[remarkEon]

I think there's something about interacting with visual depictions of other human beings that makes the other "real" social networks much different than HN - what's essentially a pseudo anon message board that has well defined rules about interactions on the platform (that are easily enforceable but more importantly well known and easy to describe). We generally come in here to talk about tech (or tech adjacent things), and we know what we're getting when we come in here. The people are (usually!) well informed and the discussion classy and highbrow.

That's not an accident, and neither is what Facebook's doing.

Facebook, and Instagram especially (but I repeat myself), absolutely do prey on the visual. It's hard for me to put into words what I'm describing (heh) but I do think visual depictions trigger latent or dormant responses in us that are too easy to manipulate and control.