What about monetizing and marketing people's affection? The dowry would be the classic example, I'd be curious why you (presumably) are against dowries.
To me it's basically the same, certain things are corrupted by their commodification, affection, attention, others.
Besides when you say:
>The world survived, thrived
You're not exactly speaking to the people hooked on video games or TV or Facebook. Your uncle lost years to a game but because what, he doesn't do it anymore it's magically fine?
Are you also okay with advertising cigarettes to children? Cigarette breaks provide great opportunities for social gathering and let you interact with other people you never would have otherwise. A smoker may lose a lot of time to smoking but when they come up for air the world will be exactly as they left it. They'll manage their enjoyment of tobacco just like everyone else.
Is it disgusting when a casino calls up a gambler who's trying to quit and offers them a credit to come back and play? I happen to believe that's a huge social ill and in many cases basically equivalent to what Facebook is doing, just that it costs time instead of money.
> What about monetizing and marketing people's affection? The dowry would be the classic example, I'd be curious why you (presumably) are against dowries.
No, the dowry wouldn't be the classic example because that's more akin to prostitution or slave trade than monetizing and marketing affection. This especially considering a lot of marriages were done out of convenience and need rather than out of love.
Better examples: Valentines day, Christmas day, or the mere idea that you have to celebrate someone's birthday. I have seen movies about the tragedy of a kid not getting a christmas present like it's traumatizing. This is marketing. As a result you have hordes of parents playing into an objectively ridiculous legend that has transformed St. Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, 2nd century into a Coca-cola developed mascot of consumption.
Anyone who's gotten married can see how ridiculous the "love" and "affection" marketing gets. Facebook isn't as much in this business; it actually is on the business of attention, and there's stuff to be said about that.
> Are you also okay with advertising cigarettes to children?
I get that Facebook keeps being compared to cigarette companies under the whole addiction narrative, but lets not forget the big reason cigarettes aren't marketed to children; they kill a lot of people, and perhaps most distressing, they kill people who don't smoke them. They are also physically addictive; this is a big issue.
I think your comparison with gambling was more appropriate, or one to video games / TV like the in the comment you replied to.
Tossing aside slavery, it's akin to prostitution because it's very similar. But prostitution is also a classic example of the commoditization of affection/sex.
>This especially considering a lot of marriages were done out of convenience and need rather than out of love.
Well yes, that's what commoditization does. It turns something into a marketable commodity. That people bargained over dowries/marriage like they do over other goods is exactly the point.
I think what you and many of us feel is that there is some intrinsic quality to our affection that is degraded when it's turned into a commodity and I'm using that to suggest that there is something similarly degrading about turning our attention into a commodity, to be bought and sold and exploited for profit whenever possible.
I do like the example of Christmas, you could draw a parallel between the message of a Charlie Brown Christmas and the message of a Target Christmas commercial that would prove a similar point.
>I think your comparison with gambling was more appropriate, or one to video games / TV like the in the comment you replied to.
You're right, cigarettes are an overblown comparison. I was just hunting for something which is pushed on children, fortunately gambling isn't usually. (maybe csgo lotteries are something are an exception here which would be a good example)
> Tossing aside slavery, it's akin to prostitution because it's very similar. But prostitution is also a classic example of the commoditization of affection/sex.
Or, you know... porn?
It's not quite the same level, but we're finding increasing evidence that Facebook and general social media use is associated with increased anxiety and depression [1]. Since depression is now the leading source of disability world-wide, the comparison is not entirely overblown.
I do like and agree with your alternate example of Valentine's Day.
[1] https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi...
I mean, what does Heroin do to your brain? Releases a ton of extra dopamine and serotonin and crap, right? And what happens when you see that 14 people liked your post?
Okay, so maybe Facebook doesn't change the way that your brain's receptors work with long-term use, but don't deny that people keep going back for that hit of inclusion.
Effect size matters. A lot. I haven't seen any convincing arguments that Facebook is even as bad as the classic "couch potato" TV junkie scenario. It's impossible to prevent someone from making bad decisions, so the size of the downside risk has to be strongly considered before claiming a problem is worth heavy-handed fixes.
People behave differently due to new technology, sure, that's a given. Is it catastrophically worse than easy access to extremely potent drugs? The outcomes suggest no.
Some people use "it releases dopamine" like that's a bad thing, like our bodies weren't wired with dopamine receptors to teach us how to function in a society. Are you proposing we get rid of everything that releases dopamine? We should all live a bleak and meaningless life?
Humans are social creatures. We're wired to seek positive feedback from our peers. Getting a laugh in a face-to-face conversation is no different than getting a smiley face in an SMS is no different than getting likes on Facebook.
Obviously not, but you believe gambling can be addictive right?
"Is having a conversation a chemical addiction?"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16343850
"My point is, dopamine is addictive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16344356
This means your argument isn't over whether or not social media (or other dopaminagenic activities) are or aren't addictive. You've conceded that point. Which ryandrake had expressly rejected another two posts up:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16342034
The question is whether or not they ought be regulated in some way.
I'd also focus far less on the specific mechanism (though gambling, drugs, social interactions, and A/B-tested sticky-on-page highly-habit-forming social media all do, as you've explicitly stated, rely on the same chemical mechanism), and instead, in the resultant behaviours.
I'm well aware that etymologies are neither clinical diagnostic tools nor necessary indications of present use. I still find them interesting in informing a discussion. And the etymology of "addiction" is a case in point:
c. 1600, "tendency, inclination, penchant" (a less severe sense now obsolete); 1640s as "state of being (self)-addicted" to a habit, pursuit, etc., from Latin addictionem (nominative addictio) "an awarding, a delivering up," noun of action from past participle stem of addicere "to deliver, award; devote, consecrate, sacrifice" (see addict (v.)). In the sense "compulsion and need to take a drug as a result of prior use of it" from 1906, in reference to opium (there is an isolated instance from 1779 with reference to tobacco).
Same point. Same goalposts. Same location. Feel free to disagree, but I know what I wrote.
Internet gambling is discouraged/banned to the extent it threatens the local tax base, nobody cares about gambling addicts.
What I'm really asking though is what lines you draw between something like 'social media addiction' and 'gambling addiction'? Or is the only difference in your mind the inclusion in the DSM?
To me, Facebook use is a dirty bad habit like nail biting. It’s not a family-destroying addiction. Totally open to the medical establishment proving otherwise though.
Seriously though good points. I understand the hate and fear (if you would call it that) of old FB, however, and am among the group who is definitely Social Media averse. I'm not convinced Facebook actually holds old friendships together (anecdotal: I don't have FB and have lots of old friends. The same can be said for my parents and grandparents...). I also don't expect 100% of my waking hours to be spent productively (whee MUGEN and IRC, or whatever your drug is.)
However, with all that being considered, there is something very weird about the asymmetry of Facebook. They collect and store all this data, know a lot of intimate details and personal information about people, control the medium in which many people use exclusively for digital communication, and aren't really answerable to anyone except their Executives, Board of Directors and Shareholders (Wealthy people? I don't know anyone who owns a significant share of this big corporation). So yeah, weird. "Hi, please use your free time to tell me a lot of intimate and personal detail about yourself so that I can do whatever I want with this information and you have no say in how its used. Kthx"
Yeah, um, no.
What I think is interesting about the events in the article is the way the that politicians and media express concern without proposing anything. Could this kind of talk be reasonably interpreted as a negotiation between Facebook and the political class relating to Facebook’s add sales practices and political influence?
People are certainly talking about excessive social media use whether FB likes it or not. I have seen tons of articles and prominent quotes on the subject of social media harm to health. I just searched for “excessive social media use” and got articles from Forbes, The Telegraph, Time, BBC, HuffPo, thetimes.co.uk, Vancouver University, and a large pile of high impact journal articles that seem to contain related language, like “impact of social media use on children.”
So lots of people are upset but neither Soros nor the author proposed any particular remedy, and the problem sounds awfully hard to clearly understand, let alone to effectively regulate. The economics of social media seem to necessitate maximizing user engagement, and wining at network effect. If Facebook didn’t do it this way, would whoever did have won the space instead? How do we incentivize social media companies to make products that are somewhat compelling, but not too much?
Is it cynical to suppose that politicians are using the implicit threat of regulation and bad press to compel FB to limit it’s add sales and suppress “fake news”, while actually having little appetite to intervene in the interest of public health? Also, are conventional media outlets afraid of Facebook because it threatens their revenue model, and undermines their credibility?
The goal of propaganda is not to make people think a certain way; it's to get people to act a certain way. Entertainment is centered around consumption, not interaction. If I can get people who dislike something to read entertaining articles about how it's bad instead of going out and protesting or canceling accounts, then I've successfully suppressed dissent.
The solution to Facebook was already spelled out in the article. There just wasn't a call to action.
Facebook’s revenue, for example, is almost entirely a function of the number of minutes the average user spends per week engaging with the service. Reducing this by even 5 to 10% — by tamping down or eliminating some of Facebook’s most addictive features — would have a disastrous impact on the quarterly earnings of this $500 billion company.
Just stop using it and it will die. I don't. Why can't you?
I don't use it either, but apparently lots of people still do. It seems like you're proposing that we should, in aggregate, spontaneously become more virtuous. How?
Since you've done that, you have several options to change other people. You can evangelize. You can promote or design alternatives. GNU Social has been extremely successful. Running an instance would be an easy and educational way to help. You could write libraries for the newly specified social web protocols.
The important thing to remember is that it's okay to fail. It's better to be a hypocrite than apathetic.
What is holding them back are the friends who are not using any other social media.
This statement is laughable:
> The thing that actually holds old friendships together and provides endless opportunities to interact with other people that you would have never done otherwise
Facebook's innovation was trapping users in a walled garden with omnipresent surveillance and advertising, perfectly timed with mass adoption of social media.
Assumption: Facebook is more effective at capturing attention than TV, TV was more effective than radio, radio was more effective than newspaper.
Follows: If this process continues, at some point we will develop something which captures attention as perfectly as possible.
Opinion: That hypothetical end case is most certainly a social ill, especially for democracies.
So whether it's Facebook, or whether it's the thing after Facebook, if we keep stepping down this path we're eventually going to end up somewhere very dark.
That isn't an innovation. They're AOL 2.0.
So... a shopping mall? A school? Any corporate job? A walk through downtown? "In-network" minutes and long distance charges on your phone? Religious institutions?
Whatever Facebook is doing wrong for society, they are standing on the backs of giants. Walled garden or not, surveillance or not, advertising or not, people have never been as free to socialize as they are today. If there is something negative on your Facebook feed, you are solely responsible for it being there. It takes two clicks to make it go away forever.
What do I click on to make the stuff Facebook decided I shouldn't see show up?
Content editors and curators have existed for a long time.
Were TV ads ever as granular in its tracking as Facebook is today?
You're being silly.
It was a broadcasting-only service with a high cost of entry. You need big money to put your thoughts on TV. As someone from a country where the big media conglomerates and the government are helplessly colluded, social media comes as a very welcome break and counter-force.
They have always had ways of knowing exactly what their content does without having to track millions of clicks.
We have had sampling methods that makes the need to examine census pointless, it is just cool that today computing can handle the whole data set and scary that we are.
Still, today, some of the best ways to truly examine massive swaths of data is deducing to what is missing. Who turns their phones off from 10pm-2am and turns them back on at 2am? Who wasn't looking at facebook and watching netflix all night while everyone else was?
> Internet Gaming Disorder is a “Condition for Further Study” in the DSM-5 (APA 2013). This means that it is not an "official" disorder in the DSM, but one on which the American Psychiatric Association request additional research. Upon further research, the APA may or may not decide to make the disorder "official" in future editions of the DSM.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/here-there-and-everywhe...
These things don't share many of the symptoms that physical addictions or even gambling are associated with.
Have a look at the actual DSM-V section on it (starts at p795): http://displus.sk/DSM/subory/dsm5.pdf
As for how proposed criteria sets are actually recognized:
Proposed Criteria sets are presented for conditions on which future research is encouraged. The specific items, thresholds, and durations contained in these research criteria sets were set by expert consensus—informed by literature review, data reanalysis, and field trial results, where available—and are intended to provide a common language for researchers and clinicians who are interested in studying these disorders. It is hoped that such research will allow the field to better understand these conditions and will inform decisions about possible placement in forthcoming editions of DSM. The DSM-5 Task Force and Work Groups subjected each of these proposed criteria sets to a careful empirical review and invited wide commentary from the field as well as from the general public. The Task Force determined that there was insufficient evidence to warrant inclusion of these proposals as official mental disorder diagnoses in Section II. These proposed criteria sets are not intended fo r clinical use; only the criteria sets and disorders in Section II of D S M -5 are officially recognized and can be used for clinical purposes.
I think the best example are little kids with no self control watching endless amount of dopamine hitting videos like kinder eggs. People realized little kids loved these simple toy opening videos and the algorithm was more than happy enough to increase engagement by feeding kids these videos.
What's wrong with this? Lots of people like television. I like television. My life isn't that great and I'll take the distraction, thanks.
Moreover, "who cares" now includes numerous former (and current) Facebook employees, executives, and investors.
Even if I don't have a Facebook account, I am tagged in so many pictures that Facebook can identify me. I find that problematic.
Even if I don't have a Gmail account, so many people do that Google has a significant number of my email conversations.
There are many things Facebook/Google/Amazon can do, and I cannot prevent them even if I never interacted or wished to interact with them.
What is MY recourse against Facebook/Google/Amazon if I wish them not to be in my life?
[0] https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/RU
[1] https://www.alexa.com/topsites/countries/CN
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat
[3] https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/1/16721230/wechat-china-app-...
But an answer to your specific question, as far as specifically avoiding Facebook, Google, and Amazon, is to only visit websites that don't have any link to those sites (e.g. no Facebook link, no Google Analytics script and make sure no one you know uses Google Voice, and not built on AWS), and don't use email anymore, just text messaging and phone calls.
I'm from a country where the TV and state are highly colluded and social media has come as a welcome alternative. Moreover, are these "polarization issues" the USA currently experiencing a product of social media, or its own cultural problems, surfaced by social media? You're not the only country on Facebook, remember that.
Also, I'd rewrite your opening rhetorical question for clarity:
Was TV, as a homogenizing force that entertained and dumbed people down to what big-money publishers wanted them to believe, a better alternative?
I'm from Mexico. A good example to look at is Carmen Aristegui. She's an award winning journalist, most recently named one of the world's greatest leaders by Forbes, but she's been shunned from most traditional media outlets. After she reported on a corruption scandal involving the president she was fired from the broadcaster she worked for, and has since relied on web/social media to keep doing her job.
Meanwhile Televisa (biggest TV network in Mexico) reports memes [1], random crazy people [2], and is known to be very politically biased [3]. No award-winning journalists on TV.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1XceNu-LE (this girl's XV birthday became a big meme in Mexico)
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObV9XDBLRUk
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Televisa#Criticisms_and_contro...
You may be right that cries of "society is being ruined" are nothing new. However, I think Facebook is different enough from what came before (such as TV) in a few ways that matter, that we should take this more seriously.
* FB is _interactive_. The effects of somebody responding to you, liking your posts, etc., are much deeper than you passively consuming some content on a screen.
* FB is _intrusive_. It sends you notifications on your phone, reminder emails, inserts calls-to-action in your news feed, etc. It's really hard to ignore.
* FB is a lot more _personalized_. It knows a lot about you. Ads are personalized. Content is specifically targeted towards your interests. Stuff is "recommended by <your-friend>". This makes it a much harder addiction to kick.
FWIW, I don't think FB is _that_ bad. Many mobile "free to play" games, on the other hand, ... They use so many dark patterns and insidious techniques to purposely capture people's (and especially kids') attention and time, while simultaneously trying to get them to spend real money. Geez. I hate them with a passion.
> There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this.
Even if that were true - and I don't think it is - I'm not sure why we should just accept the idea that it's OK for us to be lied to and manipulated. I remember TV in the 90s, and the ads were fucking horrible - many would try to capitalize on the same basic motivations: sex, greed, vanity.
Why is it OK that Facebook is going down the same path? Why should we not expect a better society than this same garbage repeated at us using every new medium? If AR becomes a big thing, are we going to have to live in a world filled with virtual Viagra billboards everywhere we walk?
That this is a social illness that has been with us since before the Internet does not excuse its continued existence. It's a waste of what Clay Shirky has dubbed "Cognitive Surplus":
> It represents the ability of the world's population to volunteer and to contribute and collaborate on large, sometimes global, projects. Cognitive surplus is made up of two things. [First,] the world's free time and talents. The world has over a trillion hours a year of free time to commit to shared projects. Now, that free time existed in the 20th century. [However, the media landscape in the 20th century was mainly very good] at helping people consume, and we got, as a result, very good at consuming.
> [That is the second part of cognitive surplus. Now that] we've been given media tools -- the Internet, mobile phones -- that let us do more than consume, what we're seeing is that people weren't couch potatoes because we liked to be. We were couch potatoes because that was the only opportunity given to us. We still like to consume, of course. But it turns out we also like to create, and we like to share. And it's those two things together -- ancient human motivation and the modern tools to allow that motivation to be joined up in large-scale efforts -- that are the new design resource. And using cognitive surplus, we're starting to see truly incredible experiments in scientific, literary, artistic, political efforts.
That people wasted their lives in front of TV does not mean that we should have to keep accepting business models based on "zombification", especially when the media of the 21st century has so much potential for individual empowerment compared to television before it.
But I do agree that Facebook should not receive all the blame. You know which product is not criticised nearly enough in this context? The iPhone. Because at its core, what differentiated the iPhone from the other smartphones when it was introduced, was that is was a portable, always-online computer optimised for consumption. And it definitely had a large role in the rise of the current form of social media, compared to the internet communities that existed before it.
The attention economy is the equivalent of bitcoin mining, except with human brain cycles: its economy is fundamentally based on wasting resources, revealing an utterly cynical view of the worth of human life.
On an individual level the attention economy is a waste of human life. On a societal level it is a waste of cognitive surplus. On a global level, whether or not we waste that cognitive surplus will mean the difference between collectively being able to get out of the mess we dug ourselves into in the last century, or racing ever harder towards collapse with then having to try to recover after that.
How is that for apocalyptic bombast?
[0] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_...
The war on social media is simply about who gets control over people's minds.
Social media sites like Reddit, Google and even HN gave in to the elite. Facebook is holding out.
You're kidding, right? Facebook sells ad space to "the elite" at bargain basement prices. Never in history has micro-targeted propaganda been this cheap for someone looking to manipulate public opinion.
Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, then get back to their vapid entertainment.
People would make a game out of who could play the longest in the arcade on one quarter. With $5, a savvy gamer could spend all day staring at lights and hearing beeps.
The world survived, thrived, and devised ever more devious and insidious ways to hook your mind. We weathered Everquest and the MMORPGs. Psychedelic drugs. Outrage didn't stop those from spreading long and wide.
My uncle lost years to Everquest. When he came up for air he found the world just as he left it. Now he manages his gaming habits just like everyone else.
Out of all the pseudo-addictive things people want to complain about, we're picking on Facebook? The thing that actually holds old friendships together and provides endless opportunities to interact with other people that you would have never done otherwise? Or is the argument that every time someone gets the urge to play Scrabble, they need to coordinate a face-to-face game instead of just loading up Words with Friends?
C'mon. I guess bombastic apocalyptic bullshit will never go out of style.