Hacker News Reader

Comment by exhumet | Hacker News Reader

i recently downloaded it again after nearly a decade to use marketplace to buy a bike for my wife. Got the bike and deleted the app. but my god opening it up was hell. the interface on mobile is just....stressful. super cluttered, shit all over the place with notifications and things to see. first post i saw on there was someone i used to be friends with but havent thought about in years just blatently reposting ACTUAL racist shit... bought a bike in one day and deleted the app once again. horrible experience aside from the nice old dude who sold me the bike lol

View on HN

My experience with Instagram too. Signed up to talk to one person who only uses Instagram, and it's just garbage all around.

I think it's a frog boiling situation. Early users got gradually accustomed to the gradually increasing garbage, but anyone who enters the ecosystem now is immediately turned off.

at the very least, insta is a semi cleaner and its the content itself thats abrasive... for now... thats the only other thing i use purely to keep up with family and i do photography so its somewhere to share some pics with family and friends.once you spend an entire night flagging everything you dont wanna see it becomes pretty clean. and then i put a 15 min timer on top of it. so it barely gets used but its semi well-tailored lol

I use Instagram on Android because it's heavily modified and stripped to its bare essentials just for responding to friends. Prior to this I used the web app. If those two disappeared I would be done.

Instagram on Android was caught bypassing OS security requirements by opening a port on localhost, which webpages with Facebook tracking scripts would connect to to get your identity.

Link to this? Haven't heard of it.

IIRC it's related to this stuff reported on by fern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOQynHuWPeI

https://scienceblog.com/facebook-yandex-apps-secretly-track-...

The modified version I use disables all telemetry. I'm also doubtful my Pihole wouldn't just black it anyways. And ultimately, I use Firefox on Android with Ublock and strict tracking protection, so it doesn't seem I would be susceptible to this particular cookie interception Meta relies.

That said, I see your point. I wouldn't use Instagram if I couldn't do these things. If Google cracks down on user choice to a degree that even adb can't work around, then I'm out. Motorola's Graphene OS phone can't come soon enough.

I had a similar experience logging in to FB to delete my account which was inactive for almost a decade. It’s legit was like the movie Idiocracy. Casino vibes, over stimulation, people saying stupid thing, trying to sift through lots of garbage to find the thing you’re looking for.

thats exactly what i was telling my wife, a casino is way more accurate than what i said. i was like it felt like signing on to Temu with all of the shit all over the place

I remember going to Las Vegas once after I turned 21, realizing that it totally wasn’t my thing, and especially being scared by the expressions on the zombie seniors sitting in front of the slot machines shoveling quarters in.

I see that basically every day now with people watching TikTok or Instagram while walking, on the bus, or even driving, barely able to tear their attention away. It’s like a casino except that it’s available 24 hours a day with no limits.

yeah its nuts. ive hard restricted any form of social media to 15 minutes a day combined for the remaining ones i have. its been extremely healthy tbh. ive felt much better in the almost two years ive been doing it!

and i get it! the zombified rapid button pressing over and over. when i went to japan we were stoked to go check out a pachinko hall and we walked in and it was overstimulation city lol. walking in through the front door directly out through the back door haha.

> especially being scared by the expressions on the zombie seniors sitting in front of the slot machines shoveling quarters in.

It's not just seniors.

I used to date a woman who worked as a cocktail waitress on the floor of a major casino on the strip. She referred to the people at the slots as "trained monkeys".

Definitely not just seniors but I saw a bus full of them unload and it was like watching a switch flip off as everyone stopped socializing and focused on the machines. So eerie.

I refuse to use facebook on mobile. Website only, and it’s terrible but that’s where the local community is if you need to find a lost dog or deal on a bike.

yup and thats exactly what i discovered. id rather not use it and also not lose any additional respect for people i used to like or have good memories with lol

Reply on news.ycombinator.com