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Comment by danfang | Hacker News Reader

I actually think there are two main camps here: people who take photos to share to their followers, and people who take photos for their own recollection and to share with the people closest to them (e.g. family photo albums).

I totally agree that the former is toxic and damages our mental health in many ways, like a digital version of smoking and vaping.

I recently launched a tool for our generation to manage and maintain a healthy relationship with social media - it moves away from the current trend of superficiality that exists on FB and IG right now.

I'd super appreciate if you all checked it out and let me know what you think! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20933272

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I think your tool is very cool and building tools for recreational image libraries is super neat. But I can’t agree with you that “a healthy relationship with social media” is a possible state of affairs apart from wholesale avoidance of social media. There is simply too much asymmetry information advantage for platform maintainers (even in decentralized cases) for it to be possible.

Could you elaborate on what you mean by "asymmetry information advantage"?

Personally, I've used tons of social media services growing up - AIM, MSN Messenger, GChat, G+, Blogspot, FB, IG, etc. I think all of them have positive traits, at least had positive traits when they started out. I've also experienced a healthy balance between online relationships and in-personal relationships. I just think it's super critical for our generation to move back to platforms that are healthier and better for our mental and social wellbeing.

I think AIM / MSN Messenger etc. don’t remotely qualify as social media, but already it feels like we’re veering into unproductive debate. My position is that “healthy” and “social media” don’t mix. There is no positive subset of Facebook. The entire conceptual value proposition of the platform is unhealthy from first principles. It requires you to trust a provider with data in such a manner that this trust is, literally by definition, unobtainable. Just can’t be done. The type of draconian HIPAA-like legal framework (plus untold billions spent on enforcement & compliance) that represents the minimum requirement is just not compatible with the existence of a corporation that makes money from being a repository and sharing platform for this data.

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