zlacker

>>giulio+(OP)
I'd like to see similar study about the original gateway drug: "24-hour News Channels", which was followed by "24-hour Outrage-News Channels". Seems like we've been building toward this, the interactivity of the internet was the paradigm shift (to use a 90's term). EDIT: I realize it isn't news messing with youths' self-esteem (well, in some cases it is), but it is related in that the media is custom-made to drive engagement at all costs.

>>sbf501+qh
Right, engagement at all cost it is, but there is a fundamental difference. Television required professionals where even wrestling and reality TV is scripted: it requires some sort of willful ignorance from the viewer to engage with it.

Social media pushes the illusion that you are not engaging with professionals but peers, and the dominant signals (how many views, likes, comments, etc.) of this day and age were not present with TV. This seriously messes with the innate reasoning of most humans, because for all our individualism we are norm conforming herd animals.

Show a kid a celebrity pushing something and they can tell it's fake. If the same thing is pushed by all of their friends, now we're in the territory of peer pressure which is a different ball game!

>>gergov+lr
Facebook brought us in with the promise of keeping in touch with friends, but the incentives are to "engagement at all costs". I'm hoping that if we can offer an alternative that lets people keep up with their friends without the engagememt incentive then we could greatly improve societal mental health. Thats why I build Haven[1] as open source and self hosted, along with several 3rd party hosting providers. No central entity means no "engagement at all costs".

[1] https://havenweb.org

>>mawise+OO
This is a tragedy of the commons situation because people cannot help themselves.

What we are actually seeing is users going to TikTok because it is even more engaging.

People may say they want to keep up with their friends, but they will choose the more engaging activity.

There is no regulating or out-competing it.

Governments should provide identification, communication, community, payments, etc platforms for their citizens, but entertainment is always going to look like this unless stoicism is somehow engrained into our culture.

Entertainment itself is measured by engagement, so it will end with unlimited personalized ai generated content that will be almost impossible to put down.

>>nkings+iU
>This is a tragedy of the commons situation because people cannot help themselves.

SOME people cannot help themselves. I spend 0 minutes on social platforms. I can help myself just fine. Some people have much more addictive personality traits than others. Please, don't paint everyone with the same broad brush. It doesn't help the conversation in a meaningful manner

>>dylan6+RV
First off you’re on hn, which is social media and absolutely optimized for your specific engagement.

I also figured the “some” was implied because the world is a complicated place. I do believe we all have our weaknesses, though mindless consumption is more attractive to some than others.

>>nkings+RX
If you equate HN to actual social platforms then okay.

The HN "algo" is user driven by fellow readers up-voting/down-voting which is much more common interests. There are no "friend" relations on HN. The other platforms are all advertising based algo driven with intentional doping to make people addicted to the platform. This isn't even apples-to-oranges comparison.

After the dust from Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers settles and everything gets evaluated, I sincerly hope that Meta/Zuck,et.al gets investigated in the same line as Purdue.

>>dylan6+3i1
Reddit is vote based so would you include that too? HN also has advertising (it has hiring ads for ycombinator companies put in as mostly organic-looking posts with no [ad] tag).

>>cma+dv1
I don't want to get into an argument about what an ad is, but I think we all understand what the difference of ad driven algos on the social platforms vs hiring blogs, Who's Hiring, etc on this platform.

Also, I just never have liked Reddit.