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Comment by ngriffiths | Hacker News Reader

Sure, making instagram as addictive as possible seems bad but I disagree with the framing a bit. Dark patterns get users to do things they don't want, that's why they get super annoyed at the design or the process or the outcome. Addictive apps are a different thing to me.

I don't think it's that compelling to say "obviously no one wants to be on Instagram and they're getting manipulated into it." ...yeah they do! The question is can you make a compelling case that spending time on it is harmful.

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This reminds me of the TikTok ban that lasted all of twelve seconds.

I’ve been using the internet for longer than I care to admit, and I’ve never seen anything like it.

It was like 300 million junkies all lost their drug supplier at the same time.

That's literally what it was. These technologies are addicting. Is it as bad or the same as heroin? No. However, they are designed to be addicting.

Not as good as heroin either.

Well seeing how we are all granted with one single life, maybe we should be more upset at things that take away our valuable time and replace it with things that make us angry? Who's to say that these things aren't worse than heroin? Lots of people would argue otherwise, I'm becoming one of them myself. Heroin only impacts one individual, social media impacts every connected person on the planet.

Mass misery is still misery.

We should, but we also shouldn't decide what other people consider proper use of their time

I don't think this is obvious at all. I think its a reasonable function of the state to pursue policies that improve the mental and physical health of its citizens, partly because the negative effects of an unhealthy population are not limited to the individuals who are unhealthy. Liberty is great. I wouldn't want to live anywhere where it wasn't one of the primary goals of a society, but there is no stone tablet from God saying its needs to be the only goal a society can set.

When you say "a society" sets a goal, it always implies a ruling group of people imposing their view of the common good unto everyone.

How do you make sure that whoever makes that choice makes it in a way you yourself will agree with?

Do you seriously believe that is not happening now? Or that even a libertarian utopia could manage to achieve agreement?

If you're going to get philosophical, go all the way. Why have society at all because it's just people imposing their will on others? Or do you at least agree that there exists a line?

Even though there clearly must be a line on some topics, many people think those lines should be placed to minimize the number of times people are forced to do something (or prevented from doing something) against their will.

It’s not at all obvious that “adults can’t have TikTok” is anywhere near the correct side of that line.

I think a mature person accepts some compromise with society at large. How do you make sure your wife always wants to do what you want? You don't. You live with other people, depend on them, pay for them when they are sick or poor (one way or another). You can't escape society. All that the libertarian view appears to do is make everyone miserable with externalities that a properly functioning state would regulate out of existence.

People's lives are ruined by gambling all the time, for instance. It is dumb to pretend like the pleasure a few people get out of it is worth someone betting away his family's welfare. It is ok to just decide "this needs to be regulated." Not everything is some intractible philosophical mystery that no consensus will ever coalesce around. Not every single thing every single person wants needs to be taken seriously.

> Heroin only impacts one individual

I have to disagree with this. Having talked to heroin addicts in the past, I was told that the heroin addiction destroyed their relationship with their families and their friends, causing heart-break in the process (particularly for mothers). They use everyone around them so that they could get their next fix: borrowing, constant cajoling and stealing results in alienating them from everyone in their social circle – other than fellow junkies.

When cut off from family and friends, junkies resort to begging, stealing, street prostitution, shop-lifting and other petty crimes, all of which have a negative effect on their community. Some junkies end up committing violent crimes which has a more destructive effect on society. They often end up in debt to their dealers and commit other crimes at their behest.

All these things are much worse when the junkie is a parent or has others depending on them for a safe and secure family life.

Also, in my country (Ireland), heroin junkies also place a huge burden on the health service. Their chaotic lives result in multiple health issues and they take up a significant portion of hospital beds.

I mean, if I add a bell to a tic tac toe game it is being designed to be addictive. It is triggering positive associative conditioning. I see 'designed to be predicting' as a misleading rhetorical device used to excuse control over speech. The 'fire in a crowded theater' of its age.

> This reminds me of the TikTok ban that lasted all of twelve seconds.

That timeline has way more to do with the corrupt politicians than consumer behavior.

_______________

Both in the sense that the original semi-bipartisan law should've been ruled unconstitutional [0], and also in how the Republican party turned around and broke portions of that law for months until Trump could ensure the assets were handed to his major donor buddy--and fixing none of the original PRC influence issues. [1]

[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-i...

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/19/tiktok-deal-done-and-its...

I found it interesting that congress never took issue with any other social media platform, and was fine with TikTok once again as well after it was sold to an American owner.

So looks like politicians never had any problem with the addictiveness of social media, they only have a problem when it's used by foreign adversaries and not by domestic companies...

Absolutely no one was running it on "social media is harmful". The policy was overtly that it had to be American owned.

>and also in how the Republican party turned around and broke portions of that law for months until Trump could ensure the assets were handed to his major donor buddy--and fixing none of the original PRC influence issues. [1]

Are you even remotely surprised by that? Honestly.

> It was like 300 million junkies all lost their drug supplier at the same time.

No, it was not. It was actually nothing like that.

No babies were left to die because their parents were out searching for tiktok clips. I saw no people whoring themselves on the street just to see a few tiktok clips. I heard no stories of children stealing from their own family to get a few scrolls of tiktok. There was no people killing each other just to get a hit of tiktok.

Let's not trivialize something like drug addiction by comparing it to kids procrastinating by watching their TV phone app.

I think you're probably vastly discounting the amount of childhood neglect wrought by social media addiction on both the parent and child's parts.

No, I'm not.

The median child of a social media user (so basically, the median child) is vastly more well off than the median child of a heroin/crack cocaine user and its not even close.

The fact you're suggesting some level of equivalency is wild imo.

Glad I could draw attention to the irrational logic of the current "social media is evil" moral panic.

True facts. My friend spent an entire day without weed once, and he killed 3 people, and abandoned seven babies. Four of which weren't even his!

Not sure if you're aware opioids and crack exist.

Let’s not pretend like all drugs are equally addictive, or that some tech products aren’t even more so. You’re comparing TikTok to crack, but it’s much more like coming off E, where your life has no sense of pleasure or happiness for weeks/months (anhedonia, I think it’s called), and you’re left on edge for any source of contentment.

So you believe clinically diagnosable Anhedonia and ecstasy withdrawal is...similar to what happens if a teenager isn't allowed to watch tiktok for a few days...hrmmm.

I'm just astonished how hard all of the supposedly rational engineering minds of hackernews are falling for this classic moral panic. The crowd of mindless pitchforks is cringe.

It must be a cognitive gymnastics that makes people here feel more important. How powerful it must feel to believe your email job can addict and destroy the world...via...javascript scroll effects on...mobile entertainment apps.

I mean, how else do you rationalize the fact that you're paid as much as a heart surgeon to implement react components and reply thumbs up to messages on slack? All this doomsday cosplaying must help square the cognitive dissonance.

Come on, that’s not a fair take. Most of us build unimportant and mediocre things at best, but TikTok is especially designed for addiction, shortening of attention spans, and making you come back.

Instagram was supposedly the same, with Meta internally knowing that. They said it themselves, the teenagers couldn’t stop using Instagram even if they wanted to. I mean, isn’t that addiction?

I don’t need to feel important. I’m an addict trying to stay away from my triggers. It’s not Instagram, but I also know how that one feels, because I had an account for years. Of course I’m not saying it’s exactly like a drug — any drug —, but that to dismiss the very real, very negative design of these tools is also folly. They hijack the same brain chemistry, to similar results, and a different scale of recovery.

No, developers aren’t special. Nobody in tech is. But Instagram themselves, in their own document, are basically admitting to behaving like a very capable dealer of a neural drug.

> the TikTok ban that lasted all of twelve seconds

The TikTok ban successfully forced the sale of the US TikTok operations. I wouldn't be so dismissive of it.

A year and a half later? Does that really count?

Yes. It's a direct consequence. Such things just move slowly.

> I don't think it's that compelling to say "obviously no one wants to be on Instagram and they're getting manipulated into it." ...yeah they do! The question is can you make a compelling case that spending time on it is harmful.

I want to follow news and deals from a handful of vendors and local businesses I like a lot. The best way to do that is following them on instagram. It’s the only reason I signed up and installed the app. If it’d been one or two, I’d not have bothered, but it’s that way for lots of them.

I never want to see the “feed”. I would disable it if I could. I would make it default to my “following” view if I could. Instagram so very much wants me not to do that that they went out of their way to make it impossible to achieve that even with iOS’ built in shortcut-like system (you used to be able to).

As a result, sometimes I get distracted by one or two of the top items on the feed. That doesn’t mean I actually want to see them. That I open the app once every couple days doesn’t mean I like the app. I think it’s terrible.

People taking what folks do with a sharply constrained set of options as an expression of “why they want” or revealed preference or whatever is frustratingly wrong.

> I don't think it's that compelling to say "obviously no one wants to be on Instagram and they're getting manipulated into it." ...yeah they do!

I can't say I know anyone who defends extended social media usage. Do you?

I absolutely did not want to go to these websites and did it anyway. I ended up blocking them in my hosts file to get me to stop.

It's wild. I reinstalled Facebook to sell some things on Marketplace. Thirty minutes later I'm doom scrolling through shit I wouldn't have sought out. I uninstall the app after I no longer have items to sell.

Good point. You sort of have a purpose for opening it up, then you get distracted, or fired up or whatever, because the app just unloads tons of information at you.

I sort of claimed that everyone enjoys it when they use these apps, maybe it's better to say they are likely getting something out of it in that moment. This could be kind of a bad deal - people make bad deals, and repeat old ones all the time. Other times they delete the app once they realize it.

What we've lost in social media just makes me so sad. I hate that reels/stories have become the "new" way of sharing things (over the past 10 years).

I took a trip to Yosemite last weekend and took the (rare) opportunity to post a reel. All of the comments and reactions are DMs. It feels so lonely and weird and isolating. Who asked for this?

I miss the days where you shared things, and people actually commented on them and interacted with each other as well as the poster. And where it wasn't ephemeral.

Do you think Instagram/Facebook is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, or a sheep with fangs?

By that I mean- is the product addiction, with a shroud of media, or is it media which just happens to be addictive.

they know what they're doing, they've tried to bury the evidence but their own internal studies have shown addiction and harmful psychological effects in children

facebook in the past has done tests of emotional manipulation on their users without informing them

they're rotten from the head down

They are the wolf. The product is the user's attention, they are ad delivery networks disguised as "social media."

The entire revenue model is based on on engagement and clicks, the product is incentivized to maximize time spent on the service at any cost. Addiction is a core engineering requirement.

> is the product addiction, with a shroud of media, or is it media which just happens to be addictive.

It's the former, by design:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846784

they are the Shepard, we are the sheep, ads/media are the wolves that also have a deal with the shepard.

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