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Comment by macksd | Hacker News Reader

As a side note, I'm a little saddened when I see friends apologize for their posts. There's such a reaction to "influencer culture" that people feel like foodgrams and humblebrags are a terrible thing, and in excess they certainly can be, but I think from most people it's a billion times better than strawman political arguments and manipulative media that is far worse for our mental health than just comparing ourselves to someone's good day.

I had a friend post a picture of food made from ingredients they had made in their own garden, and it made them feel so good to eat it because they had had a rough year and it was a good personal win, so they apologetically posted a photo of it.

Forget the rest of the trash on Facebook - seeing a friend I haven't seen in a while experience something good and being able to share that with them is something we need more of in the world. I'd trade away all the "only geniuses can remember the order of operations for this future scam page" or "you won't believe how this person misrepresents their opponents views and tears that misrepresentation apart!" and keep stuff like this.

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I really do believe there's a solution for that.

We need whatsapp/telegram/signal to display a feed based on user's status and nothing more. It's almost free, frictionless and free from ads (for now). But sharing without the widest audience (just to the social graph of your contacts).

It could bring back Google+'s circles so you don't share the same stuff with colleagues and friends and family, but your feed page would display it all the same.

Decentralized micro blogging without the huge tech cost and barrier of entry of mastodon.

People could choose how people are allowed to react to their status: limited in time, to the latest status update, limited to emoji/thumbs up reactions, allows starting new chat with that status as a topic, etc.

It also reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pownce which I thought had some great ideas at the time.

There's no money in it though, so maybe bring back the old whatsapp model ? 1€ for 6 months or something ?

Or maybe just tell people to start a group chat in which they post updates ? Facebook/Twitter/Instagram got that easy to post/single tunnel thing simplified to the max, I don't think you can do better without being centralized.

I find group chats with different groups of friends and family has filled this niche. There's no ads. There's no technical barrier to entry. No need to even sign up for a service. The stakes are low, messages can just be a meme or some nice photos from a day trip. The only downside is the ephemeral nature of texting. Even then, my MIL figured out how to save pictures to her phone and they occasionally show up in the calendars she makes as Christmas gifts.

Imho, the big toxic thing on Facebook wasn't the "news", it was "your friend liked this" and "your friend commented on this". That's where we get inundated with awfulness. My friends don't post/share terrible stuff, but they do occasionally interact with terrible stuff.

Well if you learn to live your life and enjoy time with your friends you will be much happier.

I don’t care what my friends are doing outside of our interactions. Maybe if they started to murder puppies in their spare time.

My friends apparently LOVE solving ambiguous order of operations problems.

I think the ideal would be if everyone had social account like they do with email where they post their content be it pictures text video what have you. and friending someone was simply subscribbing to a rss feed hosted by that persons provider. possiblly with a automated generation and exchange of pgp key for encryption/signing under the hood

Social media sites generally want a large user base. This approach sounds very technical so I'd imagine this being a big barrier to entry. PGP will make this even worse.

My thought is using PGP under the hood where users would never see it basically as a personal ssl cert only invisible to the user.

What do you see as the "huge tech cost and barrier of entry of mastodon"?

I agree with you that I wish social media was full of more posts like this, but foodgrams and humble brags as you put it are also one of the reasons I avoid social media these days. Seeing a feed of the best moments of other peoples lives leaves me feeling depressed. "Comparison is the thief of joy." I'm happy for my friends, but seeing it all collected in one place makes my own life feel inadequate. I'm much happier when I avoid social media.

It's strange... I thought we were wired as a species to live vicariously, to feel joy when others are blessed, and feel pain when they suffer. You're not the only one that doesn't get that out of Facebook... Why? Is it the quantity? The format? What turns it into a place of covetousness and bitterness?

It's definitely the format and the quantity for me. Seeing an old friend in person and having them tell me about their life and accomplishments, even showing me pictures, does not make me feel the same way. I think it's also the fact that I turn to social media when I'm feeling lonely, so seeing a feed of people at their best moments, on vacation with friends, getting married, having children, etc... makes me feel even more lonely and isolated. Also, social media is full of people that I have lost touch with, who never check in with me or reach out to see how I'm doing. I've found that I feel much more connected by reaching out to old friends one on one and catching up with them via texting or phone calls. Likes and comments just don't cut it.

I think also that the format is different, the link between people is not the same on social media posts. There is a difference between seeing something interesting, thinking of a friend who might be interested and sending it to him with a personal message like "check this out, it made me think of you, you might like it" and just putting something on display for people to see it, and add like to it to give you some small pride and some endorphin reinforcement of the posting behaviour.

It seems to me that the direction of the thinking goes the other way: in one, you think of a friend and contact him, in the other, you think of yourself, show yourself to the world and people send you likes.

When I thought of this, it seemed to me that social media is often some sort of "narcissistic exposure of oneself" and encourages this type of behaviour from me and I didn't like it. This plus the fact that I didn't like Facebook's behaviour with it's user's data made me delete my account, and I didn't miss it since. If I think of friends, I have other means of contacting them that have a more personal feel.

This is very true. And it reminds me that, at first, I did like Facebook, and I thought it was fun and cool. It's only when you realize how little meaning there is to the interactions that they start to feel shallow and depressing.

I feel the same way, and to me it's all about the authenticity. The context of social media takes away from the authenticity of the post. Someone may genuinely just want to share some dish that they just created, but in the context of social media, you can never be sure if they're posting it because of that, or posting it for the easy likes or easy engagement. Social media has commodified human interaction.

I forget where I read it, but it's similar to the idea that if someone you love makes a meal for you, at the end of it, you don't ask "how much do I owe you?" and break out your wallet. It's distasteful. Likewise, you don't do someone for a loved one or friend and afterwards say, "well that will be $X".

Posting on social media has a reward of sharing and liking, and as a result, to me, it turns human interaction into an exchange. (And I will admit that there is an element to that already, in terms of owing people favors etc., but the "bookkeeping" that we do is generally in our heads and is hard to quantify, which makes it a bit fuzzier and less commodified.)

"having them tell me ... does not make me feel the same way... "

You don't get the warm fuzzies when someone tries to harvest intimacy across hundreds of their relationships simultaneously with a post? Weird.

For me, it's the dishonesty of facebook and instagram. The whole culture seems to be based around lying about misrepresenting how good your life is.

I love seeing a post about something that made a friend happy, but so much of the content on facebook is so obviously not an honest post about something that made somebody happy, but rather something they felt should have made them happy, or something that somebody else would be jealous of, or worst of all a brand trying to co-opt the "something that made me happy" style of posting, that it's ruined the few honest moments of joy.

Facebook isn't doing anything new. This sort of phenomenon is something of a universal human experience. For example, "Keeping up with the Joneses" is a phrase that's been in the English language for at least a century. All social media does is crank its input gain as high as it will go.

It's the bias. You _only_ see the best moments out of the lives of others. When watching TV or movies, we used to become depressed about comparing ourselves to celebrities and their silly TV lives, until some of the sheen of Hollywood has been torn down to reveal how utterly awful achieving and keeping a 6-pack of abs can be. Or how 6 broke idiots could never actually afford a huge flat in NYC. Now I think people see it for what it is, and it doesn't depress them anymore.

But seeing people who are your peers, who have mostly followed the same paths as you being far happier and living much full and rich lives (by appearance), and _only_ seeing that, I think, becomes a subtle reminder of your own failings.

We just need to see some of that sheen taken down. If, somehow, we saw _all_ of the shit people go through in their lives, and not just the good, maybe social media would be way different.

Personally, I find it incredibly shallow to post about food you're eating or places you're visiting. That's just money, and you might as well just take a picture of the money you're spending. I prefer to see things people make in my feed (art, woodworking, metalworking, electronics, etc.). It impresses and inspires me to see people out there making the world better with their minds and bodies, not just consuming.

It's one thing to feel joy when others do. But when everything's joy, then it's just normalcy. But when you know it isn't really the case that everything's joy, then the appearance of it comes off as fake. Because it is fake. Then you feel jaded. But we also can't help but have a part of us that thinks "no, this is normal."

There's also the asynchronous nature. If you're out with friends and hear about their engagement after the fact (among other catching up), that's one thing. But when you're sitting on the couch lonely and see photos from moments after the engagement (and nothing else), it's just that much more of a gap.

Then throw in everyone's highlights with their outrage and some random shared clickbait (fwd:fwd:fwd:fwd:You won't believe what this evil politician did!), and it's just toxic.

Maybe the distance and the volume? I belong to some whatsapp and Telegram groups with people I know and I meet with at least every few months. We share stuff, even foodgrams. It's ok to hear from them. I can't just cope with all the stuff posted by some people I know but I didn't meet with for years. There are too many of them. I need time to live my life so I gave up Facebook, downsized my network and do things with people I meet.

> feel joy when others are blessed, and feel pain when they suffer.

Most people will probably acknowledge that it's more complicated than that. I think it might have to do with how easily comparable the other person's life is to our own.

I can't explain it well, but here's an example:

I saw a video of a child surprising their step-dad with paperwork for the official name change (kid accepting the Dad's last name). The Dad cried out of joy.

The video made me feel good.

On the other hand, seeing someone that I graduated highschool with getting promoted and being more successful than me makes me jealous.

Why? Because he has something and I don't, but would be within the realm of possibility to achieve. This behavior can also be observed in monkeys, so I don't question it too much.

Because people only share happy moments on Facebook. When you're catching up with someone, you're probably in a "normal" state of mind. They'll share a happy moment and the mood will spike up, then drop to baseline. Then you'll share a sad moment and the mood will spike down, return to baseline, etc. Facebook is always happy, never normal, never sad (unless it's in some way a humblebrag. "Ugh had to put in 20 hours of overtime at my killer job"). Imagine living in the crest of a manic depressive's life, forever. That's Facebook.

that's a very simplistic idea of humanity. yes, people can feel joy when others are blessed, but they can feel anything else they can feel also. surely you're familiar with envy at least.

How do you suppose Tiktok fits into all this? On the one hand, it's still a glamorous best-of reel, but it's also a lot more silliness, with sketch comedy and various remix formats (lipsync, duet, etc) being a big thing, not to mention significant subcommunities posting earnestly about topics like self esteem, mental health, etc (and with the needed community-management tools to enable the resulting discussion to not just become a Twitter-style free for all).

I'm not a super active user, but as an observer, I do wonder if much of it is pushing those same buttons but in a perhaps more subtle way— like a lot of "wellness" creators who cultivate an apparently authentic persona from which to deliver a never ending stream of motivational you're-worth-it type content meant to encourage and uplift, but that ultimately rings a bit hollow.

I think community plays a huge part. I'm not a tiktok user but I get the impression that a lot of the early tiktok users were heavily creative users. It's like a flywheel.

As these sites/services gain more popularity communities tend to splinter and it's up to the service to keep things going in whatever direction they want to via things like the fyp algorithm.

i also avoid social media, but for the opposite reason. i'm not bothered seeing everyone else's greatest hits, but curating my life and thoughts to present to an audience was wearing me down, and when i finally realized that's what i was doing, i got off it.

presumably there are some personality types that social media works well for, as opposed to personality types that work well for social media, of which there are clearly a lot.

Maybe it's not the healthiest thing, but I kind of enjoy having that as a secondary motivation, especially for projects I'm on the edge for— things like bread baking, kombucha making, small electronics repair, etc. If I know I can take a few pictures and tell a fun story around it, then it can be the motivation to get something started or power it through.

I guess the one boundary is that I don't generally mine my interactions with my kids for internet kudos— I don't want my camera in their faces when we're at the park or reading a book, making them feel like I'm only there spending time with them to score internet kudos later.

Facebook was good when it was just about adding your people and then seeing posts of your Facebook friends and messaging with them. It turned harmful when they forced the news feed content on everyone.

I'd like to share the most coherent conversation regarding the harms of Facebook (to a certain extent big tech algorithms/ML/AI). This is with Tristan Harris, Daniel Schmachtenberger and Frank Luntz. I didn't find any dull moment so please watch the whole thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPAOzlqcGIQ

A lot of social media posts come down to bragging under the guise of "celebrating life". People will go on a vacation and then meter out the pictures from it over months to appear like they're on perpetual vacations. I don't mind people apologizing for those.

To say nothing of edited photos.

Yeah that's fair, and I've seen that. I think the key is authenticity. As others have mentioned sometimes it's just a firehose of good things happening to other people. I've also seen a friend speak candidly about their struggle with mental health and suicide - again great to see everyone rally around them, and be aware of it. Probably a good way for them to get more support, and make other people aware that (a) current mental health resources kinda suck, (b) other people might be struggling just like you, and (c) everyone realize that their friend needs help.

But yeah - being vulnerable and open like that is hard and not for everyone. And it can also be faked for attention. Ultimately I don't know what a platform is supposed to do if everyone starts optimizing for the algorithm or is constantly consuming the very content that is bad for them but doesn't want censorship. There's no win - social media would be amazing if everyone was kind, honest and authentic. But I realize that's asking the impossible on a global scale.

> People will go on a vacation and then meter out the pictures from it over months to appear like they're on perpetual vacations. I don't mind people apologizing for those.

I've noticed this increasingly. It's sorta bizarre?

People won't look at a entire catalog of 100+ photos. But if you do a few at a time you will get more eye balls.

People who stream usually don't dump an entire 8 hour stream in one video on YouTube. How many people would sit through the entire 8 hour video? But do clips and more people will watch more content. From what I've seen at least. (I'm not a streamer FYI)

The "pretending to be on vacation" thing is super wired. Haven't been on Facebook in years. Is it a new trend.

People also do this on IG

Stick to messenger apps. It's tough, I know, because of network effects, but I managed to convert about 20 friends of mine to use Signal. I deliberately avoid Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp since they can be intercepted easily, and if you're caught making a joke about ISIS, the Whatsapp police can unencrypt your messages which kinda sucks.

Instant messages are more personal and you're not broadcasting your life to 5000 randos, who could potentially weaponize that data if they wanted (potential employer saw your meme about binge drinking & alcohol consumption? Too bad).

> if you're caught making a joke about ISIS, the Whatsapp police can unencrypt your messages

Would you please clarify this? I know that messages flagged by the recipient can be read by moderators [1], but I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at here.

I'm not defending WhatsApp (I've advocated for Signal since the days of TextSecure), but AFAIK the messages are encrypted using the Signal protocol, so I'm not sure how the "WhatsApp police" would be able to determine if you said something specific without the recipient reporting it.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-...

Yes I was referring to this when I meant the `Whatsapp police`. I actually tried to dig up the article to backup my claims, but was at a loss, since I didn't bookmark it.

So in this case we have Whatsapp users essentially snitching on each other and getting posts flagged for the purposes of law enforcement, and having those message unencrypted. Whilst this is largely helpful, there is the potential for false positives (e.g a meme about ISIS getting flagged as 'extremist' and 'violent')

It's a tricky one, because although the feature may help save lives and such, I am just uncomfortable with it, since the E2E encryption is slightly broken because of this mechanism in place.

Right? My pandemic hobby was cocktails. Never even tried drinking anything more complicated than a screwdriver before, but fell down the cocktail youtube rabbit hole because of "how to drink".

So, over the course of a year I made a hundred different cocktails and blogged my experiences on my blog, twitter, and Facebook. Most of the cocktails were simple 3-ingredient things based on what I had available, but a few were elaborate messes like eggnog or a Ramos gin fizz.

I had my neighbors coming over to me when I was outside thanking me for the cocktail blogging and saying it was one of their favourite things to see on Facebook, and asked me to keep posting them.

Social media doesn't have to be terrible.

Agreed. Personal responsibility is always a factor. Some people game the system by raising the victim flag which makes them a protected class and the idea that they had a hand in the situation is not talked about cuz victim blaming.

> Forget the rest of the trash on Facebook

The thing is, Facebook actively pushes the trash at you, because trash content monetizes the best.

The only effective avoidance mechanism is to not use it (unless there's some facebook-specific browser plugin that strips it all out).

Claims like these hurt your case against Facebook. For most people Facebook shows completely innocuous stuff. I have absolutely nothing political timeline, and the only political thing I have seen in 5 years was by an Aunt (who I muted). For those who love heated political debates and conspiracy theories, Facebook will serve up that content (trash). Other people hear about all the awful stuff on Facebook, check their feed, see pictures of their grand-babies, and wonder what the heck everyone is talking about.

I don't even have a Facebook account. But with my relatives that do, this stuff leaks in from seeing their coworkers' & acquaintances' posts and escalates over time once there's even the slightest hook with the algorithm. Any reasonable political opinion they might have in thumbs-upping some innocuous content eventually routes into the algo feeding more extremist content.

Most people don't outright block offtopic material, they just gloss over it, and it still ends up with influence because that's what Facebook optimizes for. Plus people will still take the occasional click of curiosity to see what some posts are all about, even if they're not really into that content.

Yes, if you do have the discipline to take a zero-tolerance personal policy and immediately block even inoffensive things that just touch into the realm of polarizing, you can probably keep your feeds clean. But most people (eg, non-HN types) don't understand what Facebook is doing and don't think to actively defend against it, and just absent-mindedly consume the feed with no click discipline.

It may be easier for adults to see those highlight reels for what they are, and minimize the feelings of inadequacy and envy. At this point though, it's pretty much established that they do harm young adults and teenagers.

While I don't really follow any food social media, I've certainly sent pictures of strange food I've bought or made to my wife or parents. Food is literally one of the most universal things on earth, so it can be interesting if I go to a country and try a dish I've never had before, and to send pictures in the process.

I never really understood shitting on people posting food pics. How exactly is it hurting anyone?

In essence, the algorithms created to give each user the feed they want has, in fact, given every user the feed the masses want.

That is to say, some people want real, individual, original and ultimately personal content. But the overwhelming activity and reactions to content has driven that out, and left us only with "mass appeal" - the things that get reactions and shares.

The only reasons there is value in facebook (to me)

1) To get updates on friends or family I don't talk to regularly, including their garden food pictures.

2) To use facebook marketplace, because in my region its basically taken over the online classifieds and if I want to buy or sell something facebook is the way to go currently.

Only years will tell whether FB will evolve to become a humanity+ or a humanity- company.

> ... I see friends apologize for their posts.

Canadians?

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