4 ms·

Should HN have addiction warning labels?

Spivak 2y ago
This website is known by the state of California to cause flamewars.
vundercind 2y ago
HN isn’t social media. No endless and ever-changing personalized algo-feed showing me stuff I didn’t ask for to try to keep me “engaged”. No alerts. No social graph at the center of it. No “friends” or “follows”. It’s missing enough of the things that characterize social media that it’s unambiguously not in that category. [edit] however, separately: yes, it should :-)
- _proofs 2y ago
  HN is absolutely social media, it's just attempting to blend aggregator with online forum. you can network, dm, and users who post frequently are often recognized here. you can doom-scroll as much as anywhere else whether it be in the feed or in the comments (so long as you don't have a bias towards different mediums like video). and also while it might not meet your criteria for social media algorithmically or otherwise, an algorithm is not necessary for someone to engage with the internet in unhealthy ways. the surface area for emotional damage is just different. and that doesn't imply HN is some special place where the only users engaging here are "emotionally well" in both their engagement/usage, and in their personal. and speaking as someone intimately familiar with relevant behaviors and presentations, the algorithm exerts influence and exploits, but it is ultimately not the RCA -- it's just like a drug dependency for someone with maladaptive coping mechanisms -- the drug isn't "the problem", it's a symptom, and the "drug dealer" is taking advantage of it. side-thought: it always makes me wonder if people manufacturing and distributing what i see as a "need" for social media, while employing HOOKED marketing dopamine strategies to establish said need in its users, ever ask themselves: is this a net-good? should i be doing more with my life? is this harmful? imagine being a demonstrably great mind and seemingly great person, but working somewhere like FB or IG or TikTok and applying every ounce of your intelligence to maximize user engagement.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    I think a lot of your side-thought basically comes down to the fact that there's an overabundance of qualified people who have to choose between a career that's personally fulfilling and pays like shit, and someone who never wants to worry about money again and seeing something like Facebook being the way to ensure they don't have to. Personally, IMHO, if we want more people to have fulfilling careers that are a net-gain for society, we need to foster an economy that finds that valuable and will pay for it as such, instead of seemingly, almost intentionally, placing personal fulfillment/net-good for society on the polar opposite end of what pays well.
- stickfigure 2y ago
  That's rubbish. HN has an algo-feed, it has public profiles (and if you stick around here, you start to recognize people), and there are plenty of ways of following other people (hell, you can see everyone's comment and post history). Hell, HN even has a "social credit score" - which is published on your profile. HN is unambiguously social and unambiguously media.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    You have just defined social media to include a multiuser UNIX shell server. Among other things. I get how people arrive at that kind of place—“social” and “media” cover so very much, singly and together, so, what’s not social media?—but if we define it that way, it’s uselessly broad because it doesn’t exclude enough. Also, it includes tons of sites that pre-date (or are similar to sites that pre-date) the term “social media”, and aren’t the kind of thing the term was coined to refer to, like HN. Why even have the term?
    - squigz 2y ago
      Okay so... what is social media, then?
      - vundercind 2y ago
        Strong focus on a social graph (this is the part that brought “social” into the phrase), follows, re-sharing, personalized feeds that make selections largely to increase engagement. Some of these I mentioned my first post. They’re major elements that characterize social media, and distinguish it from other things that are social, are media, or are both (but aren’t “social media”—the thing the term refers to, which is different and distinctive enough that it’s nice to have a label for it)
        stickfigure 2y ago
        This sounds a lot like trying to define assault weapons. There are a few features you don't like (which many people do) so any website with too many of those features is Evil. Though I suspect it's more emotional. Is Whatsapp social media? What about email lists? I'm also curious to know what you think of HN's "social credit score".
nonameiguess 2y ago
It's a warning about associations with anxiety, suicidal ideations, and other mental health issues, not addiction. But seemingly news in general, not just Hacker News, has been shown to have negative mental health effects and no legislature I'm aware of has ever tried to get news providers to add a warning label that reading the news might make you sad, distressed, afraid, anxious, and whatever else it does.

This website is known by the state of California to cause flamewars.

HN isn’t social media. No endless and ever-changing personalized algo-feed showing me stuff I didn’t ask for to try to keep me “engaged”. No alerts. No social graph at the center of it. No “friends” or “follows”. It’s missing enough of the things that characterize social media that it’s unambiguously not in that category. [edit] however, separately: yes, it should :-)

_proofs 2y ago
HN is absolutely social media, it's just attempting to blend aggregator with online forum. you can network, dm, and users who post frequently are often recognized here. you can doom-scroll as much as anywhere else whether it be in the feed or in the comments (so long as you don't have a bias towards different mediums like video). and also while it might not meet your criteria for social media algorithmically or otherwise, an algorithm is not necessary for someone to engage with the internet in unhealthy ways. the surface area for emotional damage is just different. and that doesn't imply HN is some special place where the only users engaging here are "emotionally well" in both their engagement/usage, and in their personal. and speaking as someone intimately familiar with relevant behaviors and presentations, the algorithm exerts influence and exploits, but it is ultimately not the RCA -- it's just like a drug dependency for someone with maladaptive coping mechanisms -- the drug isn't "the problem", it's a symptom, and the "drug dealer" is taking advantage of it. side-thought: it always makes me wonder if people manufacturing and distributing what i see as a "need" for social media, while employing HOOKED marketing dopamine strategies to establish said need in its users, ever ask themselves: is this a net-good? should i be doing more with my life? is this harmful? imagine being a demonstrably great mind and seemingly great person, but working somewhere like FB or IG or TikTok and applying every ounce of your intelligence to maximize user engagement.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  I think a lot of your side-thought basically comes down to the fact that there's an overabundance of qualified people who have to choose between a career that's personally fulfilling and pays like shit, and someone who never wants to worry about money again and seeing something like Facebook being the way to ensure they don't have to. Personally, IMHO, if we want more people to have fulfilling careers that are a net-gain for society, we need to foster an economy that finds that valuable and will pay for it as such, instead of seemingly, almost intentionally, placing personal fulfillment/net-good for society on the polar opposite end of what pays well.
stickfigure 2y ago
That's rubbish. HN has an algo-feed, it has public profiles (and if you stick around here, you start to recognize people), and there are plenty of ways of following other people (hell, you can see everyone's comment and post history). Hell, HN even has a "social credit score" - which is published on your profile. HN is unambiguously social and unambiguously media.
- vundercind 2y ago
  You have just defined social media to include a multiuser UNIX shell server. Among other things. I get how people arrive at that kind of place—“social” and “media” cover so very much, singly and together, so, what’s not social media?—but if we define it that way, it’s uselessly broad because it doesn’t exclude enough. Also, it includes tons of sites that pre-date (or are similar to sites that pre-date) the term “social media”, and aren’t the kind of thing the term was coined to refer to, like HN. Why even have the term?
  - squigz 2y ago
    Okay so... what is social media, then?
    - vundercind 2y ago
      Strong focus on a social graph (this is the part that brought “social” into the phrase), follows, re-sharing, personalized feeds that make selections largely to increase engagement. Some of these I mentioned my first post. They’re major elements that characterize social media, and distinguish it from other things that are social, are media, or are both (but aren’t “social media”—the thing the term refers to, which is different and distinctive enough that it’s nice to have a label for it)
      - stickfigure 2y ago
        This sounds a lot like trying to define assault weapons. There are a few features you don't like (which many people do) so any website with too many of those features is Evil. Though I suspect it's more emotional. Is Whatsapp social media? What about email lists? I'm also curious to know what you think of HN's "social credit score".

nonameiguess 2y ago

It's a warning about associations with anxiety, suicidal ideations, and other mental health issues, not addiction. But seemingly news in general, not just Hacker News, has been shown to have negative mental health effects and no legislature I'm aware of has ever tried to get news providers to add a warning label that reading the news might make you sad, distressed, afraid, anxious, and whatever else it does.