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Reasons to Quit Social Media

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Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#151

Post by fjabre »

Minor49er wrote: post #99
fjabre wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is no line for online communities. They are all social to some extent. Karma simply makes them more so.

We are no longer strangers. Social-ness has been engaged ;)

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#152

Post by laurent92 »

999900000999 wrote: post #92
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 ?

I would say that the top driver to toxic online communication is wanting to convince others.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#153

Post by Minor49er »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #142
Minor49er wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I dunno... I feel that the sine qua non of "social media" is user generated content conducted between specific users, tied to specific accounts. Not even wikis meet that definition, and certainly not most of the author-generated content-based site like blogs or market sites such as amazon, or news sites where the discussion isn't the putative content.

But don't wikis commonly have a "Talk" section or similar? The pages that are posted and edited would surely fall under author-generated content.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#154

Post by danans »

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 the most racist answer will always be at or near the top in a forum where racist people just share opinions

This has the effect, however, of making it clear that the forum itself is mostly racist, rather than masquerading as not being that.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#155

Post by wintermutestwin »

jonny_eh wrote: post #141
enos_feedler wrote: post #45

“ We persuade our minds that liking pictures and joining virtual groups gives us a sense of belonging. Connection with others” Except in many cases its not persuasion. Joining groups actually does give us these things. My gf is part of “bay area moms” group and the amount of useful tips she gets out of participating in that is significant. Or “bay area hikers” for me. Also, if i want to sell something, I hire faceboo…

I've yet to find a better tool for managing and communicating with local interest groups. For example, my local pinball group uses it to announce events, manage RSVPs, advertise machines for sale, and just chat about pinball. Meetup.com was a thing, but was more expensive and not quite as good of a product. This replaced a mailing list, but FB is frankly better at this, especially when it comes to managing events.

IME Facebook's interface is horrible and full of unnecessary cruft. Couldn't you just make a subreddit? Reddit is so much easier and cleaner IMO.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#156

Post by TeMPOraL »

cblconfederate wrote: post #114
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? Yes it is, HN pays people to keep things at bay. But that doesn't scale

It scales, just not at the price companies are willing to pay. Or, put another way, the main social media platforms aren't spending enough to ensure their service works well.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#157

Post by wintermutestwin »

spentrent wrote: post #146

#3: Your old-ass relatives are on Facebook and they want to see your kids. Def feel a validation dopamine fix from engagement...but it's not the only factor. (This is why I love Tinybeans and hope it rockets. It's like Instagram but for sharing family pics.)

Funny that you can join Tinybeans through FB. They say they don't sell your data, but I couldn't figure out the monetization strategy.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#158

Post by peakaboo »

jonny_eh wrote: post #139
jader201 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t get the complaints with Twitter as a product, at least from my usage. But maybe that’s because I’ve exclusively been using Tweetbot for several years. But it basically does exactly what I want: when someone I follow posts something, it shows up in my feed. Which is what it’s been doing for years. Again, maybe this is a matter of the client, but Tweetbot lets me see exactly what I want, and nothing more…

> Again, maybe this is a matter of the client, but Tweetbot lets me see exactly what I want, and nothing more. The official Twitter client allows this again now too (but with ads). You need to select "See latest tweets instead" at the top of Home.

Your wording "allows" is exactly what people dont like about these tech companies.

They are not real authorities on the Internet. If they left, the internet would improve a thousand times.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#159

Post by danans »

rovolo wrote: post #118
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…

How can you distinguish identity-based from topic-based social media? Doesn't your identity influence which topics you're interested in, and don't the topics which interest you form your identity? This forum says in the guidelines to submit "Anything that good hackers would find interesting." That reads to me like an identity-based forum. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think you are misunderstanding my use of the the phrase "identity-based". What I mean is that the primary entity around which conversation and content revolve on HN is the topic (from URLs or questions), not the individual user's identity.

Topic based forums are a thing. I'm a member of a paid (gasp!) forum for high-performance building methods.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#160

Post by EasyTiger_ »

Firmly believe what’s ruined social media is special interest groups and the rest parading as people like you and me. My evidence for this is the overnight take-over of r/politics in 2016 and the subsequent introduction of extremely divisive talking points which eventually transformed it into the glorified hate-site it is today. YES I’m bitter, Reddit before then got me through some tough times.
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