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Reasons to Quit Social Media

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Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#91

Post by qsort »

MattKimber wrote: post #77
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 think the problem is not necessarily things such as likes, upvotes, shares or other features but platforms which don't consider Goodhart's law when they introduce them. Large Reddits tend toward bland and repetitive cookie-cutter content not solely because Reddit has a voting mechanism, but because the site's structure allows that mechanism to be highly vulnerable to karma farming. There are many casual users who d…

In my opinion the main differentiator is whether or not the platform's userbase is more or less like the population at large.

This is important for two reasons:

- If a website is full of normies - sorry for the word, feel free to suggest a more appropriate one - then mainstream cultural references, information sources, opinions and so on are bound to dominate the scene. This makes the community far less interesting, because mainstream sources necessarly aim for the lowest common denominator. Those communities also look very similar to each other, as though they were TV channels.

- The community is prone to segment itself along the same lines that divide us in real life. Language, politics, education, etc.

As harsh as it sounds, I have come to think that being exclusionary in at least some dimensions is necessary for any kind of community to be interesting.

> I think HN is less affected by karma farming

A very underrated feature that I have come to really like is how positive scores are hidden for everyone except yourself. That a comment is flagged or at -4 is useful signal (I might disagree with the signal but it's clear that other commenters really disliked that), but on the other hand not knowing whether a comment sits at +1 or +20 forces you to think about what the comment is actually saying.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#92

Post by 999900000999 »

shuntress wrote: post #2

I don't want to quit social media What I want is for interactions with other people in online social spaces to be less destructive.

Negative content flows upwards, the more negative or edgy you are the more upvotes you get. Users crave this fake validation to make up for other things that are lacking.

Think about it this way, if you have a good job, fantastic relationships, and other great things going on are you really going to be arguing on Instagram with strangers ?

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#93

Post by skinkestek »

tessierashpool wrote: post #68
danans wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

The obvious answer to this however is not to remove the very useful upvote button everywhere but to

- stop frequenting racist forums,

- if they are actually racist, tell law enforcement (where applicable)

isn't it?

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#94

Post by Karrot_Kream »

MattKimber wrote: post #77
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 think the problem is not necessarily things such as likes, upvotes, shares or other features but platforms which don't consider Goodhart's law when they introduce them. Large Reddits tend toward bland and repetitive cookie-cutter content not solely because Reddit has a voting mechanism, but because the site's structure allows that mechanism to be highly vulnerable to karma farming. There are many casual users who d…

I agree that Upvote based sites and engagement based sites usually produce different dynamics, and that upvote places become echo chambers and that engagement based sites tend toward controversial content for exactly those reasons. I think the frustration comes from the fact that many highly specific communities use upvotes as a proxy for correctness. It's one thing to write off Twitter's lack of quality as a facet of its highly general audience, bit it's another one when highly technical (not necessarily computing) forums full of expert hobbyists and practitioners succumb to groupthink. And if you think HN is immune to karma games and groupthink, just look at any thread about $CURRENT_HYPE programming language.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#95

Post by Minor49er »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #13
trutannus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't want to stop using drugs, I just want drugs that are not going to harm me while I use them" Unfortunately, social media by its nature is going to be harmful. It was never designed to consider the world we live in now.

What exactly is wrong with that? We decided we wanted to derive cars, but without the harmful effects of being in crashes, so we decided to create safer vehicles. I like some drugs, and a lot of them are okay in some situations with some boundaries... even if a lot of the users are using them for unhealthy reasons in situations that make the drugs problematic. I like social media-- I'm literally using it right now to…

> I like social media-- I'm literally using it right now to communicate with you

If you're extending the definition of social media to include sites like Hacker News, you may as well categorize the entire Internet as social media

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#96

Post by m0ngr31 »

devmunchies wrote: post #89
m0ngr31 wrote: post #85

I have quit all social media except for HN and Reddit. Although on Reddit I just use a burner account for comments and I have a cron job that deletes all my comments/submissions at 5PM every day so I'm not providing any value to the site. Has helped me wean off of just endless scrolling. I only use it about 15 minutes a day now.

I found reddit worse than twitter as far as self esteem and group think. Reddit's downvoting is used as punishment for not being "bubbly" (don't know how else to describe the reddit vibe) enough. I do think a feed of programming posts would be nice but I don't want to visit that site.

I haven't experienced self esteem issues on Reddit, but the group think problem is one of the biggest issues I have with the platform.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#97

Post by hourislate »

The mindset of someone who would willingly engage in social media (reddit, insta, FB, TikTok, etc) is the real crux of all of this.

The need for attention, validation, to fit in, and be seen fitting it. It encourages the worst traits of old internet forums. The upvote system is a compounding factor on all of this because it gives direct feedback. Violating the group think is instantly punished. Conforming to the group think is instantly rewarded. They are thereby programmed to attempt to appease the group constantly. They live for the rush of validation and dopamine when the upvotes start ticking.

This shit becomes such a powerful feedback loop that they really have no grasp on reality at all. I've had the misfortune of talking to some IRL hardcore redditors face to face. They're socially inept in an entirely unique way. They're capable of basic social graces that an actual mentally ill people aren't, but they still lack critical self awareness. They don't know how to differentiate between the internet and real life. They're gullible and will believe anything even if it's half way agreeable to them. Its tragic, they're virtually lobotomized. Genuine NPCs.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#98

Post by skinkestek »

suketk wrote: post #69
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

> 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.

Isn't the problem more one of open-ended feeds rather than feeds generally?

I can live fine with my RSS feed for example: nothing gets in there if I don't actually put it there.

My Facebook and Twitter feeds however are full of this person liked this, reshared that and commented there. So full that I cannot finish it ever.

Of course my addiction is HN, I frequently forget to visit Facebook for weeks (booooring maybe especially after people stopped posting what they did and started just posting motivational posters and memes) and I only visit Twitter as some kind of duty (it is one of the dumbest ideas that ever got traction IMO so I don't exactly enjoy it).

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#99

Post by Minor49er »

fjabre wrote: post #27
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.

Yes it is particularly social because it has the concept of Karma. It has tamed it by policy but vanity can never be tamed outright. It will always exist in some form on these networks and HN/Reddit style forums capitalize on humans’ vanity by appealing to it through Karma. Thus it ticks up the social-ness score a bit for sites like HN as opposed to some old forums like one would find on Yahoo or used to find on Comp…

Is karma the line where the social-ness is drawn? I mean, I've been on here for a while and haven't even recognized anyone in any meaningful capacity by their handle. 100% of my interactions on here have been with strangers that have and will remain as strangers, as I am also a stranger to them.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#100

Post by m0ngr31 »

gonehome wrote: post #90
m0ngr31 wrote: post #85

I have quit all social media except for HN and Reddit. Although on Reddit I just use a burner account for comments and I have a cron job that deletes all my comments/submissions at 5PM every day so I'm not providing any value to the site. Has helped me wean off of just endless scrolling. I only use it about 15 minutes a day now.

Yeah - the lack of retention control on these platforms makes me hesitant to use them. For Twitter there are third party sites that make it easy to remove old tweets, but it's nearly impossible to remove likes (you have to start a process with their DPO office and then manually remove them in 3k batches and they have to reload them after each). Reddit is tedious in that you have to do it one by one, there are some sc…

Lucky for me I didn't post very much on Twitter so it wasn't too bad to just manually delete them one at a time.

I'm using shreddit to edit and then delete my comments on Reddit. It has worked out pretty good for me so far.

I deleted my FB account maybe 8 years ago but didn't think to delete my posts first.

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