Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

petapixel.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 274 posts

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

#81

Post by ben_w »

HPsquared wrote: post #63
ben_w wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What hooks people like us (whatever that means) isn’t necessarily what hooks normal people (ditto). Facebook has a massive training set at its disposal, claiming more monthly active users than humans have lifetime heartbeats. If FB isn’t chronically addictive for normal people with that sample size, then either (0) A/B testing isn’t as capable as we like to think it is, or (1) FB isn’t even trying anymore.

They don't necessarily need to target normal people, it's possible that over time they have optimized their site to attract those with certain traits that are most profitable.

Hm, could be, if the whales collectively outspend the rest of us collectively.

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

#82

Post by jay_kyburz »

yosito wrote: post #51
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! On a technical level, it's not hard. On business level, it's doubtful if there's a compelling enough business model to prevent it from becoming another surveillance capitalism platform. And on a societal level, it seems impossible that living generations will ever trust a platform en masse again enough to achieve such ubiquity.

I'm convinced that there is a service people will pay for. My idea is that _somebody_ in a social group will want it to happen, and that they can pay for the whole group.

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

#83

Post by gotostatement »

smsm42 wrote: post #26

I find the premise ridiculous. I mean yes, there are people who are addicted to it. There are people who are addicted to lots of things, from playing video games to climbing ice-covered mountains. But the idea that it's harder to quit facebook than to get rid of, say, opioid dependency - which literally rewires your body's biochemistry - sounds like complete BS. Of course, if your life is so empty you have nothing to…

This has the same energy as the cigarette lobbyist in congress who talked about how smoking lettuce has the same health effects as smoking tobacco

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

#84

Post by game_the0ry »

Facebook is like vendor lock in for human social interactions and emotions.

That's probably why Zuckerberg tries to acquire competitors - trying to lock in your behavior and then sell it to the highest bidder. Makes sense when you think about it.

When I suggest people delete FB apps from their phones, they start writhing uncomfortably, and try to justify not doing so by making some half-ass claim that their social life will suffer if they did. Its the same response I would expect from someone who is a moderate alcoholic and is told to drink less wine during the week. The addiction is obvious.

My experience after deleting FB apps from my phone - social life changed for the better and I feel less anxiety. It turns out, most of my FB "friends" weren't really my friends. And I can still check FB / Insta via web if I wanted to. Added bonus - FB can't track me as well.

FB will do what FB does - try to steal as much data and attention and sell it to the highest bidder. But you can only blame them so much. Collectively, its on people to change and take responsibility if they feel they have grievances related to FB.

Still, I have hope - awareness for social media's downside effects is only increasing. Ms. Haugen's testimony and the Social Dilemma documentary demonstrate that.

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

#85

Post by npunt »

afavour wrote: post #78
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!

Fully agree, HN is absolutely not the place to get insight on population-level experiences with tech (or most anything else population-level; my pet peeve is people generalizing their education experiences). These population-level problems are far better understood by a process of deduction and looking at what the data says.

I always read these types of comments remembering the response to Dropbox [1] or Slashdot's response to the iPod ("No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.").

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

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

#86

Post by spookthesunset »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #73
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 w…

> 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.

This happens way more than people know, by the way. Some of the moderators on large subreddits are complete dicks to people who go against the grain. Good luck appealing. All you can do is create another account for that subreddit or just never visit it again.

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

#87

Post by haolez »

Barrin92 wrote: post #57
haolez wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No substance could ever match? More powerful than hunger? I strongly challenge that.

Having spent a fair amount of time in internet cafes in my youth I can tell you certainly I have seen my fair share of people who have neglected sleep as well as sustenance and some fairly other fundamental drives to consume digital media for at times days without pause.

Oh, I get it now. I remember that some years ago I saw some news about a Korean kid that died from playing a game for three days in a row, without sleeping.

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

#88

Post by djoldman »

The uproar over and magnitude of digital ink spent on Facebook is interesting.

This uproar seems to persist even if the discussion is restricted to Americans who are adults and not using Facebook for a commercial purpose (i.e. the use is for amusement or in free time).

It seems to be a disconnect from the generally pro-free speech, pro-personal liberty/accountability tone of HN.

Are HN'ers calling for regulating social media companies because of toxic/manipulative/addictive free content served to adults?

If so, who gets to decide?

This discussion is separate from the monopoly power, anti-competitive, anti-democracy angles, which are discussions all their own.

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

#89

Post by mmarq »

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.

For me Twitter is a bit more than an RSS feed, I block everybody who ends up in my timeline for no good reason. A while ago I told Twitter I live in Germany, because I was told they have to censor nazis down there.

It's way healthier than Facebook, where blocking the crazy friend of your aunt may cause endless real life discussions.

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

#90

Post by ChicagoDave »

I disagree.

If someone provided a simple service for friends and families to share photos and updates, it's possible Facebook could be disrupted. I have no evidence to back up my claim, but I think those are the only things people truly care about.

It is the only thing I miss after deleting it two years ago. I certainly don't miss Messenger, the Feed, or news.

Post reply on HN