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

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 511 posts

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

#371

Post by mannanj »

Early in COVID I was lucky to have lots of time and a disposable budget. I was seeking experiences and practices to make me be more present, and have more time and productivity back. I ran into this guy named Tommy who led a phone-free movement called Brick.

With his insight I came up with my own system around apps and the computer that I still use today.

Here's how I'd encapsulate it in a nutshell, and the blocks ontop work fantastically to combat all forms of social media addiction. Notification Zero.

Notification Zero is when no apps can ever give you notifications, ever. Not the phone call, not the text, or sms, not slack, etc. Even for work. Now, with that as the default, you have to manually set and think through which apps in which cases do give you notifications, and this philosophy would built itself into a fine AI notifications management system some day. So what notifies me? When my phone is not on DND (rarely, when I'm expecting a call) only starred contacts calls. Texts never notify me. People know to call if it's serious. With this path I use my technology more intentionally, and when I open my phone there's nothing nagging me for my attention because it's a blank screen with no apps with no alarms set by other people ("notifications are like alarms other people set for you" - Naval R.)

I don't miss it. and it feels great, minimalist and clean, and allows my attention to stay focused on what I opened my phone or computer int he first place. (My computer is the same: blank screen, matching black, no apps or notifications. On Mac, I set the mission bar at the bottom to only show apps if they are open, and as we speak, only 7 open windows appear at the bottom though the bar is hidden unless mouse overed). The screen becomes a canvas for what I'm actively working on, tactically laid out for my particular use & focus.

Happy to share more if its of help to anyone.

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

#372

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#373

Post by bijowo1676 »

anal_reactor wrote: post #264
malfist wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your theory about cable television is fascinating. I never really watched TV growing up, but every time I visit my parents now that they're retired, one of them always has a 24 hour news going and it's just non stop "you should be afraid" and "you should be angry" told to you by pretty faces smiling the whole time. Social media is totally that today too. I quit facebook in 2016 and reddit in 2023 over similar fears.…

I've noticed that I watch much less funny shit and much more "you should be afraid" but I really don't know how to change this.

anxiety is what creates uninformed consumerism, which drives the capitalism

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

#374

Post by bluesounddirect »

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…

I completely get the cable tv bit. Grew up without cable just OTA tv and Radio . I remembered how i would feel left out of the cable tv connection / conversations . Then I eventually moved on to living in the city and not really watching TV except simpons reruns and the news hour on pbs for many years . The parallels reveal how we just need to go out to social place outside of our homes . The pool, a restaurant, bar , library, a club a religious place and be involved. But more importantly we all need our own opinions again, and not to be so offended when you disagree.

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

#375

Post by moffkalast »

haunter wrote: post #256
whateveracct wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forums came before social media. It's a forum.

Forums don’t have algorithmic front page and upvote/downvote system You can’t bump a thread to the top of HN so everyone sees it

No, people just keep reposting the same shit over and over instead. But the end effect is very similar, dang even links to old posts almost every time.

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

#376

Post by TulliusCicero »

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…

I miss the early days of FB where people just wrote thoughts about what they were feeling or doing.

I wish we had something like that where there was no reposting/resharing, and links & photos were allowed but deemphasized in the UI. Also, no like button, that just encourages empty engagement.

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

#377

Post by talon8635 »

armchairhacker wrote: post #27

HN is social media. Social media is a spectrum. You can imagine HN like a documentary channel compared to Facebook’s reality TV, but even “documentaries” can be dopamine sinks that aren’t actually informative (or accurate). (But personally, I see lots of short and pure opinion posts here, documentaries are long and at least pretend to contain facts; so I’d hesitate to compare it to a documentary channel even with the…

The HN comments section certainly feels increasingly hostile, manipulative, manipulated, and jokey. It use to be a reprieve, but it’s feeling more and more like every other comment section online. To me anyways.

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

#378

Post by twodave »

wuliwong wrote: post #344
twodave wrote: post #160

Yes, the game is over, the corps have won. Where the Internet used to be a forum for creativity, it's now a weapon of influence. Where we used to have an anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) playground, we are now monitored more than anywhere else. Where we used to be able to genuinely connect, everything is now artificial and manufactured. And where we once had control, we are now the product.

I am going to push back without entirely disagreeing. Most of the people online are definitely caught in this social media as cable tv thing. But the number of people using the internet back in the early days is probably similar or even smaller than the number of people today that use niche areas of the internet, niches that still have that 'playground' experience and much less corporate overwatch control. Maybe?

There's a perspective by which you aren't wrong, and yet everything about how we interact with the Internet has changed in the last decade or so. Because (to quote School of Rock) the world is run by the man.

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

#379

Post by Exoristos »

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.

A deathly calm.

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

#380

Post by saghm »

somenameforme wrote: post #319
toast0 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25 years ago, my italian grandmother was the same way. No command center, but still wildly anti-immigration; probably stoked by the news. She immigrated as a child, technically naturalized twice (she was naturalized through her fathers naturalization, but married an italian citizen in Italy and renaturalized through his naturalization... because the citizenship of a married woman was determined by her husband's citiz…

The historic reason attitudes towards immigration changes is because of scale. This [1] page has a nice graph of the foreign born US population. Towards the end of the 19th century it hit 14.8% which led to significant pushback that culminated in various laws and acts against immigration. That's precisely where the paperwork started to form. Following those acts and laws, immigration declined to a valley of 4.7% fore…

> history is, as always, not just repeating, but practically plagiarizing itself

Every time in US history that there's been an influx of immigrants, there were people spouting essentially identical arguments to the ones they're spouting now (stealing jobs, lack of assimilation, etc.), and every time it's turned out to be basically a non-issue in the long run. I've long had the opinion that most of the people vehemently "against illegal immigration" would probably have basically the same opinion if the numbers were identical but everyone followed the processes they claimed to support, and seeing how the current administration is trying to deport refugees of color while expanding the programs for only white South Africans feels like a pretty transparent confirmation of that.

Post reply on HN