Hacker News Reader

Comment by ct0 | Hacker News Reader

Reminds me of the tobacco companies hiring doctors to disclose the benefits of smoking.

I can understand people's criticisms that this analysis came from Facebook itself.

I'd like to point out that one of the authors (Moira Burke) was a PhD student in our department at Carnegie Mellon University (the Human Computer Interaction Institute) and she did research of the highest caliber with a high level of rigor and integrity.

She and her doctoral adviser (Robert Kraut) also published a very good peer-reviewed paper in the Communications of the ACM entitled Internet Use and Psychological Well-Being: Effects of Activity and Audience (https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/12/194633-internet-use-a...) which summarizes about 20 years of research in the area, and the post from Facebook echoes a lot of the same themes. The Facebook post also mentions a lot of other very well-executed and highly regarded scientific research in understanding how social media affects us.

So I'd really like to ask folks to please differentiate between the science side of the post (which I'd say is very good) from any of the associated policy or business issues (which is fair game).

Being a good scientist at one moment does not make you immune to corruption at another.

Especially when you include being a PhD not bound to the salary of an academic career.

It looks like your post got downvoted, and I don't think that was fair. I completely agree with you that there is some very insightful science in this post that didn't convince me to go back to facebook, but did give me insights into how to interact with all social media in a manner conducive to my emotional well-being.

Exactly. There will probably be huge class action lawsuits that will be too late for most.

Had the same feeling...

It honestly sounds like you didn’t read the article then

I was talking more about the point of internal researchers investigating themselves.

What they're saying is: smoking isn't the worst thing ever, in moderation. We'll still sell you packs of twenty, but don't smoke them all in one day.

But that's actually true. Maybe the world would have been better if we'd encouraged smoking in moderation instead of banning, banning, banning: deaths would be far fewer, and freedom would be much stronger.

Yeah I know but packs of twenty are optimized to keep you smoking not in moderation. Even if they sold you loosies it would still be hard for most people to smoke in moderation. That’s why smoking coughFacebookcough is so insidious. Sorry I’ve been smoking too much ;)

Smoking wasn't banned until very recently, after tremendous damage was done. Even now, smoking is only banned in places where it harms other people. You can smoke at home as much as you like.

Based on my experience, both England and Tokyo sell cigarettes in packs of 10. The US tobacco industry doesn't want moderation.

FWIW sales of packets of ten were banned in the UK earlier this year, to deter youngsters from buying cigarettes.

"Go big or go home, kid!"

You bring up a good point: is this _addictive?_

Reply on news.ycombinator.com