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

bbc.com

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

#281

Post by NopIdoN »

galangalalgol wrote: post #176
ffsm8 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm not American, calling bbc centrist in 2026 is just objectively false. It was centrist in 2000s, but it hasn't been in at least a decade.

Whose interests does it serve now? That is the main thing to understand of you are to get anything out of news.

FWIW there's a new Director-general: Matt Brittin, whose CV includes Cambridge rowing team, MBA from LBS, McKinsey, Trinity Mirror (owner of The Daily Mirror) and 18 years at Google.

He was the Google boss who said in 2016 that he doesn't know his own salary.

Presumably he wants what's best for all of us.

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

#282

Post by caseyohara »

nailer wrote: post #224
supertroop wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re just learning how small minded people are? In the US there was an attempted insurrection filmed live. We elected the guy who led it who then pardoned 1600 jailed criminals. Now he is trying to creat a slush fund to give them millions as reparations. 33% of the country is delighted by this. These are Plank sized brains.

[flagged]

I think you're downplaying it too much. Of course comparing the event to better organized insurrections makes it look more innocent. But don't forget, the rioters erected makeshift gallows and chanted "Hang Mike Pence" because he refused to overturn the election. I don't doubt the mob would have hanged him given the chance.

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

#283

Post by sidrag22 »

dottjt wrote: post #260
malfist wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. It's a very thin line to go from "just pointing out a problem" to "everything is a problem" to "everything is broken" to "nothing I can do will change anything" and then people disengage in the process and politics and everything else becomes the domain of whoever can shout the loudest with volume, rhetoric, or money. To quote Mon Mothma in Andor: I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe w…

I think the "nothing I can do will change anything" is actually a predominant theme that's emerged over the past decade. I don't know if you've watched any of Adam Curtis' documentaries, but his documentary HyperNormalisation explores this in great detail (most of this documentaries have a similar theme I've found). Edit: Apologies, I think I mean his documentary: Can't Get You Out of My Head. Essentially it asserts…

Adam Curtis docs are wonderful. I've grown so accustomed to when people suggest a doc, its some youtuber that posts a doc once a week and utilizes the youtube documentary style to disguise how poorly executed it is. Adam Curtis is certainly not that, for anyone considering this suggestion.

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

#284

Post by NewsaHackO »

yifanl wrote: post #117
austin-cheney wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome. I am thrilled you pointed this out. I also get tired of seeing that.

We keep saying it, because it's what it is. There's some black box (that can _sometimes_ be reached via dang) that determines what you see on HN's front page, and this place is just as susceptible to trends and rabbit holes as any short form video app, it just doesn't have the funny sound effects.

Yes, just because it is uncomfortable for them to realize, doesn't make it not true. Words have meanings.

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

#285

Post by throw-the-towel »

Kiro wrote: post #108
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…

It's not tiresome. It's spot on. Nothing is as addictive as HN.

Wikipedia is.

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

#286

Post by UltraSane »

malfist wrote: post #155
UltraSane wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"one of them always has a 24 hour news going " Why didn't you say which one? I bet it is Fox.

It's actually CNN, but they flip to local news often too to hear about all the car wrecks and local murders and robberies and other things to make them afraid. Fox and CNN are both bad, but different flavors of bad.

Fox is bad in a way far more fundamental than CNN. It was created specifically to lie to people.

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

#287

Post by fluffybucktsnek »

trollbridge wrote: post #135
armchairhacker wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN has comments which are social media. I don’t get why people care, because social media isn’t intrinsically bad; I always say “mainstream social media” or “toxic social media” to clarify what I’m referring to. > HN makes it quite difficult (technically impossible, but you can link out) to embed media such as videos and pictures, which makes it fundamentally different than "social media". What’s the difference? Subm…

Comment threads are not “social media”, no matter how badly anyone wants to redefine that they are. They date back to the 1970s on USENET and mailing lists.

That might imply USENET and mailing lists to be forms or primitive forms of social media.

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

#288

Post by tekla »

wussboy wrote: post #67
kiicia wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is public forum (one of the last), it's a bit different thing

Calling this out as the primary reason HN is not social media. Forums existed for years before social media was ever a thing. HN is indistinguishable from a forum in the early 2000s.

Hell no, the forums of the 2000s were "topic that had the last post gets pushed to the top", and pretty much nothing else.

HN has an algorithm that manipulates what you see, and we do not know at all how it works.

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

#289

Post by randusername »

spking wrote: post #64

If this subject interests you, and you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

40 years old now and as relevant as ever.

IMO even better than Chomsky's Necessary Illusions (1989) or Bernay's Propaganda (1928) at giving you that backstage at Disney world feeling.

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

#290

Post by Barrin92 »

close04 wrote: post #82
dust-jacket wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> if you think What do you think social media is? What are the clear criteria that make something social media, or make it not social media? If you know HN is not social media that you have a clear demarcation of what is.

>What are the clear criteria that make something social media

I have no idea why people are making some mysterious deep question out of this, wikipedia quite literally offers a definition[1]. Web 2.0 based platforms, user generated content, social networking including social mechanisms such as followers, groups and lists.

This doesn't apply to HN. You could randomly assign everyone a new name tomorrow and it wouldn't matter. Identity is virtually irrelevant here, there are no mechanisms to connect users to each other, there are no networks of people, users do not generate their own content and there is a criterion that what is discussed is of of public, not merely social or personal interest.

If some crash wiped out all HN users tomorrow and we'd all start over at zero almost nothing would change. If that happend on social media, like Instagram, the site would be dead. That's the social part.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media#Definition

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