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

Post by baggachipz » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 12:13 PM UTC

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #442

baggachipz wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's run by a guy who literally did a nazi salute. One of their most prolific users is named "catturd". I'm astonished that anybody in research or science still remains there. Edit to add: The owner of the platform contributed millions of dollars, endorsements, and manipulation of the platform to elect a regime which actively works to dismantle scientific and research funding and institutions. By continuing to use th…

I feel like I'm 'old' to say this, but I'm consistently surprised (which means it's at least some kind of a personal flaw) that companies put press releases out on a third party platform. They have their own website, and yet they update on other platforms more quickly and more frequently than their own. It's unnecessary outsourcing. Even more-so now that it's impossible to see a feed in chronological order without si…

Post by trumpdong » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 12:16 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…

Post by trumpdong » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 12:19 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #290

close04 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Post by trumpdong » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 12:27 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #308

malfist wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a very strong hive mind there. It takes very little to grassroots a subreddit. Just like at the biking subreddits and tire recommendations. It's almost always the GP 5000 that is recommended. Which, don't get me wrong, it's a great tire. But it isn't always the best, and there are tires out there that beat it. The community has just latched on to the one true tire and that's all you'll ever see recommended. M…

Reddit is a pretty extreme example, though, where mods are basically subreddit dictators. For whatever reason, Reddit gave enormous amount of censorship and conversation-shaping power to mods, to the point where a handful of like-minded mods can enforce in great detail what is allowed to be discussed and what isn't. Pretty sure if you unmasked the subreddit mods, the reason for the "circling around a particular brand…

Post by trumpdong » Tue, Jun 09, 2026, 12:32 PM UTC

mcmoor wrote: post #460

NewsaHackO wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The personalized algorithm is not the root issue though. The root issue is that social media sites live by increasing engagement of its viewers. Because of this, they all get away from the original stated purpose of bringing people together, and go all in on maximizing engagement by increasingly shady ways. Of course, the personalized algorithm is a huge one, but there are also things like "Show HN" controlling what…

I think it can be argued that, because human interests are so different and fractal, there's only so much damage that can be done with non-personalized algorithm. Ads for a certain demographic will just alienate the other demographic. But with personalized algorithm, the poison can be customized for each person and be more fatal.