People are realizing that social media is draining, predatory, and entirely superfluous.
Of course there are employees here of social media corporations who would want to stem the tide of this mass exodus, but it's useless. Social media corporations have overstepped their boundaries and become a net negative on human society.
Deleting your social media accounts results in an immediate improvement of quality of life and mental wellbeing. These sites are intentionally designed with predatory psychological mechanisms, they are designed by hackers like ourselves, but the hackers who see "social engineering" as a perfectly ethical practice and not simply psychological manipulation.
These services are designed to be addictive, full stop. Addiction is not healthy, and neither is social media. Maybe this will bring SV back to its roots, real technological progress for the nation and not desperate bids for data mining based on cheap psychological tricks.
People are growing sickened of the endless scrolls of psychological disturbing viral content combined with the false positivity of human interest stories. It is deepening social divisions, racial conflicts, political partisanship, and general misery. We don't need social media, what we need is real social connections in an increasingly isolated society, and social media stands in the way of this.
> Of course there are employees here of social media corporations who would want to stem the tide of this mass exodus, but it's useless.
Is there evidence of a mass exodus? The parent post seems to me like kind of social media post driven by addictive emotions. It's an expression of strong emotions, but curious, exploratory, or providing knowledge.
> real technological progress for the nation
When was YC's motive to serve the 'nation'? They existed long before the recent surge in economic nationalism (a platform of some very bad people in history, BTW), are an international company in an exceptionally international business - one mainly driven by a free international WAN, and, I would have said, and I long heard from SV in general, a desire to change the world for the better. To help people, not some putative 'nation' - which always ends up meaning 'my power', and by talking about the 'nation' instead of people, they exclude other people from power and basic human rights. The purpose of government is to serve and protect people.
I think social media is just serving people what they want. We can argue if this is a good thing or not.
> Addiction is not healthy, and neither is social media.
Maybe I’m an old head, but maybe we need more self discipline in the world? I know this is not pragmatic but I feel there are lots of things that are addictive (even things that were not designed to be).
> We don't need social media, what we need is real social connections
Maybe I’m using social media differently, but what is in today's social media that makes it mutually exclusive to real social connections?
>Maybe I’m an old head, but maybe we need more self discipline in the world?
Quitting and staying off of toxic social media is a great exercise in self discipline.
>>We don't need social media, what we need is real social connections
>Maybe I’m using social media differently, but what is in today's social media that makes it mutually exclusive to real social connections?
That doesn't mean they're mutually exclusive, it means one is overwhelmingly superior to the other, and that the major shift over the past decade has been in the wrong direction.
Even if your take the full libertarian stance that all drugs should be legal, the parent comment did not seem to be advocating for outlawing social media. It was positing that people have realized that social media is an addictive toxin and are deciding, on their own, to bail out. If something is truly addictive, suggesting people develop some self discipline and partake just little seems misguided at best. It's way easier to just abstain completely. Nobody wants to end up like Doug Stamper dispensing three drops of whiskey from syringe onto their tongue.
Of course there are employees here of social media corporations who would want to stem the tide of this mass exodus, but it's useless. Social media corporations have overstepped their boundaries and become a net negative on human society.
Deleting your social media accounts results in an immediate improvement of quality of life and mental wellbeing. These sites are intentionally designed with predatory psychological mechanisms, they are designed by hackers like ourselves, but the hackers who see "social engineering" as a perfectly ethical practice and not simply psychological manipulation.
These services are designed to be addictive, full stop. Addiction is not healthy, and neither is social media. Maybe this will bring SV back to its roots, real technological progress for the nation and not desperate bids for data mining based on cheap psychological tricks.
People are growing sickened of the endless scrolls of psychological disturbing viral content combined with the false positivity of human interest stories. It is deepening social divisions, racial conflicts, political partisanship, and general misery. We don't need social media, what we need is real social connections in an increasingly isolated society, and social media stands in the way of this.