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

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

#381

Post by stickfigure » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 8:34 PM UTC

jermaustin1 wrote: post #279

stickfigure wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question - how many times a day do you load HN? Is it already getting enormous amounts of your attention?

I don't have the data to quantify it, but M-F, 6a-4p, maybe once an hour or so just to check the headlines. If I have comments, I might check my threads to see if I need to respond. On the Weekends, though, I might check it in the morning and again before bed just to see if anything interesting happened. But it isn't like YT (which is running in the background nearly 24/7) or Reddit, that I habbitually check. Those f…

Well just to offer another data point, I check HN far more often than any of the others. Many times a day. I consider it far more addictive - there's usually something interesting, and scanning is low investment. Youtube requires headphones and willingness to block out the world for 15+ minutes at a time. Facebook just doesn't have much interesting in it anymore since friends stopped posting.

I feel like all of this is fine? HN is winning the attention game for a niche audience of people vaguely like me. TikTok is winning the attention game for other kinds of people. I don't understand why we have to agonize over this. What would you rather people spend their attention on? What would you rather spend your own attention on? Why don't you?

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

#382

Post by crystal_revenge » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 8:37 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #58

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…

I've never appreciated the low-effort handwaves of claiming that HN, old-school Internet forums, USENET, etc. are "social media", simply because they aren't. HN's primary medium is text, often headlined by a link to some other site. That isn't social media. 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…

I'm going to guess you're young enough that you don't remember when HN first appeared?

For anyone that was an adult in the "web 2.0" days it's hard not to see HN as "social media". The first wave of social media sites where defined by community news aggregators that allowed commenting and, most important, up voting of comments and submissions. Digg, Reddit, HN, del.icio.us (though it lacked formal 'up voting') were all part of this first wave of social media.

The absolute key differentiator between HN and an old school internet forums, that absolutely makes it "social media", is that the community votes on your opinion and users have some way to score against each other. This is precisely the mechanism that is at the root of all problems in social media: you get a measurable reward for your content that pressures you towards saying things and sharing content that increases that reward.

Perhaps one of the best decisions HN ever made, which fights this somewhat, is removing the upvote count from being visible to other members of the community (this was not the case in the early days of HN). But for anyone that saw the rise of "social media" it's hard to imagine HN not fitting that description.

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

#383

Post by adjejmxbdjdn » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 8:52 PM UTC

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…

People aren’t, and will not, have as many kids going forward. We are seeing this in rich countries and poor countries.

Right before the baby boomers are fully retired is a heckuva time America decided it wants to contract its population by prioritizing keeping the working adult out.

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

#384

Post by firebot » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 8:56 PM UTC

You're just a cost of acquisition.

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

#385

Post by projektfu » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC

testudovictoria wrote: post #370

al_borland wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As people’s default shifts to consumption, they stop posting content themselves. They also stop living a life worth posting about… especially when they start comparing themselves with “influencers”, who have made a full time job out of pretending to live an interesting life. The problem with filtering out all the junk as a solution is that it doesn’t fix the actual problem of those sites with perverse incentives havi…

The problem with some of (all of?) these is that it's becoming increasingly moot to bother posting. I posted back in the early days of social media to share with my friends. In response, my friends and acquaintances kept me up to date with their lives. Now the apps only bother to show me friend/following posts if they deem it matches my interests. I understand that this sort of algorithmic feed likely matches the met…

Yes, I mostly stopped sharing because I don't want it to be used for creepy reasons. When Facebook was just a community of sorts, it was fine to share. People who cared would see it. Facebook wasn't doing too much content mining. But in the current world, people who care often don't see it, and if I told them to go looking there, they'd be bombarded by so much ragebait that I couldn't in good conscience recommend it.

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

#386

Post by carlosjobim » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #356

carlosjobim wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some are absolutely better than others when it comes to this. But I was shocked and instantly repulsed when hearing and seeing CNN at an airport after having been away from televisions for a few months. > Same goes for anyone giving a public speech, their cadence and tone would sound bizarre if they were just say in a room with you. Then imagine these newscasters giving a public speech in that same way. You'd think y…

> But still people invite these reptilians to their bedrooms through the TV. You recognize that you're the outlier here... has it occurred to you that maybe your reaction is the unusual one, not everyone else's? There's literally a podcast called My Favorite Murder that has millions of subscribers. A lot of people go to live shows for it. They literally do invite people in flesh and blood to sit in front of them and…

> has it occurred to you that maybe your reaction is the unusual one

I am very well aware of that, what would make you think otherwise?

> There's literally a podcast called My Favorite Murder that has millions of subscribers.

Millions of people are subscribed to meth or fentanyl as well, and a lot of other things.

I have no doubt that murder podcasts are popular, and that there are people who are so far gone that they would go to a live show. Something being popular doesn't mean that it is good for you.

If a person close to you had been the victim of a brutal murder, how would you feel that people took great pleasure in that kind of thing, calling it "their favorite murder"? It's dehumanizing.

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

#387

Post by stickfigure » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

rpdillon wrote: post #188

stickfigure wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm making it as a very serious argument. HN is social, it has an algorithmic feed, people upvote and downvote your content, hell it has a social credit score. The idea that HN somehow isn't "social media" is hard to take serious. This is Reddit for a niche audience. The main difference is that HN has a small and relatively high quality community, plus the traffic is low enough that it gets a fair amount of manual mo…

Sure, but deconstructing the platform to look at the engagement points is also useful. Some things that I think set HN apart in a good way: The lack of any kind of personalization whatsoever on Hacker News is a huge differentiator. There are no notifications, so if you want to find out if somebody replied to you, you've got to go check. Everybody's front page is exactly the same. There are no direct messages. There a…

> if you want to find out if somebody replied to you, you've got to go check.

Let me spin this a different way: Because there are no notifications, HN users need to frequently come back and check. This is "positive random reinforcement" and is one of the most powerful mechanisms known for creating and maintaining addictive behavior. It's the same principle that slot machines and loot boxes use.

> There are no direct messages.

I'm not sure why this is good or bad, but it's not really true. Many people (including you and me) put their email address in their profile.

> The feed is not endless.

The feed is definitely endless. If you mean specifically that it's paginated rather than loads automatically... do you really think it matters? Like, you think that HN quality would suffer if users didn't have to click the "more" button?

I don't think HN quality would suffer, just as I don't think FB quality would improve by adding a "more" button.

> There are no reactions to posts other than upvote/downvote.

Upvoting, downvoting, and commenting are HUGE social functions. Facebook doesn't even have downvotes. You could easily spin this as a major social negative for HN. You downvote other people!?! Sounds toxic!

The other points (frontpage, images, emoji, advertising) are interesting but honestly I'm not seeing how this makes HN something fundamentally different. It does probably make HN appeal to a different audience. Which is the point... but don't confuse "great audience" for "better social technology".

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

#388

Post by bamboozled » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

The two single reasons I I have instagram installed are:

* Keeping in touch with people / contacts.

* Knowing when random cafes and restaurants I like are open.

Outside of that I just hate it and want it out of my life. I’ve spoke to others and the loss of contacts is a major reason they don’t leave also.

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

#389

Post by kachurovskiy » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

I've stopped using YouTube and Reddit since early April and it's been a mixed bag.

On one side my interest level has adjusted so that normal activities make sense again - like sitting in the garden or playing a game with my kid. I've also completed dozens of projects like replacing old silicon in the entire kitchen or updating the garden playground.

On the other side I'm feeling more isolated and lacking information / stimulation for creative output because I no longer have any idea what other people are doing. However given that massive amounts of time have been freed I'm more productive both at work and at home, more effort on health too.

It's definitely something to try but it's not all roses.

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

#390

Post by bamboozled » Mon, Jun 08, 2026, 9:05 PM UTC

estearum wrote: post #16

Insanity wrote: post #2

Social media was never really “social” in my opinion. Reading updates from hundreds of people you have shallow interactions with offers the illusion of having a social life. So I’m not sure if this change to “fads” makes it meaningfully less social than it already was.

Curious how old you are? There was definitely a sweet spot if you were in highschool or college in like 2004 - 2010 (so born something like 1986 - 1994?) where online social media was almost painstakingly manicured to mirror real-life social dynamics. Many people remember the drama of deciding who your "top friends" were on MySpace.

I think early instagram was like this for about 12 months.