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Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

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Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#12

I’ve deactivated Facebook for about 15 years. Hopefully my belief in fake news is correspondingly low. It’s tough though; for all the bullshit that comes at you through these social networks, there is a lot of genuine personal connection too. Having shunned most social networking for double digit years I do feel “cleaner” for not having to wade through all the crap, probably comparatively less anxious about the world…

We need to go back to "the old ways", that is, people just need to pay to use the internet. Compute and storage has never been cheaper. Instead of a service subsidized with ads, we each host our own software and just pay AWS (or whoever) for the bits we flip.

My internet bill comes every month. What deal are you getting?

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#14

I’ve deactivated Facebook for about 15 years. Hopefully my belief in fake news is correspondingly low. It’s tough though; for all the bullshit that comes at you through these social networks, there is a lot of genuine personal connection too. Having shunned most social networking for double digit years I do feel “cleaner” for not having to wade through all the crap, probably comparatively less anxious about the world…

Regarding, loneliness, did you consider going to the library. Sometimes there are book reading clubs and you may meet like-minded people. Meetup app also helps connecting with people with similar outdoor activities such as hiking.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#15
post #7

Facebook is easily more harmful than TikTok and should get the same treatment.

The "treatment" TikTok is receiving is a requirement that its US presence should be sold to a US company. Facebook is already a US company, so I'm not sure what you mean. TikTok is not actually getting banned, unless it fails to achieve that sale, which is highly unlikely.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#17
> Before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, more than 35,000 Facebook and Instagram users agreed to participate in an experiment.

Do people still get any sort of news from Facebook? I only see very harmless content. People posting pics about their lives, some hiking groups... very few comments overall. I thought all the toxicity has moved to X formerly Twitter.

> the work of more than 30 academics from U.S. universities and Meta researchers

At least, one can appreciate that Meta is trying to understand the potential negative effects of their system and act on it. Social networks are here to stay in one form or another, it makes sense to understand how to regulate them rather than just hoping they wouldn't exist.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#18
When people say "fake news" it means different things to different people. "Hunter Biden's laptop is a Russian plant" was considered the truth and anything to the contrary "fake news". It wasn't just a mistake, it was a hard lie.

Having any single entity determine what is "fake" and what is "real" is incredibly dangerous. We can't even agree if 72F degrees is the correct room temperature - let alone complex things like abortion or if fat is bad for you.

To have any authority say one side is correct fails to understand how the structures of scientific revolution work. Much more likely they do understand and are using "Science(TM)" to force ideological agendas.

Full disclosure: I have never used Facebook.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to go back to "the old ways", that is, people just need to pay to use the internet. Compute and storage has never been cheaper. Instead of a service subsidized with ads, we each host our own software and just pay AWS (or whoever) for the bits we flip.

My internet bill comes every month. What deal are you getting?

In this context, I am referring to the bill you'd get from AWS, not your internet utility provider.

Re: Deactivating Facebook for just a few weeks reduces belief in fake news

#20

I’ve deactivated Facebook for about 15 years. Hopefully my belief in fake news is correspondingly low. It’s tough though; for all the bullshit that comes at you through these social networks, there is a lot of genuine personal connection too. Having shunned most social networking for double digit years I do feel “cleaner” for not having to wade through all the crap, probably comparatively less anxious about the world…

>... but also undoubtedly more isolated too.

This is a very interesting point, especially when you look at human connectivity over the past 100 years relative to the connectivity seen over the whole of our existence. If anything, your experience is somewhat of a "return to the norm" in some kind of sense. I often wonder if we've swung the pendulum too far with regards to hyper-connectivity.

Interesting food for thought.

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