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Reasons to Quit Social Media

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Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#251

Post by siljon »

I actively block out content and tell social media platforms what I'm interested in and what I'm not interested in. This have improved my feed a lot and my social media have become a lot more enjoyable.

I have considered building a twitter filter program. Where instead of scrolling through endlessly content, where 90% of them isn't even good. I could just ask my twitter filter program to show me the most retweeted content, show person X last tweets, show me the most liked tweets of the people that I follow... etc. This will prevent me from scrolling endlessly, and speed up the process of information gather.

Social media if used correctly can have a lot of benefits. But takes some time to build up a good feed.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#252

Post by kongin »

fragmede wrote: post #188
mjr00 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, and same with most people I know. I'm from the generation that got Facebook in ~2005, when you still needed a university email to sign up. It was definitely helpful for socializing at college, especially the almighty "relationship status" field. Fond memories. It's useless to me now except for seeing friends' photos, but Instagram is better at that anyway. I imagine it's changed for the same reason loot bo…

> Same here, and same with most people I know. Well yeah. By definition you're no longer engaging with people on Facebook for the most part. People who are organizing events, participating in Facebook groups, posting memes to Facebook no longer exist to you (and vice versa). The contingent of people that have moved of Facebook is larger today, but I'd be wary of drawing conclusions based on "well my friends don't use…

The difference is that facebook used to be an elite corner of the web where you knew you were talking to people who would be in the upper 1% of US society.

The reddit tech subs used to be populated with the people writing the software they talked about.

There just isn't a place like that any more that is neutral ground. HN and lobste.rs are the two closest and they ban maintainers of open source crown jewels for political reasons.

I can't even be bothered to finish this post because someone will flag it and then dang will show up saying it's not true.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#253

Post by Saptarishi »

devmunchies wrote: post #86

many of these are problems social media on smart phones . the convenience and presence of an internet device is an irresistible entrapment.

Agree with this. Smartphones have enabled profligation of low effort posts and comments, emotional outbursts and mood based content.

This sort of direct or indirect attention grabbing content which is more often than not extremely unhealthy for society gets pushed up by people, because it satisfies our primal dopamine instincts.

As communities get larger and harder to moderate, more and more people assume it is the status quo to create such unhealthy content, and because of smartphones, it is extremely easy to push up such content, and those who werent originally into this also get dragged in.

On an aside, is it really ethical for a company to make insane amounts of profit for being a platform which enables people to bicker, fight and create echo chambers? Agreed that not all social media communities are like this, but even so, is it fair?

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#254

Post by winternett »

I actually use Social Media to promote my music... The things platforms don't understand is that there are multiple potential uses for social sites. That is why the one script or narrative they create and impose on their user base to manage everyone is severely flawed from the "one platform fits all: model.

That's also why tightening moderation and introducing complex protocols for success/productivity/satisfaction/merit/growth over a large user base drives people off of platforms and kills a user base quickly... It's better for social apps to stay relatively small and tight knit. They all grow and wither as monopolies, with no way of returning to the past success as far as I've seen thus far.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#255

Post by chrischattin »

atlgator wrote: post #138
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…

Hacker News IS harmful because there's no established standard for what should receive an upvote or downvote (>500 karma can downvote). This leads to people just upvoting things they agree with and downvoting things they don't. It's all groupthink. Alternatively, all well thought out comments should receive upvotes (despite personal cognitive dissonance) and inflammatory, trolling, or irrelevant comments should be do…

The was the original "reddiquette" from back in the day. But as you know, it's pretty hard to align incentives, human nature, and that ideal.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#256

Post by greggman3 »

nonbirithm wrote: post #186

> After the habit of scrolling and liking wears off, you suddenly find yourself in a joyful place. A quieter, calmer, less demanding place where you don’t want to know what others are doing. You focus on what you want to do. But what if you don't know what you want to do? I feel like this post was written from the perspective of someone who already has their own life goals sorted out, and social media was clearly act…

People did just fine without social media for 7000+ years. You don't suddenly need social media to fill some void that wasn't possible to fill before social media existed.

Note: I'm not dissing social media. I like it when it works well. I'm just responding to this idea that it's a need.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#257

Post by Griffinsauce »

mnsc wrote: post #179
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…

Hacker news is not social media. I have never recognized a user/username in between two sessions. And I would probably miss the mythical PG if he showed up in a thread. I don't know his handle anyways. Sometimes I'm made aware that a relevant "celebrity" is present in the thread but that's when people act obviously star struck like "oh thank you for that seminal paper back in '15". So nothing social going on here, ju…

> nothing social going on here, just [..] discussions

Discussions are social interactions. HNs format just makes them very shallow because they start from zero each time.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#258

Post by Griffinsauce »

buckyfull wrote: post #209
mnsc wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker news is not social media. I have never recognized a user/username in between two sessions. And I would probably miss the mythical PG if he showed up in a thread. I don't know his handle anyways. Sometimes I'm made aware that a relevant "celebrity" is present in the thread but that's when people act obviously star struck like "oh thank you for that seminal paper back in '15". So nothing social going on here, ju…

It isn't? It seems to me like it is. We have groups of people discussing issues in these online forums. Isn't that social media? And although we don't seem to have "clout mechanics" for users, we do have the upvote/downvote mechanics for posts and comment count per post. Admittedly I quickly scan all posts for these numbers to help me decide where to click. So it seems like what can make social media a positive or a…

> And although we don't seem to have "clout mechanics" for users

It is possible to see someone's profile, posts and comments. I wonder how many users do this to form opinions about others.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#259

Post by janpot »

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 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.

I believe it's advertisement-driven content curation. You're being fooled into thinking that your feed follows your interest, but instead it optimizes around stealing your attention. The feeds control you, not the other way around.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#260

Post by kierkegaard7 »

godshatter wrote: post #223
syshum wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Is it the like/upvote mechanism? Yes. This is what created the validation feedback loop, and what generally causes the social harm The like button, and the variations on it is IMO the biggest problem with social media Forums and other discussion boards did not have these problems and while you could have "flame war" that involved actual argumentation back and forth not 1000's of passive visitors choosing to upvote,…

I would place more emphasis on the downvote button causing most of the harm. If you post something, and it doesn't get up-voted, that's less of a hit than posting something and having it be actively downvoted. One is a statement that no one found it interesting enough to vote up, the other is a way of saying that kind of content isn't desired here. I'm guessing it's the downvotes that cause people to leave, leaving a…

Twitter doesn't have upvotes and I find it to be more addicting than sites with a upvote/downvote system. In a way, downvoting is still getting a response from a person, maybe that is why
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