why? you don't have to use them. should HN be banned?
We live in organised societies, nobody is forcing you to do crack but people doing crack will definitely lower the experience of everyone they interact with (and more given the burden on shared goods like healthcare, infrastructures, &c.), that's why we collectively decided that crack shouldn't be sold to 13 years old kids.
Now of course this is very flawed and we'll always have things slipping through the cracks (alcohol, tobacco, junk food, &c.), but unless you want to live in a mad max type of world you have to accept some level of regulation, and that level of regulation, in a working society, should be determined through politics
If tiktok is crack, HN is honey. One becomes problematic much quicker than the other, when you see a kid spending 5 hours a day on HN hit me up
Social media is just the demon of the day. In the 80s it was that damn rock music ruining our kids and in the 90s it was violent video games and rap.
Every generation has their "this thing is corrupting the youth" moment.
Following your logic everything new has to be desirable, that's a tough position to defend imho. Just because new trends were incorrectly criticised in the past doesn't mean every new trend is good until the heat death of the universe, logic 101
Let's stop pretending adults do not do it too.
Children are in a crucial period of their lives when it comes to forging habits, learning skills, developing addictions, &c.
Like to ski? Your injuries have a societal cost.
Like to cook? Your inefficient use of energy costs society.
If you can use an argument for anything it’s not a very convincing argument.
If you think skiing and cooking have as much of a negative impact as social media as on entire generation of kids I doubt we'll find common ground to go further, usually it requires a bit of good faith
This is the second philopsiphical point of economics. Everything is a choice between costs.
Im curious how else you would put it?
>Like to ski? Your injuries have a societal cost.
>Like to cook? Your inefficient use of energy costs society.
This assumes that fairly standard activities are imposing the societal cost you are attributing to them. For most individuals who perform these activities, they are not producing an outsized societal cost, which is the delineation the parent comment was making. The parent comment used an example of something that from their point of view has a negative societal cost in the base case. Your examples are not similar as they are not referring to the base case of simply performing the activities, but only to the relatively uncommon tail end outcomes.
Once I got diagnosed with ADHD and tried stimulant medicine, I noticed that the time I spend reading news, social media and playing games dropped dramatically. So, effectively all these activities have been nothing more than drugs for my dysfunctional brain. When my brain isn't deficient in dopamine, I seem to automatically spend most of my time on something more useful. Probably wouldn't be writing this if my meds weren't wearing off at this time of day.
I think there's a great argument that says the first amendment is not a suicide pact. The social media environment right now is having an unprecedented destructive effect on US democracy. I think TikTok is right there as a key player in spreading weapons-grade, state-sponsored mush to younger people.
That's about the number of social connections the human brain is really meant to handle.
Although I like HN more than TikTok, it's so funny
HN (and reddit) generally lacks this hyper-targeting. Obviously, just the act of going to HN is selecting for a certain cross-section of opinions, but once you're there what you see is determined by the community and not by your own personal preferences.
1. There's often little or no visibility on how this personalization happens. People with often try to guess and steer the algorithm but the reality is you don't know. This means that unpopular opinions can be quietly suppressed with no detectable censorship. On the poster/creator side this presents as constant paranoia about "shadow banning" and the like.
2. The personalized feeds are effectively endless. This allows for repetition that really amplifies any biases/fears. For example, suppose you're worried that the roads are getting more dangerous and you go on Instagram and start looking at car crash reels. Instagram will happily feed you as much of these as you can stomach and it starts to affect your perception of reality. Never mind that you're looking at incidents captured over a period of years from all over the world, seeing them all back to back will probably give you anxiety the next time you go to cross the street. Now apply this same logic to any political topic...
HN/subreddit provides a single echo chamber for everyone
that's why I like HN more, I don't want to be in my echo chamber, I perfer visiting your chamber
I know how hard it is to be in the minority on a contentious topic without getting provoked (and then becoming provocative oneself), but that's what we need commenters with minority views to do. Otherwise we end up having to moderate the accounts, not because we want to suppress minority views but because we have to enforce HN's rules.
I've written about this extensively because it's such a consistent phenomenon. Here's one post if you (or anyone) wants a fuller explanation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41948722. There are plenty more at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It's in your interest to do this, because then you maximize the persuasive power of your comments. Conversely, if you succumb to the pressure to be indignant and/or snarky and/or flamey and so on, that ends up discrediting your views, which is particularly damaging if they happen to be true: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
(p.s. I'm an admin here in case that wasn't obvious)
and there's misunderstanding, I was not provoked, at least in the comment above
it's not a critique to HN, in fact, isn't it obvious that HN inevitably ends to a echo chamber? unpopular opinions greyed out, popular opinions ranked up, wasn't it design to be this?
it's not that bad, most communities are echo chambers
Well, that's a straight out lie! :)
But nobody ever says "I was banned for breaking the site guidelines". What they do instead is make new accounts to claim "I was banned for my contrarian views". How noble that sounds!
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The tell is that they never supply links (e.g. to their previous account(s) or the place(s) they were banned). If moderation is so bad, why not allow readers to see what actually happened and make up their own minds? And yet these complaints are always linkless...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
In this case you've been using multiple accounts to post in the same thread in ways that are misleading and abusive. That's clearly over the line, so I'm banning this account (and also saying so). If you would please stop creating accounts to break HN's rules with, that would be good.
Only for tech topics
Things went ugly(but fun!) for political/geopolitical topics, 'unpopular' opinions will be grayed out, opinions survived coalesced into the essence of the Anglo-Saxon spirit
Threads is notorious for de-boosting posts with external links. This is a deliberate choice which filters facts and external references out of the conversation.
Or you can just delay the feed of posters you don't like. They arrive at every debate a day late, while your favourites go through immediately. And to more people.
And so on.
There's nothing free about any of this. It's covert behaviour and sentiment modification.
With a newspaper you get an editorial angle, so you can choose it if you want it.
Social media pretends to be a neutral conduit. But it's carefully curated and manipulated, and you don't know how or why.
“But the masses will be able to access the scripture without guidance! Society will crumble!”
Not that different from arguing that your average American can’t see through propaganda on TikTok - I think they can.
And if the argument is that it’s addictive, I mean ok? Lots of things are addictive that aren’t severely harmful. We tolerate those as well.
The argument about teens is an entirely different one, I’m talking about adults.
So yes - we should definitely agree that all new technology for publishing (publishing? COntent creation?) result in issues of free speech.
I will say that each of these, have had different issues, and that from Radio onwards, we are dealing with several issues (side effects ?) that become more intense with each new media developed.
I'll jump to the end, but Social media is definitely different from the printing press.
We certainly get new and improved benefits, such as the distribution of publishing power to individuals.
At the same time, we are getting issues with an abundance of content, that people need content to be eye catching, in order to gain an audience.
Theres also a tendency for networks to consolidate over time, so at the start of the radio era, or TV era, you have a bunch of cable networks, then over time they start collapsing into larger groups, which are better able to survive.
Fully admit that these are highly generalized, I am just thinking of what others can chime in with.
think of the printing press as invented and controlled by your worst enemy and only printing what it deems to be acceptable.