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Comment by dannyr | Hacker News Reader

This is mostly Facebook since it's zero-rated where most Filipino mobile users are prepaid.

Young and old, rich and poor Filipinos are glued to their phones like zombies all day browsing Facebook.

Filipino here. I blame carriers here for making Facebook free-of-charge. Yes, good thing that Messenger let's us send messages for free. But the thing is, we can't see images nor visit links unless you get a data pack/promo or connect to a Wi-Fi.

Especially news, people can't see thumbnails or click links so they directly jump to wrong assumptions based on what they see and hear from the comments. Some people just lost the time to click articles as time goes by.

I wish they made the plan's cheaper but this is the Philippines where internet sucks and PLDT (PH's largest internet provider) and Smart (PLDT's carrier) are the worst.

Can you really blame the carriers, at what point does personal responsibility take over?

> at what point does personal responsibility take over?

Maybe a good approach can be:

- When there are millions of people with otherwise functional lives falling for unhealthy behaviour then you blame the carriers.

- When there is a very small percentage of the population engaging in that behaviour, then is personal responsibility.

For example, personal responsibility cannot be asked for when people lack education.

This is such an unbelievably condescending opinion. Filipinos are not so uneducated that they lack the ability to assess the quality of their own lives. Facebook didn’t invent self-destructive behaviour (to use a hyperbole), it will always be available for people to indulge in. Personal responsibility will always be the only answer to it, and to imply that Filipinos lack the education to implement it is remarkably offensive.

The reference to education was an example. I don't think parent implied lack of education in Philippinos

[Edit: spelling]

It's incredible how condescending people here are. Since you see no value in Facebook, those who use it a lot must be uneducated barbarians who are not willing to spend their time on [thing you enjoy]

Economists talk about “revealed preference,” that is, people enjoy the things that they do. But I don’t think that’s actually true. FB, like drugs, short-circuits your brain and just because your reward system is hacked and you spend all day doing it doesn’t mean you actually are getting real value from it.

Like people retired people who will spend all day and most of their disposable income sitting in front of a slot machine pushing a button. I imagine that is not what most of them wish they were doing with their lives.

Carriers are partly to blame for accepting the money from Facebook. They are getting paid.

Yes, personal responsibility is also needed.

Keep in mind though that Facebook has used a lot of behavioral manipulation to squeeze engagement out of its users as much as possible. They purposeful made their product addicting.

In a lot of third world countries, digital literacy is lower than in developed countries so awareness of the bad effects of social media is low. Heck, even the US, didn't realize how bad addiction to social media is until the past few years.

I wonder if people adapt by copying articles instead of linking?

In some posts, some commenters paste the news contents from the link in the comments section but this is most usually happens during election time just like in 2016 wherein there is a hot discussion about a candidate (and blame news websites for bias reporting).

Ouch. Now combine inabilitity to read entire articles with the way clickbait works in the real world, where title+perex often times say wildly inaccurate thing to attract you to the actual article, at which point you realize it was basically a lie.

One recent example is where most news sources had a title that some [probably famous] man assualted a woman, yet the only local source had a title where it was clear that both man and the woman were arrested and charged. Google news actually makes this easier to see, because it groups titles from multiple sources into one "story" box.

You forgot to mention Globe’s broadband. Which is way worse.

I tried their home broadband. Not bad at all, I think it depends on the location.

Globe is best on mobile. They're the best but not so good with the promo offerings they give.

I agree. It is just their reputation that Globe broadband still sucks. But their mobile data on my area is top notch.

So like Hacker News? (guilty as charged, and no offense intended since it's not really comparable)

I don't understand what the ISPs are earning here?

We have zero-rated Facebook/WhatsApp plans here in Spain but they are only available for certain, somewhat expensive plans. If Facebook or WhatsApp were zero-rated for cheap plans, nobody would pay for data, including myself.

I would assume the ISP is not out of pocket. Facebook pays them to provide the free data.

Hooking more people on the drug is clearly of benefit to Facebook. Especially if the ISP's customers end up thinking Facebook IS the internet.

I can confirm that. Having travelled their extensively; their usage is not healthy.

That's very condescending towards Filipinos.

Filipino here, I didn't feel insulted. Its probably true. For a lot of people, the Internet = Facebook. Add to that the fact that Facebook is free due to telco subsidies and a culture that loves social interactions.

Only because you're not insulted doesn't logically mean it's not condescending.

If a nation with a young population has a higher adoption rate for a modern technology than "developed" countries that are twice as old on average then good for Philippines. No need to dismiss them as "zombies" and bring in the usual Facebook circlejerk.

because this is a time metric, I wonder how much the Phillipines' time use is impacted .. by .... sloooooooow ..... connection ........ speeeeeeeeeds.

It's true, though.

Clearly you haven't been here and seen it in action. Groups sitting around the dinner table, or drinking, never interacting with one another or looking up from their phones. There is no cultural stigma to sitting on your phone and ignoring your friends like there is in other countries and it's rather terrifying to see it in action.

I'm a Westerner in the Philippines now, and just the other day I went out to a restaurant and there were a group of young people having dinner at the next table. As they ate, they all were staring at their phones and not conversing, just eating. I thought, "oh well, after they finish eating they'll probably be social over drinks." Nope, I was wrong. After the plates were cleared away, they all remained zombies glued to Facebook. Not a word was passed between any of them. It's really sad to behold what Facebook is doing to the Philippines. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say what people are doing to themselves via Facebook.

Same here, I'm American but live in Manila at the moment. There are many things here that happen due to lack of cultural precedent such as rampant unchecked phone use during social outings. One can only hope that the culture will evolve eventually to make this type of antisocial behaviour less acceptable.

Oppo, which is a top Chinese smartphone maker, has a huge share of the Filipino market. And how they market these phones here in the Philippines is very revealing. The ads say: "Oppo: the selfie phone." That's right, the phone is actually marketed as a device primarily for taking selfies, not voice, SMS, or web.

That's pretty standard everywhere, though? It's not like the newest iPhone would be marketed with "iPhone - the phone that makes calls and sends texts"

Apple doesn't market the iPhone as a selfie phone. No, they wouldn't market it as a device designed exclusively for calls and SMS either, but that isn't quite the same thing since the word "phone" is still part of its name.

I (the original commenter) am Filipino. Born and raised in the Philippines.

Have you considered that a negative comment about a group can be true, without any bias towards the group?

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