I value your thought (even though I disagree with it) and I am able to interact with you in a space that both moderates my behavior by giving up/down vote feedback and which doesn't have a lot of tolerance for poor discourse habits. If you apply those same rubrics to other social media and don't tolerate them when it violates those boundaries, I believe it's possible to use them in healthy ways.
  - trutannus 5y ago
    Nothing is wrong with wanting that. I just don't think it is realistic. I've purged all social media other than HN at this point.
  - Minor49er 5y ago
    > I like social media-- I'm literally using it right now to communicate with you If you're extending the definition of social media to include sites like Hacker News, you may as well categorize the entire Internet as social media
    - scarecrowbob 5y ago
      I dunno... I feel that the sine qua non of "social media" is user generated content conducted between specific users, tied to specific accounts. Not even wikis meet that definition, and certainly not most of the author-generated content-based site like blogs or market sites such as amazon, or news sites where the discussion isn't the putative content.
      - Minor49er 5y ago
        But don't wikis commonly have a "Talk" section or similar? The pages that are posted and edited would surely fall under author-generated content.
        scarecrowbob 5y ago
        I believe a lot of the internet has social aspects. Is it possible that the "social" aspects of this media operate on a sliding scale? I understand the point that literally any website could be thought of as "user generated"... I've personally made quite a few websites. But the level of interaction and the modalities of how I and a lot of folks use things isn't as interactive as, say, twitter. So, perhaps for some user populations a Wiki is a social experience, especially for the folks who edit them. Though from my perspective, it feels entirely possible to use it without engaging in that social aspect. I don't feel the same about Hackernews and/or reddit in general.
        Minor49er 5y ago
        The social aspects absolutely work on a sliding scale. I completely agree. But I don't think that the amount or variety of social engagement is what really contributes to something being classified as "social media".
- silicon2401 5y ago
  > Unfortunately, social media by its nature is going to be harmful. I disagree. Social media has never harmed me, I just realized it wasn't worth my time. I've never had issues with self-esteem, confidence, popularity, whatever. I used social media as a photo diary for myself, shared pictures and videos with friends, kept up with what my friends are doing. To this day I check in on social media once in a while just because it's more effective than texting 100+ people to see what they're up to. That being said, I don't think social media is worth more of my time than a few minutes every few weeks or months
  - cryptoz 5y ago
    > Social media has never harmed me How do you know that? This isn't something you can typically know for your self with any degree of confidence. > To this day I check in on social media once in a while You've got a lot of recent comments on HN for this to be true. I think you use social media a lot more than you think you do, and it could be impacting you in ways that you don't notice.
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      > You've got a lot of recent comments on HN for this to be true. I think you use social media a lot more than you think you do, and it could be impacting you in ways that you don't notice. Ah so you're that kind of user. Semantics. I don't consider HN social media, when I say social media I mean instagram, facebook, etc. I consider HN a forum like reddit or other places. My usage of forums is a way to kill time when I'm at work. > How do you know that? This isn't something you can typically know for your self with any degree of confidence. Speak for yourself. Maybe you can't typically know this for yourself, but I can. And more importantly, if you're not coming into this exchange in good faith and willing to trust my claims, then any chance of reasonable conversation is gone. I'll be wrapping up my end of our conversation here, thanks.
    - bserge 5y ago
      And why should you or I judge and decide on that? If their opinion is that it doesn't impact them, that's good enough.
- shuntress 5y ago
  Do you drink coffee?
  - trutannus 5y ago
    Yep, and I can't wake up with out it, nor can I stop using it despite multiple attempts. Dependence is a harm of it's own.
    - xphx 5y ago
      There is a not so subtle implication of your comments being voted down that those claiming HN is not an instance of social media would be well-advised to reflect on.
  - drdeadringer 5y ago
    Do you eat food? Do you breathe air? Somehow coffee is completely different. Somehow coffee is on the same tier as tobacco or cocaine. It's not. Relax. Enjoy a cocoa.
    - shuntress 5y ago
      That is exactly my point. "I don't want to stop eating food, I just want food that is not going to harm me while I eat it" "I don't want to stop breathing air, I just want air that is not going to harm me while I breath it" I don't want to cease all contact with other people. I want to interact socially in non-harmful ways.
    - fortuna86 5y ago
      Food and air sustain your life, they don't create chemical dependencies.
mlang23 5y ago
Haha.... Sounds like you want World Peace...
- qaq 5y ago
  you misspelled WordPress :)
LightG 5y ago
"You may say I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will live as one"
photochemsyn 5y ago
Probably a walled city is the only way to achieve that. Such a setup is like a closed mailing list in which all participants have to pass an 'entrance exam' of some kind. This kind of setup imposes a cost for rude, nasty, aggressive and destructive behavior - since you can simply be excluded from the group in that case. This is how most of the world works on a day to day basis; you don't let random people into a corporate strategy meeting or an academic council meeting. You only admit people who agree to abide by civil society rules. Something like that can be incredibly useful, but it requires a lot of up-front organizing effort. Also, malicious types have been known to sneak into say, a closed mailing list, and leak the internal discussions to Twitter or whatever, so...
- gilbetron 5y ago
  Facebook already has all that with groups. I think the issue is something more fundamental with humans.
  - elijaht 5y ago
    More optimistically- Facebook groups are great. They are the only reason I still look at Facebook and truly bring value to me
    - enos_feedler 5y ago
      Yes and Facebook Marketplace is great for me selling things. And I know for others its actually Facebook dating (surprisingly). Facebook is here to stay by filling out all these "jobs to be done" in our lives. Every one of these jobs is backed by a moat that is very hard to compete with, and it's all the same: reach and scale.
aaron-santos 5y ago
I'm less and less confident that is possible, not necessarily because personal interactions and online spaces themselves form an inherent contradiction (though they might). But because the incentive, and ability to commodify, and capitalize these interactions are necessary and sufficient conditions for the creation of these destructive social systems. We're pretty bad at social systems level thinking, but this precise lack of skill is an opportunity for exploitation. In the same way that hobbyist day traders over-estimate their ability to turn a profit by not understanding the skill level of who they are losing against, social media participants over-estimate their ability to check out because they don't understand the skill level of players who want them to engage. This disparity in the games being played isn't spelled out and why would it be? At least there is hope in that social media systems while ubiquitous, are not yet hegemonic. As long as that holds, there is still hope.
999900000999 5y ago
Negative content flows upwards, the more negative or edgy you are the more upvotes you get. Users crave this fake validation to make up for other things that are lacking. Think about it this way, if you have a good job, fantastic relationships, and other great things going on are you really going to be arguing on Instagram with strangers ?
- laurent92 5y ago
  I would say that the top driver to toxic online communication is wanting to convince others.
laurent92 5y ago
> for interactions with other people in online spaces to be less destructive I have the exact opposite opinion, let’s confront them: real-life social spaces are toxic to me, and I seek refuge in computers, where you experience me. If we were a little less toxic to each others, maybe online wouldn’t be a high concentration of people retired from real life? - Real life has a dump of major problems that “social people” constantly refuse to fix. - And each time we bring them up, it’s the bane of your life, we get all the names, downvotes, exaggerations, parody, “we’re in $CURRENT_YEAR”, “Have you tried to man up?”, “You’re frustrated”, etc. - And the problem continues. Online, are you are just meeting with the people that are invisible to you in real life. The status of the scientific understanding today of gender imbalance in programming (excluding improper studies with doubtful scientific process) is that little boys end up in programming because it’s the only thing in the family which behaves expectedly, doesn’t sulk, calls mum, gets angry for expressing things as they are, retributes effort, etc. Making a little more room for boys in real life would also correct gender imbalance in IT. It may even make that fewer people in general go to IT and science in general, because they would be more satisfied with real-life interactions. Science would go slower, but people would be happier. It’s a tough path, but really one that upgrades the lives of millions. Do you want to take it?

trutannus 5y ago

"I don't want to stop using drugs, I just want drugs that are not going to harm me while I use them" Unfortunately, social media by its nature is going to be harmful. It was never designed to consider the world we live in now.

colecut 5y ago
What you're looking for are the illegal drugs
scarecrowbob 5y ago
What exactly is wrong with that? We decided we wanted to derive cars, but without the harmful effects of being in crashes, so we decided to create safer vehicles. I like some drugs, and a lot of them are okay in some situations with some boundaries... even if a lot of the users are using them for unhealthy reasons in situations that make the drugs problematic. I like social media-- I'm literally using it right now to communicate with you. But I do that because I value your thought (even though I disagree with it) and I am able to interact with you in a space that both moderates my behavior by giving up/down vote feedback and which doesn't have a lot of tolerance for poor discourse habits. If you apply those same rubrics to other social media and don't tolerate them when it violates those boundaries, I believe it's possible to use them in healthy ways.
- trutannus 5y ago
  Nothing is wrong with wanting that. I just don't think it is realistic. I've purged all social media other than HN at this point.
- Minor49er 5y ago
  > I like social media-- I'm literally using it right now to communicate with you If you're extending the definition of social media to include sites like Hacker News, you may as well categorize the entire Internet as social media
  - scarecrowbob 5y ago
    I dunno... I feel that the sine qua non of "social media" is user generated content conducted between specific users, tied to specific accounts. Not even wikis meet that definition, and certainly not most of the author-generated content-based site like blogs or market sites such as amazon, or news sites where the discussion isn't the putative content.
    - Minor49er 5y ago
      But don't wikis commonly have a "Talk" section or similar? The pages that are posted and edited would surely fall under author-generated content.
      - scarecrowbob 5y ago
        I believe a lot of the internet has social aspects. Is it possible that the "social" aspects of this media operate on a sliding scale? I understand the point that literally any website could be thought of as "user generated"... I've personally made quite a few websites. But the level of interaction and the modalities of how I and a lot of folks use things isn't as interactive as, say, twitter. So, perhaps for some user populations a Wiki is a social experience, especially for the folks who edit them. Though from my perspective, it feels entirely possible to use it without engaging in that social aspect. I don't feel the same about Hackernews and/or reddit in general.
        Minor49er 5y ago
        The social aspects absolutely work on a sliding scale. I completely agree. But I don't think that the amount or variety of social engagement is what really contributes to something being classified as "social media".
silicon2401 5y ago
> Unfortunately, social media by its nature is going to be harmful. I disagree. Social media has never harmed me, I just realized it wasn't worth my time. I've never had issues with self-esteem, confidence, popularity, whatever. I used social media as a photo diary for myself, shared pictures and videos with friends, kept up with what my friends are doing. To this day I check in on social media once in a while just because it's more effective than texting 100+ people to see what they're up to. That being said, I don't think social media is worth more of my time than a few minutes every few weeks or months
- cryptoz 5y ago
  > Social media has never harmed me How do you know that? This isn't something you can typically know for your self with any degree of confidence. > To this day I check in on social media once in a while You've got a lot of recent comments on HN for this to be true. I think you use social media a lot more than you think you do, and it could be impacting you in ways that you don't notice.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    > You've got a lot of recent comments on HN for this to be true. I think you use social media a lot more than you think you do, and it could be impacting you in ways that you don't notice. Ah so you're that kind of user. Semantics. I don't consider HN social media, when I say social media I mean instagram, facebook, etc. I consider HN a forum like reddit or other places. My usage of forums is a way to kill time when I'm at work. > How do you know that? This isn't something you can typically know for your self with any degree of confidence. Speak for yourself. Maybe you can't typically know this for yourself, but I can. And more importantly, if you're not coming into this exchange in good faith and willing to trust my claims, then any chance of reasonable conversation is gone. I'll be wrapping up my end of our conversation here, thanks.
  - bserge 5y ago
    And why should you or I judge and decide on that? If their opinion is that it doesn't impact them, that's good enough.
shuntress 5y ago
Do you drink coffee?
- trutannus 5y ago
  Yep, and I can't wake up with out it, nor can I stop using it despite multiple attempts. Dependence is a harm of it's own.
  - xphx 5y ago
    There is a not so subtle implication of your comments being voted down that those claiming HN is not an instance of social media would be well-advised to reflect on.
- drdeadringer 5y ago
  Do you eat food? Do you breathe air? Somehow coffee is completely different. Somehow coffee is on the same tier as tobacco or cocaine. It's not. Relax. Enjoy a cocoa.
  - shuntress 5y ago
    That is exactly my point. "I don't want to stop eating food, I just want food that is not going to harm me while I eat it" "I don't want to stop breathing air, I just want air that is not going to harm me while I breath it" I don't want to cease all contact with other people. I want to interact socially in non-harmful ways.
  - fortuna86 5y ago
    Food and air sustain your life, they don't create chemical dependencies.

mlang23 5y ago

Haha.... Sounds like you want World Peace...

qaq 5y ago
you misspelled WordPress :)

LightG 5y ago

"You may say I'm a dreamer, But I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, And the world will live as one"

photochemsyn 5y ago

Probably a walled city is the only way to achieve that. Such a setup is like a closed mailing list in which all participants have to pass an 'entrance exam' of some kind. This kind of setup imposes a cost for rude, nasty, aggressive and destructive behavior - since you can simply be excluded from the group in that case. This is how most of the world works on a day to day basis; you don't let random people into a corporate strategy meeting or an academic council meeting. You only admit people who agree to abide by civil society rules. Something like that can be incredibly useful, but it requires a lot of up-front organizing effort. Also, malicious types have been known to sneak into say, a closed mailing list, and leak the internal discussions to Twitter or whatever, so...

gilbetron 5y ago
Facebook already has all that with groups. I think the issue is something more fundamental with humans.
- elijaht 5y ago
  More optimistically- Facebook groups are great. They are the only reason I still look at Facebook and truly bring value to me
  - enos_feedler 5y ago
    Yes and Facebook Marketplace is great for me selling things. And I know for others its actually Facebook dating (surprisingly). Facebook is here to stay by filling out all these "jobs to be done" in our lives. Every one of these jobs is backed by a moat that is very hard to compete with, and it's all the same: reach and scale.

aaron-santos 5y ago

I'm less and less confident that is possible, not necessarily because personal interactions and online spaces themselves form an inherent contradiction (though they might). But because the incentive, and ability to commodify, and capitalize these interactions are necessary and sufficient conditions for the creation of these destructive social systems. We're pretty bad at social systems level thinking, but this precise lack of skill is an opportunity for exploitation. In the same way that hobbyist day traders over-estimate their ability to turn a profit by not understanding the skill level of who they are losing against, social media participants over-estimate their ability to check out because they don't understand the skill level of players who want them to engage. This disparity in the games being played isn't spelled out and why would it be? At least there is hope in that social media systems while ubiquitous, are not yet hegemonic. As long as that holds, there is still hope.

999900000999 5y ago

Negative content flows upwards, the more negative or edgy you are the more upvotes you get. Users crave this fake validation to make up for other things that are lacking. Think about it this way, if you have a good job, fantastic relationships, and other great things going on are you really going to be arguing on Instagram with strangers ?

laurent92 5y ago
I would say that the top driver to toxic online communication is wanting to convince others.

laurent92 5y ago

> for interactions with other people in online spaces to be less destructive I have the exact opposite opinion, let’s confront them: real-life social spaces are toxic to me, and I seek refuge in computers, where you experience me. If we were a little less toxic to each others, maybe online wouldn’t be a high concentration of people retired from real life? - Real life has a dump of major problems that “social people” constantly refuse to fix. - And each time we bring them up, it’s the bane of your life, we get all the names, downvotes, exaggerations, parody, “we’re in $CURRENT_YEAR”, “Have you tried to man up?”, “You’re frustrated”, etc. - And the problem continues. Online, are you are just meeting with the people that are invisible to you in real life. The status of the scientific understanding today of gender imbalance in programming (excluding improper studies with doubtful scientific process) is that little boys end up in programming because it’s the only thing in the family which behaves expectedly, doesn’t sulk, calls mum, gets angry for expressing things as they are, retributes effort, etc. Making a little more room for boys in real life would also correct gender imbalance in IT. It may even make that fewer people in general go to IT and science in general, because they would be more satisfied with real-life interactions. Science would go slower, but people would be happier. It’s a tough path, but really one that upgrades the lives of millions. Do you want to take it?