Social media is killing discourse because it’s too much like TV (2016)

technologyreview.com

24 points·Kaibeezy··8 comments

Social media is full of videos and images (instead of text) because that's what our dopamine receptors want. The reality is, if Facebook started showing less videos, more people would move to TikTok.

I think, as a society, we should actively "slow things down" and be more mindful and thoughtful of our emotions, actions, policies, and impact on a daily basis; but the audiovisualness of social media is 100% a symptom, and not a cause.

Humans have a long, deep and broad history of being told and shown stuff, whether epic poetry, puppet shows, political oratory, etc., whereas access to written materials was almost always sharply limited. Relatively widespread, relatively free access to reading materials is recent and patchy.

Across all that, we’ve also always had classes lifted by access to written materials and those that carried the weight.

The essay that brought this together for me was posted a few months ago. Scariest damn thing I’ve ever read.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25311662

(2016)

It's funny because I'm trying to solve this issue for TV (https://couchmate.com), which is pretty underserved when you look at current solutions for discourse about linear TV content.

Right, 2016. I should have added that to the title. Perhaps a mod can assist.

nice concept

Added. Thanks!

Mobile Facebook literally took away the message button and replaced it with a watch inane videos button...

OP here to clarify this is “public discourse”, not Discourse forum software nor the Discord app.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com