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Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

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Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#71

Post by whatshisface »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #68
treeman79 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I Facebook for support forums for autoimmune conditions. It is drastically better then Reddit for finding answers or suggestions. Every question gets dozens of answers many of which are very insightful and useful if repetitive. The sort of stuff that doctors don’t like to explain like my bloodwork says this what does that mean and what should I do next. people will have excellent answers.

how can you be sure that they're good answers?

I'm not in any Facebook groups but as a general principle it's a lot easier to verify a true claim than it is to come up with a true claim from nothing.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#72

Post by BitwiseFool »

ewzimm wrote: post #15

Does anyone else find it hard to personally connect with the well-researched claim that people respond with a fight-or-flight response to ideas that challenge their core beliefs? I've always found ideas to be more interesting the more they challenge my core beliefs. This is true of math and science, but especially true of things like religion. I remember how wonderful it was as a teenager to find challenges to the id…

>"that people respond with a fight-or-flight response to ideas that challenge their core beliefs?"

I believe a large part of this is due to people's personalities. Namely, Openness and Agreeableness. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) It stands to reason that someone who is low on openness and not agreeable would react poorly to their core beliefs being challenged, and vice versa.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#73

Post by PragmaticPulp »

ramoz wrote: post #19

The author who wrote this has tweeted, on average, 1-2x a day for 10 years. https://twitter.com/jaronschneider Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for society (an information/propagation architecture that exploits how people process information, imo). For me, Facebook is nothing more than a hometown forum. I havent logged on in months.

> Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for society

I'm always surprised that Reddit gets a free pass in these discussions. Reddit has been home to some of the most egregious bad communities and misinformation hives.

Their invisible-hand moderation system allows a small number of moderators to completely control the conversation in a subreddit. Banning dissenters and removing comments that don't agree with what the moderators want people to see is an easy way to make it look like everyone is in natural agreement on a topic.

The weirdest part is that most tech people readily admit that Reddit is full of terrible content, even on the front page. The common retort is that it's not so bad if you create an account and manually remove all of those bad subreddits from your list, but by the same argument Facebook isn't a problem because you can simply not subscribe to the bad content.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#74

Post by 999900000999 »

captainmuon wrote: post #14

Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring and only use it for messenger anymore. It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a social network. You were interacting with real people, you could meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances…

I’m in the same boat.

I still use it for messenger, but most days I don’t even look at Facebook.

You can still meet people in real life, just the other day I asked out a girl at a concert and we got drinks afterwards. That’s much more straightforward than installing 30 apps and chatting with bots.

In fact I had a girl offer to add me on Instagram and I just said no. It’s not that serious ( plus typically if she won’t give you her number she doesn’t actually want to date you.)

I’ll agree Facebook used to be much better. For example I was( like 10 years ago) in a college group and I actually went out with a girl from that. I think if your in a closed community it can still be fun.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#75

Post by klyrs »

captainmuon wrote: post #14

Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring and only use it for messenger anymore. It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a social network. You were interacting with real people, you could meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances…

Herein lies the banality: facebook is boring, but if you're bored, it's better than nothing. I don't begrudge folks using it to pass the time on transit to avoid interacting with the public... but I've witnessed quite a few people scrolling endlessly while half-watching tv, half-participating in face to face interactions, etc. I've fallen into that trap myself, during a period of intense burnout -- my ability to focus or produce dropped to zero, and... gotta get that dopamine.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#76

Post by afavour »

ramoz wrote: post #19

The author who wrote this has tweeted, on average, 1-2x a day for 10 years. https://twitter.com/jaronschneider Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for society (an information/propagation architecture that exploits how people process information, imo). For me, Facebook is nothing more than a hometown forum. I havent logged on in months.

> Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for society

I don't really see how that can be true when only 20% of so of the population actually use Twitter. It's very small beans compared to Facebook, or YouTube for that matter.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#77

Post by robocat »

alchemyromcom wrote: post #58

I personally found Facebook hard to quit, but not entirely impossible. I would compare it to giving up cigarettes: not easy, but I got through it. I am coming to terms with the fact that I have have a very serious and damaging internet addiction, however. Like many serious addictions, there's a lot of shame attached to my real addiction, which is 4chan. 4chan is like being addicted to heroin. Every day is a battle to…

Creating a 4chan support group for ex-users would be very challenging.

How many other 4chan addicts do you know in person?

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#78

Post by afavour »

captainmuon wrote: post #14

Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring and only use it for messenger anymore. It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a social network. You were interacting with real people, you could meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances…

I feel as though it's impossible for anyone to write a thread on HN about Facebook without someone immediately coming in and saying that Facebook is stupid and they deleted their account years ago.

Yeah, me too. But you usually don't have to look beyond your immediate family to find someone that uses Facebook (or at the very least an FB-owned property) a ton. We aren't typical!

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#79

Post by npunt »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #65
ramoz wrote: post #19

The author who wrote this has tweeted, on average, 1-2x a day for 10 years. https://twitter.com/jaronschneider Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for society (an information/propagation architecture that exploits how people process information, imo). For me, Facebook is nothing more than a hometown forum. I havent logged on in months.

>"Twitter has by far become a more egregious platform for society" Absolutely. Not only are the people on Twitter much more toxic, the trending feed is way more prone to manipulation and influence campaigns. If I don't know someone directly on Facebook, I'm probably never going to see their stupid hot-takes. No such separation on Twitter. Also, whenever I scroll through Facebook, more than half the posts are advertis…

I wouldn't take your personal experience on Facebook to be universal.

Being a public social network, Twitter's toxicity and distortions are much more visible than Facebook's, and the user experience is far less varied because of common touchpoints like Trending Topics and celebrity posters.

Facebook is a far more unique experience per user, so personal experience isn't a great way to understand others experience. A lot of Facebook's problems are related to the network you've formed, on Pages you have to follow, or in private Groups. Facebook also serves far more people and is ubiquitous and worldwide in a way that Twitter just is not. That's why you can't really rely on your own judgment of the product and sort of have to fly on instruments (population level data) to understand it. This is also why it's critical to have researchers have access to that data to understand what is going on.

Re: Facebook is an addiction treadmill most may never be able to quit

#80

Post by jay_kyburz »

captainmuon wrote: post #14

Are they taking about the same Facebook? I find it utterly boring and only use it for messenger anymore. It used to be addictive, before social media, when it was a social network. You were interacting with real people, you could meet new people, "stalk" people you know IRL, share stuff about yourself or find out stuff about others. You would try to find your crush on FB and check see if you have common acquaintances…

>I wish someone would make a site like that again!

I will make a site similar to that. I really want to. I have plan all drawn up for how it will work.

Its ad free, but with premium services for those willing to pay. One member of a family or group can pay for everybody.

The site is ephemeral, all posts are removed after three months. Its not a place where you store all your photos.

Its a site where friends and families share their holidays, their baby photos and birthday invitations. There won't be sharing news.

I'm not scared to take on the behemoth, I'm one guy in a home office. I only need a few thousand subscribers to make it worth my while.

I've got about 2 years left on my current project, then I'm going to start.

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