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At Facebook / Meta, employees often questioned Mark Zuckerberg whenever a study like this came out. Zuckerberg noted that the same held true for news media. Rep

At Facebook / Meta, employees often questioned Mark Zuckerberg whenever a study like this came out. Zuckerberg noted that the same held true for news media. Reporters do not like to mention this.

jdavis703 4y ago
My Twitter feed is basically the news. The first 4 of 5 posts are from established news organizations or about current events. Social media vs news media is a distinction without a difference.
- nomilk 4y ago
  I think of it the other way around, that "news" sites have become social media aggregators.
- fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
  Well no, not legally. Social media platforms have certain legal protections against litigation for their content while news organizations do not. The distinctions are actually fairly profound and include established practices and professional norms concerning information sourcing, verification/due diligence, and editorial discretion. This is all before the agent-principal relationship, contractual obligations, and regulatory oversight to which news organizations are subject. I understand why Zuckerberg needs to make the false equivalence, but we don’t (necessarily) share his profit motive and can be more objective here.
openknot 4y ago
Depends on the news source. There is a noticeable difference between Tweets and unverified Facebook posts, news media from Buzzfeed or Salon, articles from a local newspaper, articles from The New York Times/Washington Post, and articles from the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal. Not all news is designed for outrage. Several publications publish in-depth articles in a neutral way, where you can actually learn something. Investigations are also often genuinely useful for a better society. Zuckerberg's position therefore doesn't hold true for all news media. Separately, depending on how your social media feed is set up, you can be feel jealous/lesser due to seeing the high points of the lives of people you know (depending on your personality type), seeing news on your feed, or seeing neither due to subscribing to accounts in niche fields.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >Not all news is designed for outrage. I don't think I get anxiety from content "designed for outrage". But if I go to the front page of the Washington Post, here's what I see: >Buffalo shooting suspect wrote of plans months ago, online messages show >Only 22 saw the Buffalo shooting live. Millions have seen it since. >A barrage of ‘never-ending gunshots’: Inside the Buffalo massacre >Ukraine ends bloody battle for Mariupol, evacuates fighters in steel plant >Republicans are bringing extremism to the mainstream >White Americans must speak out against white supremacy >Russia is losing. That might make Putin more dangerous. I'd say that these headlines are more in the "giving me anxiety" camp than not.
  - davidhay 4y ago
    Exactly. Also, Major news outlets A/B test their headlines, just like advertisers, which has clearly show that anxiety provoking headlines get clicks.
  - openknot 4y ago
    That is the point of my comment: not all news sources are designed for clickbait. In contrast, consider The Financial Times's (FT's) headlines: >Tiger Global slashes bets on tech groups after stock market sell-off > News in-depth. Military briefing: why Russia and Ukraine are fighting over a Black Sea outcrop > Investors pull $7bn from Tether as stablecoin jitters intensify > Buffett buys $3bn Citi stake in value-hunting stock splurge > Ethiopia atrocities cast long shadow as city of Lalibela prays for peace > Qantas says synthetic fuel could power long flights by mid-2030s Some of the news itself is tragic. But it's a false equivalence to claim that the headlines and article content between news sources (e.g. Washington Post vs. the FT) are equally outrage-provoking or informative. The Washington Post was listed in the middle because their articles are usually highly informative (from the number of interviewed people and documents analyzed), though their headlines are more clickbait. Both The Washington Post or the FT are different from (typically) Salon, and each is a far cry from social media. Also, the debate of news media in place of discussing social media is exactly the effect that Zuckerberg intended with his comment.
  - greggman3 4y ago
forgingahead 4y ago
Yes, the correct headline and takeaway should be: "Taking a break from ALL media makes you happier", or rather, "go outside and spend time with real people".
- jimt1234 4y ago
  YES!!! ^^^
- zoul 4y ago
  While that’s true, it misses the point – which is that Facebook is consciously and painstankingly designed you keep to “engaged”. Sure, everyone wants to keep their website visitors, but what Facebook does is a different level. (And many media consider their readers to be their customers, not the goods being sold. That’s a huge difference.)
awsrocks 4y ago
lostcolony 4y ago
Sure. But in the same way that 24 hour news networks are an obvious detriment compared to brief half hour or hour long "evening news" programs, social media's patterns to keep you engaged are also a detriment compared with, say, a quick text to the people you care about checking in. There's a real positive buried in there, but the financial incentive to capture eyeballs turns it into a negative.
- fastball 4y ago
  > obvious detriment compared to brief half hour or hour long "evening news" This is not obvious to me personally. I don't think it matters how much you consume the news as much as it matters what the news is. And the news these days is almost entirely negative, even in a half-hour-long evening news segment.
  - lostcolony 4y ago
    The news has always been "almost entirely negative", even when the only source was newspapers. But being informed of what's going on, vs being clueless; there's a societal benefit in having an informed citizenry. This does presume that that half hour or hour is not a purely editorial function (think Walter Cronkite vs Tucker Carlson), and that the goal is to actually cover the news of the world, not create partisan wedges and glue eyeballs (again, same comparison). But even if it's negative, understanding what is going on matters, and is likely a net gain for society, with a minimal individual cost. What isn't a net gain is being so consumed by world events (or worse, editorialized versions of world events) that you lose sight on your personal world, and are unable to enjoy the moments around you. A similar effect is at play with social media.
    - fastball 4y ago
      > he news has always been "almost entirely negative", even when the only source was newspapers This doesn't ring true for me at all. What percentage of broadsheets were dedicated to crime/murder back in the day? Now estimate the same for crime/murder being covered in the local evening news. From my experience it's not even close. Broadsheets were actually informative, cable news is a lot of fear-mongering.
hackernewds 4y ago
The natural extension then seems to abstain from both. not encourage one as the employees are pushed to understand.
onion2k 4y ago
It might be the case that the psychological process here is that making a conscious change to your lifestyle makes you happier and less anxious (temporarily?). If so then the same is true of literally anything.
randomsearch 4y ago
That appears to be a disingenuous argument. Firstly, traditional news media’s intrusion is not as severe or wide ranging. To give one example, the surge in teenage mental health problems that Facebook and Instagram in particular seem likely to have caused. Second, there is a very large qualitative difference between social media and traditional media. Social media is monitoring your every action, and adapting to it, and creates a tight feedback loop where you are manipulated into staying engaged and consuming more adverts. That personalised real-time feedback loop, based on giant datasets that are very invasive, is incomparable to traditional media. Finally, the extent of attention capture by social media cannot be compared to traditional media. This can be observed by simply taking a walk down the high street and seeing how many people are staring at their phones. Traditional media do use apps as a medium, but there aren’t many people who would seriously argue that most of those glued to their screens are likely to be reading an online newspaper and not looking at Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. The only doubt I have is whether Zuckerberg actually believes what’s he saying, in order to have a clean conscience, or whether it’s a cynical argument used to reassure his staff.
- sshine 4y ago
  > Social media is monitoring your every action, and adapting to it, and creates a tight feedback loop where you are manipulated into staying engaged and consuming more adverts. That personalised real-time feedback loop, based on giant datasets that are very invasive, is incomparable to traditional media. I just want to add here that YouTube, while not exactly a social medium and not a traditional medium, also has a tight and instantly adaptive feedback loop. With this argument, staying off YouTube should be similarly relieving than staying off at least TikTok. At least, the hours you can waste are comparable.
  - the_gipsy 4y ago
    Youtube is considered social media. If you only go there once a month to watch some informative video, then obviously not.
jatins 4y ago
That seems like a silly argument. "They are bad hence us being bad is okay"
karaterobot 4y ago
You hear this kind of equivalence made a lot: social media is no different than the newspaper, or the TV news. This never made sense to me. Obviously, some characteristic of social media persuaded people to drop their newspapers and turn of their televisions to use their phones instead. There must be something qualitatively different about social media on mobile devices that explains this. The difference may be that it is better and more enlightening, or it may be that it is more addictive and intrusive. But, it is not the same.
Karawebnetwork 4y ago
My significant other has a news app "addiction". A lot of them now mimic the feeds of social medias. She went up to spending 6 hours a day scrolling down the infinite scroll until we noticed the issue.

At Facebook / Meta, employees often questioned Mark Zuckerberg whenever a study like this came out. Zuckerberg noted that the same held true for news media. Reporters do not like to mention this.

jdavis703 4y ago

My Twitter feed is basically the news. The first 4 of 5 posts are from established news organizations or about current events. Social media vs news media is a distinction without a difference.

nomilk 4y ago
I think of it the other way around, that "news" sites have become social media aggregators.
fleetwoodsnack 4y ago
Well no, not legally. Social media platforms have certain legal protections against litigation for their content while news organizations do not. The distinctions are actually fairly profound and include established practices and professional norms concerning information sourcing, verification/due diligence, and editorial discretion. This is all before the agent-principal relationship, contractual obligations, and regulatory oversight to which news organizations are subject. I understand why Zuckerberg needs to make the false equivalence, but we don’t (necessarily) share his profit motive and can be more objective here.

openknot 4y ago

Depends on the news source. There is a noticeable difference between Tweets and unverified Facebook posts, news media from Buzzfeed or Salon, articles from a local newspaper, articles from The New York Times/Washington Post, and articles from the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal. Not all news is designed for outrage. Several publications publish in-depth articles in a neutral way, where you can actually learn something. Investigations are also often genuinely useful for a better society. Zuckerberg's position therefore doesn't hold true for all news media. Separately, depending on how your social media feed is set up, you can be feel jealous/lesser due to seeing the high points of the lives of people you know (depending on your personality type), seeing news on your feed, or seeing neither due to subscribing to accounts in niche fields.

Hamuko 4y ago
>Not all news is designed for outrage. I don't think I get anxiety from content "designed for outrage". But if I go to the front page of the Washington Post, here's what I see: >Buffalo shooting suspect wrote of plans months ago, online messages show >Only 22 saw the Buffalo shooting live. Millions have seen it since. >A barrage of ‘never-ending gunshots’: Inside the Buffalo massacre >Ukraine ends bloody battle for Mariupol, evacuates fighters in steel plant >Republicans are bringing extremism to the mainstream >White Americans must speak out against white supremacy >Russia is losing. That might make Putin more dangerous. I'd say that these headlines are more in the "giving me anxiety" camp than not.
- davidhay 4y ago
  Exactly. Also, Major news outlets A/B test their headlines, just like advertisers, which has clearly show that anxiety provoking headlines get clicks.
- openknot 4y ago
  That is the point of my comment: not all news sources are designed for clickbait. In contrast, consider The Financial Times's (FT's) headlines: >Tiger Global slashes bets on tech groups after stock market sell-off > News in-depth. Military briefing: why Russia and Ukraine are fighting over a Black Sea outcrop > Investors pull $7bn from Tether as stablecoin jitters intensify > Buffett buys $3bn Citi stake in value-hunting stock splurge > Ethiopia atrocities cast long shadow as city of Lalibela prays for peace > Qantas says synthetic fuel could power long flights by mid-2030s Some of the news itself is tragic. But it's a false equivalence to claim that the headlines and article content between news sources (e.g. Washington Post vs. the FT) are equally outrage-provoking or informative. The Washington Post was listed in the middle because their articles are usually highly informative (from the number of interviewed people and documents analyzed), though their headlines are more clickbait. Both The Washington Post or the FT are different from (typically) Salon, and each is a far cry from social media. Also, the debate of news media in place of discussing social media is exactly the effect that Zuckerberg intended with his comment.
- greggman3 4y ago

forgingahead 4y ago

Yes, the correct headline and takeaway should be: "Taking a break from ALL media makes you happier", or rather, "go outside and spend time with real people".

jimt1234 4y ago
YES!!! ^^^
zoul 4y ago
While that’s true, it misses the point – which is that Facebook is consciously and painstankingly designed you keep to “engaged”. Sure, everyone wants to keep their website visitors, but what Facebook does is a different level. (And many media consider their readers to be their customers, not the goods being sold. That’s a huge difference.)

awsrocks 4y ago

lostcolony 4y ago

Sure. But in the same way that 24 hour news networks are an obvious detriment compared to brief half hour or hour long "evening news" programs, social media's patterns to keep you engaged are also a detriment compared with, say, a quick text to the people you care about checking in. There's a real positive buried in there, but the financial incentive to capture eyeballs turns it into a negative.

fastball 4y ago
> obvious detriment compared to brief half hour or hour long "evening news" This is not obvious to me personally. I don't think it matters how much you consume the news as much as it matters what the news is. And the news these days is almost entirely negative, even in a half-hour-long evening news segment.
- lostcolony 4y ago
  The news has always been "almost entirely negative", even when the only source was newspapers. But being informed of what's going on, vs being clueless; there's a societal benefit in having an informed citizenry. This does presume that that half hour or hour is not a purely editorial function (think Walter Cronkite vs Tucker Carlson), and that the goal is to actually cover the news of the world, not create partisan wedges and glue eyeballs (again, same comparison). But even if it's negative, understanding what is going on matters, and is likely a net gain for society, with a minimal individual cost. What isn't a net gain is being so consumed by world events (or worse, editorialized versions of world events) that you lose sight on your personal world, and are unable to enjoy the moments around you. A similar effect is at play with social media.
  - fastball 4y ago
    > he news has always been "almost entirely negative", even when the only source was newspapers This doesn't ring true for me at all. What percentage of broadsheets were dedicated to crime/murder back in the day? Now estimate the same for crime/murder being covered in the local evening news. From my experience it's not even close. Broadsheets were actually informative, cable news is a lot of fear-mongering.

hackernewds 4y ago

The natural extension then seems to abstain from both. not encourage one as the employees are pushed to understand.

onion2k 4y ago

It might be the case that the psychological process here is that making a conscious change to your lifestyle makes you happier and less anxious (temporarily?). If so then the same is true of literally anything.

randomsearch 4y ago

That appears to be a disingenuous argument. Firstly, traditional news media’s intrusion is not as severe or wide ranging. To give one example, the surge in teenage mental health problems that Facebook and Instagram in particular seem likely to have caused. Second, there is a very large qualitative difference between social media and traditional media. Social media is monitoring your every action, and adapting to it, and creates a tight feedback loop where you are manipulated into staying engaged and consuming more adverts. That personalised real-time feedback loop, based on giant datasets that are very invasive, is incomparable to traditional media. Finally, the extent of attention capture by social media cannot be compared to traditional media. This can be observed by simply taking a walk down the high street and seeing how many people are staring at their phones. Traditional media do use apps as a medium, but there aren’t many people who would seriously argue that most of those glued to their screens are likely to be reading an online newspaper and not looking at Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. The only doubt I have is whether Zuckerberg actually believes what’s he saying, in order to have a clean conscience, or whether it’s a cynical argument used to reassure his staff.

sshine 4y ago
> Social media is monitoring your every action, and adapting to it, and creates a tight feedback loop where you are manipulated into staying engaged and consuming more adverts. That personalised real-time feedback loop, based on giant datasets that are very invasive, is incomparable to traditional media. I just want to add here that YouTube, while not exactly a social medium and not a traditional medium, also has a tight and instantly adaptive feedback loop. With this argument, staying off YouTube should be similarly relieving than staying off at least TikTok. At least, the hours you can waste are comparable.
- the_gipsy 4y ago
  Youtube is considered social media. If you only go there once a month to watch some informative video, then obviously not.

jatins 4y ago

That seems like a silly argument. "They are bad hence us being bad is okay"

karaterobot 4y ago

You hear this kind of equivalence made a lot: social media is no different than the newspaper, or the TV news. This never made sense to me. Obviously, some characteristic of social media persuaded people to drop their newspapers and turn of their televisions to use their phones instead. There must be something qualitatively different about social media on mobile devices that explains this. The difference may be that it is better and more enlightening, or it may be that it is more addictive and intrusive. But, it is not the same.

Karawebnetwork 4y ago

My significant other has a news app "addiction". A lot of them now mimic the feeds of social medias. She went up to spending 6 hours a day scrolling down the infinite scroll until we noticed the issue.