Hacker News Reader

Comment by rg111 | Hacker News Reader

As soon as your news feed becomes too big for you to read all of it and then decide whether to repost anything, the quality of information you propagate is going to fall because of that filtering process.

I avoid this by unfollowing people very frequently. I see one stupid candid or a pout or a food shot, I just unfollow that person.

Same goes for SJW/White Supremacy types. Whether you are OP or a sharer, you get muted/unfollowed.

This is how I use Quora. When I used Facebook five years ago, I used it this way.

Twitter I use only for professional content. Very strictly. I also set the trending country to Namibia, so that I don't even know what they are talking about.

I am less and less active on social media with the passing of days, but a good social media experience can be achieved by strictly filtering normies, politics, food porn, etc.

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This is very nice for you, but the problem is that most people who consume social media are consuming it about as passively as possible and aren't aware that their experience can be curated the way that you are doing. Providing the tools to curate one's own social media feed is not a solution to the problem the article is explaining.

Here's an analogy: Imagine if we discovered that thousands of cars had some fatal flaw that could result in death and instead of recalling them the manufacturer just made a DIY repair kit available for twenty bucks online. How many people would just put it off or ignore the problem until their car exploded?

That's the problem we have with social media: It's got huge problems that most people are only vaguely aware of, and the solutions they offer are mostly esoteric DIY controls that very few people will care about or use.

Perhaps this is unfair, but this just makes you sound a bit antisocial. You're actively trying to remove all of the personality from social media, and filter it down to just professional or single-interest posts. People aren't like that; everyone has many facets to what they're interested in, who they are, and what makes them tick. Removing them from your network as soon as they post anything from your red flag list demonstrates that you're not actually interested in the "social" bit, and really you want a curated list of facts. I guess that's your choice but I suspect you'll find it very isolating eventually.

One of the most important "soft skills" I've learned as developer over the past 25 years is that ignoring people because they're interested in things I'm not interested in makes managing a team incredibly hard. You need to be able to listen even when people are talking about "boring" or irrelevant stuff, because sometimes there's something very relevant buried in there. People aren't one-dimensional and they won't always talk about things you want to hear, so if you reject them on that basis you'll miss the good stuff too. Plus, I've found a lot of the time the rest turns out to be quite interesting too if you take the time to listen.

> Perhaps this is unfair, but this just makes you sound a bit antisocial. You're actively trying to remove all of the personality from social media, and filter it down to just professional or single-interest posts.

Does everyone have to be social via social networks nowadays in order to be considered “social”?

Can’t we just be social, you know, face to face? And then just leave online media to news/facts?

It’s so weird to me that in order to be considered “social” it’s not enough to just be social in person.

Have we really come to that?

In a way, yes.

I think about this a lot. My hypothesis is that social status is increasingly, and will be increasingly, dictated by your "follower" count. How many eyeballs you can attract. Even worse, in my opinion, it will be the primary driver of people's perceptions of you. Basically how good are you at getting attention?

It seems a bit ridiculous to say, but I observe the "high status" or high follower count people networking more and more exclusively with each other. On the other side I see traditionally "high status" people developing their online persona - whether its a youtube channel, twitter account, substack, podcast, etc.

We are in the middle of a societal restructuring (that much is obvious) in a way that the internet is now injecting itself right into the middle of social hierarchy and relationships.

This sounds like a Black Mirror episode.

If you only leave online media to news/facts, it's not a social network at all. It's an online news paper or a user manual.

You don't have to be social online, but getting angry at people for socializing on a social network is definitely anti-social.

People have spoken over the phone and have had pen pals for a very long time, so "we have come to that" a long time ago.

Your confusing having social media/phone/pen pals as alternative vs. it being required to be social.

I never implied that being social over social media is wrong.

The GP, however, was implying that by not engaging in social media (or, using your examples, phone or pen pal) is antisocial, which I argue is wrong.

If engaging in social media is the only way to be social — or, to put it another way, if by not using social media socially you’re considered anti-social — then Facebook et al. have won.

Not necessarily. IRL, If I don't enjoy hanging around someone, I just won't hang around them. same goes gor social media. If I have a few friends who share my interests, I'll keep following them, but some friend who keeps spouting stupid stuff? I'll avoid them IRL and on Social Media.

If uncle Joe keeps talking about conspiracy theories in family gatherings, I'll keep away as much as possible.

I hang withy friends on Discord. we talk daily and game together.

The conversation wasn't about filtering out people you don't like, it was about filtering out anybody who shares anything personal. The real life equivalent would be stopping to talk to your uncle because he tells you he likes Italian food or went on a trip to Europe and you only keep speaking to people who talk to you about global warming or stuff that actually "matters". That how the person treats his friends online and the argument is if it is anti-social to do that on social networks.

Does everyone have to be social via social networks nowadays in order to be considered “social”?

Can’t we just be social, you know, face to face? And then just leave online media to news/facts?

Of course you can. You just can't claim to have "a good social media experience" if that's what you're doing (as rg111 did). If you're removing all the social parts from social media then you're not have a "social media experience" at all. You're doing something else. That might be good, and you might enjoy it and find it useful, but it's not sociable if all you're doing is consuming filtered content about a topic you're interested in.

Rejecting the social aspects of social media is, by definition, antisocial. That doesn't reflect on how sociable you are in other contexts though.

> Perhaps this is unfair, but this just makes you sound a bit antisocial.

Disagree. The commenter above may as well lead a healthy social lifestyle AFK. It's just that he/she does not want to be bombarded superficial stuff. There is already too much information presented to us on social media, one can not humanly consume them all, so might as well focus on content that is actually useful in bettering oneself.

Yes, I lead a very content and happy life.

I have the best SO, caring friends (< 5), better than average relationship with parents with no social rivalry.

I just don't buy into the popular culture- soulless movies like Avengers, sports, celebs, TikTok awfullery, virtue signalling, covert racism, keyboard activism, and so on.

I am content with the social media that I use.

I happen to be a good organizer. I organize religious ceremonies despite being irreligious, I organize other socio-cultural activities and actively take part in them.

As I have grown old, I have learned that it is in my best interest to not show my full self by default- I had gotten judged for not conforming to shallow social norms, being an atheist, etc.

And while on social media, I get to be close to my true self.

For people who don't conform with social norms, either for individual traits or other reasons, social media is simply hellish in nature.

I unfollow everyone, absolutely everyone on facebook. I do it systematically whenever somebody sends a friend request.

This way I can decide whose posts I see, and not the algorithm. Ha, take that! Facebook even displays an error message in your feed if you unfollow everyone :)

I logged on to FB a few months back because I had to send a message. I just sent that message and logged off. (I would get email when they replied)

Facebook seriously asked me if it was my own account I logged on to. Because, "when people log on to other people's accounts, they tend to log off quickly".

Yeah!

Interesting. What you say makes some sense for keeping sane where the Internet is one big room of people shouting, but for preference I'd prefer the total opposite.

I would love to be part of small social media groups with bonds of friendship and tolerance. Trends, food, non-extreme politics, in proportion to their magnitude in everyone's lives, varying with people's interests but not magnified by one-issue echo chambers. Not 100% sure what you mean by normies but I suspect I'm in favour of them.

Group chats with close friends and family fulfil this need fairly well, and are quite relaxing compared to wider social networking. But they're likely only to cover a small subset of every person's interests. Something like the infamous 'Circles' might actually be useful on a larger scale.

I just have DMs on Telegram/Signal with people I like to be close with.

For 3-4 people of my parents' generation, I just call them up once in a while.

Actually, there isn't a lot of an overlap of interests with those of the people I grew up around. I have no interests on sports, celeb culture, etc. And politically, I conform to neither side (although I am not a centrist).

People have said things behind my back and in one particular instance, I have been verbally harassed for not liking the things most people like.

So, I don't bother being "social". I do community service, donate time and money to charities, attend marriages and funerals and such and nod and smile for 1-2 hours. I also mentor 2-3 kids. One is a neighbor, one lives on a different country.

I don't see the point of a "social" media. I just want to be away from most people I know in real life.

I find better solace on anonymous sites like Reddit, HN, or new like-minded people I get to know through interest-based forums.

I do send people pictures of stuff I cook, glasses I buy, etc. tgrough DM.

I also have a private Instagram where I allow about 30 people to follow me.

I would never even think about social media like most people use it.

Yeah. I guess most people have a complex list like that. In many ways we're actually spoilt for choice when it comes to communication. And the forum we're on right now is quite excellent.

It would just be nice if the big sites were less terrible. If Facebook were once again a nice place to stay in touch with 'real life' people instead of an engagement-driven nightmare. If LinkedIn could be a wider-professional-interests place with HN-quality discussion instead of just recruiters and drivel. If Twitter remained an amazing place to connect with thinkers but not the place for outraging people into campaigning for someone to lose their job. Because of network effects, the big sites eat up a lot of what should be better discussion.

You're pretty much looking for discord servers with people sharing your hobbies.

And while they might not be small, servers corresponding to niche reddit subs might tickle your interest.

I just use good old bookmarks for specific accounts on youtube and twitter.

> SJW/White Supremacy types

In what way are these 'types' equated?

I'm assuming they're referencing the type of content they see from opposite sides of the political spectrum. I'm also not assuming any value attribution.

In the context of the comment, it seems that they simply do not want political noise in their social network in any form.

"Political noise" is completely subjective. There was a time within the last 10 years when claiming "White supremacists are a serious problem" got you branded as a SJW.

Participation in the culture war, weaponizing social media, and politicizing every space they pollute. There is no space for science, art, culture, day to day experience, or just fun and joy when they try to recruit every social media user and their content into their cause.

I'm saying this even if I actually do agree with their cause.

They're equally removed from my Facebook feed, along with most other non-local politics. Life is a lot less stressful when you don't get shown the most inflammatory political arguments on the internet whenever you check your messages.

In the same way are they equated with food shots…

Seeing either of those pretty much puts my brain in the same place, even though I agree with the SJW side. Reading people argue about it just stresses me out and doesn’t help anyone. It’s like being in “fight or flight” mode with no option to actually fight or flee. The opposite of the way I feel after a good workout.

Ironically they are one and the same: the have extremist viewpoints, resentful and hostile.

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