
Douglas Rushkoff: I’m thinking it may be good to be off social media altogether - jedwhite
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/12/digital-capitalism-douglas-rushkoff
======
oniMaker
This is the most alarming and interesting point for me:

"Facebook will market you your future before you’ve even gotten there, they’ll
use predictive algorithms to figure out what’s your likely future and then try
to make that even more likely. They’ll get better at programming you – they’ll
reduce your spontaneity. And they can use your face and name to advertise
through you, that’s what you’ve agreed to."

The order in which you are presented with items in your feed, which likes by
which friends you see, your previous actions (most of which you cannot likely
recall, but all of which facebook has a perfect memory), and many other
details are not only used to advertise to you - they're used to build you into
the type of person that will be more susceptible to advertising in the future.

Molding and shaping opinion and personality is nothing new, but it has never
been this precise, this interactive, and this pervasive. The stimulus,
response, and reward loop has never been tighter. Those who use these services
are being trained to exhibit particular valuable traits and behaviors, and the
level of control over these manipulations will only improve as data is
collected and algorithms are refined.

If you've been using a service like Facebook for several years, they know who
you have been at each point in time. Imagine you've traversed states A, B, and
C and are predicted to be moving toward D. If state F or Z is more valuable
(and can be arrived at from state D), then perhaps through several months of
training you can be led to it instead. If you're not continually aware of each
small nudge in a particular direction, then your mind is absorbing and
adjusting to these changes without you knowing about it.

I'd love to read more about this, and am sort of morbidly fascinated by the
methods by which these mechanisms operate, and just how powerful these types
of control can get.

~~~
nl
I work in a related area (prediction, though not in the AdTech market) and
keep myself up to date on the literature.

 _Imagine you 've traversed states A, B, and C and are predicted to be moving
toward D. If state F or Z is more valuable (and can be arrived at from state
D), then perhaps through several months of training you can be led to it
instead._

Nothing like this exists beyond very general models. There are some mood-state
models, but they are short term (people argue if hourly data is too sparse for
them to be useful).

The general models are roughly what you'd expect: if you are 18-22 you are
likely to be a student, 55+ considering retirement. I've never seen any
research on pushing people along paths, beyond things like education ads
trying to get people to take courses, job ads trying to get people to change
jobs and dating ads trying to get people to change partners.

Whilst general models maybe possible, my suspicion is that there are too many
confounding factors for them to be very useful.

~~~
thewarrior
But surely as more and more data is gathered over the next decade , this sort
of thing could become feasible ?

For eg: I know for a fact that FB is betting very heavily on travel
advertising. FB wants to be the go to place for travel companies to advertise
their products , so FB has an incentive to make people travel more.

They could do this prominently highlighting when people travel to a certain
tourist spot etc...

~~~
SolaceQuantum
It wouldn't be just about gathering data, but also developing the algorithms
that are capable of that specialization to each person. No matter how good
your data is, the lack of an algorithm to examine the data and recognize
applications for each unique person to manipulate behavior using a strategy
that must recognize it's own applicability at that moment is going to be the
huge hurdle.

------
Jerry2
I quit Facebook last year because it started ruining my family relationships.
I started seeing the side of people that I never saw before and I didn't like
it. I saw family & friends say and do things that were done to grab other
people's attention. I also saw people, that I knew very well, pretend to be
something they were not. I saw friends become enemies over pointless
arguments.

In short, people I was interacting with on Facebook were, most of the time,
not the people I knew in real life.

After I quit Facebook for 6 months, I attended family reunions and everything
was back to the way it was. I stopped looking at them through the lens that
Facebook presented them as and I felt no animosity or disdain towards them.

Maybe this is just my experience.

~~~
threatofrain
But in your description, Facebook is simply the mediating variable, not the
cause -- the cause is the unpleasantness generated by your family.

~~~
mentat
Human relationships have always been about selective ignorance.

~~~
mtviewdave
Mark Zuckerberg believes that presenting differing personas to different
audiences displays "a lack of integrity"[1] and thus Facebook is deliberately
engineered to encourage an individual to present their "true" self to all
"friends" equally.

[1][http://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-
zuckerberg...](http://www.michaelzimmer.org/2010/05/14/facebooks-zuckerberg-
having-two-identities-for-yourself-is-an-example-of-a-lack-of-integrity/)

~~~
bottled_poe
> Mark Zuckerberg believes that...

Any self-respecting person should not care what comes next.

~~~
ssalazar
I guess it's edgy to dismiss celebrity outright, but Mark Zuckerberg is the
steward of one of the largest social phenomena of our time, so I should think
it matters a great deal what he believes--not necessarily because we should
agree, but because of the potentially significant effects of those beliefs.

~~~
camillomiller
I agree. It's important to criticize him. Harshly. He's the harbinger of a
change whose proportions are yet to be fully understand, but it's like we're
all living guinea pigs of his experiment and happy to be that. I don't see how
we can be fine with putting a self-declared mildly autistic little genius in
charge of defining the nature of social interactions in the new millennium.
"here's what I think relationships should be like", says such child playing
with his own huge money-churning game.

------
argonaut
My FB news feed is almost as good as Twitter.

How? There is an easy solution to being inundated with things you don't want
to see. Unfollow anyone who regularly posts things you don't want to see. I've
done this. I've unfollowed pretty much everyone on Facebook, except for a few
people / groups. I also hide posts that I don't like, but come from people I
still want to hear from (I've heard this gets fed into FB's ranking algo for
you).

Now my feed is mostly interesting news stories / interesting commentary /
educational content / conversations on Facebook groups related to my
interests. My FB news feed is actually better than Twitter now, albeit with
30x less content. Tangentially, this is why I appreciate the Twitter algorithm
change.

Now I spend less than 20 minutes a day on Facebook. I don't get why people
feel the need to delete the account altogether.

~~~
chm

        I don't get why people feel the need to delete the
        account altogether.
    

Can I ask how old you are? Growing up, Facebook was not just an aside: for a
brief moment in my life, Facebook _was_ life. It's where things happened. I'm
now 25 and glad I've never stepped foot on Facebook soil since I was halfway
past 18. My personal experience is that it was a vile substitute for social
life and I don't miss it one bit. So my point is that depending on the
demographics, Facebook can mean a totally different thing. For a young man
growing up, no Facebook meant no girls, no parties, no fun - and that is a
travesty.

Edit: I don't understand how my comment is controversial - it's an anecdote.
To the risk of sinking even further: would downvoters care to express
themselves?

~~~
carlesfe
I'm 33 and FB lets me keep in touch with people I no longer see every day or
even for a few months. It provides a real value for me.

Many people seem unhappy with Facebook because "ugh others are stupid". Hide
their posts, problem solved. This seems to me a teenage problem, not a tool
problem. We've all been teens (even if only by definition) but bashing the
tool because of the users seems a bit snarky.

~~~
chm
My girlfriend uses Facebook for much the same reasons as you - to keep in
touch with friends and family who live far away. But my gripe with Facebook is
just the social dynamics of it, not the users _per se_. In my particular case,
Facebook was, for a time, a very toxic and all-encompassing environment. It
just isn't for me.

------
maus42
I don't do FB. The problem is, at least the community here at campus seems so
saturated with it that about every interaction I have with new people begins
with inquiry about it or some other social media thing.

I decide to look into some new club or political group or about anything?
Primary communication method: FB. This monopoly over our communication they
have, I think it sucks for non-users.

edit.addendum. I realized monopoly is poor choice of word because it is not
total: Instagram and Snapchat and whatever is the social media thing du jour
exist. However, as alternatives they are quite similar. I wonder how young
adults used to socialise, say, a decade or two ago?

~~~
sverige
Two decades ago we went to parties at people's apartments or houses. We also
met at a few different diners and bars where you could wander in and run into
someone you knew, or wait till someone you knew showed up. We ran into each
other walking across campus -- there was no "distance learning" in the mid-80s
(to speak of, anyway). We went in big groups to movies and concerts.

People in these sort of shifting sub-groups would split off or join new sub-
groups as they were introduced by and to others in the larger social scene. It
was quite interesting, actually. I met people from very different backgrounds
and with very different interests than mine, which made the world a much
bigger place.

And somehow this math and science geek ended up with a history and Russian
degree, friends who make movies in Hollywood and have active roles on TV, a
publisher, a bunch of artists who do their thing quietly, homemakers, lawyers,
social workers, professors, and a guy who helped discover new elements with
the Russians and works at Lawrence Livermore. Do all of them know each other?
No, but a bunch of them do.

I had a facebook account for about a month six or seven years ago but quickly
deleted it. I don't stay in touch with all these people still, but at least
two dozen of them would open their home to me if I showed up on their
doorstep. When I got divorced 10 years ago, I got some phone numbers and
called a few of them. One even asked if I needed money(!) since the divorce
led to bankruptcy, foreclosure, and lots of bad poems.

I honestly feel sorry for my daughter's generation (she's 27) because I see
the reality of her social life and it's pathetic compared to mine - and I'm
basically socially inept.

In sum, f __* facebook and all the others. They contribute nothing of value
compared to real interaction with real people in real places.

~~~
ktxt
This is funny to me because all I did last summer was meet new and interesting
people. I didn't follow the news at all, no TV, no movies; my entire life was
meeting new people and living in the moment.

And I used Facebook a dozen times a day, to add new friends and message them.
But I never looked at my news feed.

I love Facebook and technology. What makes me sad is American culture. If we
were taught critical thinking and better philosophy, maybe Facebook would look
different.

~~~
eggie
Your experience is exactly like mine was 10 years ago, but ... we didn't have
facebook. We had icq, then AIM, and SMS. We could call each other. We went to
hang out places and lived solidly in the moment. People were also in constant
contact, but maybe spent a bit more time in their thoughts or reading books
and magazines than they do now.

IMO nothing has changed except now we have someone trying to convince the
world that all communication should go through them. We are human... the
talking ape. There isn't anything more basic than communication. Why should we
send it through one company? What's impressive is how easily people accept
this; they think you're an alien if you say you don't use facebook services.
Maybe that's what you mean by philosophy. We need to develop our social immune
system or we will be overrun by these robber barons.

------
aaronchall
I recently attended a talk about the growth in volume of rides in NYC that
Uber has been providing. It was contrasted against a mostly flat (if slightly
declining) volume for yellow cabs (remember, they're not making any more
medallions). He blogged about it here:
[http://toddwschneider.com/posts/analyzing-1-1-billion-nyc-
ta...](http://toddwschneider.com/posts/analyzing-1-1-billion-nyc-taxi-and-
uber-trips-with-a-vengeance/) \- chart here:
[http://toddwschneider.com/data/taxi/uber_vs_taxi_pickups_bro...](http://toddwschneider.com/data/taxi/uber_vs_taxi_pickups_brooklyn.png)

He deplores those poor cabbies? I deplore all those poor riders who couldn't
hail cabs and had to choose between worse and worst options because of the
cabbies' government imposed monopoly. (What do you do when you can't hail a
cab? Wait for hours? Walk? Ride for hours on public transit that goes
everywhere but your destination? Give up on going where you need to go?)

Just like (apparently) most others here, I seem to use Facebook mostly to keep
in touch with my family and (close?) friends. I unfollow pretty much everyone
but my mom and wife. Facebook turned me on to adblock when they kept showing
me ads for a degree when I had already earned that same degree from a better
local school (and put it in my info on Facebook - so they were basically
shamelessly ripping of the advertiser.) Those things make Facebook about a
weekly experience now for me. I keep in touch professionally on LinkedIn.

For better or worse, I get my news on Hacker News moreso than any other place.
I don't really even bother with the New York Times or Wall Street Journal any
more. Everything in the news lately seems designed to appeal to outrage, and I
don't want to participate in that anymore.

~~~
eric-hu
> For better or worse, I get my news on Hacker News moreso than any other
> place. I don't really even bother with the New York Times or Wall Street
> Journal any more. Everything in the news lately seems designed to appeal to
> outrage, and I don't want to participate in that anymore.

I've done the same for news. I can attest that I'm generally happier for it. I
can sometimes see when someone is looking to talk to me with news induced
outage. I'm learning how to give neutral answers that don't feed any fires,
unless I believe I'll actually get a thoughtful and considerate conversation.

------
Spooky23
The man makes a good point. I quit Facebook for lent, and frankly, I don't
miss it... And feel better for it.

One way or another, it has stopped being fun for me and started becoming a
drag. Too much politics, too much inane nonsense. Yet I feel compelled to go
there.

~~~
tajen
Should we consider HN as social media and should we quit it?

~~~
rcconf
I'm starting to just read the comments on HN and I don't even look at articles
anymore. I suppose this behaviour is similar to what I do on social media.

The good part is that I have become a significantly better programmer from the
articles and comments on HN. Although, most of the improvements came from the
first year of using HN and then it's started to taper off since.

I should probably use HN less, but I think it has genuinely improved my life
more than any other social media website.

~~~
rchaud
> I'm starting to just read the comments on HN and I don't even look at
> articles anymore. I suppose this behaviour is similar to what I do on social
> media.

But this is pretty damaging, wouldn't you say? Not too long ago, I would
follow several consumer tech blogs, and jump right into the comments, because
the stories were increasingly page-view driven garbage that needed 8 separate
blog posts of ~200 words each to describe one story. The comments tended to
provide much more insight than the actual "article".

With HN, (which I've been visiting for <2 years), I'm noticing that the
articles posted tend to be long-form and generally thought-provoking. I make
an effort to read the article, collect my thoughts on them, and only then view
the comments.

~~~
bostik
For my part, I've found that a good chunk of technical blog posts (whether
they are hosted on blog engines, personal sites or even pushed out to Medium)
now assume that they will be discovered via HN. And I cannot be objectively
sure about this, but I _feel_ that these blog posts have been increasingly
targeted to HN lurkers.

They may touch technically very good topics, but the aggregate content, in my
eyes, has become shallower. It's almost like the HN crowd is being
systematically baited with superficially interesting tech posts.

(A very enjoyable exception: nautil.us - for me the posts are either entirely
irrelevant, or readable and interesting with a high probability. I don't
remember experiencing much of a middle ground yet.)

So, when my time is limited, I tend to check the discussion before hitting the
link. Usually the first few posts are enough to confirm whether the link
itself is worth visiting or not.

And sure enough, a primary motivator for this is that finding non-clickbaity
titles is increasingly rare. HN thread activity and tone acts as a pretty
decent bloom filter.

------
adventured
I've noticed over the last two to three years that everyone on my Facebook has
begun posting less and less content of substance. They no longer talk
politics, they no longer debate things, they post a lot fewer personal
updates, and about 10% of my friends have turned their profiles off / gone
dark.

My theory is: during the first several years of the mass adoption wave of
Facebook, people socially splurged. That resulted in endless fights,
arguments, hurt feelings, learning too much about friends (lesser friends,
casual friends), seeing too much drama out of family and friends, and so on.
Now my FB feed is like the old MySpace, it's mostly trash posts, with some
life photos thrown in (photos are the sole thing people update that have
substance now), friends have dramatically pulled back on posting anything that
might draw ire or cause tension. In my FB feed, almost all of the substance
has been wiped out. I had been using FB on a daily basis for nearly a decade,
and now I simply no longer care about the product. I actually look forward to
going dark on FB, sometime this year whenever I get around to 'deleting'
everything off of it.

~~~
plasticchris
I view social media as a kind of Pascal's wager. If I post something
potentially controversial I risk major harassment, in exchange for a tiny
benefit. Social media is enabling mob justice with a chilling effect on real
discourse.

------
matthewwiese
This ain't news to me; I'm sure just about most self-aware persons are capable
of (or already have) come to the conclusion that social media is cancerous for
a positive mental state.

That's not even mentioning the data mining and privacy issues that arise from
such high profile companies having access to such thorough personal
information. For them, it's business as usual and a rather understandable
response. If you have such info at hand, why not use it to further expand your
business?

Unfortunately this thought process results in active harm to users
(disregarding purposeful malice altogether). I am so thankful that I ditched
social media consumption back in high school.

------
jondubois
It feels like advertising should be regulated by the government... Just like
smoking, alcohol, drugs and gambling. It has gone too far. I can relate to
every point in this article on a personal level. People don't think for
themselves anymore - All we do is follow and give praise - And social media
decides for us who is deserving of that praise!

~~~
magicGLASSman
Yeah, because having the goverment regulate something makes it stop. That is
like saying no one is using drugs now because of the war on drugs.

~~~
jondubois
Anti-smoking regulation has been extremely successful in places like
Australia. Very few young adults smoke there - Especially when compared to
Europe.

Regulation is extremely effective if done correctly and full-heartedly. The
problem isn't regulation - It's that the government doesn't actually want to
fix certain issues and so it implements half-ass "regulation" just to satisfy
the public on a superficial level - This is certainly the case with the
gambling industry which the government actually depends on for tax dollars and
funding political campaigns.

That's the point I'm trying to make; the government should start caring about
its people and implement serious regulation to protect them.

------
pshc
His talk on "Present Shock" just expanded my mind a little bit. Embedded in
the article: [https://vimeo.com/65904419](https://vimeo.com/65904419)

"We recast this digital renaissance--this ability to really program our lives,
to get slack [free time]--we recast this as a new opportunity to somehow pump
more steroidal life into the NASDAQ stock exchange."

" _Human time_ is where we're trying to expand our markets... but it's all
because we're basing our entire model of society and economics on an obsolete
13th-century-printing-press economic OS!"

Not sure I agree--I'd prefer growth to steady state--but things start to make
sense when I'm aware of the "theorem" underpinning a system.

------
mark_l_watson
Great interview. I am going to buy his latest book. This hit me:"What’s most
pernicious about it is that we are developing companies that are designed to
do little more than take money out of the system – they are all extractive." I
have been trying to avoid feeding the beasts, but it is difficult.

I am trying to condition myself to jump on GNU Social,instead of Twitter and
G+. It is working somewhat; today about 3/4 of the hour I spent on social
media was on GNU Social and even though it lacks some convenience I am able to
find good things to read and meeting interesting people.

Substituting a small company like duck duck go for Google is fairly easy. Try
to support local stores in preference to Amazon is difficult, even knowing
that shopping on Amazon reduces my local shopping options in the future.

Somehow we need to support local economies, support people creating products
with either no middlemen or at least fair marketplaces that perhaps only
taking away 5% fees from producers. The game is rigged for large corporations,
but we can still "win" if even a small minority of people participate in local
economies and non corporate web properties.

Catherine Austin Fitts has a saying that I like: "There are people who make
pies, and people who steal other people's pies." (Ref: solari.com)

~~~
schizoidboy
There are a lot of GNU Social servers - any recommendations?

~~~
mark_l_watson
I went with loadaverage.org, but that was a random choice. Nice guy who runs
it and since he pays for the server himself I sent him a donation and marked
my calendar to do the same 6 months from now.

------
generic_user
One of the things I dislike about social networks is that people carry over
short snarky commenting style to places on the net where you expect people to
post more thoughtful comments. Or technical forums where your trying to have a
detailed conversation and solve problems. It can really add unnecessary noise
to otherwise productive boards.

I really wish people would take a breather and slow down before posting
outside of those services.

They also seem to be more of a time sink then anything else where people can
procrastinate from doing more productive or important things.

I suppose I'm guilty of doing the same thing on HN on occasion.

~~~
AznHisoka
One of my pet peeves on Twitter is people posting sarcastic posts about an
upcoming news event like the results of a primary. Sorry, but it's not funny
and I don't care - I just want to hear the real news not your lame attempt at
a joke.

------
askafriend
I think there is a difference between utility driven social media like
LinkedIn or Nextdoor (and to an extent messaging apps like WhatsApp if you
consider that social media) and apps like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram
which are less utility driven and more entertainment driven.

Of course, one can derive utility from the entertainment driven apps, but it's
often disproportionate to the gravity of the entertainment and naval gazing
that they are optimized for.

Go on LinkedIn or Nextdoor and you see much less of this type of naval gazing.
People might be trying to find a job, gain insight into an org, keep their
resume updated, with LinkedIn. Or they might be trying to find a babysitter,
sell an item, or offer a service/recommendation to their neighbors on
Nextdoor. Yes, both platforms have their flaws, but at the end of the day they
are indeed driven by and based around a utility rather than naval gazing.

But those too, you have to be careful with in how you use them. I'm not quite
sure where I was going with this comment, but I wanted to point out that a
distinction and difference does exist between types of social media.

~~~
Pxtl
Navel. Sorry, you did it twice. Bellybuttons, not warships.

Edit: also, I've never heard of Nextdoor. Craigslist w Higher-granularity of
location?

~~~
mbrock
"Belly buttons, not warships."

Words to live by.

~~~
Pxtl
[http://www.glasswings.com.au/comics/ozyandmillie.au/2002/om2...](http://www.glasswings.com.au/comics/ozyandmillie.au/2002/om20020527.html)

------
Animats
You can overdo anything.

Living in Silicon Valley, I get the impression that teenagers are looking at
their phones less than they were five years ago. A few years ago, I'd have to
dodge people on sidewalks and in store aisles who had completely lost track of
their surroundings. That seems to have stopped. I see teenagers pull out a
phone, interact with it briefly, then put it away. Also, everybody seems to be
in vibrate mode now; I seldom hear a ringtone.

~~~
Johnnybe
Are people talking to strangers more in coffee shops now too?

~~~
Animats
No, coffee shops are full of people on laptops. Starbucks seems to be able to
make money on this, even though people camp for a long time.

------
mathgenius
"Corporations are like these obese people, they suck money out of our economy
and store it in the fat of share price."

Wow, writers get to have so much fun.

------
arrty88
I put all of the social media apps into a folder on my iPhone and dragged it
to a few home screens away. I don't use them much anymore.

------
Simorgh
Facebook made the internet a home for a billion people. Mr Rushkoff is
certainly an important voice, but I'll play devil's advocate. We can never
know the initial motives or future designs of Zuckerberg et al, nonetheless
these actors have built products/services that people demand. They have
introduced advanced technology to vast swathes of people, familiarised them
with computers, and drawn them into (the periphery of) hacker culture.

Hypothetically, more intelligent/predictive advertising should decrease the
quantity of ads we see, and work in the favour of local firms. AI (including
predictive-advertising) has the potential for good. People want to support
local businesses. With the introduction of localised / native advertising,
there is the potential for the business next door to 'get you' as a customer,
as opposed to Amazon etc. The 'last mile' problem might work in the favour of
small firms.

------
beachstartup
i only use hn and reddit and group email threads. gave up all the rest many
years ago because i recognized the negative patterns it was reinforcing in my
own life and others'.

if you're thinking about it, do it. you're recognizing that there's a problem
in your own life. if you've never thought about it, you're probably fine.

------
abalone
"Uber has nothing to do with helping people get rides in towns."

I may be simpleminded here, but didn't Uber make it a lot easier to get rides
by making app-based hailing work reliably? Instead of standing on a street
corner and waving?

~~~
RickHull
Yep, it's a ridiculous assertion. No one would have ever heard of Uber if they
weren't extremely good at helping people get rides in towns. That's what they
do.

------
moultano
I appreciate that there is probably more substance to his beliefs than what is
presented here, but reading these preposterous claims without any support made
this a really irritating interview to read.

------
p4wnc6
Early last year I unplugged from all social media sites, and for me personally
it has been a very healthy choice. I'm still pretty easily able to read
anything I want to read on Twitter without having an account or installing the
app. There is no worthwhile content on Facebook or LinkedIn, so eliminating
those was pure gain. I never had an account with Instagram, Pinterest, or
others.

I've occasionally applied for jobs either directly with social media companies
or with companies that make products or services that augment social media
experiences, and they often ask why I would be interested in working for them
if I am not myself a consumer of social media sites.

I try to explain that even if I don't personally get much value out of it, I
can still appreciate that other do (or at least _believe_ they do) and at the
end of the day I'm interested in engineering problems that help customers.

Sometimes these places don't want to talk further with me because they seem to
believe it's just not possible to empathize with a social media user or
customer unless you yourself are one. Some other places don't seem to care
about that at all.

I do worry that as the ubiquity of Facebook rises, people will try to unfairly
accuse non-Facebook people of "having something to hide." I always want an
individual's ability to choose to not interact to be highly socially respected
and not come with downsides that are in the slightest bit meaningful in terms
of that person's life goals, and I fear that a social media culture damages
that.

I talk to my much younger sister about it sometimes. She is just starting to
reach an age where our parents will consider letting her have an account.
She's very precocious and asks me all the time why I don't have an account.
But when I explain my reasons (e.g. I don't like ads, I don't like sharing
data about my personal connections, I don't want to feel like the service is
adaptively responding in some ways to optimize itself against my behaviors)
she doesn't understand. To her, Facebook is life. Without Facebook, in her
social circles even in middle school, you're a nobody and can't possibly have
functional circles of friends. You just miss out on all the inside jokes,
stories, photos, etc., that everyone will be talking about at school.

I feel bad for her. I'm at a point in my life where I couldn't give less of a
fuck about that kind of stuff, and most of the close friends I have are the
same and would never exclude me just because I didn't see their vacation
photos on Facebook.

But for her, it's very much like she does not have an actual choice.
Functional social experiences are _necessary_ for healthy development, and
it's getting to a point where kids can't have functional social experiences
without Facebook.

This frightens me and makes me want to use my choice to not have an account as
a tiny, laughably insignificant market signal that maybe we should stop, and
maybe we don't actually get the value out of this concept that we think we do.

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sotojuan
How I fixed my Facebook: I unfollowed everyone I don't want to see but have to
keep as a friend for whatever reason. I never see them, ever. But they're
there if I need to contact them through Messenger.

You could go a step further and unfollow everyone and just use Messenger
(which 99% of the people I come in contact prefer/use). But that's just my use
case: Messenger remains the best way to get in contact with people, and group
chats are very fun (been on some that are nearing their third year
anniversary!).

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skyhatch1
I couldn't easily jump off Facebook, mainly because of a large contingent of
overseas family. Also, a lot of private social events are purely shared on
Facebook. Easiest thing to do was unsubscribe to literally everybody except
said overseas family and 'Like+Follow' work-related fan pages (or whatever
they're called these days.

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jorgecurio
I have no facebook or linkedin or twitter accounts or instagram or tinder or
snapchat.

I can never go back after 2 years.

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dominotw
Is it possible to live life without internal conflict?

Is it possible to examine the root of what we consider a vice so that we have
to suppress the urge with pure willpower which is going to run out sooner or
later.

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exolymph
Facebook and other social media are priceless promotion tools for unknown
writers who want their work to be read.

~~~
sehr
This is discussed in the article fwiw

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mbrock
Social media is bad when it spams your mind with cheap garbage and bullshit
propaganda, exactly as with any other form of media.

When I get a snapchat from an old friend, whom I don't see much of anymore
because they're in another city, that doesn't ruin my life. It makes me happy.
It strengthens our connection in a nice and simple way. The business model of
that company is independent from my experience.

Presumably mail couriers and telephone operators suffer from the same effects
of rent based economics and growth targets. Yet we see them as neutral
carriers—the way Facebook would like to be.

Yes, social media is to some extent an ecosystem of brands that exist only to
extract value from the already existing Internet.

They are also the most compelling use of the Internet thus far. They've
managed to create products that people actually use in their daily lives.
They've sparked a few political revolts. They've allowed new forms of
organization.

The charges of banality read to me like expressions of boredom. I remember in
2008 after my initial college Facebook period had faded into something less
exciting, I said "Facebook isn't as fun anymore" and my friend—who didn't use
it—said "well, how are you using it? Are you contributing anything fun?"

A couple of days ago I was on WhatsApp talking to a friend in Australia. I
know her because she's the friend of another person I met through social
media. We have some stuff in common and like to chat. She was at home having
pretty bad anxiety. I couldn't fix it but I could offer a conversation, some
diversion, a bit of cheering up. This is what I think about when I think about
social media.

People who get into writing books and stuff turn their social media accounts
into tools for self promotion. Always tweeting about their book tours and
stuff. If they used it to make meaningful connections with new people, maybe
their articles about social media would have a different tone.

Media people in general, including authors and journalists, seem to both
thrive in the social media realm, and to be drained by it. A Swedish podcast
with two such men had their previous episode be all about how they uninstalled
social media apps for a week and discovered things about themselves. Like how
they were using the buzz of the Twittersphere as a shield against emotions and
situations. How social media hooked them into this judgmental world of
obsessive gossip. But this isn't all of social media.

The negative feelings some people have about social media, I have them about
all kinds of media. Look at television. Holy fuck, what a disaster.
Newspapers, I can't stand them and their incessant political editorializing,
their failure as social institutions, their pompous social engineering, their
creation of Donald Trump. So there are much deeper problems with large scale
human communication in general.

Howard Rheingold didn't seem to me like a hippie utopian. His book on virtual
communities was more of a set of case studies of the idiosyncratic ways
different people and communities used different network tools to bond and
share. That's still happening every day. The varieties of networked
experience. This kind of anthropology is needed to actually understand social
networks. Not just more and more reactionary opinions.

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known
It's not plausible; Every website now has an element of social media;

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narrator
The thing about Facebook is you should assume it's public.

