Reddit is plenty addictive in my experience, and I've heard the same from other people ranging from high school teachers to tradespeople.
Hackernews is also addictive. Fortnine is addictive. World of Warcraft is addictive. NFL is addictive. Addiction does not strike to me as a unique trait of the social media. The echo chamber bubble on the other hand, seems quite unique.
I wonder if your KPI is no. of active users, page views, etc - then you are a priori building an addictive thing.
Open Internet dying in front of our very eyes. Let's not forget that social media are just one of the many scapegoats tried over the past decade in hopes of pushing this idea forwards. And while there's no denying that today's social media have gotten destructive, they're still only a scapegoat; no attempt is being made here to bring them back to their original, non-malicious shape. Is the social media hate really so…
Has anyone ever argued that children should have full access to the entire internet? Seems like a horribly bad idea.
Will adults be exempt from the invasive age verification?
Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matt…
>Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matter at all.
"AI" is really no different. These social media bans should include "AI" too, for people under a certain age. I even see adults that don't understand the limits of "AI" and that it shouldn't be trusted blindly.
Reddit has been a cesspit of recycled pablum, populist image macros and low effort reply comments for more than a decade. Enthusiast subreddits are astroturfed to hell and back by people with a Shopify storefront and a dream trying to growth hack their way to a hockey stick. The low barrier to entry to each community means that this vapid culture eventually diffuses itself across subreddits that might otherwise be go…
Agreed. I wish they would consider charging a small fee (~$1) to create an account. That alone would cut down on all the AI spam and give subreddit moderators a fighting chance.
Lol, I guess I'm glad I checked-out from reddit before the whole "AI" thing took off. My life is honestly way better without reddit. HN isn't far behind though, honestly. The less time I spend here, the better for everything else going on in my life. HN has at least been somewhat useful for my day-job and employment future.
Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matt…
Reddit has been a cesspit of recycled pablum, populist image macros and low effort reply comments for more than a decade. Enthusiast subreddits are astroturfed to hell and back by people with a Shopify storefront and a dream trying to growth hack their way to a hockey stick. The low barrier to entry to each community means that this vapid culture eventually diffuses itself across subreddits that might otherwise be go…
True for the popular subreddits, but there are occasional niche communities that imo managed to keep the forum vibe (e.g., r/progmetal, r/cpp).
Reddit has been a cesspit of recycled pablum, populist image macros and low effort reply comments for more than a decade. Enthusiast subreddits are astroturfed to hell and back by people with a Shopify storefront and a dream trying to growth hack their way to a hockey stick. The low barrier to entry to each community means that this vapid culture eventually diffuses itself across subreddits that might otherwise be go…
I miss slashdot 20 years ago :/
I still visit regularly (and have since about 2000 or so), but I agree that it is not the same as in those days. I remember feeling like I was gaining actual insight into the topics from the comments, today... much less so. Maybe being older also plays a role, but I think /. has certainly changed as well.
What would help so much would be to force the platform to act in a way to not try to retain the user at every cost.
Like YouTube. I would love to have parental settings, "no shorts", "no recommendations on video page". Kids could search and click on the creator to see more. Combine that with blocklists and curated allow lists. Boom, YouTube is not a problem. And kids getting bored of clicking around would be a feature.
They should just ban showing ads to people under 18. That will remove the incentive to produce and feed dopamine garbage to kids with unfinished brains.
They should just ban showing ads to people under 18. That will remove the incentive to produce and feed dopamine garbage to kids with unfinished brains.
There's still the incentive to get them hooked. They'd need to ban any platform for under 18s that increases its revenue from greater "engagement".