> This process of commodification has turned us all into tastemakers, reviewers, likers, retweeters and brand ambassadors. The platform takes our real authentic friendships and first commodifies them, reifies them, and then sells them back to us as an “image of friendship”, but one that is bankrupt of any genuine social value.
This is the money quote.
The article raises a lot of points and is a provocating read. One of the points it brings up has also been on my mind lately: all the content I contribute on the platform just goes there to die. It's not searcheable, it's not easily indexed, it fades quickly within the matter of hours and it doesn't foster in-depth discussion. The silverlining is that this is finally pushing me to get my own site/blog up. Yes I will still link to it from FB and they can analyze the sh*t out of it if they want; but at least I get to keep and curate my own content.
The social value lost is one-on-one development of friendships. Let's say I find something interesting. Without social media, I might share this one-on-one with my friends. I'll text a link to Joe, email a link to Jane and share it in person when I see Mike. Instead, with social media, I post it on my timeline. Since I'm 'friends' with Joe, Jane and Mike on Facebook, I won't share it with them individual and I lose out on actual human interaction and friendship-building. When a friends shares something with you individual, you feel like they thought of you specifically. But when you post it on your timeline, no one feels special.
Due to this, I've stopped sharing everything on social media, except for the stupidest, lowest common-denominator stuff, and even that I will first consider sharing with individuals instead of social media. I've made a spreadsheet of all my friends I want to keep in touch with along with my commonalities with those friends (music, art, literature, psychology, etc.) I send them things individually when I come across them instead of posting on Facebook.
This article just repeats things that have been said for 10 years now. It's great finally people wake up to the fact facebook is a twisted service, but let's not pretend there is anything innovative about this thougth.
See, 'microwork' is flawed. Facebook doesn't really benefit from the endless stream of likes and comments and sharing. Facebook couldn't care less what you like or what you actually think about current events or what your mood is or who your friends are or whether you're single. The "work" you're doing by telling Facebook this is not for Facebook's benefit. The "content" is not the point. Facebook can monetize the data, sure, but here it is acting as a prison guard; it surveils and records everything and so gathers more knowledge about the prisoners and thus maybe even more power over the prisoners. But this missing the key question: why have the prisoners voluntarily entered the prison and why do they play the games they do?
Prison is the right analogy for social media. The real danger of social media is not the endless surveillance and advertising. Social media is a prison. It's simultaneously lawless -- there are no real rules, no clear expectations, no documented roles or requirements or expectations -- and also deeply authoritarian. Everyone is subject to harsh unstated rules and watched constantly by the guards. It's a culture without any rituals, a game that can be won or lost but has no rules or regulations or referees. Indeed nothing is even real, everyone and everything is "playing" at something -- but it's never clear what. And the result, make no mistake, is chaos. Fake news, "context collapses," human impostors (bots and politicians), social media mobs -- all of these a just terms for a kind of deep-seated anarchy that rules over social media. Social media is a society surrendering to the logic of the prison and deciding to imprison everybody. And corporations sit back and just observe and record everything and print money.
But what's also interesting is that if they could the corporations would put an end to the anarchy. Facebook, I think it's very clear, does not like the chaos. They would love to put an end to all the fake news and scams and general crazines. But they can't. And this is important: in prison the guards are not really "in control." Their best hope is to guide the violence, give it direction, but they can't end it completely and in fact they did the system would turn on them. Zuckerberg is as much a victim of Facebook as everybody else.
The essay is interesting but I think focusing on the economic aspect and even dopamine addiction is missing the point. The question again is why the prisoners do what they do. And the answer I suspect is fear and violence. There is a kind of fear that drives people back to Facebook. People check their phones over and over, every fucking minute, not because they want to see what's new but because they are fundamentally concerned for their own safety and wellbeing. The concern is that somebody will have unfriended them or not invited them or simply said something about them. Or something may have happened completely unrelated to them and they know they must be seen to react in the right manner. This is what drives Facebook, the source of its enormous power. It is not a bunch of bored, dopamine addicts being tricked into doing "microwork." The truth is even worse than it appears. It's a bunch of deeply frightened prisoners doing their best to survive in an anarchic system of structural violence.
And here's the real genius of the system: it doesn't really matter whether you are on Facebook or not. The violence is structural. Quitting Facebook -- leaving the game -- can still be interpreted as an act of aggression by the prisoners left behind. They may be induced to respond and, worse, now you won't even see them coming because you've given up your ability to monitor them. No, it's always a good idea to keep an eye on your fellow inmates. Sleep with one eye open and always be aware of who's behind you.
Very well written but it's only if you are still within the matrix that Facebook even matters to your life.
I see teenagers checking their little phones every minute on Instagram or Facebook and I think it's sad, but they will learn from it. Currently human kind is learning what it feels like to require random likes from strangers in order to feel happy. At the same time a lot of people feel nervous in real life because they get less and less practice doing real human interactions.
Facebook makes people act like monkeys to get bananas. Its funny and sad how real humanity is disappearing from our lifes.
Pretty much never. I've edited spelling errors though. Comments get up and down voted pretty much randomly here, but who cares? They're fake internet points!
"Facebook doesn't really benefit from the endless stream of likes and comments and sharing."
I am pretty sure it does. It can sell targeted ads based on what you like. My previous company was implementing an "advocates program" where people could get rewards for sharing stuff on facebok (about the company).
> Twitter invents the “pull-to-refresh” UI gesture that leverages variable rewards to trigger addictive behavior as a way to increase user engagement with the timeline; Facebook invents the “red dot” notifications that keep people checking their phone for the next new thing.
two minor corrections:
1) pull-to-refresh was not invented by Twitter, but by Tweetie, a third-party Twitter client.
2) The "red dot" for notifications was not invented by Facebook, but most likely first appeared on Apple’s mail.app about 20 years ago in the first version of Mac OS X.
By citing these examples, the article is putting together a case for the narrative of Facebook/Twitter being primary drivers of the current overall system, inventing these malevolent features that enable and support this system. Rather than the alternative narrative of Facebook/Twitter being emergent "winners" in a diverse plethora of bad actors, all contributing to the system to varying degrees.
> No using a computer if it is not directly related to creating or resisting (not consuming)
Seems kind of extreme to me. Article mentions that our "attention has been colonized". Maybe focus a little more on how your attention is being sold instead of targeted.
Understanding the way FB values users ($100/year if you're in the US) and sells their attention to marketers would instruct better ways to deal with attention colonization IMHO.
Not really. Literally the next paragraph after that list is this:
> Don’t be a fundamentalist about the rules. Rules are meant to be broken. If it’s art, the rules are more loose; if its corporate media, more strict. Cinema, literature, sci-fi, comic books, indy games: as long as these types of works are not connected with our professional, interpersonal, or political responsibilities, use them in moderation. In general, make sure media consumption is done with more moderation than usual. The goal is to break your habits.
Agreed that this extreme. It doesn't cut to the heart of the issue, which is that these services are being funded somehow. Mostly by ads, I'm guessing. Somewhere out there are people who are not only unable to resist giving their attention to social media, but also unable to resist giving money in the form of clicks.
I've never clicked on these ads. If I want to buy products, I go to amazon.com. I book my flights and hotels through travel websites. I imagine many people on HN would say the same. But then again, we are not representative of the population at large.
Any one of those items could be problematic depending on the individual. I see it (particularly in light of the following paragraph) as a call to me mindful and intentional about your media consumption.
Me and my spouse watch a movie together every Friday night. It becomes a conversation piece as we go through the rest of the weekend. It is one thing among many things we might do together or with friends through the weekend. Some couples that I know will binge watch an entire television series through the weekend. It becomes the only thing that they do -- it carries them from the end of the work day on Friday to work on Monday in an unreflective daze. I can understand the need to unwind, but at some juncture you've gone from unwinding to simply filling time, hardly eudaimonia.
For myself, the problems has been news aggregation (I read too much, reflect on what I read too little) and social media (makes me lonely, when I could better be using the time to talk with and make friends).
If you are just there to fill the void, then maybe it would be better to work at becoming comfortable with the void.
If Facebook values a US user at $100/year, then many people would likely not be willing to pay that cost, and Facebook should pay those users a larger share of that revenue to bribe them.
This article makes it sound like people are forced to be social addicts. Maybe some of us our outliers here so it may be odd for me to say this but I honestly have spent more time coding social networks than actually using them. So no, I don't get how people are forced to use them.
I don't know how old you are and I don't want to make assumptions, but in high school and college, societies, school sports teams and friends all tend to use Facebook as their sole means of communication. As someone who refuses to make a Facebook account (on principle and because I'm really stubborn), I do feel like I'm being compelled to use social networks more than I want to.
Yes, I agree it is more a part of our civilization as an expected norm of operation. Where I differ from the author is the fact that the majority of us our very capable of controlling our behavior although we may not initially realize our pattern or be self-reflecting on how it may be detrimental.
Curious if you use ad-blocking software/extensions? Most people don't AFAIK. Curious if you let yourself be influenced by ads or not. Not a judgement call on ads, some people like being exposed to ads especially if they're targeted.
I don't. I usually scroll/resize the window so I don't see them. I honestly don't care if they are tracking me one way or the other. If you know what the government already does, we're already screwed so its more of a statement than useful to ad block. I think if you go to the trouble of being on a TOR network then you're good but otherwise, you're fooling yourself.
Most addicts of any type are not forced to become so, but that shouldn't make us less sympathetic to their situations, should it? Not many people are forced to use drugs or tobacco or alcohol or coffee etc, but they still get addicted.
I don't use fb or the other attention-mongering social media sites, so I feel you in not understanding how they are so addictive. But I am pretty sure they are in fact addictive to a lot of people.
I think anything that is good or feels good has that potential of affecting behavior towards it. Using the word "addict" is a cop out to take away personal responsibility. There are true addicts so it should not be used so lightly. Mark Zuckerburg is a trail blazer, creating industries which did not exist and which no one could predict the negative outcomes. Overall, I'm sure Facebook has done much more good than bad to connect people in a positive way. If it is a net gain, then it is worth fixing, even if that fix means to completely change the technology approach using some blockchain value proposition for example for social cred that is universal and lives outside the social networks themselves.
> Using the word "addict" is a cop out to take away personal responsibility.
It's not a cop out. It's a fact. Social media can fit the exact definition of "addiction" for some people.
Personal responsibility is present if you're abusing a drug or social media.
From your comments, it appears you aren't affected. Great. Similar to how you probably can't relate to a heroin addict means you can't relate to a social media addict.
Well the part that doesn't sit well with me is the suggestion of addiction in such a light flippant way. It should not be used for the general population just as a drug addiction isn't. We can empathize with true addicts but labeling the general population as such takes away personal responsibility in that people are not in control of their own behavior. That is the key difference in the point I'm making and the author. To prove my point, do you notice how quickly backlash came about to blame Facebook? People started leaving it and not using it. A true addict could not stop cold turkey so we mostly all have the ability to stop something when we do not have true addiction disorders.
> This article makes it sound like people are forced to be social addicts.
I think "forced to be social addicts" is a misreading of the article. I think a more accurate rephrase is that "people are manipulated to be social addicts."
This essay is basically:
1. Statement of the problem, including exposure of some misleading narratives.
2. Advice to avoid being manipulated by technology and media, including but not limited to social media.
3. A heuristic for separating the media wheat from the media chaff (exploit survivorship)
Do you believe that we are manipulated to be addicts? There are real addicts with genetic reasons for being so and then there are the rest of us that can control our behavior. Our behavior can be manipulated but we are not going to be addicts from that. More of a waking up and tuning out rather than a withdrawal I would think but this isn't me arguing, just commenting as its an interesting topic and I value your input on it.
> Do you believe that we are manipulated to be addicts?
I believe the companies do their best to try (under the banner of metric-driven "engagement"), but people experience the addiction to varying degrees, with varying degrees of disruption. Some people are certainly more susceptible than others. You see the same thing with substance addiction, an addict can vary from a fully functional smoker to a homeless meth-addict whose lost their teeth.
I think this is true with social media as well. I don't think I'm too susceptible to addiction, but at times I've caught myself getting into habitual use of social media based on some of its reinforcement mechanisms.
HN is definitely an outlier for population that uses social media. I'm not trying to be edgy, but I believe it's our relationship with computers/technology that makes us this way.
Computers do what we say (to our own detriment sometimes!) and we are used to parsing what the computer is telling us. We think of computers and systems as their parts and as a whole.
So we are wary of computers/phones/internet by training (self or taught or nature). Because of this relationship, we have an easier path to detach ourselves from "Facebook" and simply stop. Facebook is not doing what "I" intended, cut it out.
I think the general population's relationship with technology is that it tells you information and the information becomes your world. To them, it's an eye, an ear, an arm. Cutting out a body part is hard.
The real kicker is that we as programmers understand Facebook wants "engagement" and that it is programmed to maximize our engagement. The general population doesn't know or understand this fact. Some of use choose to disengage because it isn't desirable behavior. Some of us don't mind/care. I think the general population (on average) understand know enough to care.
shrug. some people would rather be addicted and feel like they are a part of something than be independent.
sure, my social life has been hurt by refraining from facebook for a decade.
but there's no question i'm a stronger person for being free of the flowing river of babble that's there. now, when it comes to OTHER rivers of babble...
I'm hopeful that platforms like Brave Browser/BAT (Basic Attention Token) will take off, to allow people to more directly monetize their attention, so that 'unpaid microwork' will become 'microwork.' I don't know how much demand there is for it though, since people seem content to consume endless amounts of social media for free. On the advertising (rather than consumption) side, people will advertise stuff in hopes of getting free stuff or some type of sponsorship opportunity. It's crazy how much advertising they will do for free. Brands have to be making bazillions off of this type of advertising.
Recently, I noticed that Instagram has tweaked their algorithm so that likes (and story views) are doled out in a more spread out fashion. If you post something, you won't get a bunch of likes at once, now, you're more likely to get them over the course of 24-48 hours to get you back checking the app over the entire window. I figure they have always done this, but the window seems to have grown substantially. It seems like they are reaching further and further to get engagement.
Will FB be able to infinitely increase their engagement, or will they run out, and be left with a bunch of zombie addicts who are no longer valuable to them, since they've effectively killed their host? It seems like drugs sometimes have this end game.
Personally, I'm moving away from using any more unpaid platforms to host my data or work. If a platform has a free option, I choose to pay for it. I no longer trust companies that rely solely on advertising revenue (err, maybe that means I shouldn't be using HN :) )
> Will FB be able to infinitely increase their engagement, or will they run out, and be left with a bunch of zombie addicts who are no longer valuable to them, since they've effectively killed their host? It seems like drugs sometimes have this end game.
Perhaps more saliently, microtransaction mobile games already have this pattern. They grow aggressively, stabilize after consuming all easily reached users, then slowly peter out.
Rather than unbounded growth, we actually see something a lot like bacterial growth in a closed culture: lag, log, plateau, death. [1]
It's (part of) what killed Zynga: their long-term engagement predictions didn't pan out and they couldn't cycle users to new apps fast enough. Subsequent companies like Supercell have learned to EOL apps like Clash of Clans - they draw down their advertising and onboarding efforts in favor of monetizing their existing players, and eventually wind down in favor of the next big thing.
I'm not sure whether Facebook will end up like this - they have a real advantage because their users generate new content without requiring corporate effort. But I and several of my friends have abandoned FB less out of any moral principle than out of sheer disinterest in their increasingly unfriendly, cash-focused product. My suspicion is that they'll emphasize daily time per user and monetization, but slowly bleed daily users in return.
Why "Against Facebook"? I know some mention of other services in the essay, but the headline, topic sentences and conclusion all call out Facebook pretty much exclusively.
Starting off attacking solely Facebook in the headline and wrapping it up nice and tidy at the end with "You should delete your Facebook account :)" creates a false sense of security for readers that once they delete their Facebook accounts, they're safe from the effects the essay warns about, but that's not true, as long as they're still on the web.
...and please understand, I'm not coming from the position of defending Facebook, but trying to get journalists and essayists to point out more clearly that these issues are pretty much baked into the web at this point and cutting off Facebook, even entirely, is going to have little effect in insulating yourself from things like unpaid microwork, having your data sold, being targeted with ads, etc., even if you are reading good books in your free time.
See I always disagree with these sentiments. Again like everything in America it's about political action.
Problem #1: Not enough people vote.
You can break that down into, I see it, 3 buckets.
1. People are content enough with the way things are going, and trust they will keep going so they don't waste their time, or rely on the "wisdom of the crowd"
2. People are lethargic of the issues happening around them and complacency has fully set in.
3. People are so underwater with responsibilities, debt, and pressure from stagnant wages and rising costs, their primary focus is survival, feeding family, and paying rent.
I am a firm believer that people get the government they deserve. It's not enough to wish a government into existence.
Having said all that, call this a gross oversimplification or whatnot, but I think it comes down to
not enough people feel threatened or inclined to take action by the current privacy situation. That's it. Plenty of people love to talk about it, bikeshed about how things should or should not be, play the contrarian, whatnot, but if there's anything life has taught me: if people really want something, they do it (not saying want thing that thing is a good or bad thing)
4. People don't feel self-efficacy, i.e. that their vote is having an effect. (Esp. in a two-party system where, if you don't like either big party, you're basically fucked.)
> Social media companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter and Snapchat have created a marketplace for our attention, where we become the product sold to advertisers who subtly change our behaviour to buy products and services for their own benefit.
As opposed to what? There has always been a marketplace for our attention, and our attention has always been sold for profit. The only thing that has changed is the medium. Merely stating 'we are the product' doesn't make an argument.
> This type of persuasion is most effective when these platforms command our attention with a heightened level of distraction.
I should suppose adverts are most effective when they manage to distract us from what we were doing when we weren't paying attention to the advert, yes.
> We create the content that is then used to command the attention of our peers, which is then used to sell advertising space while the surrounding content is measured for engagement, and the results are analysed to optimize the next round of ad placement.
Might be new, but unclear how this has less upside for me than me consuming content which is written by someone else for the attention of my peers with the advertising space around it being sold and measured for engagement.
As for 'microwork', haven't we always done a lot of objectively pointless stuff, norms, social customs because together they make the world we live in a little more pleasant for ourselves? Why yes we have.
> Merely stating 'we are the product' doesn't make an argument.
I dont think i merely stated "we are the product"
> As for 'microwork', haven't we always done a lot of objectively pointless stuff, norms, social customs because together they make the world we live in a little more pleasant for ourselves? Why yes we have.
We've always done pointless stuff, but the engagements (microwork) we do on social media may _seem_ pointless to us, but to Facebook it creates the value they sell.
> We've always done pointless stuff, but the engagements (microwork) we do on social media may _seem_ pointless to us, but to Facebook it creates the value they sell.
As the time I spend grooming my hair every morning creates value for my hair wax company, or the time a salesperson spends filling in SFDC creates value for Salesforce. If I'm a salesperson, I don't expect Salesforce to pay me personally for the time I spend engaging in microwork using its product, because Salesforce creates value for me too. Facebook creates value for its users too, whether you choose to see that or not.
> The net effect these platforms have on us is to alienate us from our very lives.
I really like this conclusion paragraph. I definitely feel that everything I do through my phone is a much worse version than if I had just done them irl. Socializing is the biggest one. It makes me very happy to be with friends, but when I check up on people through FB etc I may get some instant gratification but it really just leaves me a little depressed in the end.
I think the article's diagnosis part hits home. But it's preaching to the choir. Most ordinary users won't see it that way. They seem to fall, hook, line, and sinker, for the respective platform's advertised purpose (pun fully intended). This is visible even in their complaints about a platform's perceived shortcomings.
Not going to happen. There is a need here, people want some sort of social media. The best we can do is offer a better alternative. A federated protocol (e.g. like email) would solve a lot of problems.
The problem is that unlike email, not enough open source dev time goes into federated open source social media. Projects like diaspora, mastodon, and the like (there are even go and rust implementations of these protocols for those interested) as well as do it yourself servers like sandstorm.
If we want to get rid of facebook, make it an easy 5 step process to install Ubuntu, install sandstorm, download the diaspora server app, download the diaspora phone app, get your friends and family on it. I find it hypocritical that so much anti facebook sentiment is here, yet so little open source dev time goes into projects that could kill facebook.
Sure, but right now it's >20 and can't be encoded in a blog post. I know plenty of people who will take a 5 step alternative to facebook, and then get their friends/family on board with the amortized single step (e.g. sandstorm is single sign on for all services, so once they are on the sandstorm server, they just have to install the app on their phone).
This is actually true now. I set up a mumble voice chat server. It is about 3 steps to set up your login. Nobody would use it. They use discord which is super happy-clicky and logs all messages forever. I predict Discord will be the next FB discussion.
It's already sorta current: Discord's brother-in-spirit Slack is already past the hype and way into the Trough of Disillusionment with more and more people complaining about chat killing their ability to focus at work.
The sad thing here is that the people who need to hear what is said in this essay the most, no longer have the attention span to absorb it due to the damage Facebook and similar platforms have caused to their minds.
In my experience, people that have been absorbed into the collective must decide for themselves to leave it. Some may not have the will power or desire to do so and some may be oblivious to the effects it has on them.
In my opinion, this is nearly identical to seeing friends hooked on powerful drugs. I can't tell them it's hurting them. They have to experience enough negative effects to reach out for help themselves. Some choose to ignore many of the harmful effects. Usually a significant amount of damage has occurred by the time they accept something is wrong.
> They have to experience enough negative effects to reach out for help themselves.
I think, when it comes to social media, the harmful effects are much more subtle and harder to identify and articulate than those for addictive drugs. There's a benefit in pointing out and elucidating them, as well and the mechanisms by which they operate. For instance, until someone told me, I didn't realize the Facebook app works just like a slot machine, except it dispenses small amounts of social affirmation and novelty rather than small amounts of money. I just hadn't made the connection.
In principal, I completely agree with you. I have just found the effort futile. This could be the circle of friends I have are just drawn to this. I see it as a dystopian story unfolding in real time. Then again, I saw the FB campus as highly dystopian and couple of my friends understood why.
> In principal, I completely agree with you. I have just found the effort futile. This could be the circle of friends I have are just drawn to this.
Yeah, I think it's more of a marathon than a sprint. Right now, I'm satisfied if someone's engagement is knocked down a level (e.g. heavy to moderate, moderate to light, light to none, none to deleted).
So I'm curious after reading this, since Facebook lives off advertising, do advertisers hold Facebook accountable for generating a certain # of clickthroughs, or heavens forbid, some other ROI metric for their advertising dollars?
Or are advertisers just funneling money into FB regardless of any measurable impact on their revenue just because there are "N millions/billions of active users" monthly on it?
They could certainly claim this even if you logged in once a day, never looked at any ads and then just left. Why continue to pay money for advertising?
For Google, I can see how it makes sense, because you are already in "search mode" for something, so if they pop in an ad that is even semi-relevant, you might click on it - I know I have... but Facebook?
It seems that money follows eyeballs...whether those eyeballs actually deliver any value... who cares. Or am I off?
I think your assertions may be correct and you'd still be off in that the some large fraction of the money facebook takes from big companies came from advertising avenues subject to exactly the same risk of being ignored.
Think billboards, train stations, toilets, tv, cinemas. All of those could be ignored and are often unrelated to the activity conducted at the time.
The value of Facebook if nothing else is that it is one central point to reach everyone's eye at any point in the day.
So for the non-data driven decision maker, Facebook at worst will be no worse than other low-yielding "mindshare/brand awareness" channels and is at least current and conveniently executed. (consider the admin that goes with negotiating and conducting lots of adhoc coverage with each channel)
people who are upvoting anything that includes "facebook" in the title should read it first. it's a bad article full of dramatic language and hyperbole.
okay, but could you give some example to back up your judgment? I don't want to read huge long things like this that are bad nor to let "it's bad" comments be enough to sabotage my potential reading of something.
> media-driven neuroticism—a love of change for its own sake, or neomania, a love of new things. Ultimately, neomania together with the media has a negative effect on our moods, which isn’t surprising considering most of what makes the daily news is negative. This leaves us feeling powerless, like the world is falling apart. So we turn to social media to witness the (seemingly) beautiful lives of celebrities, and the romantic and exciting lives of our friends and family. But this ends up driving the compulsion to compare our own lives with those of the people we see on social media, creating feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and jealousy.
> The more media we consume, the more noise we get (rather than the valuable part, called the signal.) If we consume the news on a yearly basis (in the form of books), we can assume about half of what we consume is signal, and the rest noise (randomness). If we increase our frequency to a daily intake, the composition would increase to about 95% noise, and only 5% signal. If we increase our intake to an hourly frequency (as those who follow the stock market or heavy social media users do) the composition increases to 99.5% noise and 0.5% signal. This is roughly 200% more noise than signal, more toxic noise to both misdirect and distract, and has negative effects on our mood.
It seems it's not just hyperbole, it's plain falacious bullshit. Sorry i did not read it all.
That signal to noise quote is actually great, and one of the reasons why the late Aaron Schwartz refused to read the news. He said in one of his essays it's far more valuable to read books, and basically explained in more words, the signal to noise problem.
can you explain how the logic is not flawed? If you are consuming 50% SNR news, it will be 50% regardless of whether you read once a day or once an hour
For example, let's say you watch TV news each evening. There's a political scandal going on which is featured prominently every night for a whole week as developments go on.
A lot of what is said will be redundant because each report needs to repeat the basics to be able to stand on its own. For a returning viewer, that's not new information, ergo noise.
The journalists and experts may spend time speculating about what happens next. This information will be outdated the next day as new developments take place, so it's noise for me unless the speculation provides value for me between the broadcast and the next day.
I stopped watching TV news on a regular basis, and switched to reading a weekly newspaper for precisely this reason. With a few days of distance from the original event, everyone can catch their breath and take a step back to put the story into the bigger picture.
Now after 6 years, I've cancelled my newspaper subscription in order to read more books, so I'm deliberately zooming out even more.
The logic is: have patience, reject neophilism, take things in with all the benefits of 20/20 hindsight by reading the best from the past year or month or whatever instead of whatever is new right now.
The argument is NOT that news is 50% SNR, the argument is that BOOKS are 50% SNR. Effectively, an edited collection of the news over the course of a year has a low SNR compared to that of following the constant stream of instant-news.
The point was expressed badly, but it's about the way that the average quality of new-stuff is a lot lower than the average quality of a curated set of high-quality stuff from a time period.
It's like how you'll see better movies picking out the best movies from all of movie history versus picking even the best of whatever happens to be the newest.
My comment was about the logic. And in any case books are not news. It's apples to oranges. Sure they have great information, but it's useless if it's way past its actionable date.
Anyway, it's like the difference between checking the top voted stuff here at HN versus the newest stuff.
There's also a strange social dilemma here. In order for the curated stuff to have more value and lower SNR, responsible people need to be looking at the newest submissions. So, it wouldn't work if everyone rejected the neophilism, all of us wanting someone else to do the curation while we wait.
A better argument would be that the people who do the curation (the journalists, book authors, voters on submissions etc.) should aim for a higher SNR and stop publishing or promoting low-value stuff. Unfortunately, there's a conflict of interest. It's more profitable to play up whatever random latest story than to cancel or shorten the news report on a slow-news-day…
This is the money quote.
The article raises a lot of points and is a provocating read. One of the points it brings up has also been on my mind lately: all the content I contribute on the platform just goes there to die. It's not searcheable, it's not easily indexed, it fades quickly within the matter of hours and it doesn't foster in-depth discussion. The silverlining is that this is finally pushing me to get my own site/blog up. Yes I will still link to it from FB and they can analyze the sh*t out of it if they want; but at least I get to keep and curate my own content.