Can we just, I mean just stop using and caring about most social media. Especially facebook, it offers no meaningful value. It's slow, obtuse and haven't made life better for anyone in the last decade I suppose.
Maybe whatsapp has some use, but otherwise what's even the point. I don't even have ads on whatsapp not yet anyways, I will get my family to switch when they do.
I don't care about you Meta/Facebook or whatever it is.
I would argue that it's more or less that humans don't like change, and that boomers get upset about change. It seems that the older you get, the more egotistical/selfish you become.
I'm not saying my grandma is selfish for not wanting to switch away from WhatsApp, but I am saying that it'd be hard to convince her to switch, hence I don't try.
I think attitudes mattered more than law, but some laws (e.g. advertising restrictions, and packaging requirements) may have helped change attitudes, but growing awareness of the health issues was the key.
In 1950 tobacco was cool. By 2000 it was very definitely not. In western Europe at least, sales of premium brands were falling sharply and volumes shifting to cheap brands - a lot less profitable even for the same volume. Long before UK law changed to ban indoor smoking most offices started banning smoking indoors, and pubs started doing so too (a major chain, Wetherspoons, gradually banned smoking at all its pubs).
The manufacturers tried to grow in other markets - one tobacco company investor relations person showed me some beautiful pastel coloured cigarettes in a very fancy box aimed at Eastern Europe. It did not work in the long run as attitudes changed globally.
I understand the comparison, and if it were up to me, Facebook (aka Meta) and so forth should be disbanded and chopped up at once. But ...
> Recent research shows that social media design features like infinite scroll and algorithmic feeds may encourage compulsive use and contribute to anxiety, depression, and social comparison.
So their design is addictive; not disagreeing. I think most of us know that, even as adults, how infinite scrolling on youtube for shorts, lead to a "just one more video" effect. But even with those shenanigans in mind, I simply do not see this anywhere on the same level as smoking. The health data with regards to smoking is all there, people lose about 10 years when smoking for a long time - at the least. You can find similar data points elsewhere, e. g. sumo wrestlers in Japan dying about 15 years earlier than the rest of the population. Those data points are absolutely significant. There is no way to deny that. But comparing this to the addictive scrolling or what not ... we don't have anywhere near similar data points.
That does not mean one should look at addictive design as anything but "innocent" or "harmless", but the comparison to smoking is simply not on a factual level. If anything Facebook should be eliminated for lobbying and bribes - we witness this right now when so many states push for age sniffing of everyone using the internet while concomitantly attacking VPNs. This is not accidental - this is deliberate. And the common lie is "but but but think anyone of the kids!!!".
Social networks in the current form are, what, 10 years old? We already see collapse of attention and mental effects on people of different ages, full impact will be seen only in 20-30 years when current generation grows up.
> And the common lie is "but but but think anyone of the kids!!!".
I’m the first one to call out “think about the kids” bullshit, but this is directly applicable here.
i sort of want to defend the article because it isn't comparing the health effects of the tobacco industry and social media, but rather their pr strategies... but that being said the article is very weak, so i don't want to defend it.
They're not even moderating anymore
Can we just, I mean just stop using and caring about most social media. Especially facebook, it offers no meaningful value. It's slow, obtuse and haven't made life better for anyone in the last decade I suppose.
Maybe whatsapp has some use, but otherwise what's even the point. I don't even have ads on whatsapp not yet anyways, I will get my family to switch when they do.
I don't care about you Meta/Facebook or whatever it is.
Easier said than done. You're still here, which is understandable since Hacker News is by far the most addictive one.
Hacker News is a forum, not social media.
The problem is it that it has a helluva lot of momentum from normies. Easily enough to outweigh the resistance of the likes of you and me.
The only thing will break it is a better / easier alternative. And with enough success that will probably turn into the next big bad.
> normies
I would argue that it's more or less that humans don't like change, and that boomers get upset about change. It seems that the older you get, the more egotistical/selfish you become.
I'm not saying my grandma is selfish for not wanting to switch away from WhatsApp, but I am saying that it'd be hard to convince her to switch, hence I don't try.
> It seems that the older you get, the more self-respect you develop.
FTFY.
You could make a similar noble call for everyone to just stop using cigarettes in 1950.
It would not work. What ultimately worked were laws designed to curb tobacco use combined with public education campaigns.
I think attitudes mattered more than law, but some laws (e.g. advertising restrictions, and packaging requirements) may have helped change attitudes, but growing awareness of the health issues was the key.
In 1950 tobacco was cool. By 2000 it was very definitely not. In western Europe at least, sales of premium brands were falling sharply and volumes shifting to cheap brands - a lot less profitable even for the same volume. Long before UK law changed to ban indoor smoking most offices started banning smoking indoors, and pubs started doing so too (a major chain, Wetherspoons, gradually banned smoking at all its pubs).
The manufacturers tried to grow in other markets - one tobacco company investor relations person showed me some beautiful pastel coloured cigarettes in a very fancy box aimed at Eastern Europe. It did not work in the long run as attitudes changed globally.
I understand the comparison, and if it were up to me, Facebook (aka Meta) and so forth should be disbanded and chopped up at once. But ...
> Recent research shows that social media design features like infinite scroll and algorithmic feeds may encourage compulsive use and contribute to anxiety, depression, and social comparison.
So their design is addictive; not disagreeing. I think most of us know that, even as adults, how infinite scrolling on youtube for shorts, lead to a "just one more video" effect. But even with those shenanigans in mind, I simply do not see this anywhere on the same level as smoking. The health data with regards to smoking is all there, people lose about 10 years when smoking for a long time - at the least. You can find similar data points elsewhere, e. g. sumo wrestlers in Japan dying about 15 years earlier than the rest of the population. Those data points are absolutely significant. There is no way to deny that. But comparing this to the addictive scrolling or what not ... we don't have anywhere near similar data points.
That does not mean one should look at addictive design as anything but "innocent" or "harmless", but the comparison to smoking is simply not on a factual level. If anything Facebook should be eliminated for lobbying and bribes - we witness this right now when so many states push for age sniffing of everyone using the internet while concomitantly attacking VPNs. This is not accidental - this is deliberate. And the common lie is "but but but think anyone of the kids!!!".
To be fair, if I doomscroll an hour a day for 50 years, I'd literally lose 2 years of my life. (1hr/day * 50 years)/24hrs = 2.1 years.
That's only fair when you think doomscrolling is the same as being literally dead.
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2014-05-23-many-mental-illnesses-r...
Social networks in the current form are, what, 10 years old? We already see collapse of attention and mental effects on people of different ages, full impact will be seen only in 20-30 years when current generation grows up.
> And the common lie is "but but but think anyone of the kids!!!".
I’m the first one to call out “think about the kids” bullshit, but this is directly applicable here.
i sort of want to defend the article because it isn't comparing the health effects of the tobacco industry and social media, but rather their pr strategies... but that being said the article is very weak, so i don't want to defend it.
Facebook. They're still Facebook to me. Rebrand all you want, you're just Facebook, incapable of doing anything beyond buying WhatsApp and Instagram.
They did conjure up some hardware along the way too.
And making them worse, let's not forget that.
i mean they also created React, not that i really use it