5 ms·

There are plenty of legitimate concerns about the effect of social media on individuals and societies, but as both a smoker and a former FB employee equating th

There are plenty of legitimate concerns about the effect of social media on individuals and societies, but as both a smoker and a former FB employee equating them is a stretch. And IMHO the group most vulnerable to any negative effects of social media are mostly on TikTok these days. Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”?

kristiandupont 5y ago
I haven't used TikTok, but I wonder if it is flooded with filter-bubble fueled politics? That my primary concern with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (and others), and I honestly think the world would be a better place if that could be turned off.
- benreesman 5y ago
  So during my time at FB I spent most of it on ML infra for ads and IG. But I did spend 2016 in a content moderation group. And 2016 was both the inflection point of everyday people saying “FB is fucking with elections” and believe me or not, a totally clean election at least as concerns the outcome (I voted for Clinton FWIW). Most people’s objections to the effect of social media on politics, and I used to do this for a living, seem to boil down to: “It’s the platform’s responsibility to put downward pressure on stuff I disagree with”. I don’t mean to be flip, but one person’s “misinformation” is another person’s “free speech”.
  - jwally 5y ago
    That's fascinating. Matt Taibbi recently did an article - a takeaway from which was that Facebook is currently doing exactly that - burying content that is true but lends credence to crazy. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-british-medical-journal-story https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-british-medical-journal-st...
- nisegami 5y ago
  TikTok turns it up to 11 in my experience. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube all started off with a mechanism where you choose whose content to view through following/subscribing/friending. Over time, this was de-emphasized in favor of algorithmic recommendations, but it's still a strong signal. On the other hand, following on TikTok feels like an afterthought - it really aggressively recommends content based on the slightest interest. TikTok's algorithm is strikingly good at identifying what you like and keeping you there. YouTube also tries this, but it seems to be less effective at it and just degrade to showing you videos for the extremes of your political leaning rather than say, how effectively TikTok figured out what I find physically attractive.
- dahdum 5y ago
  TikTok highly optimizes to the individual, but from what I can tell there's little toxic political material, partially due to the threat of censorship or reduced reach. Filter bubbles are a thing, but nothing like the rabbit hole of YouTube, and are more benign imho. It's mostly short form content up to 3 minutes long. It took a lot of effort get my Facebook/Instgram feed to be a mostly positive experience, but TikTok's algorithm did it immediately. For me it brings back the fun of the early internet.
- sethammons 5y ago
  TikTok is pretty well targeted. You just choose what to engage with. I skip funny, animals, and politics. I watch woodworking, cooking, and self-reliance clips. My daughter watches world class medical experts as they explain cool things. The "crack" element of it is you can feel productive consuming it, after all, you are kinda learning. My hack is I want to start taking notes during some TikToks and then not return until I perform the recipe, craft, life hack, etc.
soundnote 5y ago
> There are plenty of legitimate concerns about the effect of social media on individuals and societies, but as both a smoker and a former FB employee equating them is a stretch. True. Tobacco breaks encourage us to connect with our fellow human beings, social media mostly makes us hate each other more ;P
- eproxus 5y ago
  There was some research to the opposite regarding smoking recently: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jan/smokers-become-lonelier-non-smokers-they-get-older https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jan/smokers-become-lonelier-...
danielrpa 5y ago
> but as both a smoker and a former FB employee equating them is a stretch. We shouldn't equate them. Facebook can scale out its ability to do harm in ways that Big Tobacco couldn't even dream of.
- benreesman 5y ago
  I personally think that Ma Bell-era regulatory infrastructure isn’t equipped to deal with modern tech giants, but I don’t think that hyperbole is assertions shorn of an argument for a better idea add much to the discussion.
keymone 5y ago
> Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”? Why are you so sure about that? Both are harmful, Facebook is bigger.
- benreesman 5y ago
  Well my point is that AFAIK 13-year olds are more impressionable than adults. Right?
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    I'm not convinced. In fact I believe young people today are much more skeptical and competent about media use than the older generations. My anecdotal data points are mainly the fact that almost all conspiracy believers I know are >40 years.
  - keymone 5y ago
    Facebook through influence on audience has power to wreck political and humanitarian situation in any country in the world right now. TikTok potentially has that power 5-10 years from now. Whatever solution you find to Facebook will also mostly apply to TikTok.
ksec 5y ago
>Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”? Because defending Facebook ( whether part of it or as a whole ), will be an extremely unpopular opinion on HN. 1. No one knows ByteDance, only TikTok. 2. No one on HN uses TikTok much. The demographics / target audience are child and young adult. Like SnapChat. So it is not on their Radar. 3. HN for the past 10+ years have been hating Facebook, it is borderline a cult. Trump era has turned this up to eleven. 4. They all think Facebook is the root cause of misinformation and spread. It is why the community or country is divided. It needs to be destroyed. Which is a strange take because I think twitter is far worse. 5. So Anything but Facebook, if TikTok will destroy Facebook, they will gladly side with TikTok, even though ByteDance the company is Chinese.
- benreesman 5y ago
  I agree with some of your points but the misinformation one is tricky. Absent Menlo Park getting hit by a meteor, trying to increase FB’s obligation around controlling misinformation is a net increase in like Zuck’s personal editorial power right?
  - ksec 5y ago
    Oh I edited the post to clarify the misinformation one wasn't my take. But the current mainstream / majority view on HN. Which has only seen some pushback in very recent months. Having lived through an era in Hong Kong where only one voice and one view is allowed. I tend to have a contrarian take than most on HN.
    - benreesman 5y ago
      I think you and I probably see eye-to-eye on some stuff. Once the censorship cat is out of the bag IMHO there a lot more ways for that to go wrong than to go well.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  Most of this is reasonable, but #5 is worrisome. Why hate everything that is Chinese?
windexh8er 5y ago
> There are plenty of legitimate concerns about the effect of social media on individuals and societies, but as both a smoker and a former FB employee equating them is a stretch. Your statement seems to imply that cigarettes are known to cause physical bodily harm and that Facebook does not. This also sounds eerily like the statement Andrew Bosworth (FB exec) made: "While Facebook may not be nicotine I think it is probably like sugar. Sugar is delicious and for most of us there is a special place for it in our lives. But like all things it benefits from moderation." But Facebook does not just impact the user, unlike sugar. Your actions can directly impact me. So it is more like cigarettes in that regard. The privacy implications aside, all social media is going to have negative mental health outcomes in the long run as all platform's best case scenario is for users to view more and they do that by ignoring what may be good for it's users mental health. If Mark Zuckerberg saw what Facebook is today and what fuels it back in the early days I'd suspect he'd be disgusted by it and the direction it's trying to drag people into (Metaverse). It's worse than big tobacco because people don't need to go out and buy or pay for social media in the traditional sense. They just need to pick up something they likely already own and pay with time. They don't know the motive is ad revenue, not their own well being. Social media are marketing sales companies. But they claim falsehoods such as entertainment or community. They don't highlight how those things get them paid on earnings calls. They talk about their ad revenue. Social media should require a label every time a user opens the app. A warning, no different than cigarettes. Showcasing the negative mental state its users can have, showcasing the negative an echo chamber can create and showcasing how people can become so sick they make life altering choices due to consuming social media.
- benreesman 5y ago
  You make some good points but I’ll offer a little food for thought and a little first-hand anecdote. I tend to agree that there’s research supporting the thesis that people’s inclination to post only the highlights of their lives on social media creates an unrealistic and frankly depressing comparison for the median viewer of it. Most of us didn’t just graduate from a prestigious university or get married or welcome a child into the world and it’s easy to be like: “well my life sucks”. But the nicotine/sugar debate is kinda missing that we sell alcohol at 7/11 which is devastating in excess to my health, my loved one’s sanity, and fatal to the guy I run over driving. We tried prohibiting that and it ended very badly. Is too much Internet better or worse than too much whiskey? Debatable I guess, but, free country? I’ve known Andrew Bozworth for years and we have disagreed plenty of times. But he’s in the top like 5% of people I know on integrity in all the ways we can sort of measure that as individuals: tells people the truth, keeps promises, admits mistakes, treats his wife and kid well, all that. And whether you agree with his life’s work or not: he’s not in it for the money, I don’t know his finances but he joined early, I’m pretty sure he could buy like a pro sports team if he wanted. He works hard because he wants to achieve his goal. I’m not sure I agree with his goal, but he isn’t faking it.
HWR_14 5y ago
> Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”? For the same reason that anti-tobacco advocates focus on Phillip Morris and not pipe smokers- its the more well known incarnation of the product. And, frankly, I don't think a lot of people realize that TikTok is a social network. I think a lot of people see a few videos out of context and think it's like YouTube (or at least the older, less big production of Youtube from back in the day)
spacexsucks 5y ago
Because not every site and restaurant info page is begind a walled garden tiktok video that profiles me when i land on it. Ditto for forums. Facebook is cancer on society and zuck and sheryl sandberg are the pathogenic leeches
pseudalopex 5y ago
> Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”? "As a genxer with an addictive streak, TikTok is undoubtedly as addictive as crack."[1] "Tiktok is also addictive in a way that no competing app has managed to capture."[2] "Tiktok is absolutely more addictive than Facebook."[3] "I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media."[4] The article wasn't about ByteDance's revenue. And ByteDance didn't try to organize public opinion against informed consent to my knowledge. Facebook campaigned for attention and got it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137353 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28134963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28134963 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30188320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30188320 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28133824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28133824
- benreesman 5y ago
  I wasn’t a top-level poster. I was replying to some who said Facebook is worse than smoking. And maybe they’re right: so I’ll keep an open mind if someone posts some figures. I’ve submitted some anecdotes to the thread but I think I clearly labeled them as such.
  - pseudalopex 5y ago
    They didn't say Facebook is worse than smoking. They said something about Facebook in response to an article about Facebook. You replied with whataboutism. I showed people criticize ByteDance when relevant. Even call them crack sellers.
amelius 5y ago
The greatest concern is not addiction, but the potential threat of this propaganda machine to democracy and world order stability.
- scarface74 5y ago
  So if Facebook disappeared tomorrow do you think the same people would say, “oh well, I might as well get my medical information from the New England Journal of Medicine”?
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Less people will be inclined to fall for extremism if it wasn't pushed in their face for the sake of generating engagement.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      When I’m referring ti “conservatives” only reading right wing media that agrees with the craziness, I’m not referring to “Romney/Bush conservatives”, I’m almost one myself. I am referring to populist/religious right conservatives. Before someone posts a “whataboutism”, I don’t know what happens on the extreme nonsensical left. I mostly read tech news, WSJ and “The Hill”. This isn’t meant to beat up on conservatives. But let’s see what’s happen in 2020. Fox News was the go to place for conservatives. Then they fairly called election results and their news articles called the accusations of the election being stolen “unfounded” and then people started leaving Fox News for News Max. RedState purged all of their never Trump journalists who clearly had their conservative bona fides because they were losing readers. Anytime that RedState does still occasionally admit the election wasn’t stolen, people threaten to cancel their subscriptions. Trump of course is the poster boy for the extremists. But when he started touting the benefits of the Covid vaccine and boosters, he is boo’d and cancelled by the extreme right and they say he is kissing up to the establishment. The Wall Street Journal has always been center right. But because it didn’t tote the “populist agenda” or the “election was stolen”, the conservatives are abandoning it too.
boh 5y ago
> equating them is a stretch. Agreed, far less people have committed suicide or foment genocide from smoking.
- benreesman 5y ago
  Fewer people have died from smoking than social media? That sounds counter-intuitive but if I’m eyeballing that wrong I’d be in your debt if you’d point me at some figures. No sarcasm, I legitimately want to know.
  - boh 5y ago
    You are "eyeballing" a self produced hypothesis. You'll probably have better luck explaining it to yourself then anyone else can.

kristiandupont 5y ago

I haven't used TikTok, but I wonder if it is flooded with filter-bubble fueled politics? That my primary concern with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube (and others), and I honestly think the world would be a better place if that could be turned off.

benreesman 5y ago
So during my time at FB I spent most of it on ML infra for ads and IG. But I did spend 2016 in a content moderation group. And 2016 was both the inflection point of everyday people saying “FB is fucking with elections” and believe me or not, a totally clean election at least as concerns the outcome (I voted for Clinton FWIW). Most people’s objections to the effect of social media on politics, and I used to do this for a living, seem to boil down to: “It’s the platform’s responsibility to put downward pressure on stuff I disagree with”. I don’t mean to be flip, but one person’s “misinformation” is another person’s “free speech”.
- jwally 5y ago
  That's fascinating. Matt Taibbi recently did an article - a takeaway from which was that Facebook is currently doing exactly that - burying content that is true but lends credence to crazy. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-british-medical-journal-story https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-british-medical-journal-st...
nisegami 5y ago
TikTok turns it up to 11 in my experience. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube all started off with a mechanism where you choose whose content to view through following/subscribing/friending. Over time, this was de-emphasized in favor of algorithmic recommendations, but it's still a strong signal. On the other hand, following on TikTok feels like an afterthought - it really aggressively recommends content based on the slightest interest. TikTok's algorithm is strikingly good at identifying what you like and keeping you there. YouTube also tries this, but it seems to be less effective at it and just degrade to showing you videos for the extremes of your political leaning rather than say, how effectively TikTok figured out what I find physically attractive.
dahdum 5y ago
TikTok highly optimizes to the individual, but from what I can tell there's little toxic political material, partially due to the threat of censorship or reduced reach. Filter bubbles are a thing, but nothing like the rabbit hole of YouTube, and are more benign imho. It's mostly short form content up to 3 minutes long. It took a lot of effort get my Facebook/Instgram feed to be a mostly positive experience, but TikTok's algorithm did it immediately. For me it brings back the fun of the early internet.
sethammons 5y ago
TikTok is pretty well targeted. You just choose what to engage with. I skip funny, animals, and politics. I watch woodworking, cooking, and self-reliance clips. My daughter watches world class medical experts as they explain cool things. The "crack" element of it is you can feel productive consuming it, after all, you are kinda learning. My hack is I want to start taking notes during some TikToks and then not return until I perform the recipe, craft, life hack, etc.

soundnote 5y ago

> There are plenty of legitimate concerns about the effect of social media on individuals and societies, but as both a smoker and a former FB employee equating them is a stretch. True. Tobacco breaks encourage us to connect with our fellow human beings, social media mostly makes us hate each other more ;P

eproxus 5y ago
There was some research to the opposite regarding smoking recently: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jan/smokers-become-lonelier-non-smokers-they-get-older https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jan/smokers-become-lonelier-...

danielrpa 5y ago

> but as both a smoker and a former FB employee equating them is a stretch. We shouldn't equate them. Facebook can scale out its ability to do harm in ways that Big Tobacco couldn't even dream of.

benreesman 5y ago
I personally think that Ma Bell-era regulatory infrastructure isn’t equipped to deal with modern tech giants, but I don’t think that hyperbole is assertions shorn of an argument for a better idea add much to the discussion.

keymone 5y ago

> Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”? Why are you so sure about that? Both are harmful, Facebook is bigger.

benreesman 5y ago
Well my point is that AFAIK 13-year olds are more impressionable than adults. Right?
- cycomanic 5y ago
  I'm not convinced. In fact I believe young people today are much more skeptical and competent about media use than the older generations. My anecdotal data points are mainly the fact that almost all conspiracy believers I know are >40 years.
- keymone 5y ago
  Facebook through influence on audience has power to wreck political and humanitarian situation in any country in the world right now. TikTok potentially has that power 5-10 years from now. Whatever solution you find to Facebook will also mostly apply to TikTok.

ksec 5y ago

>Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”? Because defending Facebook ( whether part of it or as a whole ), will be an extremely unpopular opinion on HN. 1. No one knows ByteDance, only TikTok. 2. No one on HN uses TikTok much. The demographics / target audience are child and young adult. Like SnapChat. So it is not on their Radar. 3. HN for the past 10+ years have been hating Facebook, it is borderline a cult. Trump era has turned this up to eleven. 4. They all think Facebook is the root cause of misinformation and spread. It is why the community or country is divided. It needs to be destroyed. Which is a strange take because I think twitter is far worse. 5. So Anything but Facebook, if TikTok will destroy Facebook, they will gladly side with TikTok, even though ByteDance the company is Chinese.

benreesman 5y ago
I agree with some of your points but the misinformation one is tricky. Absent Menlo Park getting hit by a meteor, trying to increase FB’s obligation around controlling misinformation is a net increase in like Zuck’s personal editorial power right?
- ksec 5y ago
  Oh I edited the post to clarify the misinformation one wasn't my take. But the current mainstream / majority view on HN. Which has only seen some pushback in very recent months. Having lived through an era in Hong Kong where only one voice and one view is allowed. I tend to have a contrarian take than most on HN.
  - benreesman 5y ago
    I think you and I probably see eye-to-eye on some stuff. Once the censorship cat is out of the bag IMHO there a lot more ways for that to go wrong than to go well.
UncleMeat 5y ago
Most of this is reasonable, but #5 is worrisome. Why hate everything that is Chinese?

windexh8er 5y ago

> There are plenty of legitimate concerns about the effect of social media on individuals and societies, but as both a smoker and a former FB employee equating them is a stretch. Your statement seems to imply that cigarettes are known to cause physical bodily harm and that Facebook does not. This also sounds eerily like the statement Andrew Bosworth (FB exec) made: "While Facebook may not be nicotine I think it is probably like sugar. Sugar is delicious and for most of us there is a special place for it in our lives. But like all things it benefits from moderation." But Facebook does not just impact the user, unlike sugar. Your actions can directly impact me. So it is more like cigarettes in that regard. The privacy implications aside, all social media is going to have negative mental health outcomes in the long run as all platform's best case scenario is for users to view more and they do that by ignoring what may be good for it's users mental health. If Mark Zuckerberg saw what Facebook is today and what fuels it back in the early days I'd suspect he'd be disgusted by it and the direction it's trying to drag people into (Metaverse). It's worse than big tobacco because people don't need to go out and buy or pay for social media in the traditional sense. They just need to pick up something they likely already own and pay with time. They don't know the motive is ad revenue, not their own well being. Social media are marketing sales companies. But they claim falsehoods such as entertainment or community. They don't highlight how those things get them paid on earnings calls. They talk about their ad revenue. Social media should require a label every time a user opens the app. A warning, no different than cigarettes. Showcasing the negative mental state its users can have, showcasing the negative an echo chamber can create and showcasing how people can become so sick they make life altering choices due to consuming social media.

benreesman 5y ago
You make some good points but I’ll offer a little food for thought and a little first-hand anecdote. I tend to agree that there’s research supporting the thesis that people’s inclination to post only the highlights of their lives on social media creates an unrealistic and frankly depressing comparison for the median viewer of it. Most of us didn’t just graduate from a prestigious university or get married or welcome a child into the world and it’s easy to be like: “well my life sucks”. But the nicotine/sugar debate is kinda missing that we sell alcohol at 7/11 which is devastating in excess to my health, my loved one’s sanity, and fatal to the guy I run over driving. We tried prohibiting that and it ended very badly. Is too much Internet better or worse than too much whiskey? Debatable I guess, but, free country? I’ve known Andrew Bozworth for years and we have disagreed plenty of times. But he’s in the top like 5% of people I know on integrity in all the ways we can sort of measure that as individuals: tells people the truth, keeps promises, admits mistakes, treats his wife and kid well, all that. And whether you agree with his life’s work or not: he’s not in it for the money, I don’t know his finances but he joined early, I’m pretty sure he could buy like a pro sports team if he wanted. He works hard because he wants to achieve his goal. I’m not sure I agree with his goal, but he isn’t faking it.

HWR_14 5y ago

> Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”? For the same reason that anti-tobacco advocates focus on Phillip Morris and not pipe smokers- its the more well known incarnation of the product. And, frankly, I don't think a lot of people realize that TikTok is a social network. I think a lot of people see a few videos out of context and think it's like YouTube (or at least the older, less big production of Youtube from back in the day)

spacexsucks 5y ago

Because not every site and restaurant info page is begind a walled garden tiktok video that profiles me when i land on it. Ditto for forums. Facebook is cancer on society and zuck and sheryl sandberg are the pathogenic leeches

pseudalopex 5y ago

> Why is no one ever like “ByteDance is a drug cartel”? "As a genxer with an addictive streak, TikTok is undoubtedly as addictive as crack."[1] "Tiktok is also addictive in a way that no competing app has managed to capture."[2] "Tiktok is absolutely more addictive than Facebook."[3] "I like to think of TikTok as the crack cocaine of addictive social media."[4] The article wasn't about ByteDance's revenue. And ByteDance didn't try to organize public opinion against informed consent to my knowledge. Facebook campaigned for attention and got it. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28137353 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28134963 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28134963 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30188320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30188320 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28133824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28133824

benreesman 5y ago
I wasn’t a top-level poster. I was replying to some who said Facebook is worse than smoking. And maybe they’re right: so I’ll keep an open mind if someone posts some figures. I’ve submitted some anecdotes to the thread but I think I clearly labeled them as such.
- pseudalopex 5y ago
  They didn't say Facebook is worse than smoking. They said something about Facebook in response to an article about Facebook. You replied with whataboutism. I showed people criticize ByteDance when relevant. Even call them crack sellers.

amelius 5y ago

The greatest concern is not addiction, but the potential threat of this propaganda machine to democracy and world order stability.

scarface74 5y ago
So if Facebook disappeared tomorrow do you think the same people would say, “oh well, I might as well get my medical information from the New England Journal of Medicine”?
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Less people will be inclined to fall for extremism if it wasn't pushed in their face for the sake of generating engagement.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    When I’m referring ti “conservatives” only reading right wing media that agrees with the craziness, I’m not referring to “Romney/Bush conservatives”, I’m almost one myself. I am referring to populist/religious right conservatives. Before someone posts a “whataboutism”, I don’t know what happens on the extreme nonsensical left. I mostly read tech news, WSJ and “The Hill”. This isn’t meant to beat up on conservatives. But let’s see what’s happen in 2020. Fox News was the go to place for conservatives. Then they fairly called election results and their news articles called the accusations of the election being stolen “unfounded” and then people started leaving Fox News for News Max. RedState purged all of their never Trump journalists who clearly had their conservative bona fides because they were losing readers. Anytime that RedState does still occasionally admit the election wasn’t stolen, people threaten to cancel their subscriptions. Trump of course is the poster boy for the extremists. But when he started touting the benefits of the Covid vaccine and boosters, he is boo’d and cancelled by the extreme right and they say he is kissing up to the establishment. The Wall Street Journal has always been center right. But because it didn’t tote the “populist agenda” or the “election was stolen”, the conservatives are abandoning it too.

boh 5y ago

> equating them is a stretch. Agreed, far less people have committed suicide or foment genocide from smoking.

benreesman 5y ago
Fewer people have died from smoking than social media? That sounds counter-intuitive but if I’m eyeballing that wrong I’d be in your debt if you’d point me at some figures. No sarcasm, I legitimately want to know.
- boh 5y ago
  You are "eyeballing" a self produced hypothesis. You'll probably have better luck explaining it to yourself then anyone else can.