Live data from Hacker News

Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

psycnet.apa.org

191–200 of 213 posts

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#191
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much value they extract from it exactly is likely something not even Google knows. But given that it can be exchanged on dark data broker markets in perpetuity, Companies like Google and Meta don't sell your data, on dark markets or otherwise. They keep it in-house for advertising targeting purposes. If they sold it to other companies it would reduce their competitive advantage. It's not even worth it for them.…

Whether they're directly doing business with data brokers or not is not the point. They're indirectly profiting from the profiles they build by selling access to them via their advertising platform. It's just a roundabout way of doing business, as is common in advertising. Besides, even if they're not selling these profiles, they will end up on data broker markets one way or another. Whether their lack of security al…

> Whether they're directly doing business with data brokers or not is not the point.

That was literally the point I responded to.

> They're indirectly profiting from the profiles they build by selling access to them via their advertising platform

That’s very different than the “selling your data” line that keeps getting repeated.

There’s a motte and bailey game that gets played every time this topic comes up. The argument starts with claims they’re selling your data, then when that’s revealed as a false claim the argument pivots to something else with strained arguments that it’s equally bad.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#192
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I remember reading an issue of Planetary from about (GOD HELP US!) two decades ago where the plot involved baddies who had invaded a fictional universe. In the time since then, I went from thinking "What a crazy idea for a plot" to "Hmm, I can see what inspired that" to "Jesus wept. People can basically choose to do this now. And they vote!"

Can you please elaborate on each I am very interested to know.

It was issue #9, https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Planetary_Vol_1_9 -- or did you mean elaborate on why I went through the X stages of Bill and Ted?

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#193
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Youtube isn't a monopoly. It's competing with Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu Instagram, Tiktok and Twitch off the top of my head. So they do have to make Youtube competitive Your theory of > just a way for some product manager to fluff up their metrics for a promotion. is the most likely culprit

How are Netflix, Hulu, Instagram, Tiktok, and Twitch compared to YouTube? It doesn't make sense, they aren't the same niche, you won't find Numberphile, 3Blue1Brown, on those platforms, you won't find reviews of appliances, tech, nor tutorials for how to fix your dishwasher, etc. on those platforms. YouTube has a whole vast amount of independent production (and some now independent-looking but owned by private equity…

I've definitely watched repair videos on tiktok. And one of my favorite (indie) tv shows was only on YT for some reason instead of Hulu or Netflix. My kid watches videogame playthroughs on YT, not twitch. And that's completely disregarding you can listen to music on YT.

When defining a monopoly you can't just say "only this subset of the market is the market we're considering" you have to look at everything it does. As the FTC just learned

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#195
post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, he's referring to politics. Far-right politics[a] encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, radical anti-communism, ethnonationalism, and nativism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics

You misunderstood me. I'm saying it's wrong to act like people can't believe different things than yourself.

Lord on high help me. When on earth did I say that??

I open any video unrelated to politics and I have shoved down my throat a rant about immigrants or about how everyone is corrupt except $far_right_guy, or clips of a "debate" that shows them "DEMOLISHING THE COMMUNIST ATHEIST LEFT", cropping all the opponent's responses.

Curiously I'm never shown any video from the boring centre party talking about the execution of the budget for 2022-2026 (yawn), or the left wing parties talking about labour law for shift workers (yawn), sensible cycling infrastructure to decrease automobile congestion (yawn), or tax incentives to ameliorate the teacher shortage in certain regions (yaaaaaaawn), despite the fact that those parties have a comparable or much greater voting base, publish videos at the same rate, etc.

I don't think even the most obtuse person can deny, in the year 2025, that algorithmic social media and its relentless peddling of whatever it deems "most engaging" is not a problem.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#197
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its monetizing the data. Selling the data (directly or indirectly) is inaccurate.

Countless studies have shown how to extract personally identifiable information from Google’s monetization platform by giving them money. They sell your data by any definition of “sell” that existed before they redefined the term so that it excludes their businesses.

Maybe you're right as I haven't seen the studies you're claiming prove this. I based my comment off my own experience using AdWords around 2013-2016 and then again around 2019-2021.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#198

I've gotten sucked into TikTok for the past couple of years, and I can really feel it. All social media is likely harmful to some degree, but TikTok is not like other social media. I've been online since the beginning of the web, and there's nothing else like it in terms of actively destroying your brain's ability to focus. It's like the fentanyl of attention, the purest distillation of the state of mind we entered i…

> I don't know if the Chinese government intended to use it as some sort of covert weapon, but if they did then they're geniuses. It literally makes you stupid. I don't think you need any government conspiracy for this. Tiktok is an inevitable product of the attention economy — moreso a capitalist wart than deliberate sabotage.

China solved this.

They deliberately made SFV educational content only. Tiktok had to comply or face the wrath of the CCP.

SFV about a math theorem or a physics phenomena or explaining how to use a type of conjugation in English? Cool.

SFV thats just a clip of a show or movie with some stupid music overlayed? SFV about a kid doing some stupid dance? Banned.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#199
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The pace is the format. Even if you're just watching turtles for 30 seconds, the loop and the switch to next video are fast-paced context switching, which is stimulating. I've been over-indulging in context switching long before short-form videos ever showed up. The internet itself is all about context switching. But the UX around short-form videos definitely encourages doomscrolling, similar to how microtransactio…

> similar to how microtransaction games encourage neverending grinds. Isn't the point of MTX to avoid the grind by i.e., buying levels or gear?

You crank up the grind so that the microtransaction is seen as a relief.
Post reply on HN