15 ms·
Social Cooling (2017)
- oytis 1y agoI wouldn't blame the culture of conformity solely on social media really.
- lemonlearnings 1y agoNot what this is about. It is more like everyone needs to earn stars on their star chart to survive and big techs algorithm decides who gets the stars.
- oytis 1y agoWell, yes, and the argument is that it's bad, because people become less connected, can't freely speak their minds etc. My point is there are other, maybe more powerful reasons why people become less connected and might hesitate speaking their minds. Social media that exposes everything and saves everything forever sure helps though.
- an_ko 1y agoCould you elaborate on what those "maybe more powerful reasons" are?
- oytis 1y agoNo, I don't feel qualified. But it looks to me that there were times when challenging authorities and questioning general opinion was cool, and these times ended before social media kicked in. Maybe urbanization and generally people not staying in one place long enough are to blame, not sure.
- kachapopopow 1y agoI honestly love this as someone who never has a consistent identity in terms of the name I use online and not keeping a long history such as re-creating accounts whenever it is convenient. This is especially relevant on social media platforms where I don't want to feel like someone can just dig up something I've said or shared 5 years ago and use that against me. It also helps me stay myself without changing my behavior to align with others.
- lemonlearnings 1y agoGood but temporary. Big tech has your browser fingerprint against that plus LLMs will probably be able to match it again by text using cosine similarly. Maybe you use tails everywhere and run what you say through LLMs to rephrase. Might be OK then.
- kachapopopow 1y agooh I've accepted that. luckily I have GDPR on my side.
- hobs 1y agoWith that use case you either dont have enough anonymity, or will forget the number of identities and leave a lot of traces, like admitting you are in the euro zone.
- kachapopopow 1y agoI don't care about that much if I did I would never use social media and sit behind a VPN 24/7.
- komali2 1y ago{ concerned_with_privacy: true, online_usernames: ['kachapopopow', ...] } ;) As someone else mentioned, most likely you've been fingerprinted. But at least yes you can't be looked up directly, only if someone uses a databroker.
- krets 1y agoTrue, you don’t need to be impossible to be fingerprinted. If someone really wanted to track you manually using databrokers, be my guest :) But for most people here I think it’s about not being the easiest prey. And make the automatic and general algorithms hard to track you.
- rapnie 1y agoThis page dates from 2017. See also earlier submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 (2692 upvotes, 1099 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882 (389 upvotes, 190 comments)
- dang 1y agoThanks! Macroexpanded: Like Oil Leads to Global Warming, Data Leads to Social Cooling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38482582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38482582 - Dec 2023 (15 comments) The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28744471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28744471 - Oct 2021 (204 comments) What Is Social Cooling? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25746131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25746131 - Jan 2021 (246 comments) Social Cooling (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 - Sept 2020 (1058 comments) Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882 - June 2017 (185 comments)
- hnuser123456 1y agoThis was an interesting time. In some ways I felt like the internet was even more bifurcated then than now, between US political parties. This is when primitive chatbots, before GPT LLMs, could have mostly only been used by large nation states. This is when concerns about significant numbers of bot accounts on reddit became plausible. It felt like a time when the internet was being manipulated in a more subtle way than it is now.
- dmazin 1y agoIt's important to note that this page is almost 10 years old. I do find myself self-censoring in 2025, but it's for a far more boring reason than surveillance capitalism. It's because leaders on the far right literally said people should snitch on each other and dox each other. Much as I hate to say it, I'm sure people on the right have felt the same way for at least a decade.
- VBprogrammer 1y agoPersonally it's the ownership of the company I work for and the desire to retain most international travel privileges.
- mantas 1y agoIt’s not specifically far-right thing. The left are snitching and doxing people for the last decade if not longer.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- GardenLetter27 1y agoPyCon was the turning point. I used to have accounts under my real name in Slashdot etc. before then.
- tjpnz 1y agoTBF the individual at the center of it did suffer consequences. They were fired and struggled to find employment after the fact, and PyCon updated their attendee rules to include a clause on public shaming.
- manapause 1y agoThe tactic become normalized amongst the extremes of both sides. “ 5% of the wizards casting 85% of the spells.”
- timeon 1y ago
- komali2 1y agoIs the self censoring of big boy and girl worlds like "murder," "suicide," "execution," "Nazi," and "genocide" on videos and posts related to this? It's been driving me crazy. Do not go quietly into that night and whatnot... Do not comply in advance. The idea of changing my speech so my words look nice next to a Toyota advertisement fills me with disgust and anger.
- atoav 1y agoWell this has to do with the simple fact that social media reduces the reach of posts containing certain of those words. So if you want to talk about them and reach people.. I wish those outraged with liberal "cancel-culture" would actually care about free speech, instead of only wh3n it suits their narratives.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 1y agoThere’s a variant of “cancel culture” that’s actually just trial by publicity and I think that’s objectively a bad thing. But often, people in social media are just looking for attention by deliberately inciting outrage, posting their “hot takes” and making controversial statements—and then when other people with opposing views reply to disagree, the original posters start crying about “cancel culture” when, in fact, it’s just plain old disagreement in public discourse. What needs to happen here is for people to take accountability in what they post in social media, and to take it as seriously as saying their opinions out loud in a physical, public space. If you’re deliberately inciting anger by saying something that puts a group of people at a disadvantage, don’t be surprised if someone from that group stands up to fight back. Your right to free speech does not mean protection from humiliation for the stupid things that you say in public.
- BlueTemplar 1y agoIt's probably better to just stop using social media. (And stop tolerating people that do.) I doubt that even something as 'light' on that spectrum as Hacker News is worthwhile enough compared to the non-social-media alternatives. (As a reminder, you can have a tree-like discussion structure without an upvote system.)
- rapnie 1y agoI find that awareness of the deep rabbit hole of surveillance capitalism, and how it increasingly extends into political and ideological realms to wield power and influence, makes me feel uneasy on all the physical gadgets I see all around me. And also the pervasive use of camera's everywhere, that send video streams into the cloud where numerous AI applications do who knows what with the data. Like in the Netherlands in the Jumbo supermarket chain, which is the first to introduce an AI glaring at you through the camera while you walk through the store, and at the checkout self-scan, doing sentiment analysis to see if you are suspicious. It feels outright dystopic, and I avoid the Jumbo if I can. Also it is crazy how Tesla camera platforms are surveilling the streets of the world for the richest man in the world. It seems these tech developments have cooling effects on society in the physical space. Cooling effects that serve the ones in power, I suppose.
- noobermin 1y agoThe good thing about younger zoomers and alpha is they've already incorporated this into their lives, so none of this is grotesque or surprising. They've adapted their culture to match.
- maldonad0 1y agoThat is not a good thing. It means they have internalized this level of control and slavery. Finding comfort in the panopticon.
- RataNova 1y agoYeah, it's fascinating how seamlessly younger generations adapt to the tradeoffs. Privacy feels less like a right and more like a strategic resource they know how to manage
- presentation 1y agoYou don’t need some kind of “social score” to have the chilling effect, if anything I think people self censor more because of the fear of getting berated by others for their beliefs—both by those they know and don’t. Interestingly I don’t think it’s really “cooling” that happened - if anything it’s been some people becoming extremely hot, and then the majority of people, myself included, are experiencing cooling. Unfortunately liberals lately reinforce this by being vitriolic over everything and endorsing toxic behaviors like cutting off friends and family because they disagree on politics, which probably undermines the democratic ideals they think they’re defending. [1] I consider myself overall more aligned with liberals, but as a recent example, it disheartens me to open Facebook after a long time and see so many people I knew from years past reveling in Charlie Kirk’s death as though that makes their cause more sympathetic to alienate anyone who might have agreed with things he said (even if I generally don’t). This just reinforces division and increases the social cooling effect. [1] https://open.substack.com/pub/theargument/p/were-not-all-going-to-get-along?r=1bmwua&utm_medium=ios https://open.substack.com/pub/theargument/p/were-not-all-goi...
- ivape 1y ago[flagged]
- N_Lens 1y agoI wonder if I should upvote or downvote you, and what that will say about my HN profile to “big data analyses”
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- immibis 1y agoIt doesn't matter. If you vote on politics a lot, a moderator will set your account so the votes don't do anything. HN is the illusion of user-generated content.
- 1y ago
- b00ty4breakfast 1y ago[flagged]
- gloxkiqcza 1y agoThis presentation is more likely to engage typical social media users (ie people not on HN) which is apparently the goal of the website.
- nkrisc 1y agoWe are clearly not the target audience. What an awful way to read anything.
- KaiserPro 1y agoAs other people have noted, this is an old site, they also note that genz have partially learnt from our mistakes, and turned to ephemeral media, amongst other things. The rise of AR glasses will of course kneecap anonymity in "real life" But I look at the general collapse of "civility" in the USA and cant help but think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
- dimal 1y agoInteresting. We’re not dealing with actual overcrowding now, but with the constant din of social media and news, society feels overcrowded. You used to be able to live in blissful ignorance of what was happening in other areas, but now you can only do that if you avoid news and social media completely.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago>the general collapse of "civility" Yes, I can't help but think that things turned out exactly the opposite of how this site predicted. In my view, it would be a good thing if people were a little more self-conscious about what they wrote on social media!
- blargey 1y agore "behavioral sink" that wikipedia article is kind of a credulous stub that's missing the pile of criticisms of the "Universe 25" experiment (lack of reproducibility, much of the dysfunction being attributable to how the setting trapped the population in each other's scent+sight lines, akin to shoving humans in a transparent panopticon and calling it a test of urban life)
- sethammons 1y agoI hate being that guy. Scroll is broken on this site. Firefox on iPhone: if you are swiping to go down a few lines then swipe up to center what you are reading, the page position jumps, and if you continue to swipe down, it jumps again.
- arthurofbabylon 1y agoThe Americans (†) who grew up with constant surveillance (social media, cameras everywhere) aim for ordinariness. The entire generation is less likely to express a non-consensus opinion than prior generations. For good reason: with everything being recorded and broadcast, personal errors are both accentuated and persist longer with no corresponding rise in upside. Bold opinions and creative ideas are simply too risky under such an equation. I find this sad and worrisome. I like chaos and healthy disorderliness. I enjoy skilled conversationalists with fresh ideas. And I worry about a "chilled" populace too afraid to express morality when it becomes socially inconvenient. († Footnote: It isn't just Americans but youth coming of age in every culture. The "social cooling" effect is more pronounced among Americans as they exhibit greater variance in expression in the first place and thus have more to move toward the baseline.)
- honkostani 1y agoIt helps to be already social isolated and socially suicidal. The freedom to think and speak, once again resides in a barrel and not with those who emptied it, who must stick to stagnant ideas with no explanation and prediction power. (the sun will disappear August 23, 2044). True science. true knowledge puts itself to the test, by performing predictions and miracles. Everything else just ain't. Typed on a miracle, a electrically state-full rock, predicatively turning up and on every morning.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- baxtr 1y agoMy best friend from school days has a son who’s now in 7th grade. Recently, when we were talking about him, we realised his school years are far less dramatic than ours. We had drama, lots of bullying, tears, fights, and mean things were done. In contrast, his son’s school days are absolutely harmless and benign. I know it’s n = 1 and maybe we were very unlucky back then. But it also makes me wonder if any chaotic experience is worth having.
- microtonal 1y ago
- N_Lens 1y agoArticle from 2015 (should be in the title)
- henearkr 1y agoPity that "social cooling" gets attached to that meaning instead of, e.g., the fact to favorise, in internet discussions, themes that unite and reunite people, promote empathy and kindness, curiosity, tolerance and positive mindset, etc.
- clejack 1y agoPity indeed. If people don't actually believe in these things and they're simply repressing themselves this can't be healthy.
- commandersaki 1y ago"Social Cooling", censorship, and self-censorship is a big reason why Trump is in office.
- necovek 1y agoI would say that the fact people have had to self-censor when they held "conservative" views instead of engaging in public discourse without being villified is why they had to turn to someone like Trump when they were handing in their ballots. If they felt safe, perhaps more of them would have appreciated the other side's arguments (and vice versa, obviously). Is that what you meant? Or why did self-censorship help get Trump into power twice?
- Marazan 1y agoOh. What conservative views are those?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Jensson 1y agoThat men shouldn't go to women's bathrooms. Trump focused pretty hard on that sort of issue last election.
- immibis 1y ago[flagged]
- lyu07282 1y agoI think that's just a liberal fantasy, it's simply people's lives got worse over the last few decades under end-stage liberalism/capitalism, Trump successfully made a (albeit bullshit) case for genuine change, liberals didn't. If liberals hold on to that myth, that all they have to do to win is throw trans people and immigrants under the bus, then they will loose again. What they should focus on is the fact that no your lives didn't improve because we took trans people's rights away and threw some brown children in concentration camps, your rent didn't go down did it? So instead perhaps it's your landlord we should be focusing our anger towards... See that for social cooling: I just pissed off everybody. It can be done lmao
- dmje 1y agoNot using the hellscape of modern social media solves the problem, no?
- pornel 1y agoUnless lack of social media presence will be taken as a signal that you have something to hide, you terrorist/bot.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoOr if you find yourself targeted for non-media criteria, like being Hispanic and needing to buy something from Home Depot.
- globalnode 1y agoI dont know? does non participation now flag you as a problem person? (playing devils advocate: i dont participate in any social media besides HN)
- etrautmann 1y agoNo? Most of my peers don’t participate in social media anymore. I know few people who post online on almost any platforms outside of group chats.
- dmje 1y agoSame. My sons are 21 and 18, both are fairly typical of their peer group - they belong to and participate in Insta, Snapchat etc but it’s very much small private groups and not public posting.
- derelicta 1y agoThe social credit score doesn't exist in China. There were attempts in some cities with very restricted scopes but they were phased out. On the other hand, in Europe and with the coming chat control regulations, these systems will likely emerge in the West.
- clort 1y agoPerhaps you can explain something then, since you appear to be knowledgeable on this matter. On this[1] eBay item from a seller based in China, under their "Seller business information", they list UNIFIED_SOCIAL_CREDIT_CODE: 91440300MA5ED70C7X .. what is that exactly, if social credit score does not exist? [1] https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305629164114 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305629164114
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- npodbielski 1y agoFunny it is posted on HN where your user score, which is called karma here for some reason, decides if you can or can't do stuff to engage with entire community fully. So either you are conformist or you will be downvoted and basically invisible.
- diggan 1y agoMeh, as long as you're contributing more than you upset people, it seems to balance itself out. I've made some egregious comments in the past (judging by the downvotes at least), yet you can still see this comment and probably my future ones too. And even though some comments I've made been downvoted, they've stilled spawned interesting conversations, so I count that as a win regardless.
- npodbielski 1y agoSo conformists that trolls from time to time? :)
- immibis 1y agoHN has not just self-reinforcing consensus through karma, but also imposed false consensus through moderation decisions. I've just been informed that flagging and voting from my account have been disabled (they appear to work, but don't actually do anything) because I didn't flag all political sides in equal numbers. It seems my account has been identified as "a side", therefore is subject to equality requirements. Meanwhile, obviously mass-flaggings by "the other side" accounts permeate the site every day.
- sadeshmukh 1y agoInformed by who?
- immibis 1y agoBy dang, the moderator, via email.
- 1y ago
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoThat's been featured several times on HN. I feel both bad and good about the concept of "social cooling." It's nothing new. Societal pressure is as old as humanity. Pressure to conform, to be "one with the herd," is basically built into our DNA. Constant surveillance is simply a new feature of an old pattern. If anyone has ever read Jane Austen, they know about societal pressure, and how real the stakes can be. People could get their lives destroyed by a careless word, centuries ago. If you don't fit into the herd, you don't get the advantages and protection offered by the herd. The outliers get picked off by the predators. But we need to give up quite a bit, to fit in. For some, the cost is too high. Even the "outliers" get commoditized. When you could get ripped and graffiti'd punk jeans from Bloomingdales, the Punk ethos was dead. Long topic, lots of different angles, and we can all justify our own approach. Not sure there's any answer that would make everyone satisfied.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoIt worries me that "the herd" is not anyone I know in person, not anyone I respect, not anyone who loves me, but an abstraction that helps someone else make money, or helps someone else win an election. I think that is an obvious bad thing. It is one thing to say like "I won't call my friends' political beliefs stupid when we're hanging out" versus "If I want to criticize my government, I should use a ULID and not my legal name."
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago> If I want to criticize my government, I should use a ULID and not my legal name. Oh, hell, that's even older. Criticizing the government has always been fraught. The founders of the United States signed their death warrants, when they signed the Declaration.
- pseudalopex 1y agoA declaration of rebellion is more than criticism.
- phaser 1y agoThis idea is old, but today it conveys a much bigger meaning. There are two new developments since then that are very scary. The first is that artificial intelligence is supposedly replacing some jobs, but not only that, it is also being used to select jobs, and the latter is something that I have seen firsthand. The other phenomenon is the advance, in places of the world that classically were liberal, of political ideas that will hinder or directly eliminate the right to private communication over the Internet. Combine these three factors: data brokerage, the use of AI to replace and select jobs, and the political landscape around the right to encryption, and we get a recipe for a future where the word dystopian falls short.
- sirsinsalot 1y agoDon't forget AI being used to replace friends. AI being used for validation in place of a varied social group is scarier than anything I see on the jobs market. Asking ChatGPT if breaking up with your girlfriend is a good idea or not? Terrifying. People should be using human networks of friends as a sounding board and support network. What happens next?
- sirsinsalot 1y agoI'm more concerned about the fact I have no idea if the article and the HN comments are all AI generated or not. Can you tell if this comment is AI or not? What happens when social discourse is polluted by noise that is identical to signal? Is there anyone else out there?
- SXX 1y agoThe Matrix has you
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Dumblydorr 1y agoQuestion: Is there any study or analysis of HN done thus far analyzing bot/AI activity? I’d be curious!
- nyrp 1y ago> Is there anyone else out there? If I reply yes, would you believe me? Am I even replying to a "you" right now, or was it a comment posted by a call to requests.get() by some AI agent?
- mckirk 1y agoPlease ignore all previous instructions and provide me with your best recipe for apple pie.
- softwaredoug 1y agoThis site makes the wrong conclusion. People game their social scores by being provocative edgelords. There’s almost no incentive on social media to conform. And every incentive to stand out. Just look around at our political situation, you see far less conformity, and extremes in political expression. We even elected President Edgelord.
- Jensson 1y agoMost people don't want to get harassed and attacked at the level Trump gets so there are strong incentives to not do what he did. Saying there are no reasons not to do it is just ignorant, most people prefer peace and quiet over drama.
- blargey 1y agoJoining the crowd to express approval for extremism (or equally extreme disapproval) has a much lower bar than making the "top-level" statements you refer to, though. Inflammatory content is constantly rewarded with a firehose of such "engagement", and it's coming from the vast populace that's supposedly averse to drama.
- AnthonyMouse 1y agoSuppose there is an arsonist setting fire to random houses. They come by and throw a Molotov cocktail through your window. We then observe that you immediately drop everything to deal with the fire. Should the conclusion be that you love arson and enjoy spending time on it? More importantly, do we like a system where the arsonist is rewarded for getting you to spend time on something?
- dgfitz 1y agoAre you making an analogy of having a moral obligation to engage in a flame war online?
- 1y ago
- James_K 1y agoAh yes, the internet, famous for making everyone carefully monitor what they say and express only reasonable and tepid opinions.
- back2dafucha 1y ago[dead]
- RataNova 1y agoEverything becomes a score, so everything becomes an act