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Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

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Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#121

Post by jrflo »

I built a safari extension called Scrolless [1] to try and solve this issue (Disclaimer: it's a $4.99 one time unlock). If you use social media in the web instead of the native apps, and use Scrolless, you'll only see posts from your friends, no recommendation algorithms anywhere.

It's absolutely insane how much influence we have given over to social media algorithms as a society. I know so many people who I'd consider to be intelligent just completely believe whatever they see on tiktok/reels. These recommendation algorithms can create such intense polarization, I really hope we can find a way to scale back their use and encourage people to think more for themselves.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scrolless-feed-blocker/id67588...

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#122

Post by Ajedi32 »

torben-friis wrote: post #83

If you're on Android, you can use revanced to patch social network apps, to, among other things, remove content from non-friends (and ads). It's scary how empty the feed is once you do this. It can be full days with the same post at the top. And the worst part is that I hadn't noticed how empty it was until I did the change.

Interesting, I thought Revanced was just for YouTube, I didn't realize it worked with other social media sites too.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#124

Post by IAmBroom »

liotier wrote: post #62
dust-jacket wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see IMO it isn't. HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were. I don't think they were social media really - they're online spaces that form around a shared interest, where Facebook etc were originally online spaces that augmented a real world community. But we're a long way from that now.

> HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were. That is the very definition of social media. "Social media I like" vs. "Social media I don't like" isn't valid categorization.

Well, it's A definition, which is more than the opposing side has yet to offer.

I knew someone who described everything he didn't like in politics as "socialism". He literally couldn't define "socialism" when pressed; it was always a circular reference to the current irritant.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#125

Post by jdw64 »

i have cut off social media related to my actual career, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Because people laughed at me for becoming a programmer. So I created my own homepage, and for communication, I mainly read posts on large Chinese tech communities, Hacker News, or dev.to.

However, when I try to communicate through GitHub or something, I wonder if I'm just using another form of social media. My main daily routine is to gradually add posts to my own homepage that no one will see, and start from there.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#126

Post by pennomi »

stickfigure wrote: post #105
everdrive wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, I don't think most people who claim HN is social media are making a serious argument. They are taking two different things which have a few points of inter-comparison and using that as a basis to claim those two things are actually equivalent. This is done as a retort (eg, "you say you hate social media, but you're on social media _right now_") rather than in service of a larger argument.

I'm making it as a very serious argument. HN is social, it has an algorithmic feed, people upvote and downvote your content, hell it has a social credit score. The idea that HN somehow isn't "social media" is hard to take serious. This is Reddit for a niche audience. The main difference is that HN has a small and relatively high quality community, plus the traffic is low enough that it gets a fair amount of manual mo…

By strict definition it obviously is social media. “Interactive forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the Internet.”

People don’t want to admit it’s social media because that delegitimizes their argument “all social media bad!” and instead of refining their argument they just double down. It’s a very human behavior.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#127

Post by austin-cheney »

close04 wrote: post #70

Why is nobody here defining social media, put down the clear criteria? "I say this, I am tired of people saying that" isn't productive if everyone has their own interpretation of what's being discussed.

My personal criteria to specifically identify social media apart from other online interaction:

* The platform is a closed garden with a goal to own the content, user submissions, and any personally identifiable data or relationships thereof.

* User interaction is primarily limited by a terms and conditions policy as opposed to a code of conduct. The goal is to impose constraints upon user rights as opposed to user behavior.

* There exists a profit incentive directly tied to engagement frequency. The goal is to quantify content visibility and sell those numbers to third parties.

* Exchange and reselling of user profile data, user submissions, and any analysis or relationship there upon is beyond user control, awareness, or agreement.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#128

Post by IAmBroom »

dust-jacket wrote: post #68
liotier wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were. That is the very definition of social media. "Social media I like" vs. "Social media I don't like" isn't valid categorization.

if you think social media just means any space online with multiple people in it, then I guess we just disagree on what social media is. Is the linux kernel mailing list social media? was usenet?

That is not what they said. Strawman fallacy, and you still refuse to define the term.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#129

Post by everforward »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #110
everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

- And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. - Thats right in that sense - but in a sense of doom scrolling, it is for me: Very often Im clicking through dozends auf pages, fortunately I have to activly do a click to get to the next site, so this dampens a little bit :-D

There’s also an end to the feed. I forget the limit, but at one point I think I hit the maximum number of pages at like 50 (quality drops pretty dramatically, by like page 10 there was almost nothing interesting or notable).

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#130

Post by willXare »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

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