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Large shares of consumers use social media out of a fear of missing out
- simonmysun 3y agoTo be honest, part of my motivation to visit HN is out of a fear of missing out.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mvdtnz 3y agoLots of people would be willing to do lots of things for lots of money until you actually give them the opportunity to do so. It's easy to spend hypothetical money.
- dclowd9901 3y ago$28 doesn’t seem like a crazy sum of money though. Passes the sniff test IMO.
- paulcole 3y ago$1 is a crazy sum of money when you actually have to spend it. Look at the entire app economy for proof.
- makeitdouble 3y agoApp economy is a lot more complicated than that. Many people won't bother installing something for free even if it potentially could help them, yet they'll spend more coins on their favorite gambling game. Money is only a tiny corner of the issue.
- Eumenes 3y agoI'd spend lots of real money to get rid of social media once and for all. Like thousands. It would do alot of good for society.
- jessehattabaugh 3y agoI'd pay $100 just to get my family to install Signal
- TrainedMonkey 3y agoHow much would you pay for them to use it?
- rogerkirkness 3y agoOnly way I have managed to do this is to burn the boats and become unreachable by other means lol.
- financypants 3y agoWhat do you currently use? Just a text message group? Is it because signal is e2e encrypted?
- aembleton 3y agoMaybe spend it on Facebook adverts targeted at them, telling them to install Signal.
- kaashif 3y agoI have literally asked people "would you pay $5 for this?" they say yes, then I tell them to buy it and they say no. When this kept happening I realised the only thing that matters in sales is... actually making sales. Everything else is window dressing.
- HPsquared 3y agoStated preference vs revealed preference.
- JackFr 3y agoFree lunch at start up - workers: “We want healthier options!!” A dozen catering trays of salad get tossed into compost. All the fried chicken is gone in less than 5 minutes.
- oh_sigh 3y agoHence ABC - "always be closing"...giving interested people an extra second is giving interested people an extra second to get cold feet.
- mcpackieh 3y agoProbably they're interpreting your first question as "would it be reasonable for me to offer this for sale for $5?" They may not be personally interested in buying it but can still tell you whether a price seems fair or not. For instance, I think it would probably be fair for you to sell your car for the blue book value... but I'm not offering to buy your car. I don't need another.
- signaru 3y agoAgree. The question also lacks a "when" part. If it were "Would you pay $5 for this NOW?" then the answer has a higher chance to be NO, regardless of whether the other person think it is a good deal. The question is more like a phrasing trap to make the other person look inconsistent.
- Buttons840 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kromem 3y agoThe reverse is also the case. In market research, the death knell of your research is if you include the question of "would you prefer money or X." People always choose hypothetical money as it's a wildcard, even if in actuality they will spend ridiculous amounts of it on the thing you are testing in the first place. The existence of hypothetical money in surveys screws them up terribly, as people are both willing to spend and accept hypothetical money in ways that often don't translate to reality.
- nvoeiah 3y ago>Among iPhone owners, a striking 91% of respondents indicate that they would prefer Apple to release the iPhone every other year rather than every year. Among respondents not owning the iPhone, this fraction is even larger, at 94%. I wonder why the 94% care so much about a phone that they do not even intend to own. I can't help but think that this study simply shows that more people should mind their own damn business.
- jncfhnb 3y agoMind your own business
- MattGaiser 3y agoMany are conscious about not having the newest stuff and would prefer the pressure not exist.
- dns_snek 3y agoWould that really help? There's a virtually unlimited supply of "stuff" one could desire & buy. There might not be a new iPhone this year, but would you look at that shiny new watch/console/TV/etc. Either you care about owning status symbols or you don't, I don't think taking one of them off the market would make a difference.
- Hugsun 3y agoThe peer pressures to have an iPhone within a lot of groups are very real and strong. Having a "Blue bubble" is shunned in many circles [1]. It's a sad reality. A part of it is likely iPhones managed to create a class of their own whereas nobody cares what brand of 65" TV someone has or who designed their 300 m^2 house. [1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009 https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-...
- dns_snek 3y agoI'm not sure if this is directly relevant since parent was discussing the pressure of owning the latest iPhone, not just an iPhone. That said, I've read about the "blue bubble" phenomenon and it's truly a bizarre manifestation of consumerism. I'm European and the Android market share is really high over here, so I haven't witnessed it first hand.
- mkoubaa 3y agoReminds me of a high school fundraiser where students paid for 5 minute pauses to a day of nonstop beiber music
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zlg_codes 3y agoSounds closer to terrorism than a wholesome fundraiser. I think maybe could do worse with Baby Shark or something.
- mcpackieh 3y agoPlaying deliberately obnoxious music to a captive audience? Yeah that's a CIA torture technique. Unironically.
- function_seven 3y agoThey're doing it (I presume) in the middle of the day, and for a couple of hours maybe. They're not keeping the victims up for 48 hours straight playing the music. I think it's a fine idea for a fundraiser.
- MarcoZavala 3y ago[dead]
- dantheman 3y agoFundraisers should benefit both people, this is extortion.
- jncfhnb 3y agoCool. I’ll set up at your work desk to kick off another one.
- soerxpso 3y ago
- Eumenes 3y ago[flagged]
- karaterobot 3y agoBeen pretty easy so far, I have to admit.
- teaearlgraycold 3y agoSole holdout? LOL
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nonethewiser 3y ago[flagged]
- boppo1 3y agoIs it really worse than insta? t. Insta user, never had tiktok
- mcpackieh 3y agoIstagram is an American country, so it should probably be considered to be counter to the national interests of any country other than America and maybe America's close strategic allies. Particularly, if you're the leader of a country America considers to be a strategic rival, then you should definitely give serious consideration to blocking American social media. Personally I think it's bad for America too, but it's unlikely that they're deliberately inflicting damage to America in an act of information/culture warfare. But other countries, particularly America's rivals, would be wise to assume that's what is happening to them.
- tempsy 3y agoIt turns people into consumer sheep, which is actually a positive for a capitalistic society.
- pbjtime 3y agoAka "against national propaganda"
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gcmac 3y agoI don't understand why they don't just make the "reciprocity" argument. The fact that we allow Chinese social networks in the US while they block ours doesn't pass the smell test. To me, this line of argument is easier to rally around as it's more business focused and avoids free speech/national security debates which only serve to muddy the waters
- kelseyfrog 3y agoHow much would you pay to have your peers deactivate their HN accounts?
- glitchc 3y agoI can't think of a reason to do this. Is this a revenge fantasy? So what if others disagree with me or I with them? Isn't that part of a fruitful discourse?
- onionisafruit 3y agoI would delete this account for $28, but I would create a new one within the week.
- xenospn 3y agoDid they actually take the money /pay and deactivate or is this all hypothetical? Because I don’t believe this for a second.
- tempsy 3y agoI think the general idea is a lot of people feel pressured to be on social media when they wouldn't otherwise be on social media if no one else was
- vzqx 3y agoThe exact dollar amounts don't matter. As long as the ratio between amounts is the same, the authors' point still stands.
- nmca 3y agoI don't think your comment is true unless you also include a linearity assumption that almost certainly doesn't hold, see e.g. prospect theory.
- doytch 3y agoThis reminds me of carbon offsets where you get paid to not cut down a forest. I’m eagerly anticipating the first social media company to take money from every user in order to shut it all down and burn the code.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hsbauauvhabzb 3y agoThis is not the dystopian future we imagined, yet here we are. I’m scared to think where we will end up in 20-40 years time as our marketing and psychology capability increases.
- fy20 3y agoThe personalized AI generated TikTok feed of dopamine hits is closer than you think.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mullingitover 3y agoI'd like to see the results of a study for "How much would you pay to have your parents/grandparents Facebook accounts deactivated?" Facebook is probably leaving money on the table!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Lockal 3y agoHow this level of title editorializing is possible on HN? It just picks Tiktok purely as a bait, but actual research includes multiple websites and also luxury brands.
- demosthanos 3y agoEmail hn@ycombinator.com if you have concerns. The mods do care and will fix editorialized titles pretty quickly, but they can't keep up with everything as it is submitted. Emailing them helps keep the site clean from clickbait titles!
- dang 3y agoYup. Thanks!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dang 3y agoSubmitted title was "Study: Users would be willing to pay $28 to have their peers deactivate TikTok". That was badly editorialized (which is against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) Even the article's own title is somewhat baity so I've changed it to a more neutral version of the subtitle.
- pbjtime 3y ago[flagged]
- renewiltord 3y agoI mean, yeah, that's an incredibly small amount of money to get everyone else to do something. I'd pay $1000 to have everyone lose their cars. Heck, if you could guarantee it would happen, I will pay $100k today so that everyone in the USA can no longer drive their cars. That means the opposite. The disutility is really low and the network utility is positive. If I charged you $29 to have all your peers lose Tik Tok, you'd say no. $29 is too much because Tik Tok doesn't hurt that much. Think about how much you'd pay for something that actually hurt. Would your ceiling be $28? I think not.
- calmworm 3y agoWhy would you pay $100k to stop people driving their cars?
- renewiltord 3y agoI just feel like it and I have the money. What cause will have you pay $28 to stop but not $29? Lunch for two at The Bird?
- pcthrowaway 3y ago> I will pay $100k today so that everyone in the USA can no longer drive their cars. It's nice to know that you'd happily pay a sum of money you're capable of paying to ensure ambulances can't get their patients to a hospital, people can't drive their wives in labor to have the baby delivered, trucks can't transport medicine between cities, farmers have no efficient way to get their food distributed once harvested.
- renewiltord 3y agoIf God has said that you are to die, then who is a doctor to challenge that? I will gladly pay $100k to support God's will but I won't pay $100,001.
- aembleton 3y agoAmbulances and trucks aren't cars. They'd be able to move around easier without cars taking up space.
- jawns 3y agoOne of the contributing factors here is that we keep calling these "social networks," but that's not really what they're being used for. If you look at an average user's feed, it probably breaks down into 30% traditional advertising, 20% nontraditional advertising (via influencers and friends shilling for their employers and promoting their side hustles), 30% content by people they have no social relationship with (celebrities, etc.), 15% low-quality posts from acquaintances, and 5% content from legitimate friends. That is a whole lot of junk to have to sift through just to get the occasional scrap of legitimate social interaction. These are advertising networks first, and social networks a distant second, even though they ostensibly involve social graphs. So I can understand the fatigue people feel about having to scroll and scroll and scroll just to stay in the loop with people they have an existing social relationship with and genuinely want to know what's going on in their lives.
- Wowfunhappy 3y agoDo people really use TikTok to keep up with their friends? I'd think it's mostly for pure entertainment, like Youtube or even MTV (the TV channel).
- intrasight 3y agoExactly. I don't care what my friends do on Netflix or Youtube or TikTok or even Instagram. My life and those of my friends don't much intersect with the digital video entertainment we consume. Facebook and text messages are where I interact with friends. On neither do I see non-friend stuff nor ads (I use FB on desktop with filters)
- 673457e347 3y agoSpeaking as a 33 year old with a freshly 18 year old sibling I'd say TikTok fills a similar niche to YouTube. You aren't really chatting on TikTok even if some people might post. What you're most likely doing is finding videos which you then share via another medium like Discord. Discord+YouTube+TikTok is a huge thing with younger netizens (and of course gamers in the case of Discord). YouTube is still popular but TikTok is less censored (this is probably the wrong word since YouTube has edgy content, but it seems to recommend more sanitized content than TikTok which most heavy users I've known agree has a much better/unrestrained recommendation algorithm). So saying people use TikTok directly to keep up with their friends might not be the full picture. But I'd still say for many people TikTok plays a role in keeping up with your friends in that trading TikTok finds is a popular activity for many friends.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- spacebacon 3y agoIt’s easy to deactivate. Many networks (ie LinkedIn) simply reactivate the account upon login. The price to delete forever and never look back will be higher. $0 is my price.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Lamad1234 3y ago[dead]
- blindriver 3y agoI watch TikTok and read reddit religiously because I'm in my 50s, and I need to make sure I can understand what is relevant to the younger people I work with. Also understanding memes, etc. so that I don't get too old with my thinking.
- jncfhnb 3y agoAs a 20-something guy I can’t imagine this strategy working
- blindriver 3y agoIt actually works great. I'm not going around saying "hello fellow young people, did you see the top post on reddit?" but it's good enough so that I'm not clueless as to what's being said in our chat rooms and I can comment.
- antisthenes 3y agoYour work chat rooms are filled with discussion of reddit posts and tik-tok? I just struggle to see how your strategy makes any sense or what the purpose of it even is.
- Woshiwuja 3y agosounds like their work chat is mainly populated by younger people and he wants to just understand the context of the memes, chill out
- antisthenes 3y agoCap bro, chill your rizz.
- Woshiwuja 3y agook..?
- 1letterunixname 3y agoSometimes, I wear a T-shirt that shows someone snorting a line of apps with a razor blade and a mirror nearby. Addicts are addicts. Perhaps, it's a socially-acceptable form of addiction with personal, interpersonal, etc. tolls nonetheless.
- vimax 3y agoLink to the shirt?
- marttt 3y agoInterestingly, in Some Smaller Democratic Countries, Facebook may function as the essential platform for society-level political discussion. In my Small Country, government members have made relevant statements first via their social media accounts, not via journalism. Most public intellectuals here seem to have a FB account, and a probably increasing amount of discussions in "real journalism" actually stem from some FB thread that went out of hand. I find this really interesting sociologically, because at the algorithms level, this means that political discussion in A Small Society is actually curated or influenced under-the-hood by a US-based Megacorp. Basically, if you're not on FB in My Small Society, you're missing out a good deal of political discussion. There have been attempts of building local, homemade online environments for political discussion in my country, but these haven't really taken off, because, well, everybody's already on Facebook, including politicians. My only hope is that FB will become increasingly annoying to use because of their ad policies, and maybe this would cause more people to abandon the platform and build homemade alternatives on their own. IMO all kinds of decentralised Smolnet-like things might have good potential for political discussion in Small Societies, but maybe they're still waiting for their time. Quite possibly, simply waiting for the next generation of users -- that are more touchy about the technical, surveilliance and algorithm-level details of online discussions.
- nonstopdev 3y agoThe only thing I miss from being only a HackerNews/X user is birthdays and events. As adults realize more and more people are not daily Facebook users, invites has gone back to other platforms like eVite but overall, the lack of seeing the latest TikTok trend is much better mentally and productivity wise than endlessly scrolling through content I don’t care about.