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Why anyone still engages with these platforms is totally beyond me. They are bad for your soul, bad for the nation, bad for the world.
by rubyfan 2mo ago
Why anyone still engages with these platforms is totally beyond me. They are bad for your soul, bad for the nation, bad for the world.
- unglaublich 2mo agoIt's an addiction. These platforms have been engineers to be addictive, and now people are hooked.
- smrtinsert 2mo agoBecause they influence a lot of opinions which influences decisions which ends up influencing all our lives. Back around 2016 bots were loose on ut internet, with everyone freely gobbling up misinformation. Now there is an unofficial army of people determined to keep facts up at the forefront as well as other malicious social media negative trends at bay.
- inigyou 2mo agoAs well as several official armies determined to keep disinformation at the forefront while keeping facts at bay.
- throwyonion 2mo ago[dead]
- exhumet 2mo agoi recently downloaded it again after nearly a decade to use marketplace to buy a bike for my wife. Got the bike and deleted the app. but my god opening it up was hell. the interface on mobile is just....stressful. super cluttered, shit all over the place with notifications and things to see. first post i saw on there was someone i used to be friends with but havent thought about in years just blatently reposting ACTUAL racist shit... bought a bike in one day and deleted the app once again. horrible experience aside from the nice old dude who sold me the bike lol
- rubyfan 2mo agoI had a similar experience logging in to FB to delete my account which was inactive for almost a decade. It’s legit was like the movie Idiocracy. Casino vibes, over stimulation, people saying stupid thing, trying to sift through lots of garbage to find the thing you’re looking for.
- exhumet 2mo agothats exactly what i was telling my wife, a casino is way more accurate than what i said. i was like it felt like signing on to Temu with all of the shit all over the place
- acdha 2mo agoI remember going to Las Vegas once after I turned 21, realizing that it totally wasn’t my thing, and especially being scared by the expressions on the zombie seniors sitting in front of the slot machines shoveling quarters in. I see that basically every day now with people watching TikTok or Instagram while walking, on the bus, or even driving, barely able to tear their attention away. It’s like a casino except that it’s available 24 hours a day with no limits.
- exhumet 2mo agoyeah its nuts. ive hard restricted any form of social media to 15 minutes a day combined for the remaining ones i have. its been extremely healthy tbh. ive felt much better in the almost two years ive been doing it! and i get it! the zombified rapid button pressing over and over. when i went to japan we were stoked to go check out a pachinko hall and we walked in and it was overstimulation city lol. walking in through the front door directly out through the back door haha.
- JohnFen 2mo ago> especially being scared by the expressions on the zombie seniors sitting in front of the slot machines shoveling quarters in. It's not just seniors. I used to date a woman who worked as a cocktail waitress on the floor of a major casino on the strip. She referred to the people at the slots as "trained monkeys".
- Gigachad 2mo agoSo is meth, but it’s as popular as ever.
- wookmaster 2mo agoHard agree, I keep hoping for the day society awakens as a whole to realize what they're doing to us.
- Bluestein 2mo agoIf I may offer: Because they have become fiendishly adept at exploiting an addictive behaviour/weakness in our brains WHILE masquerading as some sort of social utility (AND perhaps vestigially retaining some semblance of that) - which, incidentally, is what (some) originally might have been, before encrappification.-
- JKCalhoun 2mo agoI suspect the OP understands this. Since few of those on HN (I am assuming) no longer have a FB presence, the question is why hasn't everyone arrived at this same conclusion and walked away from that addiction? Meta should really have gone the way of MySpace a long, long time ago.
- jasonjayr 2mo agoBreaking any type of addiction is hard. For some people it requires intentional and deliberate help from others.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoSocial media is a habit more than an addiction. It's easy to stop if you engage in other social activities. The trouble for many people who grew up online is that they don't have much experience doing that.
- fsflover 2mo agoFacebook is intentionally designed to be as addictive as possible. It's not "a habit more than an addiction", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
- Bluestein 2mo agoAnd/or MySpace should have gone the way of F'book :) Though I hear it might make a comeback.- PS. To your point, I am guessing: For one thing it takes the ability to thus conclude, to begin with. THAT, in turn takes intellect and time AND evidence such as has been accruing. AND third, probably, because addictions are by definition hard to quit. ALSO: I think few times in the history of addictive behaviours has the enabling agent had such a low low low entry threshold, such presumptive innocuousness, and such assumed and granted "utility". It began by hijacking human communication, "socialization". It is devious.-
- doublerabbit 2mo ago> Why anyone still engages with these platforms is totally beyond me. Because it provides a form entertainment, low hanging entertainment. All designed to grip you in your weakest fronts. Map out what triggers a person visually. Feed it in to a LLM model and on the evil scale, you can start exploiting those who get angry based on whatever content. Anger is one of the easiest trigger points in form of media. Broadcast a opposite view of an individual or a group. Downvotes and Upvotes are the primitive form of this and if you lack the emotional intelligence (thick skin) to handle the flack, you end up turning on emotions. Tabs are superior to spaces and Python is basically JavaScript with indentation.
- el_jay 2mo agoOnce I overcame the addiction tech, engineered over billions of brilliant-person-hours, atop research into human behavioural prediction and conditioning that’d make the KGB blush? It’s the hundreds of people on my Facey that I have no other way to contact, and whom I can’t convince to move to e.g. Mastodon, even by offering to do or automate it for them. I suppose I could get an agent to run through the list with a script that gives my phone number to anyone who expresses a wish to remain in touch. Quora has become a scam and CP-ridden cesspit but there are still some old-timers who can really write, and whom I’ve become somewhat emotionally invested in. And a habit of 13 years is hard to break.
- inigyou 2mo agoGet their Signal or WhatsApp numbers.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- carlosjobim 2mo agoI'll help you understand: Important information is many times only found on these platforms. Many local businesses and events only have their info on Facebook or Instagram. Many local community groups are only on Facebook, and you'll find information there that has a real impact on your life (like bus broke down). The other part is messaging. In parts of Europe nobody uses WhatsApp or SMS to communicate, everybody is on Facebook messenger. And there's still the old school social media posts: cousin had a baby, friend got married. And also content made for the general public which is not malicious.
- neutronicus 2mo agoYeah, Instagram is by far the most reliable communications channel from my kid's school, believe it or not. Like, there are mailing lists and portals you can log into, but the IT aspect of actually getting access for even one parent, let alone both, is such a fucking slog for everyone involved (and who knows what bullshit the school has to deal with from their side) that we get info through our WhatsApp group chat from the parents who have Instagram.
- neutronicus 2mo agoIf you want to "make it" as an artist / restaurateur / musician / million other things you kind of have to. Hell, the most reliable communication channel for getting information from my kid's school is Instagram.
- jmyeet 2mo agoI'm not sure if you're talking about Meta platforms or social media in general. It's been years since I've used any Meta platform but I'm a daily user of Tiktok. On Tiktok I don't think the platform is paying people to rage bait, at least not directly. But wannabe influencers will still try and rage bait their way into a viral video and hopefully a following. To me it's entirely transparent and I just move on but people fall for it. Lots of people. Gender wars is easy pickings. A good example was the $3 cheese surcharge on a burger. I knew immediately that was fake and it was later confirmed [1]. But why am I on Tiktok? Because there's actually some good stuff on there and just some plain entertaining stuff. But what really seals it is the comments. Therea re a ton of videos where the comments are the best part. There are some funny people out there. And Tiktok more than any other platform I've experienced seems to surface such comments. But I could best describe Facebook as your racist uncle posting conspiracy theories and that's pretty much it. [1]: https://www.bonappetit.com/story/tiktok-3-dollar-burger-cheese-hoax-explained https://www.bonappetit.com/story/tiktok-3-dollar-burger-chee...
- gosub100 2mo agoI don't use FB or insta , but here are some reasons why people use it: - Keep in touch with family - Comfort from having their ideas reinforced - Organize small events - Share pictures easily - not feel lonely - stay current on world events All of those have other routes to accomplish the same thing, but I guess they have the "Dropbox effect" of simplifying it so even techno challenged can use it.
- beej71 2mo agoMeta is easier for that stuff, I won't deny. Nevertheless, we've managed to get our families into Signal groups that largely accomplish the same things at the scale we need. And the benefits of not needing to wade through slop make up for the losses. It's so peaceful! Hopefully more people give it a try.
- rohan_ 2mo agoIt's not like traditional media is any better. At least with social media platforms the means of producing media and building a following has been democratized.
- paxys 2mo agoEveryone needs their daily dose of outrage. Tell me – why are you here on HN interacting with this very post?
- pibaker 2mo agoIn my area if you want to join any kind of amateur sports or outdoors group, you have to get on Facebook. If you want to know what musicians are coming to town, you have to get on instagram. Ironically it's usually the young, anti establishment types who tend to have only instagram presence. Depending on your interests, getting off meta platform may very well result in a net loss of real life activity you can participate. From what I have heard, Facebook is also the place to rent cheap apartments. The mom and pop landlords are Facebook only. The local Craigslist is dying and scam ridden. Big name rental websites tend to only have listing for pricier, corporate owned rentals.
- graemep 2mo agoBecause everyone else is. If everyone in your area uses it, or its how people communicate around something that matters to you, you need to use it too
- jeffybefffy519 2mo agoThe sad thing is, the majority of the population does and they are a major source of influence and completely unregulated. Something has to change.
- elzbardico 2mo agoAll of us engage in some kind of platform like that. Here is not that functionally different. The HN bubble is also a... bubble.