Comment by asim
12 days ago
We all know this. As people in the tech industry. As people on this website. We know this. The question is, what are we going to do about it? We spend enough time complaining or saying "I'm going to quit facebook" but there's Instagram and Threads and whatever else. And you alone quitting isn't enough. We have to help the people really suffering. We can sometimes equate social media to cigarettes or alcohol and relate the addictive parts of that but we have to acknowledge tools for communication and community are useful, if not even vital in this day and age. We have to find a way to separate the good from the bad and actively create alternatives. It does not mean you create a better cigarette or ban alcohol for minors. It means you use things for their intended purpose.
We can strip systems like X, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, TikTok, etc of their addictive parts and get back to utility to value. We can have systems not owned by US corporations that are fundamentally valuable to society. But it requires us, the tech savvy engineering folk to make those leaps. Because the rest of society can't do it. We are in the position of power. We have the ability.
We can do something about it.
I wrote something to that effect two days ago on a platform I'm building. https://mu.xyz/post?id=1763732217570513817
Platforms that have the useful stuff from social media without the addictive part already exist: Forums, micro-blogging, blogs, news aggregators, messaging apps, platforms for image portfolios, video sharing platforms.
And most of them have existed before the boom of social media, but they just don't get as huge because they are not addictive.
The useful part of a social media is so small that if you put it on it's own you don't get a famous app, you have something that people use for a small part of their day and otherwise carry on with their life.
A social media essentially leverages the huge and constant need that umans have to socialize, and claims that you can do it better and more through the platform instead of doing it in real life, and they do so by making sure that enough people in your social circle prioritise the platform over getting together in real life. And I believe this is also the main harmlful part of them, people not getting actual real social time with their peers and then struggling with mental health.
At the moment the biggest hope I have is there’s client side tech that protects us from these dark patterns. But I suspect they’ll have their own dark patterns to make them profitable.
I guess we can speculate or theorise on potential strategies but beyond hope we should also try to do something. I have seen some X clones with variations but a lot of the same behaviour plays out when you have no rules around posting, moderation, types of content, etc. Effectively these platforms end up in the same place of gamification and driving engagement through addictive behaviours because they want users. Essentially I think true community is different, true community keeps each other accountable and in check. Somehow we need to get back to some of that. Maybe co-operative led tools. Non profits. I think Mastodon meant well and didn't end up in the right place. Element/Matrix is OK but again doesn't feel quite right. Maybe we should never try to replicate what was, I don't know. BitChat (https://bitchat.free/) is an interesting alternative from Jack Dorsey - who I think is trying to fix the loss of Twitter and the stronghold of WhatsApp.
We can do something about it:
Just not use those services. X is addictive, but otherwise utterly unnecessary. It seemed useful about 8 years ago when you could get tech insights form industry veterans on a daily basis and then use them in your own company. Those days are long gone.
Just. Don't. Use. Those. Services.
Easiest life-hack ever for a happier and more productive life.