Comment by jameskilton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jameskilton | Hacker News Reader

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Facebook / Meta and Mark in particular are an amazing case of someone who is, at least at this point, incapable of learning from past mistakes, or even recognizing the mistakes they have made and are continuing to make.

Facebook's mission of "connecting the world" turned out to be the absolute worst thing anyone should ever try to do. Humans are social creatures, yes, but every connection we make costs energy to maintain, and at a certain point (Dunbar's Number) we apply the minimal amount of energy and effort. With Internet anonymity, that means we are actually incapable of treating each other as people on the Internet, leading to the rise of toxicity and much, much worse.

Mark has never understood this, and as his fortune is built around not understanding this, he never will.

There is nothing good that will come from Meta's "superintelligence" and this vision is proof.

I don't think the "connecting the world" was the problem. IRC also has tons of toxicity and connects people all over the world.

The core problem is gamification of social interaction. The 'Like' button and everything like it for things people say or show is hands down the worst thing to happen on the internet. Everywhere they can, people whore for karma (unless they spend a lot of mental effort to fight back that urge). How primitive the related moderation systems are directly affects how much primitive shit gets rewarded and alas, most moderation systems are ridiculously primitive.

So, dopamine hits for saying primitive shit.

> that means we are actually incapable of treating each other as people on the Internet

Well, that's because there aren't people on the internet! I mean, yes, us technologists understand that there are often people pulling knobs and levers behind the scenes as an implementation detail, so technically they are there. But they are only implementation details, not what makes it what it is. If you replaced the implementation with another algorithm that functions just as well, nobody would notice. In that sense, it is just software.

> leading to the rise of toxicity and much, much worse.

It is not so much that it has lead to anything different, but that those who used to be in the forest yelling at animals as if they were human moved into civilized areas when they started yelling at computers as if they were human. That has taken their mental disorders to where it is much more visible.

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