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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> Stop pretending that people want to use social media for entertainment and news and celebrities

People actually want media, social and otherwise, for exactly that.

> Stop forcing content from outside of my network upon me.

There are social media apps and platforms that don't do that. They are persistently less popular. People, by and large, do want passive discovery from outside of their network, just like they do, in aggregate, want entertainment and news and celebrities.

> Make the chronological feed the only option.

Chronological by what? Original post? Most recent edit? Most recent response? Most recent reaction?

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> There are social media apps and platforms that don't do that. They are persistently less popular.

I think that's a bit murky. Facebook became popular when it was like that. They changed how it worked after it was already popular, seeking to make more mony.

Facebook could provide you options to only see friend's content. People have certainly asked for it. They absolutely refuse to.

>Facebook could provide you options to only see friend's content. People have certainly asked for it. They absolutely refuse to.

What are you talking about? On the app, click on the burger menu and select feeds. You will then have a page with get feeds. Song the top you will see "Friends". Select that to see only stuff your friends have posted.

Facebook has loads of options to curate your feed. Lots of people are too lazy or stupid to find them.

You're correct, but they only added it a couple months back, so it's less ignorance than the fact that it was silently added unless you check their blog: https://about.fb.com/news/2025/03/bringing-magic-of-friends-...

What you're link refers to seems to be a different way to get to the feed that has been around for ages. The feed I described has been around for over a year (I can't remember when I first found out about it, but it was a long time ago).

[Edit] it looks like it was initially introduced three years ago: https://about.fb.com/news/2022/07/home-and-feeds-on-facebook...

People want addictions. The answer is to regulate addictive algorithms, not to give them more things to be addicted to.

But addictions are wonderfully useful politically, so that's unlikely to happen.

The point is simple - an algorithm is a form of meta-content. It's curated and designed, not neutral. And so are its commercial, psychological, and political effects.

Currently SM companies have been allowed to use algorithms with little or no oversight. The emphasis has been on regulating privacy, not influence.

In the same way the media need to have a Fairness Doctrine restored to restore sanity and quality to journalism, algorithm providers need to be able to demonstrate an equivalent for their platforms.

This is very much against the spirit of the times, but that spirit is algorithmically created - which just proves the point.

If you're thinking "Yes, but government..." - how do you know that's a spontaneous original thought, and not something you've been deliberately conditioned to believe?

Yes, people want addictions. So give them addictions. Just don't sacrifice actual social media for that. Ideally, in my view of the world anyway, there would be separate commercial addiction-focused platforms like TikTok, and separate non-addictive, pure social media platforms like the fediverse, preferably run by nonprofits.

> People want addictions.

I think that's incorrect. Many addicts despise their addiction. A better way to look at it is: people can get addicted easily. Nobody gets addicted to paper press lubricant. The addiction is initiated by a positive experience, which often means: pleasure. Paper press lubricant doesn't provide that, but alcohol and facebook do.

It may not be much of a distinction, but sometimes it helps to think about/see it in another way.

The trouble is people want to smoke and drink, too.

The human mind is more easily exploitable than any computer.

Of course people want to see divisive content. Divisive content is engineered to trigger large emotions, which humans naturally respond to. That's what heroin exists - it feels good. Really, really good. Of course you don't need only good feelongs, bad feelings can shape behavior too.

The problem comes in when we start shifting from making products that simply cause these behavior changes to instead making products engineered to elicit the biggest response possible.

Its very easy to do, too. Want to sell more cigarettes? Add butane to the wrapping so it burns better. Concentrate the nicotine. Do all the obvious stuff. The more bad you make it, the better it will sell.

Same thing with, say, Facebook. Want people to use Facebook more? More doomerism, more lies, more misinformation, more Jesus Christ, more click bait. People want the addictive stuff, that's why we call it addictive.

So yes, social media apps without these tools are unpopular and generally fail. In the same way a nicotine-free cigarette would fail.

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