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I fundamentally do not understand how we've gotten to a point where social media has become anything other than a completely optional indulgence that we engage

I fundamentally do not understand how we've gotten to a point where social media has become anything other than a completely optional indulgence that we engage with in our free time to gain not-critical ephemeral pleasure out of. This cultural addiction to social media has caused us to throw our beliefs and convictions right out the window. People on HN are talking about breaking up Facebook, passing new "social media use" laws, and every other imaginable way of ignoring the reality that none of this is important. You can log out of Facebook/Twitter/HN/Reddit/TikTok/Instagram and be completely rid of their influence on you. You could do that right now if you wanted. You could start an alternative social media company that solves these problems "the right way" and force these companies via competition to address these issues. There are a million ways any person in the world could completely solve this problem for themselves, but we'd rather discuss forcing a privately owned corporation into doing things that aren't profitable or wise for itself? I know the mob has decided it's entitled to the services offered by Facebook (e.g. WhatsApp), but that doesn't mean you actually are entitled to those services, regardless of how ubiquitous they are. Your complacency is not Facebook's fault or problem.

m_ke 5y ago
Because they worked really hard to become indispensable and get people "hooked". You could make the same arguments about cigarettes, oxycontin or gambling.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  I don't know if the analogy holds, considering most of the complaints around social media are that it's not accessible or open enough, and engagement with social media doesn't directly create value for Facebook. They derive that value from the associated ads, as opposed to the items you listed being a) costly for its users, and b) the actual product. Social media costs nothing.
  - m_ke 5y ago
    Nobody is complaining about it not being open enough. Time on site and amount of content you view is the driver of most of their revenue. Their business is fundamentally constrained by the number of users they have and the waking hours of the ones that are on the platform. To grow they can either recruit more users or build an engaging enough product to get their user to pick it instead of youtube/netflix/tiktok/work/family. As you mentioned, their customers are advertisers, "users" are there to serve them. EDIT: before you make the same argument as you made in your reply to another comment, I don't use any Facebook related products and deleted my facebook account over 10 years ago. I'd also suggest you look into some writing on the attention economy and whales in gaming. All ad supported media is in a race to the bottom to compete for your time. There's a reason why news look like reality shows now.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      A good article about how some groups are dealing with the fact that Facebook isn't open enough (for them): https://restofworld.org/2021/homegrown-facebook-for-the-far-right/ https://restofworld.org/2021/homegrown-facebook-for-the-far-... Everyone has their pet issue with Facebook. For some, it's lack of openness. For others, Facebook is too open. Everyone seems to have an opinion about which lines Facebook is and isn't allowed to cross, and for every group it's a slightly different set of lines, for a slightly different set of reasons. My point is that nobody is correct -- Facebook isn't the cultural monolith it is because of its actions, but because of the actions of our global culture. If you want to be angry at someone, look in the (societal) mirror.
      - m_ke 5y ago
        I don't care about them being too open or not. My issue is with them pushing sensational content because it's good for their bottom line. IMHO Alex Jones should have a place to post his male enhancement promotional videos, but if a platform is curating the content and decides to recommend it to everyone because it increases time on site and engagement then they should be responsible for that choice. I have a consumer app and met with some of the early investors in the top social media companies. They all only cared about DAU/MAU, time in app and user growth. All of them recommended books like Hooked (https://medium.com/startup-grind/nir-eyal-why-you-are-addicted-to-facebook-slack-pinterest-468a86eb562 https://medium.com/startup-grind/nir-eyal-why-you-are-addict...), to help us design something that's more addictive, or anything from BJ Fogg (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/10/05/best-ethernet-cables/?sh=5bedbdd13a51 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/10...), who had founders of Instagram and Snapchat as his students. A few of them even tried to get us to hire the new hot thing, Dopamine Labs (https://www.builtinla.com/2018/01/11/dopamine-labs-boost-user-engagement https://www.builtinla.com/2018/01/11/dopamine-labs-boost-use...), who promised to have "AI" to get users addicted with custom notifications. I used to think that behavioral psychology was bullshit (my GF studied psychology too), but being exposed to it in the industry there's no denying that some of it works. There's a reason why all headlines are clickbait now and all thumbnails on youtube and netflix are of weird facial expressions (https://www.avclub.com/why-does-everyone-on-youtube-make-the-same-dumb-face-1825179202 https://www.avclub.com/why-does-everyone-on-youtube-make-the...). It turns out even the color of your app icon can make an impact on how noticeable it is, leading to more downloads and usage (https://uplandsoftware.com/localytics/resources/blog/tips-for-designing-the-perfect-mobile-app-icon/ https://uplandsoftware.com/localytics/resources/blog/tips-fo...)
  - prancer_or_vix 5y ago
    > engagement with social media doesn't directly create value for Facebook. Yes it absolutely does. They get value by showing ads. If you're staring at facebook for 4 hours a day, that's a lot more ads than if you log in for 2 minutes and then log back out. The cigarette comparison is being used a lot, so it's more like if Philip Morris was paid for every drag someone takes. Getting folks hooked, smoking a pack a day or more, is going to generate more revenue than not getting folks hooked. If cigarettes weren't addictive, would P.M. make billions of dollars every year?
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      I think you missed the word "directly" in what you quoted from me. If Facebook directly made money off of engagement, people would pay for the Facebook service. The extra step of "sell ad space to advertisers" makes engagement an indirect money maker. Philip Morris doesn't make money every drag someone takes, that's exactly my point. It's different. Also, cigarettes are bad for you in any quantity. Social media is not obviously bad for you in any quantity, it's the knock on effects of being constantly aware of what your peer group is achieving and how you react to that which creates problems (among other indirect issues ultimately caused by your decisions related to social media, not the social media itself).
      - prancer_or_vix 5y ago
        > Philip Morris doesn't make money every drag someone takes, that's exactly my point. It's different. I see. You're right that it was an imperfect comparison. Philip Morris makes _more_ money by addicting its users. Facebook makes _more_ money by addicting its users. I think social media being bad for you is a nebulous concept. I would argue that, since I stopped using Facebook and Reddit (and only use HN on work-breaks), I've been able to maintain my environment and thereby my well-being on an order that I was not previously able to. Eating a peanut M&M isn't _bad_ for me, but if they were addicting, it would be a lot harder to consume a non-harmful number of them. Stab wounds aren't inherently lethal, but enough of them will be.
- themacguffinman 5y ago
  No, frankly, you couldn't. To start with, the scientific evidence for the medically addictive and harmful properties of nicotine, opiates, and gambling is on a different planet compared to the nebulous correlations and self-reported survey "X% of teens tell us they don't feel good about themselves" results that have been beaten to death about social media. And on the most fundamental level, drugs and gambling providers are not platforms for speech, they are not very comparable. Restrictions to drugs and gambling barely overlap with any free speech issues that social media censorship advocates seem so eager to step over. And no, I'm not just talking about the USA's First Amendment that affects the government, I'm talking about the cultural principle of free speech that we figured out was a good thing at some point in The Enlightenment.
  - m_ke 5y ago
    As I understand it the issue is with their recommender system and ad driven business model, not the alt right figures who want to cry about free speech and cancel culture because they can't be racist online while at the same time trying to whipe anything vaguely related to "critical race theory" from existence. The allegations are that Facebook knows that there are people addicted to their products and who have mental issues due to what the platform decides to show them but they refuse to do anything about it because it's good for their real customers. I wrote more about this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28763413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28763413
    - themacguffinman 5y ago
      So what? It's not Facebook's responsibility to do anything about that. There isn't strong evidence that Facebook is uniquely addictive and harmful to the extent that it requires state intervention. Beyond that, this is just you judging the choices of others. We don't ask profit-driven porn studios/websites to regulate what porn they produce/show because some people get "addicted" to porn in the sense that they won't live without it. We don't ask Pizza Hut to regulate who they sell and advertise pizza to because they know some people won't live without unhealthy pizza. We don't even ask alcohol stores to avoid selling to alcoholics. Any recreational or enjoyable activity will have people who won't live without it even if it makes them feel bad or has some other costs. In a free society, people still choose for themselves and are responsible for the results of their own choices. If you have strong evidence that Facebook is uniquely addictive and harmful, present it. Otherwise, stop trying to control my ability to engage in ad-driven social media. I don't care what you think is good or bad speech or whether companies profit from it.
sp332 5y ago
and be completely rid of their influence on you This isn't true at all. First, I'd lose my connection with a lot of people because Facebook keeps buying alternative messaging services and social group management products. Second, the people who are on Facebook can organize real-world events that affect me. Facebook might even actively recommend more people to join those events. Third, they lobby Congress and state/local governments to get regulations in their favor, tax breaks, housing projects approved, etc. (This ties back to point one because in some countries, WhatsApp is the only contact method for most people and businesses.) Fourth, news articles are now written for maximum engagement on Facebook. Even if you go to a news website directly, that content has been shaped by FB's algorithms.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Ah, exactly the trap I see so many people fall for! You would not lose your connection with a lot of people because of Facebook, you would lose your connection with a lot of people because of the combined decisions of you and those people! Facebook isn't doing anything here other than being convenient -- it's your friends and family making the choice (along with you) to refuse to communicate with people outside of the FB platform. And no, WhatsApp is not the "only contact method for most people and businesses", at least not due to any kind of technical or governmental restriction. It may be the only functional way to run a business or talk to people in some places, but Facebook didn't do that, those people and businesses did. They can choose to fix that within the course of a few minutes. They won't make that choice, but they absolutely could. And so what if Facebook recommends specific events to people? Those people still retain agency over their choices, Facebook isn't making anyone do anything, people still decide how to behave, which events to attend, and generally how to navigate their time. There's a great point in what you said, that I think is worth highlighting; at the root of the complaints about social media is this fundamental rejection of the idea that people are capable or willing to act on their own accord. It's this assumption that people wouldn't make these choices were it not for Facebook's influence, and I think that's completely wrong. You can rid yourself of Facebook's influence over your life in a matter of minutes. You choose not to, and that's on you, not Facebook. It's a social media company, nothing more.

m_ke 5y ago

Because they worked really hard to become indispensable and get people "hooked". You could make the same arguments about cigarettes, oxycontin or gambling.

TameAntelope 5y ago
I don't know if the analogy holds, considering most of the complaints around social media are that it's not accessible or open enough, and engagement with social media doesn't directly create value for Facebook. They derive that value from the associated ads, as opposed to the items you listed being a) costly for its users, and b) the actual product. Social media costs nothing.
- m_ke 5y ago
  Nobody is complaining about it not being open enough. Time on site and amount of content you view is the driver of most of their revenue. Their business is fundamentally constrained by the number of users they have and the waking hours of the ones that are on the platform. To grow they can either recruit more users or build an engaging enough product to get their user to pick it instead of youtube/netflix/tiktok/work/family. As you mentioned, their customers are advertisers, "users" are there to serve them. EDIT: before you make the same argument as you made in your reply to another comment, I don't use any Facebook related products and deleted my facebook account over 10 years ago. I'd also suggest you look into some writing on the attention economy and whales in gaming. All ad supported media is in a race to the bottom to compete for your time. There's a reason why news look like reality shows now.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    A good article about how some groups are dealing with the fact that Facebook isn't open enough (for them): https://restofworld.org/2021/homegrown-facebook-for-the-far-right/ https://restofworld.org/2021/homegrown-facebook-for-the-far-... Everyone has their pet issue with Facebook. For some, it's lack of openness. For others, Facebook is too open. Everyone seems to have an opinion about which lines Facebook is and isn't allowed to cross, and for every group it's a slightly different set of lines, for a slightly different set of reasons. My point is that nobody is correct -- Facebook isn't the cultural monolith it is because of its actions, but because of the actions of our global culture. If you want to be angry at someone, look in the (societal) mirror.
    - m_ke 5y ago
      I don't care about them being too open or not. My issue is with them pushing sensational content because it's good for their bottom line. IMHO Alex Jones should have a place to post his male enhancement promotional videos, but if a platform is curating the content and decides to recommend it to everyone because it increases time on site and engagement then they should be responsible for that choice. I have a consumer app and met with some of the early investors in the top social media companies. They all only cared about DAU/MAU, time in app and user growth. All of them recommended books like Hooked (https://medium.com/startup-grind/nir-eyal-why-you-are-addicted-to-facebook-slack-pinterest-468a86eb562 https://medium.com/startup-grind/nir-eyal-why-you-are-addict...), to help us design something that's more addictive, or anything from BJ Fogg (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/10/05/best-ethernet-cables/?sh=5bedbdd13a51 https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-personal-shopper/2021/10...), who had founders of Instagram and Snapchat as his students. A few of them even tried to get us to hire the new hot thing, Dopamine Labs (https://www.builtinla.com/2018/01/11/dopamine-labs-boost-user-engagement https://www.builtinla.com/2018/01/11/dopamine-labs-boost-use...), who promised to have "AI" to get users addicted with custom notifications. I used to think that behavioral psychology was bullshit (my GF studied psychology too), but being exposed to it in the industry there's no denying that some of it works. There's a reason why all headlines are clickbait now and all thumbnails on youtube and netflix are of weird facial expressions (https://www.avclub.com/why-does-everyone-on-youtube-make-the-same-dumb-face-1825179202 https://www.avclub.com/why-does-everyone-on-youtube-make-the...). It turns out even the color of your app icon can make an impact on how noticeable it is, leading to more downloads and usage (https://uplandsoftware.com/localytics/resources/blog/tips-for-designing-the-perfect-mobile-app-icon/ https://uplandsoftware.com/localytics/resources/blog/tips-fo...)
- prancer_or_vix 5y ago
  > engagement with social media doesn't directly create value for Facebook. Yes it absolutely does. They get value by showing ads. If you're staring at facebook for 4 hours a day, that's a lot more ads than if you log in for 2 minutes and then log back out. The cigarette comparison is being used a lot, so it's more like if Philip Morris was paid for every drag someone takes. Getting folks hooked, smoking a pack a day or more, is going to generate more revenue than not getting folks hooked. If cigarettes weren't addictive, would P.M. make billions of dollars every year?
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    I think you missed the word "directly" in what you quoted from me. If Facebook directly made money off of engagement, people would pay for the Facebook service. The extra step of "sell ad space to advertisers" makes engagement an indirect money maker. Philip Morris doesn't make money every drag someone takes, that's exactly my point. It's different. Also, cigarettes are bad for you in any quantity. Social media is not obviously bad for you in any quantity, it's the knock on effects of being constantly aware of what your peer group is achieving and how you react to that which creates problems (among other indirect issues ultimately caused by your decisions related to social media, not the social media itself).
    - prancer_or_vix 5y ago
      > Philip Morris doesn't make money every drag someone takes, that's exactly my point. It's different. I see. You're right that it was an imperfect comparison. Philip Morris makes _more_ money by addicting its users. Facebook makes _more_ money by addicting its users. I think social media being bad for you is a nebulous concept. I would argue that, since I stopped using Facebook and Reddit (and only use HN on work-breaks), I've been able to maintain my environment and thereby my well-being on an order that I was not previously able to. Eating a peanut M&M isn't _bad_ for me, but if they were addicting, it would be a lot harder to consume a non-harmful number of them. Stab wounds aren't inherently lethal, but enough of them will be.
themacguffinman 5y ago
No, frankly, you couldn't. To start with, the scientific evidence for the medically addictive and harmful properties of nicotine, opiates, and gambling is on a different planet compared to the nebulous correlations and self-reported survey "X% of teens tell us they don't feel good about themselves" results that have been beaten to death about social media. And on the most fundamental level, drugs and gambling providers are not platforms for speech, they are not very comparable. Restrictions to drugs and gambling barely overlap with any free speech issues that social media censorship advocates seem so eager to step over. And no, I'm not just talking about the USA's First Amendment that affects the government, I'm talking about the cultural principle of free speech that we figured out was a good thing at some point in The Enlightenment.
- m_ke 5y ago
  As I understand it the issue is with their recommender system and ad driven business model, not the alt right figures who want to cry about free speech and cancel culture because they can't be racist online while at the same time trying to whipe anything vaguely related to "critical race theory" from existence. The allegations are that Facebook knows that there are people addicted to their products and who have mental issues due to what the platform decides to show them but they refuse to do anything about it because it's good for their real customers. I wrote more about this here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28763413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28763413
  - themacguffinman 5y ago
    So what? It's not Facebook's responsibility to do anything about that. There isn't strong evidence that Facebook is uniquely addictive and harmful to the extent that it requires state intervention. Beyond that, this is just you judging the choices of others. We don't ask profit-driven porn studios/websites to regulate what porn they produce/show because some people get "addicted" to porn in the sense that they won't live without it. We don't ask Pizza Hut to regulate who they sell and advertise pizza to because they know some people won't live without unhealthy pizza. We don't even ask alcohol stores to avoid selling to alcoholics. Any recreational or enjoyable activity will have people who won't live without it even if it makes them feel bad or has some other costs. In a free society, people still choose for themselves and are responsible for the results of their own choices. If you have strong evidence that Facebook is uniquely addictive and harmful, present it. Otherwise, stop trying to control my ability to engage in ad-driven social media. I don't care what you think is good or bad speech or whether companies profit from it.

sp332 5y ago

and be completely rid of their influence on you This isn't true at all. First, I'd lose my connection with a lot of people because Facebook keeps buying alternative messaging services and social group management products. Second, the people who are on Facebook can organize real-world events that affect me. Facebook might even actively recommend more people to join those events. Third, they lobby Congress and state/local governments to get regulations in their favor, tax breaks, housing projects approved, etc. (This ties back to point one because in some countries, WhatsApp is the only contact method for most people and businesses.) Fourth, news articles are now written for maximum engagement on Facebook. Even if you go to a news website directly, that content has been shaped by FB's algorithms.

TameAntelope 5y ago
Ah, exactly the trap I see so many people fall for! You would not lose your connection with a lot of people because of Facebook, you would lose your connection with a lot of people because of the combined decisions of you and those people! Facebook isn't doing anything here other than being convenient -- it's your friends and family making the choice (along with you) to refuse to communicate with people outside of the FB platform. And no, WhatsApp is not the "only contact method for most people and businesses", at least not due to any kind of technical or governmental restriction. It may be the only functional way to run a business or talk to people in some places, but Facebook didn't do that, those people and businesses did. They can choose to fix that within the course of a few minutes. They won't make that choice, but they absolutely could. And so what if Facebook recommends specific events to people? Those people still retain agency over their choices, Facebook isn't making anyone do anything, people still decide how to behave, which events to attend, and generally how to navigate their time. There's a great point in what you said, that I think is worth highlighting; at the root of the complaints about social media is this fundamental rejection of the idea that people are capable or willing to act on their own accord. It's this assumption that people wouldn't make these choices were it not for Facebook's influence, and I think that's completely wrong. You can rid yourself of Facebook's influence over your life in a matter of minutes. You choose not to, and that's on you, not Facebook. It's a social media company, nothing more.