[grumdan]

I think one of the things that makes HN and Reddit very different, is that the content is not personalized and tailored to maximize user engagement. Facebook seems to constantly show me things that make me more upset or concerned or outraged about something. I remember reading articles documenting this effect, but I can't seem to find them now.

The other type of posts I tend to see are about friends bragging about how many km they ran today or how great their vacation was. Not that it's that bad to post these things, but I wouldn't be surprised if exposing yourself to them constantly increased feelings of jealous and reinforce one's need to compare oneself to others.

On the other hand, I've discovered a lot of interesting books and projects through HN and learned about different topics, since there seem to be a lot of knowledgeable people here that comment on topics I know nothing about. The only type of posts that may be prone to making others feel worse are the ones about salaries / financial issues, but they are not that common.

[Kaivo]

Regarding the "bragging" posts, according to this Hidden Brain podcast [1], it has a more negative effect than anything and is usually not the truth about people current situation in life. For instance, we might see the great vacation pictures, but turns out they were fighting the whole time and it wasn't fun at all, but it is not like they are gonna share that part on FB.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/04/17/524005057/when-it-comes-to-ou...

[friendlybus]

>I think one of the things that makes HN and Reddit very different, is that the content is not personalized and tailored to maximize user engagement. Facebook seems to constantly show me things that make me more upset or concerned or outraged about something.

This really depends on whether or not you set up your own account with subreddits in reddit. It is just as personalized and outrage generating as Facebook if you self-subscribe to it.

[grumdan]

Fair enough, though the separation into categories possibly helps somewhat. If someone is reading r/some-topic-they-are-interested in, it wouldn't also show them stories about, say, cops shooting unarmed civilians in the back 67 times, in between the topic-specific content.

This is probably different on the main page though.

[thanatropism]

> I think one of the things that makes HN and Reddit very different, is that the content is not personalized and tailored to maximize user engagement

This is the single evil thing about Facebook. And it's evil, evil, evil. It's like an AI Skinner box.

No. It actually is an AI Skinner box.