9 ms·

I say this as someone who was in high school as the first wave of social media sites (early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc.) came up: Just get rid of all of the

I say this as someone who was in high school as the first wave of social media sites (early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc.) came up: Just get rid of all of them. They're battery acid poured on the human psyche. Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. If you have to combine your online interactions with people with the interactions you have with them in real life, you're better off, and that doesn't happen when social networks span the globe.

palata 2y ago
I understand your point, but I don't think it works like that for teenagers. Teenagers need to connect. They will go where the others go, because that's exactly what matters to them. It's not that they deliberately want the addiction. The addiction is a consequence of it, but they go to TikTok because their peers are on TikTok.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  They can connect in person. Like they did exclusively up until the mid 00s. I think peers is also a strange word to use. When I joined Facebook in 2007 you were more-or-less sorted by where you went to high school. You connected with people you knew. I'm sure that still exists on some level, but social media is now about driving engagement with people who pay these companies to get eyeballs. An influencer isn't your peer. It's like considering Billy Mays (may he rest in peace) your peer in 2007. No, he's a dude who sold you Oxy-Clean, but he was on TV a lot.
  - palata 2y ago
    > social media is now about driving engagement with people who pay these companies to get eyeballs That's what it is, but that's not how teenagers perceive it, I think. I see it like this: if all your friends watch the news everyday and spend a lot of time talking about it, you will end up watching the news as well. To connect. If all your friends watch a lot of sport and meet for that, you may well end up learning to enjoy sport as well. If all your friends know the trends on TikTok and talk about it...
  - throw2827374 2y ago
    I was bullied in high school because I was so different. I was also a new kid so it was hard to join an existing clique in a small town. Online groups saved me. It not only let me stay in contact with my old friends, but also let me meet new people with similar interest so I didn't feel so alone.
    - shlant 2y ago
      I don't think your story is uncommon especially for people who had trouble fitting in, however I would bet that places like facebook or instagram were not where you found your online groups. More likely to have been forums or online games. Very different environments and consequences.
    - sampullman 2y ago
      Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. have mostly killed off the places where online groups formed when I was a kid.
      - don_neufeld 2y ago
        Exactly. Subject specific forums and blogs are just ghost towns these days.
      - IncreasePosts 2y ago
        Reddit seems just like every forum, but with a mostly default skin
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Facebook is not "online groups", and it is known to statistically lead teenagers into higher rates of suicide.
  - ThatMedicIsASpy 2y ago
    Connect in person as a teen when everything is designed around cars and stuff a lot more expensive. Where cops arrested for you for loitering. Where people see kids going home from school as 'they're up to no good'. A lot of the past locations are gone and no longer accessible for todays youth. Even fast food places want you gone as fast as possible.
- dailykoder 2y ago
  >Teenagers need to connect. But not in a tiktok-way. They have more than enough social contacts when they go to school. No one need tiktok.
  - palata 2y ago
    > No one need tiktok. And we should not underestimate teenagers: if they have something better to do than swiping on TikTok, they do it. Parents must help them have better things to do. But still, if all their friends know and talk about the TikTok trends, they will feel disconnected if they have no clue. That's how I meant that they "need" it. They need to "connect" as in having the same references as their friends.
    - cj 2y ago
      That’s kind of like telling parents that they should tell their kids to eat their vegetables when sitting next to McDonalds.
      - jkestner 2y ago
        Yes, and? Parenting is an active job. It can be done. Take a lesson from Steve Jobs and say "no" a lot.
        1718627440 2y ago
        And Mark Zuckerburg.
      - lukan 2y ago
        Nah, it is more like parents telling their children to eat healthy, while they themself go to McDonalds. Most parents are addicted to smartphone and don't go with their children outside. I would start the investigation into root causes right there.
        palata 2y ago
- lolinder 2y ago
  So if theoretically you ban addictive social media platforms and prevent the formation of any platform with more than a million users, then yes, teenagers will go where their peers go, but that will not necessarily be where teenagers on the other side of the country go. It will also not necessarily be a destructive algorithm-oriented social network designed to maximize time spent viewing ads. My friend group had a phpBB forum back in the day. I spent hours on there because I liked hanging out with that group of friends, not because it was profitable for some megacorp.
  - shlant 2y ago
    yea I don't think people are grasping how different places like Myspace or forums or online games are compared to modern social media.
- don_neufeld 2y ago
  Social media is not connection.
- lm28469 2y ago
  How do you explain the children/teenager loneliness spike since ~2008-2010 if these things are the pinnacle of connection ?
  - palata 2y ago
    I didn't want to imply that those things are the pinnacle of connection. I rather wanted to say that it's easier said than done. You can't just tell teenagers "stop using social media, it's bad for you". Because if their peers use social media, then they need to use social media as well. I'm all for removing social media altogether.
tempworkac 2y ago
why? you don't have to use them. should HN be banned?
- zzzeek 2y ago
  hacker news has a lot of ideological community problems but HN is not "massively centralized", it's just a narrow window into the US tech scene with a relatively small community of people. I think there's a great argument that says the first amendment is not a suicide pact. The social media environment right now is having an unprecedented destructive effect on US democracy. I think TikTok is right there as a key player in spreading weapons-grade, state-sponsored mush to younger people.
  - tempworkac 2y ago
    but HN is centralized, so you agree if HN exceeds some arbitrary amount of users it should be banned? how ridiculous. tiktok is not any better or worse than facebook, youtube, or the mainstream media.
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      Hell, I'd make that arbitrary amount 300. That's about the number of social connections the human brain is really meant to handle.
    - spencerflem 2y ago
      Its worse for the US Govt in that they cannot secretly ask them to control what gets seen
  - suraci 2y ago
    TBO, TikTok and Twitter are far more diverse than HN, which is merely an echo chamber, only slightly better than a subreddit. Although I like HN more than TikTok, it's so funny
    - AlexandrB 2y ago
joewhale 2y ago
Idk Xanga was peak non toxic social media. Pretty much just blogging. I miss it.
- soupfordummies 2y ago
  Yeah that and LiveJournal. And then it just kept going down from there in terms of self-expression, effort, quality, personal, actually-SOCIAL-media, etc. "Social media" went from blogging and commenting with your friends and others to watching videos of ads interspersed with random memes and shit. Quite a slide.
recroad 2y ago
[flagged]
- hairy_callous 2y ago
  [flagged]
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  > Most of all, it’s so ironic that in America, which is supposed to be the bastion of free speech, is banning something that is so valuable for many people. This sort of confirms what I had feared for a few years now: that Americans don’t really want to be free or have free speech. What in the law, exactly, would prevent the things you discussed from being spoken about on another online platform?
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > What in the law, exactly, would prevent the things you discussed from being spoken about on another online platform? Let me expand this: what in the law prevents someone from going to TikTok.com and seeing the same content? The ban is on (a) apps in the app stores and (b) hosting by American companies. It’s not sanctioning TikTok à la Huawei.
    - lossolo 2y ago
      In May 2019, the U.S. government placed Huawei on the Entity List, which restricted American companies from doing business with it without a special license. This included Google, which meant Huawei lost access to the licensed version of Android and key Google services, including the Google Play Store. As a result, Huawei could no longer pre-install Google apps like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and other essential services that many users in Western markets rely on. Huawei was once a strong competitor in Europe challenging Apple, Samsung, and other manufacturers. It effectively limited Huawei's competitiveness in Western markets and diminished its momentum when it was at the peak of its challenge to Apple and Samsung. The same will happen with TikTok in the U.S. Under the umbrella of national security, competition is being sidelined.
VyseofArcadia 2y ago
I feel like the actual big difference between social media when we were in high school (hello age cohort pal) and social media now is the algorithmic feed. There was a time when you'd have a couple dozen friends on Facebook, who were people you actually know in real life, and you'd check Facebook, read you feed in chronological order, and then reach the end. Like with email. The algorithmic feed, in addition to time spent on social media, has also intensified online discourse in a way that I believe to be harmful to society. What people see now is not the most recent things their friends were posting, no matter how banal, but whatever it is that the algorithm judges most engaging. Truth doesn't matter. Now the conspiracy theories and weird new age shit that your one hippy friend posted constantly have an audience. That kind of thing is engaging, so it floats to the top. I'd be perfectly fine with just banning social media altogether. Never before in history has the value of a barrier to entry to publishing something been more apparent. But as a compromise, I would accept banning the algorithmic feed.
- Rooster61 2y ago
  > I feel like the actual big difference between social media when we were in high school (hello age cohort pal) and social media now is the algorithmic feed. Bringo. The day Facebook implemented the feed as the main page rather than the original homepage was the day social media went sideways. It's little more than a Skinner box with a bright candy coating and it has just gotten more egregious over time. It's right on the tin, "Feed". I'd be interested to see how much R&D budget has gone into hiring persons in the field of psychology to tweak the dopamine treadmill over time.
  - JohnMakin 2y ago
    I distinctly remember when the chronological timeline was done away with, people were extremely pissed.
    - chatmasta 2y ago
      I remember the day they introduced the chronological newsfeed! People were pissed about that. Nobody wanted a list of all their wall posts to be published to everyone who could see them. Prior to newsfeed, FB was obviously an N-N platform, but the interactions were more 1-1. You used the network to find and connect, but you interacted with individuals (on their wall). The newsfeed tipped the focus toward 1-N interactions, and direct messages solidified that (no more wall posts).
jstummbillig 2y ago
> They're battery acid poured on the human psyche. At least as far as kids are concerned, current evidence does not readily support this common believe. Sabine Hossenfelder writes: "The idea that social media causes children mental health distress is plausible, but unfortunately it isn’t true. Trouble is, if you read what the press has written about it, you wouldn’t know. Scientists have described it as a “moral panic” that isn’t backed by data, which has been promoted most prominently by one man: Jonathan Haidt." Video for more insight, if you are interested: https://youtu.be/V95Vg2pVlo0 https://youtu.be/V95Vg2pVlo0
- paulddraper 2y ago
  What is causing the record level of mental health disorders in children?
  - miragecraft 2y ago
    Other children.
  - Jean-Papoulos 2y ago
    Actually getting kids tested for them.
    - persedes 2y ago
      You can argue for more increased self-reporting, but suicide rates are going up too.
      - paulddraper 2y ago
        To support this: https://www.charliehealth.com/research/the-us-teen-suicide-rate-is-on-the-rise https://www.charliehealth.com/research/the-us-teen-suicide-r... According to the CDC, teen suicide rate is up over 33% from 1999. (Obviously, social media doesn't have to be the only cause. But something is producing a material difference and it's hard to say social media isn't a leading one.)
coliveira 2y ago
The problem is not the social network in itself, but the fact that companies are manipulating what you see to maximize the bad aspects of the network. Companies should have strict limits on the kind of algorithms they use to generate a feed.
- le-mark 2y ago
  Recently I’ve been imaging a world where social media algorithms were tuned to help people instead of “driving engagement” with ever more outrage bait. Oh you’re watching clips about machining and by your data profile you’re an uneducated adult? Here are some trade school, financial assistance, and self help links to nudge you toward a better life! What a world that would be.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - emseetech 2y ago
    Doesn't China's national TikTok equivalent do that? I'm fine with going back to 100% chronological feeds. Show events as they happen and don't put a hand on the scale. That's how social networks usually build their base then they switch to an algorithmic feed to satisfy advertisers once their user base is big enough.
  - tsunamifury 2y ago
    “We will teach you to be free”
eunos 2y ago
For all complains of the toxicity of the platforms. For now, the contents over there are written by your fellow human (maybe AI in a few years). Just focussing on platform closure for me indicates that we resigned from fixing our fellow folks.
- nullc 2y ago
  But it's not the "folks" that are the factor, generally. The mechanisms of many major social media platforms actively amplify the worst aspects of the worst people, while suppressing the best parts of the best. Someone put the microphone too close to the speaker. As the feedback rings our ears someone reaches out for the power switch. Do you call out "but the start of the feedback was the music from the band, turning it off won't fix the band"? :)
  - eunos 2y ago
    Assuming that social media is an evolution of traditional media. The traditional media loves to chase negative news (If it bleeds, it leads) and we let that happen (muh free speech!). So it is logical that social media amplified the negativity of society, coupled with algorithms evolution and instant broadcasting the impact is amplified. Fck around and find out I guess.
    - codr7 2y ago
      Yep, I'm very careful what kind of content I feed my subconscious these days. Watching news is like begging for nightmares, and most of it's made up anyways.
- RiverCrochet 2y ago
  > we resigned from fixing our fellow folks We have. It's A) too expensive, and B) we can't agree on what "fixed" looks like. "Think of the children" type scare-legislation is going to fill this void.
sneak 2y ago
Please stop advocating for censorship and authoritarianism. This is the USA, we don’t do that here. (Except when we do, as in this terrible case, but it’s not what we are about.) If you don’t like them, don’t use them. Don’t force other people to share your views and opinions. We like social media and choose every day to continue to use it. App bans are simply state censorship, nothing more. It’s a real shame we don’t have methods of sideloading to bypass such idiocy on the part of the USG and the chokepoints at Apple and Google. At least tiktok.com will still work.
- VMG 2y ago
  I read it as a personal recommendation to delete the apps, not as an appeal to ban them for everybody
- zeroonetwothree 2y ago
  What content is being censored? Creators are free to post their videos on other platforms. Also note that the law doesn’t force TikTok to shut down, it requires divestment. The fact that they choose not to divest says a lot about how they view the platform.
  - LawrenceKerr 2y ago
    The comment they are replying to suggests taking down all the major social media networks by government force ("Just get rid of all of them"). Arguably, even if you are not prohibiting the content itself, if you take away the means for your content to spread far & wide, that's the same as censorship. I find this quite disturbing.
InDubioProRubio 2y ago
You can not because the money invested into this is to large. Same with AI - half of which is used to build a personal cheerleader/ hype-train for everyone using those apps now. If you want to end that, you need to actively sabotage it, by creating fake users who eat resources for not add-revenue. Feeding crack to children has to become economically unviable for the world to change.
nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
> early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc. This was really a fun time and it was a whole new vista for interaction. It was really something to enter a new age. That feeling didn't last long, but I still got value from Facebook until the early 2010s.
- noboostforyou 2y ago
  FB Marketplace is definitely the best way to buy and sell anything locally. Of course you will have to filter through the usual flakers and what not but that was always the case since craigslist days. But for actual social media? Burn it all down lol
  - nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
    People say that, but I've long since abandoned my FB account and sinkhole facebook domains. I miss CragisList for that. Used it a lot a decade ago.
  - teeray 2y ago
    >FB Marketplace is definitely the best way to buy and sell anything locally I really wish they had some kind of auction component to deal with multiple interested parties / reduce flakers, but I imagine eBay has some crappy software patent that they wield with an iron fist.
    - Hasu 2y ago
      > I really wish they had some kind of auction component to deal with multiple interested parties / reduce flakers, but I imagine eBay has some crappy software patent that they wield with an iron fist. Facebook Ads has auctions for selling ad slots. They have the technology, they just reserve it for their real customers.
  - The_Colonel 2y ago
    Facebook groups is also a decent way to build communities. Honestly, Facebook without the push for reels / videos isn't that bad. (now you can crucify me)
ixtli 2y ago
I think around here people will all agree with you, the problem is that in practice this isn't at any level about cleaning up peoples experience of each other. it's economic protectionism injected with yellow-scare nonsense reminiscent of the 20th century. they're gleefully making the large ones worse while closing down anything which doesn't benefit US oligarchs
vanillax 2y ago
The real issue with Facebook is the inability to tune easily. One of the reasons I use Instagram and Threads is because I feel I can easily tune the algorithm with likes. I can keep up with my friends via stories. I dont need to post on my "wall" stupid stuff like the beer im drinking. Instagram + Stories feels like the best medium to see what my friends are upto with short stories and images. The explore feed can be tuned so I get content and threads fills the void on X and its terrible algorithms. I agree, "deleting" facebook or simple just leave it on deprecated mode and never use it besides market place is the best thing you can do. I dont give a crap what person's political view is and dont need to see a news feed based on triggers.
- echelon 2y ago
  The real issue with Facebook is that they help precipitate the TikTok ban [1]. Not that TikTok should have stayed, but the fact that Meta was pushing for this and now stands to benefit massively should be concerning. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...
- navbaker 2y ago
  I love that I can have multiple profiles in IG and Threads, each tuned like you talked about for a specific interest of mine with no cross-pollination
jmyeet 2y ago
This is a trite (and arguably silly) comment bordering on neo-Luddism. The genie is out of the bottle. There's really no going back. Worse, it's treating symptoms as the problem. We, as a society, deify hyper-individualism. This is to such an extreme that people actually in completely and utterly selfish ways are glorified and celebrated because "freedom". Social media happened after we destroyed community and any sense of collectivism. Unhealthy social media habits are a consequence of that. They didn't cause it. Where once you needed just one job to live, you now need 5. Every aspect of our lives is financialized. We spend 30 years working to the bone to pay for a house that cost 1/10th what it did 30 years ago. The high costs of housing have destroyed all the so-called "third places". Federating services does nothing to the core problem here. I find HN's obsession with federation, which literally solves zero problems for users and creates a bunch of problems, bizarre and out-of-touch. The problem is capitalism.
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  What practical alternative do you propose to capitalism?
raincole 2y ago
The more you ban, the more "centralized" and "massive" the platforms you don't ban get. Unless you literally ban everything. One has to be extremely naive to think Google (youtube) lobbyists didn't play a role in this Tiktok ban.
- echelon 2y ago
  Meta certainly lobbied for a TikTok ban: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...
  - nprateem 2y ago
    Ah so that's why he's sucking up to trump now.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Big things aren't necessarily centralized, and you can replace big things with lots of small ones.
beAbU 2y ago
> Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. Herein lies the rub. How do you decide what the threshold is? Who gets to decide what that threshold is, and how do you do it without inviting accusations of regulatory capture? If you make it blanket all social networks, then things like discord and even public slack orgs will inadvertently become collateral damage. If you make it focussed on only a few large ones, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, then something else will pop up to take it's place. It'll become a game of whack-a-mole. Users are supposedly already migrating in droves to some other TikTok clone. I'm not really sure what the solution is though. Regulate the shit out of it to the extent where it becomes a government-provided utility or something? The reality is people want social media because they are addicted to it. Getting rid of social media will be like the war on drugs: completely ineffective. The danger here is that the drug is very easy to create, impossible to control and extremely lucrative.
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  Require human moderation. That naturally limits scale.
  - mmcdermott 2y ago
    > Require human moderation. That naturally limits scale. Does it? Does a human need to examine everything posted? You can certainly send letters without them going through a human moderator. Only what is flagged by a scanner? What if nothing is flagged? What should be flagged?
    - rad_gruchalski 2y ago
      > Does it? Does a human need to examine everything posted? You can certainly send letters without them going through a human moderator. Because those are two orthogonal things. You aren’t sending a letter to be displayed by everyone and their dog on this planet to see.
      - mmcdermott 2y ago
giancarlostoro 2y ago
I'm in favor of letting people pay for their own smaller instances, like something Facebook esque, and you can invite all your relatives. They can join your instance. But someone (or maybe its a group effort) has to pay for it. Zero ads, just friends and family. I've thought about this a lot. I don't think I'll ever build it (I have another idea in the works consuming all my time), but I'll go a step further and share my other thought on it: The less they use it, the less they should pay for using it. So if your goal is to keep up with relatives via sharing photos / videos, you can do that, and bug right out. So now there's a financial incentive to use it less, but it serves its purpose, like email.
- nprateem 2y ago
  This won't help with the dopamine craving. Most peoples' actual friends can't produce enough content. The sooner we treat it as an addiction the faster we'll think of treatments.
- philote 2y ago
  Smaller instance can become big. Say you set up a small instance and invite your family. Then family members want to invite their family, or friends, or whomever. How do you manage that? I think the answer is what we see with Mastodon, etc. and that's federated/distributed social networks.
  - tmpz22 2y ago
    A restaurant can become big. Say you have a food critic showcase your restaurant and hundreds of people show up. How could we possibly deal with this problem without the aid of the smartest, most amazing, totally really smart, awesome at leet code, software engineers?
supriyo-biswas 2y ago
This is how you end up with the UK's Online Safety Act. And personally, I'd prefer to have international networks where you can get exposed to different opinions; my life would be in an objectively worse place if I had only had the opinions of the people of my country to go off of.
erentz 2y ago
First, people say things like they can't not use Facebook because it has marketplace, etc. shows there has clearly been an issue of not enforcing any kind of anti-trust laws for the past 20 years since US v Microsoft in the browser wars days. The FTC over the past four years has taken a turn here and is starting to do that work again, it's slow but it needs to continue. Second, these companies behave as publishers without any of the responsibilities/liability. This has to stop. If you publish just a chronological feed that's one thing. But when you algorithmically decide what people see when, and now introduce your own AI bots into the mix, you're 100% a publisher and need to be legally responsible for it. That legislation needs to be updated to reflect this. Third, much of the root issues stem from advertising. These companies are driven to get and keep as much of your attention as possible simply so they can sell that attention to advertisers. If we all paid for it, the design of these services would be different. I'm not sure how to tackle that but it seems a start is privacy legislation to prohibit user tracking and sale or sharing of personal data.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- braiamp 2y ago
  > First, people say things like they can't not use Facebook because it has marketplace, etc. shows there has clearly been an issue of not enforcing any kind of anti-trust laws for the past 20 years since US v Microsoft in the browser wars days. Europe is in some capacity doing that. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/facebook-marketplace-to-display-ebay-listings-to-appease-eu-regulators/ar-AA1xbdEl https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/facebook-marketplace-t...
- firefax 2y ago
  I deleted my Facebook in 2016, and when I tried to create a new one they banned me as "inauthentic". I've seen people complain about the site demanding a government ID scan, but I'd have been willing to prove I am who I am if given the chance. Now I can't delete my Instagram, which I was using FB SSO for. They ocassionally send me marketing emails that I might want to engage with so and so's content. How, when you nuked my goddamn account for no reason? Anyways, if I had the money I'd short them -- they seem to be completely unconcerned with the few who'd consider giving them a second chance. As for Tik Tok, as with Telegram having it's servers in Russia, I think the real issue is the data is in control of the PRC, rather than whinings about "fake news" -- people have consumed supermarket check out drivel like the Weekly World News for years, it's just moved online.
misiti3780 2y ago
They 100% are - I fantasize about world in which they dont exist.
quelup 2y ago
There's a lot of issues with social media - I don't think anyone denies that. But not everyone thinks like the HN crew. What about the millions of users who actually enjoy FB and use it to connect with friends and family? To pretend that use case doesn't exist seems naive and biased. There's a reason these companies are so big - some people actually like them. Maybe they're the naive ones and we need to save them from themselves, but I don't think it's that black and white.
- vineyardmike 2y ago
  I want to respect the user here, but also they need to be saved. The companies are big because they’re advertising machines with intense targeting abilities, which makes for a great place for advertisers to spend money. Plenty of people enjoy Facebook, and plenty of people enjoy drugs and gambling and all sorts of destructive behaviors that many nations regulate. I think we can recognize that it can be fun and have utility, while still being dangerous or problematic. If you had to convince people to pay for Facebook as a subscription, would people use it the same way? Would they still find utility there? Would they prefer a competitor? I have a facebook account from my college days, but I don’t use it and neither does most of my network. My parents, despite being deeply suspicious and tech-savvy have started using it more and more to “connect” with family. In reality, I’ve seen their usage and it’s mostly generic groups and memes and similar stuff. I suspect that most people experience the same reality, and respectfully, I think society can survive without that. To postulate, I think there are a million “better” ways to connect with friends and family, but I also think that there’s no one App that can do everything for everyone. My extended family bought a dozen smart picture frames, and everyone adds photos to a joint account we all share, and that has replaced a social feed for pics of kids/grandkids. I think people would be better served finding what works for them and letting it be bespoke to their family/friends.
intended 2y ago
The early waves of most communities is 'better'. Strangely this is really consistent, even if you've been on sites quite a bit. One of the rules of moderation I believe in, is that the workload depends on the nature of the people in your community. Oh, so communities follow the rules of subculture founding and decline ??? So there should be a point where things that were not cool, become cool again?
draw_down 2y ago
[dead]
madeofpalk 2y ago
What are you actually saying? The government should make these websites illegal? I like tiktok. I scroll for a bit in the morning and watch some funny videos. Who are you to say that's immoral and shouldn't happen?
- spokaneplumb 2y ago
  The government’s banned owning media with too much reach before, placing limits on audience size per owner. We no longer know how to actually govern the country, but it used to be entirely possible.
mk89 2y ago
basically go back to old SMF/php forums with maximum 100s of known people. I thought about this recently… It was really better times. Even decentralized mastodon is too big and it makes it far too easy to post BS and hateful / unhealthy stuff. Plus there are far too many posts you can’t relate to or just don’t want to read („algorithm“ or not), without even mentioning the bubble effect, much worse there than on X to be honest. Smaller communities which you can connect to /disconnect from plus a good combo of RSS feeds to get news. That’s probably it.
- krainboltgreene 2y ago
  > basically go back to old SMF/php forums with maximum 100s of known people. I thought about this recently… It was really better times. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume this is how you grew up?
  - raincole 2y ago
    It's simply a better model to connected online. I use present tense because the "better times" didn't really go away: it becomes Discord servers. The bad part, of course, is that Discord is owned by one single entity and not indexed like the open web is.
  - mk89 2y ago
    Kind of, yeah. IRC, simple php forums, no TLS, easy stuff. Nowadays we're full of technology and very poor content. In no way can mastodon (mentioning because it's the defacto decentralized social media) solve that problem. It's really easy to post stuff that shouldn't be posted. On the other hand, crappy looking forums, slow internet connection, you really had to take the time to think about what to say and mainly why say it in the first place. It was more about the content than about quantity.
  - supersanity 2y ago
    I did, and it truly was better. Threaded forums are far better at facilitating complex discussions, organizing information, and making the information accessible. Today, most communication is happening inside the walled gardens of Facebook, Discord, etc. That information is effectively being lost rather than being neatly organized and easily searchable.
bparsons 2y ago
I think 90% of the negative social impacts would go away if they just did reverse chronological, opt-in news feed. The black box algorithms are the problem.
p3rls 2y ago
Whoa there bro didn't you see Zuckeberg's latest podcast, he built facebook to bring people together! He paid good money for that corporate beastie boy makeover too-- show some damn respect.
INTPenis 2y ago
First wave? You must have missed yahoo groups. And of course someone will reply to this and mention usenet.
redactd 2y ago
The literal terminology we use to refer to them directly correlates with their slide. They were "Social Networks" and were all about the network effect of having a connection to people IRL reflected online. That meant you could also go additional links out. They are now "Social Media" and they are largely just one-to-many platforms for media. They have completely crowded out most of the original benefit of being a social network.
kitsune_ 2y ago
Bring back IRC
- INTPenis 2y ago
  It never left. I've been consistently on IRC since the 90s.
EasyMark 2y ago
That can't happen, the 1st amendment protects us from that sort of overreach with lots of precedence coming before it. What can happen is severe penalties for companies and adults who allow minors to get on social media. That is the sort of regulation that can happen if the USA Congress really wants to do something. They can also regulate foreign propaganda sneaking like with TikTok, there is precedence for it. Also severe penalties and jailtime for threats (terrorism, personal) done online, they should be taken seriously and tracked down and prosecuted as if the threat was made against me if I was standing on a street corner.

palata 2y ago

I understand your point, but I don't think it works like that for teenagers. Teenagers need to connect. They will go where the others go, because that's exactly what matters to them. It's not that they deliberately want the addiction. The addiction is a consequence of it, but they go to TikTok because their peers are on TikTok.

lenerdenator 2y ago
They can connect in person. Like they did exclusively up until the mid 00s. I think peers is also a strange word to use. When I joined Facebook in 2007 you were more-or-less sorted by where you went to high school. You connected with people you knew. I'm sure that still exists on some level, but social media is now about driving engagement with people who pay these companies to get eyeballs. An influencer isn't your peer. It's like considering Billy Mays (may he rest in peace) your peer in 2007. No, he's a dude who sold you Oxy-Clean, but he was on TV a lot.
- palata 2y ago
  > social media is now about driving engagement with people who pay these companies to get eyeballs That's what it is, but that's not how teenagers perceive it, I think. I see it like this: if all your friends watch the news everyday and spend a lot of time talking about it, you will end up watching the news as well. To connect. If all your friends watch a lot of sport and meet for that, you may well end up learning to enjoy sport as well. If all your friends know the trends on TikTok and talk about it...
- throw2827374 2y ago
  I was bullied in high school because I was so different. I was also a new kid so it was hard to join an existing clique in a small town. Online groups saved me. It not only let me stay in contact with my old friends, but also let me meet new people with similar interest so I didn't feel so alone.
  - shlant 2y ago
    I don't think your story is uncommon especially for people who had trouble fitting in, however I would bet that places like facebook or instagram were not where you found your online groups. More likely to have been forums or online games. Very different environments and consequences.
  - sampullman 2y ago
    Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. have mostly killed off the places where online groups formed when I was a kid.
    - don_neufeld 2y ago
      Exactly. Subject specific forums and blogs are just ghost towns these days.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Reddit seems just like every forum, but with a mostly default skin
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    Facebook is not "online groups", and it is known to statistically lead teenagers into higher rates of suicide.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 2y ago
  Connect in person as a teen when everything is designed around cars and stuff a lot more expensive. Where cops arrested for you for loitering. Where people see kids going home from school as 'they're up to no good'. A lot of the past locations are gone and no longer accessible for todays youth. Even fast food places want you gone as fast as possible.
dailykoder 2y ago
>Teenagers need to connect. But not in a tiktok-way. They have more than enough social contacts when they go to school. No one need tiktok.
- palata 2y ago
  > No one need tiktok. And we should not underestimate teenagers: if they have something better to do than swiping on TikTok, they do it. Parents must help them have better things to do. But still, if all their friends know and talk about the TikTok trends, they will feel disconnected if they have no clue. That's how I meant that they "need" it. They need to "connect" as in having the same references as their friends.
  - cj 2y ago
    That’s kind of like telling parents that they should tell their kids to eat their vegetables when sitting next to McDonalds.
    - jkestner 2y ago
      Yes, and? Parenting is an active job. It can be done. Take a lesson from Steve Jobs and say "no" a lot.
      - 1718627440 2y ago
        And Mark Zuckerburg.
    - lukan 2y ago
      Nah, it is more like parents telling their children to eat healthy, while they themself go to McDonalds. Most parents are addicted to smartphone and don't go with their children outside. I would start the investigation into root causes right there.
      - palata 2y ago
lolinder 2y ago
So if theoretically you ban addictive social media platforms and prevent the formation of any platform with more than a million users, then yes, teenagers will go where their peers go, but that will not necessarily be where teenagers on the other side of the country go. It will also not necessarily be a destructive algorithm-oriented social network designed to maximize time spent viewing ads. My friend group had a phpBB forum back in the day. I spent hours on there because I liked hanging out with that group of friends, not because it was profitable for some megacorp.
- shlant 2y ago
  yea I don't think people are grasping how different places like Myspace or forums or online games are compared to modern social media.
don_neufeld 2y ago
Social media is not connection.
lm28469 2y ago
How do you explain the children/teenager loneliness spike since ~2008-2010 if these things are the pinnacle of connection ?
- palata 2y ago
  I didn't want to imply that those things are the pinnacle of connection. I rather wanted to say that it's easier said than done. You can't just tell teenagers "stop using social media, it's bad for you". Because if their peers use social media, then they need to use social media as well. I'm all for removing social media altogether.

tempworkac 2y ago

why? you don't have to use them. should HN be banned?

zzzeek 2y ago
hacker news has a lot of ideological community problems but HN is not "massively centralized", it's just a narrow window into the US tech scene with a relatively small community of people. I think there's a great argument that says the first amendment is not a suicide pact. The social media environment right now is having an unprecedented destructive effect on US democracy. I think TikTok is right there as a key player in spreading weapons-grade, state-sponsored mush to younger people.
- tempworkac 2y ago
  but HN is centralized, so you agree if HN exceeds some arbitrary amount of users it should be banned? how ridiculous. tiktok is not any better or worse than facebook, youtube, or the mainstream media.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    Hell, I'd make that arbitrary amount 300. That's about the number of social connections the human brain is really meant to handle.
  - spencerflem 2y ago
    Its worse for the US Govt in that they cannot secretly ask them to control what gets seen
- suraci 2y ago
  TBO, TikTok and Twitter are far more diverse than HN, which is merely an echo chamber, only slightly better than a subreddit. Although I like HN more than TikTok, it's so funny
  - AlexandrB 2y ago

joewhale 2y ago

Idk Xanga was peak non toxic social media. Pretty much just blogging. I miss it.

soupfordummies 2y ago
Yeah that and LiveJournal. And then it just kept going down from there in terms of self-expression, effort, quality, personal, actually-SOCIAL-media, etc. "Social media" went from blogging and commenting with your friends and others to watching videos of ads interspersed with random memes and shit. Quite a slide.

recroad 2y ago

[flagged]

hairy_callous 2y ago
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lenerdenator 2y ago
> Most of all, it’s so ironic that in America, which is supposed to be the bastion of free speech, is banning something that is so valuable for many people. This sort of confirms what I had feared for a few years now: that Americans don’t really want to be free or have free speech. What in the law, exactly, would prevent the things you discussed from being spoken about on another online platform?
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > What in the law, exactly, would prevent the things you discussed from being spoken about on another online platform? Let me expand this: what in the law prevents someone from going to TikTok.com and seeing the same content? The ban is on (a) apps in the app stores and (b) hosting by American companies. It’s not sanctioning TikTok à la Huawei.
  - lossolo 2y ago
    In May 2019, the U.S. government placed Huawei on the Entity List, which restricted American companies from doing business with it without a special license. This included Google, which meant Huawei lost access to the licensed version of Android and key Google services, including the Google Play Store. As a result, Huawei could no longer pre-install Google apps like Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and other essential services that many users in Western markets rely on. Huawei was once a strong competitor in Europe challenging Apple, Samsung, and other manufacturers. It effectively limited Huawei's competitiveness in Western markets and diminished its momentum when it was at the peak of its challenge to Apple and Samsung. The same will happen with TikTok in the U.S. Under the umbrella of national security, competition is being sidelined.

VyseofArcadia 2y ago

I feel like the actual big difference between social media when we were in high school (hello age cohort pal) and social media now is the algorithmic feed. There was a time when you'd have a couple dozen friends on Facebook, who were people you actually know in real life, and you'd check Facebook, read you feed in chronological order, and then reach the end. Like with email. The algorithmic feed, in addition to time spent on social media, has also intensified online discourse in a way that I believe to be harmful to society. What people see now is not the most recent things their friends were posting, no matter how banal, but whatever it is that the algorithm judges most engaging. Truth doesn't matter. Now the conspiracy theories and weird new age shit that your one hippy friend posted constantly have an audience. That kind of thing is engaging, so it floats to the top. I'd be perfectly fine with just banning social media altogether. Never before in history has the value of a barrier to entry to publishing something been more apparent. But as a compromise, I would accept banning the algorithmic feed.

Rooster61 2y ago
> I feel like the actual big difference between social media when we were in high school (hello age cohort pal) and social media now is the algorithmic feed. Bringo. The day Facebook implemented the feed as the main page rather than the original homepage was the day social media went sideways. It's little more than a Skinner box with a bright candy coating and it has just gotten more egregious over time. It's right on the tin, "Feed". I'd be interested to see how much R&D budget has gone into hiring persons in the field of psychology to tweak the dopamine treadmill over time.
- JohnMakin 2y ago
  I distinctly remember when the chronological timeline was done away with, people were extremely pissed.
  - chatmasta 2y ago
    I remember the day they introduced the chronological newsfeed! People were pissed about that. Nobody wanted a list of all their wall posts to be published to everyone who could see them. Prior to newsfeed, FB was obviously an N-N platform, but the interactions were more 1-1. You used the network to find and connect, but you interacted with individuals (on their wall). The newsfeed tipped the focus toward 1-N interactions, and direct messages solidified that (no more wall posts).

jstummbillig 2y ago

> They're battery acid poured on the human psyche. At least as far as kids are concerned, current evidence does not readily support this common believe. Sabine Hossenfelder writes: "The idea that social media causes children mental health distress is plausible, but unfortunately it isn’t true. Trouble is, if you read what the press has written about it, you wouldn’t know. Scientists have described it as a “moral panic” that isn’t backed by data, which has been promoted most prominently by one man: Jonathan Haidt." Video for more insight, if you are interested: https://youtu.be/V95Vg2pVlo0 https://youtu.be/V95Vg2pVlo0

paulddraper 2y ago
What is causing the record level of mental health disorders in children?
- miragecraft 2y ago
  Other children.
- Jean-Papoulos 2y ago
  Actually getting kids tested for them.
  - persedes 2y ago
    You can argue for more increased self-reporting, but suicide rates are going up too.
    - paulddraper 2y ago
      To support this: https://www.charliehealth.com/research/the-us-teen-suicide-rate-is-on-the-rise https://www.charliehealth.com/research/the-us-teen-suicide-r... According to the CDC, teen suicide rate is up over 33% from 1999. (Obviously, social media doesn't have to be the only cause. But something is producing a material difference and it's hard to say social media isn't a leading one.)

coliveira 2y ago

The problem is not the social network in itself, but the fact that companies are manipulating what you see to maximize the bad aspects of the network. Companies should have strict limits on the kind of algorithms they use to generate a feed.

le-mark 2y ago
Recently I’ve been imaging a world where social media algorithms were tuned to help people instead of “driving engagement” with ever more outrage bait. Oh you’re watching clips about machining and by your data profile you’re an uneducated adult? Here are some trade school, financial assistance, and self help links to nudge you toward a better life! What a world that would be.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- emseetech 2y ago
  Doesn't China's national TikTok equivalent do that? I'm fine with going back to 100% chronological feeds. Show events as they happen and don't put a hand on the scale. That's how social networks usually build their base then they switch to an algorithmic feed to satisfy advertisers once their user base is big enough.
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  “We will teach you to be free”

eunos 2y ago

For all complains of the toxicity of the platforms. For now, the contents over there are written by your fellow human (maybe AI in a few years). Just focussing on platform closure for me indicates that we resigned from fixing our fellow folks.

nullc 2y ago
But it's not the "folks" that are the factor, generally. The mechanisms of many major social media platforms actively amplify the worst aspects of the worst people, while suppressing the best parts of the best. Someone put the microphone too close to the speaker. As the feedback rings our ears someone reaches out for the power switch. Do you call out "but the start of the feedback was the music from the band, turning it off won't fix the band"? :)
- eunos 2y ago
  Assuming that social media is an evolution of traditional media. The traditional media loves to chase negative news (If it bleeds, it leads) and we let that happen (muh free speech!). So it is logical that social media amplified the negativity of society, coupled with algorithms evolution and instant broadcasting the impact is amplified. Fck around and find out I guess.
  - codr7 2y ago
    Yep, I'm very careful what kind of content I feed my subconscious these days. Watching news is like begging for nightmares, and most of it's made up anyways.
RiverCrochet 2y ago
> we resigned from fixing our fellow folks We have. It's A) too expensive, and B) we can't agree on what "fixed" looks like. "Think of the children" type scare-legislation is going to fill this void.

sneak 2y ago

Please stop advocating for censorship and authoritarianism. This is the USA, we don’t do that here. (Except when we do, as in this terrible case, but it’s not what we are about.) If you don’t like them, don’t use them. Don’t force other people to share your views and opinions. We like social media and choose every day to continue to use it. App bans are simply state censorship, nothing more. It’s a real shame we don’t have methods of sideloading to bypass such idiocy on the part of the USG and the chokepoints at Apple and Google. At least tiktok.com will still work.

VMG 2y ago
I read it as a personal recommendation to delete the apps, not as an appeal to ban them for everybody
zeroonetwothree 2y ago
What content is being censored? Creators are free to post their videos on other platforms. Also note that the law doesn’t force TikTok to shut down, it requires divestment. The fact that they choose not to divest says a lot about how they view the platform.
- LawrenceKerr 2y ago
  The comment they are replying to suggests taking down all the major social media networks by government force ("Just get rid of all of them"). Arguably, even if you are not prohibiting the content itself, if you take away the means for your content to spread far & wide, that's the same as censorship. I find this quite disturbing.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago

You can not because the money invested into this is to large. Same with AI - half of which is used to build a personal cheerleader/ hype-train for everyone using those apps now. If you want to end that, you need to actively sabotage it, by creating fake users who eat resources for not add-revenue. Feeding crack to children has to become economically unviable for the world to change.

nyarlathotep_ 2y ago

> early Facebook, MySpace, Xanga, etc. This was really a fun time and it was a whole new vista for interaction. It was really something to enter a new age. That feeling didn't last long, but I still got value from Facebook until the early 2010s.

noboostforyou 2y ago
FB Marketplace is definitely the best way to buy and sell anything locally. Of course you will have to filter through the usual flakers and what not but that was always the case since craigslist days. But for actual social media? Burn it all down lol
- nyarlathotep_ 2y ago
  People say that, but I've long since abandoned my FB account and sinkhole facebook domains. I miss CragisList for that. Used it a lot a decade ago.
- teeray 2y ago
  >FB Marketplace is definitely the best way to buy and sell anything locally I really wish they had some kind of auction component to deal with multiple interested parties / reduce flakers, but I imagine eBay has some crappy software patent that they wield with an iron fist.
  - Hasu 2y ago
    > I really wish they had some kind of auction component to deal with multiple interested parties / reduce flakers, but I imagine eBay has some crappy software patent that they wield with an iron fist. Facebook Ads has auctions for selling ad slots. They have the technology, they just reserve it for their real customers.
- The_Colonel 2y ago
  Facebook groups is also a decent way to build communities. Honestly, Facebook without the push for reels / videos isn't that bad. (now you can crucify me)

ixtli 2y ago

I think around here people will all agree with you, the problem is that in practice this isn't at any level about cleaning up peoples experience of each other. it's economic protectionism injected with yellow-scare nonsense reminiscent of the 20th century. they're gleefully making the large ones worse while closing down anything which doesn't benefit US oligarchs

vanillax 2y ago

The real issue with Facebook is the inability to tune easily. One of the reasons I use Instagram and Threads is because I feel I can easily tune the algorithm with likes. I can keep up with my friends via stories. I dont need to post on my "wall" stupid stuff like the beer im drinking. Instagram + Stories feels like the best medium to see what my friends are upto with short stories and images. The explore feed can be tuned so I get content and threads fills the void on X and its terrible algorithms. I agree, "deleting" facebook or simple just leave it on deprecated mode and never use it besides market place is the best thing you can do. I dont give a crap what person's political view is and dont need to see a news feed based on triggers.

echelon 2y ago
The real issue with Facebook is that they help precipitate the TikTok ban [1]. Not that TikTok should have stayed, but the fact that Meta was pushing for this and now stands to benefit massively should be concerning. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...
navbaker 2y ago
I love that I can have multiple profiles in IG and Threads, each tuned like you talked about for a specific interest of mine with no cross-pollination

jmyeet 2y ago

This is a trite (and arguably silly) comment bordering on neo-Luddism. The genie is out of the bottle. There's really no going back. Worse, it's treating symptoms as the problem. We, as a society, deify hyper-individualism. This is to such an extreme that people actually in completely and utterly selfish ways are glorified and celebrated because "freedom". Social media happened after we destroyed community and any sense of collectivism. Unhealthy social media habits are a consequence of that. They didn't cause it. Where once you needed just one job to live, you now need 5. Every aspect of our lives is financialized. We spend 30 years working to the bone to pay for a house that cost 1/10th what it did 30 years ago. The high costs of housing have destroyed all the so-called "third places". Federating services does nothing to the core problem here. I find HN's obsession with federation, which literally solves zero problems for users and creates a bunch of problems, bizarre and out-of-touch. The problem is capitalism.

ajmurmann 2y ago
What practical alternative do you propose to capitalism?

raincole 2y ago

The more you ban, the more "centralized" and "massive" the platforms you don't ban get. Unless you literally ban everything. One has to be extremely naive to think Google (youtube) lobbyists didn't play a role in this Tiktok ban.

echelon 2y ago
Meta certainly lobbied for a TikTok ban: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/facebook-tiktok-targeted-victory/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/faceboo...
- nprateem 2y ago
  Ah so that's why he's sucking up to trump now.
marcosdumay 2y ago
Big things aren't necessarily centralized, and you can replace big things with lots of small ones.

beAbU 2y ago

> Or, at least, get rid of the centralized massive ones. Herein lies the rub. How do you decide what the threshold is? Who gets to decide what that threshold is, and how do you do it without inviting accusations of regulatory capture? If you make it blanket all social networks, then things like discord and even public slack orgs will inadvertently become collateral damage. If you make it focussed on only a few large ones, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, then something else will pop up to take it's place. It'll become a game of whack-a-mole. Users are supposedly already migrating in droves to some other TikTok clone. I'm not really sure what the solution is though. Regulate the shit out of it to the extent where it becomes a government-provided utility or something? The reality is people want social media because they are addicted to it. Getting rid of social media will be like the war on drugs: completely ineffective. The danger here is that the drug is very easy to create, impossible to control and extremely lucrative.

matthewdgreen 2y ago
Require human moderation. That naturally limits scale.
- mmcdermott 2y ago
  > Require human moderation. That naturally limits scale. Does it? Does a human need to examine everything posted? You can certainly send letters without them going through a human moderator. Only what is flagged by a scanner? What if nothing is flagged? What should be flagged?
  - rad_gruchalski 2y ago
    > Does it? Does a human need to examine everything posted? You can certainly send letters without them going through a human moderator. Because those are two orthogonal things. You aren’t sending a letter to be displayed by everyone and their dog on this planet to see.
    - mmcdermott 2y ago

giancarlostoro 2y ago

I'm in favor of letting people pay for their own smaller instances, like something Facebook esque, and you can invite all your relatives. They can join your instance. But someone (or maybe its a group effort) has to pay for it. Zero ads, just friends and family. I've thought about this a lot. I don't think I'll ever build it (I have another idea in the works consuming all my time), but I'll go a step further and share my other thought on it: The less they use it, the less they should pay for using it. So if your goal is to keep up with relatives via sharing photos / videos, you can do that, and bug right out. So now there's a financial incentive to use it less, but it serves its purpose, like email.

nprateem 2y ago
This won't help with the dopamine craving. Most peoples' actual friends can't produce enough content. The sooner we treat it as an addiction the faster we'll think of treatments.
philote 2y ago
Smaller instance can become big. Say you set up a small instance and invite your family. Then family members want to invite their family, or friends, or whomever. How do you manage that? I think the answer is what we see with Mastodon, etc. and that's federated/distributed social networks.
- tmpz22 2y ago
  A restaurant can become big. Say you have a food critic showcase your restaurant and hundreds of people show up. How could we possibly deal with this problem without the aid of the smartest, most amazing, totally really smart, awesome at leet code, software engineers?

supriyo-biswas 2y ago

This is how you end up with the UK's Online Safety Act. And personally, I'd prefer to have international networks where you can get exposed to different opinions; my life would be in an objectively worse place if I had only had the opinions of the people of my country to go off of.

erentz 2y ago

First, people say things like they can't not use Facebook because it has marketplace, etc. shows there has clearly been an issue of not enforcing any kind of anti-trust laws for the past 20 years since US v Microsoft in the browser wars days. The FTC over the past four years has taken a turn here and is starting to do that work again, it's slow but it needs to continue. Second, these companies behave as publishers without any of the responsibilities/liability. This has to stop. If you publish just a chronological feed that's one thing. But when you algorithmically decide what people see when, and now introduce your own AI bots into the mix, you're 100% a publisher and need to be legally responsible for it. That legislation needs to be updated to reflect this. Third, much of the root issues stem from advertising. These companies are driven to get and keep as much of your attention as possible simply so they can sell that attention to advertisers. If we all paid for it, the design of these services would be different. I'm not sure how to tackle that but it seems a start is privacy legislation to prohibit user tracking and sale or sharing of personal data.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
braiamp 2y ago
> First, people say things like they can't not use Facebook because it has marketplace, etc. shows there has clearly been an issue of not enforcing any kind of anti-trust laws for the past 20 years since US v Microsoft in the browser wars days. Europe is in some capacity doing that. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/facebook-marketplace-to-display-ebay-listings-to-appease-eu-regulators/ar-AA1xbdEl https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/facebook-marketplace-t...
firefax 2y ago
I deleted my Facebook in 2016, and when I tried to create a new one they banned me as "inauthentic". I've seen people complain about the site demanding a government ID scan, but I'd have been willing to prove I am who I am if given the chance. Now I can't delete my Instagram, which I was using FB SSO for. They ocassionally send me marketing emails that I might want to engage with so and so's content. How, when you nuked my goddamn account for no reason? Anyways, if I had the money I'd short them -- they seem to be completely unconcerned with the few who'd consider giving them a second chance. As for Tik Tok, as with Telegram having it's servers in Russia, I think the real issue is the data is in control of the PRC, rather than whinings about "fake news" -- people have consumed supermarket check out drivel like the Weekly World News for years, it's just moved online.

misiti3780 2y ago

They 100% are - I fantasize about world in which they dont exist.

quelup 2y ago

There's a lot of issues with social media - I don't think anyone denies that. But not everyone thinks like the HN crew. What about the millions of users who actually enjoy FB and use it to connect with friends and family? To pretend that use case doesn't exist seems naive and biased. There's a reason these companies are so big - some people actually like them. Maybe they're the naive ones and we need to save them from themselves, but I don't think it's that black and white.

vineyardmike 2y ago
I want to respect the user here, but also they need to be saved. The companies are big because they’re advertising machines with intense targeting abilities, which makes for a great place for advertisers to spend money. Plenty of people enjoy Facebook, and plenty of people enjoy drugs and gambling and all sorts of destructive behaviors that many nations regulate. I think we can recognize that it can be fun and have utility, while still being dangerous or problematic. If you had to convince people to pay for Facebook as a subscription, would people use it the same way? Would they still find utility there? Would they prefer a competitor? I have a facebook account from my college days, but I don’t use it and neither does most of my network. My parents, despite being deeply suspicious and tech-savvy have started using it more and more to “connect” with family. In reality, I’ve seen their usage and it’s mostly generic groups and memes and similar stuff. I suspect that most people experience the same reality, and respectfully, I think society can survive without that. To postulate, I think there are a million “better” ways to connect with friends and family, but I also think that there’s no one App that can do everything for everyone. My extended family bought a dozen smart picture frames, and everyone adds photos to a joint account we all share, and that has replaced a social feed for pics of kids/grandkids. I think people would be better served finding what works for them and letting it be bespoke to their family/friends.

intended 2y ago

The early waves of most communities is 'better'. Strangely this is really consistent, even if you've been on sites quite a bit. One of the rules of moderation I believe in, is that the workload depends on the nature of the people in your community. Oh, so communities follow the rules of subculture founding and decline ??? So there should be a point where things that were not cool, become cool again?

draw_down 2y ago

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madeofpalk 2y ago

What are you actually saying? The government should make these websites illegal? I like tiktok. I scroll for a bit in the morning and watch some funny videos. Who are you to say that's immoral and shouldn't happen?

spokaneplumb 2y ago
The government’s banned owning media with too much reach before, placing limits on audience size per owner. We no longer know how to actually govern the country, but it used to be entirely possible.

mk89 2y ago

basically go back to old SMF/php forums with maximum 100s of known people. I thought about this recently… It was really better times. Even decentralized mastodon is too big and it makes it far too easy to post BS and hateful / unhealthy stuff. Plus there are far too many posts you can’t relate to or just don’t want to read („algorithm“ or not), without even mentioning the bubble effect, much worse there than on X to be honest. Smaller communities which you can connect to /disconnect from plus a good combo of RSS feeds to get news. That’s probably it.

krainboltgreene 2y ago
> basically go back to old SMF/php forums with maximum 100s of known people. I thought about this recently… It was really better times. I'm going to take a wild guess and assume this is how you grew up?
- raincole 2y ago
  It's simply a better model to connected online. I use present tense because the "better times" didn't really go away: it becomes Discord servers. The bad part, of course, is that Discord is owned by one single entity and not indexed like the open web is.
- mk89 2y ago
  Kind of, yeah. IRC, simple php forums, no TLS, easy stuff. Nowadays we're full of technology and very poor content. In no way can mastodon (mentioning because it's the defacto decentralized social media) solve that problem. It's really easy to post stuff that shouldn't be posted. On the other hand, crappy looking forums, slow internet connection, you really had to take the time to think about what to say and mainly why say it in the first place. It was more about the content than about quantity.
- supersanity 2y ago
  I did, and it truly was better. Threaded forums are far better at facilitating complex discussions, organizing information, and making the information accessible. Today, most communication is happening inside the walled gardens of Facebook, Discord, etc. That information is effectively being lost rather than being neatly organized and easily searchable.

bparsons 2y ago

I think 90% of the negative social impacts would go away if they just did reverse chronological, opt-in news feed. The black box algorithms are the problem.

p3rls 2y ago

Whoa there bro didn't you see Zuckeberg's latest podcast, he built facebook to bring people together! He paid good money for that corporate beastie boy makeover too-- show some damn respect.

INTPenis 2y ago

First wave? You must have missed yahoo groups. And of course someone will reply to this and mention usenet.

redactd 2y ago

The literal terminology we use to refer to them directly correlates with their slide. They were "Social Networks" and were all about the network effect of having a connection to people IRL reflected online. That meant you could also go additional links out. They are now "Social Media" and they are largely just one-to-many platforms for media. They have completely crowded out most of the original benefit of being a social network.

kitsune_ 2y ago

Bring back IRC

INTPenis 2y ago
It never left. I've been consistently on IRC since the 90s.

EasyMark 2y ago

That can't happen, the 1st amendment protects us from that sort of overreach with lots of precedence coming before it. What can happen is severe penalties for companies and adults who allow minors to get on social media. That is the sort of regulation that can happen if the USA Congress really wants to do something. They can also regulate foreign propaganda sneaking like with TikTok, there is precedence for it. Also severe penalties and jailtime for threats (terrorism, personal) done online, they should be taken seriously and tracked down and prosecuted as if the threat was made against me if I was standing on a street corner.