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Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

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Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#71

Post by rsa4046 »

stiray wrote: post #42
Calvin02 wrote: post #7

HN's Facebook obsession is so unproductive. Let it go already. Focus on building your own thing. Yes, people use Facebook. No, you don't have to. Edit: yes, please downvote this comment. Let the HN naval gazing continue.

Or some of us have obsession about unhealthy distopia that is at the end of facebook road. May I recomend you a book? https://www.amazon.com/Age-Surveillance-Capitalism-Future-Fr... Or, if books are not your thing, maybe watch Black Mirror - Nosedive (S03E01). You need to understand that some people are older than facebook and have seen the tranformation of human society since the Facebook came.

Zuboff's book is excellent

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#72

Post by WiPo »

The way I choose to use FB or Twitter is to check one's profile before the actual meeting happens so I could have some 'common knowledge' with him to talk about. As a researcher and programmer, it's crucial to realize that you couldn't do anything meaningful or fundamental without immersing yourself into thinking and being kinda isolated. I'm kinda pessimistic about this round of internet bubble as it seems to come out of the exploitation of people's spare time and attention by using superficial content and instant satisfaction. (FB, Netflix, Tik-Tok, etc) But productivity is indeed boosted. I couldn't imagine WFH being so widespread 20 years ago, but now with a smartphone, you can basically meet, chat, work on documents/ projects, taking lectures from elementary to graduate level. So in the long-term, I'm still optimistic that, maybe after the burst of the current bubble, people will realize how addicted they've been, and how they should adapt to new techs.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#73

Post by dcabrejas »

wideasleep1 wrote: post #16
ryannevius wrote: post #3

TL;DR from the abstract of the actual study: > In a randomized experiment, we find that deactivating Facebook for the four weeks before the 2018 US midterm election (i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused…

" (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; " I interpret that as 'reduced propaganda and it's resultant effects". Much like giving up television.

Polarization has been the trend in the western world for the last decade, slowly but surely countries are being divided and polirized more and more. It doesn't paint a good picture of the future for sure, and social media is part of the problem unfortunately.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#74

Post by deepnet »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #67

I wonder if people will ever quit Facebook.. I mean after all the stuff that's happened and they still haven't. We had a discussion about this recently in my Spanish class. Someone asked me for my facebook and when I said I closed it long ago they were all like "eeewww privacy freak". So I explained my reasons, the abuse of personal data, the manipulation of the masses (Cambridge Analytica) and the others immediately…

It is awful that staying in contact with messages from friends and loved ones forces one to be exposed to Facebook's addictive advertising, propaganda and surveillance machine - especially as Facebook is a monopoly.

Legislation enshrining adversarial interoperability would allow competition to improve user experience.

But now Facebook is a kingmaker akin to the Murdoch press legislators are not incentivised to corral Facebook.

Imagine a message client that interacts with facebookosphere and allows the use of a single detoxified client for messages and feeds from all protocols, services and ospheres.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#75

Post by bilekas »

I stopped using Facebook a good few years ago (4+), and to be honest, I know it had a positive impact on me, but at the time I was a very frustrated with almost a feeling of being blocked off from some part of society/friends.

Now I have absolutely no reservations saying : 'No sorry I dont have FB' and it's such a relief.

I do still have other bad habits such as over consumption of youtube/news sites which I'm also working on, but I recommend the leap away from the plague of Faceobok.

When I have kids, I genuinely will be very diligent about deamonizing all social media and education around modest useage.

The social media enviornment has exploded so fast there has never been time to fully realise the impacts or the effects later. But all indications look towards it being incredibly damaging.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#76

Post by dcabrejas »

johnmarcus wrote: post #22

this is true of any poor online habit people develop though, i don't think it has too much in particular to do with Facebook. If you asked Reddit or Hacker News readers to do the same, I almost guarantee similar or the same results.

This is true for most of the finding. But not for politics, in my opinion. I think people are more likely to get polalized in Facebook than in ycombinator. In fact it is known that political campaigns invest heavily in facebook adds. And this is worse than most of the regular media, which although biased, at least provides some sort of fact checking or push back usually.

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#78

Post by collyw »

numpad0 wrote: post #45
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The echo chamber is real. I went cold turkey on Twitter after using it for 10 years and gaining about 6k followers. Twitter was the #1 source of left-wing extremist noise in my life. I'm sure there were/are right-wing extremists on that platform too, but one seemed to appear in my algorithmic feed more than the other. Or perhaps it was confirmation bias. Who knows! Good riddance.

Both side's on it. In fact there's no sides. Just that Twitter is competent at removing constructive elements and distilling hatred/rage/anger for profit and it's working against you. There are few ways to strip out some of their 10-year "improvement" and oh how deserted it looks under there...

Both sides are indeed on Ttwitter but it feels like it has a strong skew to the left. And as Time Pool discussed on Joe Rogan, the platform itself censors right wing opinion far more than left wing opinion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbTXqrS9l5E

Re: Economists study what happens when people stop using Facebook

#79

Post by gjs278 »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #67

I wonder if people will ever quit Facebook.. I mean after all the stuff that's happened and they still haven't. We had a discussion about this recently in my Spanish class. Someone asked me for my facebook and when I said I closed it long ago they were all like "eeewww privacy freak". So I explained my reasons, the abuse of personal data, the manipulation of the masses (Cambridge Analytica) and the others immediately…

tricking stupid people into voting for trump is not horrible. you’re a weirdo for not using facebook over that.
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