Comment by te_chris | Hacker News Reader

Comment by te_chris | Hacker News Reader

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This and the author's other post both remind me of tyler the creator's famous tweet about cyber bullying (https://twitter.com/tylerthecreator/status/28567082226430771...).

We choose where we put our time. Obviously it's harder for teens etc, but we still have agency in this. I installed an app called clearspace that makes instagram annoying to open. It's killed it for me. Using it less has shown me how little value it was delivereing me.

So, how does this reconcile? The author is too deep in social, they're not seeing the forest for the trees. The problem isn't some minute one about which social platform matters, the problem is that they're bad products 90% of the time, with the occasional gleams of brilliance that keep us hooked.

I get the same value out of checking instagram for 5 min a day that I did when I didn't have the chastity belt app and could check it continuously. This is a problem for Zuck. And Musk.

AI could read instgram for me and summarise, and my utility would increase even further.

I’m with you, having quit social media some 10 years ago. That said, not everybody has the ability to exercise their agency. In this social media addiction isn’t much different from any other addiction. Many folks find themselves incapable of making a change here, while some like you (and myself) simply decided one day. Same goes for a lot of other things. I quit drinking alcohol because I saw it as a negative in my life. Other things have been much, much harder for me.

> not everybody has the ability to exercise agency

Disaster awaits a person whose habits become lucrative for someone else.

At the same time, the distribution of Meta users by country is interesting. The top 5 countries for Meta are (with some variance among Funkbook, Insipigram, Wartsapp):

    * India 
    * USA
    * Indonesia
    * Brazil
    * Mexico

[1] _ https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/facebook-users-by-cou...

Agree, I'm certainly not trying to minimise the effects of real addiction, but I do think for a lot of us it's more crutch than dependency.

One thing to note is that Mastodon - at least in its current form - is a lot lower intensity than Instagram. We don't have algorithms that try to hunt for content to "maximize engagement". So you're very likely to run out of stuff on there at about the same time as your 5 minutes a day. And the author already knows most of Meta's products are garbage attention sinks.

Sounds like Mastodon is still in its eternal september and pre-enshittification phase; it'll either peter out over time (likely since it feels like only techbros use it), or get an influx of users / "normies" that make people feel nostalgia about when they would only see a dozen new posts a day. Then commercial interests will take over.

If the 'normies' discover Mastodon, the biggest problem won't be enshittification. I run my own instance, it can't be enshittified because I have no profit motive. On the other hand, it can be spammed, and I've already noticed several instances of ActivityPub spam that I've had to deal with.

Think less Facebook, more e-mail.

From my perspective the problem is often other people... without a Facebook account I have a hard time getting invited to events, and lately even more difficulty purchasing used items locally, people organize roommates and rentals on facebook! one organization I volunteered for briefly organized everything via Facebook message and were upset that I didn't have an account.

everyone in my circle has drifted away from facebook and mostly just uses whatsapp groups to organise events.

drifted away from facebook to... whatsapp by facebook

You could, you know, have a Facebook account and use it only for Marketplace and Messenger. That’s what I do. I don’t post or read the feeds.

I find it too insidious personally

That's cool, but it means you'll be excluded from events by people that don't agree; you can't expect people to make an exception just for you.

Yes, this is the problem as described in the initial comment. Facebook has commercialized a basic slice of human interaction.

To boycott Facebook is to boycott people who rely on it. Quite evil at scale, from my perspective.

You could say the same of EventBrite, Craigslist, and evite (birthday parties). Facebook is not alone. Why not just turn off all screens while you’re at it? /s

A better solution is to use these services with discernment; e.g. engage with them to the limited extent to need to RSVP an event or sell something out of your garage.

I would argue very strongly that Facebook is alone in scale, breadth, and controversy in the space they operate in. The only winning move is not to play.

All of the competitors you've mentioned are orders of magnitude smaller.

Once you are off the dopamine needle, you start seeking for options to get the most relevant and compact content.

And you start understanding that algorithms are playing against you, they are made to keep you scrolling. Not to deliver the most relevant stuff in shortest time

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