Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 140 posts

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#41

Post by mc32 »

ghaff wrote: post #34
mc32 wrote: post #2

He’s right. The problem is the incentive for “popularity” running amok. If Linus’s angry emails are on a distribution list, the exposure is minimal and the damage is contained. His same excess in social media is reproduced and exploited for various reasons, positive and negative and overflows into unrelated circles where unrelated people have input into something containment would prevent them from being exposed. Thi…

>If Linus’s angry emails are on a distribution list, the exposure is minimal and the damage is contained. Perhaps. Another way to say the same thing however is something along the lines of the following. If you behave... poorly within a relatively narrow community, given sufficient authority you can just get away with it. Maybe you drive people away but it's all pretty invisible to the broader world and those that re…

I get your point. He acted badly and I think social media has dulled his appetite for that, however, his peccadilloes are not the main point. It’s the greater idiocy that current social media fosters which is a multiple orders of magnitude a bigger problem than these provincial disputes ever were.

Let’s take people who are against childhood vaccinations. Their unfounded beliefs would remain contained and would not proliferate beyond their circles vs everyone gets exposed and people who’d never think of this anti scientific position become convinced this position kinda somehow makes sense.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#43

Post by jamesholden »

Is it just me, or does the article kind of suck? It starts with discussing who he is, and then his opinion, and the spends the next half of the article talking about what kind of person he is and how this is 'ironic' coming from _him_ of all people.

Just seems weird that they give his opinion, and then we get someone else's opinion on HIM. That doesn't seem very unbiased. Maybe I am overthinking it.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#44

Post by seneca »

smt88 wrote: post #14
trpc wrote: post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

Those forums exist and are more widely-used than ever. They're just mostly hosted on reddit now.

Reddit is very far from a forum. It's centrally administered by people outside your community who have a profit motive, it serves ads, has a terrible free speech record, and a slight amount of popularity means people will wander into your community and, generally, fill it with low content garbage. Reddit is a horrible place to host a community, and, in my eyes, is the actual cause of the death of forums more so than Facebook.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#45

Post by 0xcafecafe »

smt88 wrote: post #14
trpc wrote: post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

Those forums exist and are more widely-used than ever. They're just mostly hosted on reddit now.

Reddit also has its issues though. Recently they have increased policing of the subs and removed many in guise of breaching rules. Not to mention their terrible UX for the "new reddit" which has prompted me to change all my bookmarks to "old.reddit.com/r/".

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#46

Post by HNthrow22 »

TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #5

I wonder what he thought made Google+ "less mindless" than the other platforms.

Tied to real identity - given the current state of the net one could make a case that the S Korean system of requiring gov ID # for all online signups would be an improvement, of course that opens the door to serious abuse but at this point would it be the lesser of two evils?

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#47

Post by pferde »

mc32 wrote: post #16
bovermyer wrote: post #8

I feel like he's right, but there's much more to understand here. The broadcast of oversimplified messages through a human network that reacts strongly to those messages, and thus boosts the signal of those messages further, is something that bears careful consideration.

Some of this behavior could be mitigated. Remove likes and resharing. Ban the incentives (economic, internet points, attenuate diffusion with distance from *caster), etc. in other words, semi-anonymize the author, take away virality and remove the economics (likes, views, etc., which incentivize virality).

Just for clarification - did you really mean "virility", or was it supposed to be "virality"? :)

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#48

Post by ghaff »

mc32 wrote: post #41
ghaff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If Linus’s angry emails are on a distribution list, the exposure is minimal and the damage is contained. Perhaps. Another way to say the same thing however is something along the lines of the following. If you behave... poorly within a relatively narrow community, given sufficient authority you can just get away with it. Maybe you drive people away but it's all pretty invisible to the broader world and those that re…

I get your point. He acted badly and I think social media has dulled his appetite for that, however, his peccadilloes are not the main point. It’s the greater idiocy that current social media fosters which is a multiple orders of magnitude a bigger problem than these provincial disputes ever were. Let’s take people who are against childhood vaccinations. Their unfounded beliefs would remain contained and would not pr…

And I don't disagree with that. There's a whole outrage culture that social media certainly contributes to (as does click-driven "journalism"). Every intemperate or ill-advised--or seen as inappropriate by some segment of the internet--remark gets endlessly repeated and amplified.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#49

Post by mc32 »

pferde wrote: post #47
mc32 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of this behavior could be mitigated. Remove likes and resharing. Ban the incentives (economic, internet points, attenuate diffusion with distance from *caster), etc. in other words, semi-anonymize the author, take away virality and remove the economics (likes, views, etc., which incentivize virality).

Just for clarification - did you really mean "virility", or was it supposed to be "virality"? :)

My mistake virality in both cases, although virility in some sense could also make sense.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#50

Post by redleggedfrog »

jamesholden wrote: post #43

Is it just me, or does the article kind of suck? It starts with discussing who he is, and then his opinion, and the spends the next half of the article talking about what kind of person he is and how this is 'ironic' coming from _him_ of all people. Just seems weird that they give his opinion, and then we get someone else's opinion on HIM. That doesn't seem very unbiased. Maybe I am overthinking it.

That's funny, cause I was about to post starting with "Is it just me..."

No only the things you said, but it's written like it's targeted at a middle-schooler. I could barely make myself skim the 2nd half of it. I did, cause, you know, Linus.

Post reply on HN