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>Meta will impose daily usage limits and restrict nighttime usage by children who use Facebook and Instagram, and enhance measures to prevent children from acc

>Meta will impose daily usage limits and restrict nighttime usage by children who use Facebook and Instagram, and enhance measures to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content So meta won. The only thing I'm asking for is better control over my social media. Let me remove infinite scroll on Instagram and don't show me things I have explicitly followed on Facebook. And do this setting by default and a cigarette like warning pop-up when you try to enable the algorithms. (I know you can do this with custom apps and I'm doing that but you have no clue how many non tech people beg me to share how and then cop out when they learn you have to download custom apk. Just add these functionalities as an default )

JKCalhoun 1mo ago
"So meta won." Unless we make sure in print to specify "Meta, the company found to have harmed children, …".
- inigyou 1mo ago
  So what? Media can write "Donald Trump, the confirmed child rapist and embezzler" but it won't actually make anyone stop liking him.
Helloworldboy 1mo ago
[dead]
phyzix5761 1mo ago
As someone who doesn't use social media please explain. Is it not possible for people to just delete the apps and stop using them? Is the addiction so strong at this point that people don't have the willpower to stop?
- pirates 1mo ago
  I don’t understand either. Usually someone responds with something like “the local <whatever> only posts updates on <app> so what choice do I have” or something to do with peer pressure or FOMO. I don’t doubt that people deal with those problems but they seem like better ones to have. But it seems like a lot of people just cannot imagine living without the apps anymore.
  - fsflover 1mo ago
    Facebook is intentionally designed to be as addictive as possible. It's not just FOMO, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
- NalNezumi 1mo ago
  >Is it not possible for people to just delete the apps and stop using them? Some people have friends, and some people also have friends that are very distant (geographically, life style, stage of life, etc). Social media can allow you to keep in touch with these people in a very convenient way. For me, being able to see life updates of friends with 8h+ timezone differences is very nice perk, because planning a call or having energy to chat with someone that far away is tricky and many people understandably then drop it if that's the only way. (same applies if I want to talk to my digital nomad friend or, new-dad-overwhelmed friend). It's much easier to facilitate meeting up when I'm traveling too. But even for people that want to use it for that purpose only, FB/Instagram will shove down infinite scroll and stories/reels/updates of people/entities you can care less about. And yes for some it is hard to have "the willpower" as you want to frame it. (although we know it's not so much willpower, from addiction studies around nicotine and how loss of socialization around smoking usually is a detriment to quitting smoking for example) And yes just removing / blocking those features help. There are also unofficial side-loadable app out there. So for me it works. And for your life maybe there's no loss in socializing by just walking away. Good for you. But maybe the examples can shed some light in how social NETWORK (social media before algorithm and attention economy) is useful for many in different predicament than you, while the social media aspects, many would rather opt out. And unfortunately only a select few of my friends (nerds/techies) are outside it (signal, discord, good old email) but almost everyone at least have an account. Many of the people I know move often enough that phone numbers aren't even a reliable way to keep in touch
  - tintor 1mo ago
    People who don't use social media to catch up with distant friends and family just ... phone or video call. No addiction, no infinite scroll, no exhaustion, no casino-like mechanics, no endorphins, no political rage, no AI companions, no random posts, no influencers.
    - threetonesun 1mo ago
      Or e-mail, or chat in a video game, or a shared photo album, or blogs, or so many other things that the Internet still makes quite easy.
- doctorpangloss 1mo ago
  it may be possible for some people, I don't know. does Meta have internal research that uses the word addiction that would come up in discovery? probably. so there's more than one side of this. a little bit of a chance in the health & science department, a little bit of a chance in the legal department, that the plaintiffs would prevail. that said, are people willing to ban alcohol and tobacco fully? and most "recreational" drugs? the cultural side is the least informative, because you can't litigate culture, it's arbitrary, hypocrisy is the rule, not the exception.
- intended 1mo ago
  Nope. in more detail: Largely no. Theres many ways to explain this, but this is the shortest: You have an average person, with a phone. This person, with their average life experience, average brain development and biology, is facing off against research programs, data analysis, engineering teams, product designers, financiers, operations teams, who all want to give them the best digital experience they possible can have. The algorithms are A/B tested to as close as possible, the content is generated from a dog-eat-dog creator economy that finds the most distracting methods to grab your attention. A good part of this is because our society has never had to deal with information technology of this scope and scale. Quantity is its own quality. As a result people never had support and the firms had carte blanche. It took us decades to go from the Libertarian ideal of "More speech is free speech" to knowing that content moderation is required to have functional online communities. Do individuals have free will and choice? Yes. Are people going to respond to incentives? yes. Are people going to be able to compete fairly against a far more resourced claimaint for their attention and money? No.
  - autoexec 1mo ago
    > This person, with their average life experience, average brain development and biology, is facing off against research programs, data analysis, engineering teams, product designers, financiers, operations teams, who all want to give them the best digital experience they possible can have. They do not want to give you the best digital experience you can have, they want to give you the most addictive and exploitative digital experience they can legally get away with because they value the money that brings in more than they value anything else. They'll be content to see you hurt or killed if it makes them more money. They've knowingly been hurting and killing people, including children, for money. Meta, and the corporations like it, have leveraged all of their vast resources against the average person and the average person is always going to lose in that situation.
    - intended 1mo ago
      Yup - “best”. As in an experience so tuned to our hind brains that we are enraptured, past our ability to be concerned or switch off. I’m being minimal in my invective and generous in my choice of words. There is no fair fight against a corporation for an individual.
- pas 1mo ago
  HN is also social media :) but let's say friends sending links to group chats (or through direct messages) and you open it, and uh you see you got messages from other people on Instagram, or on Facebook you see that someone had a baby/wedding/whatever, and ... also I see that people install these limiter apps on their phones, and then just override them many times a day. and of course if every few days you spend 30 minutes giggling while looking at funny cats/dogs, sure, great. but on bad days you end up doing it for hours and escaping into it, ignoring something else, or using it after stressful meetings to "clear my head" (which becomes a coping mechanism for anxiety) the problem is obviously (right?) that this happens to everybody. kids are probably more susceptible, but in general we withdrew into our screens and do our flight/fight/fawn/freeze responses online (videogames, outrage porn, porn porn, food porn) https://www.slowboring.com/p/from-bowling-alone-to-scrolling-alone https://www.slowboring.com/p/from-bowling-alone-to-scrolling...
  - tintor 1mo ago
    HN is social media only in strictly technical sense of the term. HN isn't optimized daily for engagement like FB and IG are. There isn't a single image, or video on website. Ads (for YC companies) sometimes show up and are rare. Color scheme-wise it is very plain (and should stay like that). HN is not hidden behind login wall. It is not tracking you. You can access HN fully anonymously, and create throwaway accounts for posting.
    - pas 1mo ago
      there's no need to "optimize" it already has the basic loop. stochastic reward (interesting news, interesting comments/replies), gamification (points go up!), and no real social interaction. (no connection, some performative elements, ie. comments are written not just to one known person or a small group of people you know.) the things you mention all exploit this loop for monetization. I agree it's great that HN is not, but that doesn't mean it won't tickle our brains.
      - inigyou 1mo ago
        HN is monetized indirectly by advertising VC stuff, also by removing things that contradict government narratives or billionaire narratives
- alightsoul 1mo ago
  In some countries there is no alternative. News, events and many businesses only publish on social media
  - phyzix5761 1mo ago
    Yeah, I currently live in one of those countries where businesses only post on facebook. I do fine without it. If I need something I google it and it shows up on google maps. I only see what I want to see instead of being inundated with unwanted ads from irrelevant businesses.
    - alightsoul 1mo ago
      How do you get news and events? I mean yeah I can just ignore businesses
      - phyzix5761 1mo ago
        Most news is unnecessary noise that most normal people can do nothing about so why waste emotional cycles reading that? For everything else, like important weather alerts, holiday events, etc, I go to the weather website for my country and for events I see signs up around the city. I keep up with tech news by reading HN, financial stuff I can find on yahoo finance, and for global stuff, which I rarely check, I read Ground News.
        inigyou 1mo ago
        Ground News was shown to be a right-wing psyop and an AI slop machine, FWIW. It also doesn't deliver the value it says on the tin, since you can't actually read the articles it links to unless you have subscriptions on those sites.
        alightsoul 1mo ago
        Where I live there are no signs for events
- alastairr 1mo ago
  You describe the apps as though they are recreational drugs with no other purpose but to produce endorphins. These 'apps' have a high level of utility - which is, I imagine, why most start to use them in the first place.
  - cuu508 1mo ago
    The utility is not of existential importance. Yes, you can uninstall Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the sky will not fall, life will just go on.
    - jstummbillig 1mo ago
      Similarly to how you can just eat less and lose weight.
      - allknowingfrog 1mo ago
        You're making an argument about self-control in a conversation that is explicitly about factors other than self-control.
      - gorjusborg 1mo ago
        > The utility is not of existential importance. Yes, you can uninstall Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the sky will not fall, life will just go on. >> Similarly to how you can just eat less and lose weight. I'd argue it isn't similar in an important way, people cannot opt out of eating entirely. Overeaters must eat. People who can't control themselves with social media do not need to use them at all.
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    - alastairr 1mo ago
      Strange argument, you could say the same for almost anything.
    - episky1234 1mo ago
- chad_strategic 1mo ago
  I beleive I deleted facebook in 2013ish. If I need to access for some business reason, I have a fake account. Otherwise I have zero desire to be on social media. For my son, I built a web site based on my dog. The dog aka Prof Nubbs. Essentially it's a dogs against social media, if you on social media then you are not playing with your dog! Dogs against social media.
- Melatonic 1mo ago
  I deactivated Instagram about 6 months ago and while there are definitely benefits I also miss out on a lot of local events and updates. It can be a useful tool if done right. That being said I never use any of the features that feed you new content - strictly used it for people I knew in real life and events / local fitness groups / etc. Facebook I deactivated way back and never looked back. Maybe it was useful in 2008
- grishka 1mo ago
  You fall out of society, basically. In my circles, most people expect everyone our age to have Instagram, even though it's been blocked by the government since 2022. As far as I'm concerned, the algorithmic part that shows me content from strangers is a tacked-on extra, and not a very welcome one.
  - FLeXMurphy 1mo ago
    Which society?
  - inigyou 1mo ago
    Are you actually in society by using Instagram, or do you just feel like you are?
- didibus 1mo ago
  > Is the addiction so strong at this point that people don't have the willpower to stop? Yes. I've stopped Facebook and Instagram, and it simply got replaced by more time on HackerNews and YouTube. I've failed to cut those out as well. The addiction is a lot stronger than we'd all like to assume in my opinion.
  - ipdashc 1mo ago
    > and it simply got replaced by more time on HackerNews and YouTube I don't disagree with you at all, but doesn't this go against what most people are claiming in this thread (that Meta products are uniquely engineered to be addictive, to a significant degree)? Hacker News doesn't have any especially "addictive" features. They don't make money off this site, there's no ads, there's no personalized algorithm, no promotion of ragebait, etc. Yet plenty of us use it day after day or find ourselves distracted by it. Youtube is more obviously addictive, but it's hardly social media. It's just media. Meta has done a lot of harm in the world, don't get me wrong, but I think people are stretching a bit when they act like none of these technologies would be addictive on their own if not for the company's design.
    - didibus 1mo ago
      Upvotes, downvotes, trending, there's still an algorithm on HackerNews. Meta is the one being sued currently, obviously they are the biggest one, and have tried even harder to keep users coming back in addictive ways, and likely targeted children more directly. I'd say HackerNews also has better moderation where they actively will remove ragebait, where Meta services often encourages it. I see your general point though, but I don't think people act like these technologies wouldn't be addictive separate from some corporate endorser. A homemade cigarette is still an addictive cigarette, but that doesn't stop you from suing and regulating tobacco companies. The other question you might raise is, what alternative isn't addictive? I think many have said that feeds should simply be chronological, same for comments. Instead of upvote/downvote, there should be reviews (score how much you liked the video/article), and users could sort by review score as well. You shouldn't be allowed to push content that users didn't explicitly subscribed too (ads should be ads on the side, not promoted content injected into your feed for example). And so on. Is it too restrictive, maybe, I think it's an interesting debate to have though, like what do we lose/gain making it less addictive, and what is actually less addictive?
- gherkinnn 1mo ago
  Just. That word again. So why don't you just override your monkey brain that hordes of clever people trick in to scrolling more? Why don't you just get all of your social circle to move off Meta? Why don't you just use Ebay over FB Marketplace? Why don't you just convince your housing development to use something other than WhatsApp for sharing equipment? Why don't you just find a different channel through which to promote your small business? Why don't you just accept to be a social outcast? The vast, vast majority can't pay that price. And yes, some programmer somewhere has his programmer friends in Matrix. And no, that doesn't work beyond that very case. Why is this so hard to understand?
- alex1138 1mo ago
  This is not a solution. Do better, on a site like this
triceratops 1mo ago
> The only thing I'm asking for is better control over my social media Filter-tipped instead of unfiltered cigarettes basically.
sershe 1mo ago
Facebook has a "feeds" (or something like that) view, that is exactly your subscriptions in chronological order. As for restricting nighttime usage and imposing daily limits, somehow my mom managed to do that (for video games) without any corporate features in the 90s, while being a single working mother. One time when I was particularly uncooperative she just went to the electrical panel and shut off the power to my room. That worked like a charm. Today, there are all kinds of parental control features instead. However, how can you expect people to do parenting, when grown adults are apparently not even capable of basic self-regulation?
- owisd 1mo ago
  All the recent evidence (https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-5736553/fast-food-screens-kids-health https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-5736553/fast-food-scree...) is that people who are best at self-regulation don't do it by surrounding themselves with tempting things and will-powering themselves not to indulge in them, they do it by changing their environment so the tempting things aren't an option. They're changing the environment via the courts and the ballot box. The people with no self-regulation are the ones complaining about the possibility of having their dopamine toys taken away.
  - sershe 1mo ago
    The first premise of the case is that it's to protect the children, so this doesn't make any sense - it's not people with self-regulation improving their own environment. Parents are the ones who are supposed to make sure their children have limits, in general, not just for social media. Social media/etc. makes it easy (or can make it easy) with parental controls. Even construed more broadly, this makes no sense. All of these cases and the criticism hinge on harms of addiction, that pretty much by definition apply primarily to those with poor self-regulation. Those with proper self-regulation need them much less - so it's basically paternalism. Supposedly some people don't know what's best for them, they are "addicted" to watching cat videos. As, again, is obvious in this case, since the case is literally about children. I, personally, like infinite scroll algo reels. I probably spend about 20 minutes a week on them, and if anything I'd prefer the algo to be more tailored / "addictive" cause it tends to over focus quickly and bore me. It sure sucks at addicting me. I don't want the state to interfere with what FB can or cannot do with the algo. If an adult gets addicted to reels, they are definitely not a victim.
jdeaton 1mo ago
the only thing I'm asking for is better control over my cigarettes. Let me remove all the carcinogens, addictive substances and dont let me inhale things that are hazardous for my health. And do this by default on all cigarettes!
pj_mukh 1mo ago
"I know you can do this with custom apps and I'm doing that but you have no clue how many non tech people beg me to share how" Wait...I'm in tech and I'm begging you to share how. Is there a way on iOS? I've mostly just stopped using these apps.
- inigyou 1mo ago
  iOS app installation (what some people call "side-loading") is done by signing up as a developer and then installing the apps as if you're developing them. You have to refresh them every 7 days in Xcode or they'll get deleted from your phone as that is one of Apple's anti-using-developer-mode-to-actually-install-things measures, and you can only install up to 3 apps this way, though apparently there's some kind of chameleon app that wraps multiple other apps with a menu.

JKCalhoun 1mo ago

"So meta won." Unless we make sure in print to specify "Meta, the company found to have harmed children, …".

inigyou 1mo ago
So what? Media can write "Donald Trump, the confirmed child rapist and embezzler" but it won't actually make anyone stop liking him.

Helloworldboy 1mo ago

[dead]

phyzix5761 1mo ago

As someone who doesn't use social media please explain. Is it not possible for people to just delete the apps and stop using them? Is the addiction so strong at this point that people don't have the willpower to stop?

pirates 1mo ago
I don’t understand either. Usually someone responds with something like “the local <whatever> only posts updates on <app> so what choice do I have” or something to do with peer pressure or FOMO. I don’t doubt that people deal with those problems but they seem like better ones to have. But it seems like a lot of people just cannot imagine living without the apps anymore.
- fsflover 1mo ago
  Facebook is intentionally designed to be as addictive as possible. It's not just FOMO, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
NalNezumi 1mo ago
>Is it not possible for people to just delete the apps and stop using them? Some people have friends, and some people also have friends that are very distant (geographically, life style, stage of life, etc). Social media can allow you to keep in touch with these people in a very convenient way. For me, being able to see life updates of friends with 8h+ timezone differences is very nice perk, because planning a call or having energy to chat with someone that far away is tricky and many people understandably then drop it if that's the only way. (same applies if I want to talk to my digital nomad friend or, new-dad-overwhelmed friend). It's much easier to facilitate meeting up when I'm traveling too. But even for people that want to use it for that purpose only, FB/Instagram will shove down infinite scroll and stories/reels/updates of people/entities you can care less about. And yes for some it is hard to have "the willpower" as you want to frame it. (although we know it's not so much willpower, from addiction studies around nicotine and how loss of socialization around smoking usually is a detriment to quitting smoking for example) And yes just removing / blocking those features help. There are also unofficial side-loadable app out there. So for me it works. And for your life maybe there's no loss in socializing by just walking away. Good for you. But maybe the examples can shed some light in how social NETWORK (social media before algorithm and attention economy) is useful for many in different predicament than you, while the social media aspects, many would rather opt out. And unfortunately only a select few of my friends (nerds/techies) are outside it (signal, discord, good old email) but almost everyone at least have an account. Many of the people I know move often enough that phone numbers aren't even a reliable way to keep in touch
- tintor 1mo ago
  People who don't use social media to catch up with distant friends and family just ... phone or video call. No addiction, no infinite scroll, no exhaustion, no casino-like mechanics, no endorphins, no political rage, no AI companions, no random posts, no influencers.
  - threetonesun 1mo ago
    Or e-mail, or chat in a video game, or a shared photo album, or blogs, or so many other things that the Internet still makes quite easy.
doctorpangloss 1mo ago
it may be possible for some people, I don't know. does Meta have internal research that uses the word addiction that would come up in discovery? probably. so there's more than one side of this. a little bit of a chance in the health & science department, a little bit of a chance in the legal department, that the plaintiffs would prevail. that said, are people willing to ban alcohol and tobacco fully? and most "recreational" drugs? the cultural side is the least informative, because you can't litigate culture, it's arbitrary, hypocrisy is the rule, not the exception.
intended 1mo ago
Nope. in more detail: Largely no. Theres many ways to explain this, but this is the shortest: You have an average person, with a phone. This person, with their average life experience, average brain development and biology, is facing off against research programs, data analysis, engineering teams, product designers, financiers, operations teams, who all want to give them the best digital experience they possible can have. The algorithms are A/B tested to as close as possible, the content is generated from a dog-eat-dog creator economy that finds the most distracting methods to grab your attention. A good part of this is because our society has never had to deal with information technology of this scope and scale. Quantity is its own quality. As a result people never had support and the firms had carte blanche. It took us decades to go from the Libertarian ideal of "More speech is free speech" to knowing that content moderation is required to have functional online communities. Do individuals have free will and choice? Yes. Are people going to respond to incentives? yes. Are people going to be able to compete fairly against a far more resourced claimaint for their attention and money? No.
- autoexec 1mo ago
  > This person, with their average life experience, average brain development and biology, is facing off against research programs, data analysis, engineering teams, product designers, financiers, operations teams, who all want to give them the best digital experience they possible can have. They do not want to give you the best digital experience you can have, they want to give you the most addictive and exploitative digital experience they can legally get away with because they value the money that brings in more than they value anything else. They'll be content to see you hurt or killed if it makes them more money. They've knowingly been hurting and killing people, including children, for money. Meta, and the corporations like it, have leveraged all of their vast resources against the average person and the average person is always going to lose in that situation.
  - intended 1mo ago
    Yup - “best”. As in an experience so tuned to our hind brains that we are enraptured, past our ability to be concerned or switch off. I’m being minimal in my invective and generous in my choice of words. There is no fair fight against a corporation for an individual.
pas 1mo ago
HN is also social media :) but let's say friends sending links to group chats (or through direct messages) and you open it, and uh you see you got messages from other people on Instagram, or on Facebook you see that someone had a baby/wedding/whatever, and ... also I see that people install these limiter apps on their phones, and then just override them many times a day. and of course if every few days you spend 30 minutes giggling while looking at funny cats/dogs, sure, great. but on bad days you end up doing it for hours and escaping into it, ignoring something else, or using it after stressful meetings to "clear my head" (which becomes a coping mechanism for anxiety) the problem is obviously (right?) that this happens to everybody. kids are probably more susceptible, but in general we withdrew into our screens and do our flight/fight/fawn/freeze responses online (videogames, outrage porn, porn porn, food porn) https://www.slowboring.com/p/from-bowling-alone-to-scrolling-alone https://www.slowboring.com/p/from-bowling-alone-to-scrolling...
- tintor 1mo ago
  HN is social media only in strictly technical sense of the term. HN isn't optimized daily for engagement like FB and IG are. There isn't a single image, or video on website. Ads (for YC companies) sometimes show up and are rare. Color scheme-wise it is very plain (and should stay like that). HN is not hidden behind login wall. It is not tracking you. You can access HN fully anonymously, and create throwaway accounts for posting.
  - pas 1mo ago
    there's no need to "optimize" it already has the basic loop. stochastic reward (interesting news, interesting comments/replies), gamification (points go up!), and no real social interaction. (no connection, some performative elements, ie. comments are written not just to one known person or a small group of people you know.) the things you mention all exploit this loop for monetization. I agree it's great that HN is not, but that doesn't mean it won't tickle our brains.
    - inigyou 1mo ago
      HN is monetized indirectly by advertising VC stuff, also by removing things that contradict government narratives or billionaire narratives
alightsoul 1mo ago
In some countries there is no alternative. News, events and many businesses only publish on social media
- phyzix5761 1mo ago
  Yeah, I currently live in one of those countries where businesses only post on facebook. I do fine without it. If I need something I google it and it shows up on google maps. I only see what I want to see instead of being inundated with unwanted ads from irrelevant businesses.
  - alightsoul 1mo ago
    How do you get news and events? I mean yeah I can just ignore businesses
    - phyzix5761 1mo ago
      Most news is unnecessary noise that most normal people can do nothing about so why waste emotional cycles reading that? For everything else, like important weather alerts, holiday events, etc, I go to the weather website for my country and for events I see signs up around the city. I keep up with tech news by reading HN, financial stuff I can find on yahoo finance, and for global stuff, which I rarely check, I read Ground News.
      - inigyou 1mo ago
        Ground News was shown to be a right-wing psyop and an AI slop machine, FWIW. It also doesn't deliver the value it says on the tin, since you can't actually read the articles it links to unless you have subscriptions on those sites.
      - alightsoul 1mo ago
        Where I live there are no signs for events
alastairr 1mo ago
You describe the apps as though they are recreational drugs with no other purpose but to produce endorphins. These 'apps' have a high level of utility - which is, I imagine, why most start to use them in the first place.
- cuu508 1mo ago
  The utility is not of existential importance. Yes, you can uninstall Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the sky will not fall, life will just go on.
  - jstummbillig 1mo ago
    Similarly to how you can just eat less and lose weight.
    - allknowingfrog 1mo ago
      You're making an argument about self-control in a conversation that is explicitly about factors other than self-control.
    - gorjusborg 1mo ago
      > The utility is not of existential importance. Yes, you can uninstall Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the sky will not fall, life will just go on. >> Similarly to how you can just eat less and lose weight. I'd argue it isn't similar in an important way, people cannot opt out of eating entirely. Overeaters must eat. People who can't control themselves with social media do not need to use them at all.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - alastairr 1mo ago
    Strange argument, you could say the same for almost anything.
  - episky1234 1mo ago
chad_strategic 1mo ago
I beleive I deleted facebook in 2013ish. If I need to access for some business reason, I have a fake account. Otherwise I have zero desire to be on social media. For my son, I built a web site based on my dog. The dog aka Prof Nubbs. Essentially it's a dogs against social media, if you on social media then you are not playing with your dog! Dogs against social media.
Melatonic 1mo ago
I deactivated Instagram about 6 months ago and while there are definitely benefits I also miss out on a lot of local events and updates. It can be a useful tool if done right. That being said I never use any of the features that feed you new content - strictly used it for people I knew in real life and events / local fitness groups / etc. Facebook I deactivated way back and never looked back. Maybe it was useful in 2008
grishka 1mo ago
You fall out of society, basically. In my circles, most people expect everyone our age to have Instagram, even though it's been blocked by the government since 2022. As far as I'm concerned, the algorithmic part that shows me content from strangers is a tacked-on extra, and not a very welcome one.
- FLeXMurphy 1mo ago
  Which society?
- inigyou 1mo ago
  Are you actually in society by using Instagram, or do you just feel like you are?
didibus 1mo ago
> Is the addiction so strong at this point that people don't have the willpower to stop? Yes. I've stopped Facebook and Instagram, and it simply got replaced by more time on HackerNews and YouTube. I've failed to cut those out as well. The addiction is a lot stronger than we'd all like to assume in my opinion.
- ipdashc 1mo ago
  > and it simply got replaced by more time on HackerNews and YouTube I don't disagree with you at all, but doesn't this go against what most people are claiming in this thread (that Meta products are uniquely engineered to be addictive, to a significant degree)? Hacker News doesn't have any especially "addictive" features. They don't make money off this site, there's no ads, there's no personalized algorithm, no promotion of ragebait, etc. Yet plenty of us use it day after day or find ourselves distracted by it. Youtube is more obviously addictive, but it's hardly social media. It's just media. Meta has done a lot of harm in the world, don't get me wrong, but I think people are stretching a bit when they act like none of these technologies would be addictive on their own if not for the company's design.
  - didibus 1mo ago
    Upvotes, downvotes, trending, there's still an algorithm on HackerNews. Meta is the one being sued currently, obviously they are the biggest one, and have tried even harder to keep users coming back in addictive ways, and likely targeted children more directly. I'd say HackerNews also has better moderation where they actively will remove ragebait, where Meta services often encourages it. I see your general point though, but I don't think people act like these technologies wouldn't be addictive separate from some corporate endorser. A homemade cigarette is still an addictive cigarette, but that doesn't stop you from suing and regulating tobacco companies. The other question you might raise is, what alternative isn't addictive? I think many have said that feeds should simply be chronological, same for comments. Instead of upvote/downvote, there should be reviews (score how much you liked the video/article), and users could sort by review score as well. You shouldn't be allowed to push content that users didn't explicitly subscribed too (ads should be ads on the side, not promoted content injected into your feed for example). And so on. Is it too restrictive, maybe, I think it's an interesting debate to have though, like what do we lose/gain making it less addictive, and what is actually less addictive?
gherkinnn 1mo ago
Just. That word again. So why don't you just override your monkey brain that hordes of clever people trick in to scrolling more? Why don't you just get all of your social circle to move off Meta? Why don't you just use Ebay over FB Marketplace? Why don't you just convince your housing development to use something other than WhatsApp for sharing equipment? Why don't you just find a different channel through which to promote your small business? Why don't you just accept to be a social outcast? The vast, vast majority can't pay that price. And yes, some programmer somewhere has his programmer friends in Matrix. And no, that doesn't work beyond that very case. Why is this so hard to understand?
alex1138 1mo ago
This is not a solution. Do better, on a site like this

triceratops 1mo ago

> The only thing I'm asking for is better control over my social media Filter-tipped instead of unfiltered cigarettes basically.

sershe 1mo ago

Facebook has a "feeds" (or something like that) view, that is exactly your subscriptions in chronological order. As for restricting nighttime usage and imposing daily limits, somehow my mom managed to do that (for video games) without any corporate features in the 90s, while being a single working mother. One time when I was particularly uncooperative she just went to the electrical panel and shut off the power to my room. That worked like a charm. Today, there are all kinds of parental control features instead. However, how can you expect people to do parenting, when grown adults are apparently not even capable of basic self-regulation?

owisd 1mo ago
All the recent evidence (https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-5736553/fast-food-screens-kids-health https://www.npr.org/2026/03/09/nx-s1-5736553/fast-food-scree...) is that people who are best at self-regulation don't do it by surrounding themselves with tempting things and will-powering themselves not to indulge in them, they do it by changing their environment so the tempting things aren't an option. They're changing the environment via the courts and the ballot box. The people with no self-regulation are the ones complaining about the possibility of having their dopamine toys taken away.
- sershe 1mo ago
  The first premise of the case is that it's to protect the children, so this doesn't make any sense - it's not people with self-regulation improving their own environment. Parents are the ones who are supposed to make sure their children have limits, in general, not just for social media. Social media/etc. makes it easy (or can make it easy) with parental controls. Even construed more broadly, this makes no sense. All of these cases and the criticism hinge on harms of addiction, that pretty much by definition apply primarily to those with poor self-regulation. Those with proper self-regulation need them much less - so it's basically paternalism. Supposedly some people don't know what's best for them, they are "addicted" to watching cat videos. As, again, is obvious in this case, since the case is literally about children. I, personally, like infinite scroll algo reels. I probably spend about 20 minutes a week on them, and if anything I'd prefer the algo to be more tailored / "addictive" cause it tends to over focus quickly and bore me. It sure sucks at addicting me. I don't want the state to interfere with what FB can or cannot do with the algo. If an adult gets addicted to reels, they are definitely not a victim.

jdeaton 1mo ago

the only thing I'm asking for is better control over my cigarettes. Let me remove all the carcinogens, addictive substances and dont let me inhale things that are hazardous for my health. And do this by default on all cigarettes!

pj_mukh 1mo ago

"I know you can do this with custom apps and I'm doing that but you have no clue how many non tech people beg me to share how" Wait...I'm in tech and I'm begging you to share how. Is there a way on iOS? I've mostly just stopped using these apps.

inigyou 1mo ago
iOS app installation (what some people call "side-loading") is done by signing up as a developer and then installing the apps as if you're developing them. You have to refresh them every 7 days in Xcode or they'll get deleted from your phone as that is one of Apple's anti-using-developer-mode-to-actually-install-things measures, and you can only install up to 3 apps this way, though apparently there's some kind of chameleon app that wraps multiple other apps with a menu.