[ars]

Social media has the following elements (which would be prohibited):

Recommendation based on previous views. Recommendation based on what is currently being viewed is permitted. Recommendation based on current view that is customized to user is not permitted.

Ratings up/down.

Sorting based on rating or based on users' interest. Chronological sorting is permitted.

Suggesting content is forbidden. Specifically subscribed content is permitted to be suggested - but only chronologically, or in response to a search.

No public comments. Private comments permitted. Comments in room/forum/group permitted. User must specifically subscribe/join to see the comments.

Comments sorting/notification rules same as above.

"Reactions" to messages show up as additional/new replies, and are not attached to the original message.

Discussion:

The idea is to reduce addictive methods, and to modify discussion/views to reflect ordinary human behavior: No one rates your sentence spoken in a group, no one goes back and promotes certain things you said, words are said in a group chronologically.

[still_grokking]

So you want to ban all kinds of software forges, like for example GitHub? Or other regular coordination platforms for business?

I guess the definition of "social media" is not as simple as outlined above.

[ars]

Explain please how my suggestion bans GitHub.

GitHub does not show me (on my home page) "recommended" repositories, rather only the ones I specifically searched for, and the information on it is organized in a chronological fashion, which is permitted by my suggestion.

Is your issue that I can see public comments regarding the repository? That's permitted - comments on random repositories do not show up on my home page, only if I specifically go to a particular repository, which is effectively joining it for the purposes of what I wrote. (Although I guess that could be clarified.)

[lurker616]

How about Discord? Or reddit? Would those be limited to kids as well? You can be sure that even if FB/Instagram were to ban kids, there would be hundreds of companies jumping in to scoop up all that teenage DAU.

[ars]

Yes, reddit would be limited, unless they made a mode that ordered submissions and conversions chronologically and removed all voting.

Forums have existed before reddit that didn't have those things, and those forums worked just fine - and continue to work just fine. The way reddit does things is not necessary, they do it to try to make it more addictive, and that's exactly what we are trying to stop.

Discord I'm not sure - does it have votes/rating that kind of thing? From what I saw in my limited usage it's pure chronological chat, but I haven't used it much.

[still_grokking]

Sorry to be so direct, but your rules just don't make any sense to me. Let's go through them one by one:

> Recommendation based on previous views. Recommendation based on what is currently being viewed is permitted. Recommendation based on current view that is customized to user is not permitted.

This would ban all kinds of news aggregators, or even just simple help-desk / support ticket systems.

> Ratings up/down.

This is one of the most important features of an internet forum! Just imagine HN without votes. It would be flooded with nonsense!

> Sorting based on rating or based on users' interest. Chronological sorting is permitted.

I don't want a chronological information thread most of the time. I want to see the things that are relevant to me. A news ticker full of stuff you don't care about is just a big waste of life or work time.

If I'm working on project X with technology Y I want to get relevant information. Without the need to search for it explicitly. The computer knows anyway what I'm working on, so it should show me the relevant information. That's the whole point of a computer: It processes information for you so you don't have to go through it manually.

> Suggesting content is forbidden. Specifically subscribed content is permitted to be suggested - but only chronologically, or in response to a search.

How do you discover interesting things you don't know about already? Should we ban the "see also" section on Wikipedia, too?

What again about work organization tools? Should they be kept dump instead of helpful?

> No public comments. Private comments permitted. Comments in room/forum/group permitted.

I don't even know what this is supposed to mean.

Is a blog post a public comment?

Spam email is a private comment, right?

Reddit or YouTube comments happen in a room/forum/group I guess?

> User must specifically subscribe/join to see the comments.

Yeah, sure, you need to be logged in to read Stackoverflow comments. But you can only see them when you joined the discussion of some question, otherwise no comments for you. Do I get this right?

> Comments sorting/notification rules same as above.

Sure. Your inbox full of trash notifications about "chronological events"—that don't matter to you.

> "Reactions" to messages show up as additional/new replies, and are not attached to the original message.

OMG. Back to "+1" comment threads on GitHub & Co…

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The whole point is: Something that works like "social media" is just a communication tool. A tool by itself is not good or bad. The difference is in who's interest the tool is applied. When I install something that works like Reddit on my own servers and use it to discus internal topic related to my workplace this tool is likely great. The same Reddit-like software operated by an company that seeks out to sell ads to people is likely dangerous to the public.

The problem now is, the whole internet is run on ads. So more or less any communication platform on the internet is potentially malicious.

Of course there are exceptions, like for example HN. But these are rare cases. Also note that something like HN ticks a lot of the "not permitted" boxes outlined above. This just makes no sense as I don't think HN is harmful. More the contrary. So the stated "rules" just don't work.