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Comment by alxmng | Hacker News Reader

I think what I think about docudramas in general: Hyperbolic. I think the harms of social media are exaggerated, and not entirely unique to social media.

I don’t have a problem with Facebook knowing what content I interact with and using that to serve me ads, or content that I want to spend time consuming. I don’t agree with the characterization of publishing or volunteering information (likes, posting photos, profile details) as private information. Facebook makes clear what information is public, what is shared to friends, etc. I think most people are relatively aware their interactions determine ad selection, as it is intuitive. It’s really not scary to me that Facebook knows which city I live in to target ads.

I don’t agree with the characterization of engineering apps to provide entertainment or social value as “manipulation” in the harmful sense. The fact that something is enjoyable to use or is used a lot isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and is not necessarily an addiction. To use another example, I would want game developers to “manipulate” me to enjoy playing a game. That’s the point. The fact that people spend lots of time on social media just demonstrates that they derive something from it, not that it’s addictive or harmful. Is social media a worthwhile use of your time? Maybe not. Is it an intrinsically harmful activity? No.

I think the Internet in general allows for the more rapid, selective spread of information, and that it lowers the cost of publishing. It follows that ideas can spread quickly, including conspiracy theories. I don’t agree that belief in pseudoscience, rumor, or superstition is anymore prevalent than it was before social media. I think it’s just more visible to everyone how many people do believe wacky ideas. Regardless, social media isn’t going to suddenly make me believe the moon landing was fake, so I don’t see it as being harmful.

In short, I don’t think ad targeting is harmful or violating my privacy. I don’t think social media is harmful but that passive consumption of media is not the best use of time, like video games or watching TV.

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> The fact that people spend lots of time on social media just demonstrates that they derive something from it, not that it’s addictive or harmful.

I was totally with you until this moment. This is like arguing that people with alcoholism get something out of drinking too much.

It’s one thing to say that you’re comfortable with the amount of information that’s collected about you and how it’s used, but how can you ignore the fact that these companies hired experts in psychology and paid millions to keep people using their apps, just like child psychologists were deployed to TV advertising in the 80s and 90s? These apps are absolutely addictive because they were explicitly and intentionally designed to be.

Spending hours in an infinite scroll wormhole does not automatically mean you’ve derived something important or worthwhile. It just means you were entertained enough by the possibility something might be good if you just keep scrolling, and that’s a problem for some.

I spend lots of time reading. Is reading an addiction? I don’t think spending time on something is necessarily an addiction. Can social media be an addiction? Sure, in the same way videgames can be an addiction. I wouldn’t go as far as saying video games are harmful. Social media is also different in that it’s a means of communication. It does have utility for communicating whereas video games or drinking doesn’t.

It’s not about how you consciously choose to spend your time, it’s about being able to choose when to stop.

I commonly hear from alcoholics that the problem isn’t that they want 1 drink, the problem is that they want 10 drinks. They lack the ability to moderate consumption and be able to consciously stop.

Social media struggles from this exact same problem. It’s so easy to just keep scrolling, to just keep seeing what’s further down the feed. Maybe I missed a picture that I would like, or something. This FOMO is intentionally designed and baked into the apps to keep people from leaving them.

You can choose to put down the book whenever you want to or need to, and maybe you don’t have a problem putting down social media either. But many, many people do. Just because you don’t feel psychologically pulled in doesn’t mean that it’s not a real addiction.

There’s an easy way to test this out on yourself. Commit to going a whole day without checking your favorite social media apps and add the parental control time limit to those apps. If you find yourself unconsciously whipping out your phone and checking social media, you’ll see the prompt to input your parental control code. If you’re anywhere near the statistical average human, you’re gonna find yourself mindlessly checking social media multiple times that day. That’s what I’m talking about.

> I spend lots of time reading. Is reading an addiction? I don’t think spending time on something is necessarily an addiction.

Anything can become addictive, really, if we use ASAM's official definition: «People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences.»

The difference between books and feed-scrolling is stark. Books are linear, static and finite, while your feed is ever-changing and adapting to your patterns of behavior – and practically infinite. These differences are huge when it comes to the potential for "continued used despite harmful consequences".

Addicition is defined by its consequences. If you're engaging in a regular activity, that's one thing, but if you can't stop yousrself from doing it, even if it's harming you, that is addiction.

Is the book dynamically changing its content based on what it knows about your psychological profile in order to influence your beliefs and behaviours?

The deck of cards isn't changing its contents and yet gambling is an addiction. And if influncing behavior is such a sin why are you speaking? Don't you knoe that could influnce beliefs and behaviors?!

The outcome of the game is ever-changing. There is always the possibility that next hand (or dice roll) will give you the dopamine rush you crave. That is why it's addictive.

But.. that has nothing to do with the premise that reading books can be compared to social media.

>And if influncing behavior is such a sin why are you speaking

Because I'm on a message board whose accepted purpose is to read and share thoughtful (your comment excluded) ideas and views.

> These apps are absolutely addictive because they were explicitly and intentionally designed to be.

Same goes with fast food, TV shows etc. It's your responsibility to not over-consume anything; and if you have children, teach them to not do that as well. The problem is not with FB, Google etc. The problem (which is over-consumption of everything) is cultural. Blaming some specific corporations is easy but it won't lead to any positive solutions. We desperately need stoicism in the west.

Good old personal responsibility. It's your responsibility not to walk into traps laid out to catch you.

Why stop people from laying out the traps? They're just trying to make a living, it's perfectly fine!

What do you propose to solve this problem besides teaching others to take personal responsibility?

Some basic rules and regulations would be great :)

This should of course not replace taking personal responsibility, but humans are way to easy to influence / hack to leave it entirely to market forces. Some common ground and basic rules is at the very core of any healthy society or community.

Speed limits, traffic lights and bike lanes creates great conditions for a healthy marketplace. An absence of regulations benefits only the biggest and meanest, and usually ends up creating unsustainable systems that is crushed under it's own weight.

> Some basic rules and regulations would be great :)

Any specific ones? I personally can't think of any at all that would work.

@blueterminal: There are many proposed solutions, some better than others. GDPR is a step in the right direction, it should not be easy or trivial to collect huge amounts of data on people. There is no good rational justification for this behavior. Consumer protections is important and should be extended to how algorithms are used. Fine-grained targeting of ads (political or not) should not be allowed, due to the obvious negative consequences for societies. An expert panel could be given the task to make some sensible compromises.

The irony is that such regulations would ultimately benefit the companies that are currently being criticized, making long term survival more likely. Regular people would be better of too, and I would not need to discuss movies like The Social Dilemma on HN.

Some (including myself) would argue that a repeal of section 230 would go a long way towards solving some of these issues.

A large part of the problem is that social media companies algorithmically serve content to serve their purposes, but are not liable for the consequences of algorithmically served content.

To me, using an algorithm to select what content to show a user is exactly the same thing newspapers do: editorializing. I don't understand why its treated any differently.

Those people who say that about section 230 are better known as either dishonest or complete fucking morons.

The entire mutually exclusive division between platform and publisher is a zombie propaganda lie that won't stay dead.

I can see two obvious interpretations of what you might be implying:

1. That, because you are unable to think of rules and regulations that would work, there must not be any.

2. That, in order for anyone to legitimately suggest that something might be worth attempting, they must already have a working solution.

Is it one of those two, or something else?

Yes, make facebook news feed default to first in / last out, and let users upload community created filtering algorithms so they can decide whether they see certain news/sites etc. or if they just see their grand kid’s picture (and if there are none, they would probably log off of FB quite quickly, which is why FB does not offer this as an option now)

I personally can't think of any at all that would work.

This rhetorical technique is called 'poisoning the well,' preemptively injecting doubt into whatever follows. The GP gave several examples of regulatory mechanisms that already work to some degree, and an argument for why, but you chose to ignore that completely for some reason.

The GP gave examples of regulatory mechanisms that work for other situations, but I also am unsure of what specific regulatory mechanism would work well for this, and those examples don't really bring anything to mind, even though I am in favor of a regulatory solution. I think coloring the question as poisoning the well might be a bit premature.

That is, what are traffic lights and safety lanes for social networks? How do we enforce those for private products when generally they are things why apply to our public spaces? A social network is much more of a mall than a public park, so what restraints are we willing to make towards a private property, and what will actually work? I think those are very valid questions, and while the argument from blueterminal may have gotten there in a roundabout way (and in a way that some consider not in good faith), I they are well worth considering in detail.

To me it's blatantly obvious something needs to be done, I'm just not sure what that is, and am slightly afraid we'll implement a fix that if not as bad as the problem, is still much worse than it needs to be unless we consider it carefully.

It's the pre-emptive foreclosure of discussion I find objectionable, negating the attempt rather than exploring the problem space.

I would personally reduce the private property privileges substantially since a social network by definition derives its value from the number and variety of people that use it. I'd like if FB were at least as searchable to its users as to advertisers, for example; arguably FB knows more about many of its users than they know about themselves.

> I would personally reduce the private property privileges substantially since a social network by definition derives its value from the number and variety of people that use it.

That does make sense, and also fits with how private property can't entirely be viewed in isolation if it has negative externalities. I.e. You should be able to pollute the air immediately above your land as much as you want because that doesn't just stay on your land.

> I'd like if FB were at least as searchable to its users as to advertisers, for example; arguably FB knows more about many of its users than they know about themselves.

That might help in some small amount (and as long as people people actually reviewed info and requested removal, and that had to be honored, it would help), but I'm not sure the companies in question wouldn't just turn their neuroscience divisions to the task of making people want to allow the data for some reason.

To me this feels more like a drunk driving type situation, or age of consent, or ability to sign away your rights. We believe some things should be disallowed because the combined cost to society pf allowing it is much greater than the sum of the individual costs for disallowing it added up. But even if that can be sold as a good idea for this, I'm not sure what specific things we would do to block it that aren't nebulous and can be gamed. Maybe disallowing advertising, but that seems to be targeting one industry, and I suspect something else with a similar negative and the same incentives might take its place for this area.

Stop people from laying out the traps, and saying it is not really fine. Guess that means regulation and enforcement thereof. Things go both ways, of course. There is a certain level of personal responsibility to teach and take into account.

> Stop people from laying out the traps, and saying it is not really fine. Guess that means regulation and enforcement thereof.

What kind of regulations would you impose? Any specifics?

How about stop the hysterical hyperbole of calling speech traps instead?

Not the original poster - just replying with some ideas...

I would purpose that Google in particular be broken into many different companies. The fact that they own such a large part of mobile, browser, search, video, email, news aggregation, online office products is hugely problematic. I believe one of the issues that was not highlighted is the overall reach of these companies, they focus in on the mobile aspect, but there are huge swathes of data being collected via other means. Search in particular should not have a bias in the autocomplete - search should be agnostic, like Wikipedia. When I search it should show the same results as when you search. Next there should be a requirement that these companies provide access to a users data back to them, along with the analytical output that creates their digital avatar. There should be the ability to FULLY delete the data per a request. Next there should be a requirement that the sites provide ability to utilize their services with browser anonymity enabled. Much of the data leakage is harvested automatically from the mobile device or browser, the ability to slow the trickle of information should be required by law. Perhaps a requirement that a price that an advertiser paid for each ad should show up, and an opportunity for the user to opt-out and pay for the service instead at the same rates in truly anonymized fashion. More extreme options - restrictions on access based on age, we do this for cigarettes and alcohol, perhaps this should be applied to social media as well. Perhaps there should be a throttle on data gathering or hard limits placed on how much data can be pulled in and kept. Require maximum data retention periods on this data to make the models dumber. We have data retention periods set for health data - why not restrict it for social media.

Time and time again I see it suggested that these "lets be evil" giant companies like Google be split up. I'm coming around to this. They aren't able to be accountable because they are far too giant (not necessarily in the head-count sense) to be influenced by human conscience. They take on a life of their own, unconstrained by their externalities, adapting like DNA, optimizing for their survival at any cost. Force these tech giants to split up, because we agree as a society that they are evil (or at least problematic). The individual people that make up the mini-corps will then have more influence to steer these mini-hydras. What about shareholders?

Maybe we can look for historical examples of how legislation had a positive impact on a widespread harmful habit.

  Early on, the U.S. Congress adopted the Federal Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act of 1965 and the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act of 1969. These laws—

  * Required a health warning on cigarette packages
  * Banned cigarette advertising in the broadcasting media
  * Called for an annual report on the health consequences of smoking

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/sgr/history/inde...

Absolutely. Let's lay out traps for the trap layers then, and find a way to do it for a living. You're saying that's fine, so lets do it.

Except you don't lay out traps for the trap layers. You make it very clear that if they lay out traps then they will face consequences.

They are the ones acting in bad faith and trying to extract resources from you via subversion.

Except the trap layers are bigger (more money), stronger (good lawyers from that moeny), and there are more of them than you (lots of people and lawyers).

How do you fight that? With a bigger group of people. Since they are so large, that means a nation or state (if you're a big one, as if you're small they probably won't care, that's how big they are).

If there's a pride of man-eating lions roaming about, you don't set out by yourself to fix the problem. That's just an imaginative attempt at suicide. You get a large group of people. That's why regulation is what we need, because that's what it means when you get a really large group of people to impose their will in the modern age.

This is like arguing that the fast food industries, the sugar industry, and the ad industries have no role to play in diabetes because it's your fault you can't control yourself.

Never mind that you will have been exposed to tens of thousands of hours of literal behaviour modification programming. You should somehow magically still have the personal, emotional, and cultural resources to override it. And if you don't - it's your fault.

But curiously it's not the fault of the corporations, because there is no equivalent requirement on them to control themselves, or to take corporate-personal responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

How would you try to help an alcoholic? Would you tell him that it's alcohol producers' who is at fault? Or would you tell him to try and get help? Why would an advice be different for over-consumption of social media, coke, big macs, tv shows, casinos etc.?

all those examples you listed have restrictions and regulations in many places in addition to services that provide help to the affected. Doesn't have to be one OR the other, can do both

That's weird framing. The individual needs help, but there are significant regulations on alcohol companies, too. We went too far, by prohibiting it altogether, but we still limit alcohol advertising, we have age limits, etc. None of that is "telling him" to blame the alcohol producers; we need both regulations against harms facilitated by corporations for profit and support for those harmed.

> Why would an advice be different for over-consumption of social media, coke, big macs, tv shows, casinos etc.?

Of course, different people deal with these kinds of issues differently, but it's also important to recognize the vast differences between consuming too much alcohol vs consuming too much tv. Firstly, if you've spent any significant amount of time around a recovering alcoholic and discussed the issue openly with them, you realize pretty quickly that it's usually not just a raw craving. A lot of alcoholics drink in response to trauma of various kinds, and your backstory as an alcoholic plays a fairly significant role in how to seek the best recovery strategy. There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution there.

TV is much different for several reasons. First, there's not a universal societal acknowledgement that TV is addictive like alcohol. The US went through prohibition because alcoholism was rampant in society, TV hasn't disrupted society in the same way. That's not to say that TV isn't addictive or capable of being abused, it's simply that TV is much more passive in terms of how it's consumed, and it's higher order effects on people who consume too much. This is also true of social media.

Social media and TV don't usually force people between feeding their families or consuming endlessly the way that alcohol did in the 19th century, but it does encourage us to spend more time on autopilot and less time consciously thinking and being present.

I highly recommend David Foster Wallace's talks on entertainment addiction[0]. He predicted the genesis of a lot of these issues 20 years ago, and his commentary is still so relevant today, years after his death.

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoAME7gPBaw

There are four trillion bits coming at you, 99% of them are shit

The answer to that is extraordinarily complex, and dependent on the abusers' history and personal circumstance so it's not really answerable here.

Cigarettes might be a more apt analogy IMHO. It's extraordinarily hard to quit, but at least we've come to a point where there is enormous social pressure to do so. And not just for health reasons: it's widely considered an unattractive habit.

Contrast that with the 50's where it was not only accepted by society but considered "glamorous". That's (sort of) where social media is today. Its image needs to go from fun and youthful to gross and harmful in the popular perception (barring that, the entire model needs to be re-invented).

Educating people on the long-term harms is the primary (perhaps only?) way forward at this point. This movie does that very well but it will be a long slog.

I'm not even sure this war can be won, but we must try.

> How would you try to help an alcoholic?

That's a distinct question from "How would you try to reduce the prevalence of alcoholism in your country?".

When considering a particular individual, yes you need to get them medical and therapeutic help, some kind of life coaching/counseling program etc.

When considering the whole population, you do need to think about regulation of selling, advertising, public health campaigns for prevention etc.

Similar with sugary junk food. You can tax it at higher levels, ban advertising to children etc. Be strict on forbidding misleading claims. Perhaps pub highly visible "high sugar content" warnings on the product etc.

Yes, all this stuff is very un-American and too "socialist" I guess, which leaves you with the other option of being the most obese developed nation and having a substantial proportion of people be obese at a level of it becoming a legit disability. Which is fine for most people I guess, because it's not themselves, so who cares about other people anyway.

Not a great comparison, since if alcohol were invented today I'd expect it to be banned or at least much more tightly control. It is incredibly damaging to society and we only tolerate it for historical reasons.

One of the main issues is regulation. With TV, government was able to regulate the content via FCC. The movie's example to this was Saturday morning cartoons compared to YouTube for Kids. The latter is very much self regulated by Google/YT and parents, rather than government which, given history, has the actual power to curb it. Giving the keys of regulation to the target of it is not the way to get it done. YT in this example will set the main goal to driving their product to further profit over content regulating one way or the other.

I definitely understand your argument of "leave it to the parents" but why add to their ever growing pile of worries? What if they don't know any better b/c of technical illiteracy? This issue of an unregulated media line has been seen and dealt with before yet we're hesitant in doing anything about it.

The reason to be hesistant is /because/ we saw how it was dealt with before! If we had the same godawful most self-righteous prude standards we would be censoring the very concept of LGBT people as "corrupting". It is no accident that acceptance's first step was from unregulated media who slipped through the crack and was able to laboriously crack and pry through the societal bullshit.

Fuck the parents - they should be adults and taking responsibility for their life's direction if they have kids.

What "unregulated media" do you feel was responsible for "acceptance's first step"? I'm not an expert on this by any stretch, but I've studied both media history and LGBT issues, and the shows that get cites most often for doing a shocking amount of work in shifting American attitudes toward LGBT folk were, well, regulated media. Specifically, the network sitcoms "Ellen" and "Will & Grace," with earlier tentative steps in "L.A. Law" and, in the late 1970s, "Soap."

While "unregulated media" may have become leading edge in LGBT presentation in the years since, it's also become leading edge in reactionary backlash, from Fox to internet media to the right-wing propaganda pushed by Sinclair Broadcasting to their local TV stations -- which in many markets they wouldn't have been able to own if local TV markets were still more tightly regulated.

I'm not suggesting regulation is a failsafe panacea by any stretch -- I'm just suggesting that deregulation isn't, either. There is probably a balance to be struck, and it is not at all clear to me that the balance we have now is correct.

They are the Johnny come lates - look at the various zines and very small newspapers published way back when homosexuality was actively illegal for one and would have been called obscene material but regulation thankfully couldn't be meaningful. Although niche they certainly had a role in growing networks of allies.

On the other end of the contact Internet contact is a later one and although nothing concrete it seems very non-coincidental that generations where straight people could watch gay or lesbian porn, and fanfics being ubiquitous enough that Draco and Harry ships were well known even among people who never read a single one due to lack of interestm

The "balance" is a golden mean fallacy. Best illustrated by a rhetorical question that sounds like a death threat: Is there a balance to be struck between you being alive and unharmed and stone dead?

I'm not sure we're using "balance" in the same way, precisely; I don't mean "balance" in the "present both sides of every issue as if they're equal," I mean that there's a continuum of regulatory options in a given field and that "less regulation" is not always the correct direction. (Not that regulation is really a spectrum, for that matter, as you could conceivably have high levels regulation in a given field that's still regulating badly.)

So, to answer that last rhetorical question with the way I'm intending "balance" to be used: I'm not at all opposed to regulations in food safety, wiring standards, water treatment, etc., that shift the balance of likely outcomes for me toward "alive and unharmed" and away from "stone dead." :)

One way of promoting personal responsibility is to make people aware of a problem. Some people may be able to figure it out on their own, others find out from someone close to them, yet others will learn of it from other sources (such as documentaries).

That being said, I believe that social responsibility also has to play a role. If companies were simply interested in making a product appealing, they would look at how well it is received. When companies start employing psychology, there is a strong possibility that they are doing so to override people's judgment (thus their ability to take personal responsibility).

> One way of promoting personal responsibility is to make people aware of a problem.

Totally agree. Movies like these or like "That Sugar Film" are extremely important.

> That being said, I believe that social responsibility also has to play a role. If companies were simply interested in making a product appealing, they would look at how well it is received. When companies start employing psychology, there is a strong possibility that they are doing so to override people's judgment (thus their ability to take personal responsibility).

They are going to inevitably do that, and that's what we should expect them to do. I don't think there are any solutions to that except building some new services / protocols.

> They are going to inevitably do that, and that's what we should expect them to do. I don't think there are any solutions to that except building some new services / protocols.

The trouble is interoperability. Creating open social media platforms has been tried before, yet the uptake seems to be those with strong ideological views. You would pretty much have to compel new and existing social media networks to support the services/protocols in order to give people a viable option. I'm not sure that many people are ready for that type of legislation, and I'm not even sure it is a good thing. At least existing social media services have some incentive, may that be the company's reputation or the value of the data itself, to offer some degree of privacy protection.

Speaking as someone who came from a rather colorful childhood of abuse, I'm wondering what your personal past is? You're assuming so much about the lives that folks lead, and to me it speaks of a lack of empathy for the personal struggles each individual is enduring.

Stoicism will fix things in the west? I assume you mean the USA, but as a person in the USA, I have to say that we are about as stoic as you can get. We lean on personal responsibility for every little thing.

"Oh, you went bankrupt from cancer. Why didn't you plan for that? Don't you know around 50% of folks get that?"

"Oh, you went to college for a useless degree? Why didn't you have someone in your life teach you that was a mistake? Why didn't you reject the counselors in public schools who encouraged you down that path?"

"Oh, you eat too much sugar? Why didn't you reject the industry sponsored studies that downplayed their health effects?"

"Oh, you got covid? Why didn't you stay at home? What do you mean you're an essential worker? Why didn't you take care of your health so you weren't predisposed to it?"

It's not stoicism the west needs, but a dire injection of empathy and community.

Stoicism would be helpful because of how common emotional manipulation is as a vector from sociopaths and how those they manipulate wind up /acting/ almost indistinguishable from sociopaths except they don't even remotely serve their own interests. Look at the Covidiots spreading disease because a politician doesn't want to admit the obvious - that they fucked up big time.

Or the long list of fucking stupid moral panics oriented around children from people trying to get reelected and everything "satanic" which ironically enough many children could have told them was just plain dumb. While empathy would be good emotions alone aren't enough as even "a desire to protect one's offspring" may be twisted horrifically. Community I am deeply skeptical of as a value in itself given how often it winds up something deeply toxic and stupid from acting like dumb herd animals. Sure internal investment would be good but given their record community itself can piss off.

It's not just an argument about stoicism vs empathy, but freedom vs control. How much paternalism do you want from your politicians? How much control over your daily routine do you want to give some barely accountable millionaire legislator/governor/president who's loyalties are only to you based on how many votes their donors can buy (the rate differs greatly depending on the politician). The more effectively money buys their votes, the less they give a crap about you.

We need a better word than "paternalism" for "not inclined to use a pandemic as an excuse to give trillions of dollars to the rich".

I don't think it's a given that Social Media's harms are at the level of fast food. Figuring out where it falls on the "harmful to society scale" is a worthwhile discussion. Is it sugar, e coli, or something in between?

We do have regulatory protections around food. We don't think it's pragmatic for everyone to run their own home lab to determine if there's poison in their food. It may also not be pragmatic to expect everyone to check sources or even be able to locate the truth of a source (I sure can't most of the time!).

This is an utterly unscientific and healthcare ignorant view on the level of "spirits cause tuberculosis". Science and medicine have long past moved from the model of personal responsibility in treating addiction behavior. We now know that a wide variety of factors completely out of control of the user, such as trauma in childhood, genetic influence, isolation, depression, etc. contribute to someone's tendency to become addicted to something.

Additionally, we also know that it is possible to make something addictive by spacing out dopamine hits in such a way that can be designed to cause a person to pursue this over other necessary duties. Pairing this with people who are more vulnerable to addiction through no factors they could've possibly controlled essentially takes advantage of people.

'Personal responsibility' is often used to inhibit the formation of a consensus for collective action. The people who sell things like fast food or saturate TV with ads are acting collectively to profit themselves, but you're saying that the people who are weary of it should be stoical rather than cooperating among themselves to counter the unwanted behavior.

I think this argument is odd. You are literally arguing that every individual should have more self control than can be overcome by a team of experts whose job it is to defeat your control. I'm sorry, but we're just out matched.

This argument and arguments like it suck because it fails to recognize that people who can't control themselves have the potential cause harm to those who can. Stoicism would only work if everyone would instantly adopt it at once.

People who mal-consume social media contribute to cancel culture, spreading lies and propaganda, and providing the fuel for negative power-seeking behavior in political and business realms. These have very real consequences for those innocent parties that don't mal-consume social media.

Aligning with your libertarian pattern, you can say "Well it's up to the people who can control themselves to defend themselves from the people who can't", and then that's precisely why we would introduce laws/regulations limiting things.

> The fact that people spend lots of time on social media just demonstrates that they derive something from it, not that it’s addictive or harmful.

I can't tell you how many times I hear my wife say "I need to get off Facebook" but never does. There's very much an addiction.

I use Facebook, but I've found that I spend nearly all my time in specific groups (for me that's motorcycle related groups) because it's a great source of help for "who wants to go riding" or "how do I fix this" or "can I borrow a tool". When it's very topic specific, social media can be really awesome.

What my wife complains about is "friends" that are posting about politics. She just wants to hear about their personal lives but wants them to shut the hell up about politics.

I often derive the most enjoyment through more niche social media spaces, such as HN or certain subreddits. I think the difficulty I have is that you get pigeonholed. I don't use Reddit as much because I like a few posts on /r/Funny and then my feed is taken over. I don't always want to go there to learn technical stuff, some days I just want memes. Other days I don't want any memes.

Content discovery is a difficult challenge but I think it is hard when incentives aren't aligned.

> I can't tell you how many times I hear my wife say "I need to get off Facebook" but never does. There's very much an addiction.

My wife says that too. Then while watching this, she said wasn't that interested, got bored, and decided to use Facebook and Instagram next to me instead. It was surreal and disturbing to watch it in that situation. :/

>I don’t agree that belief in pseudoscience, rumor, or superstition is anymore prevalent than it was before social media. I think it’s just more visible to everyone how many people do believe wacky ideas.

I think this is a key point. In particular I think educated people (for want of a better term) are often dangerously out of touch with how many people (particularly internationally) don't share their worldview. I remember the first time having dinner with a family and finding out I was the only person at the table who believed in Darwinian evolution. I was shocked because these people weren't even particularly religious. Up to that point, except for strict religious people I don't think I'd even spoken to someone who didn't believe in evolution. Or at least, it never came up.

And this is the point really - what social media does do is increase social friction on these topics. I worked with a guy who didn't believe dinosaurs existed (also not religious). After the initial debates it was fairly easy to just let it rest since he was a nice guy and completely sane on all other topics. But if this had been on social media if I had seen anti-dinosaur posts on a regular basis that would probably have got to me eventually and I would have blocked him. Even though, in social terms it doesn't matter if he believes in dinosaurs or not.

The other thing it does is make people feel less embarrassed of holding particular viewpoints. Lots more people than you might think believe in witches and curses but (quite rightly) think they'll be ridiculed if they discuss this too openly. But if you're on a Facebook group where everyone believes in witchcraft it starts to feel like a legitimate opinion. And then someone else sees one of your pro-witch posts and suddenly there's a discussion about where all this new belief in witches came from. This kind of conflict drives a shitload of activity and makes everyone involved feel bad one way or another.

> In social terms it doesn't matter if he believes in dinosaurs or not.

Yes, I can choose not to bring up that topic. And I choose to ignore it because I don't know what else to do. But, I can't completely let go of the idea that a person who doesn't believe in dinosaurs is voting on things like whether or not schools teach about dinosaurs or whether or not kids should be vaccinated or whether or not masks will cause co2 poisoning.

I don't know exactly where to draw the line. I don't know how to put this without people reading something into it that's not there but, I'm perfectly ok with someone having arguable reasons for holding an opinion different than mine but I'm not so okay with them having nonsense reasons.

To give an example, for some reason my my dad stopped believing in evolution in his 40s and will spout nonsense reasons like claiming eyes are impossible because it's too big a step which is logically false. You can easily name the steps. I'm not saying I require him to believe in evolution, I only want him to give valid reasons. A valid reason could be "because god tells me so and to ignore all other input" but valid reason is not "because evolution can't make eyes"

I know what you mean but...what can you do? In the instance you give, he's still your dad and if he's a generally good guy otherwise you're presumably not going to cut all ties over a disagreement about biology.

> I think educated people are often dangerously out of touch with how many people don't share their worldview.

What you call above a wacky idea - is actually not that wacky. I may believe dinosaur X existed but not dinosaur Y. That’s perfectly ok. Much of this stuff is not “settled science”. I work in academia, and mostly its a milder version of VC vacuousness. You occasionally throw stuff out & see what sticks. It’s plausible, but not proven one way or other. So you publish something - the goal is mostly signaling and mindshare acquisition. If everyone waited until we knew forsure with 100% consensus, then nothing would get published. That’s why a majority of academic research can’t be replicated, but it is still published and it is still legit.

Social media doesn't just increase social friction, but creates beneficial network effects for people who share particular views. That's often just harmless fandom or fads, but it can also be deadly serious when the views in question promote political violence.

The harms of social media are understated. I live in Brazil. Social media was one of the main reasons of the election of our president, Bolsonaro. Now we have more than 130.000 deaths from coronavirus, the Amazon and Pantanal are burning, our institutions are crumbling. My fellow software developers aren't just make some far way teenagers depressed. This is is real harm in the real world.

Most systems won’t change overnight because of the guy on top. What makes you so sure Brazil would have done better with the opposing party candidate as president?

Maybe the problem lies in a supposedly chronically underfunded healthcare system, by a number of previous administrations? This would then reflect, in an electoral democracy, of the citizenry’s misplaced priorities.

Men, this guy fired 2 health ministers during a pandemic. And during a pandemic we don't have a health minister!

Most systems get built over time to be better.

Every crack pot on top harms the structure, until eventually One Guy does break the system.

Now if people want this outcome, its great. If you don;t want this outcome, its not.

I totally, 100%, agree with you. I worked at Twitter pre-ipo. There were no “expert psychologists” anywhere in the company at that time, unlike what people below claim. Whatever features we built were mostly organic ( things like hashtags rose from the twitter community itself, not fron some internal mandate). The 140 char limit was a technical sms limit, not some feature purposely engineered to get you to engage more. Many of these things such as like button, heart button, retweet - for every “success” such as this, there were numerous failures that simply did not catch on. All in all, it was a bunch of clever hacks. The ipo happened, we sold our shares and moved on. Most of us deleted our twitter accounts shortly after. Its not like any of us were actively tweeting anyways. Many of my colleagues went to work at facebook. They have a barely functioning facebook page, which they hardly ever post on. A few of my friends work at insta. They don’t even have a profile - they said it’s mostly celebrities who post pictures about some luxury goods, not us developers who are git checking code. It has no relevance to us. Basically, a lot of us are completely bored with this social nonsense, and we’ve moved on to more important things. Social garbage is just not interesting. One of my friends works at Linkedin on something called Linkedin Stories. So I casually asked if he had ever written a linkedin story. He said you must be a bigtime loser to even think of using that garbage feature!

I guess once you know how the sausage is made, you lose the craving.

There's a bit of Sisyphus in everyone's story it would seem.

You don't need to have an "expert psych" initially.

Sitting with a friend rehashing what we studied about skinnerian conditioning and a diablo like game we thought of a frankenstinian game which knew exactly when to hit you for a transaction to let you level up/get new item and so on. Years later and micro transaction enabled mobile games came out.

Adding simple psych based analysis to systems isn't hard, you would just pick it up from gaming/other industries and recreate it as a best practice.

People are interested in this, and are doing great amounts of research to figure out how to do it better.

You are vastly understating the volume and type of data that Facebook is gathering. You casually mention photos but there is a mountain of information in each and every photo. People upload tens of thousands of photos.

You also just hand wave away the real psychological manipulation that is available when bad actors have enough information on you. “I won’t be convinced the moon landing was fake.” Sure, that’s likely true, but you aren’t special or immune from manipulation. With enough data ANYONE can be surgically targeted and manipulated.

And the worst part of all of it is that you can’t opt out. You can upload a photo that I am in. Facebook can scan and get a ton of demographic information about me. Then they can continue to trace and build out my “invisible” profile, all without me needing an account.

It’s absurd.

Even I feel the narrative is played quite disproportionately (democracies are falling, dystopian world).

Doesn't any engaging TV show (Game of Thrones) does something similar, keep you engaged by twist and turns, experimenting/testing with new characters? A/B testing on users is perceived as experiments on lab rats in the docudrama.

And why is the ad-based business model a bad thing? If the platform target specific customers without any misleading information, it can really help both the customers and the advertisers. Seems like a win-win.

I feel absolutely necessary for these platforms to understand us better, by capturing various data points and then manipulate/filter our feeds. There is so much content published every second, a genuine AI can really come handy. If I feel that my feed is getting polarised and I am in an echo chamber, I can consciously subscribe to alternate and diverse opinions and people. In reality, "You are average of the 5 people you surround yourself with"

On a side note, Netflix itself is a competitor to Facebook (content), Google (Youtube) and also engineering resources. Netflix is too "competing for user's attention" with these tech giants. Netflix too in a way was getting you hooked to the documentary by playing around with tempo and music frequency, that triggers some engaging chemical reaction.

I'm not super bothered much by it either. However, there is data to show, through Facebook's own research, that is possible to manipulate people's sense of well being and their perspective by what is being shown to them. For example, Facebook could show a person only posts from their friends expressing negative sentiment and put you in a bad mood.

Although these algorithms are quite sophisticated, there is no universally accepted heuristic for what is ideal for somebody to see. For example, let's say your friends have broad political leanings but you lean left. Should the algorithm only show you left leaning political posts because that's what you like, or should it optimize for you engaging with a broader variety of content but maybe increase your dissatisfaction. I think these are very difficult questions to answer.

Another issue is that people are very biased towards believing what is put in front of them. If your mind sees a pattern, it starts attributing truth to that pattern. This idea that you should just see all the facts and then "you decide" is a cop-out in my opinion -- your mind will have decided before you were ever able to apply rational thought to something.

Most people are used to seeing filtered information that has been vetted (newspapers, textbooks, teachers, experts, etc.), and the age of social media presents a problem insofar as this filter does not exist or exists in the court of public perception or algorithms. You can see evidence of this in that there are otherwise rational people who are being easily tricked into believing these whacky conspiracy theories and fake news, as you point out. I think that's a pretty big problem with serious societal repercussions.

> Should the algorithm only show you left-leaning political posts because that's what you like, or should it optimize for you engaging with a broader variety of content but maybe increase your dissatisfaction.

They should give that control to the user. Users should have the ability to select how much diversity they want and then provide feedback later to the content for the AIs to iteratively understand better, just like in Google news, Youtube. In addition to that, a report analysing the user's engagement with content and topics, for the user to reflect upon.

>The fact that people spend lots of time on social media just demonstrates that they derive something from it, not that it’s addictive or harmful.

I think the point of the movie is to show that it is addictive and harmful and it is built that way intentionally. And it gets worse for younger generations.

>Regardless, social media isn’t going to suddenly make me believe the moon landing was fake, so I don’t see it as being harmful.

Maybe not the moon landing, but it can make you believe many other things with out you even noticing.

We've seen examples of this already, there's nothing new here.

The truth is that platforms like HN are the worst offenders. While consumption-oriented platforms are clearly consumption-oriented, the addiction from text-based platforms like HN is far more insidious.

People think they're making a difference when they come here, but nothing is happening. They get the dopamine hit of some karma, and replies, but they're in their trench and the other guy is in the other trench and the battle lines aren't moving.

HN is a pretty clever tool. It honeypots entrepreneurs who can't develop so they don't compete with the guys who can develop. The former category, instead of competing¹, talks here about how they can't finish their side projects and how they can't get motivation to work, and other unrelated stuff that is just addictive entrepreneur or tech porn.

This streamlines the experience for doers, who avoid the manipulative trap that is HN, and are busy building product.

¹ Competition is bad. cf. Zero to One

I am not categorically against ads on online platforms (or offline for that mater), but I do have a problem with the power these companies have gained by gathering and analyzing fine-grained data-points on us and our behavior. The fact that most people only have a very vague idea about how these systems work and how much data is collected is worrying.

The fine grained control over who you can show ads to is a problem in itself and a tool ripe for exploitation by anyone who wants to nudge certain demographics in any direction they want, political or otherwise. We have seen several examples on how wrong this can go already.

> I don’t agree that belief in pseudoscience, rumor, or superstition is anymore prevalent than it was before social media.

I have seen up close and personal how a combination of Facebook and Youtube's algorithms have cleverly identified and massively amplified certain tendencies in people I'm close to. That is a personal, political and societal problem we should not ignore.

Like many privacy advocates, the documentary begs the question on most of the privacy issues it discusses. Some people seem to have an intuitive sense that they're being violated whenever anyone trades data about them or surveils them in public or aggregates their emails for crime-fighting purposes (or any of a dozen other examples), but I don't share it, so I'm not responsive to arguments that rely on the assumption that we share common ground on this point.

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