[machinehermiter]

As someone who hasn't used social media in 5+ years, what do these social networks need to do to make you quit using them?

There has to be some threshold but I just don't understand how this threshold hasn't been crossed for more people.

I don't want to see Twitter legislated or controlled. The counter balance and equilibrium should be doing crazy things causes a massive loss of users so crazy things do not happen. Twitter is not a public utility like electricity or drinking water. You actually need to drink water.

[mmaunder]

I have been off Facebook for years. I was forced to rejoin because our head of marketing departed and I had to take over our company page. OH MY F*** GOD. I could not believe the mess of user engagement triggers and dark patterns that confronted me. (I'm an ops guy, a dev and a successful entrepreneur, currently a high growth CEO) I was literally nauseated. I've actually postponed the job just to avoid the damn thing.

As someone who left for a long time and looked at it with a fresh set of non-desensitized eyes, I can tell you with absolute certainty that FB is bad for your mental health.

I think the trouble with social is that it's really hard to tell people what they don't want to hear. Anyone who lived through the 80s knows how pissed a smoker would get when you'd tell them they're killing themselves. You felt like an asshole. Same with Facebook, Insta, Twitter, etc. Tell someone who's into it (most of us) they're self harming, and it doesn't exactly improve your relationship with them.

But I think the ship has sailed. These are companies making north of 100 Billion per year (in FB's case) with massive lobbying cannons, who are now entrenched and ingrained in our culture and day to day life. It may sound overly dramatic, but I think the truth is that, this sucks for the species boys and girls.

[Sorry, had to add the boys and girls. Little Starship Troopers hat tip]

[reader_mode]

If Facebook is cigarettes is HN alcohol ? Half joking, I often read about social media "detox" here on HN but at the same time HN is something like a social media platform that sucks more of my time than Facebook or Twitter. The only other platform I spend more time on is YouTube. I guess it's more to do with your tendencies than platform needing dark patterns.

[type0]

HN is like coffee, use it with moderation and you'll be fine. Both are enjoyable.

[meristohm]

Quitting coffee (all caffeine, with coffee being my favorite source) brought my dreams back after two weeks or so. Not browsing HN (my socmed toe-dip after years with zero) helps me focus on making things, and also sometimes inspires me to make things, and is much easier to take a break from than Twitter was.

[jareklupinski]

after spending time here, i feel enriched

after spending time 'there', i feel drained

[ric2b]

The time you spend on it isn't the issue, you're focusing on the wrong thing.

[Viliam1234]

Let's say the time is part of the issue.

(I took a month off HN, this is my first comment coming back.)

[belval]

Other humans acknowledging your existence and even agreeing with your various opinions is a very very euphoric experience, it is true of any social media. Suddenly you have hundreds or even thousands of people that "get" you, that understand how great and clever you are. This is the drug that people can't quit.

People won't quit because they'd be unable to tell people that they've quit.

Another take could be that we are just all very lonely and that when you stop using social media you are left with emptiness that is harder to fill with real connections with friends especially during covid.

[PragmaticPulp]

> Other humans acknowledging your existence and even agreeing with your various opinions is a very very euphoric experience, it is true of any social media. Suddenly you have hundreds or even thousands of people that "get" you, that understand how great and clever you are. This is the drug that people can't quit.

It’s always funny to see people discussing “social media” as some insidious drug that other people use to get confirmation about their opinions from other people…

…as comments on Hacker News, a site that lets people post their opinions and have other humans acknowledge their existence and validate their opinions (upvotes == likes).

We can debate the differences between real names and screen names and pictures or no pictures all day, but when it comes down to it Hacker News is a social media platform and you’re participating in the very thing you’re describing. It’s time we stopped pretending that “social media” is only something that other people use, while the rest of us on HN and other social platforms are doing something more noble. It’s all the same.

[greggman3]

I'm interpreting your comment as HN is like Twitter, HN is good therefore Twitter is good but I have the opposite opinion. HN is like Twitter, Twitter is bad, HN is bad

HN for me, HN's social media feature (the POINTS) are as bad as twitter and i've banned myself from it twice because of how addicting it is for me. (blocking it in my browser, setting my noprocrast to billions, even blocking it in my DNS server).

Seeing those points go up, a stupid as it is, is that "euphoria" mentioned above. If I notice that little number jump then I immediately want to know "wow, what comment of mine did people like" and similarly if it goes down I immediately get defensive and want to go respond to whichever comment was downvoted.

This time I wrote a chrome extension to remove the points which for me as a force multiplier in it's addictiveness.

https://github.com/greggman/hn-points-exorcism

[kortilla]

It’s not the same. I don’t have an option of who to build my echo chamber with.

On Twitter and Facebook you get to remove anyone that challenges your thought process. That’s what makes it so dangerous and euphoric. Everyone you see is clapping for your stupid ideas and people just live in different realities now because of it.

On HN we all get the same front page, same comments, etc. You might not like what gets the upvotes, but at least you saw it.

You’re right this is social media, but it’s not the cancerous “choose your reality” style that people usually are talking about when they decry “social media”.

[PragmaticPulp]

> It’s not the same. I don’t have an option of who to build my echo chamber with.

Maybe not immediately, but Hacker News is absolutely an echo chamber. People who don't toe the line on certain popular opinions (e.g. social media bad) quickly learn not to comment because they know they'll get massively downvoted.

Hacker News upvotes and downvotes are supposed to be about whether or not the comment is a quality post that contributes to the discussion, but in practice they tend to function as "agree" and "disagree" buttons. Post something that is disagreeable on certain echo chamber topics and it's immediately met with downvotes, regardless of the quality of the content.

This effect is most obvious in posts about social media, big tech companies, drugs, and certain parts of the law. For example, I hesitate to even participate in posts about "LSD cures depression" stories any more because most of the commenters don't even read the studies and any comment that isn't 100% enthusiastic about psychedelics curing depression is met with a wave of downvotes.

Likewise, when I see a story about social media I can tell before clicking on the comments that it will be full of comments that start with "I don't use social media but..." and then a straw-man caricature of social media that doesn't match reality.

These comment sections are absolutely an echo chamber. People who disagree are barraged with downvotes and abusive comments, so they simply leave.

I actually had to change screen names on HN once already because I pointed out some flaws in a certain author's books, and one of that author's fans tracked me down and tried to argue with me on my personal e-mail address. Nothing like that has ever happened to me on any other social media site.

[kortilla]

> Maybe not immediately, but Hacker News is absolutely an echo chamber. People who don't toe the line on certain popular opinions (e.g. social media bad) quickly learn not to comment because they know they'll get massively downvoted.

That’s not special to social media. There have been unpopular opinions among communities since before the internet. This all part of being in a large community based on interests. Learning how to deal with that is critical to learn how to function in society.

The other components of your reply complaining about the community having emergent plurality opinions completely misses the point. HN is better because these biases and things you disagree with are right in your face.

> I actually had to change screen names on HN once already because I pointed out some flaws in a certain author's books, and one of that author's fans tracked me down and tried to argue with me on my personal e-mail address. Nothing like that has ever happened to me on any other social media site.

People get stalked and harassed due to their Twitter posts all of the time by using their real name. Swatting is a thing. An argument over email is tepid in comparison to the real violence that happens from people using real identities on public social media every day.

[cmckn]

Totally agree that HN checks a lot of the same boxes, but there are some significant differences.

1. Advertising. (Or lack thereof)

2. Moderation. Downvotes here literally slowly erase content that the community doesn’t like; I think this compliments the swift hand of dang in a great way.

3. Participation. This is just a WAG, but i think more HN users post comments or submit stories than Twitter users tweet. There is a very low percentage of users posting the vast majority of tweets. I like HN because I can actually interact, not just follow.

We really had realized most of the promise of online socializing with forums 20 years ago, IMO. Twitter is exhausting.

[PragmaticPulp]

> Downvotes here literally slowly erase content that the community doesn’t like;

Most of the time downvotes are used to erase abusive content, but it's shocking how quickly some of the well-formed opinions in the content sections go gray if they don't agree with the popular opinion on HN.

At this point, I almost don't bother replying to HN comments if I know they'll just be met with waves of lazy downvotes.

The invisible hand of HN creates an echo chamber by teaching us not to post "content that the community doesn't like", which is often just comments that disagree with popular sentiment.

[macintux]

HN also lacks an algorithm tuned to encourage “engagement” through divisiveness.

[type0]

In fact it has the opposite algorithm, someone more knowledgeable might know how it works, has something to do with the ratio of downvotes to comments if I remember correctly.

[civilized]

I think there is a meaningful difference between social media that centers the person posting vs. centering the content. Twitter centers the person, HN centers the content. One is not uniformly better than the other, but the UI/UX differences promote very different cultures. Imagine the discontent if HN people were forced into a Twitter or Reddit style UI that spends lots of screen real estate on the person posting.

[ryanianian]

> Twitter or Reddit style UI that spends lots of screen real estate on the person posting.

Not sure I follow this. Reddit focuses on the content just as much as HN. The nature of the network (and quality of content in general) is quite different from HN of course.

There's a lot to not like about Reddit, but it's the only social media apart from HN that I still enjoy using after quitting FB/Twitter/Insta/Snap.

[civilized]

Old reddit is like HN but new reddit has a slot for an avatar by everyone's posts and generally a lot more distractions.

[christophilus]

The quality of Hacker News discussion is orders of magnitude better than any other platform I’ve tried. (Thanks, dang, for everything you do!)

So, this is the only social media I use.

[belval]

When writing my reply I actually thought about mentioning how ironic it was that every upvote on my comment would have exactly the effect I describe. I completely include myself in the "human" group.

[DaiPlusPlus]

> is a very very euphoric experience

I think you're overstating it.

[mkl95]

I used Twitter for about 10 years. Over that time, my timeline -which consisted mostly of tech workers and artists- became a cesspool of political rants and toxicity, no matter how many times I "cleaned it up", and how hard I tried to restrict content to professional stuff. Quitting TW was definitely a good decision.

[nradov]

Some people want social media to be a force for political change and social justice. I think this is a mistake and goes beyond what those platforms are suitable for.

Personally I just want to share my photography with friends. Social media works great for that. I'll probably never quit.

[6510]

It works great if you only care about the short term moment of sharing. The technology is all there to make something superior to the family photo album but marking everything for eventual deletion makes it an inferior medium. Everything is designed to get rid of your words and images as soon as the content stops serving a party with motivations not aligned with the user. People tend to think their unique experiences and unique perspective is not worth anything but the sum of those billions might be the most important thing we've ever owned.

[mrighele]

In sone countries twitter et al are the best way to get information that is not directly controlled by the government. They are imperfect (accounts banned, state funded troll farms etc) but still better than the alternatives

[hackermailman]

Like finding out the new official domain, since it is constantly changing, most countries don't directly block facebook/twitter so you can use it for official communications, many scam domains masquerading as sci-hub trying to get you to install malware browser plugins. There's also a Telegram bot https://telegram.me/scihubot assuming your country hasn't blocked Telegram (China).

[azangru]

It's not so much what the social networks need to do, but rather what you as a user need to do. Or to have. Or to be. You need to have sufficient willpower. And you also need to have a job that does not rely on social media to function. I.e. not an entertainer, not a journalist, not a blogger, not an SMM, etc.

[0x_rs]

>what do these social networks need to do to make you quit using them?

They have apparently not done enough to warrant a mass exodus to greener, more privacy (and human dignity, intellectual honesty) respecting pastures. What's a few dozen PII data leaks, or misuse of the former information provided explicitly for authentication; or what's about massive poorly regulated if not ignored misinformation campaigns on such platforms, poorly automatized reporting systems but also manual trending manipulation et similia? And it may never be enough for some, otherwise it's a continuous slope of degradation that will continue unstopped until its momentum ceases by gradual abandoning of the platform, most likely in waves as every new controversy happens or becomes public.

[cblconfederate]

We need an alternative. Simple personal Rss will do. Users will go wherever the techies tell them to go

[mixedCase]

That's never been the case. Users at large want convenience above all. If Twitter were to hire a private army and take over a small remote island exterminating its indigenous populace in the process, I would bet good money they would lose fewer users than if they were to force mandatory 2FA and >16 character passwords.

[cblconfederate]

I don't care about users at large they can keep debating their politics at twitter. But it is also the equivalent of a public feed for all kinds of important people and personalities

[6gvONxR4sf7o]

> Users will go wherever the techies tell them to go

Only if those techies make it worthwhile. How do we make something like private RSS feeds as easy as facebook?

[cblconfederate]

First by having rss feeds. Then by creating competing readers

[polynomial]

"techies"

[fortuna86]

Twitter really isn't a social network. If you follow industry professionals and academics, it's a feed of interesting and important news tied to your direct interests.

[prepend]

Except for the ones who are banned for violating the “Twitter Rules.”

So it’s good if you like a feed of things tied to your direct interests, that Twitter allows.

I’m interested in Sci-Hub. I don’t want to use Twitter for part of my interested and the ??? for other things.

[fortuna86]

> Except for the ones who are banned for violating the “Twitter Rules.”

This reminds me of criticisms of "metoo". Yes, i'm sure someone somewhere got a raw deal. But as far as I can see the people banished deserve it, and the overall ecosystem is better for it.

[prepend]

So you think SciHub deserves it? And that we’re better off without their voice?

Obviously, you’re free to think what you like but this seems like a sad and limited worldview. Assuming that everything removed from my perception deserves to be removed.

[fortuna86]

I don't know. For what it's worth, the account is back and the entire basis for this conversation (a perm suspension) is null and void.

The system largely works, from what I can see. Getting thrown off Twitter for 24h isn't that bad of a mistake even, given the scale of the challenge they face to enforce their TOS to billions of accounts.

[BoorishBears]

Can't be banned from HN right?

[fortuna86]

You can.

[BoorishBears]

I'd say that was a pretty clear rhetorical question

[mjburgess]

Alas, this reads like a drug dealer distinguishing crack from cocaine.

[cannabis_sam]

I would hope anyone distributing any of the related substances DO distinguish between “crack” and “cocaine”..

[fortuna86]

Or it's a simple distinction between what more resembles an RSS feed for people vs. traditional social media.

But if you've made up your mind that it's all rubbish, by all means don't let me interrupt.

[ad404b8a372f2b9]

On reddit you've got your mates page which shows you only posts from people you follow, on facebook you can curate your wall to some extent to only see news from your family and friends. You can do the same thing on twitter. It's still social media and an extremely toxic implementation of it at that.

[fortuna86]

Sorry but you are still equating content from your friends with content from trusted sources and experts. I love my friends, I don't care what their opinions are on most things (because they are often uniformed). And I don't want to see endless pictures of their kids.

[scdp]

Let me guess, you dislike twitter because of the hyperbole and lack of nuance ... which you just used

[moron4hire]

I don't think drug dealers do. Only the government does.

[markus_zhang]

Maybe instead use some maillist instead of Twitter for important information? Not sure how expensive a server could be.

[alphachloride]

If they asked for money, I'd stop using them.

[FpUser]

>"what do these social networks need to do to make you quit using them?"

Nothing. I have FB account as it was the only means for me to find and connect to a person but other than that do not really use those networks.

[jimbob45]

AFAICT, no one really uses Twitter anymore, certainly not for actual interaction outside of influencers and streamers.

Instead, it’s become an easy billboard for companies to post their news. The alternative, of course, would be to make their own websites and post news there. However, it’s far simpler for users to search a company on Twitter than to guess around for their website URL on Google (god forbid you have multiple sites).

[BoorishBears]

You are literally using social media right now.

There is nothing people who have "quit social media" like to do more than virtue signal about the dangers of social media on more niche social media platforms. It gets a little tiring.

[mrAnon218]

Deplatforming is the way, social media sucks!

[PragmaticPulp]

> As someone who hasn't used social media in 5+ years, what do these social networks need to do to make you quit using them?

HN is social media (we’re here posting things and socializing, right?), so I’m assuming you’re referring to Twitter and Facebook type sites instead of social media in general.

I admit that I’ve used sci-hub a lot, and I strongly agree that publicly funded research shouldn’t be hidden behind paywalls.

However, ethical debates aside, I also have to admit that sci-hub’s activities are violating copyright law, whether we like it or not. I’m not going to pretend to be surprised when public companies choose to suspend accounts which violate their policies. If anything, it’s helpful to have consistent guidelines for what is and isn’t against their policies. Obviously they can’t have perfect enforcement of every Tweet and every account, but I can’t really blame a company for consistently enforcing policies which are consistent with the law.

As for social media: I’m a light Twitter user, but I don’t go to the site for Twitter itself. I go for the connections I’ve made on the site. Most of the people I know who are boycotting Twitter for whatever reason aren’t people who actually liked using the site in the first place, so their boycott isn’t really much of a statement.

Likewise, I don’t use Twitter or Instagram or HN or any other website as my exclusive source of interaction, so one site’s enforcement of their honestly quite consistent policy isn’t some sort of dire threat to my freedoms. By now, we’re all well aware that no website is perfect and no social media platform can keep everyone happy at scale. If I rage quit every site that did anything anywhere that I didn’t fully like, I wouldn’t have many social platforms left (HN included)

Refusing to use any platform unless they act in perfect lockstep with our own desires is not a realistic expectation at scale.

[satellite2]

I think the law (generally in western countries) gives you some liberty to express how you disagree with it.

The issue with having as you mention guidelines in line with the law, is that it prevents people discussing it. Which is an absolute necessity for lively democracies.

You're going to tell me that you can discuss the law without breaking it. But that's a very debatable point. Generally the law moves because of pressions from interest groups that would be beneficiary from a change. So banning them would in effect ban the most vocal proponents of changes and those that really understand the fine details and issues and that can meaningfully make the debate progress.