Hacker News Reader

Comment by skwee357 | Hacker News Reader

The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better.

Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpose it to pump cheap crap to their "followers", a vessel for state actors to spread the current flavor of propaganda/racism supported by "the algorithm" that creates echo chambers rather than promoting diversity of opinions, dopamine producing machines that glue us to the screens.

There is nothing social in social media, in-fact, it should be called the "anti-social media".

View on HN

I would start by outlawing the algorithmic feed. Force them to show a chronological timeline of who you follow with no influence from likes, no For You feed, basically no algorithmic recommendation engine.

You probably solve most of the problems with 10% of the legal/social/implementation difficulty.

And no ads.

I agree that would go a long long way.

When it becomes a place to share photos with your friends, like the OG Instagram, a lot of the harmful effects go away.

This must be the modern version of Fahrenheit 451.

Books are bad because „list of bad things“, let’s not weigh in if people like it or not… just burn the books.

I truly don't understand how people can make such comparisons, and in general defend social media. Is this some sort of Stockholm syndrome?

Social media has ruined my mental health, when I fell into a deep hole of propaganda. It took me a year to recover, and I'm still not fully recovered, and I'm still trying to separate between what I truly think, and what social media "made" me think. People underestimate the power of echo chambers created by the algorithm.

I saw how friends and family got radicalized thanks to social media. Social media is currently fueling at least one war and multiple regional conflicts, where people who know nothing about the events, get "educated" by social media. Social media is fueling hatred and bigotry, further diving already fragile societies. Social media disinformation campaigns were behind Brexit. And social media is used as a tool by government to spread misinformation or influence social opinions. All these in addition to everyone being an influencer and showing their phone into the faces of people in public places, while selling crap from AliExpress for 500% markup, as if you drink electrolytes, put a nose tape, and clean your face every day -- your life will become ten folds better.

I can't name one good thing that came out of social media. None. And even if there are things, and I'm sure someone will name them out, they are minor comparing to the negative sides, or could be achieved in a more sustainable way.

You do know that HN in in the category of social media right?

HN is an anti-social media. It is not inclusive. If you are not a tech geek or cannot articulate well you are not welcome here, and will be ignored.

You cannot follow or be followed. There is no attention drawn to your username or profile. Everything about HN is designed for you to just read a comment and move on, not caring much about the human behind it.

No, it’s not. It’s a link aggregator and a discussion platform, it is not centered around social aspects like user profiles and followers.

Your profile here is https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=skwee357 and your Social Credit Score, as of this posting, is 927.

HN is social media.

So Reddit isn't social media either?

Originally it wasn't. It was more similar to hackernews, just more general. Lately it's going all in on wanting to be a social media platform full of dark design patterns to keep people hooked. Hackernews has barely changed from its beginning. I don't feel overwhelmed browsing it. Five minutes of reddit and I fall into a dopamine hole that can be hard to get out of. It's no longer part of my daily routine for that reason.

Hacker News is almost indistinguishable in spirit from a well-run subreddit. Reddit is not centered on user profiles and followers and yet, Reddit is included in the Australia's social media ban.

It is clear from the ruling that by including YouTube, Reddit and Facebook, they take a broad definition of what social media is, essentially anything with user interaction and Hacker News definitely fits the bill.

And if your criteria includes "social aspects like user profiles and followers", then GitHub would fit too: it has user profiles, followers / stars, and allows for discussion. It is even included in the "social media" list for ESTA and visa applications for the US. We could even include StackOverflow, I mean, it used to be common practice to build a profile, chasing a reputation score so that you could show off to recruiters.

> Reddit is not centered on user profiles and followers and yet

This is not entirely correct anymore, many of the new features added to Reddit over the last 5 years have focussed on expanding precisely this aspect of the site.

No, it's not.

You can't follow people or have followers. There's no notification system when someone "likes" your comment. It doesn't lend itself towards pulling you back with the latest comment or post. There is the front page algorithm, but you can always just go to /latest or /active. It's about the content, not the users.

Critically, there's no ads or monetization (which is where all that garbage comes in).

There is nothing that social media provides that a private group chat with your closest people doesn't fulfill.

It could be banned with nothing of value lost.

The whole world seems to be hooked on TikTok, reels and shorts for entertainment.

Reversing that would take some doing.

There will definitely be hellish withdrawal symptoms.

It's quite dystopian. Seeing people in your family, and friends, just mindlessly consume that shit, for hours upon hours - and many of them are completely oblivious to the fact that these reels and shorts are engineered to keep them engaged.

Using ML/Data to keep people hooked on content - I'd be embarrassed to be an engineer at any of these companies actively destroying our society.

TV had the same effect before the internet. It just had to use less effective Nielsen instead of AI/ML. People make this complaint about all new media when it appears, including books even (well, that kids and adults would spend their time reading trashy novels rather than study the Bible), and later serial articles (which were designed to keep readers hooked with literary cliff hangers so they would buy the next issue).

"The dose makes the poison."

Comparing modern algorithmic/addictive social media to print articles with cliffhangers isn't a serious argument.

???? We're on social media right now.

Come on, you know what is meant by "social media" in this context. An algorithmic feed with tuning to be as addictive as possible.

No one outside of someone trying to be obtuse would put HN and Tiktok in the same category.

> No one outside of someone trying to be obtuse would put HN and Tiktok in the same category.

Definitely not the ones enforcing it, when it serves their purpose.

HN literally has an algorithmic feed and the karma system is the most addictive system used on forums. It's why Reddit is so addictive.

Either HN is part of the evil social media club or the rule for what separates the good ones from the bad ones needs updated. HN and TikTok are different and I think being able to articulate what actually makes them meaningfully different is the first step toward useful legislation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com