Facebook and YouTube don't target me with political disinformation, but their ads are often for malware like MacKeeper, or Bitcoin scams using fake celebrity endorsements. Even when they're for seemingly harmless merchandise like clothes, they're for Chinese online stores that will keep your money and disappear (wife fell for it once). Maybe my ad situation is so dire because I'm avoiding trackers at all cost, but man it's bad.

I'm amazed that people still act surprised that these platforms are used for hostile disinformation when that's basically their business model. (At least YouTube lets you pay to get rid of ads, although you lose even more privacy on the way.)

Edit: And to add something constructive, I think the only way out is for the EU (where I'm based) to fund a free, public, encrypted messenger service to free its citizens from WhatsApp, and maybe more services later. Social media has become the public space, for better or for worse, and at the very least it needs to be regulated like a utility.

I argue that the "i deleted facebook" is a perfectly typical user of social media. Its trendy to tell that you quit Facebook. Instead "follow me on instagram".

HN is social media, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.

“typical” in the sense that there are lots of examples of it, yes. But “typical” in the sense that it’s something the majority of people do... absolutely not.

My social circle is full of people that deleted FB. But when I step outside that circle not being on FB is very rare.

> I argue that the "i deleted facebook" is a perfectly typical user of social media. Its trendy to tell that you quit Facebook. Instead "follow me on instagram".

I don't think a typical HN participant is deleting their FB account and then telling people to follow them on Instagram.

HN readers know that Instagram is owned by FB.

> HN is social media, and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.

Another good bit of willful ignorance is that “if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product not the customer” seems to not apply to HN.

We can quibble over the definition of social media, but HN is more like forums and usenet dating back to the 80s than it is like Twitter or Facebook. Aside from temporal ranking of submissions, which is both universal and transparent, it's the same.

The big problem with Facebook and Twitter is a potent mix of incentive for controversy, algorithmic amplification, and groupthink bubbles. These problems exist elsewhere as well, so it's not like it's all social media (eg. television news networks in an age of unlimited media choice), but I don't think HN is a useful example to understand any of the macro-dynamics of todays information culture and political landscape.

I disagree.

The forums that I used to use simply made the top shown comments/threads the most recent activity.

The default HN view is clearly based on some algorithm to calculate what is "worth" being on the front page. I read the high comment topics, and there is a ton of groupthink and pushing controversy.

This is also why the HN effect is even a concept. There are enough people here watching controversial topics to hug a modern website to death.

Sure there is groupthink, we're mostly software engineers. But it's a relatively small group, uniform presentation visible to anyone, and very limited reach. Contrast with what's going on in Twitter and Facebook: many orders of magnitude more reach, and it's almost impossible to have any idea what people are seeing or saying in aggregate, and what the many small groupthink bubbles are.

I know you’re arguing this as a note of caution in the opposite direction, but I’d actually argue this as a note in the same direction. You’re essentially arguing that we’re having an effect on something we don’t understand, which is a really bad thing to do in my opinion