How Facebook makes us dumber • Hacker News Board

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#81

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:40 PM UTC

spydum wrote: post #75

TeMPOraL wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me biased, but pretty much every on-line community I've seen in the past 15 years had no desire to limit disagreements. All they wanted is to get rid of assholes . It's the same on HN and on your Facebook feed, as it was on the old topical boards and mailing lists. You can argue for any controversial position you like as long as you do this in a civil and substantial way. What ends up happening is people getting…

While I agree with you, this did have me giggling a bit: > and assholes who just want to call people names.

I guess I need to work on my writing skills a bit more; I still tend to quantum-tunnel into DH0 sometimes. :).

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#82

Post by DanBC » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:43 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #21

zappo2938 wrote: post #9

Reddit too. I just wrote 500 words without using any logical fallacies backing up my assertions with scientific studies from trusted sources, why does my comment have -12 points without a single person taking the time to refute my position in a comment? I believe managed, licenced hunting in Africa supports conservation efforts, there is no reason ever to spank or hit a child, all children should be vaccinated, and p…

Just out of curiosity why do you think children should never be spanked? Do you have children?

It's always a failure of parenting. It's abusive - it's an abuse the the rights of the child. It's ineffective.

You always hear some fucking idiot saying "my child ran out into the street, so I hit him". Hear the useless parent put their child at risk of harm by not teaching the child about road safety, by not providing adequate supervision in a dangerous situation, and then punishing the child for the parent's lack of skill.

"I hit my children" is no different from "I hit my spouse" or "I hit my employees".

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#83

Post by krisdol » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:43 PM UTC

rdlecler1 wrote: post #48

I'm generally curious whether or not most people on HN still actively use their Facebook account.

I rarely participate in commenting/sharing/liking like I used to years ago, and I don't click any links on it anymore, but I do still check it several times a week.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#84

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:47 PM UTC

DanBC wrote: post #79

danieltillett wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK it sounds like you are actually of the belief that spanking should be rare, rather than never. In this I agree, but I do think from personal experience that spanking is a useful "thermonuclear" option to stop dangerous behaviour in young children. To give you an example, I once caught one of my children at the age of two inserting objects into electrical power points. I gave him a good spank on the bottom and he n…

You subjected your child to violence because you failed in your duty to keep him safe?

When you put it that way, it does sound wrong.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#85

Post by ehnto » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:50 PM UTC

randycupertino wrote: post #59

TeMPOraL wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: Facebook is quite inconspicuous about displaying fanpage likes; i.e. your friends will probably miss the information that you've liked some fanpage. Each of your friends most likely has hundreds of books, movies and commercial venues liked (you can check that in their profile), and you probably haven't seen a single one of them popping up on your timeline.

Really? Interesting, because I get spammed pretty constantly that my friends "liked" Barkbox or whatever stupid MLM pyramid scheme is the current fad in my newsfeed pretty constantly. In fact, the Barkbox one shows up almost every few days. Is that just because Barkbox is advertising on facebook? I always thought if I liked anything it would reciprocatively show up in their newsfeeds.

You might find that those are actually sponsored advertisements in your feed. You might also notice it's often the same people who have liked it.

They didn't like it right then and there, it's just that an advert is showing and FB pulls up people you can relate to as others who recommend it.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#86

Post by cryoshon » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:50 PM UTC

hellofunk wrote: post #50

There have already been studies showing that frequent visits to FB make a person more unhappy in their overall life. Now this. So, a major worldwide internet power -- that is, a single company -- that is trying to disrupt so much of global life (India, anyone?), with the interesting side effect that it makes people unhappy and less intelligent. If you had heard this "reality" 20 years ago, you wouldn't believe the fu…

Yep, a major worldwide internet power has vested interest in mining data from its billions of users via its product, which is broadly detrimental to those users.

To be honest, it seems a lot like the oil companies: major worldwide energy powers with vested interest in extracting fossil fuels from the earth then selling them to billions of users to burn, which is detrimental to everyone.

A lot of these mega-scale corporations manage to get away with mass-scale detrimental effects because of a general state of addiction to their product, which was legitimately new and useful at an earlier point in time. That, and after a certain point they become too powerful for any one country to stop.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#87

Post by hussong » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:53 PM UTC

In Germany, vast parts of Facebook have become one big ugly hate fest. I've read so much utterly terrible crap in the past few days (in the aftermath of the NYE events in Germany), that I'm still sick to the stomach. People are completely resistant to any facts contradicting their favorite narrative and flagging is useless (moderation is a joke). Same for YouTube btw.

edit: typos

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#88

Post by zappo2938 » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 1:55 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #60

zappo2938 wrote: post #9

Reddit too. I just wrote 500 words without using any logical fallacies backing up my assertions with scientific studies from trusted sources, why does my comment have -12 points without a single person taking the time to refute my position in a comment? I believe managed, licenced hunting in Africa supports conservation efforts, there is no reason ever to spank or hit a child, all children should be vaccinated, and p…

It's charitable to assume, like other commenters did, that your comment was totally fine, but I have to ask - what was the tone of it? And how did it happen that people actually unfriended you on Facebook? The other potential reason is that you posted it to the wrong community. There are, unfortunately, groups of people who get the more angry the more you try to back up your point with science. Best to avoid those. T…

The problem is that my ideas through the Reddit algorithm sink to the bottom and RES will automatically hide them if they fall below a threshold. This is another case of an algorithm creating an opinion bubble. As for being unfriended on Facebook, people are passionate about not getting their children vaccinated. I lost a couple friends over that. One woman posted a picture with text that said, "My parents spanked me and I turned out fine." I donated money and time to do Facebook marketing for a charity concert for a local homeless non-profit last year. They do awesome work getting people off the streets where I live, but they are weird. I didn't know the women well but my response about her being a recovered heroin addict and not being fine ruffled a lot of people's feathers. That ended with a bunch of people unfriending me too.

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#89

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:10 PM UTC

zappo2938 wrote: post #88

TeMPOraL wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's charitable to assume, like other commenters did, that your comment was totally fine, but I have to ask - what was the tone of it? And how did it happen that people actually unfriended you on Facebook? The other potential reason is that you posted it to the wrong community. There are, unfortunately, groups of people who get the more angry the more you try to back up your point with science. Best to avoid those. T…

The problem is that my ideas through the Reddit algorithm sink to the bottom and RES will automatically hide them if they fall below a threshold. This is another case of an algorithm creating an opinion bubble. As for being unfriended on Facebook, people are passionate about not getting their children vaccinated. I lost a couple friends over that. One woman posted a picture with text that said, "My parents spanked me…

Uh, I see. Yeah, Reddit has this problem; I've noticed new subreddits often changing the top-level comment sorting order to counter exactly that effect.

I can see how the issue with that woman could cause some opposition - if I understand it correctly (she told she turned out fine, you pointed her out that in fact she didn't), I can see myself being in disagreement (depending on the full context). But unfriending over things like that? This surprises me. Their loss, sadly, they chose to form a bubble around themselves.

Thanks for responding with details!

Re: How Facebook makes us dumber

#90

Post by inthewoods » Mon, Jan 11, 2016, 2:11 PM UTC

throwaway125 wrote: post #58

inthewoods wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At one point people estimated that a Facebook like was worth quite a lot of money. I am quite sure that now the value has greatly diminished" Have you looked at a stock chart of Facebook recently? All time high basically and worth $220b. Or did you mean the value the company brings to the user?

You misread what was said I think. It's about a facebook like , not about facebook itself.

Ah my bad - need more coffee.