Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Quit Social Media (2016)

calnewport.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 281 posts

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#81

Post by BigGreenJorts »

watwut wrote: post #79
freediver wrote: post #6

I would rephrase it to “quit ad-based social media”. The incentives are perverse, there is an inherent conflict of interest in the business model and there is an intermediary between the user and information/community they want to participate in. This leads to most problems we see in legacy, ad-based, social media. Most successful social circles are ones where there is a barrier to entry. In life we do not let everyo…

We do not filter real world friends based on them paying for arbitrary product.

But do we not? We meet friends in life through school, work, hobbies. There's at least a time commitment to some common space if not a financial one. Friendship grow and die based on whether you can easily continue to see them - a common scenario for the dynamic changing being they no longer participate in the common space.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#82

Post by keiferski »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #56
motbus3 wrote: post #31

I won't advertise but I work for a company which holds a social media for cooking and recipes. Folks there are totally averse to those and based stuff. It has been hard for the company. The owner decided the company will die before using ads (for many reasons). The paid plan is stupidly cheap and when people sign and use for a month they stick with the company for years. But it is hard. Company laid off 80% of the te…

If the company you work for REALLY does behave like that, you SHOULD DEFINITELY advertise it. Companies like this must be acknowledged and celebrated. The owner must be a really good person.

Unfortunately people love to complain about ads, but rarely actually get their wallets out when an alternative payment method is presented. Case in point: the frequent archive.org links to get around paywalls.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#83

Post by AStonesThrow »

SamDc73 wrote: post #67
seqizz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We also do not let people into the friend circle just because they have money (I hope). IMHO healthiest "social media" I could think is interest groups. They eventually need some kind of donation from one or more people, but with no or minimal barriers.

For me no of course, but if you think about unintentionally your friends are from the same income group really (for the most part), if you are rich and go to private school, your friends are most likely rich, and usually hang around "fancy" places.

I was briefly a member of a church-related singles group. Their activities revolved around visiting a different church every Sunday. And also doing activities on weekends that involved a lot of car travel and significant admission fees, if only viewing a film at the mall cinema.

I had a real commitment to my home parish at the time. I was involved in ministries weekly, where I could not simply flit about anywhere I wanted. Sure, as a group we could meet many strangers on this itinerary, but I risked severing all ties with my spiritual home!

The activities were sometimes active and sometimes passive, such as hiking, dancing, or going to a festival or something. And I quickly gave up on everything, because it seemed like the group was not really oriented to pairing people off, but more of a self-sustaining club where people gained "volunteer responsibilities" and were thus pressured into staying in the "singles group" no matter what their relationship status. Also, having no vehicle of my own, I'd either opt out of traveling, or I'd hit someone up to carpool, and that wasn't always copacetic.

I also found, on dating websites, this mentality that single Catholics would be jet-setters, traveling all over the world on pilgrimage. That they would generate a steady stream of photographs and social media posts from their adventures. That they would have marvelous, expensive hobbies and be so active in volunteerism. For crying out loud! I wondered how these people would ever have space in their lives for a significant other! All I wanted to do was hang around home, go for walks, prepare a nice meal at home once in a while. But the dating sites seemed geared exclusively for high-maintenance and upper-middle-class go-getters. Again, I felt like it was a clique of "professional singles" who didn't really expect to pair off and get married.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#84

Post by watwut »

BigGreenJorts wrote: post #81
watwut wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do not filter real world friends based on them paying for arbitrary product.

But do we not? We meet friends in life through school, work, hobbies. There's at least a time commitment to some common space if not a financial one. Friendship grow and die based on whether you can easily continue to see them - a common scenario for the dynamic changing being they no longer participate in the common space.

Friends through work, school and most hobbies are transient - they come and go, temporary only.

With friends as in people in your life who you want to really be friends with, you both make changes to be able to keep the relationships. Otherwise it dies. And you certainly do not go "either you buy this app or I am not friend with you anymore".

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#85

Post by watwut »

kikokikokiko wrote: post #56
motbus3 wrote: post #31

I won't advertise but I work for a company which holds a social media for cooking and recipes. Folks there are totally averse to those and based stuff. It has been hard for the company. The owner decided the company will die before using ads (for many reasons). The paid plan is stupidly cheap and when people sign and use for a month they stick with the company for years. But it is hard. Company laid off 80% of the te…

If the company you work for REALLY does behave like that, you SHOULD DEFINITELY advertise it. Companies like this must be acknowledged and celebrated. The owner must be a really good person.

I think that big issue there might just be that infinite reoccurring payments for cooking app is just not something reasonable for most people to set up. People likely prefer to not have a cooking app over paying regularly for it and it is actually reasonable decision.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#86

Post by lynx23 »

ryandv wrote: post #78
tropdrop wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly this changed somewhat with the clickbait-based model – now, I would disagree that advertisers "want, more generally, to avoid programs with serious complexities and disturbing controversies." I think this does describe legacy advertisers (and TikTok, for different reasons) – we might remember Tumblr's hyper-specific LGBTQ-friendly (often NSFW) communities being completely liquidated in the transfer of T…

As possible counterpoint consider the departure of several advertisers from X following the Musk acquisition, whose controversial online antics and positions (irrespective of one's potential value judgments of them) were deemed bad for business and a damper on the "buying mood." In general though it is true that ragebait and sensationalism do tend to drive "engagement" and thus ad revenue (often to the detriment of s…

Still, his "Go f--- yourself" reply was one of the best things ever since sliced bread. I am still appaulding.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#87

Post by watwut »

ryandv wrote: post #50

I quit social media over 10 years ago, already having been a conscientious objector to Facebook and other platforms, much to the confusion of my classmates who didn't understand my idiosyncratic positions on digital privacy, attention span, banality, and brainrot. It's gotten to the point where I view the narcissism of the modern 21st century social media user the same way I would view a crack addict smoking a pipe o…

Shouldn't lack of social media make people happier in theory? Because you sound to be quite resentful and angry.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#89

Post by whoitwas »

jjordan wrote: post #8
benjaminwootton wrote: post #5

Isn’t it on the decline yet? Facebook is for boomers. Twitter is weird and we all realised how pointless it is to spend time falling out on there. Instagram feels a bit long in the tooth. LinkedIn is a parody of itself. Reddit feels like it’s growing but I think that avoids the worst of social media. TikTok and YouTube shorts seem popular but aren’t really social media. It’s just time wasting junk. All in all, social…

Twitter/X is fantastic for breaking news. For example during the first assassination attempt you would find new details on there that would then appear on MSM newscasts one to two hours later. It also helps immensely to curate lists of interests to help filter out the noise and politics.

At what cost? You would need to monitor your spyware all day to gain any value. I'd rather save the time and read the news more efficiently.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#90

Post by rob137 »

Would love to hear Venkatesh Rao / Cal Newport discuss this at some point: https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/against-waldenpondin...

Another related post: https://contraptions.venkateshrao.com/p/semicolon-shaped-peo...

From the second link:

> Tenured professors with status in a discipline can tune out the world and do "deep work" peers recognize as "important" before it is done (with accompanying ivory-tower/angels-on-pinhead risks).

> But a free agent, with no institutional safety net, no underwriting of exploratory expeditions by disciplinary consensus, and no research grants, cannot afford this luxury.

Post reply on HN