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Reasons to Quit Social Media

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Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#101

Post by pknomad »

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…

I think COVID lockdown made keeping social media usage to a minimum really difficult. I noticed that I started to watch chatting streams on Twitch as a crutch for not being able to socialize outside. Socializing over a video call with your friends are also difficult because you're not left with much topics to talk about.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#103

Post by drdeadringer »

shuntress wrote: post #34
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.

Do you drink coffee?

Do you eat food? Do you breathe air?

Somehow coffee is completely different.

Somehow coffee is on the same tier as tobacco or cocaine.

It's not.

Relax.

Enjoy a cocoa.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#104

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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…

>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.

Sure, there's correlation but the correlation always breaks down whenever anyone needs it most.

If you ask an easy question you could have just googled or read the man pages to get a decent answer is what's upvoted. But few people really need help answering those questions.

If you ask a hard question potentially involving nuances and situational constraints or if you ask a very specific question requiring expertise you will get the same naive surface level answers highly up-voted and the one guy who actually knows your question has his answer downvoted to oblivion by the people who know just enough to be dangerous.

If you aren't familiar with the subject matter in question it's even worse because a guy who knows what he's talking about answering your hard question and getting downvoted for it is indistinguishable from a guy who has no idea what he's talking about giving a wrong answer to an easy question.

Of course the end result is that everyone who knows WTF they're talking about contributes minimally if at all.

Stack Overflow is better than most subreddits because you can link a man page or doc but the more a subject requires subjective judgement the more it displays the pattern I described above.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#105

Post by throwaway0a5e »

qsort wrote: post #91
MattKimber wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

>That a comment is flagged or at -4 is useful signal

Knowing that something is a) spot on but ideologically inconvenient b) wrong doesn't really help if you don't have the subject matter familiarity to already know what's right and wrong. It just reduces your options to a binary choice.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#107

Post by giantrobot »

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

If you enjoyed the things you did why the fuck do they need to be productive? No one needs to be "productive" 100% of the time.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#108

Post by skadamat »

jensensbutton wrote: post #106

Honestly this seems like an argument to quit everything _except_ facebook. For me, fb is the only social media built to enhance relationships with your real friends.

Messaging apps maybe, but Facebook? I think once FB started to put news and content from people you don't know alongside content from people you know / care about, IMO they stopped making this a priority

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#109

Post by JasonFruit »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #105
qsort wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

>That a comment is flagged or at -4 is useful signal Knowing that something is a) spot on but ideologically inconvenient b) wrong doesn't really help if you don't have the subject matter familiarity to already know what's right and wrong. It just reduces your options to a binary choice.

It does a good job of saying, "That comment isn't a good fit for this community." You may decide you don't care; you may decide to adjust your tone or approach; you may decide HN isn't for you. But it provides useful information.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#110

Post by kyle-rb »

Maybe I'm not the typical user here, but I don't have most of the problems described in this post. I use Twitter somewhat heavily, but I just use it to post jokes, and mostly follow people who use Twitter the same way.

It's definitely a time-sink, and to some degree the "fake sense of belonging", so I'm being less social irl. But I don't think I can blame the second point entirely on Twitter, and I think I'm ok with the tradeoff of Twitter being a time-sink in exchange for the entertainment it provides me.

So imo, the solution to around 30% of these problems is just not to follow the "Jim just purchased a BMW" people.

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