[HN Gopher] Facebook Is an Addiction Treadmill Most May Never Be...
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Facebook Is an Addiction Treadmill Most May Never Be Able to Quit
Author : thg
Score : 173 points
Date : 2021-10-06 17:45 UTC (5 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (petapixel.com)
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Facebook is like vendor lock in for human social interactions and
| emotions.
|
| That's probably why Zuckerberg tries to acquire competitors -
| trying to lock in your behavior and then sell it to the highest
| bidder. Makes sense when you think about it.
|
| When I suggest people delete FB apps from their phones, they
| start writhing uncomfortably, and try to justify not doing so by
| making some half-ass claim that their social life will suffer if
| they did. Its the same response I would expect from someone who
| is a moderate alcoholic and is told to drink less wine during the
| week. The addiction is obvious.
|
| My experience after deleting FB apps from my phone - social life
| changed for the better and I feel less anxiety. It turns out,
| most of my FB "friends" weren't really my friends. And I can
| still check FB / Insta via web if I wanted to. Added bonus - FB
| can't track me as well.
|
| FB will do what FB does - try to steal as much data and attention
| and sell it to the highest bidder. But you can only blame them so
| much. Collectively, its on people to change and take
| responsibility if they feel they have grievances related to FB.
|
| Still, I have hope - awareness for social media's downside
| effects is only increasing. Ms. Haugen's testimony and the Social
| Dilemma documentary demonstrate that.
| kmetan wrote:
| OT: I have quit FB more then 5 years ago, but every time I see a
| post like this I fear that I am still addicted. Not to FB but to
| HN...
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| If you can be free to be addicted to alcohol, weed, or
| cheeseburgers...then you should also be free to be addicted to
| junk data
| thomasfl wrote:
| I have been just as addicted to Hacker News as I have been
| addicted to Facebook. Since I discovered this site in 2007, it
| has at times been a daily routine to come here. Of course you
| don't spend as much time on HN as on FB. It only takes a few
| seconds to scroll to the end on HN.
| azta6521 wrote:
| Did not even noticed it was down. I think the problem are the
| people - Zuck just making bank on the weak.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| As someone who's recovered from multiple substance addictions in
| the past, it is so painfully obvious when I see social media
| addicts. It's literally the exact same behavior. The compulsion,
| the lack of awareness, the ignoring of friends and loved ones
| while mindlessly scrolling; it's all there. Social addiction is
| even more sinister because the feedback loop is scientifically
| optimized in a way no substance could ever match, and it feeds
| the most base primal need that humans have which is status and
| recognition. It's more powerful than even hunger. I don't know
| how we can possibly get away from this.
| haolez wrote:
| No substance could ever match? More powerful than hunger? I
| strongly challenge that.
| wuliwong wrote:
| I would think a strong challenge would contain _some_
| rebuttal?
| speedybird wrote:
| When people get hungry enough, they become willing to eat
| even their friends and family.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Having spent a fair amount of time in internet cafes in my
| youth I can tell you certainly I have seen my fair share of
| people who have neglected sleep as well as sustenance and
| some fairly other fundamental drives to consume digital media
| for at times days without pause.
| haolez wrote:
| Oh, I get it now. I remember that some years ago I saw some
| news about a Korean kid that died from playing a game for
| three days in a row, without sleeping.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >No substance could ever match?
|
| If you plot the area under the curve of addictive behavior
| engaged in over a lifetime, absolutely. People can quit
| substance addictions. You know that your addiction is harming
| you and actively destroying your life while you are engaged
| in it. Those feelings eventually lead most people to quit if
| they don't die. But social addiction is different. It feels
| like you're actually doing something useful and good, while
| it rots away your agency and sense of self. You become a
| mindless scroller whose tastes, preferences, ideologies, and
| overall cultural milieu become entirely mediated through
| engagement algorithms without you ever being aware of it.
| zepto wrote:
| It's a pretty reasonable hypothesis. Social drives are innate
| and are likely at least as powerful the drive for food, and
| may be prioritized higher.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there are substances that can match whatever
| addictive qualities you get from reading a screen. My best
| friend from high school died while detoxing from alcohol. I'm
| reasonably sure social media withdrawal is not physically
| dangerous.
| smsm42 wrote:
| If you ever heard about Maslow hierarchy, the status is way
| towards the top. Things like hunger, safety and not being in
| pain is much lower. So I highly doubt many people would forgo
| food and agree to be in constant excruciating pain just to be
| able to access facebook.
| Geee wrote:
| I think more reasonable stance would be that addicted people
| stop caring about what they eat, and prioritize time spent on
| Facebook instead of time spent on cooking better food.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Have you ever met a nutrient deficient heroin, crack or meth
| addict? I'd be willing to bet those habits are closer to the
| top than food, but they seem to forego it and take that as
| far as they can without dying. We are talking about addiction
| here after all.
| smsm42 wrote:
| I find the premise ridiculous. I mean yes, there are people who
| are addicted to it. There are people who are addicted to lots of
| things, from playing video games to climbing ice-covered
| mountains. But the idea that it's harder to quit facebook than to
| get rid of, say, opioid dependency - which literally rewires your
| body's biochemistry - sounds like complete BS. Of course, if your
| life is so empty you have nothing to do but browse facebook, sure
| it's hard to quit, but it's not because of the strength of the
| addiction, it's because of the weakness of the alternative. I'm
| sure if you cut off that person's internet access and threw their
| phone into a lake, they'd be cured pretty soon.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I don't disagree with you, but I felt the need to point out the
| positive feedback loop in the scenario you laid out, that is,
| the more time you use Facebook the less you spend in your real
| life and so the alternative becomes weaker even if it was
| strong when you started. People who use Facebook compulsively
| didn't start out with no friends and family, if they had they'd
| have had no reason to create an account on the first place.
| gotostatement wrote:
| This has the same energy as the cigarette lobbyist in congress
| who talked about how smoking lettuce has the same health
| effects as smoking tobacco
| xtartupsHQ wrote:
| It's been 6years since I actively used Facebook. But they
| acquired everything that I'm addicted to.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| I disagree.
|
| If someone provided a simple service for friends and families to
| share photos and updates, it's possible Facebook could be
| disrupted. I have no evidence to back up my claim, but I think
| those are the only things people truly care about.
|
| It is the only thing I miss after deleting it two years ago. I
| certainly don't miss Messenger, the Feed, or news.
| donw wrote:
| I disconnected from nearly all social media about four years ago,
| and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.
|
| I did not even notice the recent Facebook outage in my daily
| life, and wouldn't have even been aware of it without HN.
| sibeliuss wrote:
| Same here. It's been glorious getting all of that wasted time
| back. (To say nothing of the weird, latent background
| depression that suddenly vanished when I deleted said
| accounts.)
| throwaway123x2 wrote:
| I noticed right away because whatsapp went down. Pretty much
| all my social media is on whatsapp now.
| standardUser wrote:
| In the past several years I was able to leverage Facebook
| groups to meet people and find activities when I moved abroad,
| furnish an apartment when I moved back, discover a niche retro
| gaming community that I adore, share photos and memories with
| old friends when a high school friend passed away, collect
| stories and remembrances that were shared for an uncle who died
| and share those with his elderly, non-tech parents, to name
| just a few experiences that would be difficult to replicate
| without Facebook.
|
| I don't like Facebook, but I can't deny the value it has added
| to my life.
| [deleted]
| ramesh31 wrote:
| This is always the response. But I would say ask yourself, do
| you _truly_ need these things? Or are the fleeting
| superficial connections that you maintain through social
| media simply distracting you from seeking truly meaningful
| interactions, and substituting an artificial (although
| comforting) facade in its ' place?
|
| If you truly care about someone, you will call and talk to
| them. Or orient your life in a way that facilitates that
| relationship. Otherwise what you are doing is tantamount to
| slacktivism.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I drove from Mexico to Panama. The Pan-American highway
| group and several of the expat groups were indispensable
| sources of information.
|
| I was able to get out of Nicaragua during the big protests
| in 2018 because someone on the Nicaragua expat group told
| me they were letting foreign-plated vehicles through the
| roadblocks. I never would have had the nerve otherwise to
| walk up and say, "Hey, I'm an American, that makes me
| special, please let me through."
|
| Several hiking groups here in LA have also been invaluable
| for me.
|
| Not everyone has the same lived experience.
| travisporter wrote:
| Beautifully put. I have a cousin who always updates me on
| what his extended family is doing as though he's talking
| with them weekly. Turns out he's just regurgitating
| Facebook status updates to me. He may as well have been
| talking about Lionel Messi or Kylie Jenner
| standardUser wrote:
| Did I truly need to gather the sentiments of my dead
| uncle's friends and coworkers to print out and share with
| his grieving parents? I'm going to say yes, I did. Of
| course, none of what I referenced precludes using a
| different platform for the same experience. I wish I had
| been able to gather those posts from WT.Social or some
| other platform I don't think is ravaging our culture. But
| that's not where the people are.
|
| As for this: "Or are the fleeting superficial connections
| that you maintain through social media simply distracting
| you from seeking truly meaningful interactions"
|
| I have more than enough meaningful interactions in my life,
| and having less intimate interactions with a broader range
| of people doesn't distract or detract from those more
| significant connections. Sometimes, those less personal
| connections are what have eventually led to some of my most
| important connections.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| In contrast, I have done none of those things, but because I
| have no idea if anyone else I might have otherwise connected
| with or known has done them, either, I've lost nothing. It's
| not like I have no one to tell stories to or no communities
| I'm a part of. I just didn't find them on Facebook. People
| still tell me when family or close friends die. I didn't
| become unreachable.
| standardUser wrote:
| I don't really "tell stories" on social media, I'm not much
| of a sharer on these platforms, rather I was giving
| examples of when it was a useful resource, and specifically
| instances where the resource doesn't have an obvious
| replacement. I'm not sure I relate to the idea of "lost
| nothing". By that logic I'd have "lost nothing" if I neve
| flew on a plane, or sat quietly in a room for 10 years. But
| in terms of pursuing things I do want to do, Facebook has
| been a helpful resource on a number of occasions.
|
| As for people dying, that for me has been far and away my
| most valuable use of Facebook in recent years.
| erikerikson wrote:
| And, yet, here you are on HN ;D
| jjulius wrote:
| >... _nearly_ all...
| erikerikson wrote:
| Indeed! Considered that and yet I only recently started
| referring to HN as my social media recently and thought
| that might add to the conversation.
| captainmuon wrote:
| Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring
| and only use it for messenger anymore.
|
| It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a
| social network. You were interacting with real people, you could
| meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about
| yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find
| your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances.
| And you would obsessively watch who looks at your page and who
| likes your posts. The thing that made it addictive were the
| actual human interactions that people crave.
|
| I wish someone would make a site like that again!
| standardUser wrote:
| I follow a certain set of pages/groups for some hobbies and
| have muted almost everything else, including almost all people.
| You can pretty much make a custom feed that way, though the
| quality will depend on the quality of posts in those groups
| (which is on average very low).
|
| Instagram still sort of works like an actual social network for
| me. I've found it's actually super important for dating (in my
| age group/scene/whathaveyou).
| afavour wrote:
| I feel as though it's impossible for anyone to write a thread
| on HN about Facebook without someone immediately coming in and
| saying that Facebook is stupid and they deleted their account
| years ago.
|
| Yeah, me too. But you usually don't have to look beyond your
| immediate family to find someone that uses Facebook (or at the
| very least an FB-owned property) a ton. We aren't typical!
| npunt wrote:
| Fully agree, HN is absolutely not the place to get insight on
| population-level experiences with tech (or most anything else
| population-level; my pet peeve is people generalizing their
| education experiences). These population-level problems are
| far better understood by a process of deduction and looking
| at what the data says.
|
| I always read these types of comments remembering the
| response to Dropbox [1] or Slashdot's response to the iPod
| ("No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.").
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
| root_axis wrote:
| So what? Facebook has a lot of users, that doesn't negate the
| point that quitting is not hard, people just like Facebook,
| they don't want to quit.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| I think my wife is addicted, she will pick up her phone to do
| one thing but first goes to Facebook and scrolls, then she
| forgets what she was using her phone for.
|
| Maybe not addicted but she has a habit of going to Facebook
| every time she uses her phone.
| root_axis wrote:
| That doesn't seem at all like addiction to me, that's just a
| mundane routine. If she had a panic attack when FB went down
| this week _then_ I think we could say it 's an addiction.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| I think you are right, I was interested what would happen
| while it was down and she was fine once she knew it was
| down, until then she kept saying her internet wasn't
| working.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| "wellness" settings can limit the amount of time per day she
| spends doing it if she wants to alter her behavior.
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| I'm not sure she wants to stop tbh
| colpabar wrote:
| I deleted my account several years ago and tried to get my
| girlfriend at the time to do the same thing. She was in favor
| of the idea, but facebook would show her a bunch of people with
| a message like "but what about all these people, won't you miss
| them?" and it did a _great_ job of picking people who she most
| likely would not have kept in contact with if not for facebook,
| so she never deleted it.
|
| I think FOMO is the main reason most people are still on there,
| not so much "addiction".
| coliveira wrote:
| You don't need to delete your account, you just need to
| delete the app in your phone and the job is done.
| yosito wrote:
| > I wish someone would make a site like that again!
|
| On a technical level, it's not hard. On business level, it's
| doubtful if there's a compelling enough business model to
| prevent it from becoming another surveillance capitalism
| platform. And on a societal level, it seems impossible that
| living generations will ever trust a platform en masse again
| enough to achieve such ubiquity.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Non-profit would be a perfect business model. It isn't like
| that level of functionality requires a multi $B company to
| run it.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I'm convinced that there is a service people will pay for. My
| idea is that _somebody_ in a social group will want it to
| happen, and that they can pay for the whole group.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| >I wish someone would make a site like that again!
|
| I will make a site similar to that. I really want to. I have
| plan all drawn up for how it will work.
|
| Its ad free, but with premium services for those willing to
| pay. One member of a family or group can pay for everybody.
|
| The site is ephemeral, all posts are removed after three
| months. Its not a place where you store all your photos.
|
| Its a site where friends and families share their holidays,
| their baby photos and birthday invitations. There won't be
| sharing news.
|
| I'm not scared to take on the behemoth, I'm one guy in a home
| office. I only need a few thousand subscribers to make it worth
| my while.
|
| I've got about 2 years left on my current project, then I'm
| going to start.
| randycupertino wrote:
| This actually sounds super cool and I think would fill a void
| a lot of families/groups are using right now with group
| texting.
|
| Godspeed!
| s5300 wrote:
| To my knowledge, it's sort of like a retirement home for old
| people or those with no real career, especially angry ones.
|
| I was in an AT&T store the other day when Facebook went down,
| dealing with something stupid. I hadn't really touched the
| internet that day up to that point, blissfully unaware of the
| Facebook issues.
|
| During the last five minutes I was there, in the physical AT&T
| store, some lady who was in her 50's, or really rough 40's,
| came in screaming about not being able to get into Facebook on
| her phone (I presume her only method of internet access) - &
| also about an uptick of spam calls and texts, I can only
| hilariously imagine why she's getting them.
|
| Not too long after I got home I read about the Facebook outage,
| and it hit me that was the reason she was in there. The
| employees also seemed unaware as I could hear them discussing
| standard diagnostics on her phone.
|
| But yeah, that person in middle America had absolutely nothing
| better going on in life than to drive roughly 10 minutes or
| more (near all residential areas are far away from this store,
| fairly rural) because she couldn't get on Facebook for a few
| hours. She was... very not nice to the employees too.
| ben_w wrote:
| What hooks people like us (whatever that means) isn't
| necessarily what hooks normal people (ditto).
|
| Facebook has a massive training set at its disposal, claiming
| more monthly active users than humans have lifetime heartbeats.
| If FB _isn't_ chronically addictive for normal people with that
| sample size, then either (0) A /B testing isn't as capable as
| we like to think it is, or (1) FB isn't even trying anymore.
| HPsquared wrote:
| They don't necessarily need to target normal people, it's
| possible that over time they have optimized their site to
| attract those with certain traits that are most profitable.
| svachalek wrote:
| This is sadly true. Genuine social interaction is rewarding
| but not addictive, as evidenced by thousands of years of
| history. And there's not a lot of ways to profit from it.
| On the other hand, getting people to come back every day or
| every hour for messages that compel them to buy things or
| vote a certain way is priceless to the right bidders.
| ben_w wrote:
| Hm, could be, if the whales collectively outspend the rest
| of us collectively.
| ljm wrote:
| > Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly
| boring and only use it for messenger anymore
|
| You are not 'most people' then
| fsckboy wrote:
| he wrote a substantive post, the main thrust of which you're
| not responding to.
|
| what he said is how captivating he found facebook before they
| made a number of changes to it. So he is actually saying he
| is a part of most people, give what he says some creedence.
| meijer wrote:
| Wait... you could see who looks at your page?
| 999900000999 wrote:
| I'm in the same boat.
|
| I still use it for messenger, but most days I don't even look
| at Facebook.
|
| You can still meet people in real life, just the other day I
| asked out a girl at a concert and we got drinks afterwards.
| That's much more straightforward than installing 30 apps and
| chatting with bots.
|
| In fact I had a girl offer to add me on Instagram and I just
| said no. It's not that serious ( plus typically if she won't
| give you her number she doesn't actually want to date you.)
|
| I'll agree Facebook used to be much better. For example I was(
| like 10 years ago) in a college group and I actually went out
| with a girl from that. I think if your in a closed community it
| can still be fun.
| itake wrote:
| +1. My news feed is like 90% memes and ads. I have like 3
| friends that actually make interesting text posts that foster
| discussions. Everything else is a waste cognitive energy.
| treeman79 wrote:
| I Facebook for support forums for autoimmune conditions. It
| is drastically better then Reddit for finding answers or
| suggestions.
|
| Every question gets dozens of answers many of which are very
| insightful and useful if repetitive.
|
| The sort of stuff that doctors don't like to explain like my
| bloodwork says this what does that mean and what should I do
| next. people will have excellent answers.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| how can you be sure that they're good answers?
| whatshisface wrote:
| I'm not in any Facebook groups but as a general principle
| it's a lot easier to verify a true claim than it is to
| come up with a true claim from nothing.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Because I spent years researching my conditions. A lot of
| people on the forums have as well. Plus some treatments
| show up again and again as "this worked for me"
|
| For example I was getting up 10x a night to pee for
| years. Kept seeing post to try aloe Vera freeze dried
| pills. $$$
|
| Finally tried it. And I slept through the night now.
|
| Understanding test is another one.
|
| A crap ton of doctors will see a negative test and
| automatically declare you don't have X condition even if
| you have every single symptom. Eventually you learned
| that a large percentage usually get negatives on that
| test. That there are alternate test that can be run. But
| most doctors aren't even aware they exist.
|
| Oh so a lot of the moral and legal support. Imagine
| having the flu for 30 years And trying to live a normal
| life. Everyone calling you lazy and a whiner and if you
| try and do something about it you get labeled as a
| hypochondriac and it all being dismissed as anxiety. Some
| diseases take on average seven years or more to get
| diagnosed because because of these problems; mine took 20
| years.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| maybe you need to curate your feed? mine is no memes and few
| ads which I ignore. it's all posts from family and friends .
| also stopped following friends who I aren't close and friends
| that post too much
| amelius wrote:
| If you unfollow people, Facebook will just fill the gap in
| your newsfeed with more stupid memes and ads.
| im3w1l wrote:
| Why would I spend a lot of effort on getting myself
| addicted?
| itake wrote:
| I certainly could curate my following list more, but that
| takes too much time. Manually unfollowing ~1.1k is boring.
|
| Also, I am in FB groups b/c at one point they were
| important to me (like looking for housing in SF). I don't
| exactly want to leave the group b/c I know I will need it
| later, nor do I want to deal with unfollowing all of the
| groups I don't are about.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Sounds like being the FB equivalent of an IRL hoarder!
|
| Why not drop out the groups and rejoin in the unlikely
| event you really do need them later? Most people I know
| get by very well with no FB groups at all.
| itake wrote:
| I've certainly done left and rejoined before. I worry
| that Group moderators might not allow me back in (either
| they stop accepting new members or get annoyed at someone
| for jumping in and out). Also, there is some friction
| with joining Groups. Group owners ask filter questions
| and delay admissions by days. You can "unfollow" groups,
| but that requires a few clicks.
|
| FB groups are the best way for me to find roommate-style
| housing. "{city|country} expat" Groups help me plan my
| travels and answer questions. I don't know of other
| platforms that provide this service for me at low costs.
| klyrs wrote:
| Herein lies the banality: facebook _is_ boring, but if you 're
| bored, it's better than nothing. I don't begrudge folks using
| it to pass the time on transit to avoid interacting with the
| public... but I've witnessed quite a few people scrolling
| endlessly while half-watching tv, half-participating in face to
| face interactions, etc. I've fallen into that trap myself,
| during a period of intense burnout -- my ability to focus or
| produce dropped to zero, and... gotta get that dopamine.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| I'll assert that it's much worse than nothing.
|
| "Nothing" isn't bad. Meditate. Let your imagination run wild.
| Relax. You can't do those things on facebook dot com.
| klyrs wrote:
| For people with severe anxiety or depression, meditation
| can actually aggravate the situation and do significant
| harm. Letting one's mind run wild in that situation leads
| to more anxiety, suicide planning, etc.
|
| But, I'll amend my statement: facebook is less boring than
| a blank screen.
| ferrumfist wrote:
| That's absurd. There is no scientific basis that would
| support your assertion. In fact, increased social media
| activity leads to a higher chance of suffering from
| depressive episodes. Meditation has been shown to to
| actually combat symptoms of depression.
|
| If you can't sit still with your own thoughts for 60
| seconds without spiraling, then you shouldn't even be
| remotely near social media.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| You know what, you're right, I never noticed this change,
| probably because I quit FB years ago. It's just a content
| aggregator now, there's not much social about it aside from
| FOMO.
| ewzimm wrote:
| Does anyone else find it hard to personally connect with the
| well-researched claim that people respond with a fight-or-flight
| response to ideas that challenge their core beliefs? I've always
| found ideas to be more interesting the more they challenge my
| core beliefs. This is true of math and science, but especially
| true of things like religion. I remember how wonderful it was as
| a teenager to find challenges to the ideas I was raised with,
| debating my positions with people online, and appreciating losing
| debates and having my mind opened to new ideas.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I'm like you in this respect, but I wasn't always. It took
| reflection and effort to realize that being challenged is more
| stimulating than being defensive, and more productive
| personally. So yes, I can understand that line of thinking, and
| yes, it is pretty senseless.
| apeace wrote:
| I can relate to it. Being challenged on a core belief is an
| uncomfortable feeling for me. I've learned that in order to be
| open minded I need to pause, listen, and take as much time
| reflecting as I need before I respond. Oftentimes that means I
| bow out of a debate with "That's interesting, I hadn't thought
| of that before, I really want to think about that". For me, it
| takes a lot of discipline to not give in to the fight-or-flight
| reaction, and really digest something that challenges me. And
| I'm not always perfect at it.
|
| Ironically, I feel like online platforms should be a _better_
| venue for that type of thing, since it 's asynchronous and you
| don't have people in front of you awaiting your response.
| Obviously it doesn't tend to work that way, though.
| rvbissell wrote:
| I suspect it depends on how much social and psychological
| equity you have invested in the core beliefs, when they get
| challenged. If you've never experienced much indoctrination, I
| can completely understand why it would be hard for you to
| relate.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"that people respond with a fight-or-flight response to ideas
| that challenge their core beliefs?"
|
| I believe a large part of this is due to people's
| personalities. Namely, Openness and Agreeableness.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) It
| stands to reason that someone who is low on openness and not
| agreeable would react poorly to their core beliefs being
| challenged, and vice versa.
| htrp wrote:
| Public key encryption, especially PGP, is useless in a modern
| computing context. Windows has solved almost all identity
| management issues for the end-user base.
|
| (did that trigger an emotional response?? It bothered me to
| write it)
| mjevans wrote:
| Sadly, I agree with the first half; for normal end users
| anyway. (Open)PGP / GNUpg are uselessly cumbersome, slow to
| adapt standards, useful tools that are ill-suited to the
| needs of most end users and have horrifically bad UI.
|
| The second half is total bunk though, and I'd like to hear
| how you think that's possibly the case. Maybe there's an
| angle I'm missing since I don't use that platform for those
| things. I suspect it was just made up to see what the
| reactions were.
| htrp wrote:
| I took two of the most awful things that bother me about
| general purpose computing (and likely the larger HN
| community) and typed them in to see if that would trigger
| an emotional response.
|
| My heart rate actually jumped 15 bpm writing the second
| statement.
| ewzimm wrote:
| That's a great one, and it hits close to home. I'm a huge
| believer of libre software. I'm typing this response in the
| vim-based text editor of w3m inside a Terminology terminal on
| dwm. Just today I fully moved the business I manage off the
| StatusNet/GNU Social network plus OwnCloud which I've run for
| the last decade to Microsoft Teams because using AzureAD and
| Office365 was more efficient for everyone. I haven't changed
| my beliefs, but I appreciate the best solutions wherever I
| can find them. If a better option comes along, I'll gladly
| take it!
| gmadsen wrote:
| Yes, as I'm sure many do here as well. Thats because the HN
| community is not representative of the average population
| haswell wrote:
| I grew up in a very religious (technically a cult) setting.
| Earlier in my life, I believed some of it. I bristled at the
| suggestion that what I'd been taught might be wrong. I relished
| in the opportunity to practice "apologetics" and debate non-
| believers - a concept that appealed to me deeply at the time.
|
| And then, I grew up and left the bubble. I was fortunate enough
| to get a job working with people who held diverse viewpoints. I
| still found myself resisting those viewpoints instinctively,
| but I learned something that surprised me at the time: the
| people who held those viewpoints were good people! Who'd have
| thought? I'd been told those people were the enemy.
| Unbelievers, sinners, "of this world".
|
| As my relationships with those people grew, the cracks in my
| own belief systems started to grow.
|
| I'm now in my mid 30s, and would describe my mindset as that of
| a scientist. I'm excited to learn when I'm wrong, because it
| means I learned something new about the world.
|
| I often think about the people I left behind, many of whom are
| still deeply in the bubble. I wonder if I got out because I was
| predisposed to have an open mind, and when given the
| opportunity I took it, or if I was just exposed to the right
| combination of things to help me see the light.
|
| All of this to follow up on this:
|
| > _Does anyone else find it hard to personally connect with the
| well-researched claim that people respond with a fight-or-
| flight response to ideas that challenge their core beliefs?_
|
| I can still feel some kind of connection to that early version
| of myself, or at least I know it was there and now it's not.
| This history has established within me some empathy for people
| who still do react poorly to new ideas, and I've found that it
| helps me better understand (not accept) the viewpoints of
| others around me that might otherwise seem insane.
|
| Edit: I know it's not great to complain about downvotes, but
| I'm really puzzled here.
| rvbissell wrote:
| I'm not sure why you were net-downvoted; your anecdote was
| on-topic, relative to the comment you replied to.
|
| I have a similar background, and your use of 'of this world'
| may possibly indicate that we both suffered at the hands of
| the same cult.
|
| Within myself, I have personally experienced both the fight-
| or-flight reaction to dis-confirming datapoints, and also
| excitement at learning something new. The former happened
| more often when I was still in the clutches of the cult. I
| think it boils down to how psychologically invested you are
| in your beliefs, at the time of feeling the cognitive
| dissonance.
| twistedpair wrote:
| Phew, managed to quit FB in 2009.
| acoye wrote:
| I quitted 8 years ago, banned in my personal DNS, never looked
| back.
|
| I use private chat apps to replace it, and full disclosure I
| enjoy from time to time loosing some time on twitter.
|
| INT-P speaking, this may be helping me.
| djoldman wrote:
| The uproar over and magnitude of digital ink spent on Facebook is
| interesting.
|
| This uproar seems to persist even if the discussion is restricted
| to Americans who are adults and not using Facebook for a
| commercial purpose (i.e. the use is for amusement or in free
| time).
|
| It seems to be a disconnect from the generally pro-free speech,
| pro-personal liberty/accountability tone of HN.
|
| Are HN'ers calling for regulating social media companies because
| of toxic/manipulative/addictive free content served to adults?
|
| If so, who gets to decide?
|
| This discussion is separate from the monopoly power, anti-
| competitive, anti-democracy angles, which are discussions all
| their own.
| bink wrote:
| If the platform is controlling what you see or interact with
| based on opaque algorithms does that really still qualify as
| free speech?
| hairofadog wrote:
| Firstly, from my point of view they're already heavily
| censoring content via their algorithm. Facebook hides posts
| that decrease engagement and amplifies posts that increase
| engagement. If the argument for _absolute free speech_ is that
| misinformation should be fought with information (meaning, if
| some folks are telling people to drink bleach as a cure for
| covid, the remedy is to tell those same people _not_ to drink
| bleach, and let the people decide for themselves), that 's
| impossible what with Facebooks algorithmic censorship. It's
| nearly impossible to reach those people, and it's not even
| possible to even hear what argument they're receiving in order
| to rebut.
|
| Secondly, in terms of liberty, Facebook is a company doing what
| they feel they need to do. What course of action, aside from
| government intervention, would prevent them from removing posts
| they thought were harmful? What would be the threshold for the
| government to intervene in a web service's moderation policy?
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Imagine if nicotine had network effects (edit: I mean as strong
| network effects as fb). You can't quit unless all your friends do
| too. I hear some alcoholics have a similar challenge when their
| social life revolves around drinking with peer pressure not to
| abstain.
| tombert wrote:
| While it was fortunately never a problem for me (I've never
| really drank a lot), when I did business travel for a living,
| it was pretty common to go to bars after work and expense some
| drinks to the company (the CEO knew about this, we weren't
| breaking rules).
|
| I remember thinking that if I were an alcoholic, this would
| either be the best job in the world or the worst job in the
| world, depending on your perspective. I can't imagine how much
| harder it would be to actually quick full-blown alcoholism if
| all the booze is free. Obviously you were _allowed_ to just buy
| a soda or seltzer or something, and that 's usually what I did,
| but I could totally see it being ten times harder to quit when
| all your drinks are comped and all your peers are drinking
| around you.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It does. It's pretty common for friends groups to grow around
| everyone at a school, a dorm, an office, that take smoke breaks
| together.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| True story: I once got a major promotion because the boss was
| a smoker and he overheard me talking about coding - "oh, you
| can code?"
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| >Imagine if nicotine had network effects. You can't quit unless
| all your friends do too.
|
| As a former smoker, it took me moving from an office full of
| smokers to an office where I was the _only_ smoker to finally
| motivate me to quit for good. I tapered down over about a year
| with a vape though, and I think that almost has an anti-network
| effect in that you kind of look like a bellend!
| ugjka wrote:
| Nicotine patches and Wellbutrin; I can be around 100 smokers
| and not give a shit
| speedybird wrote:
| My father picked up smoking when he joined the Navy so that he
| could participate in the smoke breaks. Fortunately he managed
| to quit when he got out. I wager many started smoking for the
| same reason, and never quit.
| TheBozzCL wrote:
| You know what worked for me to get rid of Facebook? I turned it
| into a chore and eventually broke it.
|
| When I deleted my old account and created a new one a few years
| ago, I decided to run a little experiment: I started hiding
| everything that was not posted directly by friends. "[unknown
| person] posted on [friend]'s wall"? Hide [unknown person].
| "[friend] liked a post by [some page]"? I hid that page. A friend
| shared a post by someone or from a page? You bet I hid those too.
| And the same for groups, events and so forth.
|
| I did that a little bit every day, for 3 years, until Facebook
| became pretty much barren. My friends only really post a handful
| of things a day and the rest is just cruft. Around that time I
| also discovered that Facebook started exposing who had uploaded
| your contact info as part of a marketing list... so I started
| leaving negative reviews and blocking those pages.
|
| Does this sound like a total bore and a chore? Yes, yes it was. I
| think I got it going for so long mostly out of spite for the
| platform. Eventually, it got so bad that it started literally
| breaking Facebook for me. Sometimes no posts would load at all.
| Eventually, some of the hiding options stopped working! After a
| year or so, the experience got so janky and unrewarding I just
| deleted my account. I took the chance to get rid of Instagram and
| WhatsApp as well, since this was around the time where the latter
| started pushing for more telemetry.
|
| I got most of my closer friends to jump on Telegram and Signal. I
| do miss Facebook a bit, in that it's become harder to keep up
| with some people that don't use other platforms... but not too
| much. I'm setting up a blog for myself to share whatever I want
| to write, my tech tutorials and maybe set up a photo gallery.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| What I noticed about my son's peer group is that FB just doesn't
| occupy their mind share. It's mostly Roblox, Minecraft, Netflix,
| YouTube or some other game.
|
| FB may well be an addictive space now but I suspect its growth
| has just about peaked. I keep hearing kids say that FB is
| something adults use and hence isn't cool or trendy.
| svachalek wrote:
| Those sound like pretty young kids. Teens are more actively
| seeking socialization, but they also gravitate to places adults
| aren't. Unfortunately it doesn't sound like the new generation
| of sites like Tiktok is any less insidious.
| asdff wrote:
| Among millenials at least in my experience it seems like once
| parents joined fb it had a strong quieting effect almost
| instantly.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Unfortunately youtube is just as bad or worse than Facebook for
| leading people down extremism rabbit holes.
| btheshoe wrote:
| It's not just Facebook, it's social media in general. More
| precisely, it's infinite scroll, which has become a ubiquitous
| design decision across social media. I recently finally succeeded
| in developing a healthy relationship to social media, and it
| involved disabling infinite scroll where I could (using
| Hackernews, moving to old Reddit) and quitting the social media
| sites where I couldn't (mostly Youtube). I'm scared to touch
| Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter because the infinite scroll
| mechanism is so addictive.
| ramoz wrote:
| The author who wrote this has tweeted, on average, 1-2x a day for
| 10 years. https://twitter.com/jaronschneider
|
| Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for society
| (an information/propagation architecture that exploits how people
| process information, imo).
|
| For me, Facebook is nothing more than a hometown forum. I havent
| logged on in months.
| afavour wrote:
| > Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for
| society
|
| I don't really see how that can be true when only 20% of so of
| the population actually use Twitter. It's very small beans
| compared to Facebook, or YouTube for that matter.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| Policy makers, journalists, and educators tend to use twitter
| pretty extensively. What happens on twitter affects the
| worldview of just about every journalist out there. Don't
| like the current ideological capture of journalism on both
| sides of the US political spectrum? Blame twitter for a
| significant portion of that.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for
| society"
|
| Absolutely. Not only are the people on Twitter much more toxic,
| the trending feed is way more prone to manipulation and
| influence campaigns. If I don't know someone directly on
| Facebook, I'm probably never going to see their stupid hot-
| takes. No such separation on Twitter. Also, whenever I scroll
| through Facebook, more than half the posts are advertisements
| anyways. It rarely shows me anything of value from my friends
| and somehow fixates on the same dozen people. Oddly, I was
| never even very friendly with those dozen in real life.
|
| People say Facebook is dangerous because people fall into a
| loop of following content they already like and falling into
| grouptthink. Firstly, how in the world does not apply more
| strongly with Twitter? Second, on Twitter it is possible to
| bombard non-followers with repeated, biased, and motivated
| messaging. I think this is far more insidious because it
| creates a false sense of consensus and you can condition people
| to react a certain way with repeated messaging. And, these
| users don't even need to actively follow the influencers'
| accounts.
|
| Edit: I don't even follow people like "Brooklyn Dad, Defiant!",
| "Duty to Warn", or "Palmer Report", yet I am always seeing
| content from these paid influencers whenever I click on a
| trending topic. So imagine if you're not a partisan person and
| you consistently keep seeing messages from these kinds of
| accounts. Chances are, eventually, some of their tweets are
| going to influence how you think and give you a biased view of
| things.
| npunt wrote:
| I wouldn't take your personal experience on Facebook to be
| universal.
|
| Being a public social network, Twitter's toxicity and
| distortions are much more visible than Facebook's, and the
| user experience is far less varied because of common
| touchpoints like Trending Topics and celebrity posters.
|
| Facebook is a far more unique experience per user, so
| personal experience isn't a great way to understand others
| experience. A lot of Facebook's problems are related to the
| network you've formed, on Pages you have to follow, or in
| private Groups. Facebook also serves far more people and is
| ubiquitous and worldwide in a way that Twitter just is not.
| That's why you can't really rely on your own judgment of the
| product and sort of have to fly on instruments (population
| level data) to understand it. This is also why it's critical
| to have researchers have access to that data to understand
| what is going on.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I'm never logged in as a user and I don't have an account.
| So I imagine what I see is likely what other people tend to
| see if not logged in.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| I feel like everyone ignores scale here. Facebook is an of
| magnitude larger even before considering Instagram and
| WhatsApp. They have nearly 3 billion active users.
|
| Twitter is a fraction of the scale/influence, especially
| outside of english speaking countries.
|
| WhatsApp is the de facto communication platform in some
| _countries_. Facebook _is_ the internet in some parts of
| Africa. India has nearly as many Facebook users as the US has
| adults in total.
|
| Even if you don't use Facebook yourself, society around you
| uses it... a lot... and that impacts you.
| aaron695 wrote:
| The greatest trick Twitter ever pulled was convincing the world
| Facebook were the problem.
|
| The entire world lives in an altered reality. Always have been.
| Now you just say Facebook enough times and people believe
| anything. We deserve what we've got.
|
| Facebook even has a simple path to less toxicity _and_ seems to
| have done it, Twitter has no other state than toxic. The
| genealogy of toxic Facebook is also traced to Twitter.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for
| society
|
| I'm always surprised that Reddit gets a free pass in these
| discussions. Reddit has been home to some of the most egregious
| bad communities and misinformation hives.
|
| Their invisible-hand moderation system allows a small number of
| moderators to completely control the conversation in a
| subreddit. Banning dissenters and removing comments that don't
| agree with what the moderators want people to see is an easy
| way to make it look like everyone is in natural agreement on a
| topic.
|
| The weirdest part is that most tech people readily admit that
| Reddit is full of terrible content, even on the front page. The
| common retort is that it's not so bad if you create an account
| and manually remove all of those bad subreddits from your list,
| but by the same argument Facebook isn't a problem because you
| can simply not subscribe to the bad content.
| avgDev wrote:
| I hate Reddit mostly for its hive mind.
|
| For example: There is a video of someone blasting music and
| neighbor clearly being upset. The offender calls the lady
| Karen. Then, all the comments are bashing so called "Karen".
| Even though many places in the US have laws in place to
| prevent people from blasting music all day. Stating this
| brings many down votes.
|
| I had an awful neighbor in an area where houses are close
| apart. He would get wasted, cut grass with a lawnmower and
| blast music out of his car, which he could not hear because
| of lawn mower. My windows would shake when I was trying to
| study.
| ferrumfist wrote:
| Reddit is an amazing platform for niche hobbies and tech
| forums.
|
| It is fucking terrible for its political news. It's so
| clearly biased AND it leaks into every default subreddit.
| bink wrote:
| I have a carefully curated list of subs on Reddit that are
| well moderated and informative. There just isn't an easy way
| to do that with Facebook or Twitter. Both of those platforms
| will show me "related" content I don't want to see.
|
| Reddit might do that with their app (I don't use it so I
| don't know) but with a third party client or the old website
| I can pretty effectively avoid trolls and nonsense.
|
| It's a controversial topic but I personally think the
| downvote makes a huge difference in my experience on social
| media. You see it here on HN as well.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > Banning dissenters and removing comments that don't agree
| with what the moderators want people to see is an easy way to
| make it look like everyone is in natural agreement on a
| topic.
|
| This happens way more than people know, by the way. Some of
| the moderators on large subreddits are complete dicks to
| people who go against the grain. Good luck appealing. All you
| can do is create another account for that subreddit or just
| never visit it again.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Because there is no such thing as Reddit. Every sub is
| different. SilphRoad and the fandom subs for Dark and Twin
| Peaks were terrific communities when I participated there.
| Hobbyist subs for modding PC cases and programming languages
| have consistently great communities. Front-page Reddit is a
| totally different animal, but assuming you can remember words
| or deal with six bookmarks instead of one, you can go to the
| specific subs you want without ever having to see the front
| page at all.
| harpersealtako wrote:
| I think the hypocrisy isn't as much as you might think. Think
| of it like this: Facebook is like Walmart, Reddit is like a
| shopping mall. Malls and Walmarts have plenty of garbage
| products alike, but at Walmart you HAVE to walk past garbage
| to get to the thing you want, whereas at a mall you can just
| beeline straight to the one store you want to go to.
|
| I can't avoid things I don't want to see in facebook unless I
| have zero friends and only subscribe to community topics
| (eventually a friend will post a link or opinion on a topic I
| don't want to see in social media), but if I literally only
| care about pictures of bees, I can just exclusively follow
| the pictures of bees subreddit.
| mmarq wrote:
| For me Twitter is a bit more than an RSS feed, I block
| everybody who ends up in my timeline for no good reason. A
| while ago I told Twitter I live in Germany, because I was told
| they have to censor nazis down there.
|
| It's way healthier than Facebook, where blocking the crazy
| friend of your aunt may cause endless real life discussions.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| I used to think so, now I'm living a more nomadic life. It's a
| convenient way to text and call people when you don't have a set
| phone number.
| [deleted]
| m1117 wrote:
| At least it's not as bad as opioids, actual smoking, gun violence
| and sugar. Real problems that are neglected in America.
| alchemyromcom wrote:
| I personally found Facebook hard to quit, but not entirely
| impossible. I would compare it to giving up cigarettes: not easy,
| but I got through it. I am coming to terms with the fact that I
| have have a very serious and damaging internet addiction,
| however. Like many serious addictions, there's a lot of shame
| attached to my real addiction, which is 4chan. 4chan is like
| being addicted to heroin. Every day is a battle to look away from
| the train wreck, and so far I haven't been able to overcome this
| addiction in any meaningful way. What's interesting is that the
| site doesn't use any of the scandalous techniques that facebook
| is currently getting heat for, yet it has a grip on me that's
| basically ruined my life as much as a crack addiction could ruin
| a person's life. It's so bad that I've spent many years of my
| life living in very close proximity to hard drug users, because
| of the poverty my addiction has caused me. So, I guess what I'm
| getting at is we might have a bigger problem than just facebook,
| or at least I do.
| robocat wrote:
| Creating a 4chan support group for ex-users would be very
| challenging.
|
| How many other 4chan addicts do you know in person?
| elliekelly wrote:
| Even if there were a large number of 4chan addicts actively
| in search of support any attempt to organize a 4chan
| addiction group would be immediately trolled and ruined by
| the rest of 4chan.
| ryanianian wrote:
| This got dark fast. Any behavior that is getting in the way of
| daily life is an addiction. Doesn't have to be drugs or
| gambling. Therapists have extensive training in coaching
| patients out of these behaviors or at least better
| understanding them. I hope you can find the help you need.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Easy. It became so packed with fake posts and paid-for crap that
| I got bored and quit oh, years ago.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I want to thank my insufferable American aunt who did nothing but
| spin every post and comment into being about her. Made it very
| easy to quit about eight years ago.
|
| Twitter is trickier. I actually enjoy the discourse (once I
| figured out how to filter the loud angry idiots).
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