12 ms·

The case against social media is stronger than you think

348 points by ingve 1y ago

hedayet 1y ago
I used to spend 4+ hours a day glued to Facebook. Last November I hit a tipping point and quit social media altogether: Facebook: deactivated Twitter: deleted my account altogether LinkedIn: removed the app—now I only post and check messages via desktop with a news-feed eradicator Google + Chrome + Youtube on mobile: deleted. now I just use Safari in incognito mode. Once the apps were no longer at my fingertips, quitting was surprisingly easy. I don’t miss them at all and I’m enjoying life much more. As for HN, I browse only sporadically—and it’s never felt addictive to me anyway.
- rightbyte 1y ago
  A tip is to also have Leechblock on Firefox mobile such that you can't easily cheat. I realized I had this muscle memory vising some detrimental sites in a loop so I blocked them.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
  Individual quitting could be a bad solution for the systemic effects of social media though, if it leaves the remaining population of social media users even more radicalized. (I'm assuming that individual quitters tend to be more level-headed than the average user. If you self-assess as being high-risk for radicalization, then yeah I support individual quitting in your particular case.)
geoffbp 1y ago
I fell into the trap over some months of installing fb, Reddit, x, Instagram. It really is amazing how additive they are. I’ve since removed the apps but still have an account and limit myself to using the web versions only
lattalayta 1y ago
I’m finding that social media is less “social”. Fewer of my friends and family are posting and more and more businesses, ads, and “creators” are filling the gap
narag 1y ago
If you're a politician, you need people to vote for you. "Your" people will. Try not to alienate too much others so you can fish moderates and get to 50%. If you're an "influencer" you need engagement. You can live off a 10% easily. And you need retention. So keep the message heated.
- eastbound 1y ago
  We’ve succeeded to make people vote for the fight against global warming, which clearly says people have to reduce their lifestyle, so I think there can be enough audience to make this topic the platform of one party.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    Have we? I don't recall that option ever being on the ballot in the US.
    - BobbyTables2 1y ago
      Well, one party’s stated solution for high oil imports was not to reduce consumption but rather “drill baby, drill!” Inefficient regulation also incentivizes car companies to make larger less efficient vehicles because they can’t make the smaller ones efficient enough. And the public has no problem buying enormous vehicles… (Doesn’t everyone need an off road extended cab 4x4 truck for commuting to the office?) Frankly, I do feel there is a segment that seems to over focus on conservation to the point of impracticality. However, the “single use” consumption has got to end. I don’t even see the debate here. Plastic lids, styrofoam containers, gotta go. Maybe not outright ban, but the culture has to change. Ordered a pastry in a bakery — clerk put it into a large styrofoam container, inch thick stack of napkins, plastic grocery bag, plastic fork/knife. Unfortunately I was eating it there… All that waste for one pastry baked there? On the other hand, I wonder if Amazon is the devil we assume. If I drive my car around town to get a few items, maybe it’s more fuel efficient to just have them delivered with others’ ?
      - 1y ago
zyxzevn 1y ago
The problem with social media (and all media) is opinion-based censorship, causing group-think. And the chaos of replies that are uncategorized. Different opinions do matter. But due to the algorithms, the most emotional responses are promoted. There is no way to promote facts or what people think are facts. So most discussion will be extremely emotional and not based on facts and their value. This is even true in scientific discussions. Combined with group-think, these emotions can grow and lead to catastrophic outcomes.
- btreecat 1y ago
  > The problem with social media (and all media) is opinion-based censorship, causing group-think. And the chaos of replies that are uncategorized. All people are biased. It's impossible to also avoid bias needed to filter out the firehose of data. What your describing is often a form of moderation. > Different opinions do matter. But due to the algorithms, the most emotional responses are promoted. There is no way to promote facts or what people think are facts. This is tuneable. We have tuned the algos for engagement, and folks engage more with stuff they emotionally react to. People could learn to be less emotionally unstable. > So most discussion will be extremely emotional and not based on facts and their value. This is even true in scientific discussions. I think your over fitting. Moderation drives a lot of how folks behave in a community. > Combined with group-think, these emotions can grow and lead to catastrophic outcomes. Group think is also how we determined mamales are mamales and the earth isn't the center of the universe. Sometimes a consensus is required.
  - hsartoris 1y ago
    > People could learn to be less emotionally unstable. How does it make sense to make billions of people responsible for abating the consequences of choices made by a few social media companies?
  - zyxzevn 1y ago
    I am thinking of some moderation systems that focuses on categorization instead of censorship. There will be a bias in moderation, but that will have less of an effect when there is no deletion. If possible, the user could choose their preferred style (or bias) of moderation. If you want full freedom, you can let users select "super-users" to moderate/categorize for them. Emotional responses and troll jokes could be a separate categories as long they do not call for violence and or break other laws. Consensus is still group-think. I think it is destructive without any clear view where it stands within other options or other ideas. Like: "why exactly is earth not the center". A lot of consensus is also artificial due to biased reporting, biased censorship and biased sponsorship. During discussions, people within a consensus tend to use logical fallacies. Like portraying the opposition as idiots, or avoiding any valid points that the opposition bring into the discussion. I think that people have becomes less intelligent due to one-sided reporting of information. With extra information, people will become smarter and more understanding of how other (smart) people think.
vinceguidry 1y ago
The profit motive is largely what drives these problems. My big dream is a social media platform for humans. Self-hostable Zoom / Discord alternative that just works. AGPL-licensed and eventually turned over to the GNU project for long-term maintenance once it's feature-complete. Mastadon is nice and all, but micro-blogging isn't really for ordinary humans.
Babkock 1y ago
Whaat? You are telling me... Facebook and le Instragram... are not good things for me?
alexpotato 1y ago
A lot of the comment seem to ignore Hotelling's Law [0]. When applied to politics the game plan is: - In a two party system, start by framing your message to the middle of your party - This means you capture everyone from middle of your party to the political middle of the population (we'll call these the "closest to center") AND get a few folks farther out from your middle - This will help you win the "primaries" - After that, you want to slowly drift towards the middle of the population. This allows you to pull most of the "close to center" folks from your party AND people from the other side NOTE: the other side should be doing the exact same but coming from the other direction. Now, people may also ask "Why not start out in the population middle??". The reason is that you: a. don't win any primaries this way b. you get "crowded out" by the winners of the two party primaries 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law
_wire_ 1y ago
These question-begging, click-bait something-is-something-other-than-you-think posts are something less entertaining than the poster thinks.
- abnercoimbre 1y ago
  Yup. Soon as I read: > I am going to focus on the putative political impacts of social media I closed the tab.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    Yeah I closed it when I saw the size of the scroll bar. If you need 100k words to make your point write a book.
    - stevage 1y ago
      Huh, I often have the reverse sentiment with a lot of books: this should have been a blog post. There's often a good intro which lays out the thesis, but each chapter is way too long, spelling out details that are obvious or superfluous.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- greyadept 1y ago
  The author could have made the same points without using words like “polemicizing”, “putative”, and “epistemic”.
- dwedge 1y ago
  As soon as I saw that his article has an introduction and the first line of it mentions that he wrote a long essay (as though long == good) I closed it
alexfromapex 1y ago
My main case against at this point is that everything you post will be accessible by "bad" AI
isodev 1y ago
I think to be clear that’s “The case against algorithmic*” social media”, the kind that uses engagement as a core driver.
- elric 1y ago
  Where "engagement" is short for driving eyeballs to ads, optimizing for this ad nauseum, until the platform is raking in the dough and they stop caring about their users in the slightest.
- parasti 1y ago
  I recently learned that Tiktok has a thing called "Streak Pets". Imagine taking a dopamine addiction-inducing activity and imagine gamifying that to maximize engagement in that activity. Imagine the brainstorming sessions at Tiktok where they navigate around the glaring issue of the fried brain circuitry of their own users.
  - raziel2p 1y ago
    mind-blowing. like tamagochis for the modern age.
johnea 1y ago
Man, blah, blah, blah... That article needs to have about 80% of the words cut out of it. When the author straight up tells you: I'm posting this in an attempt to increase my subscribership, you know you're in for some blathering. In spite of that, personally I think algorithmic feeds have had a terrible effect on many people. I've never participated, and never will...
scarface_74 1y ago
I really hate the narrative that social media has increased polarization knowing that my still living parents grew up in the Jim Crow south where they were literally separated from society because of the color of their skin. The country has always been hostile to “other”. People just have a larger platform to get their message out.
- jwilber 1y ago
  The article mentions this. It tries to argue the significance of that platform.
- tolerance 1y ago
  > The country has always been hostile to “other”. People just have a larger platform to get their message out. And a consequence of this is that some people’s perspective of the scale of the nation’s hostilities is limited to the last 5 years or so.
- linguae 1y ago
  As someone whose grandparents endured Jim Crow, I largely agree in the sense that social media did not create America’s divides. Many of the divides in American society are very old and are very deep, with no easy fixes. Unfortunately algorithmic social media is one of the factors adding fuel to the fire, and I believe it’s fair to say that social media has helped increase polarization by recommending content to its viewers purely based on engagement metrics without any regard for the consequences of pushing such content. It is much easier to whip people into a frenzy this way. Additionally, echo chambers make it harder for people to be exposed to other points of view. Combine this with dismal educational outcomes for many Americans (including a lack of critical thinking skills), our two-party system that aggregates diverse political views into just two options, a first-past-the-post election system that forces people to choose “the lesser of two evils,” and growing economic pain, and these factors create conditions that are ripe for strife.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    So there wasn’t enough fuel in the fire when marauding Klansmen were hanging Black people? It was the current President of the US that led a charge that a Black man running for President wasn’t a “real American” and was a secret Muslim trying to bring Shari law to the US and close to half of the US was willing to believe it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0 This was before social media in the northern burbs of Atlanta where I had to a house built in 2016. We didn’t have a problem during the seven years we lived there. But do you think they were “polarized” by social media in the 80s? That’s just like police brutality didn’t start with the rise of social media. Everyone just has cameras and a platform
effnorwood 1y ago
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Lerc 1y ago
Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack. A lot of things suck right now. Social media definitely give us the ability to see that. Using your personal ideology to link correlations is not the same thing as finding causation. There will be undoubtedly be some damaging aspects of social media, simply because it is large and complex. It would be highly unlikely that all those factors always aligned in the direction of good. All too often a collection of cherry picked studies are presented in books targeting the worried public. It can build a public opinion that is at odds with the data. Some people write books just to express their ideas. Others like Jonathan Haidt seem to think that putting their efforts into convincing as many people as possible of their ideology is preferable to putting effort into demonstrating that their ideas are true. There is this growing notion that perception is reality, convince enough people and it is true. I am prepared to accept aspects of social media are bad. Clearly identify why and how and perhaps we can make progress addressing each thing. Declaring it's all bad acts as a deterrent to removing faults. I become very sceptical when many disparate threads of the same thing seem to coincidentally turn out to be bad. That suggests either there is an underlying reason that has been left unstated and unproven or the information I have been presented with is selective.
- make_it_sure 1y ago
  seems that you're the guy that likes to be against the norm, even if you're wrong. Social media being controlled by corporations and algorithms built to create addiction should be enough, unless you have other motives to ignore all this.
- kmacdough 1y ago
  I'm with you on the skepticism, but I also think the underlying point is worth acknowledging: Social media represents a step change in how we consume news about current events. No longer are there central sources relied on by huge swaths of the population. Institutions which could be held accountable as a whole and stood to lose from poor reporting. Previous behemoths like NYT, WaPo, Bloomberg are now comparatively niche and fighting for attention. This feels so obvious it's not necessary to litigate, but if someone has statistics to the contrary, I'll be happy to look deeper and re-evaluate. I agree, one should not immediately succumb to fear of the new. At the same time, science is slow by design. It takes years to construct, execute and report on proper controlled studies. Decades to iterate and solidify a holistic analysis. In the mean time, it seems naive to run forward headlong, assuming the safest outcome. We'll have raised a generation or two before we can possibly reach analytical confidence. Serious irreparable damage could be done far before we have a chance to prove it.
xnx 1y ago
Social media would be entirely different if there were no monetization on political content. There's a whole lot of ragebaiting/engagement-farming for views. I don't know how to filter for political content, but it's worth a shot. People are free to say whatever they want, but they don't need to get paid for it.
- stevage 1y ago
  Strangely I never see political content on YouTube. Maybe the algorithm worked out quickly I'm simply not interested. Whereas twitter/mastodon/bluesky are awash in it, to the point of making those platforms pretty unusable for me. I guess the difference is that YouTube content creators don't casually drop politics in because it will alienate half their audience and lose revenue. Whereas on those other platforms the people I follow aren't doing it professionally and just share whatever they feel like sharing.
  - timeon 1y ago
    Interesting, I do not see politics on Mastodon, while YouTube recommends me not just random politics, but conspiracy theories about politics. On Mastodon, those I follow do not post about politics and if they do it is hidden behind content warning. YouTube is probably location based as I have no account there and that type of content is relatively mainstream where I live.
  - 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
    Youtube is the one platform that actually tunes "the algorithm" in a responsible way.
- ants_everywhere 1y ago
  they get paid in political power that's why it's so ragebait driven
jparishy 1y ago
We, consumers online, are sliced and diced on every single dimension possible in order to optimize our clicks for another penny. As a side benefit, when you do this enough, the pendulum that goes over the middle line for any of these arbitrary-but-improves-clicks division builds momentum until it hits the extremes. On either side-- it doesn't matter, cause it will swing back just as hard, again and again. As a side benefit the back and forth of the pendulum is very distracting to the public so we do not pay attention to who is pushing it. Billions of collective hours spent fighting with no progress except for the wallets of rich ppl. It almost feels like a conspiracy but I think it's just the direct, natural result of the vice driven economy we have these days
blitz_skull 1y ago
The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.
- scandox 1y ago
  I'm making 2 assumptions here: that you're American and that you're referring to the recent assassination. What I find odd is that American history is packed with assassinations and domestic terrorism and yet it is this recent event that has affected your thinking. In your own parlance, what gives?
- m3047 1y ago
  If the internet is in fact "the largest social media platform", then anonymity absolutely has to go as my public-facing telemetry server [0] based on DNS as a transport, and not rooted to the ICANN DNS tree, gets 1000+ abusive requests for every legitimate one. I'm supposed to return REFUSED to each and every one [1] of them (not drop them) and I'm not supposed to publish the IP addresses involved. Granted they could be spoofed, but the only way we'll ever know is to go ahead and publish so that a global picture can be developed and the owners of the addresses can tell us that they're being spoofed. [0] One of the pieces of telemetry is the addresses abusing the server. [1] I, and many other operators violate this stability requirement and drop traffic. [2] [2] There are no internet police. If there were then BCP 38 would be enforced and this particular problem would largely go away.
- rkomorn 1y ago
  They're unfortunately not much more capable of responsibly connecting with people non-anonymously, I'd say. See examples like finding someone's employer on LinkedIn to "out" the employee's objectionable behavior, doxxing, or to the extreme, SWATing, etc.
  - qarl 1y ago
    Yeah. People use their real identities on Facebook, and it doesn't help a bit.
hn_throw_250910 1y ago
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api 1y ago
It's more specific than social media. It's engagement maximizing (read: addiction maximizing) algorithms. Social media wasn't nearly as bad until algorithmic engagement maximizing feeds replaced temporal or topic based feeds and user-directed search. Two people walk past you on the street. One says "hi," and the other strips naked and smears themselves with peanut butter and starts clucking like a chicken. Which one maximizes engagement? A politician says something sane and reasonable. Another politician mocks someone, insults someone, or says something completely asinine. Which one maximizes engagement? This is why our president is a professional troll, many of our public intellectuals are professional trolls, and politics is becoming hyper-polarized into raging camps fixated on crazy extremes. It maximizes engagement. The "time on site" KPI is literally destroying civilization by biasing public discourse toward trash. I think "trash maximizes engagement" should be considered an established fact at this point. If you A/B test for engagement you will converge on a mix of trolling, tabloid sensationalism, fear porn, outrage porn, and literal porn, and that’s our public discourse.
profsummergig 1y ago
I used to be disappointed in myself that I didn't understand Discord well enough to use it. Now I'm glad I never understood it well enough to use it.
- stevage 1y ago
  Huh. I'm on a few discords. They're very easy and obvious to use, and I really enjoy them. And because they are generally well divided by channel, it's easy to avoid the bits you don't want.
  - profsummergig 1y ago
    You may remember that one needed to use Discord to use MidJourney initially. I was able to use it for that (although a lot of messages that streamed by were confusing to me). After that I joined a couple of Discords with tens of thousands of users. Nothing ever seemed to happen on them. I knew I was doing something wrong but I couldn't figure it out.
793212408435807 1y ago
Number 3 will shock you! What a shame that these clickbait headlines make it to the front page.
epolanski 1y ago
Looking at this very comment section the author may have a point.
- beeflet 1y ago
  The solution to social division is to force everyone to use news.epolanski.com, the site where you can only post things that epolanski agrees with
  - epolanski 1y ago
    I was referring to the amount of toxicity in the comments.
cramsession 1y ago
Without social media, we'd be left with mainstream media, which is a very narrow set of channels that those in power can control. Despite rampant censorship on social media, it's still the best way to circumvent propaganda and give people a voice.
- sethammons 1y ago
  > it's still the best way to circumvent propaganda and give people a voice. I think it can amplify propaganda but still give people a voice, which is better than no voice I think
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
  The idea of social media reducing net propaganda is a wild take.
  - cramsession 1y ago
    We would have no idea what was going on in Gaza if it wasn't for social media. It really exposed how biased (which probably isn't even a strong enough word) our msm is.
  - synecdoche 1y ago
    Without it, there would be no way to get information from the source. In msm all we get is the msm view. When compared to what was actually said, done or written then you have a chance to make your own opinion. You only then can compare what is in msm and what is not. And the bias is relentless. Which makes it a propaganda machine. Of course there is garbage in social media as there is in every field. Find the source if there is one recorded. Msm rarely if ever refer to any. And no wonder. It would risk undermining their publication, which they peddle as unbiased.
- n1b0m 1y ago
  Its still propaganda just from Russian and Chinese bots.
hbarka 1y ago
Full anonymity in social media should not be allowed. It becomes a cover for bad actors (propagandists, agents, disinformation, bots, age-inappropriate, etc.) It doesn’t have to be a full identity, but knowing your user metadata is open during interactions can instill a sense of responsibility and consequence of social action. As in real life.
- makeitdouble 1y ago
  Real life needs full anonymity too. Not everywhere, but it's critical to have some. For instance a political vote needs to be anonymous. Access to public space typically is (you're not required to identify to walk the street) even if that anonymity can be lifted etc. Real life is complex, and for good reasons, if we want to take it as a model we should integrate it's full complexity as well.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - hbarka 1y ago
    In the United States, political votes are not anonymous. There is a database of how someone voted. If you’re out in public, you’re also not fully anonymous. You display metadata such as race, gender, age, behavior. Now you could wear a ski mask during broad daylight but I doubt if you’d be allowed inside a bank. And the bank has a right to judge you for that.
    - makeitdouble 1y ago
      > There is a database of how someone voted. That cannot be right, that's the fundamental core of the voting process in our democracies. You might be thinking about the party registrations or voluntary polls ? > You display metadata What you show to the world has no requirement to be accurate. If you look like a rich 70 old Asian lady when going to the park there will be no check that's actually what you are (unless the police comes at you for an identity check...). That's particularly impacting for gender, you're typically not required to represent your official assignment, and how you behave isn't stuck to your official identity.
homeonthemtn 1y ago
Social media is a cancer on our society. It is both the asbestos and cigarettes of our generation.
- infotainment 1y ago
  Agreed, and I feel like the right answer might be to treat it exactly like cigarettes. For example: 1. Ban in most places except very specific ones. E.g., "would you like to sit in the social media use section today?" 2. Make it extremely expensive to access and use. This would likely do wonders to cut down on use, just as it did for cigarettes.
- lanfeust6 1y ago
  You're on social media right now. Probably you could better qualify what it is you think is a problem.
  - delis-thumbs-7e 1y ago
    Are we? In a sense yes that the content is usee-generated and stranger are discussing the content, but is any newsfeed with a comment-section or a hobbyist forum social media? Can I monetise my contributions here, advertise products, sell my karma-points or create networks of like-minded individuals here? Is there any point for me to try to turn my personality into a brand or try to ragebait you to interact with me by saying that your aunt Mary likes Duran Duran, or that your goldfish looks silly, in order to trick the algorithm to show more of my content? Can I channel people from here to a website showing lewd pictures of my parrot in order to get them pay me? If all social media was like HN, I think we would be fine y’know.
    - lanfeust6 1y ago
      > In a sense yes By definition, yes. > is any newsfeed with a comment-section or a hobbyist forum social media? Some are just larger and more centralized than others. > Can I monetise my contributions here, advertise products, sell my karma-points or create networks of like-minded individuals here? "Show HN" basically is that. And yes you can create connections here. I don't think I need to go on.
deleted 1y ago
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PicassoCTs 1y ago
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mallowdram 1y ago
The missing link to our epistemic collapse is language. The acceleration of language, which is arbitrary, accelerates language distortion. The contagion on social media is merely a symptom of the disease of language. “Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades” https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2102061118 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2102061118
- throawaywpg 1y ago
  acceleration? as in the literal speed at which we translate information through language?
  - mallowdram 1y ago
    Not translate it, simply transmitting it. This stuff is just arbitrary. we can say anything we want, it means nothing. Look at high speed conflicts now, each side accuses the other of being the same villain. It means we're saying nothing. The initial conditions are arbitrary, very indirect perception. How we ever assumed we were communicating is quite strange. Everything is primate, every word is first a negotiation for status. Then control. Perhaps manipulation. That words words refer directly to anything outside of a momentary context is impossible. Plus every word isn't simply arbitrary, it's metaphors, and they separate things by attributes that are based in folk science/psychology. We basically have to unlearn and replace words.
1970-01-01 1y ago
You reap what you sew. Stupid and uninformed voices receiving equivalent status to wise scientific experts was a mistake. Witnessing the flat Earth crowd growing over the decades encapsulates everything wrong with social media.
- cindyllm 1y ago
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- giardini 1y ago
  "1970-01-01" stepped in it 5 hours ago by saying: >"You reap what you sew.< "You reap what you sow" is correct. You sew cloth with a needle and thread but sow seeds by throwing them on fertile ground, hoping they will sprout, grow and you will later reap a harvest.
stack_framer 1y ago
I did my own informal research study—I quit social media cold turkey. My findings: I feel much better. I don't need any other data.
- delis-thumbs-7e 1y ago
  Same here. Even very depressing news do not cause and endless circle of anxiety and scrolling, when you don’t have constant new enforcement in form of comments, I just get bored, switch off and take some distance - as we should. I already stopped using FB after 2016 when I noticed that instead of being better informed - like I felt I was - I was actually dumber and knew less what was going on. After that I have gradually quit forums, IG, reddit. Onlyone left is youtube, which I watch occasionally to watch some comedy. Ifeel better, more calm and I feel I am on the driver’s seat. I think it is insane that we give these companies this much power and influence in our lives and societirs without them contributing almost nothing.
- coffeefirst 1y ago
  I have informally reproduced your study and reached the same conclusion.
- escapedmoose 1y ago
  Same. 9 months into quitting socials I feel like I got a new brain. I’m appreciating my surroundings and noticing the cadence of the day more than I have in years. I’ve been killing it at work and got a promotion. Just last year I had been thinking to myself that my mind had lost its sharpness since college. Now I feel like it’s noticeably expanding! I will never ever ever ever go back. The perks of online connection were never worth the sacrifices.
gerdesj 1y ago
"In conclusion: " "...in particular in the U.S., but probably across Europe as well. ..." The world is rather larger than the US and Europe. I physically endure myopia and frankly Mr Witkin seems to figuratively suffer from it. I need only mention the name: TikTok.
amatecha 1y ago
"everyone publicly talking in the same room" social media really sucks. I've really enjoyed the smaller-scale, better-curated interaction on mastodon. It feels like a giant step forward in how people can connect and socialize online.
- beeflet 1y ago
  A giant step forward into the echo chamber
  - amatecha 1y ago
    I interpret this as "I expect my opinions to be heard by people who don't want to hear them". Show me the ill effects of having an opt-in, consent-based social space where it's not infiltrated by unwelcome participants?
    - zeta0134 1y ago
      Well, imagine for a moment that the unwelcome participants are the ones against murder. Everyone currently in the group thinks murdering people who disagree with you is a fine way to solve problems. Outsiders might share insights and opinions to discourage this way of thinking, so they're not allowed to join.
      - amatecha 1y ago
        Yeah? That's the nature of social circles. To take the example further, I definitely won't be able to work my way into a social circle of violent criminals who murder rival gang members and think murder is okay. I will not be on board with their general way of life and general perspective on the value of human life, or my overall aversion to committing crimes. They will definitely not "let me in" (unless they intend to exploit me as an unwitting participant in something, lol) The jist of what I'm saying is, I don't feel like I have a right to join every conversation everywhere just because I have a computer and an internet connection. Groups of people have established norms for what's acceptable and what's not. For once, those social boundaries, the delineation between one group of people and another, can actually be represented in server-to-server communication permissions. That doesn't mean that "murdering ppl who disagree with you is okay" people will never interact with the "murdering ppl who disagree with you is bad" people. They just probably won't be on the very same server, but the servers will probably communicate between each other unless the conflict level gets particularly high, at which time one server may defederate from or block the other. I regularly see opinions and views I don't agree with or share. Life isn't so black and white, I don't (and my server doesn't) block people just because they say something a bit spicy or weird. Some people/servers might, but the idea is that, for myself, I can interact with those different chunks of humanity in a way that works for me. All part of the word I keep saying, "agency". Beyond all that, I've not seen anyone provide any reasons that an opt-in consent-based medium has any ill effects.
mightyham 1y ago
To me this just reads like fear mongering and shilling for the status quo political establishment. I've recently been learning a bit about Russian history and it has similarities to their conservative nobility throughout the 19th century trying through various means to suppress the spread of liberalism in the public and intelligentsia: the point being that Russia had serious social ills like serfdom and radical political ideas were absolutely warranted. Social media is destabilizing for the influence of establishment sources of information and more of the public (right and left) is finding out more accurate information about how the world works, then coming to natural conclusions about how to address various social ills. Polarization may be increasing, but people forming stronger opinions is also exactly what you would expect in the face of increased revelation about unsolved social problems. Ultimately, I'm optimistic about the long term effects of social media on politics.
drraah 1y ago
I've seen numerous posts from researchers on X demonstrating that people high in psychopathy, low in empathy, and low in cognitive ability are overrepresented on social media. They post more often and fuel polarisation in politics. The extremism is entertaining to others and rewarded with exposure. Political moderates don't tend to get as emotionally invested and are less likely to voice their opinions in the first place. But underlying the extremism and polarisation are real issues. There's often an overlooked middleground that technology can step in to highlight
freshtake 1y ago
The problem is that our thoughts, opinions, and ultimately actions are the product of our exposure. Social media gives a small number of companies (and their algorithms) unparalleled and unchecked control over our exposure. We should be educating children at a young age about the benefits and risks of social media. We haven't adapted the way we educate society in light of massive tech changes. This will likely be a topic that future humans look back on and wonder why we did this to ourselves.
- adrr 1y ago
  People have stopped reading the news and rely on social media as their main news source. Thats the scariest thing.
  - topspin 1y ago
    > Thats the scariest thing. Written "news" is frequently a report about a series of X posts by various authorities, thought leaders and celebrities, embedded directly in the story. Square that circle.
  - moduspol 1y ago
    At the same time, "reading the news" has become less and less valuable. And social media has an overwhelming impact on the tone and content of "the news," too.
- lumost 1y ago
  Is the media even “social” anymore? How much of Reddit is simply bots generating catchy takes and then generating commentary on these takes. You can easily be deceived into thinking that a vast number of people believe something, or think the way you do, or think the way you do but were swayed by some thought process. Repeat the process long enough and with enough variation and tuning and anyone can be made to believe anything.
  - SapporoChris 1y ago
    I do not believe it.
averageRoyalty 1y ago
The social media problem is very simple to solve. Ban advertising on social media (from platform or users) and ban usage of user data external to the platform. When you remove the incentive to engage users, the companies will engage in less abusive practices to push engagement. I've never seen this proposed, and I'm confused why.
- positron26 1y ago
  - information silos still exist - social incoherence because silos cannot communicate laterally is still there - the ads will likely go native to become "content" and more revenue will shift to influencers Just saying it's not quite that easy, but yes, ad monetization is a great force of evil.
- pitched 1y ago
  I think the way you define ads and social media would be important. We would end up getting something like the cookie banners again instead of real change.
deleted 1y ago
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softwaredoug 1y ago
The article mentions political polarization increased most in seniors (65+). Social media or not, I would guess it’s largely because many retirees don’t have anything to do. They’re isolated. They want connection and purpose. While younger adults have jobs and obligations. My retired dad lived alone. He could talk nonstop about that crazy thing Trump did, but I wasn’t following closely, and somewhat tuned my dad out to not get lost in a rabbit hole. My dad got this from cable news. Isolation to me is the root cause at any age. People who only see the world through media (social or otherwise). It’s easy to become radicalized when you don’t have any attachments other than your political affiliations.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
Person A and person B (or group B) want to communicate by using the internet Idea: Use person C's website This was never a good idea for A and B but turned out to be a great idea for C C derives the benefit, C became a billionaire, but it is taking a very long time for A and C to realise they are not getting a good deal Sadly in 2025 A and B believe there is no other way to communicate via the internet other than through C C could disappear and the internet would live on, and A and B would indeed be able to communicate A and B pay internet subscription fees, but generally do not pay subscription fees to C The internet is worth something, people are willing to pay for it; C's value is questionable, few would be willing to pay for it If not for the internet, C would not be a billionaire If not for the internet, A and B could not communicate via C The case for the internet is stronger than the case for C
- meonkeys 1y ago
  Yes, this. It's a symptom of late-stage capitalism.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
  s/A and C/A and B/
dfee 1y ago
I often wonder when I see articles like this if HN counts as social media. And then, the continuous re-discovery or the ails of social media on social media is a trip, in itself.
- AdamN 1y ago
  I don't think it has the hallmarks of social media (aggressive engagement mechanisms, etc...). We've had newsgroups for 30+ years and social media requires more than just message boards. The owner needs to push the content such that there is enough engagement to make money from advertising (or monthly fees).
- mid-kid 1y ago
  Technically, yes, but at least it's not filter bubbling everyone.
  - topspin 1y ago
    There is a "karma" score. You know yours and you've checked the scores of others. This is social media. It's a fairly benign manifestation of it, I suppose, but it's social media nonetheless. Something to consider while carefully crafting denigrations of what we all think is meant when discussing "social media." Especially if you'd rather not see HN and similar places damaged by righteous politicians.
  - raziel2p 1y ago
    there may not be an algorithm at work here as there is on Instagram or TikTok, but there's still a bubble - the name, design and discourse of HN itself works as a filter.
    - mid-kid 1y ago
      What you're describing is an echo chamber, when people willingly share only things that they know resonate with the group. While still somewhat detrimental, it's at least a visible problem - everyone is aware of it because everyone sees the same thing. With filter bubbles, you create personalized echo chambers, that nobody is aware of unless they're in there.
mihaic 1y ago
I think the biggest problem in arguing against tech and social media is that it in truth you rely on counterfactual positions, which describe how the world would look without that thing. A world without online dating for instance wouldn't just be the same as now, except without those apps. Now forms of socializing would emerge, which you could argue are more local and healthier for society. When talking about social media, I now ignore the more powerful arguments of how better the world could be without people spending hours on their smartphones, and focus on the problem that it's a surogate for socialization where everyone wants to sell you something, which most people seem to agree is wrong.
picafrost 1y ago
Designing tools is designing behavior. It shouldn't be surprising that the behavior of a society changes when the primary form of discourse shifts from communication among peers to maximizing the engagement of strangers due to the financial needs of the platform.
Argonaut998 1y ago
I started using X a few weeks ago and I’m already seeing it impact my mind negatively. It is pure controlled and distilled propaganda that’s clearly made to intentionally shape how we think, across the different skinner boxes that is each different social media platform. I’ll be deleting my account. Reddit is by far the worst though since everything is clearly botted yet people pretend it’s organic leading to a kind of false sense of security that what you see is curated and willed by the “people”. It’s far more than “engagement” and the “algorithm” - it’s beyond that It’s all blatantly manufactured as some Aquino-esque psyop.
amelius 1y ago
I would be in favor of a social media ban around elections. In any case, there's nothing wrong with trying it out and seeing what other benefits it brings.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
visarga 1y ago
I see this step progression: 1. people having real problems, like employment, housing, health, or education access 2. they go online (or watch TV) finding all sorts of extreme takes and biases; these theories provide simple explanations and ways to pin the blame on others 3. they converge on identity based reasoning, where dialogue becomes impossible, tribal; their posts signal adherence to in-group and rejection of the out-group, no longer tied to reason 4. they vote against their own best interests, such as recent elections (Trump) and referendums (Brexit) or refuse the vaccine (10x higher death rate, observed in hindsight) The thing that is different now is that we have social networks, and that the outcomes are so drastic they are surprising everyone. Could be a coincidence, but I don't think it is. So it's: real problems -> toxic social media & tv takes -> identity politics

348 points by ingve 1y ago

I used to spend 4+ hours a day glued to Facebook. Last November I hit a tipping point and quit social media altogether: Facebook: deactivated Twitter: deleted my account altogether LinkedIn: removed the app—now I only post and check messages via desktop with a news-feed eradicator Google + Chrome + Youtube on mobile: deleted. now I just use Safari in incognito mode. Once the apps were no longer at my fingertips, quitting was surprisingly easy. I don’t miss them at all and I’m enjoying life much more. As for HN, I browse only sporadically—and it’s never felt addictive to me anyway.

rightbyte 1y ago
A tip is to also have Leechblock on Firefox mobile such that you can't easily cheat. I realized I had this muscle memory vising some detrimental sites in a loop so I blocked them.
0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
Individual quitting could be a bad solution for the systemic effects of social media though, if it leaves the remaining population of social media users even more radicalized. (I'm assuming that individual quitters tend to be more level-headed than the average user. If you self-assess as being high-risk for radicalization, then yeah I support individual quitting in your particular case.)

geoffbp 1y ago

I fell into the trap over some months of installing fb, Reddit, x, Instagram. It really is amazing how additive they are. I’ve since removed the apps but still have an account and limit myself to using the web versions only

lattalayta 1y ago

I’m finding that social media is less “social”. Fewer of my friends and family are posting and more and more businesses, ads, and “creators” are filling the gap

narag 1y ago

If you're a politician, you need people to vote for you. "Your" people will. Try not to alienate too much others so you can fish moderates and get to 50%. If you're an "influencer" you need engagement. You can live off a 10% easily. And you need retention. So keep the message heated.

eastbound 1y ago
We’ve succeeded to make people vote for the fight against global warming, which clearly says people have to reduce their lifestyle, so I think there can be enough audience to make this topic the platform of one party.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  Have we? I don't recall that option ever being on the ballot in the US.
  - BobbyTables2 1y ago
    Well, one party’s stated solution for high oil imports was not to reduce consumption but rather “drill baby, drill!” Inefficient regulation also incentivizes car companies to make larger less efficient vehicles because they can’t make the smaller ones efficient enough. And the public has no problem buying enormous vehicles… (Doesn’t everyone need an off road extended cab 4x4 truck for commuting to the office?) Frankly, I do feel there is a segment that seems to over focus on conservation to the point of impracticality. However, the “single use” consumption has got to end. I don’t even see the debate here. Plastic lids, styrofoam containers, gotta go. Maybe not outright ban, but the culture has to change. Ordered a pastry in a bakery — clerk put it into a large styrofoam container, inch thick stack of napkins, plastic grocery bag, plastic fork/knife. Unfortunately I was eating it there… All that waste for one pastry baked there? On the other hand, I wonder if Amazon is the devil we assume. If I drive my car around town to get a few items, maybe it’s more fuel efficient to just have them delivered with others’ ?
    - 1y ago

zyxzevn 1y ago

The problem with social media (and all media) is opinion-based censorship, causing group-think. And the chaos of replies that are uncategorized. Different opinions do matter. But due to the algorithms, the most emotional responses are promoted. There is no way to promote facts or what people think are facts. So most discussion will be extremely emotional and not based on facts and their value. This is even true in scientific discussions. Combined with group-think, these emotions can grow and lead to catastrophic outcomes.

btreecat 1y ago
> The problem with social media (and all media) is opinion-based censorship, causing group-think. And the chaos of replies that are uncategorized. All people are biased. It's impossible to also avoid bias needed to filter out the firehose of data. What your describing is often a form of moderation. > Different opinions do matter. But due to the algorithms, the most emotional responses are promoted. There is no way to promote facts or what people think are facts. This is tuneable. We have tuned the algos for engagement, and folks engage more with stuff they emotionally react to. People could learn to be less emotionally unstable. > So most discussion will be extremely emotional and not based on facts and their value. This is even true in scientific discussions. I think your over fitting. Moderation drives a lot of how folks behave in a community. > Combined with group-think, these emotions can grow and lead to catastrophic outcomes. Group think is also how we determined mamales are mamales and the earth isn't the center of the universe. Sometimes a consensus is required.
- hsartoris 1y ago
  > People could learn to be less emotionally unstable. How does it make sense to make billions of people responsible for abating the consequences of choices made by a few social media companies?
- zyxzevn 1y ago
  I am thinking of some moderation systems that focuses on categorization instead of censorship. There will be a bias in moderation, but that will have less of an effect when there is no deletion. If possible, the user could choose their preferred style (or bias) of moderation. If you want full freedom, you can let users select "super-users" to moderate/categorize for them. Emotional responses and troll jokes could be a separate categories as long they do not call for violence and or break other laws. Consensus is still group-think. I think it is destructive without any clear view where it stands within other options or other ideas. Like: "why exactly is earth not the center". A lot of consensus is also artificial due to biased reporting, biased censorship and biased sponsorship. During discussions, people within a consensus tend to use logical fallacies. Like portraying the opposition as idiots, or avoiding any valid points that the opposition bring into the discussion. I think that people have becomes less intelligent due to one-sided reporting of information. With extra information, people will become smarter and more understanding of how other (smart) people think.

vinceguidry 1y ago

The profit motive is largely what drives these problems. My big dream is a social media platform for humans. Self-hostable Zoom / Discord alternative that just works. AGPL-licensed and eventually turned over to the GNU project for long-term maintenance once it's feature-complete. Mastadon is nice and all, but micro-blogging isn't really for ordinary humans.

Babkock 1y ago

Whaat? You are telling me... Facebook and le Instragram... are not good things for me?

alexpotato 1y ago

A lot of the comment seem to ignore Hotelling's Law [0]. When applied to politics the game plan is: - In a two party system, start by framing your message to the middle of your party - This means you capture everyone from middle of your party to the political middle of the population (we'll call these the "closest to center") AND get a few folks farther out from your middle - This will help you win the "primaries" - After that, you want to slowly drift towards the middle of the population. This allows you to pull most of the "close to center" folks from your party AND people from the other side NOTE: the other side should be doing the exact same but coming from the other direction. Now, people may also ask "Why not start out in the population middle??". The reason is that you: a. don't win any primaries this way b. you get "crowded out" by the winners of the two party primaries 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law

_wire_ 1y ago

These question-begging, click-bait something-is-something-other-than-you-think posts are something less entertaining than the poster thinks.

abnercoimbre 1y ago
Yup. Soon as I read: > I am going to focus on the putative political impacts of social media I closed the tab.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Yeah I closed it when I saw the size of the scroll bar. If you need 100k words to make your point write a book.
  - stevage 1y ago
    Huh, I often have the reverse sentiment with a lot of books: this should have been a blog post. There's often a good intro which lays out the thesis, but each chapter is way too long, spelling out details that are obvious or superfluous.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
greyadept 1y ago
The author could have made the same points without using words like “polemicizing”, “putative”, and “epistemic”.
dwedge 1y ago
As soon as I saw that his article has an introduction and the first line of it mentions that he wrote a long essay (as though long == good) I closed it

alexfromapex 1y ago

My main case against at this point is that everything you post will be accessible by "bad" AI

isodev 1y ago

I think to be clear that’s “The case against algorithmic*” social media”, the kind that uses engagement as a core driver.

elric 1y ago
Where "engagement" is short for driving eyeballs to ads, optimizing for this ad nauseum, until the platform is raking in the dough and they stop caring about their users in the slightest.
parasti 1y ago
I recently learned that Tiktok has a thing called "Streak Pets". Imagine taking a dopamine addiction-inducing activity and imagine gamifying that to maximize engagement in that activity. Imagine the brainstorming sessions at Tiktok where they navigate around the glaring issue of the fried brain circuitry of their own users.
- raziel2p 1y ago
  mind-blowing. like tamagochis for the modern age.

johnea 1y ago

Man, blah, blah, blah... That article needs to have about 80% of the words cut out of it. When the author straight up tells you: I'm posting this in an attempt to increase my subscribership, you know you're in for some blathering. In spite of that, personally I think algorithmic feeds have had a terrible effect on many people. I've never participated, and never will...

scarface_74 1y ago

I really hate the narrative that social media has increased polarization knowing that my still living parents grew up in the Jim Crow south where they were literally separated from society because of the color of their skin. The country has always been hostile to “other”. People just have a larger platform to get their message out.

jwilber 1y ago
The article mentions this. It tries to argue the significance of that platform.
tolerance 1y ago
> The country has always been hostile to “other”. People just have a larger platform to get their message out. And a consequence of this is that some people’s perspective of the scale of the nation’s hostilities is limited to the last 5 years or so.
linguae 1y ago
As someone whose grandparents endured Jim Crow, I largely agree in the sense that social media did not create America’s divides. Many of the divides in American society are very old and are very deep, with no easy fixes. Unfortunately algorithmic social media is one of the factors adding fuel to the fire, and I believe it’s fair to say that social media has helped increase polarization by recommending content to its viewers purely based on engagement metrics without any regard for the consequences of pushing such content. It is much easier to whip people into a frenzy this way. Additionally, echo chambers make it harder for people to be exposed to other points of view. Combine this with dismal educational outcomes for many Americans (including a lack of critical thinking skills), our two-party system that aggregates diverse political views into just two options, a first-past-the-post election system that forces people to choose “the lesser of two evils,” and growing economic pain, and these factors create conditions that are ripe for strife.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  So there wasn’t enough fuel in the fire when marauding Klansmen were hanging Black people? It was the current President of the US that led a charge that a Black man running for President wasn’t a “real American” and was a secret Muslim trying to bring Shari law to the US and close to half of the US was willing to believe it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WErjPmFulQ0 This was before social media in the northern burbs of Atlanta where I had to a house built in 2016. We didn’t have a problem during the seven years we lived there. But do you think they were “polarized” by social media in the 80s? That’s just like police brutality didn’t start with the rise of social media. Everyone just has cameras and a platform

effnorwood 1y ago

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Lerc 1y ago

Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack. A lot of things suck right now. Social media definitely give us the ability to see that. Using your personal ideology to link correlations is not the same thing as finding causation. There will be undoubtedly be some damaging aspects of social media, simply because it is large and complex. It would be highly unlikely that all those factors always aligned in the direction of good. All too often a collection of cherry picked studies are presented in books targeting the worried public. It can build a public opinion that is at odds with the data. Some people write books just to express their ideas. Others like Jonathan Haidt seem to think that putting their efforts into convincing as many people as possible of their ideology is preferable to putting effort into demonstrating that their ideas are true. There is this growing notion that perception is reality, convince enough people and it is true. I am prepared to accept aspects of social media are bad. Clearly identify why and how and perhaps we can make progress addressing each thing. Declaring it's all bad acts as a deterrent to removing faults. I become very sceptical when many disparate threads of the same thing seem to coincidentally turn out to be bad. That suggests either there is an underlying reason that has been left unstated and unproven or the information I have been presented with is selective.

make_it_sure 1y ago
seems that you're the guy that likes to be against the norm, even if you're wrong. Social media being controlled by corporations and algorithms built to create addiction should be enough, unless you have other motives to ignore all this.
kmacdough 1y ago
I'm with you on the skepticism, but I also think the underlying point is worth acknowledging: Social media represents a step change in how we consume news about current events. No longer are there central sources relied on by huge swaths of the population. Institutions which could be held accountable as a whole and stood to lose from poor reporting. Previous behemoths like NYT, WaPo, Bloomberg are now comparatively niche and fighting for attention. This feels so obvious it's not necessary to litigate, but if someone has statistics to the contrary, I'll be happy to look deeper and re-evaluate. I agree, one should not immediately succumb to fear of the new. At the same time, science is slow by design. It takes years to construct, execute and report on proper controlled studies. Decades to iterate and solidify a holistic analysis. In the mean time, it seems naive to run forward headlong, assuming the safest outcome. We'll have raised a generation or two before we can possibly reach analytical confidence. Serious irreparable damage could be done far before we have a chance to prove it.

xnx 1y ago

Social media would be entirely different if there were no monetization on political content. There's a whole lot of ragebaiting/engagement-farming for views. I don't know how to filter for political content, but it's worth a shot. People are free to say whatever they want, but they don't need to get paid for it.

stevage 1y ago
Strangely I never see political content on YouTube. Maybe the algorithm worked out quickly I'm simply not interested. Whereas twitter/mastodon/bluesky are awash in it, to the point of making those platforms pretty unusable for me. I guess the difference is that YouTube content creators don't casually drop politics in because it will alienate half their audience and lose revenue. Whereas on those other platforms the people I follow aren't doing it professionally and just share whatever they feel like sharing.
- timeon 1y ago
  Interesting, I do not see politics on Mastodon, while YouTube recommends me not just random politics, but conspiracy theories about politics. On Mastodon, those I follow do not post about politics and if they do it is hidden behind content warning. YouTube is probably location based as I have no account there and that type of content is relatively mainstream where I live.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
  Youtube is the one platform that actually tunes "the algorithm" in a responsible way.
ants_everywhere 1y ago
they get paid in political power that's why it's so ragebait driven

jparishy 1y ago

We, consumers online, are sliced and diced on every single dimension possible in order to optimize our clicks for another penny. As a side benefit, when you do this enough, the pendulum that goes over the middle line for any of these arbitrary-but-improves-clicks division builds momentum until it hits the extremes. On either side-- it doesn't matter, cause it will swing back just as hard, again and again. As a side benefit the back and forth of the pendulum is very distracting to the public so we do not pay attention to who is pushing it. Billions of collective hours spent fighting with no progress except for the wallets of rich ppl. It almost feels like a conspiracy but I think it's just the direct, natural result of the vice driven economy we have these days

blitz_skull 1y ago

The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.

scandox 1y ago
I'm making 2 assumptions here: that you're American and that you're referring to the recent assassination. What I find odd is that American history is packed with assassinations and domestic terrorism and yet it is this recent event that has affected your thinking. In your own parlance, what gives?
m3047 1y ago
If the internet is in fact "the largest social media platform", then anonymity absolutely has to go as my public-facing telemetry server [0] based on DNS as a transport, and not rooted to the ICANN DNS tree, gets 1000+ abusive requests for every legitimate one. I'm supposed to return REFUSED to each and every one [1] of them (not drop them) and I'm not supposed to publish the IP addresses involved. Granted they could be spoofed, but the only way we'll ever know is to go ahead and publish so that a global picture can be developed and the owners of the addresses can tell us that they're being spoofed. [0] One of the pieces of telemetry is the addresses abusing the server. [1] I, and many other operators violate this stability requirement and drop traffic. [2] [2] There are no internet police. If there were then BCP 38 would be enforced and this particular problem would largely go away.
rkomorn 1y ago
They're unfortunately not much more capable of responsibly connecting with people non-anonymously, I'd say. See examples like finding someone's employer on LinkedIn to "out" the employee's objectionable behavior, doxxing, or to the extreme, SWATing, etc.
- qarl 1y ago
  Yeah. People use their real identities on Facebook, and it doesn't help a bit.

hn_throw_250910 1y ago

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api 1y ago

It's more specific than social media. It's engagement maximizing (read: addiction maximizing) algorithms. Social media wasn't nearly as bad until algorithmic engagement maximizing feeds replaced temporal or topic based feeds and user-directed search. Two people walk past you on the street. One says "hi," and the other strips naked and smears themselves with peanut butter and starts clucking like a chicken. Which one maximizes engagement? A politician says something sane and reasonable. Another politician mocks someone, insults someone, or says something completely asinine. Which one maximizes engagement? This is why our president is a professional troll, many of our public intellectuals are professional trolls, and politics is becoming hyper-polarized into raging camps fixated on crazy extremes. It maximizes engagement. The "time on site" KPI is literally destroying civilization by biasing public discourse toward trash. I think "trash maximizes engagement" should be considered an established fact at this point. If you A/B test for engagement you will converge on a mix of trolling, tabloid sensationalism, fear porn, outrage porn, and literal porn, and that’s our public discourse.

profsummergig 1y ago

I used to be disappointed in myself that I didn't understand Discord well enough to use it. Now I'm glad I never understood it well enough to use it.

stevage 1y ago
Huh. I'm on a few discords. They're very easy and obvious to use, and I really enjoy them. And because they are generally well divided by channel, it's easy to avoid the bits you don't want.
- profsummergig 1y ago
  You may remember that one needed to use Discord to use MidJourney initially. I was able to use it for that (although a lot of messages that streamed by were confusing to me). After that I joined a couple of Discords with tens of thousands of users. Nothing ever seemed to happen on them. I knew I was doing something wrong but I couldn't figure it out.

793212408435807 1y ago

Number 3 will shock you! What a shame that these clickbait headlines make it to the front page.

epolanski 1y ago

Looking at this very comment section the author may have a point.

beeflet 1y ago
The solution to social division is to force everyone to use news.epolanski.com, the site where you can only post things that epolanski agrees with
- epolanski 1y ago
  I was referring to the amount of toxicity in the comments.

cramsession 1y ago

Without social media, we'd be left with mainstream media, which is a very narrow set of channels that those in power can control. Despite rampant censorship on social media, it's still the best way to circumvent propaganda and give people a voice.

sethammons 1y ago
> it's still the best way to circumvent propaganda and give people a voice. I think it can amplify propaganda but still give people a voice, which is better than no voice I think
deleted 1y ago
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add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
The idea of social media reducing net propaganda is a wild take.
- cramsession 1y ago
  We would have no idea what was going on in Gaza if it wasn't for social media. It really exposed how biased (which probably isn't even a strong enough word) our msm is.
- synecdoche 1y ago
  Without it, there would be no way to get information from the source. In msm all we get is the msm view. When compared to what was actually said, done or written then you have a chance to make your own opinion. You only then can compare what is in msm and what is not. And the bias is relentless. Which makes it a propaganda machine. Of course there is garbage in social media as there is in every field. Find the source if there is one recorded. Msm rarely if ever refer to any. And no wonder. It would risk undermining their publication, which they peddle as unbiased.
n1b0m 1y ago
Its still propaganda just from Russian and Chinese bots.

hbarka 1y ago

Full anonymity in social media should not be allowed. It becomes a cover for bad actors (propagandists, agents, disinformation, bots, age-inappropriate, etc.) It doesn’t have to be a full identity, but knowing your user metadata is open during interactions can instill a sense of responsibility and consequence of social action. As in real life.

makeitdouble 1y ago
Real life needs full anonymity too. Not everywhere, but it's critical to have some. For instance a political vote needs to be anonymous. Access to public space typically is (you're not required to identify to walk the street) even if that anonymity can be lifted etc. Real life is complex, and for good reasons, if we want to take it as a model we should integrate it's full complexity as well.
- deleted 1y ago
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- hbarka 1y ago
  In the United States, political votes are not anonymous. There is a database of how someone voted. If you’re out in public, you’re also not fully anonymous. You display metadata such as race, gender, age, behavior. Now you could wear a ski mask during broad daylight but I doubt if you’d be allowed inside a bank. And the bank has a right to judge you for that.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    > There is a database of how someone voted. That cannot be right, that's the fundamental core of the voting process in our democracies. You might be thinking about the party registrations or voluntary polls ? > You display metadata What you show to the world has no requirement to be accurate. If you look like a rich 70 old Asian lady when going to the park there will be no check that's actually what you are (unless the police comes at you for an identity check...). That's particularly impacting for gender, you're typically not required to represent your official assignment, and how you behave isn't stuck to your official identity.

homeonthemtn 1y ago

Social media is a cancer on our society. It is both the asbestos and cigarettes of our generation.

infotainment 1y ago
Agreed, and I feel like the right answer might be to treat it exactly like cigarettes. For example: 1. Ban in most places except very specific ones. E.g., "would you like to sit in the social media use section today?" 2. Make it extremely expensive to access and use. This would likely do wonders to cut down on use, just as it did for cigarettes.
lanfeust6 1y ago
You're on social media right now. Probably you could better qualify what it is you think is a problem.
- delis-thumbs-7e 1y ago
  Are we? In a sense yes that the content is usee-generated and stranger are discussing the content, but is any newsfeed with a comment-section or a hobbyist forum social media? Can I monetise my contributions here, advertise products, sell my karma-points or create networks of like-minded individuals here? Is there any point for me to try to turn my personality into a brand or try to ragebait you to interact with me by saying that your aunt Mary likes Duran Duran, or that your goldfish looks silly, in order to trick the algorithm to show more of my content? Can I channel people from here to a website showing lewd pictures of my parrot in order to get them pay me? If all social media was like HN, I think we would be fine y’know.
  - lanfeust6 1y ago
    > In a sense yes By definition, yes. > is any newsfeed with a comment-section or a hobbyist forum social media? Some are just larger and more centralized than others. > Can I monetise my contributions here, advertise products, sell my karma-points or create networks of like-minded individuals here? "Show HN" basically is that. And yes you can create connections here. I don't think I need to go on.

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PicassoCTs 1y ago

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mallowdram 1y ago

The missing link to our epistemic collapse is language. The acceleration of language, which is arbitrary, accelerates language distortion. The contagion on social media is merely a symptom of the disease of language. “Historical language records reveal a surge of cognitive distortions in recent decades” https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2102061118 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2102061118

throawaywpg 1y ago
acceleration? as in the literal speed at which we translate information through language?
- mallowdram 1y ago
  Not translate it, simply transmitting it. This stuff is just arbitrary. we can say anything we want, it means nothing. Look at high speed conflicts now, each side accuses the other of being the same villain. It means we're saying nothing. The initial conditions are arbitrary, very indirect perception. How we ever assumed we were communicating is quite strange. Everything is primate, every word is first a negotiation for status. Then control. Perhaps manipulation. That words words refer directly to anything outside of a momentary context is impossible. Plus every word isn't simply arbitrary, it's metaphors, and they separate things by attributes that are based in folk science/psychology. We basically have to unlearn and replace words.

1970-01-01 1y ago

You reap what you sew. Stupid and uninformed voices receiving equivalent status to wise scientific experts was a mistake. Witnessing the flat Earth crowd growing over the decades encapsulates everything wrong with social media.

cindyllm 1y ago
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giardini 1y ago
"1970-01-01" stepped in it 5 hours ago by saying: >"You reap what you sew.< "You reap what you sow" is correct. You sew cloth with a needle and thread but sow seeds by throwing them on fertile ground, hoping they will sprout, grow and you will later reap a harvest.

stack_framer 1y ago

I did my own informal research study—I quit social media cold turkey. My findings: I feel much better. I don't need any other data.

delis-thumbs-7e 1y ago
Same here. Even very depressing news do not cause and endless circle of anxiety and scrolling, when you don’t have constant new enforcement in form of comments, I just get bored, switch off and take some distance - as we should. I already stopped using FB after 2016 when I noticed that instead of being better informed - like I felt I was - I was actually dumber and knew less what was going on. After that I have gradually quit forums, IG, reddit. Onlyone left is youtube, which I watch occasionally to watch some comedy. Ifeel better, more calm and I feel I am on the driver’s seat. I think it is insane that we give these companies this much power and influence in our lives and societirs without them contributing almost nothing.
coffeefirst 1y ago
I have informally reproduced your study and reached the same conclusion.
escapedmoose 1y ago
Same. 9 months into quitting socials I feel like I got a new brain. I’m appreciating my surroundings and noticing the cadence of the day more than I have in years. I’ve been killing it at work and got a promotion. Just last year I had been thinking to myself that my mind had lost its sharpness since college. Now I feel like it’s noticeably expanding! I will never ever ever ever go back. The perks of online connection were never worth the sacrifices.

gerdesj 1y ago

"In conclusion: " "...in particular in the U.S., but probably across Europe as well. ..." The world is rather larger than the US and Europe. I physically endure myopia and frankly Mr Witkin seems to figuratively suffer from it. I need only mention the name: TikTok.

amatecha 1y ago

"everyone publicly talking in the same room" social media really sucks. I've really enjoyed the smaller-scale, better-curated interaction on mastodon. It feels like a giant step forward in how people can connect and socialize online.

beeflet 1y ago
A giant step forward into the echo chamber
- amatecha 1y ago
  I interpret this as "I expect my opinions to be heard by people who don't want to hear them". Show me the ill effects of having an opt-in, consent-based social space where it's not infiltrated by unwelcome participants?
  - zeta0134 1y ago
    Well, imagine for a moment that the unwelcome participants are the ones against murder. Everyone currently in the group thinks murdering people who disagree with you is a fine way to solve problems. Outsiders might share insights and opinions to discourage this way of thinking, so they're not allowed to join.
    - amatecha 1y ago
      Yeah? That's the nature of social circles. To take the example further, I definitely won't be able to work my way into a social circle of violent criminals who murder rival gang members and think murder is okay. I will not be on board with their general way of life and general perspective on the value of human life, or my overall aversion to committing crimes. They will definitely not "let me in" (unless they intend to exploit me as an unwitting participant in something, lol) The jist of what I'm saying is, I don't feel like I have a right to join every conversation everywhere just because I have a computer and an internet connection. Groups of people have established norms for what's acceptable and what's not. For once, those social boundaries, the delineation between one group of people and another, can actually be represented in server-to-server communication permissions. That doesn't mean that "murdering ppl who disagree with you is okay" people will never interact with the "murdering ppl who disagree with you is bad" people. They just probably won't be on the very same server, but the servers will probably communicate between each other unless the conflict level gets particularly high, at which time one server may defederate from or block the other. I regularly see opinions and views I don't agree with or share. Life isn't so black and white, I don't (and my server doesn't) block people just because they say something a bit spicy or weird. Some people/servers might, but the idea is that, for myself, I can interact with those different chunks of humanity in a way that works for me. All part of the word I keep saying, "agency". Beyond all that, I've not seen anyone provide any reasons that an opt-in consent-based medium has any ill effects.

mightyham 1y ago

To me this just reads like fear mongering and shilling for the status quo political establishment. I've recently been learning a bit about Russian history and it has similarities to their conservative nobility throughout the 19th century trying through various means to suppress the spread of liberalism in the public and intelligentsia: the point being that Russia had serious social ills like serfdom and radical political ideas were absolutely warranted. Social media is destabilizing for the influence of establishment sources of information and more of the public (right and left) is finding out more accurate information about how the world works, then coming to natural conclusions about how to address various social ills. Polarization may be increasing, but people forming stronger opinions is also exactly what you would expect in the face of increased revelation about unsolved social problems. Ultimately, I'm optimistic about the long term effects of social media on politics.

drraah 1y ago

I've seen numerous posts from researchers on X demonstrating that people high in psychopathy, low in empathy, and low in cognitive ability are overrepresented on social media. They post more often and fuel polarisation in politics. The extremism is entertaining to others and rewarded with exposure. Political moderates don't tend to get as emotionally invested and are less likely to voice their opinions in the first place. But underlying the extremism and polarisation are real issues. There's often an overlooked middleground that technology can step in to highlight

freshtake 1y ago

The problem is that our thoughts, opinions, and ultimately actions are the product of our exposure. Social media gives a small number of companies (and their algorithms) unparalleled and unchecked control over our exposure. We should be educating children at a young age about the benefits and risks of social media. We haven't adapted the way we educate society in light of massive tech changes. This will likely be a topic that future humans look back on and wonder why we did this to ourselves.

adrr 1y ago
People have stopped reading the news and rely on social media as their main news source. Thats the scariest thing.
- topspin 1y ago
  > Thats the scariest thing. Written "news" is frequently a report about a series of X posts by various authorities, thought leaders and celebrities, embedded directly in the story. Square that circle.
- moduspol 1y ago
  At the same time, "reading the news" has become less and less valuable. And social media has an overwhelming impact on the tone and content of "the news," too.
lumost 1y ago
Is the media even “social” anymore? How much of Reddit is simply bots generating catchy takes and then generating commentary on these takes. You can easily be deceived into thinking that a vast number of people believe something, or think the way you do, or think the way you do but were swayed by some thought process. Repeat the process long enough and with enough variation and tuning and anyone can be made to believe anything.
- SapporoChris 1y ago
  I do not believe it.

averageRoyalty 1y ago

The social media problem is very simple to solve. Ban advertising on social media (from platform or users) and ban usage of user data external to the platform. When you remove the incentive to engage users, the companies will engage in less abusive practices to push engagement. I've never seen this proposed, and I'm confused why.

positron26 1y ago
- information silos still exist - social incoherence because silos cannot communicate laterally is still there - the ads will likely go native to become "content" and more revenue will shift to influencers Just saying it's not quite that easy, but yes, ad monetization is a great force of evil.
pitched 1y ago
I think the way you define ads and social media would be important. We would end up getting something like the cookie banners again instead of real change.

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softwaredoug 1y ago

The article mentions political polarization increased most in seniors (65+). Social media or not, I would guess it’s largely because many retirees don’t have anything to do. They’re isolated. They want connection and purpose. While younger adults have jobs and obligations. My retired dad lived alone. He could talk nonstop about that crazy thing Trump did, but I wasn’t following closely, and somewhat tuned my dad out to not get lost in a rabbit hole. My dad got this from cable news. Isolation to me is the root cause at any age. People who only see the world through media (social or otherwise). It’s easy to become radicalized when you don’t have any attachments other than your political affiliations.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

Person A and person B (or group B) want to communicate by using the internet Idea: Use person C's website This was never a good idea for A and B but turned out to be a great idea for C C derives the benefit, C became a billionaire, but it is taking a very long time for A and C to realise they are not getting a good deal Sadly in 2025 A and B believe there is no other way to communicate via the internet other than through C C could disappear and the internet would live on, and A and B would indeed be able to communicate A and B pay internet subscription fees, but generally do not pay subscription fees to C The internet is worth something, people are willing to pay for it; C's value is questionable, few would be willing to pay for it If not for the internet, C would not be a billionaire If not for the internet, A and B could not communicate via C The case for the internet is stronger than the case for C

meonkeys 1y ago
Yes, this. It's a symptom of late-stage capitalism.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
s/A and C/A and B/

dfee 1y ago

I often wonder when I see articles like this if HN counts as social media. And then, the continuous re-discovery or the ails of social media on social media is a trip, in itself.

AdamN 1y ago
I don't think it has the hallmarks of social media (aggressive engagement mechanisms, etc...). We've had newsgroups for 30+ years and social media requires more than just message boards. The owner needs to push the content such that there is enough engagement to make money from advertising (or monthly fees).
mid-kid 1y ago
Technically, yes, but at least it's not filter bubbling everyone.
- topspin 1y ago
  There is a "karma" score. You know yours and you've checked the scores of others. This is social media. It's a fairly benign manifestation of it, I suppose, but it's social media nonetheless. Something to consider while carefully crafting denigrations of what we all think is meant when discussing "social media." Especially if you'd rather not see HN and similar places damaged by righteous politicians.
- raziel2p 1y ago
  there may not be an algorithm at work here as there is on Instagram or TikTok, but there's still a bubble - the name, design and discourse of HN itself works as a filter.
  - mid-kid 1y ago
    What you're describing is an echo chamber, when people willingly share only things that they know resonate with the group. While still somewhat detrimental, it's at least a visible problem - everyone is aware of it because everyone sees the same thing. With filter bubbles, you create personalized echo chambers, that nobody is aware of unless they're in there.

mihaic 1y ago

I think the biggest problem in arguing against tech and social media is that it in truth you rely on counterfactual positions, which describe how the world would look without that thing. A world without online dating for instance wouldn't just be the same as now, except without those apps. Now forms of socializing would emerge, which you could argue are more local and healthier for society. When talking about social media, I now ignore the more powerful arguments of how better the world could be without people spending hours on their smartphones, and focus on the problem that it's a surogate for socialization where everyone wants to sell you something, which most people seem to agree is wrong.

picafrost 1y ago

Designing tools is designing behavior. It shouldn't be surprising that the behavior of a society changes when the primary form of discourse shifts from communication among peers to maximizing the engagement of strangers due to the financial needs of the platform.

Argonaut998 1y ago

I started using X a few weeks ago and I’m already seeing it impact my mind negatively. It is pure controlled and distilled propaganda that’s clearly made to intentionally shape how we think, across the different skinner boxes that is each different social media platform. I’ll be deleting my account. Reddit is by far the worst though since everything is clearly botted yet people pretend it’s organic leading to a kind of false sense of security that what you see is curated and willed by the “people”. It’s far more than “engagement” and the “algorithm” - it’s beyond that It’s all blatantly manufactured as some Aquino-esque psyop.

amelius 1y ago

I would be in favor of a social media ban around elections. In any case, there's nothing wrong with trying it out and seeing what other benefits it brings.

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visarga 1y ago

I see this step progression: 1. people having real problems, like employment, housing, health, or education access 2. they go online (or watch TV) finding all sorts of extreme takes and biases; these theories provide simple explanations and ways to pin the blame on others 3. they converge on identity based reasoning, where dialogue becomes impossible, tribal; their posts signal adherence to in-group and rejection of the out-group, no longer tied to reason 4. they vote against their own best interests, such as recent elections (Trump) and referendums (Brexit) or refuse the vaccine (10x higher death rate, observed in hindsight) The thing that is different now is that we have social networks, and that the outcomes are so drastic they are surprising everyone. Could be a coincidence, but I don't think it is. So it's: real problems -> toxic social media & tv takes -> identity politics