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Comment by iamcalledrob | Hacker News Reader

I'd bet that this is ultimately about people's preferences for consuming content, unfortunately.

People will say they only want content from friends, just as they say they want to eat healthily. But the desire and the reality end up looking very different.

People at large will spend time in whatever surfaces are the most engaging (~addictive), and if a platform like Facebook removed those "other posts", it's likely that people would just spend time on another platform instead -- TikTok, Reddit, YouTube Shorts, etc...

It's like if the #1 grocery chain removed all the addictive stuff. No junk food, no soda, no alcohol. In the short term, people might consume less bad stuff. But in the long run, the #2 chain would take over, and we'd be back where we started.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, but it's a very tricky problem to tackle at scale.

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> It's like if the #1 grocery chain removed all the addictive stuff. No junk food, no soda, no alcohol. In the short term, people might consume less bad stuff. But in the long run, the #2 chain would take over, and we'd be back where we started.

What you are observing is a case where market signals result in obviously undesirable outcomes. The problem cannot be solved from within the market, the market's signaling needs a tweak. In the case of this example, a tweak to bring purchasing behavior inline with what people want to be buying in the long term, what they know is good for them. This could be achieved by mandating some form of friction in buying unhealthy food. Banning outright tends to go poorly, but friction has seen great success, like with smoking.

I'm not sure exactly what this looks like for social media, or if it's even a necessary form of action (would banning surveillance-based advertising kill feed-driven platforms as a side effect?) but as you say, the market will not resolve this even if an industry leader tries to do the right thing.

> People will say they only want content from friends

I actually don't want content from friends, at least not in the way Facebook presented it before becoming another TikTok.

Facebook showed me the worst of my friends: polarizing political opinions, viral marketing, etc... These come from really nice people in real life, but it looks like Facebook is trying its best to make me hate my friends, it almost succeeded at one point. Thankfully, we met some time later, didn't talk about all the crap he posted on Facebook, it and was all fine.

I'd rather hate on public personalities and other "influencers", at least, no friendship is harmed doing that.

The only thing I miss about Facebook is the "event" part. If you want to invite some friends for a party, you could just create an event and because almost everyone was on Facebook, it made knowing who came and who didn't, who brings what, etc...

Exactly. If people weren't liking it, it wouldn't be successful. The point of these apps has become to be the thing you do when you're slightly bored and want to experience that's not the line at the deli counter, subway ride to work or sitting on the toilet.

It almost doesn't matter what the content is as long as it's more engaging than that actual moment of life.

I have neither TikTok nor Instagram nor Facebook (anymore), but I know from when I had Twitter that the endless videos are engaging. I'm not above having my attention captured by them, so I know not to engage with the networks themselves.

It's precisely what you say: I would like to say I just find that stuff horrible. But no, if I had those apps, I'd be using them as distraction too.

So how is this different from people sitting in front of a TV and watching endless samey series?

Only that it's portable.

If we didn't have "social media" we'd be all watching samey tv series on our phones.

It absolutely makes a difference because tv shows are usually 20 mins at least, which means watching 3 minutes in the supermarket line is actually a bad experience, so it requires more deliberation.

I’d also argue that the average TV show is more edifying than the average social media post but that’s another topic.

> I’d also argue that the average TV show is more edifying than the average social media post but that’s another topic.

Nope. In my experience most modern series can be remade as 1 hour movies ... per season.

> If people weren't liking it, it wouldn't be successful.

When you talk to people, most of them want to do less of those apps, so its not about wanting it. Its the fact that _all_ companies know how to make really addictive stuff and they only lose when more addictive things come out.

Yeah exactly. Nobody's happy with their internet/phone usage these days. But also, I do know quite a few people who genuinely enjoy using TikTok.

Either way, what should we do about it?

We're not going to ban vertical short-form video. Mandate screen time controls? People will get extra devices. And expecting people to just Do The Right Thing has not ever worked.

Social media is genuinely like cigarettes, where it's so ubiquitous and people are so addicted to it that you can't just ban it.

Cigarettes were reduced a ton by banning them in most places indoors, taxing it way higher and making them harder to access (i.e. ask for them behind a counter vs. vending machine)

But cigarettes also have negative externalities like the smell and the effects of breathing in a room full of smoke. Phones don't have that—if someone's scrolling on their phone, it makes zero difference to you, so there's far less of an anti-phone movement than there was in smoking.

There's more engagement with consuming content, therefore more ad opportunity and more revenue. But entertainment sources are more fungible than communication platforms. So in turning FB into a media company (effectively) they may have grown faster, but they also made themselves more vulnerable to a disrupter like TikTok.

There is a good reason I don't stock my freezer with microwave pizza.

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