My outrage quotient has dropped significantly in the two and a half months since I deleted facebook and twitter. Just removing those two things from my life has made a measurable improvement in my quality of life.
Nice try Mark
Second rule of HN: don't call out people who you think are astroturfing.
Third rule: astroturf.
And of course there's the "trending" sidebars, and ads and other stuff that gets injected into your timeline without you asking for it.
So things bleed in no matter how careful you are. The platforms are designed to drag you in and outrage you. Trying to avoid that is a constant battle - and you're going to give in to it from time to time.
My current move is to delete Facebook completely (well, deleted that years ago). I just didn't find as much value there as elsewhere on the internet. And the psychological cost wasn't worth the little value there was there. So, complete deletion.
Twitter, I've deleted the mobile app and I follow no one. I have a separate list of profiles I find interesting. I have to physically go to that list and click on their profiles.
This keeps me out of 90% of the drama and into 90% of the worthwhile content.
It's hard to not look at "trending" but I'm trying. I wish there was a way to turn off "trending" and "timelines" completely.
End result: hugely more productive and psychologically lighter.
twitter.com##section div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"]
In Ublock - origin rules to hide the trending sidebar
This will benefit from updates from the author whenever Twitter tries to foil blocking. It comes with a variety of tweaks like a separate timeline for retweets and forcing the latest timeline.
Thanks!
This alone completely changes Twitter for me. Making Twitter mostly original content? Sign me up.
Interestingly, this is the same solution I came to with Twitter, except I don't even keep a list of profiles, I just navigate based on memory and auto-complete in the address bar.
My list is far too long to memorise, though.
And having it separate helps keep me honest (I think my memory would suffer biases) and out of my head.
Mainly though - the act of having to physically click a few times to get to the list gives me a moment of pause where I'm able to wake up and recognise whether I'm about to make good use of twitter or habitually jump into the time-worm-hole we all know.
1. Click "Show more" at the bottom of "What's happening"
2. Click the "settings cog" at the top of the page
3. Uncheck "Show content in this location"
4. Click "Explore locations" and choose a location whose language you can't read and you know nothing about.
And to avoid outrage leaking to me via people who end up in my main feed I simply aggressively mute pretty much anyone who talks about politics or similar. Sure, I therefore lack their signal but avoiding their noise more than makes up for that.
twitter.com##section div[aria-label="Timeline: Trending now"]
In Ublock - origin rules to hide the trending sidebar
I just tuned FB to show me stuff I wanted by scrolling past stuff I didn’t, “liking” stuff I did/do, and clicking through to read/respond to comments. It’s mostly friend&family updates, apolitical jokes, animal pics and other anodyne stuff fun to see.
And I block ppl who are on the outrage train, typically just for the 30-day automatic cool down and FB gets the message.
It’s my attention and I don’t have to give it to people.
You can also keywords (which I think you can do with the Twitter app as well) for more granular curation.
I think solutions like this allow one to benefit from Twitter without paying the heavy price that their shitty engagement tactics demand.
Then I started unfriending people that just posted stuff that annoyed me.
Then I realized after 3 days there was literally no new posts.
Then I just deleted facebook.
I don't miss it at all.
I've got multiple group chats with friends that I like. People post funny and interesting stuff there and we talk about it without having to deal with what someone's crazy uncle thinks about the topic.
There's not much facebook left over, but oh well.
Then I promptly close it and remember that's why I don't even bother. Facebook's entire engagement strategy has become outrage and fear. It's what keeps people the most engaged and that's literally the only metric they care about.
I truly believe if Zuck had the option of nuking a third world country to make another billion or solve world peace and Facebook goes away entirely, he'd nuke the country without a second thought. Everything about him strikes me as a sociopath with little to no regard for mankind outside of his personal bubble.
You should check these articles out, they were written in 2018[1][2] and then in 2020[3].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...
[3] https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-...
> If you want to spend more time connecting with people you care about, getting rid of facebook feels like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Sadly, lots of people I care about think it's a moral imperative to broadcast their political position on Facebook on every issue of the day. The people I connect with are skewed pretty heavily towards my own point of view, but that doesn't make it any less corrosive to read what they have to say. Facebook is just too emotionally taxing to follow. (Using Facebook's tools to curate my feed just reminds me how much power I'm giving up to them, which is also depressing.)
I feel so much better with Facebook out of my life. I have the app installed on my phone in case somebody from twenty years ago wants to look me up and message me. That's all it's good for.
I only ever posted positive things like videos of me playing piano and only tried to interact with others in a positive way but I found myself becoming more and more angry over time so I just quit the whole thing and never looked back.
No, guy. The concensus is growing around social media being really fucking toxic.
Thing is, you're still close to the toxic web you regularly step into it .. and that's why i'm banned from twitter now.
That deserves every ounce of hostility that we can muster. And then some.
They are parasites. It doesn't matter if you "made it work for you".
Second of all, there's nothing crazy about what I said. By their own admission they've designed the apps to be addictive.
Would you tell your friends "go ahead, shoot up. have a great time!"? Would you tell your family? What I think is crazy is that we tolerate companies that make products like this.
I guess greed is a powerful force.
[0] we're still having deadly cigarettes sold everywhere you know..
We're all Slowly Boiled Frogs.
People say social media like Facebook is toxic for the most part because they only deal with toxic people.
Why participate in that in the first place when toxicity grows there like a weed?
But on Twitter, there seem to still be work-arounds. I use lists set to Private, curated for specific experts on particular topics, and many top and/or obscure experts post regularly.
This provides a reasonably straightforward chronological feed, curated to my interest, with well-tuned news and links to key analysis. Just NEVER use the main Home feed (which they do push on you).
IDK how long that feature will stay unpolluted by toxic algorithms, but Jack does seem a bit less determined than Zuck to pollute society.
Constant curation and management is indeed everything. And I remember at my first encounter with real computers in college, when I had a choice of editors, I went for the one with the most powerful features, despite the stated hazards.
I do assume that the audience here tends to the more capable end, so most of them would not be in that 99%, but perhaps I'm mistaken?
It's sufficiently tranquil that my wife now asks to read my feeds. It just took some filter cycles to get there.
This mostly works for me for Twitter. FB is just garbage so I haven't been on it in months. I don't need to delete it though, I just stopped going.
HN for the most part is still unique. Even when I see a comment I disagree with, most of the time it's articulated well and I can see their point. There are discussions that can happen.
FB is/was just nonsense, and Twitter is more comedy/entertainment than anything.
Yes, they did it by leaving Facebook and Twitter.
That seems like the most obvious strategy for effecting this change.
I don't really understand the line of thinking that somehow you have to will yourself into things rather than changing your environment. I think it misses how predictable peoples' reactions to things really are.
If facebook, twitter, crypto“currencies” were to suddenly disappear from the face of the Earth, society would be better off significantly.
By just reading a quality daily newspaper and a couple of newsmagazines, I’m better informed than when I was a news junkie with cable news on in the background and news websites refreshing on my phone.
“Breaking news” is broken. Print media, especially weekly newsmagazines, have the luxury of time to actually think about their coverage and provide adequate research and follow-up. Conversely, space is limited, so if it’s not adding value, it gets chopped.
Live news, on the other hand, needs to alternate between being first to report, then filling time until something else occurs, all while making whatever is occurring seem more important than it really is.
Maybe their wealthier audience means that they're not racing to the bottom for clicks. Maybe the people in charge know to run a business that gives people what they want without alienating half of potential customers. Maybe something else entirely. Whatever it is, it's working, and I hope it stays that way.
Secondly there is also their Tech section which compared to politics / economics / finance ..., I can as an insider judge its quality. It stands out among the rest IMO. I also like the FT for similar reasons.
>their Tech section ... stands out among the rest
this is some hardcore Gell Mann sorcery right here
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
867 is either implying that because something you know is good you judge the rest likely to be good.
Alternatively they are being sarcastic because they think The Economist's tech section is poor.
yes it's my own opinion and I don't consider myself to be an authority on these other subjects, so my only tools are intuition or trying to piggyback on people I think (or was told) are authorities. (but both are blunt tools since if I can't judge the subject my trust in others who I think know those things is equally questionable)
I also really like Foreign Policy. Despite its name, it’s not really a specialist publication, just a general overview of global current affairs with a bit of a policy focus.
The Guardian Weekly has great international coverage. Its editorial stance is also less overt than it once was (far more measured than the website). There are still occasional stories and writers that make my eyes roll, but it also covers really interesting global stories I don’t find anywhere else.
My daily newspaper is the Sydney Morning Herald. I’ve been based in Australia since travel restrictions hit, and I’m really happy with the paper. It seems to be just as good as it was a decade ago when I was last based here.
Contrary to popular opinion, there’s plenty of quality print journalism out there.
You just need to read an individual paper for a while to internalise the house style and (with the notable exception of The Economist) get to know the individual predilections of each journalist. That level of engagement with the paper and its writers is not something you get from skimming Google News, but I really feel it’s at the heart of getting the most from journalism.
Just buy a particular paper or newsmagazine for a month or two, and see if it’s for you. One local/national and one with a global focus is all you need. If you find them, you’ll hopefully be set for years.
I studied journalism in undergrad, and I have never understood why people are so drawn to watch these national 24hr 'news' channels. During a major crisis, sure, but day in and day out? I just don't get it. There just isn't that much that happens at a non-personal level (personal meaning self-, family-, friend-, work-oriented) each day. In terms of staying "up to date," I still am not clear on why this is important to do daily at a national-focused level, but if it's important to you, it can be done in a few minutes by reading a brief recap. If you do want a more traditional news cast, PBS News Hour is a good one.
But with these 24 hr networks, given how little of import happens on an average day, most of the time what you are being shown are not facts, but opinions. And these networks are all owned by massive, massive megacorps. Not sure why anyone is interested in getting drip fed opinions that originate, however loosely, from these conglomerates.
They try to get you to buy into them by convincing you it's important to "stay informed," but never really explain why. They play on your desires to be a good citizen, to be seen as intelligent, to feel 'serious.' If staying informed is important, it's most important at a local level, where your real connections can help you have a real impact. People are so focused on what all the senators tweeted yesterday that they are missing the real problems, issues, etc. that they could help address in their local communities. In this sense, news might not come from media at all -- and here is where social media could actually have real value.
The common explanation you hear everywhere, even here on HN, is that citizens "staying informed" is the key to an effective democracy. While it may be true in the abstract, using this as an argument for 24h news - or even daily news - is quietly omitting the fact that these news sources provide negative information value. Your worldview becomes less accurate, not more. Widespread addiction to breaking news is thus creating a less effective democracy.
Today I don't get live TV but I do pretty much get real-time news through Twitter, etc.
Following news makes little sense for keeping a person informed. There are too many completely conflicting sources of news. All the news informs of is what other people who watch the news will have opinions on.
Because the alternative (other than going out for a walk) is watching re-runs of many years old shows or other outright crap.
Personally, I like the 24/7 radio news channel of the local public broadcaster ("B5 Aktuell") - news and information program, but no pop music that was bad already when it came out.
The answer was no to everything single one. That was pre-covid, and sometimes the news are relevant, but you can mostly do a quick checkup once a week. Prefer something in text form that you can scan over.
I don't really need a constant drip feed of all the terrible things going on in the world. Most of it doesn't affect me, and only serves to make me feel worse about humanity
Also, I have a second account for "open" discussions and work-related stuff that I barely use. It would be awesome if one could set certain tweets in a locked account to "visible for everyone".
How do you measure outrage?