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

The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

vpnoverview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 305 posts

Re: The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

#201

Post by standardUser »

pessimizer wrote: post #198
nlh wrote: post #41

A personal anecdote: I use Instagram for my hobby/business (coin & paper money collecting & dealing). I have mercilessly curated my feed to be ONLY people who post content purely related to the numismatic world. No real-life friends, no travel posts from random semi-friends, no selfies, none of that garbage. If someone starts posting it, I unfollow them. And for the ads -- I click on ads related to cat toys and pet f…

> SO: My instagram feed is 100% hobby-related posts & cats. I think I may be victorious (for the time being....). Eventually they'll figure out how to keep you from doing that.

They already have on Facebook. I can keep my Insta stream within certain bounds but Facebook always serves me fresh nonsense no matter how tightly I try to control it.

Re: The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

#202

Post by standardUser »

notmindthegap wrote: post #72

VCs with no personal skin in the game have funded what is essentially addiction engineering. It’s wild that the industry does not seem to have the awareness to understand or care about this. People are getting paid fat salaries to figure out how to covertly manipulate users into abdicating their attention and time to wholly isolated, disconnected, and malnourishing behaviors. Now the techies are concerned with the me…

I'm not going to feign surprise that there is no shortage of young, white, straight men with engineering degrees that either don't care or can't comprehend that they are contributing to a mental health crisis in exchange for $250k/yr.

Re: The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

#203

Post by prawn »

nobody9999 wrote: post #184
bluefirebrand wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However there is a certain kind of dissonance between deciding to publicly state "I don't care what you think" that sort of implies that they do care actually. It seems to me that people who truly do not care would just not engage in the first place?

>It seems to me that people who truly do not care would just not engage in the first place? That seems rather reductive given the topic here. I don't own an EV auto, or any auto for that matter. By your logic, I shouldn't engage in discussions about EV vs. ICE or anything to do with transportation. Is that correct?

If you said that you have no interest whatsoever in cars or electric cars, or no care for things tangentially related (impact on climate or similar).

Re: The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

#204

Post by askvictor »

harry8 wrote: post #195
Zak wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube occasionally, but regularly tries to show me culture war content even though I never watch it and usually tell it "don't recommend this".

It's like those "drug pushers" we were told about in school but don't seem to actually exist who use weed to constantly try to get you onto more lucrative for them heroin no matter how many times you say "no thanks." Heard that so many times at school, never heard anyone encountering anything like it in the real world. But here we are with google, facebrick et al saying "come on, just try a little culture war" becaus…

Not just the new/tech companies, but gaming/gambling companies, and really, a lot of large businesses in general.

Re: The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

#205

Post by prawn »

snarf21 wrote: post #147
notShabu wrote: post #17

Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous. Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection, not an actual thing in reality (similar to colors not existing in reality). Having access to a extra mirrors at first creates a sense of control. You know your mom and dad won't give you a "non-distorted" reflection so the reflection from stra…

It isn't Instagram, it is like counts. But the like counts are what drives the addictive behavior and makes the product "free" to use. This is just Goodhart's Law at a personal level. We stop being authentic to chase likes. We inherently turn the measure into a target. We have hundreds of "friends" of FB and we interact with a dozen or less regularly.

I don't think likes are currently their major issue. Instagram at least created its own problem:

1. start with regular people posting regular stuff - it was great fun

2. the professional users are the most active and polished

3. regular people stop posting because their content isn't polished enough and they resent comparisons of their life to others'

4. regulars follow less (to preserve their sanity) and post less

5. to maintain growth, the platform pushes more and more suggestions (people you don't want to follow, ads you don't want to see, reel encouragement you don't want to do)

Final stage is a platform that has deterred you from participating and constantly assaults you with things that you don't want to see. I used to really enjoy using Twitter and Instagram. I haven't touched Twitter in a couple of months and I usually resent using Instagram (but it's key in my industry).

Re: The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

#206

Post by speakfreely »

yodsanklai wrote: post #199
mbesto wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have control to not be a celebrity and avoid the paparazzi. This is the parent's point. While you may have free will, it's hard to argue that having cheap access to fame is not appealing to everyone.

A lot of things can be bad if abused. Alcohol, eating, watching TV, video games even healthy activities like sport can be addictive or have risk of injuries. Social medias aren't different. They are entirely harmless for most people. Not that a big of a deal.

> They are entirely harmless for most people.

I'm not sure that this is clearly established.

Re: The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

#208

Post by megablast »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #186
jstarfish wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really impossible to obtain in real life. In the 4 months I dabbled with Instagram, I was shocked by how toxic and outright false the pop psychology memes were. They were stereotypical, frequently backwards, and deliberately misapplied. And all of that is before the cluster-B LARPing. "Your partner won't…

I saw a youtube short like this. It was a video demonstrating the "perfect" guy. It started reasonable, with him saying "oh can you check this on my phone? the passcode is XYZ" Yeah, I would have trusted my current-wife then-girlfriend with my phone passcode pretty early on, no big deal. She didn't feel the need to know it, but casually telling it to her so she could do something with it is probably a thing that happ…

You saw a weird video on youtube. Parent saw some weird stuff on instagram.

What is the point here?

Re: The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most

#210

Post by ajsnigrutin »

notShabu wrote: post #17

Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous. Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection, not an actual thing in reality (similar to colors not existing in reality). Having access to a extra mirrors at first creates a sense of control. You know your mom and dad won't give you a "non-distorted" reflection so the reflection from stra…

The biggest problem with instagram (well and most other photo-based social network) is not the fame and glory of a few individuals, but a selective showing of the best highlights of other people.

Imagine sitting at a shitty job, going to the bathroom, and browsing instagram... hey look, here's Alice eating at a fancy restaurant.. here's Bob on a beach... here's Cecilia at a party... here's Doug moutain climbing... and you're stuck at a shitty job.

Instagram doesn't show eg. Bob working for months to save up for a trip to a shitty seaside location, hotel with bedbugs, overpriced cocktails and a sewage flowing into the sea just out of the visible part in the photo... but you don't see any of the bad stuff, just other people having fun, and you having to deal with all the bad stuff. Add all the filters, and all other people are pretty, have nice skin, look skinny.. and you look like shit after 7 hours on the job and one more to go.

Post reply on HN