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Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

m.nautil.us

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Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#261

Post by rhizome »

YungCabbage wrote: post #155
rhizome wrote: post #104

Earlier 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.

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…

It's not a matter of simple price per user

It pretty much is when the question is about what the price would be for an ad-free subscription. The calculation may be more complicated, but it's all in service of a per-user number.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#262

Post by wincy »

smsm42 wrote: post #109
wffurr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did I deliberately avoid the M-word? Maybe. A solid counter to demagoguery is economic justice and education that encourages critical thinking. People are much less prone to be swayed by that sort of thing when their health, shelter, and food are not at risk.

Should I read this as "solid counter to socialist propaganda is actually building socialism"? If so, I wholeheartedly agree. As somebody who actually lived under socialism (until it collapsed), I am inoculated against it forever. However, I think this is way too cruel punishment for a weak souls swayed by a false promise of socialist demagoguery about "justice" and "education" and inevitably finding themselves in abj…

Hey, I just wanted to thank you for articulating some of the thoughts I've had more eloquently than I can or have time to do. It's good to see HN not just sounding like an echo chamber and seeing someone speak up against socialism/communist sentiments commonly expressed here.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#264

Post by eckza »

free_everybody wrote: post #256

Stop carrying your smartphone. Leave it at home. If you must because your family/work depends on you, then delete every app. Use your laptop as your main driver. If you need to, get a laptop with better battery life. Start developing a personal philosophy of internet usage. Here is mine: Category 3 [Abstain from completely] Reddit (Yes, all of reddit), Facebook ... Category 2 [Check once every couple days ~15 min tot…

I love this, I love this, I love this.

Right now, I am about a month along with no Facebook or Messenger. Previously I spent hours per day on both, running a pretty large community group and supporting its members. I disappeared; no explanation. Stress levels are down, I have so much more time to do things, and I have so much more attention for the things that really matter.

Anybody that needs me, has my phone number; and at least for now, SMS isn't a gamified platform (I'm looking at you, Snapchat).

Any social media apps (I compulsively install and uninstall Instagram a few times a week because on one hand, it's awesome; on the other hand, I end up putting too much time into it) have notifications disabled.

Getting an Apple Watch was the real game changer. Now, if my phone goes off, I don't even have to look at it or stop what I'm doing. I can decide whether or not to engage with the incoming notification without risking getting sucked into "being on my phone". With LTE, I can even leave the god damn phone in the car, at my desk, or in my locker at the gym without having to worry about missing an important call.

HN is my ground zero for everything and while it may be a little dangerous to only read news and articles that are posted on the same website, you all are pretty balanced and nuanced people from reasonably diverse backgrounds and worldviews, so I'm not that worried about it.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#265

Post by agumonkey »

gkya wrote: post #207
senko wrote: post #128

Earlier 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…

Solid advice. I'll add to this: - Do not follow newspapers RSS feeds. They bombard you with news that are not relevant at all. Their newsletters are better. I get all my news from daily or weekly newsletters. I would like to get weekly digests only, but I havent found a good one from a newspaper I like. - Actually quit Facebook. It's pure evil. I was so shocked to hear how it showed you your old, forgotten photos/mem…

it's funny, your comment makes me think.. the world has too many moving parts to follow them all, so a carefully curated summary of events would be interesting. annnnd that's the press (which got injured by the stream fad.. irony)

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#266

Post by gorbachev »

senko wrote: post #128
tribune wrote: post #34

I'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…

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 used to run my browsers with an addon that disabled user comments. I whitelisted a few sites where the Internet idiots didn't visit. It worked absolutely beautifully and forced me to avoid the worst of Internet very effectively, even during my weak moments. It cut down so much of the frustration I had about consuming content on the Internet.

I had to uninstall it, because the addon developer stopped maintaining it and the performance bugs made browsing bigger sites much too slow.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#267

Post by Mahn »

HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #120

"The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, but it doesn’t necessarily protect freedom of attention." Are you suggesting that people's free will is so easily lost that we needed to have, in the First Amendment, a clause stating "freedom from external thought influences"? "Modern Media is a DoS Attack on Your Free Will" Only if you allow it to be, just like with any other compulsive activity, if it starts affecti…

The problem is that a lot of people can't help themselves from falling prey to the attention seeking media. I don't know whether this is something that should be regulated, but there is some responsibility on the party that's exploiting people's time fully knowing what they are doing, not just on the addicted consumer.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#268

Post by enraged_camel »

free_everybody wrote: post #256

Stop carrying your smartphone. Leave it at home. If you must because your family/work depends on you, then delete every app. Use your laptop as your main driver. If you need to, get a laptop with better battery life. Start developing a personal philosophy of internet usage. Here is mine: Category 3 [Abstain from completely] Reddit (Yes, all of reddit), Facebook ... Category 2 [Check once every couple days ~15 min tot…

I carry my smartphone with me but I keep it on DND most of the time unless I'm expecting a call or an email.

That way I get the best of both worlds: lack of constant interruptions and the ability to use important features such as maps, camera, etc. when I need.

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#269

Post by dps7ud »

HoppedUpMenace wrote: post #120

"The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, but it doesn’t necessarily protect freedom of attention." Are you suggesting that people's free will is so easily lost that we needed to have, in the First Amendment, a clause stating "freedom from external thought influences"? "Modern Media is a DoS Attack on Your Free Will" Only if you allow it to be, just like with any other compulsive activity, if it starts affecti…

I think this is addressed in the article:

> Isn’t it our own fault that we’re too easily distracted? Maybe we just need more self-discipline.

> That kind of rhetoric implicitly grants the idea that it’s okay for technology to be adversarial against us. The whole point of technology is to help us do what we want to do better. Why else would we have it?

...

> Does personal responsibility matter at all?

> I don’t think personal responsibility is unimportant. I think it’s untenable as a solution to this problem. Even people who write about these issues day to day, even me—and I worked at Google for 10 years—need to remember the sheer volume and scale of resources that are going into getting us to look at one thing over another, click on one thing over another. This industry employs some of the smartest people, thousands of Ph.D. designers, statisticians, engineers. They go to work every day to get us to do this one thing, to undermine our willpower. It’s not realistic to say you need to have more willpower. That’s the very thing being undermined!

Re: Modern Media Is a DoS Attack on Free Will

#270

Post by asabjorn »

free_everybody wrote: post #256

Stop carrying your smartphone. Leave it at home. If you must because your family/work depends on you, then delete every app. Use your laptop as your main driver. If you need to, get a laptop with better battery life. Start developing a personal philosophy of internet usage. Here is mine: Category 3 [Abstain from completely] Reddit (Yes, all of reddit), Facebook ... Category 2 [Check once every couple days ~15 min tot…

Much of our news media is currently designed to be sports-like, so if your goal is to be informed then this strategy is very wise. To make news more sports-like news channels like CNN offer generous pay to people that are willing to spout controversial cartoonish opinions on national news as explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pS4x8hXQ5c

It is very questionable if these controversial opinions are representative of anything except an antagonistic "other" that is similar to who we want our opposing political side to be, so that we don't have to actually spend the effort to speak together and find common ground. Generous pay would probably not be necessary if anything else was the case.

This way of avoiding civic discourse and not listen is in my opinion incredibly dangerous for our democracy, as the default state of a society is not a working democracy and you have to fight to keep it.

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