Facebook acquires anonymous teen compliment app tbh, will let it run | Hacker News Reader

Facebook acquires anonymous teen compliment app tbh, will let it run

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189 pointscoloneltcb141 comments

This isn't improving mental health, it's just destroying it in a different way than negativity destroys it.

Sure, we all want social approval, but this sort of thing is about creating a system to depend on. It seems designed just like other social media, aiming to cause people to feel a need for TBH approval and a social obligation to participate in showing your approval of others.

People should drop the entire concept of caring about aspects of their identify as fixed traits such as those TBH focuses on. Having a nice smile (or not) or being viewed as the most talented at whatever skill are traits that are phrased as fixed judgments of a person.

Instead, we need to focus on acknowledging success for particular actions and recognizing the potential for growth in areas where we can improve. See (e.g.) http://malcolmocean.com/2014/07/growth-mindset-reframing/

TBH is more likely to lead to dysfunctional fixed mindsets than to inspire anyone to do anything good or feel good about themselves in a healthy growth-focused way.

Should self worth be tied to success at all?

Well, a basic sense of dignity as a human being should certainly not be tied to success. But the important point is that the best way to think about failure and success is as simply facts about what happened. You failed. You succeeded.

The problems with fixed mindset relates to treating success as an indication of your self-worth. Doing that means that failure is a rejection of your self-worth. That leads to people fearing failure and thus avoiding taking on risky challenges they may fail at. And yet growth comes from being willing to fail and to persist in the face of failure etc.

If I fail at expressing myself clearly in a comment like this, it's better to acknowledge it and think "that comment failed" and think about how to succeed better next time… (I could go on, but I'm not going to invest more time in this comment right now)

As I see it, your options are fear of failure, fear of success, fear regardless of success/failure, or fearlessness regardless of success/failure. Fear of failure seems like a fantastic choice.

Why does it seem like a fantastic choice? Significant fear of failure leads to not attempting things in the first place; that doesn't sound fantastic.

Sure it does! I could attempt to fly every time I see an open window. It’s wonderful to fear failure.

Seems like a "false quachotomy" to me.

Enligthen me; what possibility did I miss?

Fearing some consequential failures but being fearless of non-risky failures and all other sorts of fuzzy combinations that aren't all-or-nothing / black-and-white.

This is all way too black-and-white thinking. You don't have one or the other of these like they are mutually incompatible. You should fear the failure of things that are too risky to even attempt, that's basic safety / risk-analysis. The fear-of-failure that I was talking about is the fear of failing at something that need not have ANY consequences besides the failure itself.

To put it another way: you should fear falling to your death when thinking about rock climbing. You shouldn't fear the failure itself but the painful death. Failure isn't worth fearing as a thing itself, only the consequences of failure are worth fearing.

If we had to pick one of your options, go with fearlessness. Be scared of actually dangerous things rather than of the abstract experience of failure.

I hear that a lot, but I don't buy it. Fearing the failure itself is useful. If failure leads to awful consequences, fearing failure is a shortcut. If it doesn't lead to awful consequences, I'd rethink framing it as failure in the first place.

I think I agree with your other point: that's sort of what I'm trying to say. If you know the risk/return of things, you're already in the clear. When you don't, you have four options.

I think you're hung up on the semantics (which doesn't mean it's a non-issue, semantics do matter).

When people talk about the problem with "fear of failure" they usually mean (at least I do myself) "failure" in the most plain and benign sense.

If I am trying to sink a basketball in a basket and I miss, that's failure [to get the ball in the basket that time]. Fear of that failure is unhealthy, period.

You seem to be using "failure" strictly for real problematic things and wouldn't even use the word in the case of a simple missed basketball shot. If "failure" as a word to you means something deeper and more profound, something usually associated with real fear-worthy consequences, then (using that semantic approach) the entire recommendation of "not fearing failure" would be reworded as "don't think of normal errors/mistakes as 'failures'".

The point is that we agree that fear of fear-worthy consequences and even some buffer of fear of things that risk those consequences is good. That sort of fear is to be respected (even though it may sometimes come up inappropriately).

I'm using "failure" in the literal sense where the vast majority of failures have NO connection to any consequences. And I'm using "fear" in the literal sense too. So, while I can have some concern about the possibility of my comment not coming across as clearly as I'd hope, I'm not literally scared to post it out of "fear of failure". Instead, I'm doing my best to be clear, having reasonably concern that drives my effort, and then willing to post and see whether I succeed at reaching you fully or fail to hit the bull's eye in this little thread. Fear of failure isn't needed or helpful here.

Fear of failure specifically in a case where I'm discussing something really controversial that could lead to people wanting to rile up an online mob and dox me and ruin my life — that would be an online comment posting situation where the fear is warranted.

> Well, a basic sense of dignity as a human being should certainly not be tied to success.

Are you saying that in order to have a high self-worth someone needs accomplishments? Your phrase "basic sense of dignity" makes it sound like one can only have a high self-worth if they frame their successes and failures with this process you are advocating.

Also, this comment is off-topic. You're reiterating your main point and not addressing my comment.

> Are you saying that in order to have a high self-worth someone needs accomplishments?

I'm not sure what you even mean by "high-self-worth". I used different terms in my reply to try to make my original point clearer and make sure I was clear to reject the way that some people treat unsuccessful people condescendingly. I think condescension is rarely warranted, certainly not based on what we typically call "success" or "failure".

As to "self-worth", I dunno. I'm not sure how we all take that term. I'd rather we drop it entirely and not have any ego about anything. I appreciate the way pride is seen as a sin. All forms of egotism are obnoxious and pathological in my view.

People should just accept that they are as they are, focus on being loving and kind to one another while doing all the necessary things to care for themselves and their own well-being.

I know I'm being tangential. I'm trying to say that I don't advocate for any idea where I ought to feel that I'm a more valuable person because of my successes. I'd rather the successes be only about their own value. If I succeed at expressing my thoughts to you, the value is in the communication itself and not in self-worth for me or anything.

Yes, and strongly if not fully. Shouldn't it? If not, why not?

We don't want kids who struggle with something to feel worthless. That tends to breed depression. Failure should be orthogonal to your feelings of self-worth. It's ok to fail, sometimes it's beneficial to learning (or whatever), but sometimes that needs to be made clear.

What do you mean by orthogonal? I see no reason to tie self-worth to success or failure. It's a disadvantage. You are putting yourself at an unnecessary risk of feeling horrible.

Their feelings are accurate. Failure, generally, is indeed quite costly, ergo it would be maladaptive to be even vaguely affine to it.

You can't say generally that failure is costly. Tons and tons of failures cost nothing at all. Failures are inherent to learning. You can't generalize about the cost of failures, it totally depends on the type of failing.

Now, if you read the word as a state of being as in "being a failure" then you missed the entire point. The fixed mindset of seeing yourself in your identity as "a failure" or "a success" is stupid and should be discouraged. Failing is a verb, it's something you do or don't do in all sorts of cases all the time. It would be better to never think any of it is about "being a failure" in some personal identity way.

Be it measured in raw materials, labor, time or "merely" money, most failures cost. In fact I've yet to hear of a fallible endeavor that can fail without first expending at least some portion of the investment required for success. (And if it requires no investment, I've no idea how it is supposed to produce anything.)

And as to it being "worthwhile for learning" ... failure in that context just means you didn't learn/know enough before you tried.

Sure, that makes sense. The point is that if the only cost is the cost of the attempt itself, then it depends on that detail. The cost of me posting this is some time and energy. By bothering to post, I continue practicing communication skills and open myself to learning new perspectives from others. If all that succeeds, maybe it's worth it (although maybe I have more valuable things I should be doing).

If I fail to have a productive exchange, then the cost of time and energy is indeed non-zero. But I will have a good chance of learning something about where I went wrong (because I have a habit of reflecting on things and learning what I can from each little exchange), so it's not a total loss.

But I'll accept I was wrong to imply that there's absolutely no cost to some failures, that was too strong a wording. I'd count that as a minor failure in my efforts to communicate with nuance. I'll keep working to improve. Cheers

Why not? Because if your self-worth is tied to your accomplishments you are at risk of having a low self-worth in the future! The economy collapses, you lose your job, or your partner requests a divorce. These are things you can't control.

Your statements are all true, in isolation from the question they answer. But I do not see why this risk means that self-worth should not be connected to accomplishments.

As I see it, an analogy to your argument would be that making a car's fuel gauge dependent on the amount of fuel in the car's fuel tank, means that the car is at risk of showing a low reading on its fuel gauge in the future.

Self-worth doesn't have to be connected to accomplishments, so why should it be? The car doesn't need fuel because the engine runs fine without it.

I don’t really follow how an app like this leads to dysfunctional mindsets. Your slippery slope argument feels hysterical; this is just an app, and it’s a digital version of what teens already do...

But it's not supplying teens with a better alternative though. It's reinforcing something healthy adults know (intellectualy) isn't ha healthy way to view yourself and the world. Teens don't necessarily yet have that frame of reference. One can only hope that everyone receives the support from family or friends to see their self-worth tied to something else than this, no?

I wasn't only making a slippery-slope argument, it was just one aspect of this. And it's based on my understanding that there really is a slippery slope in THIS case (although I didn't write a full essay explaining the evidence).

> a digital version of what teens already do

That would be nothing more than open-ended chat such as teens communicating via text-messages or online forums.

An analog version of TBH would be a structured system in which employees of for-profit companies go to high schools and facilitate teen gossip, inject themselves into a circle of girls hanging out in the hall and prompt them with these questions etc.

I would like to think you can consider for yourself the ramifications here. Teens do lots of stuff, some of which is kinda shitty even when it seems positive on the surface, and TBH is a for-profit app trying to monetize and control it while spouting some B.S. about how they're doing something positive somehow.

A little OT, but personally I'm tired of hearing the term "growth mindset". It's a business buzzword that has become as meaningless as the inspirational posters of the 80's and the "hang in there" cat of the 70's.

I have children and I try to praise their effort and encourage them as much as possible. I do not ask them if they have a "growth mindset".

(Apologies to parent - I'm just venting)

Actually it's a pretty specific thing from the work of Carol Dweck: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_growth

As with any popular technical concept, many users will drop some of the subtleties, and I think 'growth mindset' has gotten big enough that you start seeing people using it loosely to justify various things—but there is something specific and maybe quite useful at the core.

It's a specific thing but the evidence is questionable. IIRC most of Dweck's studies and findings have failed to replicate.

I'm not certain that the "growth mindset" research is solid, lots of psychological science isn't that certain actually. But I think it's supported more than not.

The key point here: saying "you have a fixed mindset" and "you have a growth mindset" are THEMSELVES statements of a fixed mindset in this perspective! It's not strict in that it doesn't imply that you can't change. but my favorite part of the perspective is the broader thing that can be divorced from "growth mindset": that we should focus on the actions and intentions rather than on personal judgments.

There are reasons outside of "growth mindset" (such as plain improved interpersonal communication) to avoid focusing on personal judgment.

If you say, "I don't like that 'growth mindset' stuff", consider how much better it sounds for me to say "That's doesn't seem like an open-minded view of the idea" instead of saying, "You don't seem like an open-minded person."

The "growth mindset" is just one framing. I'm asserting that we really do need to get away from things that encourage kids (and everyone) from taking everything so personally. We can all respond better to both positive and negative feedback when it isn't seen as a personal judgment. We need to go away from the entire emphasis that personal judgments are something to focus on.

I think Positive psychology and Character Strengths would be a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_Strengths_and_Virtue...

That seems like good stuff to pursue when you do focus on personal judgments, but I was emphasizing getting away from personal judgments. Instead of caring that you are a curious person (like an identifier), just be curious. It's a way to be now and tomorrow and on, a habit to have. We should get away from focusing on who you are which is what is a more fixed mindset.

Identifying character strengths can be powerful. Imagine an role-playig (computer) game (RGP): "I use my curiously to learn a new language" where he/she gets a +5 modifier on the dice roll vs "I learn a new language" without a modifier. Usually thinking your are good at something helps to make you good at it, and thinking you're talented can help motivation.

I see your point but don't personally relate at all.

I don't need some sort of personal identification with my curiosity. It's wholly uninteresting to me to have that sort of ego in the situation. It's just a plain fact that I'm curious and that's part of my motivations in learning. I don't need some reinforcement. In fact, I find emphasizing the idea of feeling good about having curiosity in a personal sense ("my curiosity) to be an awkward ego-boost.

I don't do better by thinking I'm good at stuff, it's a distraction.

I happen to be a musician and music teacher. I know from personal experience, knowledge of psychology research, and experience talking with many others that the whole idea of being talented and good at music is a source for the worst of depressive performance anxiety. The most skilled musicians beat themselves up over little mistakes even when the audience loved the concert. On the flip side, narcissistic self-absorbed musicians can be technically skilled but obnoxious.

Get the ego out of all of this. The point is to do something meaningful in the world. I got over my performance anxieties when I learned to stop caring about whether I was judged as good or bad or talented or whatever and just focused instead on using whatever skills I have to provide maximum value for audiences and students. I still think about all the ways I could do better and I can tell you where I succeed. I mean, I can plainly describe my failures and successes. But I'm only interested in doing better so that I provide more value and meaning to others. Every time anything is about me and my ego, it's misguided.

The goal is to be expressive rather than impressive. Pride should go away entirely.

I actually became a musician because I found it fascinating and challenging whereas I resented people assuming I'd be a mathematician because I was naturally good at math. I have a knack for math, I'm good at it. So what? That didn't make me motivated.

I think all the stuff you're getting at lives within the smaller context where people who are self-conscious and in the normal range of egocentricity do indeed take motivation from ego-boosts. Unfortunately, ego-boosts amplify the deeper disease, since the real goal is ego elimination as far as we can.

There's evidence from psychological research (sorry this is memory from reading, don't have citation) that feedback like "you had a good sense of rhythm there" and "you got all the notes right but need to work on keeping the dynamics even" are correlated with experienced successful teaching and successful students whereas "good job!" and "you're so talented" are throwaway crap that inexperienced teachers say.

In a recent chat, someone shared the anecdote that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at UCLA early in his basketball career broke major records in like his first game, and his coach just said "good job, keep it up" (along with continued coaching on improvements etc) instead of giving him praise about how great he was. As I heard it, Kareem said it was the best thing for him. The last thing he needed was more praise and ego-boosting.

This ++

Its time to remind everyone that Facebook owns Onavo[1][2] and before any investor realizes, will pick up a product that hits their metrics threshold and buy them out.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebooks-onavo-gives-social-me...

[2] https://twitter.com/dhh/status/900893798821134336?lang=en

This is a really good point. I don't think this is necessarily a bad acquisition at all. Onavo is basically Facebooks eye of sauron:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo

TBH has been in the top 10 free apps for a few weeks now. FB has a good track record of buying small teams with good engagement numbers and letting them run themselves (Whatsapp/Instagram).

I'm sure Facebook looked at their numbers via Onavo and decided they were on a pretty good trajectory.

Also, it should be noted that TBH doesn't even have an Android app yet.

The question now is will TBH turn out to be more of a draw with friends (flash in the pan game) or have staying power like Bitmoji does.

Bitmoji was purchased by Snap Inc for around 100 million about a year ago. It has managed to consistently stay in the top 10 free apps since then:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/29/snapmoji/

I've never heard of this before, is there an honest review of Onavo out there other than bait for data collection?

We used to use them at a previous job -- they had a data product that would tell you what add networks competitor apps were using, their estimated market share in impressions, and what their ad creative was. Was a very useful research tool for digital marketing.

> TBH has been in the top 10 free apps for a few weeks now. FB has a good track record of buying small teams with good engagement numbers and letting them run themselves (Whatsapp/Instagram).

I can't comment on Whatsapp but I don't think this is an accurate description of Instagram. It took them a while, sure, but today they are most definitely asserting their control as overlords of Instagram even if they 'run themselves'.

Oh so how do you know that? Did they publish some article stating a change in control?

Anecdotal: Last Instagram update started giving me notifications from Facebook not related to my Ig posts.

Does Facebook even need Onavo for that? AFAIK any Android app can check which other apps are installed and the names of all other running processes, with little to no permissions. And since the main Facebook app is installed on most devices they can use that to gather the data. Not sure how accurate it is in comparison, but it definitely has a wider reach.

I guess the point is that owning Onavo gives them access to data about users who specifically are not actively using Facebook -- which is obviously the space where FB would be looking to do defensive acquisitions.

Analytics is the free-social-network type product for app developers. Developers know they are giving all their valuable private data to the behemoths but they can't resist the few crumbs of value that they're given in return.

This is always interesting when it’s pointed out, but are teenagers in US high schools really using a fake security spyware VPN in high enough volume to give Facebook useful data?

Now that I say that, I wonder if they’ve tried marketing it to clueless people via their apps by touting it as a way to improve the security of their accounts or something.

This article is dated and I’ve never used Onavo myself but I think the pitch is it saves you money on your data plan:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.imore.com/onavo-app-claims-...

Teenagers are pretty cheap so I can see the appeal if that’s still true.

You'd think the kind of people who use HN would know better than to share AMP urls.

I refuse to click on that URL.

HN is a diverse community with many views.

If you understand the view of those who share these URL's, could you explain the merits of their case?

Now I'm not talking about using AMP on websites as I know the arguments for and against.

But as for linking to a resource from a third party site, why would one link to a mirror instead of the canonical URL?

Why not? The link works fine for me.

When the mirror is a faster-loading page (as experienced by normal users who don't have javascript blockers), then that makes perfect sense, no?

Just edit AMP out of the URL.

https://www.imore.com/onavo-app-claims-shrink-iphones-data-u...

It's really irritating to click on those links, so I think the request is reasonable. AMP pages take many seconds to load on some browsers.

> We will not sell the data or introduce ads to Onavo.

:-(

A lot of high school WiFi networks have blacklists for social media sites. Many kids use VPNs to get around it.

Yep. Or web proxies; I remember one that was disguised as an educational site, but if you entered the right credentials into the "admin area" login, unlocked a PHProxy instance.

This was also what led me to first install Tor.

"start using cgiproxy" used to be all you needed back in my day.

You could also throw the tor browser on a usb stick when i graduated.

Tor doesn't work everywhere. I'd don't know how they did it but it was blocked in my school's computer lab.

Probably just blocked the port.

Back in the day I've had a website ranking in the top 3 of Google for "start using cgiproxy". Honestly, I never knew why people would search for such a complicated phrase, but I've found the keyword somewhere and optimized the website for it.

Do you mind telling me why where you searching for that phrase instead of something like "free proxy" or "cgi proxy"?

Free proxy and CGI proxy alone used to generate lots of fake results. As "start using cgiproxy" is the title of a cgiproxy page you'd typically get less false positives.

In my era it was all about war dialing and AOHell.

Not if the filter system you were subjected to attempted to block any URL containing the substring "proxy"... This led to as many false positives as you might expect.

I remember my school network used to block the Sun Java SDK docs, for "hacking"... it made studying for AP computer science interesting. I forget the slightly dodgy vpn/proxy I wound up using to get around that - I think it had fire in its name, and was a super Web 1.0-style site filled with anarcho-libertarian rhetoric.

May Bess rot in hell.

Even back in middle school in the early 2000's, credentials to bypass the web blocker or address to a proxy that hadn't been blacklisted yet was a hot commodity - they were mostly sold/ distributed by entirely non-technical kids too.

Yes but that was back in the day of locked down desktop machines. Teens have smartphones now, they don't have to care about that.

More: firms like Sequoia and Accel have tools/or buy similar data. But the more significant point is, Facebook has a pulse on the market and can compete or buy out anyone the moment they see trends that have a considerable potential.

This is a paranoia acquisition to kill a future competitor. If this works, and I think it will under FB’s strong leadership, its a win win for the tbh founders and FB.

If you care for a non-monopolistic future where privacy is valued, go work for Snapchat and push some sense into them; diversify and acquire companies like this to compete with FB (Even if you don’t like Snapchat).

How is a Facebook-Snapchat duopoly better than a Facebook monopoly?

Is that the best humanity can do in terms of designing these systems?

I feel like the subtle pseudo-gratification from this app is not going to make teens happier. Rather, they'll subconsciously realize that it's all a facade and it'll make them even less happy.

We're going to keep creating this crap, I am sure, but lets just not label it with, "We're trying to make the world better". You're an app company, not a collective of teen health PHDs seeking to thwart teen's hormonal, depressive tenancies.

That's possible, but it's tough to say what kind of effect this will have on them. Humans didn't evolve in an environment that had the internet, and social media increases exposure to both the good and bad sides of life more than ever before. The issue is that humans respond more to negative emotions than positive ones, driving depression and suicide rates up.

I think the jury's still out on apps like this that try to foster a positive emotional environment while limiting the negative.

If faux positivity was bad for us, then sites like 4chan would foster a good mental status. I think it should be obvious that it doesn't.

Less cynically, you might be right, but I hope it actually works. There's nothing wrong with trying to make something positive. There's http://www.rethinkwords.com/ which actually has data backing up that it works.

I don’t think the point GP is making is cynical. I think what GP is talking about is cynical.

Yeah, this app strikes me as "who should be prom queen."

"subtle pseudo-gratification from this app ... it's all a facade and it'll make them even less happy."

So the essence of Facebook? Seems like a perfect fit.

They also know that giving out only positive badges to a social circle just makes the negative ones implicit (Everyone gets the X kind but me, message received and I know everyone else noticed as well) and is only marginally more positive than allowing anything at all.

It's just good marketing to frame it this way. They saw what happened to Peeple.

Rather, they'll subconsciously realize that it's all a facade and it'll make them even less happy.

I'm listening to the great book iGen [1] and it lays out very clearly, with empirical, longitudinal, multifaceted research, that social media apps unquestionably make teens more anxious and less happy.

[1]http://www.simonandschuster.com/books/iGen/Jean-M-Twenge/978...

My son asked for approval on this app just this morning and I had red flags waving all around my head as I read the description.

Learning that Facebook is now involved is just icing on the cake.

My middle school aged daughter wanted this installed on her phone the other day. I said no way. The last thing she needs her electronic devices doing is serving up tinder for kids, leaving her obsessing over popularity contests, or another avenue for anonymous bullying.

I'm appalled that everybody carries around a real time yearbook. High school seems to never end. I shudder the effect this app will have on the self esteem of the user.

We didn't know tobacco was harmful back when everybody was doing it. We didn't know cocaine was harmful back when it was the thing. We also don't know about the sort of damage and stress of the human psyche with these engineered digital toxins.

Facebook is nothing like a "real-time yearbook", though.

I think it's actually quite an apt metaphor. Yearbooks are a collection of snapshots-in-time and the kind of trite social cache signalling of shallow observations and pseudo-intellectual "deep" insights about who's going to make what of themselves that only an immature, ignorant, inexperienced kid can make. That's exactly what Facebook is: a forum for the most trite kinds of social engagement and signalling.

...Or it's just a site to keep up with friends through messenger, events, pictures, etc?

You just have to do a bit of work to filter out the crap from your timeline (unfollow/unfriending)

What you are saying might be true, except:

There are too many idiots who go and "tag" photos with people who are not active on Facebook and help create a shadow profile.

There are too many idiots who willingly give Facebook the permission to mine their address book to triangulate the phone number + name + email address + misc. contact info of people who are not active on Facebook and help create a shadow profile.

There are too many idiots who don't think one extra second about filling up the messages they send to other people who are not on Facebook with all kinds of sensitive information and help create not just a shadow profile, but one which can be mined in ways that the idiots don't ever want to acknowledge.

Oh, and there are too many idiots who think that their "right" to use Facebook also gives them the right to send the personal information of other people to Facebook, whether or not those other people consent to such abuse of trust.

So yes, it is just another site. The smart folks who are concerned about tattling on their friends have mostly left. The remnants are mostly idiots, and damn it, I just can't find a way to stop these idiots from being so idiotic other than filling up internet comment threads with not-so-subtle hints about how these idiots are fucking up my life. Do you have any suggestions for how I can stop these idiots from acting in such an idiotic way?

You have important points, but your tone defeats your purpose. Would have liked to read this comment again without the unfunny over-usage of “idiot”.

At best, their behavior is idiotic. But short of consuming our entire vocabulary with ever-further steps of euphemism, there are few if any accurate alternative descriptions of the set of people who trust Facebook.

"Naïve", perhaps, but that excludes the vast swath of people who trust Facebook for more than a rather short duration of time.

Yes, we know that this (mobile devices, mostly) is causing issues with developing empathy and communication skills.

See "Reclaiming Convestaion": https://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Conversation-Power-Talk-Di... for much more detail.

I think that for America, and white america in particular life's non plus ultra is senior year of high school. At the very least country music seems to paint this picture.

what does non plus ultra mean? i looked it up but couldn't find a clear definition

contextually it seems like it means "peak"?

It means "nothing further beyond"; life never moves beyond the senior year of high school.

I feel like if you look at a country's high school culture, you can get a feel for what their values are.

For example, students from Korea are studious, exam taking machines and there's no "jock" culture. The smartest cookies are the "jocks". "Jocks" are looked down upon.

In contrast, students in USA seem, at least White America, seems uninterested, unmotivated or believe in studying. Everybody's trying to become an NBA or NFL player or a celebrity. People who excel academically are shunned and looked down upon.

Maybe there's an interesting link somewhere.

I mean, do you remember high school? It's been a popularity contest ever since high schools have existed. This is just a different form.

> This is just a different form.

At scale. Significantly different. Societal fabric has enough problems without adding to it.

Also with the brightest brains in the world devoting their phds to make sure you engage.

What social media is today is IMO a significantly different from anything humans have experienced before.

That’s not to say it’s necessarily bad, but for the last 5 years or so the evidence seems to be pointing in that direction.

I think "Tinder for kids" is a really good break down of what this is. As someone else stated, they are going to be desperately awaiting the next compliment's arrival. Just like a lonely person on Tinder desperately swipes hoping for a match. Good eye!

If she bought her own phone and pays the monthly fees she can do whatever she whants. If not, what imaginary phone are we talking about again?

I know, I know, this may be a reason I do not have kids. They would throw me out on the first day...

OR she’ll be the one person in her grade without it, get isolated from social activity, and get detached from her friends. (Coming from first-hand experience of someone whose parents restricted them from video games and social media)

Well then, if everyone else is doing it!.. I don't buy it. People don't have friends based off of if they're on social media, or play specific video games. If they do, you don't want them as friends. It's the same reason I don't let my 3rd grade boy play FPS games even though he REAAALY wants to, and all his friends do. An 8 year old should not be running around in a realistic game shooting people. When his brain is more mature, he will have plenty of time to play such games.

Of course people have friends based on what their hobbies are. In my childhood and teenage years I was only allowed to play computer games during the weekend. While my friends were online chatting and gaming together, I was sitting alone in my room reading books and watching TV. That affected my social skills, the lack of which I still suffer greatly from. I'd be careful with denying kids things that are important in their social circles. The damage done by FPS games or other similar things is nowhere close to the damage done by social isolation.

Nice write up on focusing on "postivity focus" and "helping teens' mental health" but seems like just another app training teens to seek social validation via an app...

I am trying to figure out why Facebook didn't just clone the features and add anonymous friend polls to their app/website (which I assume is definitely going to happen now in spite of the press release.)

If you mean clone the features over to Facebook.... It's because Facebook is unpopular with teens. That's a demographic Facebook has increasingly lost as it pertains to usage (they still sign-up, because of the vague pressure that everyone must have an account). If it weren't for Instagram, they'd be in deep shit with people under ~25 and very susceptible to being replaced or having their monopoly fractured (the 16-25 group would seed competitors, one of which would eventually kill Facebook starting from that base and progressing up).

It seems to me that Facebook has the age data and could have just targeted those age groups exclusively with the feature, and hidden it from the uncool age groups. Maybe they tried it and it didn't get any traction and that's why they did the purchase.

Like when Facebook made their "Poke" app to compete with Snapchat and it failed miserably?

Facebook is like a telephone directory to teens. You're in it, but you don't care for it. For want of a better term, it just isn't cool. Of course it isn't, your parents are on there.

Every teenager seeks social validation. That's not something Facebook or instagram invented, it's in the nature of all humans and especially those of younger age. This app found a way to create anonymity (for the user) while preventing bullying which is a problem with most other apps. I think it's a good idea. I really doubt that this will make teens spend more time on their smartphone than they already do. The worst thing that can happen is that someone signs up and gets no "badge". But even that seems unlikely if enough people use it.

> The worst thing that can happen is that someone signs up and gets no "badge". But even that seems unlikely if enough people use it.

IMO, the worst thing that could happen is FB creating much richer profiles about its users. There are many companies, employers or governmental institutions who might want to know how your friends think about you. For instance, FB might learn that when it comes to "who has the most integrity" you score the lowest within your circle of friends.

https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/shot-1-e150819107...

This could be a data mining wet dream. They have found a way to make filling out surveys addictive. It seems all you had to do was present it in a fun way and make sure the surveys are about other people. I wouldn't be surprised if the questions start shifting towards things that could be used to market to people. Imagine if all of John Smiths friends say he is "Most likely to skip work to play a videogame". It wouldn't matter if John had ever mentioned video games on his profile.

Twitter has been justifiably snarky about the news that Facebook bought another short-term viral app for the users: “this smacks of engagement desperation”

https://twitter.com/mikeisaac/status/920021423703310336

The same people said the same thing about Instagram and WhatsApp.

I thought one of the main things about Whatsapp was the huge audience and the demographics of that audience skewed young, and this app while not quite the install base size of Whatsapp/Instagram is ppoular with young folks. The demographics is the one they teach in Psych 101 as the most crucial point at which marketing can influence lifelong brand choices. The tweet snark seems to miss the point altogether.

Did they? I remember people balking at the price of Whatsapp but not the actual of buying it, it was widely seen as a huge benefit to Facebook.

Well, that's ironic.

I was not aware that a single tweet by Mike Isaac, who has a tendency to be extremely snarky about everything, represented the feelings of everyone on Twitter.

Don't get me wrong, Isaac is right a lot, but he's also wrong a lot, and from what I can see: https://twitter.com/search?q=facebook%20acquires&src=typd the reception to this acquisition is mostly positive.

I think this is genius on Facebook's part, they know that what we know today as Facebook isn't going to be popular forever, eventually something cooler will come along and enough people will switch that Facebook becomes more or less irrelevant. But if Facebook the company just keeps buying the next new thing then whenever one actually hits it big they won't be losing users, their users will just be switching from their legacy product to their newer product.

If MySpace had bought out Facebook during the early years and just let them keep doing their thing their fate might have been different. Yeah, people would have still moved to Facebook but MySpace (the company) would have still been the one to profit.

Yeah Facebook is going to have a ton of misses with this strategy, but if it helps their long term prospects it'll be worth it.

Or, Friendster not selling their patents to Facebook, and instead collecting license fees from Facebook and others.

From a capitalistic point-of-view, congrats to Midnight Labs for successfully repeatedly pivoting until something stuck. From a cultural point-of-view, I'm afraid for my (future) kids.

Anonymous compliments seem nice to me, am I missing something?

You're missing very nearly everything.

Even anonymous compliments are not just nice. They can be awkward or add to self-consciousness or to self-absorbed narcissism. It all depends on the details. A sincere, meaningful compliment about some actual achievement (as opposed to some random trait that is fixed) can be wonderful. TBH has none of that though. But TBH does have a lot of bad things that normal anonymous compliments never have.

When anonymous compliments require signing up for a service just to get anonymous compliments from your peers with the understanding that you do the same, you create an entire social context where all the benefits of an actually natural complement are eliminated and replaced with an addictive, data-mining and actually negative for mental health situation.

Can you recommend another way I could leave an anonymous compliment?

Leave a note, send a letter, send an email, leave a comment anonymously

>> “If we’re improving the mental health of millions of teens, that’s a success to us.”

Amplifying attention bitching is a good deed again.

This app reminds me of the Black Mirror episode "Nosedive."

I know I shouldn't be so down on this.

Why shouldn't you be down on it? TBH, from the description in the article, is horrible and deserves being seen negatively.

Seems like a step towards that Black Mirror episode, Nosedive;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive

I don't see this as a positive app at all., It's just reinforcing shallow and unhealthy behaviour.

This app held the attention of the kids in the middle school and high school near me for about 7 days. Then they got bored of it and all stopped playing.

Sounds like founders made a good call on acquisition :-P

A hundred million here, a hundred million there: who cares? It's way cheaper for FB to buy up these small social media companies than wait around until they become big competitors. If it fails, so what? It's worth it to ensure their market dominance.

When are we going to have a legislative crack down on psychologically abusive software? It's not just this, though it's a particularly egregious example. Facebook itself is a huge online predator.

No thanks, people like their abuse systematic and shiny. When everybody becomes more pathological, nobody becomes more pathological.

Want to know what will improve teen health, going back to not having to worry what every other teen thinks about you. I remember when my parents attempted to give me a cell-phone at 17. I politely said no thank you, I don't want you being able to contact me at anytime. I want to be in the moment. I didn't take photos or update anything in real-time, I didn't update people after the fact either, we just lived in the moment then moved on. Mind you this was 18 - 20 years ago.

The SEC regulates anticompetitive moves. Sounds like we need a new body which regulates creepy predator companies like facebook going after kids.

> The SEC regulates anticompetitive moves.

Actually, that's the FTC.

The SEC regulates securities trading.

> Sounds like we need a new body which regulates creepy predator companies like facebook going after kids.

With appropriate statutory authority, that sounds like it would also be a good fit for the FTC. Even if new law is needed, why a new regulatory body?

I was working on an app that used a lot of emojis. And searching for similar design app, tbh came to my attention. It was really similar to what I was doing in term of design using strong colors and a big emoji. But the idea was totally different.

Teens and Kids really love this combination. And the app is simple and fast, It is like play a game. You could imagine kids playing and smiling.

Yeah, I'm sure it will maintain the same separation as it did with WhatsApp...oh wait, no it didn't. This "anonymous" app won't be anonymous much longer. And it will probably happen at least a year before they actually announce it, just as it did with WhatsApp.

Big freaking deal... This is simply PR for all the nastiness they've released into the world and damage to our democracy. The world would be better off without Facebook.

I think you miss the point. It's newsworthy, not positive. This is not news about FB doing something good, this is news about FB continuing to harm the world still further. Of course, the world would be better of without FB and also without TBH.

？

Eww.

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