Comment by Zambyte
15 days ago
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?
I think we should ban all users until they provide 10 photos of their face from different angles and lighting. Passport and birth certificates and a lawyer letter confirming it’s really you trying to sign up under the username: LexiMax
Then all this will be synced with govs so can read all your messages. And sell to ad companies to spam you later. (They can link your phone number, email etc to you as you provided real id on all those).
And if you travel to some country that doesn’t approve what you ever said, maybe you broke their law, so you deserve a few years in prison.
And oxygen is also a poison. I don't know what's wrong with HN, but the moment there's _any_ basis for comparison, so many people here are extremely confident that there's no difference between the two things. I'm sure it's an earnestly-held belief, but it's maddening and simply incorrect.
Further, if in some contrived scenario we had to lose HN to get rid of all social media, I'd happily do it.
No, because banning social media at large probably isn't the right answer. It's certain interaction patterns that cause harm. That can be pushed back against either technologically (ex chronological feeds) or culturally (ie via moderation).
There's no perfect solution but some are significantly better than others.
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Having an account should probably be restricted to adults only. But it's such a low priority target compared to the other platforms.
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!
Disagree, that's reductive and beside the point.
It's useful to have words that distinguish major classes of activity online, even if several types are combined on a given platform. "Messaging", "Chat Rooms", "Streaming", "Forums", "Social Networking", and "Social Media" are all different things. You can quibble about what constitutes the edges of the definitions but they all have different key activities they enable.
If you lump everything together, you fail to understand the necessary nuances to identify the problems let alone solve them.
The key to understanding any given social platform is to understand the proportion of which activity that platform enables. This tells you things like the incentives, constraints, externalities, etc of the platform. Different designs have different effects.
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I don’t understand your point.
I don’t use any of these platforms, except HN. But the distinction between social media and social networks is pretty clear.
https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/answe...
Block lists, starter packs, and quote detaching did not exist on Twitter ten years ago. Person-scale moderation is simply more effective on Bluesky, and that leads to a better experience.
I am super curious about this distinction! Could you say more?
On a network, people interact with each other.
In ~media~, you have a few specialized ~creators~, and doom scrollers.
Compare Lunarstorm anno 2000 and instagram 2026.
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Blueskys only difference is that it hasnt been enshitified yet.
And when (if) that happens, everyone will just continue to use the same network through a better app. Blacksky is a notable example of this already happening.