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The case against social media is stronger than you think

arachnemag.substack.com

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

#221

Post by paganel »

majormajor wrote: post #14
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…

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…

What’a being discussed in the traditional media has no value anymore because it’s a dead medium, inhabited by dinosaurs.

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

#222

Post by paganel »

bluebarbet wrote: post #69
alisonatwork wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately most of what people understand as "social media" is not decentralized, and most of the biggest names on Substack in particular come directly out of "traditional media", which is exactly why it's not a real alternative. Substack is just another newspaper except now readers have to pay for every section they want to read.

The difference between traditional and social media is not just technical. Traditional media hosts a profession (journalism) with a code of ethics, editorial oversight, minimal standards, a mission of truth-seeking. It's easy to be cynical but those things have generally served us well. The Substack jungle is not a good replacement.

Yes, they get paid to spill out stuff that materially benefits those that do the paying, there’s another name for that that I won’t use on a Sunday.

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

#223

Post by imtringued »

NoahZuniga wrote: post #47
slg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that instance, the anonymity is treating the symptom and not the root cause of the problem you fear. The actual problem is a society that does not tolerate dissent.

You might live in an extremely free country and have no fear about political prosecution but still fear social prosecution. If someone I was friends with made racist remarks, they wouldn't be prosecuted for that. But I would stop being their friend. Similarly if I was the only one in my friend group against racism and advocate firefly against it, they would probably stop being my friends.

Your case doesn't sound reasonable and it also doesn't fit the current zeitgeist.

What people these days are worried about isn't that they are racist and have no outlets for their racism. It's that they worry that whatever they say will be reinterpreted as racism when they were making an honest attempt to not be racist.

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

#224

Post by raziel2p »

mid-kid wrote: post #181
dfee wrote: post #174

I often wonder when I see articles like this if HN counts as social media. And then, the continuous re-discovery or the ails of social media on social media is a trip, in itself.

Technically, yes, but at least it's not filter bubbling everyone.

there may not be an algorithm at work here as there is on Instagram or TikTok, but there's still a bubble - the name, design and discourse of HN itself works as a filter.

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

#225

Post by danhau »

procaryote wrote: post #208
zarzavat wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> set an age limit of 16 to have social media This just shows how futile it is. How do you actually stop someone from using social media? If a 15 year old signs up for Mastodon what is Australia going to do about it?

I'm guessing it's mostly useful as a guide for parents, but I haven't seen any hard data It shows it's not just a debate on substack though

Indeed. I think most phones already have some kind of parental control. I know Apple devices do. With screen time you can limit your kids social media use. Shouldn‘t be rocket science to ban those apps automatically, if that isn‘t already possible. OS vendors could use that to implement the country specific bans outright. This does require though, that parents set up their kids‘ phones correctly.

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

#226

Post by krapp »

sedawkgrep wrote: post #118
krapp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that "More and more people declaring social media net-negative" doesn't mean anything, and it certainly isn't a valid "first step towards changing anything" because it isn't actionable. >I don't think you have to think of things in terms of "hate it more than I like it" when you have actual examples on social media of children posting self-harm and suicide, hooliganism and outright crimes posted for viewe…

While I appreciate the idea that moving without factual data is often detrimental (which is what I believe you're implying here), I don't share the opinion that SM deserves any benefit of the doubt. I'm old enough to have lived as an adult pre-SM, and from my perspective the overwhelming impact of social media has been more inflammatory, degrading, divisive, etc., etc., etc., than whatever positives you think you're…

That's just your perspective, based on the fact that controversy makes headlines and normality doesn't. One might conclude based on headlines and populist political rhetoric that the US is a crime-filled hellhole, awash in gang violence and illegal aliens swarming over the border raping and pillaging and burning entire cities to the ground, whereas in reality crime is lower than it has been for years. Perceptions created by the media aren't always accurate, and "social media is a cancer" is absolutely a media-driven narrative. Remember when TikTok was a CCP mind-control weapon turning our children into sleeper agents? When Twitter was threat to the very existence of Western democracy that controlled human speech and could topple governments at will? The vast Marxist conspiracy behind all social media that rigged elections for the DNC? The louder such narratives become, the more we should question the motives of whomever holds the bullhorn.

A lot of people using social media aren't teenagers. A lot of teenagers are depressed and anxious for reasons other than using social media. A lot of teenagers use social media and aren't depressed and anxious because of it. A lot of teenagers find community and support for their issues through social media. Your extrapolation from a sample size of "one teenage girl and her friends that I'm aware of" to the billions of people currently using social media, and your conclusion that social media is responsible for all of the maladies common to youth doesn't really mean much.

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

#227

Post by hoss1474489 »

synecdoche wrote: post #198
foxglacier wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in a society as toxic as that. It's New Zealand. One of the minor parties currently in government aims to undo systemic racism. However, the popular opinion is that they are the racists because of that. I don't dare tell people that I voted for them because I'll be judged as a racist by some of my family members and loose friends. If I say it on the local internet groups, others will be hostile to me for it. A…

I understand this view is unpopular, but nevertheless. For something to be systematic there needs to be some set of rules governing it. I have yet to see any evidence of discriminatory rules as part of any western company or government policy, except for affirmative action and equivalent policies which do have such rule sets, where some group is prioritised to the detriment of other.

Explicit and obvious encoding in rules isn’t what makes something systemic.

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

#228

Post by NoahZuniga »

imtringued wrote: post #223
NoahZuniga wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might live in an extremely free country and have no fear about political prosecution but still fear social prosecution. If someone I was friends with made racist remarks, they wouldn't be prosecuted for that. But I would stop being their friend. Similarly if I was the only one in my friend group against racism and advocate firefly against it, they would probably stop being my friends.

Your case doesn't sound reasonable and it also doesn't fit the current zeitgeist. What people these days are worried about isn't that they are racist and have no outlets for their racism. It's that they worry that whatever they say will be reinterpreted as racism when they were making an honest attempt to not be racist.

> What people these days are worried about isn't that they are racist and have no outlets for their racism. It's that they worry that whatever they say will be reinterpreted as racism when they were making an honest attempt to not be racist.

So you agree with my point that people could face social prosecution for dissenting (even when they are correct), so we should have anonymous platforms where they can champion their ideas.

> Your case doesn't sound reasonable and it also doesn't fit the current zeitgeist.

These were just extreme examples to indicate that there can be social repercussions to dissenting.

Maybe a more convincing example is that if I advocate for making it easier to build housing because that will lower the cost of housing and many of my friends are homeowners, they might really not like me because lowering the cost of housing directly lowers their net worth.

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

#229

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

rkomorn wrote: post #184
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of this is driven by the user's behavior, not just advertising, though. "The algorithm" is going to give you more of what you engage with, and when it comes to sponsored content, it's going to give you the sponsored content you're most likely to engage with too. I'd argue that, while advertising has probably increased the number of people posting stuff online explicitly designed to try and generate revenue for…

Reddit and 4chan both get their money from advertisers though, so they have an incentive to try to boost engagement above whatever level might be natural for their userbase.

Social interaction is integrated with our brain chemistry at a very fundamental level. It's a situation we've been adapting to for a million years. We have evolved systems for telling us when its time to disengage, and anybody who gets their revenue from advertising has an incentive to interfere with those systems.

The downsides of social media: the radicalization, the disinformation, the echo chambers... These problems are ancient and humans are equipped to deal with them to a certain degree. What's insidious about ad-based social media is that the profit motive has driven the platforms to find ways to anesthetize the parts of us that would interfere with their business model, and it just so happens that those are the same parts that we've been relying on to address these evils back when "social media" was shouting into an intersection from a soap box.

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

#230

Post by meonkeys »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #155

Person A and person B (or group B) want to communicate by using the internet Idea: Use person C's website This was never a good idea for A and B but turned out to be a great idea for C C derives the benefit, C became a billionaire, but it is taking a very long time for A and C to realise they are not getting a good deal Sadly in 2025 A and B believe there is no other way to communicate via the internet other than thr…

Yes, this. It's a symptom of late-stage capitalism.
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