4 ms·

I'm going dark on social media this year, twitter especially. There are some amazing posts on twitter, but how much crap do you have to wade through to get to

I'm going dark on social media this year, twitter especially. There are some amazing posts on twitter, but how much crap do you have to wade through to get to them? Nuzzel was great at filtering down to the most relevant article, but twitter caught and killed that company, it's acqui-hired CEO promising to move some features into twitter but they never materialised. Twitter wants me to consider the uninformed and the informed alike, just so they can monetise my eyeballs, and in 2022 that's just a waste of our time. I think of my information diet as a classic signal to noise problem. My goal is to unearth thought provoking articles, twitter it might take an hour of slog to get one nugget, whereas hacker news offers about one per minute, and at the other end feral wastelands like the youtunbe comments section you would be lucky to get one gem a month. All of which is my round about way of saying that I love HN! The comments here are often more insightful than the article, and I feel that time spent here is actually time well spent. Happy new years to all the hackers, makers and grinders out there. Don't go changing!

marcus_holmes 5y ago
I dropped Twitter about 5 years ago, and didn't miss it. I dropped FB over a year ago, and that improved my mental health considerably. I'm finding that I'm part of a growing minority. A large proportion of my friends have also dropped all social media (usually the more interesting friends). I do wonder where this is going.
- ant6n 5y ago
  hn is social media.
  - Syonyk 5y ago
    It may fit some older definition of "social media," but the definition that it would fit as "social media" is so broad as to cover most of the internet anymore, including blogs with comment sections and forums. The line I draw, personally, to distinguish "harmful social media" from the rest of the web, is per-user algorithmic feeds optimized, by default, for "engagement." That's the mark of a surveillance capitalism extraction beast, and that sort of thing is well demonstrated to be absolute poison to humans. Hacker News (and to an extent reddit, though they're trying to get away from this as far as I can tell, and the algorithmic front page certainly doesn't qualify) have a single consistent "global state." If I'm logged in to HN, I see the same global state as other people do, and as a logged out user sees (subject to a few tweaks like seeing dead/flagged content, which I can't do logged out - but again, I believe everyone with that setting turned on sees the same thing). It's not trying to reorder the front page to engage me - it's simply a global state that can be modified by the bulk aggregate of user interaction, or moderator interaction, and that's reflected to all users. It also lacks the "bottomless bowl" endless scrolling style interface that encourages endless scrolling looking for something interesting. You can see other pages, but the standard view is top 30, and then you have to take a concrete action to see other stuff, not just scroll. It encourages a quick skim of the top stuff to see what's interesting, and then going to do something else because it's not going to change that rapidly. In terms of UI design, that's quite respectful to user attention, and is consistent with "HN tries to be useful, not to extract all the behavioral surplus it possibly can from as many users as possible." It is what it is, take it or leave it. The upvote/downvote system is prone to some harms, but HN tries to avoid most of that by keeping the vote views invisible to everyone else - you have to evaluate the comments by their text, not by what other people think of them (though the more insightful stuff tends to filter to the top, as it should). I would like an option to hide your own responses in the settings (similar to the "I need to work" delay option), but there's a small Chrome extension that does that - Hacker News Demetricifier or something along those lines. So while you can argue that it's "social media" by some definition, it's absolutely nowhere near the same design or motivations as the human-toxic systems we also call "social media." YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter being the worst. I understand TikTok is pretty bad as well, but I'm not in any way familiar with that system.
- PedroBatista 5y ago
  That might be also due to aging. “Social media” is a young person’s game. And some old people too but for different reasons. I wonder what’s the next big thing. And no, it will not be Zuck’s VR chat scam.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    > “Social media” is a young person’s game. Anything but, in my opinion, though different social media websites gather a different demographic age wise.
    - Mezzie 5y ago
      It's a game for people with time, which is quite different. Young people do have time, which is why you see them a lot on TikTok (or for Millennials, why you saw us waste our 20s on Instagram and FB). You know who else has time? Old people and retirees. Hence the FB political rage problem. Oh, and unemployed young NEETs, but Reddit is more their speed.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        > It's a game for people with time, which is quite different. I think you're locked into a certain worldview that does not necessarily line up with reality. I see people on social media that definitely do not fit your picture, and that's the vast majority of them. 'Young' people, lets say under 25 are a small fraction of what I come across on Twitter, and old people and retirees are an even smaller fraction. As for FB, I couldn't tell you, I have been there twice and decided that it wasn't for me. But Twitter is chock full of working professionals.
        Mezzie 5y ago
        Oh, Twitter definitely fits. There's a reason Twitter is dominated by professions like academics, journalists, and writers: They have a lot of time during their work day/ work time to spend on Twitter. They're allowed hours of access to computers + their work performance is judged on social metrics in addition to quantitative ones. Each social media's most active class is a group of people that has more free time than the average person (for whatever reason). Twitter's is just 'highly educated people with the free time and autonomy in their (likely WFH or unsupervised) jobs to fuck around online.' My friends who work at academic institutions and who do creative work for a living have way more free time than your average office, retail, or service worker. That's why Twitter is such a cesspit when it comes to anything around social class.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
- mattgreenrocks 5y ago
  I realized at some point that nothing really happens on social media. Everyone just talks at length about things that happen in other spheres. Social media is a pale shadow of reality.
BlueTemplar 5y ago
Hacker News is arguably social media too, though with less issues than more popular ones.
- canyonero 5y ago
  That's interesting. I've not really thought a lot about how Hacker News is social media platform. But it does fit the bill in terms of a virtual community for me. I think of traditional social media as focusing on individuals rather than topics (like Hacker News or Reddit). Once you start giving power to individuals rather than ideas or topics, the community becomes toxic and unpleasant for me. Individual focused communities, where likes and followers determine value create deep centralization and power for those that wield it and frequently devolve into paid advertisements and/or product placement schemes. Topic based communities are of course not immune to toxicity and paid advertisement (as seen on Reddit). Despite that vulnerability, I've found the best social communities to be based on ideas and topics rather than those celebrating individual ideas/content. I find the discourse and topics on this site to be excellent. It's absolutely my favorite site on the web. If Hacker News ever follows in the footsteps of Reddit by optimizing dark patterns for monetization, such as paid ads, I'll be deeply disappointed. For now, though -- thanks to all that contribute to making this site great!
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    I'm mostly annoyed by the fleeting nature of the discourse here (also on Reddit). It's always on the back of my mind that I'm wasting my time here. At least on reddit (which is generally even worse) you have notifications allowing you to carry on the conversation for a few weeks... If it wasn't for the quality of the community here I would have stopped returning to HN a long time ago. (What happened to my relation with Slashdot.)

marcus_holmes 5y ago

I dropped Twitter about 5 years ago, and didn't miss it. I dropped FB over a year ago, and that improved my mental health considerably. I'm finding that I'm part of a growing minority. A large proportion of my friends have also dropped all social media (usually the more interesting friends). I do wonder where this is going.

ant6n 5y ago
hn is social media.
- Syonyk 5y ago
  It may fit some older definition of "social media," but the definition that it would fit as "social media" is so broad as to cover most of the internet anymore, including blogs with comment sections and forums. The line I draw, personally, to distinguish "harmful social media" from the rest of the web, is per-user algorithmic feeds optimized, by default, for "engagement." That's the mark of a surveillance capitalism extraction beast, and that sort of thing is well demonstrated to be absolute poison to humans. Hacker News (and to an extent reddit, though they're trying to get away from this as far as I can tell, and the algorithmic front page certainly doesn't qualify) have a single consistent "global state." If I'm logged in to HN, I see the same global state as other people do, and as a logged out user sees (subject to a few tweaks like seeing dead/flagged content, which I can't do logged out - but again, I believe everyone with that setting turned on sees the same thing). It's not trying to reorder the front page to engage me - it's simply a global state that can be modified by the bulk aggregate of user interaction, or moderator interaction, and that's reflected to all users. It also lacks the "bottomless bowl" endless scrolling style interface that encourages endless scrolling looking for something interesting. You can see other pages, but the standard view is top 30, and then you have to take a concrete action to see other stuff, not just scroll. It encourages a quick skim of the top stuff to see what's interesting, and then going to do something else because it's not going to change that rapidly. In terms of UI design, that's quite respectful to user attention, and is consistent with "HN tries to be useful, not to extract all the behavioral surplus it possibly can from as many users as possible." It is what it is, take it or leave it. The upvote/downvote system is prone to some harms, but HN tries to avoid most of that by keeping the vote views invisible to everyone else - you have to evaluate the comments by their text, not by what other people think of them (though the more insightful stuff tends to filter to the top, as it should). I would like an option to hide your own responses in the settings (similar to the "I need to work" delay option), but there's a small Chrome extension that does that - Hacker News Demetricifier or something along those lines. So while you can argue that it's "social media" by some definition, it's absolutely nowhere near the same design or motivations as the human-toxic systems we also call "social media." YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter being the worst. I understand TikTok is pretty bad as well, but I'm not in any way familiar with that system.
PedroBatista 5y ago
That might be also due to aging. “Social media” is a young person’s game. And some old people too but for different reasons. I wonder what’s the next big thing. And no, it will not be Zuck’s VR chat scam.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > “Social media” is a young person’s game. Anything but, in my opinion, though different social media websites gather a different demographic age wise.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    It's a game for people with time, which is quite different. Young people do have time, which is why you see them a lot on TikTok (or for Millennials, why you saw us waste our 20s on Instagram and FB). You know who else has time? Old people and retirees. Hence the FB political rage problem. Oh, and unemployed young NEETs, but Reddit is more their speed.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      > It's a game for people with time, which is quite different. I think you're locked into a certain worldview that does not necessarily line up with reality. I see people on social media that definitely do not fit your picture, and that's the vast majority of them. 'Young' people, lets say under 25 are a small fraction of what I come across on Twitter, and old people and retirees are an even smaller fraction. As for FB, I couldn't tell you, I have been there twice and decided that it wasn't for me. But Twitter is chock full of working professionals.
      - Mezzie 5y ago
        Oh, Twitter definitely fits. There's a reason Twitter is dominated by professions like academics, journalists, and writers: They have a lot of time during their work day/ work time to spend on Twitter. They're allowed hours of access to computers + their work performance is judged on social metrics in addition to quantitative ones. Each social media's most active class is a group of people that has more free time than the average person (for whatever reason). Twitter's is just 'highly educated people with the free time and autonomy in their (likely WFH or unsupervised) jobs to fuck around online.' My friends who work at academic institutions and who do creative work for a living have way more free time than your average office, retail, or service worker. That's why Twitter is such a cesspit when it comes to anything around social class.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
mattgreenrocks 5y ago
I realized at some point that nothing really happens on social media. Everyone just talks at length about things that happen in other spheres. Social media is a pale shadow of reality.

BlueTemplar 5y ago

Hacker News is arguably social media too, though with less issues than more popular ones.

canyonero 5y ago
That's interesting. I've not really thought a lot about how Hacker News is social media platform. But it does fit the bill in terms of a virtual community for me. I think of traditional social media as focusing on individuals rather than topics (like Hacker News or Reddit). Once you start giving power to individuals rather than ideas or topics, the community becomes toxic and unpleasant for me. Individual focused communities, where likes and followers determine value create deep centralization and power for those that wield it and frequently devolve into paid advertisements and/or product placement schemes. Topic based communities are of course not immune to toxicity and paid advertisement (as seen on Reddit). Despite that vulnerability, I've found the best social communities to be based on ideas and topics rather than those celebrating individual ideas/content. I find the discourse and topics on this site to be excellent. It's absolutely my favorite site on the web. If Hacker News ever follows in the footsteps of Reddit by optimizing dark patterns for monetization, such as paid ads, I'll be deeply disappointed. For now, though -- thanks to all that contribute to making this site great!
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  I'm mostly annoyed by the fleeting nature of the discourse here (also on Reddit). It's always on the back of my mind that I'm wasting my time here. At least on reddit (which is generally even worse) you have notifications allowing you to carry on the conversation for a few weeks... If it wasn't for the quality of the community here I would have stopped returning to HN a long time ago. (What happened to my relation with Slashdot.)