Does it really matter what social network it is, FB, Reddit, HN, etc.? The effects are similar - people immerse in the digital while at the same time being absent from the physical.
Facebook is primarily organised around the individual. You are following individuals, talking with individuals, and participating on a reciprocal basis as an individual with all the others. There are groups, but it's less prominent.
Reddit and HN are centred around discussion. Be it individual articles of interest (HN) or further grouped into specific topics (Reddit).
I don't think either are benign. The upvote/downvote mechanism does "gamify" the experience and adds some additional meta-effects to participation, which I don't think are necessarily healthy. However, it's not as bad as Facebook by a large margin. There's no pressure to participate; I can read interesting articles, make the odd contribution, and dip in and out as the fancy takes me. It's not nearly as addictive. Though I have to say, I still spent a reasonable amount of time on both HN and Reddit, I could step away for weeks without feeling like I was losing anything. I'm participating on my own terms.
IME, communities in the analog world engage in ranking, albeit largely unconsciously, and perhaps mimicking this pattern in a digital environment would be beneficial compared to current systems.
A key benefit to me is that the points aren't visible to others. Up/Down voting is fine, and there's no real public benefit to the karma given to an individual post, nor any way to even see what it is. Sorting isn't based only on the post score either, and it's not in your face -- it's a much better system that slashdot in my view.
I would assume the problem is more along the lines of; treating it as a substitute to talking to friends/family. Only responding in short bursts or assuming a "like" is enough to sate your need for other human connections.
Reddit/HN/fora are _great_ at connecting you to communities across the globe that have a shared interest. You don't talk to your sister/girlfriend/mother via hackernews, therefore it doesn't "replace" actual discussion with them.
The other type of posts I tend to see are about friends bragging about how many km they ran today or how great their vacation was. Not that it's that bad to post these things, but I wouldn't be surprised if exposing yourself to them constantly increased feelings of jealous and reinforce one's need to compare oneself to others.
On the other hand, I've discovered a lot of interesting books and projects through HN and learned about different topics, since there seem to be a lot of knowledgeable people here that comment on topics I know nothing about. The only type of posts that may be prone to making others feel worse are the ones about salaries / financial issues, but they are not that common.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/04/17/524005057/when-it-comes-to-ou...
This is the single evil thing about Facebook. And it's evil, evil, evil. It's like an AI Skinner box.
No. It actually is an AI Skinner box.
This really depends on whether or not you set up your own account with subreddits in reddit. It is just as personalized and outrage generating as Facebook if you self-subscribe to it.
This is probably different on the main page though.
I'm not using HN as some sort of substitute for social interaction. I'm not on HN all day engineering every post to garner maximal attention and approval like the people who abuse FB the hardest are. I AM getting that constant stream of novelty that is typical of social media. However tech IS constant novelty so that's unavoidable regardless.
On most social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc.) the answer is simple: advertisement. To maximize revenue from ads, they focus on:
1) Getting people to spend as much time as possible on their platform (so they can show more ads), and; 2) Gathering as much information as possible about people (so their ads are more effective).
Which isn't exactly what people want when they go on Facebook. This puts the objectives of the social network and its users at odds.
Compare that to Hacker News, which is in itself an advertisement for Y Combinator (I wouldn't know of YC if it wasn't for HN, or at least it wouldn't be the first accelerator in my mind). I feel the objectives of Y Combinator with HN are much more aligned with my own objectives than Facebook's (the company) with Facebook (the social network).
I'd be worried when/if ads start appearing on HN...