The case against social media is stronger than you think • Hacker News Board

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#141

Post by pitched » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:19 AM UTC

beeflet wrote: post #122

creata wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about reactions to the murder of Charlie Kirk, I really don't think anonymity is the problem here, because the opinions I've seen people express anonymously aren't much different to the opinions I've seen people express with their names attached. If anything, the ones where people have attached their names tend to be a bit more extreme. Maybe attaching your name to something makes it feel more impor…

Named users are not more brave than anonymous users, but they are more reckless

Anonymous users are much less likely to get defensive because they have nothing to defend.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#142

Post by Tade0 » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:30 AM UTC

solid_fuel wrote: post #25

Lerc wrote: post #11

Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack. A lot of things suck right now. Social media definitely give us the ability to see that. Using your personal ideology to link correlations is not the same thing as finding causation. There will be undoubtedly be some damaging aspects of social media, simply because it is large and complex. It would be hi…

There a lot of money in social media, literally hundreds of billions of dollars. I expect the case against it will continue to grow, like the case against cigarettes did. I will say this, and this is anecdotal, but other events this week have been an excellent case study in how fast misinformation (charitably) and lies (uncharitably) spread across social media, and how much social media does to amp up the anger and t…

> If social media turns up the anger that much, I don't think it's worth the cost.

It doesn't. It's just that when people can publish whatever with impunity, they do just that.

Faced with the reality of what they're calling for they would largely stop immediately.

I believe the term for that is "keyboard warrior".

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#143

Post by Eisenstein » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:33 AM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #81

solid_fuel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that having an incentive to hide harms is being used as evidence for the harm, whether it exists or not. No, the incentive to hide harm is being given as a reason that studies into harm would be suppressed, not as evidence of harm in and of itself. This is a direct response to your original remark that "Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litiga…

> No, the incentive to hide harm is being given as a reason that studies into harm would be suppressed, not as evidence of harm in and of itself. This is a direct response to your original remark that "Part of me thinks that if the case against social media was stronger, it would not be being litigated on substack." That seems like a fair argument. I don't think it means that it grants opinions the weight of truth. I…

> That seems a far worthier problem to address.

If we can't fix the underlying problem immediately, treating the symptoms seems reasonable in the meantime.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#144

Post by non_aligned » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:35 AM UTC

Lerc wrote: post #61

majormajor wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's increasingly discussed in traditional media too so let's toss out that first line glib dismissal. More and more people declaring it's net-negative is the first step towards changing anything. Academic "let's evaluate each individual point about it on its own merits" is not how this sort of thing finds political momentum. (Or we could argue that "social media" in the Facebook-era sense is just one part of a large…

I did not consider it a glib dismissal, and I would not consider traditional media an appropriate avenue to litigate this either. Trial by media is a term used to describe something that generally think shouldn't occur. The appropriate place to find out what is and isn't true is research. Do research, write papers, discuss results, resolve contradictions in findings, reach consensus. The media should not be deciding…

> The appropriate place to find out what is and isn't true is research. Do research, write papers, discuss results, resolve contradictions in findings, reach consensus.

Few hot-button social issues are resolved via research, and I'm not sure they should be. On many divisive issues in social sciences, having a PhD doesn't shield you from working back from what you think the outcome ought to be, so political preferences become a pretty reliable predictor of published results. The consensus you get that way can be pretty shoddy too.

More importantly, a lot of it involves complex moral judgments that can't really be reduced to formulas. For example, let's say that on average, social media doesn't make teen suicides significantly more frequent. But are OK with any number of teens killing themselves because of Instagram? Many people might categorically reject this for reasons that can't be dissected in utilitarian terms. That's just humanity.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#145

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:37 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#146

Post by softwaredoug » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:44 AM UTC

The article mentions political polarization increased most in seniors (65+).

Social media or not, I would guess it’s largely because many retirees don’t have anything to do. They’re isolated. They want connection and purpose. While younger adults have jobs and obligations.

My retired dad lived alone. He could talk nonstop about that crazy thing Trump did, but I wasn’t following closely, and somewhat tuned my dad out to not get lost in a rabbit hole. My dad got this from cable news.

Isolation to me is the root cause at any age. People who only see the world through media (social or otherwise). It’s easy to become radicalized when you don’t have any attachments other than your political affiliations.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#147

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:49 AM UTC

blitz_skull wrote: post #24

The last week has taken me from “I believe in the freedom of online anonymity” to “Online anonymity possess a weight that a moral, civil society cannot bear.” I do not believe humans are capable of responsibly wielding the power to anonymously connect with millions of people without the real weight of social consequence.

Really? With people being tracked down and fired for expressing their political views, it seems like online anonymity is more important than ever.

Or better yet, we need some kind some zero knowledge doodad which enforces scarcity of anonymous handles such that a given voice is provably a member of your same congressional district, or state, or zip code, or whatever, and is known to not be spinning up new identities all willy nilly like, but can't be identified more precisely than that.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#148

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:51 AM UTC

ks2048 wrote: post #55

qarl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. People use their real identities on Facebook, and it doesn't help a bit.

> it doesn't help a bit. I would replace "it doesn't help a bit" with "it doesn't solve the problem". My casual browsing experience is that X is much more intense / extreme than Facebook. Of course, the bigger problem is the algorithm - if the extreme is always pushed to the top, then it doesn't matter if it's 1% or 0.001% - the a big enough pool, you only see extremes.

I bet if we didn't tolerate advertising and were instead optimising for what the user wanted we'd come up with something much more palatable.

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#149

Post by hbarka » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:54 AM UTC

creata wrote: post #113

hbarka wrote: post #66

Full anonymity in social media should not be allowed. It becomes a cover for bad actors (propagandists, agents, disinformation, bots, age-inappropriate, etc.) It doesn’t have to be a full identity, but knowing your user metadata is open during interactions can instill a sense of responsibility and consequence of social action. As in real life.

People should be able to say things without those things following them around for the rest of their lives. > As in real life. No, your proposal is very different to real life. In real life, the things you say will eventually be forgotten. You won't be fired for things you said or did years ago, because people will have moved on. Having a convenient index of everything anyone has ever shared is very different to real…

> You won't be fired for things you said or did years ago, because people will have moved on

You realize that the evidence is against you on that one. Just recently, who was that UK ambassador that Prime Minister Keir Starmer just fired?

Re: The case against social media is stronger than you think

#150

Post by makeitdouble » Sun, Sep 14, 2025, 2:56 AM UTC

hbarka wrote: post #114

makeitdouble wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real life needs full anonymity too. Not everywhere, but it's critical to have some. For instance a political vote needs to be anonymous. Access to public space typically is (you're not required to identify to walk the street) even if that anonymity can be lifted etc. Real life is complex, and for good reasons, if we want to take it as a model we should integrate it's full complexity as well.

In the United States, political votes are not anonymous. There is a database of how someone voted. If you’re out in public, you’re also not fully anonymous. You display metadata such as race, gender, age, behavior. Now you could wear a ski mask during broad daylight but I doubt if you’d be allowed inside a bank. And the bank has a right to judge you for that.

> There is a database of how someone voted.

That cannot be right, that's the fundamental core of the voting process in our democracies. You might be thinking about the party registrations or voluntary polls ?

> You display metadata

What you show to the world has no requirement to be accurate. If you look like a rich 70 old Asian lady when going to the park there will be no check that's actually what you are (unless the police comes at you for an identity check...). That's particularly impacting for gender, you're typically not required to represent your official assignment, and how you behave isn't stuck to your official identity.