Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

nber.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 527 posts

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#331

Post by exceptione »

ay wrote: post #154
madaxe_again wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how much of a difference it would make, as then we just become the algorithm. I quit Facebook over a decade ago, because others used it to go “look at my shiny car/wife/house”, and I would use it to lose friends and alienate people. These online environments do not foster any kind of human connection.

Blue sky allows you to have many different kinds of feeds and I can say the difference in adrenaline level and mood is palpable depending on the feed I use. News items - frustration at the state the world is in. Urban bicycle feed: annoyance at the atrocities of the inept drivers. Feed with cycle side trip pictures: fun. Rust projects, Electronics: the curiosity of learning. Also: Bluesky has an absolutely amazing fe…

* Bluesky is from the same people that launched Twitter and, optics aside, just the same ideology. There is no real deep divide on values. It is about locking up people in echo chambers, information filtering and ultimately ripping out people's ability to organize around a common good.

There is only one danger for the 0.1%. The 99,9%.

* The people that got disturbed by Twitter's boosting of extremists and nazis, now took refuge to bsky. Only to get ripe for the next iteration. But see how many people are still on X, increasingly less aware of the abnormality they are drowning in.

This playbook of cultural engineering should be super clear by now. Ad tech => Private Intelligence.

* How to sell it? Invest in narratives that bend the notion of free trade in order to instill rigid beliefs about Free Markets. Now look at the free markets. :) It only takes you a few million bucks and a dinner to set your company free.

Like parent hinted at, "social media" means the opposite for society.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#332

Post by rightbyte »

thoroughburro wrote: post #279

They were provided with a quite plausible motivation. What is the plausible motivation in your scenario?

The clique on pub B might talk down on the clique on pub A without any motivation but not B.

Someone that doesn't notice that he is "hated" might also be susceptible to such low key social manipulation to be made believe he is hated.

But ye, as I am not in clique A or B there is a lot of guesswork on my part and I cam't argue against someone else's story. I am just trying to bring up the possibility of bad mouthing.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#333

Post by sam0x17 »

8s2ngy wrote: post #41

I believe many of the problems in our current social media landscape could be solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media and could go against what most people have become accustomed to. Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can…

This is what Facebook was the last time I used it, which is like a decade ago at least

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#334

Post by aaronbaugher »

steveBK123 wrote: post #82
Kozmik1 wrote: post #73

Weird. There is little that depresses me more than watching my wife sit at the table for hours a day slowly scrolling Facebook while ignoring me and the kids. We have talked about it and she's tried to reduce it to no avail.

There's something about the social media influencer industrial complex that short circuits women's brains worse, as far as I can tell. Most of my friends quit social media years to a decade ago but our wives are all on it. Men seem to get sucked into Youtube wormholes instead. I think the only way out is cold turkey. The number of conversations my wife starts with telling me about some distant acquaintances recent va…

When my girlfriend told me on our first date that she doesn't use social media, I nearly proposed on the spot.

And even she does some doom-scrolling though news sites. She claims to know it's mostly nonsense, and then says she has to do it to know what's going on. I try not to point out the contradiction too much, because she does limit it pretty well.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#335

Post by _Algernon_ »

zpeti wrote: post #326
erkt wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This is what Facebook was when we all signed up almost two decades ago. No one ever wanted a feed of people they didn't know. Free social media is inherently corrupt as they chase profits abusing the user base.

I think this is what your conscious mind thinks but your actual desires don’t. Facebook was refocusing on friend and family content before TikTok came along. But they had to adjust to the TikTok trend otherwise they would have lost market share or potentially lost the entire market. You might think you want friend and family content, but actually you don’t. Not as much as you want engaging content.

You are equating action and desire which is a false equivalence. You wouldn't claim that somebody who died in a car accident wanted that to happen, would you?

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#336

Post by rubicon33 »

donatj wrote: post #111

Before its fall, I had over 700 followers on Twitter. I could post any random thought and within minutes be having an interesting conversation with some rando about it. For example I pondered why phone manufacturers didn't use a p2p protocol for distributing updates and had an enlightening conversation with a person who worked for a major telco chiming in as to why that would be problematic for their infrastructure.…

Everything you’ve described is exactly what forums are for.

We didn’t need social media, we had everything we needed with the old PHP forums

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#338

Post by aaronbaugher »

rubicon33 wrote: post #336
donatj wrote: post #111

Before its fall, I had over 700 followers on Twitter. I could post any random thought and within minutes be having an interesting conversation with some rando about it. For example I pondered why phone manufacturers didn't use a p2p protocol for distributing updates and had an enlightening conversation with a person who worked for a major telco chiming in as to why that would be problematic for their infrastructure.…

Everything you’ve described is exactly what forums are for. We didn’t need social media, we had everything we needed with the old PHP forums

Even better, Usenet, which is what the web-based forums were a poor replacement for.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#339

Post by coldpie »

rubicon33 wrote: post #336
donatj wrote: post #111

Before its fall, I had over 700 followers on Twitter. I could post any random thought and within minutes be having an interesting conversation with some rando about it. For example I pondered why phone manufacturers didn't use a p2p protocol for distributing updates and had an enlightening conversation with a person who worked for a major telco chiming in as to why that would be problematic for their infrastructure.…

Everything you’ve described is exactly what forums are for. We didn’t need social media, we had everything we needed with the old PHP forums

Agreed. I think one of the big problems with current social media is that they are person-focused instead of topic-focused. This is backwards. This means if I want to follow a cool woodworker because I like their woodworking, I also see their other hobbies, or their political trash, or whatever. Topic-based forums are much better suited for what I actually want--discussions around woodworking. Forums are also self-limiting in size. If a single thread gets too active for people to follow, it makes sense to split off into separate threads, which keeps community sizes reasonable.

I've been a member of one of the internet's longer-running web forums for two decades, and nothing I've seen from the big social media corps comes close to providing the same level of usability and community health.

Re: The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

#340

Post by naasking »

svnt wrote: post #329
erkt wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This is what Facebook was when we all signed up almost two decades ago. No one ever wanted a feed of people they didn't know. Free social media is inherently corrupt as they chase profits abusing the user base.

Maybe just phrasing but free social media isn’t the problem. VC-backed corporations masquerading as public services to gain user networks they can later monetize is the problem.

I think that's just rephrasing the same argument. If social media weren't free, then you would be the customer and those VC-backed corps would be serving you. Social media being free means they're not serving you because you are not the customer. The "free" part and the "VC-backed" part aren't the problem, it's the incentive structure created by combining the two.
Post reply on HN