
Why social media bosses don’t use social media - imartin2k
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/23/never-get-high-on-your-own-supply-why-social-media-bosses-dont-use-social-media
======
gtirloni
_“The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook
being the first of them … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your
time and conscious attention as possible?’ That means that we need to sort of
give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or
commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to
contribute more content and that’s going to get you … more likes and
comments,” he said_

I wish it was possible to disable showing points in HN for this exact same
reason. Both in stories and my comments. I'm sure Greasemonkey could help but
I'd like this embraced by HN, if possible.

~~~
Chathamization
Timing plays a role into this too. If you're interested in getting into a
discussion on a submission, you need to check the site frequently because
after a few hours the discussion is going to be dead. Likewise, you need to
make the comment fairly quickly instead of waiting a day or two to chime in.
And after making a comment, there's pressure to check frequently to see if you
got replies - again, if you wait for too long nobody is going to notice your
reply back to them.

With the old web forums you could wait a day or two to respond or a day or two
to check for replies. But the timing dynamic here (and on many other sites)
encourages much more frequent checks and much more rapid-fire conversations.

~~~
fsavard
I don't often comment on HN and this (the short-timed nature of discussions)
is one of the main reasons. The other main reason is that I have a high
threshold for considering my participation is worthy of other people's
attention.

More often then not, when that threshold is crossed, I realize I'm too late
and my post will just sit there, unread.

Aren't there others who think it'd be great to have a "sticky" or "follow"
button, in essence signalling "I'm going to follow this discussion for a few
days / weeks, because I'm genuinely interested"?

Also if there was a way to easily "suscribe" to a thread (email alerts) that'd
help. (Someone mentioned hnreplies.com in a sibling comment, never tried it,
but I'll check it out)

~~~
Chathamization
> The other main reason is that I have a high threshold for considering my
> participation is worthy of other people's attention.

This is one of the problems with online conversations in general. Person A
makes a lot of low effort comments without putting much thought into it and
without bothering to check the accuracy of what they're writing. Person B
thinks about whether or not they have anything to add to the conversation,
spends time thinking about other people's comments, checks any claims they
make to see if they're accurate, rewrites their comment so that it flows
better, etc. Person A is going to end up making many, many more comments than
Person B. The conversation will look more and more like Person A's posts, even
when those people are in the minority.

There are some places that suffer more from this than others, but I think it
affects just about every online conversation to some extent. It would be
interesting to see what effect posting limits would have.

~~~
fsavard
You're right about that. It might be that I suffer from a "person B" problem
:)

However I still think that the "short-lived" nature of discussions here is a
relatively independent problem. I think integrating a way to "subscribe to a
story" with email alerts on HN itself (rather than independent apps like
hnreplies.com), and _displaying_ the number of people who did subscribe, would
pave the way for longer-lived discussions. By seeing the number of people who
did "subscribe to the story" you'd know whether or not it's still worth
posting a comment even though it's been a day or two.

Maybe that's the reason forums have longer-lived discussions. You can easily
get alerts when there are new posts in a discussion where you've posted.

~~~
Chathamization
It would be interesting if someone started a HN News discussion forum where
people could continue the conversations that start here. That would at least
help alleviate the problem of feeling pressure to respond to stories and
comments rapidly, even if the other issues involved in online discussions
(like the "Person A/Person B" one) remain.

In general I wish there was more attention paid to the way different platforms
shape our conversations, and more interest in exploring alternative platforms.

~~~
lioeters
I like the idea of a "discussion forum where people could continue the
conversations that start here" (at HN).

Some discussions (not all :) that arise on HN are rich and deep, with
intelligent people exploring the topic, often someone with
expertise/experience/domain knowledge will pitch in to inform the rest - and I
haven't found many places on the Web where such discussions happen regularly.

It's a pity sometimes when such a discussion gets swept away in the timeline,
simply archived, rather than continuing it over a longer-term, to really have
a chance to think deeply and collectively.

~~~
philipodonnell
You could have a greasemonkey script that puts a 'continue this discussion on
[site]' button and then auto-cross post on a click. Even also put auto put a
comment in that says 'I'd like to continue this on [site], please join me
there'.

------
pgsandstrom
> Over at Twitter, the story is the same. Of the company’s nine most senior
> executives, only four tweet more than once a day on average.

Say what? Tweeting once per day seems like a lot of tweeting to me. But I
guess things are relative...

~~~
chippy
I think the authors point was that the companies are advocating for people to
be using their services for as long as possible, and yet the bosses of the
companies are using it minimally or not using it at all.

Once per day may indeed be a healthy usage but it's not the level of
engagement desired by the companies.

~~~
i_cant_speel
Is it safe to assume that's because they don't like using the service or
because they are too busy to be spending all day on social media sharing posts
and tweets?

~~~
chippy
The article points out that ex-executives of these companies say that the
services were designed to capture people's attention and act like a drug, and
that they now disagree with it. The implication of this (and to answer the
title, I guess) is that current executives know this and "don't get high on
their own supply".

Whether that's the actual case or not is the question, and we could compare
other executives of technological but non social media companies to see the
level of how much of their own dog food they eat. There's a further question
which is whether eating ones own dog food is a good measure.

------
mxschumacher
Here's how I protect myself from addictive sites:

I have a (fairly bad) smartphone and no data plan (just a small 200mb/mo
emergency contingent). I have deleted all social media apps (Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Messenger, all Games). On the go, I use apps with offline
capabilities. Pocket Casts for Podcasts, the Kindle app for my books, Spotify
for music. Those get synced on Wifi

If I use any apps of this kind, I do so on my Laptop:

Here, I have more control by using three Chrome extensions:

\- Stay Focused
([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji))
which gives me a few minutes per day on a set of blacklisted sites.

\- Newsfeed Eradicator ( [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-
eradicat...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-
for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg) ) - does exactly what the name suggests.
Still possible to use Facebook for events and to talk to friends

\- Distraction Free Youtube ([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-
youtube-distrac...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/df-youtube-
distraction-fr/mjdepdfccjgcndkmemponafgioodelna) ) deactivates the features
that suck you down the Youtube rabbit whole of by clicking on recommended
videos.

On top of that, I use uBlock which blocks all the ads that I would have to
endure on my phone.

A little lower level, I have a modified hosts file which blocks social media
sites:
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)

Obviously it is possible to circumvent all of these self-imposed obstacles,
but taking a couple of seconds to "take the safety off" is often enough to
remind me why I have blocked those pages in the first place. It is enough time
to let my prefrontal cortex reign in my dopamine seeking reptile brain.

Taking these measures has allowed me to drastically reduce my time spent on
distracting sites.

~~~
ggregoire
Do you also use a shitty computer just to protect yourself from addictive
video games?

I honestly don't get it when people have to do all that stuff to "protect"
themselves instead of just... not going on Facebook 15 times a day? I consider
myself like an easy target for addictive services but, I don't know, I guess I
just have better things to do.

~~~
cimmanom
Once you develop a habit of doing something, it can be tough to drop the habit
without something to interrupt your thought process.

For instance, I noticed myself picking up my phone and browsing certain
websites (dopamine sources) whenever my thoughts wandered into a topic I find
distressing -- instead of confronting those thoughts and thinking them
through. For me, Facebook happens not to be addictive, but other sites are
(for instance, Quora). I was wasting hours on those sites instead of doing
productive things.

Setting up a content blocker to make me think twice before visiting them has
helped. So has adding an app that I can set to block using my phone for a
given period of time, forcing me to put it down and do other things.

------
gaius
The emotions that most drive engagement with social media are all negative
ones: gloating, FOMO, jealousy, outrage, schadenfreude. Even if the humans
running didn’t know this perfectly well, their ML would have independently
discovered it. Social media by its very nature CANNOT be good for anyone so
long as engagement or time on the site is used as a success metric. Which
means, at all.

~~~
iliketosleep
Thank you for this insight. These problems are reflected in modern media which
push stories often source from social media (i.e. any sort of "outrage" on
twitter is headlines these days). Such news stories are then also consumed via
social media, creating a perverse sort of feedback loop that amplifies all the
ugliest aspects of humanity. I find it insulting, and it astonishes me the
number of people who sheepishly just go along with it.

------
philipodonnell
> “In general, when people spend a lot of time passively consuming information
> – reading, but not interacting with people – they report feeling worse
> afterward,” two Facebook researchers said in a review of the existing
> literature. On the other hand, “actively interacting with people –
> especially sharing messages, posts and comments with close friends and
> reminiscing about past interactions – is linked to improvements in
> wellbeing”.

Its rather unsettling how easy it is to replace some of these words with
'mdma' and make it sound like a drug dealer encouraging you to go to raves
with other people on mdma and not do mdma by yourself at home because you
won't enjoy it as much.

~~~
workthrowaway27
This is an absurd argument. Humans are social. Take two activities at random,
one social and one not, and you'll probably find people feel better on average
after doing the social one. (Obviously, there are counterexamples, but I'm
talking about averages here).

~~~
Chaebixi
I think that's false. Humans are social, but that means social activity is
rewarding. You can build a Skinner box out of "social" rewards just like you
can build one out of money rewards (e.g. slot machines).

Success for a social network is not "people feeling better on average" it's
_people coming back more often on average_. Their actual level of enjoyment or
well-being is irrelevant to the platform.

~~~
philipodonnell
I would argue that feelings of well-being are not just irrelevant, they are
actually directly contrary to the goals of our current advertising-driven
social networks. Happy contented people aren't as influenced by advertising
intended to capitalize on insecurities, which is really most of it.

A social network's ideal audience would be a group of people who are
relatively discontent with their lives and provide a series of small
improvements to that state of being, but ones that quickly fade, and then
encourage them to repeat that cycle as often as possible. That way the
susceptibility to advertising remains high and boosts advertiser ROI, which
raises the social network's value as a platform.

Come to think of it, that sounds pretty familiar.

~~~
Chaebixi
> Come to think of it, that sounds pretty familiar.

I've never used Instagram much, but that sounds like one aspect of that
network I've read about. Everyone curates their profile to make their lives
seem more fun and more interesting than they really are, often with a
materialist angle. The real you looks inadequate compared to these false
lives, leaving many feeling insecure about themselves. Then you have
professional "influencers" with hyper-curated profiles that depict a
fantastically fun and fashionable life. They make money by shilling products
that subtly promise to let you join in on that lifestyle, if you only buy.

~~~
philipodonnell
Insecurity has always been a strong undercurrent in advertising. Anytime you
see a picture of someone looking happy or having fun with a product, that's a
tiny dig at your insecurities that maybe you aren't having as much fun as you
could with that product.

Its just that, Instagram especially because of the power of an image, its like
not only did they set out to create a platform to maximize your insecurity,
they recruited thousands of people and gave them a special title
("influencer") and pay them to amplify that message as loudly as possible,
then bake in the same addictive interactions as Facebook, and then monetized
the whole thing.

Its not to say that its always bad and should be shut down, just be aware of
the effects it can have and be honest about how you react to them.

------
FanaHOVA
Where does it say that they don't though? Some Twitter execs tweet more than
once a day, Facebook's exec profiles are private so you can't see their
activity. Am I missing something? Quotes like this:

> Facebook’s locked-down nature means mere mortals can’t see the private posts
> on Zuckerberg’s timeline, but it is hard to imagine him getting into
> arguments about a racist relative’s post of an anti-immigration meme.

Make it sound like the article is just about bashing social medias, without
having an answer to the question in the title.

~~~
prepend
I think the author may just be unfamiliar with the different social media
sites and assumes that everyone uses them as he does.

I don’t use Facebook much, but I’ve never made a public post and my friends
aren’t visible. But you wouldn’t know this without asking me. My goal is to
never be the subject of an article, but if I was, it would be lazy on the part
of the author to assume that I don’t use Facebook because I have no posts
visible to the author.

------
OliverJones
I suppose this is the same reason TV executives didn't spend all day watching
"As the world turns" and "the $64,000 question" back in the day.

They're the merchants, not the product. The people who watch all day are the
product. The people who obsessively check their instagram feeds for uplikes
(or whatever they're called this week) are the product.

I too am a social media conscientous objector.

Partly because FB said they won't always offer information I create to my
"friends." So why should I create it?

Partly because I've really come to dislike getting sucked down a rabbit hole
of stuff the social media companies machine learning knows will snag my
attention.

Partly because fake nuz is worthy of protest and boycott.

Mostly because the charge humans get from accumulating "uplikes" is a soul-
corrupting addiction. I could rant on about professor René Girard's mimetic
theory and human yearning to think we're better than the next guy, and how one
Peter Thiel helped FB corrupt Girard's work. But, bah. Back to work.

------
devit
Aren't Reddit and in general forums much better at that?

With Facebook, you are using your true identity resulting in the pressure of
having to post perfect content, you often have to post photos which are
extremely time consuming to get right, the number of people who can "upvote"
is very limited and the lack of a "downvote" button makes trolling for
downvotes impossible.

On the other hand, a short but effective text post on Reddit or a forum can be
done in a minute and potentially generate a huge flamewar and thousands of
people upvoting or downvoting, and it doesn't matter if it turns out to be
dumb or ineffective or otherwise bad.

And all you need is to just express the most controversial and hyperbolic take
possible on a given existing subject, while on Facebook you'd need to come up
with original content.

Finally, while Reddit might be accused of doing it intentionally for traffic,
the web forums and newsgroups where this behavior started most definitely did
not, so it's more of an intrinsic property of public one-to-many communication
systems than something evil that Facebook came up with.

------
dkns
Here's my wild guess as to 'why social media bosses dont use social media':
they're too busy running biggest companies in tech industry to have time to
spend on twitter/facebook.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Doesn't seem to be the case for the POTUS

------
nablaone
[https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/manipulation-matrix-are-
you-i...](https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/manipulation-matrix-are-you-
improving-lives-or-peddling-your-product)

So Zuck is no longer an Entertainer, his a Dealer right now.

~~~
thinkMOAR
The all famous, "Don't get high on your own supply" :)

~~~
jeffhuys
Which is in the title of the actual article, haha!

------
tremendulo
Isn't there a danger here of blaming social media for the fact that the _rest_
of your life apparently sucks? I remember I used to get annoyed at people who
were noisy when I was trying to study. Then I realised I was blaming them for
my own sense of inadequacy.

Yet neither was it my fault: it's simply that the material was boring. Lack of
focus really implied that I needed something _harder, more important_ (and
thus more exciting) to do.

~~~
UweSchmidt
It could be related. But human psyche is always there and systems must
accomodate it. Building systems that hurt you mentally is not unlike trying to
hurt you physically. Say the library was designed to be noisy - would that be
acceptable?

~~~
tremendulo
Good point -- but then, is it acceptable for winemakers to choose the best and
most alluring grapes? And for there to be a distribution point within easy
distance of my house, supported by local government planners and so on?

~~~
UweSchmidt
Winemakers can use any grapes and set up shop anywhere they like. Alcohol is
of course problematic and reasonable restrictions may be put into place.
Pretty straightforward, really.

(Your hypothetical argument based on false moral absolutisms is familiar
around the internet, usually used to excuse unethical behaviour. Don't fall
for it)

~~~
tremendulo
How is the system that has evolved for wine consumption _not_ an example of
'building systems that hurt you mentally'?

------
ponderatul
I found Taleb's perspective on things terribly refreshing. "Each one should
eat his own turtles" \- seems to be a terrific heuristic for everything
consumption related, even if it errs sometimes on the precautionary side.
Zuckerberg doesn't seem to eat his own turtles, Dorsey doesn't, Spiegel most
likely does the same. I don't need anymore examples.

Take this principle elsewhere, it works the same. Safe to assume, the casino
owner doesn't gamble, or the gambling site owner doesn't as well. Does any
tobacco exec smoke regularly? I'm not even going to look for a factually
accurate answer. It seems this principle seems extremly robust.

[http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/equality.pdf)

------
ddorian43
Cause they have better things to do than watching your friends spiritual
enema/yoga experience in Cambodia ?

~~~
blocked_again
Like figuring out all possible ways to make billions of people spend more time
and concentration on their website so that they can get richer and richer by
generating money through ads? God only knows what social media is doing to our
children's brains.

------
hknd
Google executives use our social media platform Google+. ...and they are
probably the only once.

~~~
bryanrasmussen
only once is even funnier than only ones.

~~~
tmnvix
Maybe that wasn't the typo.

"...and they are probably there only once"

------
zelos
Time for one of them to pull a Ratner? [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner)

------
inertial
It sounds fairly reasonable to me. You design a cool app but it evolves into
something much more than what you envisioned. You are still passionate about
it but it doesn't mean that you have to be a compulsive user. Same story with
several employees / key executives. There are there to perform a role, maybe
manage engineering, run finance etc. They really don't need to be immersed in
the app to do that, neither should they be expected to.

------
Mc_Big_G
I post this in every related thread but can't help myself as I really believe
it's important. Delete your facebook/instagram/whatever account. Get off of
Google services. If and when a distrubuted, encrypted, open source social
network gains traction that cares about privacy as much as duckduckgo, then
_maybe_ consider using it. This will almost certainly never happen because joe
interweb clicker doesn't give a shit.

------
cateye
I'm also not using social media often, is this a sign that I will become a
social media boss? :)

------
ralphc
Isn't texting and social apps where kids "hang out" and make friendships
today? It might be noble to keep your kids off of the platforms but if you're
the only one your kids are going to be lonely.

------
yakitori
Why doesn't theguardian bosses read newspapers so much? Because they are too
busy running the company and trying to make money? Do I get to write an
article for the guardian now?

The obvious reason social media execs don't use social media as much is
because they are too busy. It's the same reason that movie execs don't watch
many movies, it's why football execs don't' watch too much football games,
it's why newspaper execs don't read much newspapers, etc.

Most top execs are busy running a company to be doing anything else. But
theguardian along with the rest of the media has to spin everything for their
own agenda.

Would be great if we went a few days without the standard "I hate social
media" from the toxic "traditional media".

------
montrose
The Acceleration of Addictiveness (2010):
[http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://paulgraham.com/addiction.html)

------
pavelludiq
From The 10 crack commandments:

"Never get high on your own supply"

------
agumonkey
who believes in the principle of dog fooding ?

------
misterbowfinger
This article makes a huge assumption that the "social media bosses" don't have
fake or anonymous accounts. I can't imagine that they don't.

------
jabot
... They probably value their time too much.

------
zerr
Interesting if pg checks HN daily...

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
This shall upset the narrative: I don't use social media, and I'm not a social
media boss.

------
mmjaa
Its the same reason psychiatrists tend to not use pharmaceuticals: they know
the dangers.

~~~
dudul
And the same reason mobile app publishers don't let their kids have a tablet.

~~~
w1kt0r
How do you develop immunity then? Might be wise to have limited exposure as a
kind of "vaccine"?

~~~
taneq
Cap your wifi at 256kbps. :P

------
Simon_says
> ... a racist relative’s post of an anti-immigration meme

Nice way to conflate anti-immigration opinions with racism, Guardian. You
probably don't even know you're doing it.

------
jlebrech
Why ~~social media~~ bosses don’t use social media

ftfy

------
philfrasty
Same goes for YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg7fzx4PEk96-7Ec2Ol2dJA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCg7fzx4PEk96-7Ec2Ol2dJA/videos)

Uploaded her first video 3 months ago (following the monetization outcry).
Seems very hard to me to really understand the platform and its
problems/opportunities without fully embracing it from a creator and viewer
perspective.

~~~
dx034
You don't know if she's a viewer. And to be a creator you need time which she
won't have. Just uploading a few videos won't help her understand the
creator's perspective. But I'd be surprised if she didn't use Youtube
regularly.

