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Comment by joelbluminator | Hacker News Reader

Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power...Facebook seems to be just a platform where our natural desires can have a play. Facebook hasn't created this impossible beauty ideal, it was created long long ago by Hollywood and the fashion industry. Facebook just makes it super easy for people to become obsessed with something by "connecting" with it. It used to be that 40 years ago you watched some supermodel in a commercial for 20 seconds and she was gone. The novelty with the internet is that now you can follow this supermodel and get dozens of alerts a week about her. If it's not Facebook it's gonna be TikTok or something other platform.

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It's their fault. An individual girl in 1995 who was concerned with her looks had at most a couple dozen people in her life to judge her. In 2021 it's hundreds of millions, and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life.

Does society value beauty? Sure. Do models set "unrealistic expectations"? Sure. Are some high school girls assholes to other girls? Absolutely. But once upon a time kids would go home and those people would be gone. Now it's a 24/7 feedback loop and it's completely unhealthy.

> and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life

This is pretty much an internet problem, not a Facebook problem. The things people say to each other on forums or Twitter or Facebook, especially when anonymous (but not always), are quite often horrendous.

True, and the cat can't be put back in the bag, so it's up to the collective "us", who build the Internet, to rediscover our moral imperative to fix what's broken... and Facebook is a huge chunk of this brokenness.

I personally deleted my account but what is it about Facebook that is worse than say Twitter (also deleted) ? Twitter was a big bag of toxicity. Not saying it wasn't interested, tons of interesting people to follow; but the discussions were often rude, racist and hateful. And it poses the same problem of teens following supermodels and what not. What I'm saying is this is about social media in general, not about Facebook which just happens to be the (currently) number 1 platform.

Twitter is not algorithmically pushing supermodel photos to teenage girls. The target demographics are completely different from Instagram.

You are correct however, that Twitter is also toxic; like all social media.

The more basic issue seems to be that (many) people are toxic. If not always, to everyone, at least some of the time, towards some other people.

The problem with social media, then, is that it allows -- indeed encourages, because "engagement" -- all that toxicity to spread so much more widely and rapidly than ever before.

We could argue about "general/basic problems" all day.

This post is about FB suppressing their own research, which showed that Instagram and its algorithm are toxic to teenage girls.

> We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,”

> Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression,”

> “This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

That is not what the data researchers currently employed by Facebook said, if you read the article.

"They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others."

"'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle."

So I suspect that their understanding of the problem is better than yours, and that there is something about Instagram that makes it worse than generic social media.

You're assuming people have morals to appeal to - most don't. When everyone is connected to everyone else the asshole always prevail. The solution is to sever the connections.

One would dare say that an overwhelming majority of people does have morals.

But a very small minority that doesn't have morals, is causing the illusion that it's most people that don't have them.

As individuals, maybe, but as a society I have a hard time seeing proof when there is normalized wage slavery, the animal industrial complex, and any industry with money or power is deeply corrupted.

Right now we have a large percentage of people that refuse to get a vaccine to protect their neighbors.

Everyone might have morals, but the bar is low.

Other people not sharing your values is not the same as them not having morals at all.

[citation needed]

I don't know many such morally-absent folks. Perhaps the perverse incentives in our system mean a bunch of CEOs are quite sociopathic, but on the whole, people seem rather good intentioned to me. The internet certainly serves as a platform for many that would be otherwise shunned IRL, but I don't think they're the general majority...just the majority that decide to voice their opinions. The rest aren't even paying attention - only a small fraction of people have a Twitter account, for example.

Even reddit, which can be anonymous, is filled with good discourse, assuming you avoid certain subreddits, and sort by top. Moderation goes a long way to mimicking our more natural IRL tendencies to turn down the assholes. Twitter and Instagram generally lack those tools, so the assholes can be louder and _seem_ more prominent than they are.

This is true but the companies choose how to build and operate these spaces, which includes things like moderation and what they promote. Part of what makes Facebook important here is that they’ve put so much effort into taking over people’s socialization everywhere with an emphasis on being where your friends and family are. The more toxic parts of the Internet used to be different places you had to seek out.

Given how profitable that’s been it seems reasonable to expect them to be involved in fixing it.

Guess those geniuses earning massive salaries are too dumb to figure out ways to counteract this effect ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Or they’re paid massive salaries not to do that.

Facebook is the business that enables this problem on their platform. This problem could disappear overnight if Facebook decided to moderate their platform. Facebook chooses profitability over a safe platform for their users. This is where regulatory bodies should step in.

And yes we need regulatory help. Tens of millions in this country are experiencing mental health issues as a result of these platforms. When we understood that other industries were causing a health crisis we regulated them, the same needs to occur here.

Note. I don't know what the regulatory solution should be, but we should be having that discussion.

Doesn't facebook & co design their service to be addictive, or, erm, "maximize engagement"? The internet is fine, as I see it, it's ad-revenue based social media that's the problem.

It's absurd to absolve a company as wealthy as facebook who optimizes for "engagement" from their externalities on children.

> Doesn't facebook & co design their service to be addictive, or, erm, "maximize engagement"?

Is there something on the internet that isn't designed as such?

Maybe weather apps... Everything else, from wikipedia to github to stackoverflow to the site you're on now is yet another automated massively multiplayer kudo ranking system. The only meaningful difference appears to be demographic; Facebook is one of the places 'teen girls' spend their time. All I see here is evidence that clicks can still be had by ascribing some concern to the fate of young women[1].

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

Wikipedia, Github and Stackoverflow don't really have a "feed" much less a opaque, hidden algorithm to induce addictive behavior behind the feed. They don't press you into the app and then send you frequent push notifications.

Gamification is benign compared to an interactive news feed developed to drive ad sales. I find pointing at especially wikipedia, but also github as being designed to maximize engagement comparable to social networks as silly. Neither has much to gain from having addicted users, the same can't be said for facebook, IG, or Reddit.

> Wikipedia, Github and Stackoverflow don't really have a "feed"

All three have various feed mechanisms. They all have various ranking systems. Every one of them have people employed (even if mere 'volunteers') to 'maximize engagement.' And every one of these systems have people obsessed with their profile. Every. Single. One.

They're just mostly not 'teen girls' and so the 'problem' makes for poor headline material.

"especially wikipedia"

Wikipedia is rife with obsessed 'editors' climbing the rungs of the interweb status ladder. They're easy to find. Look at their profile pages; filled with achievement badges (gamification) and vast profiles of their lives. Does Facebook have 'campaigns' for 'elections' that grant power on the platform? I honestly don't know because I spend no time there, but I know Wikipedia does, and we can only imagine the anxiety involved for these 'candidates.' Thankfully though, they're mostly not 'teen girls' so we're not going to worry about them.

I think this is just a red herring for the main discussion here. Of course that example is also terrible! Just because this discussion is about Instagram doesn’t mean we don’t care about anything else.

Speaking to your point more directly, the massive, massive difference is the primary user of Instagram and typical social media vs the primary user of these other platforms. The primary user of Instagram is shown addictive feeds non-stop. It’s really not possible or enjoyable to use Instagram without interacting with designs deliberately and literally trying to get you addicted to the platform. This isn’t true for something like Wikipedia or Stack Overflow. The primary user is going to come across a few articles now and then or search something. But they are rarely going to be interacting with an algorithm or design trying to get you addicted for hours a day.

Think about it like gambling. The only way to use Instagram or Tiktok or Facebook or anything like that is by pulling the lever on a slot machine, trying to get a dopamine hit.

The inherent design and purpose of social media platforms is to addict people so they spend as much time on the platform as possible, and then show them ads. That’s not true for Wikipedia or stack overflow. Those examples are more about policies that encourage toxic behavior or just crappy people on the internet, not a critique of the inherent platform design.

I agree with the points made here but if addiction or useless products is the problem we will have to disallow Netflix to teenagers and gaming as well. It's not clear to me we as a society are capable of doing that. Not only that, probably the whole pop culture and increased individualism is contributing to increased unhappiness. Facebook is just a symptom of a disease in our culture. Dismantling Facebook will do very little to help kids I think. I actually think the Chinese got it right (banning gaming to teenagers above 3 hours per week or something like that), but we don't operate like that.

yes, they do.

We've had subscription media for a while now and it's shown that that business model has it's glaring weaknesses as well, especially when it comes to ideological pandering

Yes, but on flipside said girl now can and fully expects to be courted by best boys well outside of 1995 logistic reach.

this. And then be bullied by even more people outside said reach

https://www.fastcompany.com/90411925/having-too-many-choices...

Also for all of the women I've seen flown out from Alabama, Mississippi, etc to NY, LA & Miami by the more affluent men in my social circles, I haven't seen a single long term relationship develop out of it. The wider net isn't leading to better outcomes.

Wouldn't it be great if we could use the power of technology to then have one but not the other?

>Yes, but on flipside said girl now can and fully expects to be courted by best boys well outside of 1995 logistic reach.

I honestly can't tell if you're joking or not, but study after study has shown that dating was far more mentally healthy in 1995 than it is today. Online dating falls into almost the exact same category of causing anxiety and making it more difficult for younger generations to form meaningful relationships - just like instagram and facebook.

...far more...

I think GP is conflating an issue with online dating and the psychology of beauty. Basically, men in online dating on average get very low numbers of matches while women on average get a ton. It's a numbers game, the apps know it, and that's why they have upgrades to buy visibility etc...

It's a genuine problem, in that it is fully exploitative of men, but not related to this imo.

Please reflect on the circumstances in your life that lead you to this belief. In my experience this is a very toxic viewpoint and couldn't be further from the truth.

If anything I'd argue that more than ever both women and men are searching for authenticity in a partner. Something increasingly difficult to come by in our social media fueled world.

Sure, there is a subset on both sides that has been completely sucked in by this culture and measures each others worth by the number of followers on their instagram, but I'd actually view this as a positive. It's really convenient to be able to identify and filter out these vain individuals early on in the dating process.

Keep your head up nodejs_rulez_1, there are still plenty of good women and men out there.

I don't believe that is a toxic belief. Or even a belief at all. It's just human psychology.

Simply put, any man or woman with a lot of choices would be less invested in any of the options presented.

Because the overall process, despite being more efficient as measured by outcome, does not lead to as many fulfilling experiences as before.

Oh for sure. Seems to widely known that the more choices you have, the less happy you become.

You say this like it's some kind of benefit to the girl in question... IMO seems far more likely to lead to increased harassment and negative outcomes, rather than being a positive.

> An individual girl in 1995 who was concerned with her looks had at most a couple dozen people in her life to judge her

An individual girl in 1995 had enough shows on TV and enough magazines to tell her she is not looking good.

Yeah, but people have a certain level of disconnect with the models, athletes, actors, and superstars you see on TV and in magazines. Facebook brings that to the next level by encouraging that sort of content from people who you can actually relate to and feeds it to you around the clock. IG is especially bad about this.

And that's just some of the content. The algorithm is also just as happy to feed you a continuous stream of outraging, extremist "punditry", manufactured drama, fake "crafting" videos, conspiracies, and paranoid, depressing "news" - anything to keep you engaged.

> Yeah, but people have a certain level of disconnect with the models, athletes, actors, and superstars you see on TV and in magazines.

I'm not really sure about it. When highschool girls wore the same clothes the Spice Girls wore, had the same haircut they had and replicated their dances, for me that's a lot of connection.

I'm sure Facebook/Instagram have a lot to be blamed for but we (not just young girls; parents, teachers, etc) need to be responsible of our actions to some degree.

> It's their fault. An individual girl in 1995 who was concerned with her looks had at most a couple dozen people in her life to judge her. In 2021 it's hundreds of millions, and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life.

I agree with the 2nd part of your comment. But this part is just dishonest, and sounds like a startup pitch about addressable market. Do you honestly believe that each teen girl is being followed by hundreds of millions, who comment on every single photo of her? Almost everyone still lives in their social bubbles, and yes, it's easier to to communicate and say mean things to each other (totally 24/7 feedback loop), but they almost exclusively come from people you know, not hundreds of millions of internet randos.

While that is true, many people (especially teenagers) curate their Instagram page as if they had tons of followers. That doesn't come with the downsides that actually having many followers does (hateful comments, etc.), but it certainly fosters a stressful mindset where every posts success is closely monitored and the content is carefully chosen to achieve as much growth as possible.

Doesn't matter if it reaches 10 or 10000 people.

Good point, it got me thinking about what a young person (or someone who has yet to make an impact in society) might obsess over on Instagram. Changed my mind about why this matters to people in my demographic.

The judging of other people towards these girls isn't nearly as toxic as them having a poor body image because of all the beautiful people they see online.

Those girls in 1995 got their media fix through magazines geared at women and teenaged girls, where they'd find an impossibly thin model on every other page. The Kardashians wouldn't have been well-received in the 90s, because all of them would have been considered fat by those standards.

The 24/7 thing is mostly the fault of the user’s usage habits and their notification settings.

"As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power.."

Species, not culture.

The evolutionary explanations for such are not hard to come up with just with a bit of thought, and not hard to confirm in the literature either. Which also means the species isn't about to stop admiring those things any time soon.

Which means, rather than the "boil the ocean, then boil it a few more times again" plan of trying to somehow "fix" the species not to admire those things, one needs to pursue a plan of figuring out how to live within the existing constraints.

Which takes you right back to old idea of one's rationality being a small human trying to corral the crazy elephant that it is riding to go where we want it to go. The trick is to learn how to prevent the crazy elephant from even seeing the undesirable stimuli, rather than trying to deal with what happens if it does after the fact.

Unfortunately, explaining that to teenagers is a tough sell, especially when the alternative is tuning you out and going back to the highly-addictive social media.... even explaining it to adults can be a tough sell.

this is a much more compelling and eloquent way of saying "go touch grass"

Extremist conduct keeps people engaged longer, so they see more ads.

Facebook/YouTube/Twitter all exploit the dark side of human nature. They've been doing it for so many years, that it's difficult to imagine that it's unintentional.

>in Google’s effort to keep people on its video platform as long as possible, “its algorithm seems to have concluded that people are drawn to content that is more extreme than what they started with—or to incendiary content in general,” and adds, “It is also possible that YouTube’s recommender algorithm has a bias toward inflammatory content.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/youtube...

These companies are always going to want to hold our attention but it's us at the end of the day who decide to give them our attention. I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control.

In corporate america, it's hard for me to see any private owned corporation doing what's in best interest for the public versus their own pockets.

> I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control.

Kind of like how we said that the answer to alcohol & tobacco was to show self-control, not restrict sales and advertising? Expecting people to go one on one against enormous companies’ profit motives is a recipe for failures.

Except that this is not alcohol or tobacco, this is a digitized version of a free attention grabbing tabloid customized to the person's "interests" is always available to view at their desire. To me this makes it difficult to regulate as it's not purely based on the amount of consumption, it's based on the content you consume.

No, it's not the same as a physical product but there's a growing body of research, supported by some of Facebook's internal commentary, suggesting that it has similarly addictive characteristics, which is why I made that comparison. The point, again, is simple: most people recognize that it will not be optimal to tell everyone that it's their job to ignore a billion-dollar promotional system run by a company which makes more money if they get addicted.

There are some things which you could try regulating: for example, a lot of what drives the dubious aspects comes back to algorithmic promotion maximizing time on site and advertising views. Legislators could ban algorithmic promotion for children, require companies to identify and curb addictive levels of consumption, or require companies to put more effort into moderation on the posts & comments which they promote.

Similarly, I believe at least some countries are exploring requirements to clearly indicate photos which have been modified or retouched.

I agree that content consumed by facebook/instagram can be addictive. But I don't think this is unique to them, I think youtube (my personal weakness), netflix, television, video-games and movies all fall into this category. The particular problem with instagram is that it encourages people to post the "highlights" of their life. Therefore people end up consuming a super un-real version of what life is and end up depressed when they compare it to their own. This issue is not a problem of an algorithm or moderation but of one's personal expectations.

There are tons of great examples where algorithmic feed is useful, particularly when your feed is related to activities such as cooking, music and exercise.

In theory I think the concept of forcing the companies to behave a certain way is ideal but I'm still unsure of what type of legislation could be put in place to address the problem in the article.

Yes, I don't think anyone is saying that this is unique to Facebook — they just get the most attention by virtue of popularity and profitability, and having lied about what they knew and when in various related areas. Ignoring the question of the exact effects of all of the political use of social media in the previous decade, that simply happening to the degree it did guaranteed that they'd get a lot more scrutiny.

I definitely agree that there isn't a proven solution for this problem — that's normal for major technological changes. We saw the same thing with printed books, magazines, and newspapers; radio; TV; the internet; etc. — not to mention things like cars which weren't communications technologies but definitely had major impacts on society. I think the best thing we can get right now is more of the data companies like Facebook and Google tend to avoid sharing, especially after various governments experiment with rules and it becomes possible to see what does and doesn't work.

Cigarettes aren't highly regulated because they are addictive, they are regulated because they literally rot and kill your internal organs.

"Some people feel bad about their bodies after viewing social media" doesn't nearly meet the threshold of measurable harm that tobacco does. And algorithmic promotion can be positive, unlike the universally health-corrosive effects of cigarettes.

That's not the relevant part of the comparison: the point we were talking about is that there are plenty of examples of things where society uses regulation rather than expecting most individuals to make good choices all of the time.

Where the impact of cigarettes is relevant is in the discussion of how _strong_ a particular regulation should be. A deadly threat certainly warrants stricter rules than something minor, just as we do not enforce zoning violations with the death penalty.

If there's a specific policy proposal you could talk about whether you think it'd be effective or overkill but instead you appear to be arguing that there's no need to even consider the range of policy options.

There are quite a few things to think about here: 1) When do we agree science has actually reached a conclusion about something? Facebook is quite a new phenomenon. Social studies research is notoriously difficult to replicate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis While it's pretty clear social media has drawbacks, I am not convinced they are materially worse for kids than Netflix or pop culture. 2) Why do we only think about the kids? If we say that social media is more harmful than good - why not ban it altogether? There's this sense that after 18 years old we are all responsible autonomous creatures worthy of maximum freedom but I think that's not based on anything. 3) What happens if we decide to hold everything in our lives to the same yardstick of how good it is to our mental health? I mean social media shouldn't be the exception right? Is watching a violent sadistic show like Games of Thrones good for our mental health? Or watching T.V in general for more than 1 hour a day? How about using Twitter? Or the internet in general? Owning a smartphone? Looking at your smartphone for more than 30 minutes a day? The list of things in our modern lives that have a questionable effect on our mental well-being is enormous.

Or walk into a casino and look at the people pouring their savings into addictive slot machines. It's kind of eerie how modern slot machines actually appear to be converging with mobile games in many ways.

https://media.gettyimages.com/photos/todd-matthews-and-emily...

https://www.bestuscasinos.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/slo...

https://ak.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/1023380611/thumb/1....

Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work is a recipe for failure. How many billions wasted on the war on drugs? People are always going to want to view extremist content, see beautiful people that cause body image issues, etc.

If people didn't want to see it, they wouldn't click on it. Banning it or regulating it is not going to change that, it's just going to cause it to shift elsewhere. It's human nature.

> Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work is a recipe for failure.

Regulations come in flavors other than draconian. Do you have a specific policy proposal which you're referring to? Otherwise it seems somewhat disingenuous to predict the failure of something which we don't even have enough detail to discuss.

War on drugs is not an appropriate analogy here. A better analogy would be a known addictive, but legal, product being subject to tighter regulation to reduce its overall appeal and social harm--e.g. tobacco.

> as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies ...

I agree that this is a test of our society.

> ... and are capable of discipline and self-control

These organizations have enormous resources dedicated to exploiting our frailties and overcoming an individual's discipline and self-control. One option is to continue to expect every man, woman, and child to fight this battle alone in their own head every day.

But we'd probably achieve better results more efficiently by organizing ourselves as well. Then we can combat it collectively as a community and a society like we have done for other human frailties. This would mean things like education, societal pressure, and regulation.

Yes I agree that it's difficult for us to fight individually. I believe we should start informing children about the dangers of the internet once they begin to consume customized feed-based content. I believe parents also have the right to (and should to a certain extent) regulate consumption of their kid's digital media.

> I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control.

I think it's a losing game.

For as long as big social is allowed to be “free” with its paying customers being advertisers, it will keep benefitting from trolling and other unhealthy behaviours (narcissism?) that happen to drive up engagement and ad revenue. With user lock-in, full control over UI and algorithms at its disposal, big social has way too many tricks up its sleeve for your average tired-after-work-or-school, running-out-of-willpower, vulnerable user to consciously compensate for.

Normalising paid social (forcing interoperability, downgrading platforms to pipes) is probably the most straightforward way for us to finally gain the ability to vote with our wallet and to choose client software crafted with our needs in mind. (I’m not a proponent of regulation bloat or special rules for select big companies; I think a small but strategically focused general requirement could be enough for such a change to happen.)

We aren’t smarter than these companies. They spend billions of dollars and hire top people in their fields to keep us engaged.

The idea that this is just a lack of willpower on our end is total bs

>These companies are always going to want to hold our attention but it's us at the end of the day who decide to give them our attention.

These companies are already amplifying content they think will hold our attention, by leaning into people's worst instincts.

>In the fall of 2018, Jonah Peretti, chief executive of online publisher BuzzFeed, emailed a top official at Facebook Inc. The most divisive content that publishers produced was going viral on the platform, he said, creating an incentive to produce more of it.

Mr. Peretti blamed a major overhaul Facebook had given to its News Feed algorithm earlier that year to boost “meaningful social interactions,” or MSI, between friends and family, according to internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that quote the email.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-algorithm-change-zucke...

If you read the original article, Facebook employees felt, based on their research, that Instagram was worse for teenage girls than Snapchat or Tik-Tok.

So maybe they understand the dangers of Instagram better than you do?

If you are the designer of an environment that induces pathologic behavior in people is your fault or theirs?

PS: Where is the people that use to proudly say "with great power comes great responsibility"?

Where are they? Making salaries beyond most people’s imaginations. And many honestly believe that “just” enabling communication and engagement can’t be a bad thing.

I think it's equivalent to the tobacco industry. They didn't invent smoking tobacco but they built it into an industry. Once they were aware of the health effects of smoking was it their fault that they suppressed this information and continued to market their products to more people, including children?

I think this is exactly what should and will happen to social media. We, as a culture, did very well without social media for millenia. The internet was fine without it too.

I think it’s obviously a mix, however, an algorithm that maximizes purely for attention or time on site causes a lot of issues.

Sometimes people are seeking something that is beneficial, and maximizing that is fine. Lots more times, people are mostly responding to angry posts, or falling down a conspiracy rabbit hole that they cannot critically think their way out of. Maximizing the attention of those people is clearly negative.

So does society share some blame? Sure. Does an algorithm that maximizes some people into very bad places share some blame? Absolutely.

I've never really believed it was Hollywood or the fashion industry that created it. People know who's attractive in their circle. You compete with them. The magazines and ads have upped the ante, and facebook turned it into an addiction, but the mechanism was there all along, I think.

The mechanism are also there to prefer sugar and fat to healthier food, to become addicted to nicotine and opiates, and to do many other self-harming things.

That doesn't mean giant corporations should allowed to exploit these mechanisms for profit.

Of course. If anything, it gives them a greater responsibility (and accountability), because it's such an easy trap.

Perhaps, but what would you propose?

Do we take the approach we take with opiates, and ban companies from allowing users to upload images?

Or do we take the approach we take with nicotine, and force companies to disclose the possible harms that can come from social interactions online?

Or is there another approach you'd propose?

Hopefully this doesn't come across too confrontational - I genuinely am curious as to what solutions are viable, and I do recognize the harm social media can cause. But it seems to me that as long as there exists any platform where we can freely post photos, we'll have toxic comparisons, and I don't see more education changing this - I don't think it's a rational choice that we make, to choose to compare ourselves to others.

> it was created long long ago by Hollywood and the fashion industry.

It was created much longer ago than that. We've had beauty standards for as long as humans have created art, and probably for as long as humans have existed. It's probably biological to a large degree, although the manifestation has changed over time. As with many of social media's deleterious effects, they hijack, amplify, and distort our natural inclinations for their own purposes.

> they hijack, amplify, and distort our natural inclinations for their own purposes

Ironically it seems a totalitarian country like China is better equipped to deal with these things (see how they simply banned teens from gaming lately). The liberal democracies number one value is individual freedom; well it works out great most of the time but other times we are not that great ourselves in handling our lives and using our time constructively. Some of us get bored, addicted and obsessed under certain circumstances and I don't actually see an easy solution for that. Maybe social media should be age restricted like porn?

Facebook and social platforms in general are just very efficient in amplifying all these toxic elements of our culture

> Facebook and social platforms in general are just very efficient in amplifying all these <insert adjective here> elements of our culture

Is it as good at amplifying goodwill towards friends and neighbors as it is at amplifying negative sentiments?

I don't think the former scales, whereas the latter lends itself to amplification. Authenticity and community require much more complexity to uphold than anger, anxiety, and resentment.

I do take your point, and think that un-nuanced conversations about the evils of Social Media are unhelpful, but I think the scaling problem is the real danger. Negativity scales globally, positive sentiment and experience is limited to the individual or local level.

What do you think of any of this?

> Is it as good at amplifying goodwill towards friends and neighbors as it is at amplifying negative sentiments?

Probably, but because of salience asymmetry, we don't realise it. Like the good stuff is often more local as you say, and more distributed, while the bad stuff makes the news.

Yes with that I agree. But we are already toxic, let's not blame Facebook for all our problems. And I just don't see how Twitter, TikTok or anything similar is better; maybe we should just say teens can't be on social media ? Unlikely to pass.

Not all algorithms are created equal. TikTok's for instance seems to be biased to make weirdos find their niche, as opposed to the more binary steamrollers coming from Silicon Valley's monoculture.

Yes I think the "social platforms in general" part is key. It's hard to imagine what a social platform would look like that wasn't harmful in this way. Maybe chat apps I suppose, since 1-on-1 interaction is less of a popularity contest.

But anyway, I think the reason that facebook is aware of the problem but doing nothing is not that they are cynically exploiting people, and it's rather that they don't know how to solve it.

> If it's not Facebook it's gonna be TikTok or something other platform.

You are right that there will always be a different “drug” that exposes the same underlying societal issues. But given that FB+Insta are /algorithmically/ pushing these posts to users to increase engagement, it is their problem too.

Every company will push whatever it needs to maximize user attention.They are all out there selling ads to make money, I don't think the other players are different than Facebook.

Please stop with the incessant whataboutism.

Nobody is saying that this is not a general social media problem, just that this article is reporting on FB hiding crucial information.

Quite a few people here argued that Facebook is somehow doing a special evil, so yes people are kinda saying that.

You’re probably confused because you’re speaking quite generally, while most of us here are commenting after reading the article:

> “They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others." "'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle."

I am not confused, the article is under a paywall so probably lots of people only read the tite, like me. But feel free to skip my comments of course.

You can often get past a paywall by plugging the URL to the paywalled article into the wayback machine. In fact, the top comment (at least in my HN reader) is just an archive link to the article.

>You’re probably confused because

That's needlessly rude and doesn't add anything to the conversation. Lets try and be nice :) You do have some valid points.

Once there are algorithms ranking the posts, they are meddling with the culture.

I kinda agree maybe this can be better regulated but if someone decides to follow Beyonce or Lady Gaga (sorry I'm not really up to date with pop stars) or some supermodel, how are you gonna prevent that? As for algorithm ranking, I suppose 40 years ago it was a "human algorithm" reaching the conclusion that you better have hot chicks drinking coke on commercials, how is that different?

I'm just going to assume you are not a teen girl. And I'm certainly not one so we can just pull things out of our asses. But I don't think that the issue is the pop star or super model any more. It's the influencers and the idea that "anyone" can be top dog now. This means that you have young regular girls following other young "regular" girls. And if you do what they do, use the same products, be as charismatic then you too can be an influencer. Maybe not a global one but at your school. So suddenly you have young girls that "expose" themselves publically for their 62 followers and pretending to be a influencer. Which makes you a very large target for bullying and "harsh truths" that will end your "influencer career" and at the same time that sliver of self esteem that a teenager normally has. And this is 100% caused by having a platform that is "democratic" and allows everyone to "compete for likes on equal terms".

The difference is that Instagram/etc inundate you with nonstop algorithmically “related” posts from every supermodel, not just the ones you chose to follow.

Following a or b is not the problem. Ranking is. As you mentioned, it was already a problem in the times of simple broadcasting, it became an even bigger problem now. Our massive servers will go brrrrr serving algorithms all over the world much faster than we can dream about interveening. The Rohingya crisis stands as a terrifying example.

Though it's an interesting question whether the same culture would develop if the same thing happened again.

Not that it really matters, I don't think either would help you find a fix that doesn't involve destroying the whole thing.

In the 80's people insisted that fashion magazines and beauty pageants were "toxic" for teen girls, for the exact same reasons. Apparently acknowledging that beauty exists is harmful to some people's mental health. Since it's unlikely that we're ever going to convince everybody that there's no such thing as physical beauty, maybe we'd be better off working out ways to help people come to terms with not being at the pinnacle of it while still accepting that there can be and is such a pinnacle.

To me, it's obvious that "social" media is extreamly bad for people, and specially extra bad for young people who compare themselves with others a lot.

If we figured too much TV was bad for people, "social" media is 100 times worse. How is it even possible to still feel good about yourself after spending time there? I don't use any of these services because I see them as obviously bad for our mental health.

It might indeed be harmful for teens, or lets say overall unhelpful to them.but there are many examples where Facebook provides useful information, helps people stay in touch with family and friends or even date.

I agree that we need to hold ourselves responsible for our actions. If it's not going to be facebook capitalizing on our behavior, it will be some other company. From the article it seems that most teens are aware that they have an unhealthy relationship with instagram. Tackling this issue in a sustainable way is something I believe most teens are capable of this with the right guidance.

If we should hold ourselves responsible, so should companies.

Tackling this issue in a sustainable way is something I believe most companies are capable of with the right guidance.

Morally I agree with you but the pessimist in me thinks that is unrealistic. I believe facebook is primarily motivated by their earnings. If an unhealthy behavior with instagram leads to more engagement, which means more ad sales, why would facebook interfere dramatically with that recipe? I won't be surprsied if they already A/B tested more "healthy" types of content with their feed and recognized it lead to a dip in engagement.

> If we should hold ourselves responsible, so should companies.

Why "should" FB do so? It is doing the "right thing" for its stake holders. Of course, Ideally they should, but realistically not going to happen.

It is us who need to protect our families because we are incentivized to do so. We have failed in protecting our own interests.

It is no different from the drug dealers in our town, we warn our children of the dangers, take steps within our means to reduce our children's interactions, etc.

Social media is neither good nor bad. It is a tool for communication.

Most users benefit from social media and you can't condemn them for not questioning other aspects.

Nevertheless, it is essential to question the intentions and procedures of the company behind it. I believe that external observers and institutions are required for this to happen and to spread awareness of things running afoul.

However, like so many things, software can be used for good, as well as for evil purposes. The difficult task is to define that boundary without compromising the utility for most users.

Related topics: Games, app stores, default browsers, etc.... How far does the state have to intervene? How much responsible behaviour can be expected from the user themselves?

> Most users benefit from social media

What evidence supports this? The story is about evidence that this is in fact not true.

The software we are talking about is not dropped from the heavens. It is created by extremely large, powerful companies in pursuit of profit. If this software harms people, these companies are not neutral actors merely swept along with the tide of technology.

> How far does the state have to intervene? How much responsible behaviour can be expected from the user themselves?

Surely the most relevant question is how much responsible behavior can be expected from the companies themselves? They are the ones armed with research departments actually studying the effects of how their software affects people.

There are quotes from internal research in the article that Instagram is worse than the alternatives like tiktok. And internal researchers are quoted as saying that this research gets internal pushback because it’s standing between people and their bonuses. Those bonuses aren’t for letting culture play out; they’re for things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. It seems super clear that it’s an Instagram problem.

A great example is the girl who searched for exercise tips once and then her feed was algorithmically focused on weight loss tips and the like afterwards, which is not a cultural issue.

"As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power."

Don't you mean "as a species"?

Culture is one of the few tools we have to overcome these natural inclinations. Religion, too.

It would be VERY different if Facebook was not a free, ad-driven service where their sole optimization is engagement. If Facebook was a subscription service where users had 'timelines' (remember that Facebook era?), we would not be seeing the psychological phenomenon we see to this magnitude. Same for Twitter, Insta, TikTok, etc.

As humans we adore beauty and power*

FTFY

Most issues are human issues. Just because it is a human issue does not make it alright to exploit it at scale with such invasiveness. Especially since they know that is it harmful. Sounds like cigarettes marketed to children. It's not a cigarette company issue it's a human issue after all! We are not liable.

The medium is the message.

The message of the Web isn't looking so great, all around, I'd say.

>Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power...Facebook seems to be just a platform where our natural desires can have a play

Yes it is Facebook's or Instagram's fault. We are endowed with our natural desires (which are even more fundamentally biological than cultural in this case), that we have no choice over, but we have the choice to remove bad technologies from our societies.

This is in fact the only choice we have. You can't cure people of their desire for power or beauty, but you can destroy the tools that amplify the worst instincts we have.

Facebook was created to rate young women on their looks so... yes?

Going back to the similarity between Facebook and the tobacco industry that the article points out, you could make the case that Phillip Morris is not to blame because people are naturally prone to nicotine addiction. I hope that at some point we as a society figure out that unregulated social media has the same damaging potential as tobacco, alcohol or gambling, especially for kids.

> As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power To be fair, humanity has adored these three traits throughout history. This adoration is somewhat built into us naturally. Our current culture certainly amplifies and capitalizes on it. Facebook is a big player within the current culture.

> Facebook just makes it super easy for people to become obsessed with something by "connecting" with it.

“Just”? I would say this is plenty enough. And this is done willingly. So is it their fault ? Yes (not exclusively though)

Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture?

Yes.

Implying that Facebook/Instagram isn't our culture.

It's one and the same.

Humans are easily addicted. It seems tantamount to selling drugs that are harmful to the minds of children. It is debatable about whether or not selling those drugs to adults is ok, but I'm not sure many people would be OK with selling them to children.

Why not both?

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