Comment by Gud
16 days ago
Absolutely. Social media and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race. Ban it for everyone.
16 days ago
Absolutely. Social media and its consequences has been a disaster for the human race. Ban it for everyone.
I've flown across the US to meet what will likely be lifelong friends[0], and just went out to dinner and an escape room with some others, all of which I connected with through Bluesky. The worst of social media is terrible, but I would hate to lose the best of it by banning it outright. The really negative parts come are
- Underage people who do not have the emotional maturity to deal with digital public spaces
- Emotional manipulation through "algorithmic" timelines (chronological or bust)
- Waves of unwanted interactions
Social media seems like it can be a positive tool to me. I would love to be able to continue to use it as I am. I do think there is a conflict of interest issue between the mental health of the people that use social media, and for-profit corporations that provide social media services. Regulating social media in a sane way has become difficult due to how much financial sway social media companies have on legislation, but it's an important fight to fight.
[0] I have a thread on my bsky account with a bunch of group photos, if you're interested it shouldn't be hard to find. I'm not linking it because I'm not interested in people engaging in it from here.
This right here is why we keep having this problem. The benefits (or in more cases) the addictions are too enticing. So we take the good with the bad, except the problem is that the bad far, far outweighs the good.
Hacker News is also social media - at least by most reasonable definitions of social media. Should it also be banned?
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The thing is that I literally just don't have the bad, that's why I listed those things. Bluesky is chronological by default, and that is what I use exclusively. There is a "Discover" feed, but I straight up removed it from my account. I have a few other user made feeds that I use very sparingly (basically just chronological keyword search feeds). There are powerful tools for blocking brigading (blocks detach quotes, or quotes can be detached without blocking). I am a mentally mature adult capable of dealing with public interactions.
It's wise to limit use under different conditions from these, but these conditions are seriously positive. I've never had such a positive experience with social media before. The fedi came the closest, but my experience was limited to interacting with technically inclined people who weren't the most socially skilled. Bluesky is approachable enough that anyone who can figure out mainstream social media can figure it out, so there is a much more diverse set of people.
Social media doesn't mean communicating with people you know. Social media means optimized algorithmic feeds. You could have met the same friends over email.
Blue sky is a social network, not social media.
A subtle but important distinction
Sorry but you sound exactly like that comic. "Our blessed homeland, their barbarous waters"
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-their-ba...
More seriously, I have seen similar exchanges many times on this social media where one party tries to exempt what is clearly a social media from his anti-social media agenda because he finds it personally more palatable. Usually he tries to exempt Reddit or HN but in this case it is Bluesky, which has the same features as Twitter ten years ago and is notorious for being always politically charged. It makes me think whatever criticisms he may have against social media are actually less about social media but about people he does not like being on social media. Like a driver complaining about all the other cars causing a congestion while he sits in his own car.
But fear not, because our blessed regulators (totally different from their tyrannical censors) will save us from the Big Bad. Never mind when Nepal blocked WhatsApp in its social media ban or when UK came after Wikipedia!
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I am super curious about this distinction! Could you say more?
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Blueskys only difference is that it hasnt been enshitified yet.
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Hilariously, the website hosting the post you are currently commenting on is Social Media by almost any definition. Autocracy and autocratic thinking are never the solution. You don’t know what’s best for everyone.
Not really. By a broad definition, yes. But here there is no algorithmic filtering of what you see based on data about you that is tracked and data about you purchased from data brokers. Nor is there a team of psychologists constantly working on ways to hit your dopamine triggers and keep you engaged.
But that isn't the main issue with Discord, either, despite their attempts to add features like the ICYMI tab. The problem of Discord is more in the social than the media.
Social media has none of that. Sometimes it is conflated with that as Facebook was social media for the first five minutes of its life, until they realized you can't make money with social media and quickly pivoted.
This place should burn too.
And every video game is a RPG because you play a role.
Sure, social media is bad for kids. Why can't their parents regulate them though? Isn't keeping kids away from dangerous things a basic requirement of being a parent?
I propose passing laws that make parents who let their kids on social media pay fines and risk having social media sites blocked by their ISP rather than just making all adults have to get an "internet license".
It’s bad for everyone, except for the advertisers, and arguably it’s bad for them as a 2nd order effect.
I think we just need to ban social media in general. It's done more harm to our societies than good.
The loss of all anonymity and privacy on the internet is much worse than this generation's version of the "won't someone think of the children" scare. It's wild how many people are eating this up.
I’m not suggesting “upload an id”. I’m suggesting ban all these brain slugs outright.
Make META a criminal organization. Put Zuckerberg behind bars.
Yes we should give the government more power and put up “The Great American Firewall” so Americans can’t use any foreign Facebook like companies.
I didn't respond to the suggestion of absolute prohibition because it's too ridiculous a concept to take seriously.
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If I host a personal server with a Facebook-like app for myself and a few friends, at which point do I go behind bars in your brave new world?
Do you disagree with the first amendment? That's fine, just get it repealed first.
Louis Rossmann had a vid about this and it's much more than jut anonimity, it's about protecting yourself from being exploited by algorithms. Can go as far as influencing your political voting, or who knows what else.
Does tiktok have good intentions keeping your hooked all day on end?
The one (teenage verification for specific services such as social media) does not require the other (require uploading ids to every site on the internet). For one, the scope is limited and secondly, there must be different schemes possible.
Who cares? What exactly is lost. Personally I’m not going to give them my ID, I’m just going to stop using those parts of the internet.
> "won't someone think of the children" scare
Pretending that's what the anti-social media stance is, is hilariously dishonest.
Anyone pretending there is any anonymity and privacy to protect on the internet, right now, has their head in the sand, especially if they use social media.
What happens when the governments around the world decide to ban something that you care about? Will you be so eager to agree with them or will you cry that your rights and your freedom are being taken away?
Don't like social media, fine, nobody is forcing you to use it.
define 'social media' .. were BBSs social media? usenet? email? aol instant messenger? physical community bulletin boards? classified ads? newspapers?
I agree that social media is a plague. Unfortunately, the legal definition of "social media" is likely to be so broad that it will include things like Hacker News or even old-school forums. The real plague is the infinite scroll, engagement-farming social media like Twitter, post-newsfeed Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok. I'm skeptical that laws addressing social media will target the right problem given how rich/powerful a company like Meta is vs. some guy running an Anime forum.
> some guy running an Anime forum.
I expected all of them to have become Discord channels at this point.
Good bye, Hacker News. I knew ye uhh... Well, I knew ye.
HN would be improved if the comment section was removed and it was just high quality submissions. All the AI generated engagement bait articles would stop.
Comments are where 90% of the value of HN is. If you remove them and it just becomes another news aggregator, I very much doubt that it would retain most of its users. Nor would submissions be "high quality".
What is social media?