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As someone also with two young kids, my hope is to instill the idea that they can and should use the internet for their own expression and communication, but th

As someone also with two young kids, my hope is to instill the idea that they can and should use the internet for their own expression and communication, but that they need to do it with tools which puts them in control, and not the other way around. There are "indie web" alternatives to the big social networks which everyone can use. Social networks without the algorithms that make you doom scrolling, messaging apps that do not track you or read your messages for ads, photo apps that do not have likes and do not gamify karma-whoring, and so on. To make it even better, these apps are not exclusive to smartphone platforms, so they won't need a smartphone just to participate. At least here in Germany, even my non-techy friends that are totally addicted to Instagram and Facebook don't publish anything with their kids. I am hoping that by the time their kids have grown a bit, these tools will be more popularized and accessible so that their kids don't fall into the same trap as their parents, and perhaps even the parents take the opportunity to do the switch themselves.

samhw 5y ago
> do not gamify karma-whoring Christ, I'm not really on the 'complain about social media' train, but this resonates with me so much. The way people pose and mug for upvotes on Reddit - or mortifiedly delete their comments when they get some downdoots – is, well, it's self-abasing. I can't believe the effect it has on people. For kids I can only imagine how destructive it would be, in the already insecure and reputation-centric environment of school. I don't know what the solution is. I believe it lies _broadly in the direction of_ better clients, rather than different networks. The latter is a fool's errand. The former is still hard, but at least practicable on one's own: to find or create [apps / web clients / browser extensions / etc] which don't surface the karma component as much. HN is a good example of that: it still has upvotes and downvotes, but the design (especially not showing you others' downvotes, beyond binary indicators of positive/negative) centres them much less. It's an illustration of how you can substantially reduce this through frontend changes alone, without needing to change the core logic of the product.
- nonplus 5y ago
  Re HN: I've had a hn account for 7 years, and I still can't downvote, and I think I like it this way. If I feel strongly enough I can start a dialogue instead. Conversation threads on hn are also nice in my opinion, they are not compulsory, if you forget a discussion was happening the platform allows that. Instead of throwing it back in your face to encourage engagement.

samhw 5y ago

> do not gamify karma-whoring Christ, I'm not really on the 'complain about social media' train, but this resonates with me so much. The way people pose and mug for upvotes on Reddit - or mortifiedly delete their comments when they get some downdoots – is, well, it's self-abasing. I can't believe the effect it has on people. For kids I can only imagine how destructive it would be, in the already insecure and reputation-centric environment of school. I don't know what the solution is. I believe it lies _broadly in the direction of_ better clients, rather than different networks. The latter is a fool's errand. The former is still hard, but at least practicable on one's own: to find or create [apps / web clients / browser extensions / etc] which don't surface the karma component as much. HN is a good example of that: it still has upvotes and downvotes, but the design (especially not showing you others' downvotes, beyond binary indicators of positive/negative) centres them much less. It's an illustration of how you can substantially reduce this through frontend changes alone, without needing to change the core logic of the product.

nonplus 5y ago
Re HN: I've had a hn account for 7 years, and I still can't downvote, and I think I like it this way. If I feel strongly enough I can start a dialogue instead. Conversation threads on hn are also nice in my opinion, they are not compulsory, if you forget a discussion was happening the platform allows that. Instead of throwing it back in your face to encourage engagement.