5 ms·

if the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs, and evidently just as bad, why not ban them for adults as well?

ATMLOTTOBEER 4y ago
Agreed we should!
startupsfail 4y ago
HackerNews included? It does seem like a reasonable solution. A rewind back to the age when it had been just the newsgroups. Without +1 algorithms that result in the algorithm making a choice what users see and not the opposite. Certainly a better solution, if compared to forcing everyone to show their Real Id, just to verify their age to access the Internet.
- tehnub 4y ago
  With HN and other sites with a non-personalized feed, at least what you see is the same as what everyone else sees. And if there's voting, which isn't perfect, it's based on community feedback.
  - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
    How hard is it to add "upvotes" to TikTok and fake that it is based on community feedback? How do you know that HN isn't personalized for you?
    - burnished 4y ago
      Well, you can go ahead and independently verify something like that pretty easily. Kind of weird to veer towards lies and malice at the drop of a hat here
      - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
        >Kind of weird to veer towards lies and malice at the drop of a hat here What? To me it is extremely naive to think that social media services wont try to use every single loop hole. Also, cant help but notice you didnt actually answer the question - just dismissed it.
        burnished 4y ago
        I'm not doing your homework for you - if you think HN is personalized it should be trivial to show it.
        nextlevelwizard 4y ago
        There is just no response I can make that wouldn't be an insult, but couple of points: - if you make a claim then burden of proof is on you - I never actually claimed that HN was tailored, just pointed out that you can't tell if that was the case I won't be reading more from you
FractalHQ 4y ago
As someone 8 years sober from social media, I’m convinced the benefits of banning it would far outweigh the cost.
- SCdF 4y ago
  Out of interest, what's your definition of social media? Because mine is a site / app whose value is derived from its users, where users are all of (roughly) equal importance. Which puts forums / reddit / hacker news into that category.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    You can quibble about definitions, but I'd say it's got a lot to do with being personalized. So anything where you need to know something about the viewer in order to optimise what to show each individual. That can be for anything from the content itself to the advertisements, if you need to know something about who is watching, it's what we currently think of as social media. FB, Instagram, TikTok, but also Google search, and every ad supported site. Not WhatsApp or the chat services, interestingly.
- imadierich 4y ago
  [dead]
- goatlover 4y ago
  Sounds a lot like, "I stopped drinking because it became a problem, so everyone else should too."
  - snapdeus 4y ago
    Drinking causes severe societal ills and is unhealthy in any amount. Everyone should indeed stop drinking. We should tax alcohol until it is unaffordable for the vast majority.
    - goatlover 4y ago
baq 4y ago
I’d ban photos, pictures, video and sound. Leave text only. Greatly reduces deepfake potential, manipulation options by state actors, dopamine hits from looking at pretty cat pictures too. I don’t want to say IRC was fine but it was better than Instagram.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mxkopy 4y ago
> if the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs I highly doubt the implied semantics of this statement. We don't know everything there is to know about "dopaminergic effects". The pharmacology of smoking weed is probably very different than from say, scrolling through memes.
- clnq 4y ago
  Pharmacology, yes. But we can compare social media and other addictions in terms of social harm, health harm, psychological and emotional harm, withdrawal symptoms, financial consequences, impairment to decision-making, procrastination and distraction impacting attainability of personal goal, prerogatives and decreasing motivation, relationship harm (it is difficult to form relationships with those "terminally online" for example), cognitive/executive function impairments, self-esteem harm, sleep hygiene harm, personal hygiene harm (difficult topic for some addicted people to talk about but in my opinion, it is related to internet addiction as much as alcohol or drug addictions), harm on enjoyment of life, and many others. The effects of dopamine bombing yourself with on line content are not very dissimilar to effects of drugs. I would argue they are more similar than dissimilar.
  - mxkopy 4y ago
    In my experience you don't become terminally online unless there's something else going on in your life. People talking about the ills of social media seem to forget that children nowadays are: institutionalized for 8 hours of their day, raised on diets of processed garbage, etc. Like, a well adjusted kid isn't going to treat social media as more important than their friends unless they think they can make a living from it or have no friends. I think "dopamine bombing" is not what it sounds. See discussions on dopamine fasting for what I mean. The relationship between the things you do and dopamine are complex, probably more complex than the relationship of what you physically consume and dopamine.
    - clnq 4y ago
      > In my experience you don't become terminally online unless there's something else going on in your life That's true, but it's also true for other addictions. > a well adjusted kid isn't going to treat social media as more important than their friends unless they think they can make a living from it or have no friends. Probably mostly true, but also a lot of friendships are moving online. > I think "dopamine bombing" is not what it sounds Can you elaborate? I think it sounds like abusing the dopamine hits you get when scrolling through SM, for example.
cykros 4y ago
Because banning drugs has worked so well...
checkyoursudo 4y ago
The effects on developing versus developed brains is different for most things, including drugs and other psychological/psychosomatic stimuli. Also, we give adults the freedom to fuck themselves up to a great extent that probably most people think it would be unethical with children.
DrThunder 4y ago
Because we live in a society (that mostly) allows adults to make choices for themselves. Just because a few adults can't handle themselves doesn't mean that all adults should be punished for it. You can say the same thing about gambling, smoking, drinking, eating sweets etc. Also, the effects on undeveloped brains are far greater. Our job is to teach kids and raise them. Not be their friends and just let them do whatever adults do.

ATMLOTTOBEER 4y ago

Agreed we should!

startupsfail 4y ago

HackerNews included? It does seem like a reasonable solution. A rewind back to the age when it had been just the newsgroups. Without +1 algorithms that result in the algorithm making a choice what users see and not the opposite. Certainly a better solution, if compared to forcing everyone to show their Real Id, just to verify their age to access the Internet.

tehnub 4y ago
With HN and other sites with a non-personalized feed, at least what you see is the same as what everyone else sees. And if there's voting, which isn't perfect, it's based on community feedback.
- nextlevelwizard 4y ago
  How hard is it to add "upvotes" to TikTok and fake that it is based on community feedback? How do you know that HN isn't personalized for you?
  - burnished 4y ago
    Well, you can go ahead and independently verify something like that pretty easily. Kind of weird to veer towards lies and malice at the drop of a hat here
    - nextlevelwizard 4y ago
      >Kind of weird to veer towards lies and malice at the drop of a hat here What? To me it is extremely naive to think that social media services wont try to use every single loop hole. Also, cant help but notice you didnt actually answer the question - just dismissed it.
      - burnished 4y ago
        I'm not doing your homework for you - if you think HN is personalized it should be trivial to show it.
        nextlevelwizard 4y ago
        There is just no response I can make that wouldn't be an insult, but couple of points: - if you make a claim then burden of proof is on you - I never actually claimed that HN was tailored, just pointed out that you can't tell if that was the case I won't be reading more from you

FractalHQ 4y ago

As someone 8 years sober from social media, I’m convinced the benefits of banning it would far outweigh the cost.

SCdF 4y ago
Out of interest, what's your definition of social media? Because mine is a site / app whose value is derived from its users, where users are all of (roughly) equal importance. Which puts forums / reddit / hacker news into that category.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  You can quibble about definitions, but I'd say it's got a lot to do with being personalized. So anything where you need to know something about the viewer in order to optimise what to show each individual. That can be for anything from the content itself to the advertisements, if you need to know something about who is watching, it's what we currently think of as social media. FB, Instagram, TikTok, but also Google search, and every ad supported site. Not WhatsApp or the chat services, interestingly.
imadierich 4y ago
[dead]
goatlover 4y ago
Sounds a lot like, "I stopped drinking because it became a problem, so everyone else should too."
- snapdeus 4y ago
  Drinking causes severe societal ills and is unhealthy in any amount. Everyone should indeed stop drinking. We should tax alcohol until it is unaffordable for the vast majority.
  - goatlover 4y ago

baq 4y ago

I’d ban photos, pictures, video and sound. Leave text only. Greatly reduces deepfake potential, manipulation options by state actors, dopamine hits from looking at pretty cat pictures too. I don’t want to say IRC was fine but it was better than Instagram.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mxkopy 4y ago

> if the dopaminergic effects are not dissimilar to drugs I highly doubt the implied semantics of this statement. We don't know everything there is to know about "dopaminergic effects". The pharmacology of smoking weed is probably very different than from say, scrolling through memes.

clnq 4y ago
Pharmacology, yes. But we can compare social media and other addictions in terms of social harm, health harm, psychological and emotional harm, withdrawal symptoms, financial consequences, impairment to decision-making, procrastination and distraction impacting attainability of personal goal, prerogatives and decreasing motivation, relationship harm (it is difficult to form relationships with those "terminally online" for example), cognitive/executive function impairments, self-esteem harm, sleep hygiene harm, personal hygiene harm (difficult topic for some addicted people to talk about but in my opinion, it is related to internet addiction as much as alcohol or drug addictions), harm on enjoyment of life, and many others. The effects of dopamine bombing yourself with on line content are not very dissimilar to effects of drugs. I would argue they are more similar than dissimilar.
- mxkopy 4y ago
  In my experience you don't become terminally online unless there's something else going on in your life. People talking about the ills of social media seem to forget that children nowadays are: institutionalized for 8 hours of their day, raised on diets of processed garbage, etc. Like, a well adjusted kid isn't going to treat social media as more important than their friends unless they think they can make a living from it or have no friends. I think "dopamine bombing" is not what it sounds. See discussions on dopamine fasting for what I mean. The relationship between the things you do and dopamine are complex, probably more complex than the relationship of what you physically consume and dopamine.
  - clnq 4y ago
    > In my experience you don't become terminally online unless there's something else going on in your life That's true, but it's also true for other addictions. > a well adjusted kid isn't going to treat social media as more important than their friends unless they think they can make a living from it or have no friends. Probably mostly true, but also a lot of friendships are moving online. > I think "dopamine bombing" is not what it sounds Can you elaborate? I think it sounds like abusing the dopamine hits you get when scrolling through SM, for example.

cykros 4y ago

Because banning drugs has worked so well...

checkyoursudo 4y ago

The effects on developing versus developed brains is different for most things, including drugs and other psychological/psychosomatic stimuli. Also, we give adults the freedom to fuck themselves up to a great extent that probably most people think it would be unethical with children.

DrThunder 4y ago

Because we live in a society (that mostly) allows adults to make choices for themselves. Just because a few adults can't handle themselves doesn't mean that all adults should be punished for it. You can say the same thing about gambling, smoking, drinking, eating sweets etc. Also, the effects on undeveloped brains are far greater. Our job is to teach kids and raise them. Not be their friends and just let them do whatever adults do.