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Reasons to Quit Social Media

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Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#61

Post by optimalsolver »

betenoire wrote: post #32
scarecrowbob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what little it's worth, I've been online since Compuserve and personal local BBSs... I absolutely consider HN to be social media.

Mind sharing why? Is it the features or something else? When I think back 20 years to forums, HN feels most like those to me. It feels nothing like what most people call "social media"

Out of curiosity, do you condider Reddit to be social media?

To me, HN is just a well-maintained subreddit (pseudonymous, karma-based voting system, recency bias, etc.)

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#62

Post by tqi »

syshum wrote: post #42
clircle wrote: post #33

In reality, when people quit social media, they don't start using their time better, they mostly shift their time into different time waster websites. For example, people quit using facebook for 2 hours a day just start skimming reddit for 2 hours a day. They aren't going to start writing a book or bettering themselves in some way.

That has been my pattern, I will find a different time suck. Leave Reddit, come to HN, leave HN, play a new video game, stop playing a video game, binge watch a tv show. Never anything productive

I think that it is a trap to feel like all time needs to be productive. Not only is it an unachievable ideal, it also makes time spent doing "unproductive" stuff less restorative.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#63

Post by nonameiguess »

zzzbra wrote: post #25

I think part of the problem today with individuals trying to figure out how to moderate their social media usage is that it's not clear what specifically within social media constitutes harm. Is it the like/upvote mechanism? Hacker News would constitute harmful social media in that case. But what might be lost is a powerful lever for democratic input in terms of content curation and moderation. My vote for what's mor…

I'm not sure it's anything mechanical. Facebook is a wretched hive of scum and villainy for sociocultural inertial reasons. You may as well ask why Detroit is a crappier place to live than Madison. Facebook succumbed early on to echo chambers, disinformation campaigns, and marketing of snake oil and pyramid schemes. Hacker News set rules and followed them consistently, moderating the discussion in accordance with those rules.

Maybe for a better example, just look at Reddit. Something like AskHistorians or SilphRoad for Pokemon Go are terrific communities full of great information and productive discussion, whereas many other subs are as bad or worse than Facebook. That is in spite of exactly the same interface technology. The difference is culture.

If Facebook has a design problem, it's not having any sort of guiding principles other than engagement. The purely algorithmic curation isn't really curation. It doesn't create a culture at all. It just creates addiction. Infinite scroll is in service of that, but it doesn't create it. In fact, the mobile reader I use for Hacker News has infinite scroll and it doesn't make the site worse.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#64

Post by [deleted] »

motohagiography wrote: post #55
tarr11 wrote: post #8

Isn’t HN social media?

Best question. Declined to join or participate any social media from the beginning. HN is absolutely is on the spectrum of social media, but more like a well moderated usenet group. It's a well run decoupled internet comment section, sort of like a fat tailed reddit. Without pictures, friends, followers, alerts, verified identities, personalization and emphasis on personal branding, an ad-driven revenue model, I woul…

[deleted]

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#65

Post by paulpauper »

The biggest problem with twitter is low engagement. You can comment on popular stories and likely no one will see or engage at all. Same for sending direct messages or replying. Much of twitter is just a few thousand big accounts doing all the broadcasting.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#66

Post by ahmaman »

Good points and personally relate to some of these benefits.

I try to keep my social media minimal. No Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, etc...

At times has been difficult to use social media in moderation. Feels like I am competing with an Olympic champion in their own sport.

With that said, here some things that I found helpful:

- Never social media apps on my phone (no email either).

- Only access social media via laptop/desktop.

- Use services like Mailbrew to follow Youtube channels I want to follow (very few).

- Never save my session, always enter the credentials every time I want to check social media.

I do however follow Twitter & HN. More like a passive user.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#68

Post by tessierashpool »

danans wrote: post #52
zzzbra wrote: post #25

I think part of the problem today with individuals trying to figure out how to moderate their social media usage is that it's not clear what specifically within social media constitutes harm. Is it the like/upvote mechanism? Hacker News would constitute harmful social media in that case. But what might be lost is a powerful lever for democratic input in terms of content curation and moderation. My vote for what's mor…

> Is it the like/upvote mechanism? Hacker News would constitute harmful social media in that case. The way I've started to look at it is that all social media has some harmful and some beneficial aspects, but the nexus of identity-based (vs topic-based like HN) social media with upvote/like functionality is the most problematic for people struggling with identity and self worth. Even as someone established enough not…

the upvote mechanism is definitely harmful in most use cases, because it prioritizes groupthink over expertise.

but it's also definitely beneficial in places like Stack Overflow, where there's a logical reason to assume that the most popular answer might have any correlation at all with the best answer.

the best answer will always be at or near the top in a place like Stack Overflow. so the upvote mechanism is useful there. but the most racist answer will always be at or near the top in a forum where racist people just share opinions.

and this malicious example is just chosen for clarity. even in a more innocuous context, if there is no absolute correct answer and nobody is testing the answers for accuracy, upvotes often do more harm than good, and upvote sites are almost by definition groupthink factories, when they don't pertain to verifiable claims that are quickly tested (which is what makes upvotes helpful on a site like Stack Overflow).

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#69

Post by suketk »

zzzbra wrote: post #25

I think part of the problem today with individuals trying to figure out how to moderate their social media usage is that it's not clear what specifically within social media constitutes harm. Is it the like/upvote mechanism? Hacker News would constitute harmful social media in that case. But what might be lost is a powerful lever for democratic input in terms of content curation and moderation. My vote for what's mor…

The problem is absolutely scrolling (I call them feeds[0], but pedants don't love that.)

Feeds encourage consumption over action, take you in unwanted directions and induce FOMO through overchoice. If you can eliminate them, these services magically become tools rather than escapes.

[0] https://suketk.com/feeds-considered-harmful

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#70

Post by ahmaman »

ahmaman wrote: post #66

Good points and personally relate to some of these benefits. I try to keep my social media minimal. No Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, etc... At times has been difficult to use social media in moderation. Feels like I am competing with an Olympic champion in their own sport. With that said, here some things that I found helpful: - Never social media apps on my phone (no email either). - Only access social medi…

For those of you who have successfully minimized social media in their life. Where does you go for real conversations on the internet?

I sometimes use Twitter for that but feels like the ratio of noise vs. signal is too high!

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