[HN Gopher] The apps that Americans search to "delete" the most
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The apps that Americans search to "delete" the most
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 201 points
Date : 2023-03-08 15:20 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vpnoverview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (vpnoverview.com)
| mishingo wrote:
| I bookmarked the messages page in instagram in my web browser and
| deleted the app, that way I can stay in contact with friends and
| family without the distraction.
|
| This interaction pattern isn't possible in the app, and users are
| forced to view the most captivating post in their feed upon
| opening.
| sib wrote:
| The "analysis" doesn't seem to have been normalized by number of
| installs or MAU...
| jcreinhold wrote:
| Thanks for this. I was looking for someone to comment on this
| point.
|
| The list of apps that people most "want to delete" is highly
| correlated with apps with the list of apps with the most MAUs.
|
| The right thing to look at here is the percentage of users who
| want to delete the app. Otherwise this table is just telling us
| that Instagram has more users than other apps--e.g., 1% of 1
| billion > 1% of 1 million--which I suspect most people already
| know.
| olliej wrote:
| So I just checked, and instagram doesn't seem to have become an
| undeletable system app so it's really easy?
|
| Instagram has also never had the network effects that require you
| have/maintain it so I'm not sure what these people are
| complaining about?
| seydor wrote:
| So most american IG users are liars?
| slackdog wrote:
| If an alcoholic tells you he wants to quit but never seems to
| actually quit, does that make him a liar? Of course not.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| :smart guy meme: Can't delete it if I don't have it installed in
| the first place!
| Jabrov wrote:
| Wait, they're basing this off total search volume? So Instagram
| is most searched for deletion because ... it's one of the most
| popular apps?
|
| I feel like normalizing the search volume according to number of
| users would yield much more useful results.
| dminor wrote:
| I didn't want to delete my Instagram account but they went ahead
| and algo'd it into the trash can anyway, after first making me
| upload a selfie with a piece of paper with a random code written
| on it.
|
| Truly a bizarre experience.
|
| After I tweeted about it I discovered there's an underground
| economy of people claiming to be able to restore your account.
| mdgrech23 wrote:
| That app is super addicting and totally toxic. The shit it puts
| in my feed is crazy. It's like 100s "normal" posts and then all
| of sudden it's like here some whacky shit what do you think about
| this eh?
| jaywalk wrote:
| You get 100s of normal posts before the "whacky" stuff? For me
| it seems like every other post is either an ad or "whacky"
| RajT88 wrote:
| About 1/3rd for me, just a quick scan now.
|
| I am not terribly active on it though.
|
| But let me say that it's total horse shit that most of my
| notifications aren't related to my posts, or posts I've
| interacted with.
| illiarian wrote:
| You guys are getting them only every other post?
|
| The default feed I get is _at most_ two posts from people I
| follow, and then only ads and weird shit.
|
| There's a minor mitigating factor: if you tap on Instagram
| logo, it will show a drop down letting you switch to a
| chronological timeline from accounts you follow. You have to
| force-refresh it though because by default it refreshes
| perhaps once an hour.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| Instagram has added a word list feature that allows you to hide
| posts by keyword. This has been very useful to hide politics
| and topics I find negative. It's also much better without
| following influencers.
| lavender123 wrote:
| Interesting article, but the information here is skewed in two
| ways. If the data were normalized in relation to how many users
| or downloads they have we would get a better picture. Also the
| search use skews towards cases where users need to search for how
| to delete their app or deactivate an account vs just doing it
| (apps that make it difficult or user base who needs help doing
| this).
| renewiltord wrote:
| There are only two kinds of apps: the ones that people want to
| delete and the ones that people don't use
| donclark wrote:
| Where are we headed? What app should we use to share/communicate
| with others in a group setting without ads or having an option to
| have our data not to be mined or sold?
|
| Is there a HN poll of a range of apps and how many is using each
| (and maybe a daily/weekly time usage of each)?
|
| Some data to review below (*may be biased):
|
| Most Popular Apps 2022 (Global)
|
| TikTok 672
|
| Instagram 548
|
| Facebook 449
|
| WhatsApp 424
|
| CapCut 357
|
| Snapchat 330
|
| Telegram 310
|
| Subway Surfers 304
|
| Stumble Guys 254
|
| Spotify 238
|
| https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/most-downloaded-apps/
|
| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/most-popular-apps/
|
| https://www.zucisystems.com/blog/15-most-popular-apps-to-dow...
|
| https://buildfire.com/app-statistics/
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Discord? Seems to work well for my group of friends of real
| people I know and have a relationship with.
| distrill wrote:
| as soon as it becomes popular there will be outcry to leave
| whatever you land on.
| indymike wrote:
| Maybe people just don't like 4,211 social notifications per hour.
| nlh wrote:
| A personal anecdote:
|
| I use Instagram for my hobby/business (coin & paper money
| collecting & dealing). I have mercilessly curated my feed to be
| ONLY people who post content purely related to the numismatic
| world. No real-life friends, no travel posts from random semi-
| friends, no selfies, none of that garbage. If someone starts
| posting it, I unfollow them.
|
| And for the ads -- I click on ads related to cat toys and pet
| food, just to let the algorithm know to feed me more of it.
|
| SO: My instagram feed is 100% hobby-related posts & cats. I think
| I may be victorious (for the time being....).
|
| PS: Stay AWAY from the "Explore" tab. That is an endless dopamine
| well of misery.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| At some point, wouldn't it be better to build your own RSS
| bridge for posts from Instagram accounts you want to follow? At
| least you'd get to exercise some programming skills that way,
| instead of running around in Meta's dark pattern labyrinths.
| naillo wrote:
| I appreciate mercilessly curating your feed. But man even
| having to do that is such a huge waste of time and life energy.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| It's way too big of a task for any one person to do
| individually (like trying to block ads online), and then you
| have the problem that people collaboratively moderating a
| stream together wouldn't have the same opinions on what
| content they actually want to see.
|
| It's basically a hopeless problem.
| legitster wrote:
| I actually had a similar nicely curated Facebook around my
| personal interests.
|
| Then Facebook decided to throw that all out the window and now
| I have a wall of pure garbage. Just random low quality memes
| and content.
| swatcoder wrote:
| The Algorithm owes no loyalty to your efforts. I think many of
| us have watched well-curated social feeds revert to noise when
| an algorithm got tweaked or irrecoverably fixated on some
| irrelevant interaction we once made. These things are not built
| to let you have the control you've found. It's an happy
| accident when that happens.
|
| Enjoy your victory while it lasts, I guess.
| Swizec wrote:
| > PS: Stay AWAY from the "Explore" tab. That is an endless
| dopamine well of misery.
|
| I have a 6 figure instagram id and have never opened the
| explore tab.
|
| But I also stopped using instagram when I realized the ads are
| more interesting than the people in my feed. Maybe early
| instagram folk just aren't the target market anymore.
|
| Sometimes I miss my quirky candid real life photography app.
|
| edit: to clarify for the downvoters -- professionally
| interesting people (influencers) bore me and my friends
| highlight reels ... are kinda boring too because they all end
| up looking the same since they're all trying to promote an
| idealized version of their lives instead of just being
| themselves. The ads were great, but I don't need an app for
| ads. So like the commenter above, I curated heavily - by never
| checking the app.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| > Sometimes I miss my quirky candid real life photography
| app.
|
| I miss the same too. BeReal is has the closest experience for
| candid photography. Unfortunately is not that widely used in
| my group
| hiidrew wrote:
| This reminds me of a tweet about a guy complaining about
| Instagram models in bikinis on his feed. Unaware of how
| recommendation algorithms work... Related image that I love -
| https://ifunny.co/picture/thank-you-for-ruining-my-life-i-m-...
| testmasterflex wrote:
| My dad on family dinner last week :D
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| My explore tab has bird photography, cool art, and cycling. Its
| actually quite pleasant
|
| I actually found some coin videos through my explore page
| gedy wrote:
| > Stay AWAY from the "Explore" tab. That is an endless dopamine
| well of misery.
|
| I actually preferred that, as until recently there were no ads
| in the posts you saw (top level of course).
|
| I made a point to not like or comment on anything, and seemed a
| decent diversion for a few minutes.
| sureglymop wrote:
| What I hate is that even if you curate it that meticulously
| (gid forbid you click on the wrong thing and mess it all up),
| you still get fed so many random ads and "people you could
| follow". Just a completely whack user unfriendly platform in my
| experience.
| tantalor wrote:
| Congrats you invented a worse version of Google Plus.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Instagram is a reflection of the stuff you click on. So long as
| you take that to heart, then you'll do fine.
|
| Make sure you flat out reject and ban anything you don't like
| (either use the ... or long press and say "I don't like this").
|
| Make sure you turn off feed suggestions (they are the ones with
| the x in the top right) That'll stop Instagram injecting
| targeted, and stuff some poor IC has been forced to cram into
| your feed to suit some metric. Then you'll have a feed that shows
| you updates from people you follow, then when you get to the end
| suggested posts.
|
| The explore tab has a different persona to who you follow. So you
| can be obsessivly following knit crafters in your feed, but your
| explore tab could be filled with something entirely orthogonal.
| You will get inclusions from explore into your main feed
| suggestions, but you can reject them by either scrolling over
| them quickly (not that effective) or long press -> I don't like.
|
| multiple accounts for different interests is also a good idea.
| 3np wrote:
| > multiple accounts for different interests is also a good
| idea.
|
| ...Until a bunch of them get suspended without recourse because
| having more than one account as an individual violates their
| ToS. Don't ask me how I'd know...
| rvz wrote:
| Well for billions of users, it's very hard for them to quit a
| digital drug like Instagram when the feverish notifications,
| updates and posts are tempting cold turkeys everywhere resisting
| the urge to log in to the app.
|
| There is a reason why Meta has spent millions on psychologists
| studying on ways to hook in users and increase screen time,
| scrolling and getting more people addicted to Instagram; hence
| the billions of users having difficulty deleting the app.
|
| Even if they do, they end up re-installing it and logging back in
| again to scroll up for the entire day about what they missed,
| then the addiction cycle continues.
| armatav wrote:
| Kind of weird that a VPN site is doing this analysis.
| tristor wrote:
| My wife convinced me to install Instagram so she could send me
| videos of stuff. My experience was that at first it was annoying,
| then I found out I could follow some cool hobbyist folks working
| on cars, old computer systems, electronics, and of course all the
| mechanical keyboard content, as well as travel (I'm an extensive
| world traveler and used to post travel content on Instagram over
| 5 years ago) and I got sucked in. I started getting
| recommendations for comedy shorts and cat/dog videos which I
| enjoyed, and pretty soon I had a list of subscriptions which made
| it possible to scroll for hours watching videos which interest me
| without repeats.
|
| The problem became:
|
| 1. Ads, the ads are bad because they're well targeted and mostly
| for things which are unnecessary or scams/knockoffs. I found
| myself buying things I didn't need from dubious brands.
|
| 2. Thots. Maybe because I'm a male between 25-50 or something,
| but even though I subscribe to 0 people on Instagram that qualify
| as thots, my feed started getting filled with women using
| Instagram to advertise their OF/services. Usually these seem
| cross-recommended as related to comedy shorts, cosplay/gaming, or
| cars, but aren't really any of those things.
|
| 3. Notifications. Instagram generates unnecessary notifications
| which ends up driving you back into the app, especially if you
| are like me and require there to be no number badges on any apps
| on your phone to eliminate FOMO anxiety.
|
| The net effect was that I talked with my wife and deleted the
| app. It was the only social media app I've attempted to use in
| the last 3 years, and it lasted about 30 days before I felt it
| was necessary to delete it once again. I had used Instagram from
| 2015-2017, but had deleted it in 2017 previously. It's gotten
| much worse, and even in 2017 I felt it was unhealthy.
|
| The thing is, I'm pretty sure Instagram is "better" (in the sense
| of less bad) than TikTok and many other apps that are more
| popular.
| impalallama wrote:
| The enshittafication of TikTok is just starting. Right now they
| are still doing their best to provide a quality service rather
| than extract value. Instagram is about a decade into getting
| steadily worse, more addicting, and more unhealthy.
|
| So IMHO no not yet, but it will get there eventually.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| > scams/knockoffs
|
| That's the most common issue with MetaZuck - advertisements are
| riddled with fraud.
|
| Outside of Facebook Local marketplace, they are utterly
| horrendous.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| >The thing is, I'm pretty sure Instagram is "better" (in the
| sense of less bad) than TikTok and many other apps that are
| more popular.
|
| Users judge these apps based on different criteria and at
| different stages of use. On Instagram I found someone I wanted
| to follow but had to be approved to follow their content, I
| immediately uninstalled the app.
|
| I get tons of excellent content on TikTok about tech, science,
| programming because I've "shaped" my algorithm well. I find
| people judge these platforms, as I have with instagram, before
| they have cultivated their best possible platform experience.
|
| TikTok skews younger on average; Instagram skews more
| egocentric. You can mostly avoid both negatives but it won't be
| your first experience on these platforms.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Ads, the ads are bad because they're well targeted and mostly
| for things which are unnecessary or scams/knockoffs. I found
| myself buying things I didn't need from dubious brands.
|
| I make it a rule to never click on an ad no matter what. On the
| rare occasion I see any ad at all, if I do see something I
| think I want, I'll search for it later on my own. That let's me
| look at reviews, compare other similar items, and it means I'm
| buying from reputable sources only. Block every ad you can,
| never click or interact with any ad you can't block (or just
| haven't blocked yet).
| cloverich wrote:
| You don't have to click on ads to be fed relevant ads. Your
| search history, app usage history, browsing history, credit
| card purchase history, location history, your social network
| (using any of those signals), can all be aggregated to
| profile you and your (potential) interests.
|
| Searching and purchasing the item later can and (often but
| not always) is fed back to the system so it knows you
| purchased something you got an ad for.
| quest88 wrote:
| Ooc why didn't you disable notifications? I have them disabled
| and with a nicely curated feed (like yours) it's pleasant. The
| hard part is limiting your usage. I trick myself by putting the
| app many screens deep and in a folder so it's not one tap away.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Just a general point:
|
| You can disable badges (in iOS) in notifications separately
| from the others (that is, allow notifications but not badges).
|
| I found that out because, like you, I require that there is no
| counter.
| zucked wrote:
| > 2. Thots. Maybe because I'm a male between 25-50 or
| something, but even though I subscribe to 0 people on Instagram
| that qualify as thots, my feed started getting filled with
| women using Instagram to advertise their OF/services. Usually
| these seem cross-recommended as related to comedy shorts,
| cosplay/gaming, or cars, but aren't really any of those things.
|
| THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS. I have consistently resisted ever
| following, or even _looking_ at the profiles of obvious IG
| thots and yet recently, because my IG account only follows a
| handful of others and runs out of content quickly, IG has been
| FILLING my feed with IG models. Not just one, not just a few,
| like a healthy amount of scrolling is required to get beyond
| them to other types of sponsored content.
|
| I cannot for the life of me figure it out. I'm sure something I
| did or revealed has tagged me as "likely to find this content
| captivating" but I don't and I wish I could flag it as such. My
| best guess is that because I follow some "BRO" accounts
| (qualified captain, i70 things, etc) and happen to fall in
| gender/age pairing where that kind of content is a reliable
| draw, they'll keep trying.
|
| I mostly maintain my account to follow hobbies and local
| businesses, but I'm about to shitcan it for the second or third
| time.
| throitallaway wrote:
| I don't use a whole lot of social media with targeting as
| part of the core feature set (just Instagram and Snapchat.)
| Instagram has their algo honed into exactly the type of
| people I like to see, and my search page is filled with
| basically nothing except that. This is despite the fact that
| I don't engage (comment or like) with any posts. They must
| have some intense screen lingering analytics to figure out
| what people like. I find it very annoying and wish I could
| see what data they're basing recommendations on. It's a large
| impetus for me to get rid of my Instagram account entirely.
| technion wrote:
| It's not you or the male typed things you follow.
|
| My wife used to use instagram just to look at cat videos and
| wedding dresses. She wasnt into cars or gym workouts or
| whiskey or whatever. She's also surprisingly female. Her
| suggested posts and ads were always just girls with onlyfans
| accounts. I thinks it's just a matter of what most of the
| platform offers at this point.
| chrbr wrote:
| I had the same problem and hated it. What fixed it was
| clicking "Not Interested" on enough of the posts to where it
| eventually gave up trying to show stuff like that. I think
| you're correct about the fact that it figures out you're an
| adult male and assumes you want that content, since a common
| theme with adult males is, well, an interest in attractive
| women.
|
| The algorithm has now decided to just show me cute animal
| stuff for several months, which is fine by me. It's all low-
| effort and mostly dumb, but it's better than unsolicited
| butts popping up everywhere when I just want to see what my
| friends are up to.
|
| Now if I could just fix the scenario where somehow it decides
| I really like garbage pay-to-play mobile games and shows me
| _nothing_ but ads for them for days on end.
| lastLinkedList wrote:
| The thing I dislike the most about Instagram is it seems like
| at some point it will be like "I'm done showing you content
| from your feed, here is generically popular stuff". There's a
| divider and a little message, but if I'm casually scrolling I
| might miss it and I'm on my timeline, if I wanted to be on
| Discover I'd be on Discover.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| When TikTok runs out of relevant content and starts showing
| me generic/popular stuff; I say aloud "Ope, I'm out of
| tiktoks".
|
| These days I don't check TikTok every day or I hit the normie
| soft cap after 5 minutes. My friends rely on me to be the
| "TikTok" guy since none of them have it installed for various
| reasons, so I "save them up" by waiting to view my fyp for
| longer periods of time.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| TikTok also tells you to stop spending time on TikTok.
| ars wrote:
| Is this list weighted for how many people have the app in the
| first place?
| bialabs wrote:
| It's the only app I set the timer for. Stories in particular have
| a negative impact on me
| mock-possum wrote:
| Wait -
|
| > We looked into the top 30 most popular apps people most want to
| delete in the United States by delving into regional search
| volumes for "delete" and "deactivate" apps/accounts by each
| state.
|
| They're not going off of actual app deletion or account
| deactivation data... they're going off of how often people search
| for how to do it?
|
| Here's the thing - if I want to 'delete Facebook' then I'll do it
| - there's no searching involved, I go to my home screen, long-
| press the 'f' icon and then choose the 'trash' option. My
| decision to delete Facebook is not captured in their data.
|
| What they're measuring is stats on people too technologically
| illiterate to manage the apps installed on their own device,
| right? That's a significant skew on the conclusions they're
| drawing isn't it?
| FunkHose wrote:
| You deleted the app not Facebook and it is absolutely not
| obvious how to delete your account.
| burnished wrote:
| Wait, you think you stop having a facebook account by deleting
| the app on your phone? Probably shouldnt be calling other
| people tech illiterate tbh
| slg wrote:
| They are also counting absolute numbers instead of numbers
| relative to the size of the social network. That means the
| bigger ones will generally be higher. Instagram seems to be
| about 5 times the size of Snap but only has roughly 3 times the
| number of people seeking to leave the platform. That means
| relatively people are seeking to leave Snap more than
| Instagram.
|
| Honestly this isn't a very good article and seems to just be
| blogspam.
| hbn wrote:
| I'm currently taking applications for my upcoming invite-only
| social media platform, which is more successful than
| Instagram because there is zero search trends for how to
| deactivate your account on it.
| slg wrote:
| I didn't equate this metric with being more successful. In
| fact, it is closer to the opposite. Instagram is at the top
| of this list because they are more successful and have more
| users than several smaller social networks that have higher
| turnover.
| hbn wrote:
| I was agreeing with you
| mulmen wrote:
| > That means relatively people are seeking to leave Snap more
| than Instagram.
|
| Can you even assume intent here? Maybe they are trying to
| delete the app for some other reason, like trying to save
| storage space or fix a bug.
| isk517 wrote:
| I hate to inform you but, as someone that has to directly deal
| with the average person that uses technology, the vast majority
| of people fall into the 'too technologically illiterate to
| manage the apps installed on their own device' category.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Here's the thing - if I want to 'delete Facebook' then I'll
| do it - there's no searching involved, I go to my home screen,
| long-press the 'f' icon and then choose the 'trash' option.
|
| But you haven't deleted your Facebook account. You've removed
| the app from your phone.
|
| If your goal was to delete your Facebook account you've failed.
|
| Each company has a different way to actually achieve (or come
| as close as they allow you) removing your account from their
| service. It's completely reasonable that (even technologically
| literate people) would need to search for how to accomplish
| that goal for service X, since the services tend to be
| intentionally somewhat hidden.
|
| Note the search term in the article isn't "Delete Instragram
| *app*", it was "Delete Instagram Account". Those are different
| things.
| vlunkr wrote:
| It's been many years since I deleted my Facebook, but it was
| absolutely hidden like you describe. As far as I could tell
| there was no way to navigate directly to it from the site
| itself.
| mbesto wrote:
| > they're going off of how often people search for how to do
| it?
|
| Yes, its called a proxy. It's not perfect, but it's very likely
| has a strong correlation and low standard deviation from the
| truth.
|
| > What they're measuring is stats on people too technologically
| illiterate to manage the apps installed on their own device,
| right? That's a significant skew on the conclusions they're
| drawing isn't it?
|
| It's enough of a population to demonstrate probability.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| If you're on Android Facebook and Instagram can be installed by
| manufacturers with no option to delete.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >If you're on Android Facebook and Instagram can be installed
| by manufacturers with no option to delete.
|
| Which OEMs do that? I haven't seen that from HTC, Motorola or
| Google.
|
| Not being snarky here. I'd like to know who _actually_ does
| so. Allowing me to avoid them in the future[0].
|
| [0] I'd note that LineageOS[1] doesn't do that either. I
| highly recommend it!
|
| [1] https://lineageos.org/
| dang wrote:
| The submitted title was "Americans want to delete Instagram
| more than any other app", which (assuming the article hasnt'
| changed) looks like an editorialized title, which is against
| HN's rule (" _Please use the original title, unless it is
| misleading or linkbait; don 't editorialize._" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).
|
| Since the article's own title is misleading, I've edited it to
| make it clear that they measured searches for "delete".
| charles_f wrote:
| Fair, but I guess that extrapolating that proportionally it is
| still relevant is not toooo far fetched. Certainly not accurate
| data, but a valid indication as pre-research.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| The other skew is how straight-forward account deactivation is.
| Sites/apps that make deactivation obvious won't have as many
| searches. Deleting apps is equally easy for all apps.
| countmora wrote:
| > My decision to delete Facebook is not captured in their data.
|
| I think for some people, it is. If I want to "delete Facebook"
| then I want to delete my account and every data associated with
| it. This is often not a straight forward process because
| sometimes the delete account option is buried in settings, you
| have to contact support, fill out a form, etc. Hence a quick
| search will guide you through the deletion process.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| I deleted my FB account years ago, so this might have
| changed... but it's even less straightforward then you think.
| Instead of burying the "delete account" option in settings,
| they hid it entirely. You could find "deactivate account,"
| but permanent deletion was only accessible if you knew the
| URL. Even then, Facebook kindly imposes a 30 day delay before
| deleting your account; if you log in in any way, even
| accidentally, before the 30 days pass, it resets the timer,
| reactivates your account, and you have to start from 30
| again.
|
| Instagram had a similar problem when I deleted it a year or
| so later: you couldn't delete your account from the app. You
| had to log in via a browser, navigate the very dated UI
| through to advanced settings, and request a deletion there. A
| lot of folks don't even know their Instagram password -- I
| think they just used SMS codes originally -- so it was
| surprisingly hard to get a password associated with my
| account so I could even log in via a browser!
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Here's the thing - if I want to 'delete Facebook' then I'll do
| it
|
| stop to think about how many people in the world are not techy
| smart people and might need a reminder/refresher from time to
| time on how to delete an app. or maybe possibly, "delete an
| app" can mean something more like actually deleting their
| content from the platform and then deleting their account? but
| hey, they're technology illiterate anyways so who cares, right?
|
| Edit: to remove the dang disapproved snark
| dang wrote:
| Please follow the site guidelines even when--or rather,
| especially when--you find another comment annoying.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| culebron21 wrote:
| Reading it more carefully, you can see the article consists of
| paragraphs with a number and word improvisation without any
| facts or trends whatsoever.
| uhtred wrote:
| so delete it then?
| macwindowslinux wrote:
| Socia media with just close friends and family, no influencers,
| no dark patterns. Ah one can dream...
| superasn wrote:
| I really hate that I can't even delete it on my phone. Had to do
| some `adb` magic to finally get it disabled. There is a really
| horrible policy for Android on some phones which doesn't allow
| you to uninstall apps (and some phones like Oppo don't even let
| you disable it too).
|
| Don't know if it's the same on iPhone (having never owned one)
| but I reckon they are no better as I have to install 'Notunes' on
| my laptop just to disable Apple music popping up when I connect
| bluetooth (and now way to uninstall Apple apps either).
|
| What a horrible ecosystem this is with these companies nowadays.
| irusensei wrote:
| Used to be an app where I would check what friends have been
| doing on their spare time and vacation. Since the stupid tik too
| videos started the content I want to see is basically ratiod by
| an ownslaught of ads and silly videos from people I've never
| interacted with.
|
| Wish I could delete but then I might lose contact with friends.
| latchkey wrote:
| That's because they are all addicted to other apps.
| cronix wrote:
| TLDR: The most popular and most widely used apps, are also the
| apps with the highest deletion and deactivation rates.
|
| Also, users don't know how to delete apps off of their phones and
| have to search.
| notShabu wrote:
| Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only
| affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
|
| Who people think we are _is_ who we are because identity is a
| reflection, not an actual thing in reality (similar to colors not
| existing in reality).
|
| Having access to a extra mirrors at first creates a sense of
| control. You know your mom and dad won't give you a "non-
| distorted" reflection so the reflection from strangers is worth
| more. Colleagues or friends saying "you're smart!" means a lot
| more from them.
|
| When each mirror is carefully placed, the "whole" of we we are
| and would like to be can be understood more deeply just like 7
| blind men working together understand the elephant more deeply.
|
| However when the mirrors are mass produced and cheap and you have
| no control over their place in your life, then the identity
| becomes overwhelmed by expectation. Just like super high
| resolution makes your pores look larger, the mirror array makes
| every aspect of your life feel like shit even if from a rational
| analysis "extra information should never be a danger"
| barrysteve wrote:
| Very true.
|
| There was a young woman highlighted by a popular youtuber for
| her odd behaviour in a gym recently. She was filming herself
| exercizing for views and dollars. The rough moment was when
| everyday gym guys walked past her. She felt pressured enough by
| their presence to accuse them of being creeps and mocked them
| on her video feed while complaining at the guys in person. The
| guys were doing normal gym chores ignoring her.
|
| A young adult has gotten so far into the mental space of her
| social media job that she is hypersensitive to any attention,
| or the implication of attention, in real life.
|
| Splitting a person's psyche into cyberspace and real life when
| your livelihood is on the line, is a real skill. Training
| healthy habits into full time workers could possibly help.
| throwaway049 wrote:
| Or she's just acting that way for more views and dollars.
|
| You're posting on hn about a YouTuber who filmed an
| Instagrammer... We're all doomed!
| pnathan wrote:
| > Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only
| affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
|
| Astute. I have concluded there are social mental illnesses, and
| celebrity is absolutely a generator of one of those.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I think this is a great analysis, though I think in reality
| it's not limited at all to Instagram specifically but more
| broadly to the self-promotional and self-marketing aspect of
| our culture in general at this point. Social media throws
| kerosene on it, certainly, but it's a much broader phenomenon
| of which this experience of Instagram is only one symptom.
|
| Capitalism turns everything into a commodity. Including
| ourselves. From a very early age we are taught that it's
| important to sell ourselves; to survive and thrive. For most
| people this is just a background nag, mostly ignored, or poorly
| executed. For some it becomes a primary drive. The internet
| only accelerates it.
|
| Mediums like Twitter are just as involved; showcasing one's
| quips for the world. It doesn't have to be a photo or video
| like Instagram or TikTok.
|
| And as others may be pointing out, Instagram isn't even the
| worst of it.
|
| Anyways as a parent of teens, it's very distressing.
| [deleted]
| andrekandre wrote:
| > Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only
| affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
|
| because they've basically turned themselves into a commodity?
| snarf21 wrote:
| It isn't Instagram, it is like counts. But the like counts are
| what drives the addictive behavior and makes the product "free"
| to use.
|
| This is just Goodhart's Law at a personal level. We stop being
| authentic to chase likes. We inherently turn the measure into a
| target. We have hundreds of "friends" of FB and we interact
| with a dozen or less regularly.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| It's not just like counts. That's just a metric/formalism for
| the narcissistic self-marketing thing that these platforms
| are really about. You could remove them or obscure them but
| some other form of observing engagement would take the same
| place.
|
| It's about being seen and popular. The same crap adolescents
| have dealt with for decades, but now... automated.
| blackbear_ wrote:
| > Who people think we are is who we are
|
| May be true for extroverts, but as an introvert I don't give a
| cent about what random people think about me (which also
| explains why I do not use Instagram in the first place).
| burnished wrote:
| This is all people. Calling yourself an introvert is a prime
| example in fact.
|
| Notice how the top level example didn't start with randos,
| but family members and close associates.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Whatever personality trait you're talking about is orthogonal
| to introversion/extroversion.
|
| There are many introverts who manage their social time
| specifically because they care about the impressions they
| make on others and find it effortful to manage them; and many
| extroverts who do the opposite specifically because they
| don't think at all about such impressions.
| cxf12 wrote:
| We have no idea who you objectively are and don't care.
| [deleted]
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > I don't give a cent about what random people think about me
|
| But you did post about it.
| pb7 wrote:
| Not caring what people think doesn't mean he can't
| communicate with others. Introvert doesn't mean asocial.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| However there is a certain kind of dissonance between
| deciding to publicly state "I don't care what you think"
| that sort of implies that they do care actually.
|
| It seems to me that people who truly do not care would
| just not engage in the first place?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It seems to me that people who truly do not care would
| just not engage in the first place?
|
| That seems rather reductive given the topic here.
|
| I don't own an EV auto, or any auto for that matter. By
| your logic, I shouldn't engage in discussions about EV
| vs. ICE or _anything_ to do with transportation. Is that
| correct?
| onion2k wrote:
| _Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a
| reflection.._
|
| That assumes a level of honesty that is missing from social
| media. On Instagram people explicitly pretend to be someone
| they are not. The reflection they show is beauty and affluence
| but the reality is Photoshop and prestige car rental.
| droptablemain wrote:
| The first sentence is infinitely quotable.
| JRandomHacker42 wrote:
| > They say it's the 'me' generation. It's not. The arrogance is
| taught, or it was cultivated. It's self-conscious. That's what
| it is. It's conscious of self. Social media - it's just the
| market's answer to a generation that demanded to perform, so
| the market said, here - perform. Perform everything to each
| other, all the time, for no reason. It's prison - it's
| horrific. It's performer and audience melded together. What do
| we want more than to lie in our bed at the end of the day and
| just watch our life as a satisfied audience member. I know very
| little about anything. But what I do know is that if you can
| live your life without an audience, you should do it.
|
| Bo Burnham, from Make Happy
| neura wrote:
| "Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only
| affect child stars and the hollywood famous."
|
| Wow. I have problems with Instragram, but I've never tried to
| sum it up into a single statement and while this is rather
| specific and may not include all the problems I _feel_ are
| there, it really does bring home the main issue, for me. A
| little snark in there about democratizing, as some people will
| always put a positive spin on such things, which I feel is
| totally appropriate here.
|
| Just... The comment could have stopped right there and been as
| or more impactful (for me). Thanks. :)
| eganist wrote:
| > A little snark in there about democratizing, as some people
| will always put a positive spin on such things
|
| Let's try this:
|
| "Instagram makes pandemic the mental illness that used to
| only affect child stars and the hollywood famous."
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| > Wow. I have problems with Instragram
|
| I remember that for a few months before my partner broke up
| with me, their IG feed was full of reels, posts, 'comedy',
| 'psychology tips', about people complaining about their
| partners. And also lots of Insta influencers posts giving
| relationship tips or encouraging people to break up for
| diverse reasons.
|
| While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards
| promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really
| impossible to obtain in real life. Unless of course your life
| consisted only of perfectly curated Insta moments.
| logifail wrote:
| > While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect [...]
|
| My $0.02: We are taught not to aim for perfection at
| work[0], that should apply to relationships too.
|
| [0] https://hbr.org/tip/2020/02/dont-let-perfect-be-the-
| enemy-of...
| jstarfish wrote:
| > While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the
| standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers
| were really impossible to obtain in real life.
|
| In the 4 months I dabbled with Instagram, I was shocked by
| how toxic and outright _false_ the pop psychology memes
| were. They were stereotypical, frequently backwards, and
| deliberately misapplied. And all of that is before the
| cluster-B LARPing.
|
| "Your partner won't give you access to their financial
| accounts? That's _domestic violence,_ and he probably has
| _Narcissistic Personality Disorder_ too! What 's his is
| yours, so just use his credit card to book plane tickets
| without asking and remember that him yelling at you about
| it is _verbal abuse,_ so get out while you still can before
| he starts _beating you_! And remember abuse thrives in
| secrecy-- so make sure you tell everybody how he was so
| aggressive that _you were in constant fear for your life!_
| "
|
| Sorry you were on the receiving end of [whatever your case
| is]. Not even the strongest of relationships can withstand
| reinforcement of sentiments as corrosive as Instagram,
| where you're a useless piece of shit if you can't/won't
| support your partner's ambitions of joining the jet set.
|
| You lost your partner to a cult. They're called "followers"
| for a reason. It starts with separating victims from their
| loved ones...
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I saw a youtube short like this. It was a video
| demonstrating the "perfect" guy. It started reasonable,
| with him saying "oh can you check this on my phone? the
| passcode is XYZ"
|
| Yeah, I would have trusted my current-wife then-
| girlfriend with my phone passcode pretty early on, no big
| deal. She didn't feel the need to know it, but casually
| telling it to her so she could do something with it is
| probably a thing that happened.
|
| But it started to veer completely weird after that, about
| abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned into a
| giant WTF for me.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > But it started to veer completely weird after that,
| about abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned
| into a giant WTF for me.
|
| Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's long-
| game triangulation, which is little more than domestic
| violence perpetrated by the other partner. But men are
| supposed to feel ashamed of themselves if they're not
| willing to just blindly go along with it.
|
| The irony is, they call this sort of victim the "ideal"
| guy, while simultaneously deriding him as a "simp" to the
| rest of their cliques. It's loathesome. I pity anybody
| involved in the dating game these days.
| jvm___ wrote:
| All the ideas that the world will be perfect if you would
| just think thoughts like these...
|
| "manifest what you want from the world" and "think positive
| thoughts and everything will be ok"
|
| Is actually kind of true when you think about all the
| algorithms that run social media. If you only ever search
| for cats and scroll past anything political, the algorithms
| will learn what you like and feed you more cats.
|
| So, if you're searching up relationship advice, and
| spending time on those things, that's what you get back
| from 'the borg'.
|
| You do have control over what social media shows you, it's
| just that you need to work against your basest desires in
| order to get there.
| Zak wrote:
| Youtube occasionally, but regularly tries to show me
| culture war content even though I never watch it and
| usually tell it "don't recommend this".
| harry8 wrote:
| It's like those "drug pushers" we were told about in
| school but don't seem to actually exist who use weed to
| constantly try to get you onto more lucrative for them
| heroin no matter how many times you say "no thanks."
| Heard that so many times at school, never heard anyone
| encountering anything like it in the real world.
|
| But here we are with google, facebrick et al saying "come
| on, just try a little culture war" because its lucrative
| for them, no matter how many times you say no thank you.
|
| It's really sick but yeah, obviously lucrative and Larry,
| Seregey & Mark clearly _need_ the money.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| From the algorithmic feed PoV it's a very high value
| cluster (average watchtime has to be very high, audience
| retention is probably quite excellent) so it's
| unsurprising that it'll try to get you hooked from time
| to time.
| kodah wrote:
| If someone is constantly projecting relationship advice
| social media topics on you'd I'd venture to say you're in
| an abusive/manipulative relationship as opposed to a
| healthy one. Glad you got out.
|
| I've learned more recently that healthy relationships
| aren't empirically so. Instead, there's "signs" of a
| healthy relationship; determining the health of your
| relationship must be a two way conversation. It requires
| assessment, honesty, and participation by both parties as a
| qualifier as well as the ability to listen without your ego
| involved. That's not to say all of those aren't challenging
| things to do in their own right just to say that the health
| of a relationship will be explored differently by different
| sets of people.
| chrisgd wrote:
| I think that is an insanely insightful comment. It is very
| scary having an 11 year old and wondering when that day comes
| when his friends are on social media and he wants to
| participate. I am skeptical of a lot so don't fall for get rich
| scams or ads on these platforms but do enjoy perusing for
| sometimes too long
| treeman79 wrote:
| My oldest got instagram and such at 16. She became depressed,
| moody, rude, and isolated. We would take the social media
| away, she became happy engaged, involved with friends and
| family.
|
| Go right back to being depressed again as soon as she got
| access to Instagram.
|
| Repeat every three or so months until she moved out. After
| wasting a couple years of her life she finally got off social
| media all together and is doing much better.
|
| Her much younger sister is 13 wants social media. It's a hard
| no. She complained to her older sister. Older sister was
| extremely firm on saying to stay off it.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| There's hope: My 12 year old son recently got his first
| phone. After seeing what's happened with his older sister
| (very bad), he steadfastly refuses to install any games or
| social media on it.
|
| We'll see if he holds out...
|
| It's extremely hard as a parent.
|
| Younger adolescent girls are extremely vulnerable. But this
| stuff is very hard to lock down and manage. There are no good
| tools for managing it. The parental controls apps are leaky
| and crappy. Schools issue (and require!) devices, so even if
| you can lock your kids device, there's always alternate
| paths. And as a parent you are easily sidelined and ignored
| when you try to talk about it and bring up concerns.
|
| Worst problems have been Tumblr and Pinterest, BTW, not
| Instagram. Both are full of eating disorder and self-harm
| content. Instagram is at least somewhat moderated. (Reddit
| and Twitter are also really bad, though less used by teens
| that I have seen.)
| yrdmb wrote:
| > Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only
| affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
|
| It also democratizes the clout, power and protection that the
| hollywood famous have. Without social media harvey weinstein
| would not be in jail. A "relative nobody" wouldn't have been
| able to "out shout" and expose a media mogul like weinstein.
|
| As with everything, there are positive and negative aspects.
| uoaei wrote:
| As with everything, it is folly to assume the positives and
| the negatives are in relative balance.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a
| reflection (similar to colors not existing in reality).
|
| I strongly disagree, and don't think your example supports your
| conclusions.
|
| Colors are arbitrary and subjective constructs and dont exist
| in reality. Following your example, identity does not exist. It
| is not in the reflection _either_.
|
| The "problem" is that people place more importance on the
| subjective identity seen by the observer, and less on the
| equally subjective identity they see them selves.
|
| Just because each are subjective does not mean that they are
| equally fulfilling, productive, or healthy.
|
| Living a life you find beautiful has objective advantages over
| living a life someone else thinks is beautiful. Satisfying your
| arbitrary needs is ultimately more fulfilling than satisfying
| someone else's arbitrary needs.
|
| It should be no surprise that people who don't live a life
| _they_ like end up dissatisfied with their life...
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > However when the mirrors are mass produced and cheap and you
| have no control over their place in your life,
|
| you have control to not use this application. It's not like
| you're forced to use it. You can also go there casually to see
| your friends pictures without thinking too much about it.
| mbesto wrote:
| You also have control to not be a celebrity and avoid the
| paparazzi. This is the parent's point. While you may have
| free will, it's hard to argue that having cheap access to
| fame is not appealing to everyone.
| sdwr wrote:
| Beautiful!
| JAlexoid wrote:
| I'm sorry, but this sounds like a lot of pseudo-intellectual
| mumbo jumbo... with a lot of condescending undertones.
|
| Instagram is by far the least horrible of social media
| platforms.
|
| It doesn't drag you into comments wars or allows you to repost
| things easily.
| vlunkr wrote:
| > doesn't drag you into comments wars
|
| It doesn't focus on comments as much as other platforms, but
| they are just as terrible in my experience.
|
| > allow you to repost things easily
|
| And yet a good chunk of the content is straight from TikTok
| right now. Or a screen capture of tumblr blog and includes a
| Tweet of a video from TikTok.
| watwut wrote:
| > mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the
| hollywood famous.
|
| There is no such illness. Like, literally none of them. (And in
| child stars case, massive amount of their issues can be
| explained by pervasive abusive situations and exploitation they
| found themselves in. Which is something that happens to poor
| unknown kids too.)
| neslisah wrote:
| From a person who constantly deletes and reuploads the apps I
| have different reasons for each. Instagram is very addictive,
| Twitter demolishes me from the inside, Linkedin drags my
| confidence down, Spotify & I have a personal problem. When I feel
| that way with the apps I delete them to get rid of those
| situations and when I feel better I reupload them. Because it is
| my fault to feel those things not the apps. In these cycle of
| deleting and reuploading the apps, I built better relationship
| with the apps. It sounds very toxic I know but it gets better
| every time. Sometimes I caught up in a feeling to delete all
| socials, forever but it would be very bold to do that in this
| era.
| jonathan_h wrote:
| I agree with you on every point.
|
| If you're willing to share, I'm curious on what issues you're
| having with Spotify. Do you feel you're filling the silence too
| much with it, or something else?
|
| I'm tired of Spotify too, in part because I don't see an
| endgame where I shut the family plan off. My family uses it a
| lot.
| donclark wrote:
| Is there a way to safely determine what my most used services are
| (by time and by device(mobile/desktop)? (gmail, voice, outlook,
| figma, youtube, amazon, etc) - and see a daily/weekly/monthly
| chart of each at any time? My guess is that I would need to
| install an app on my phone and have a Windows/MacOS desktop app
| to do this?
| ilikerashers wrote:
| I hate how I got rid of TikTok because of the addictive short
| form content and now I find myself somehow in Instagrams short
| form content. Now YouTube are also doing it.
|
| These companies are just selling attention crack disguised as
| "creativity".
| brycedriesenga wrote:
| I'm still baffled about how TikTok hooks people. I installed it
| to check out an AI filter and look for a certain person doing
| live videos I found on YouTube. I've browsed the main feed a
| few times now and it's honestly 90-95%+ garbage and altogether
| just super annoying.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| It's like that until you put in a little time, then it
| becomes very good at showing you content that you might be
| interested in.
| hbn wrote:
| Why would you expect it to immediately know what to show you?
| This isn't YouTube's front page in 2007 where everybody gets
| suggested the same popular videos. You need to give it some
| input data first. The types videos you stick around and watch
| will be shown more frequently, the types you scroll past
| without watching will be shown less. It'll seed you stuff
| that it shows to people who watch similar stuff to you, and
| narrow your taste down. Everyone's feed becomes pretty
| unique, and chances are if you have any interests or hobbies,
| there's creators out there making something for your tastes.
|
| In my experience it does a pretty good job of figuring this
| out. Especially compared to YouTube which seems to mostly
| show me videos from channels I've been watching frequently,
| and not necessarily similar types of content.
| aimkey wrote:
| [dead]
| conqrr wrote:
| Social media is getting closer to fast fashion. Every app is
| doomed on creation to live a short life. I'm happy with this,
| since in reality, its ultimately a tool for marketing and social
| media is just the side effect. Superficial way of connecting to
| the masses? use the latest Social media. The real way of staying
| in touch with people? giving them a call or an email if not meet
| in person. Nothing beats the personal touch. Super
| pilarphosol wrote:
| This is all true, but the result of social media is that people
| feel like they're getting social fulfillment despite, in most
| cases, getting anything of value. So people are irritable,
| exhausted, and feel no need for offline socialization.
|
| We'll eventually come up with ways to resist this, but it'll be
| hard. We can't, if we live in the expensive cities where the
| jobs are, return to the real physical world, because that place
| was bought by the rich when we weren't looking and now they own
| it.
| holler wrote:
| Me: Deletes instagram.
|
| Instagram: Your account will be deleted in 30 days.
|
| Me: ...
|
| Me: Login on day 29
|
| Instagram: Welcome back.
| sockaddr wrote:
| My account will auto delete after 30 days? That's actually
| pretty nice if true.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Me: Deletes instagram.
| cronix wrote:
| It was the same when I deleted all FB properties 3 years ago,
| except I never went back.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| It's probably still there.
| patrickscoleman wrote:
| I dunno. I only follow tattoo artists on ig now and log on once a
| month or so to think about my next tattoo and also to laugh at
| the DMs my partner sent me from weeks earlier. I'm quiet quitting
| ig I guess?
| lmedinas wrote:
| My social media experience nowadays:
|
| - Twitter post-Musk: most of the interesting people i followed
| moved to Mastodon and stopped posting interesting content on
| Twitter. Plus App and Site went slower, same old trolls and Musk
| now is the center of attentions. No removed, since i go there
| once in a while to read what the Crypto community has to
| speculate.
|
| - Facebook: I refuse to use, i have absolute no interest to see
| content from "friends" in that form. I used FB groups a while ago
| but the read format was horrible. I only keep the account because
| its the only way to keep somekind of contact to old co-workers.
|
| - Whatsapp: I do use, for some friends. I like it. I miss general
| content infomation, therefore i use more Mastodon or Instagram.
|
| - Tiktok: The recommendation engine is brilliant. Its like an
| addition, but i barely use it due to Privacy reasons. Also i have
| no interest to post any content on Tiktok.
|
| - Signal: I use to contact my family. Apple Messages as well.
|
| - Reddit: I go to some subreddits to keep me informed about some
| hobbies, but i take the information and comments with a huge
| grain of salt. My experience tells me Reddit cannot be used for
| serious exchange of information.
|
| - Instagram: I use it for some hobbies, I was able to find
| interesting content but the Experience itself Meta wants to
| provide to the users is bad. Ads everything, useless suggestions
| often show and lack of identity. What does Meta want to do with
| Instagram ? Does it have an identity right now ? Does it want to
| be Tiktok, the old photos based Instagram, Facebook replacement
| or what else ? Also i hate the fact its difficult to access
| external links and the comments system.
|
| - Youtube: its ok, it is what it always is. The amount of Ads its
| annoying, maybe I need to pay premium at some point in time.
|
| - Linkedin: Its horrible in everyway. I have an account to check
| some old colleagues.
|
| - Discord: I don't like the concept, its difficult to keep track
| of information and its too chaotic. I use it to keep up with some
| friends for Gaming. Its also fun to interact with Bots.
|
| - Pinterest: my wife loves it, but i never found a use for it.
|
| - Mastodon: is the only Social Network i can safely say i have
| been having a very good experience. The Apps are great, most of
| the interesting users from Twitter are now on Mastodon,
| descentralized, Privacy friendly, no Ads, no Algorithm to sell
| you ads.
|
| Bonus:
|
| - HN: I like it, moderation works great! Lots of interesting
| content! :)
|
| So yeah, social media in 2023 its not a good experience. It seems
| everybody wants to exploit something out of their users and fight
| for their time. In addition they are breaking search engines
| because the average user posts content on social networks instead
| of open websites which could be seached from Search Engines.
| pookha wrote:
| Mastodon is great...I like how all of the wild ass american
| taliban leftist people are leaving twitter to go join their own
| boxed in caliphate's. It's a better situation for the world in
| general. let these maniacs cancel themselves on their own ruby
| servers vs polluting Twitter with their nonsense.
| browningstreet wrote:
| I don't have much in the way of social, but I've kept Instagram
| mostly to look at locations when I travel.
|
| Instagram seems to have leveled off, but I personally don't find
| the Instagram annoyances nearly as dire as the TikToks posted to
| Youtube Stories.
|
| Those seem the most annoying, and especially fake.. with all the
| amateur comedians, clickbait-y vid behaviors and voiceover
| triggers, and fake couple dynamics.
|
| Instagram seems almost normal in comparison.
| anthomtb wrote:
| I set a 15 minute daily limit on Instagram. I also have my phone
| setup to block all non-essential apps between 7:00AM and 6:00PM
| on the weekdays, and I am not usually hitting my 15 Insta-minutes
| on those days.
|
| I could probably reduce that to 10 and still catch up on anything
| from friends and family. But the extra 5 minutes is just enough
| time to enjoy some interesting content from the hobby-influencers
| I follow, yet not enough time to get sucked into the click-bait
| stuff.
|
| Before setting limits I was probably at 30-60 Insta-minutes per
| day. Now I spend that extra time commenting on HN, which I would
| like to think is a more productive endeavor.
| cmh89 wrote:
| Can you recommend that app to block non-essential apps? I
| reflexively open stuff on my phone
| EduardoBautista wrote:
| It comes standard on iOS. "Screen time" under settings.
| tpowell wrote:
| It's not cheap (like $99 annually) but I've gained a ton of
| time back with Opal. I think this is a referral link, but
| I've already paid for it. Founders are young, out of Paris.
| https://link.opal.so/D3ttGLGSF9xGFNVj7
| anthomtb wrote:
| I use the Screen Time feature built into iOS. It looks like
| Android has similar capabilities:
|
| iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-
| us/HT208982#:~:text=Go%20to%20S....
|
| Android: https://support.google.com/android/answer/9346420?hl
| =en#zipp...
| hiidrew wrote:
| Love this app. Funny enough I found via a Twitter ad, the
| only Twitter ad that's successfully converted me -
| https://one-sec.app/
| bs7280 wrote:
| my iPhone saves my login credentials when I delete/reinstall
| it, so I delete instagram every Sunday or Monday then reinstall
| on Friday/Saturday, because I don't have the self control to
| actually limit myself with the screentime functionality.
| notmindthegap wrote:
| VCs with no personal skin in the game have funded what is
| essentially addiction engineering. It's wild that the industry
| does not seem to have the awareness to understand or care about
| this. People are getting paid fat salaries to figure out how to
| covertly manipulate users into abdicating their attention and
| time to wholly isolated, disconnected, and malnourishing
| behaviors.
|
| Now the techies are concerned with the mental health crisis.
| ec_gv wrote:
| I made an Instagram account recently and within 10 minutes they
| banned my account for being suspicious, asking for a mobile
| number. I gave them my number and then the account got banned
| again for the same reason. I didn't post anything or do anything
| suspicious, is this common?
| bmarquez wrote:
| This has happened to me, except I was banned instantly upon
| creation and they wanted a mobile number AND a selfie. Which I
| refuse to give them and ended up deleting Instagram.
|
| I suspect my IP address was suspicious to the algorithm, but
| it's a mobile app on a mobile network so I'm not sure why it's
| so strict.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Just a heatmap of popular apps. If instead it were deletions-per-
| userbase it would be a whole different story.
| bbkane wrote:
| I deleted Instagram a couple of years ago due to privacy concerns
| (I don't trust Meta) outweighing the value I obtained from using
| Instagram.
|
| So far it's gone well! Occasionally I use the Facebook Container
| Firefox plugin to check the web app for messages from my mom.
| bwi4 wrote:
| I don't use FB or IG, but my partner is able to do amazing things
| with IG. She's able to market her business and convert to sales.
| I'm pretty good at finding info but for local topics she
| frequently finds more up-to-date stuff from IG than I can find
| through public channels. She connects me to stories about nieces
| and nephews that aren't posted elsewhere. I do catch her doing
| the glazed eye infinite scroll sometimes, but we all need
| downtime. If it seems excessive or stress inducing, I'll gently
| point it out so she can self-moderate.
| ivanech wrote:
| I've had a very positive experience with instagram -- it's my
| favorite social media thing. My feed is friends, paintings,
| photos, bikes, and furniture.
|
| I also used the shopping tab (never bought anything there though)
| because its recommendations were great for finding specific
| things with the aesthetic I was looking for. I wish it was still
| in the app.
| rdl wrote:
| I actually really love instagram more than most other social
| networks I use.
|
| I follow ~1500 Japanese cat accounts, ~50 personal friends (who
| mostly post food/travel/etc.), and ~100 "influencer" and "brand"
| accounts for companies I like, and ~10 meme accounts.
|
| I mostly post random photos during travel, ranging from food
| photographs to cats to landscapes to sometimes things from
| conferences, mostly going for "visually interesting.
|
| Locked to friends-only, and just remove people if they're
| slightly annoying even if I know them IRL.
|
| The only thing I dislike about my use of IG is the lack of "easy
| to download photo from someone else's IG", but that's a product
| decision. I keep wanting to set up an actual self-hosted photo
| gallery but never get around to it, and the iphone cameraroll to
| IG workflow is so easy.
| colordrops wrote:
| Somehow Instagram is the only social media I can tolerate.
| Doesn't seem to have the hate and anger that I encounter
| constantly on Twitter and Reddit. Perhaps text format is not for
| me. I'm sure there is ugly stuff on Instagram but when it comes
| to images and video clips I naturally follow artists, musicians,
| and foodies rather than political or other incendiary content.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I actually _tried_ to delete Facebook at one point, but so much
| interaction is only on FB I had to come back to it.
| uhtred wrote:
| Society is so weird now. On the very rare occasion I get curious
| and visit tiktok or instagram and start scrolling it's like these
| windows moving up my screen and each one has a human face
| desperately trying to get my attention, and I just scroll past
| them. That reddit live thing is one of the weirdest. Play that
| piano motherfucker, play it better than the previous guy, dance
| while you're doing it and look like a star, keep my attention, oh
| no, you lost me.
| ctvo wrote:
| ... doesn't this list correlate positively with the most popular
| apps in America? Yeah, there's a high # of how do I delete
| Instagram searches, there's a high # of Instagram users.
| luckylion wrote:
| Or: Americans wanting to delete Instagram have a harder time
| figuring out how to delete apps than users of other apps.
|
| Or: Instagram is the most-used app.
| boh wrote:
| My vote is for LinkedIn. Who actually likes using that thing?
| loeg wrote:
| Possibly post-Musk Twitter. Half or more of the people I read
| left the platform and the app keeps getting worse.
| diordiderot wrote:
| My Twitter feed got waaaay worse for a few months post
| acquisition but I'd say it's better than ever in the past two
| or three months
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| I don't believe this for a second.
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| half of the "people" maybe.
| bmarquez wrote:
| I think it's highly dependent on the user. A technically
| inclined HN user probably knows people who shifted to a
| tech Mastodon instance (like infosec.exchange).
|
| As a personal anecdote, the people I know who cut back on
| Twitter did so long before Musk due to general social media
| burnout.
| orwin wrote:
| The vast majority of cybersec people I followed left, and
| tbh I only used the platform for them.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| > Possibly post-Musk Twitter.
|
| I don't have an active twitter account, so one of the things
| I like from post-Musk Twitter is that it no longer requires
| me to login for reading tweets or for searching.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Same, site's actually way, way better now for us non-
| account-havers.
|
| And the dumb shit Elon posts and all the times he kicks
| himself in the balls are way funnier than before he
| acquired 'em.
|
| Overall, I'm happier with the site since he took over,
| personally. But then I'm rooting for its demise, preferably
| with as much drama and humor along the way as possible, so
| of course _I_ like it.
| [deleted]
| MrPowers wrote:
| I've been having a great time using LinkedIn. I only like and
| follow data people. My feed is only data and there are a lot of
| high-quality creators. I unfollow anyone that posts personal
| content or low-quality data "self-help"/motivational stuff.
| Just checked my feed and the top 10 posts were all good.
| tayo42 wrote:
| A lot of job search stuff is centered around it still.
| Recruiters find me there. But when I wasn't using it was just
| noise.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| It can be useful for job seeking and maintaining contact with
| professional connections, but reading the feed full of self
| congratulatory and/or virtue signaling posts is a complete
| waste of time.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I use the desktop site for jobs; I wouldn't download the app if
| they paid me.
| cmh89 wrote:
| LinkedIn is a paradox. It's basically a free online resume to
| most people. A small subset actually post on it trying to build
| their brand. And then an even smaller subset don't understand
| that it's basically social media at work and spend their time
| posting political opinions and conspiracy theories that make
| them look bad.
|
| I've never used LinkedIn for anything other than to respond to
| recruiters and look up people's backgrounds.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| I guess I am too slow in that I opened a Facebook account for the
| first time ever in may 2012 and it was where everybody seemed to
| be at, only for a couple years later everybody started to open a
| parallel Instagram account - I never could understand why people
| would want to use another thing additional to a thing that could
| do the same?
|
| In those years you could notice Facebook became a wasteland, the
| Cambridge analytica scandal surfaced and got so stressed just by
| opening the app - I deleted my account in 2018. But for my
| surprise, people around here seems to be quite happy with
| Facebook (which here in Latin America seems to refuse to die!),
| Instagram, twitter, Snapchat and now tik tok accounts - how do
| they handle all of that?
| hbn wrote:
| Instagram was much simpler back then. It wasn't a general
| social media platform, it was just for posting square images
| with captions. No DMs, no videos, no stories (that wasn't even
| a thing back then really), no status updates, etc. And it was
| only accessible on smartphones.
|
| And that was around the time Facebook's original audience had
| their parents joining Facebook, making it less of a safe/cool
| place to screw around with your friends. Instagram had less
| appeal to parents because of all those limitations, so young
| people migrated there. Eventually the parents got on Instagram
| too, and they moved to Snapchat, which has so far done a pretty
| good job at being indecipherable to older generations, and
| focuses on making everything private, only sending stuff to
| people directly or whitelisted groups of people who can see
| your stories. Not to mention, everything having an expiration
| date means people won't be able to scroll back and see
| cringey/embarrassing posts you made a few years ago.
| ncpa-cpl wrote:
| The Facebook experience seems to depends a lot on the age
| group. For the older than 1970s age group, Facebook experience
| is very similar to what early Facebook was for high school and
| universities in the 2000s. With lots of photo updates from
| friends.
| zucked wrote:
| Facebook Marketplace and Groups have nearly killed off hobby
| forums and Craiglist. I have an account for that purpose
| specifically. I don't even have a single friend on FB and it
| seems to really bug them -- I get a prompt to befriend at least
| one person from a list when I log in.
| Aromasin wrote:
| The same way people handle Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook,
| and OneNote. They fulfill different functions to different
| people. I could do notes, make spreadsheets, or produce
| presentations in any one of those apps, but each task is more
| or less practical in each tool.
|
| I haven't used social media in a while, but when I did they
| fulfilled these separate functions:
|
| Facebook - Keeping up to data with family (or anyone over the
| age of 40). Communicating with Social groups/organizing events.
| Messaging friends and family with Messenger.
|
| Instagram - Maintaining a photo diary of my life. Sharing what
| I'm doing currently with friends. Following celebrities.
| Messaging.
|
| Twitter - Following celebrities, but textually rather than with
| video stories. Keeping up to date on current events and trends.
|
| Snapchat - To be honest, Instagram stole SnapChats cake
| completely for me when they made Stories. Younger generations
| use it more from my experience. Used it largely for messaging
| without a paper trail.
|
| TikTok - Entertainment and following social trends. It's like
| YouTube, but with a better recommendation algorithm and shorter
| form videos.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| The Canva infographics set destroyed IG. It became hyper topic
| after 2016 and never recovered. Good example of how not to run a
| platform.
|
| Now it's all ads and nonorganic posts. People only really use
| stories anymore. A few of My friends are influencers and they've
| all given up on IG and moved to TikTok.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| > The Canva infographics set
|
| What does this mean?
| timbit42 wrote:
| Online tool for creating infographics:
| https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/
| aardvarkr wrote:
| I was similarly confused and looked it up. I believe it's
| just a set of templates for making infographics. Hard to draw
| the dots between "free templates" and "toxic social media
| app"
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I have posted photos to Instagram but I don't understand the
| point. I rarely take picture of myself . Mostly I take photos
| using my macro camera , cool things I have seen like architecture
| or the local environment and graffiti and real life stickers. Is
| it mainly just to share photos of yourself?
| thrwaway94028 wrote:
| What's equally fascinating from this list is how thoroughly and
| completely Meta has wasted the opportunity of WhatsApp. Notice
| how it's one of the most used/downloaded apps and not high in the
| list for deletes.
|
| I interviewed at WhatsApp post acquisition, but it seemed pretty
| obvious that the Facebook PMs and leadership that they installed
| post acquisition had neither the will nor ability to actually
| develop a strategy and make clear decisions in the absence of
| data and metrics.
|
| Mark doesn't care of course, because you can't expand an ad
| network into a product hardened against surveillance. They tried
| for a while by investing in Messenger as a potential WeChat-like
| platform, but it was the wrong horse to bet on when WhatsApp
| already won internationally and iMessage/iPhone was the platform
| of choice among US teens.
|
| Meta is the new Yahoo. One huge blue/purple legacy app they will
| continue to milk as it slowly fades, and then just a trail of
| death and decay in a long list of acquired products. Thank god
| Signal has come around and is being invested in.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I wonder if inability to hide "Reels" drives disdain.
|
| I get forced Reels into the stream which are just creepy and
| sleazy, in no way personalized beyond narcissistic women making
| spectacles of themselves, targeted to me evidently since i'm
| male, since i loathe that.
|
| Maybe loitering looking at them like "wtf?" is enough to
| perpetuate them?
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