language itself is a means of control.
Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
151–160 of 523 posts
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why you got downvoted. It's both simple and hard. I quit facebook back in March. Yep, some people don't talk to me anymore. But you know what? I talk with other people more, and I'm enjoying those relationships more. It's also hard; this is a top-of-class addiction. There's nothing easy about rewiring the reward circuit of your brain. And definitely Facebook, work email and in my case ycombinator news, a…
Yeah, HN is scary because browsing it will give you a subconscious feeling that you worked on something important.
This is true but at least HN has the noprocrast setting to fill the willpower void. Facebook could use the same thing but that means less eyeballs on ads.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. If you can't consciously choose to turn off your phone and go read a book, you never had anything that remotely resembles free will.
That's easy to say. But what if family, friends and work are so tied up with your phone that doing so would hurt too much? Sure, you can change your work and friends, and cut off your family, but that's hard.
For most, I think there are easy ways to massively reduce time spent on their phone without an adverse effect on career or relations otherwise, but that's predicated on a want to. Besides, I see plenty of people who are on their phone all the time, yet their life is almost void of physical interaction with others. I think it's very common to overestimate the importance of being "on", and even more common to think it has a positive effect on their lives.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#154I've been coming to resent my smartphone more and more, essentially because of this. I recently quit using tobacco. I remembered all the warnings from my school health classes about how hard it was to quit once you start, how there's a physical dependence and all that. It was uncomfortable at times, and there were plenty of cravings to get over, but I was ultimately successful. I can compare this to the couple of tim…
You can ditch Facebook and not lose out socially. My life got a lot more social after I got off social media because there weren't easy fixes to my social needs. Ditching reddit or hacker news is much harder. I mean, how do you even use the internet these days?
For some people like me it doesn't matter if I have social media or not, nobody notices. I decided there are more fruitful endeavours than taking part in the commercial and absurd nature of almost all social media networks--it encourages superficial relationship with the user to drive consumerism. Selfies, group selfies, documentation of every fucking noise of things in your waking life masquerading as insight, (fuck soc-) are all aimed at you buying things from the companies that sell you a vision of life to distract you from your own intrinsic values.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#155I'd pay Facebook to be ad free. Why don't they want my money?
You can't afford to pay them the amount they make from the ads you see/click. UPDATE: 2016 revenue is $27B. At 2B MAUs, that's a little more than $1/mo. Hmm. Surely there's something I'm overlooking.
It's not a matter of simple price per user. At its core, their product is the incredibly precise and nuanced network they have constructed though their various sources of user data. The value they get per click/view is only so valuable because companies are willing to pay for the quality of targeted advertising that only a company on the scale of facebook can provide.
This model allows FB to keep their platform free for users, lowering the barrier to entry meaning that more people are likely to join the network, whose data makes FB's advertising system all the more effective. More data means a better user experience (and better advertising), which naturally draws in more users to add their data to the pool.
The end result is a virtuous cycle that provides companies with this model the best data, the most users, and the best targeted advertising in their respective fields. This model is the endgame of companies like Facebook, Gooogle and Amazon, and is the reason FB isn't interested in your $1.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
This may work well for you but there are somethings that cause you to have to check email and Facebook for fear of external consequences which is what the OP is saying. For example Hangouts makes me lose at least half a hour of productity a day but if I uninstalled it and never checked it then I would never talk to all of my friends on Hangouts which is not a trade-off that I am willing to take. Same for email, if I…
For example Hangouts makes me lose at least half a hour of productity a day but if I uninstalled it and never checked it then I would never talk to all of my friends on Hangouts which is not a trade-off that I am willing to take. A lot of people say this one (usually about Facebook), but I don't understand it. If you want to talk to those friends, why doesn't it suffice to schedule spending time with them in the same…
Exactly. And not just 2000, Hangouts was released in 2013, are these friendships less than four years old?
Phones and email still exist. If your relationship is predicated on a single internet based communication service then it's probably not a relationship worth maintaining.
Just use a different communication mechanism. It's really not that hard.
Send a postcard, it's fun, I promise.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't afford to pay them the amount they make from the ads you see/click. UPDATE: 2016 revenue is $27B. At 2B MAUs, that's a little more than $1/mo. Hmm. Surely there's something I'm overlooking.
They don't value all users equally, ones in North America are generally worth considerably more. From a quick search, I can't find any more recent info, but in Jan 2016 a user from USA/Canada was worth $13.54/quarter [1], so that would be about $54/year. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/28/how-much-...
Also, the users who can afford to pay to remove ads may be the same ones that increase the value of their advertising products overall.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can ditch Facebook and not lose out socially. My life got a lot more social after I got off social media because there weren't easy fixes to my social needs. Ditching reddit or hacker news is much harder. I mean, how do you even use the internet these days?
I frequently disable reddit, and sometimes HN, in my hosts file. I'm both happy and sad to discover that I don't even know what to do on the internet when they're not available. Happy because it forces me to do something else. Sad because I remember when I truly loved the internet, before reddit or HN, and I wonder why I don't have that love anymore. I really don't know how to use the internet these days.
> I really don't know how to use the internet these days.
Same for me. Nowadays when I get bored and have some unproductive time to kill, I usually surf hacker news because I can't think of any other website to read as I quit other social media websites.
It's the same happiness/sadness you mention, although the lack of options on the internet has been turning out to be more positive than negative as I've been reading much much more.
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#159We'll we see similar to tobacco lawsuits - they knew it was addictive, used it for profit and even intentionally increased addictiveness, and didn't even put warning on. Cue similar contra argument about free will of consumer choice.
Uncanny similarity of Facebook and tobacco addiction is because they use the same dopamine biological machinery .
Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's how I (try to) keep the Internet-based distractions to a minimum: * Uninstall twitter, facebook and other social apps from your phone; only use the computer (or other device that's not constantly in your pocket). * Even on your computer, log out of twitter, facebook and others. Only log in when you want to look into something (eg. check the social events, send a message), and use private/incognito mode for thi…
I've done something similar with my Android phone, and it's worked out decently. One problem I encountered though - I spent a lot of time on Reddit, and would check it subconsciously, so I deleted it. Now I find that I'm using Google Now, the left swipe off the home screen. In effect I took the attention from Reddit and gave it to Google. I'm not convinced that was a worthwhile trade. Given I can't delete Google Now,…
FWIW, you can disable Google Now on your phone. On the more recent versions of Android, you long-press an empty spot on your home screen, select "Settings", and then locate and disable the "Your feed" item.