[joedavison]

I think it’s clear that social media (or more broadly, “the internet”), is exacerbating mental health issues. At the very same time, the ability to connect with people around the world is undoubtedly also reducing mental health issues (for some) by building bridges to friendships and social connections they otherwise would not have.

It is a double edged sword. The internet serves to amplify the extremes. At least that is the conclusion I draw.

[podgaj]

We have two be careful (I have Schiozoaffective Bipolar Disorder) when going on to social media. I cannot use Facebook at all. For some reason it is always a huge trigger for me. On Twitter I go back and forth. Even Hacker News frustrates me when they keep telling me I am "posting too fast". Most times nothing is too fast for me. :)

But in total, I would say some social media platforms are worse than others. I long for the calmness and organization of the old MyBB forums.

[actually_a_dog]

Your account has been rate limited. At some point, you did something wrong, and noone in administration could even be bothered to warn or tell you about it. That cryptic error message is what gets shown to you instead of anything descriptive. The only way to get it lifted is to email them and pinky promise never again to do the thing they didn't tell you you did in the first place. See this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29024255

[mleonhard]

In that thread, you wrote:

> I'll write something, it will accumulate a couple to several upvotes, and then, those upvotes all go away over the course of a few more hours, sometimes to be replaced by net downvotes.

Maybe your initial upvotes come from one type of user and the later downvotes come from another type?

Starting about six months ago, I noticed that a lot of low-quality comments were getting voted up on HN. I feel disappointed. Previously, I would spend my downvotes on comments that tried to contribute but contained some error of analysis or logic. I would add a reply explaining the problem, or upvote an existing reply that did that. Nowadays, I spend my downvotes on comments that are low-effort: jokes, opinions with no explanation, knee-jerk reactions, ignorant positions, baseless assumptions, and emotional appeals. I dislike reading those kinds of comments.

I looked over some of your recent comments. I think some of them are low-effort. Example:

> Whoever thought not fixing a remote code execution bug just so they could use it to do something as trivial as tell the difference between their client and others should have been fired.

I think you're initially getting upvoted by people who are OK with low-effort comments. These folks spend a lot of time on HN and refresh to see new comments. They vote up your comment because they like reading comments. Then later, busier people read the story and downvote the low-effort comments. I think this is why you're getting initially upvoted and then downvoted.

[actually_a_dog]

"Effort" is not a measure of the magnitude of how much a comment contributes to a discussion. Just because I don't feel like writing a dissertation does not mean my comment doesn't contain a worthy discussion point.

Even if true, it doesn't explain why it suddenly started happening some weeks ago and wasn't happening before.

[mleonhard]

Does your reply argue semantics?

[throwaway0a5e]

"did something wrong" seems to have a strong correlation to the ability to make hard to refute arguments for opinions that are very solidly in the "outgroup wrongthink" category on HN. The people who can only make weak arguments for the wrong sides of issues get thier accounts shadowbanned or banned for flamebait.

I have no desire to converse with certain ideological groups on certain sides of certain issues but to silence (in relative terms) the ones arguing their side effectively endangers the community's ability to think critically.

[podgaj]

Could it be that I use a VPN frequently?

[actually_a_dog]

They don't tell me these things, either. Sorry.