Hacker News Reader

Comment by caldarons | Hacker News Reader

I got off Instagram and Facebook about 2 years ago and never got on Tik-Tok and I can safely say it was one of the best choices I ever made. I am still on Twitter which I check about once every few days for about 10 minutes.

I realized how my peers (umivesity students) are affected by social media, most of them are endlessly circling instagram and tik-tok every time there is a spare second. Once I got off I discovered how much time it frees up for thinking and/or doing other activities. I get the feeling that people are losing the joy of being alone with one's thoughts. The hard part of being off social media is the fact that it is such a central part of our social interactions, sometimes I feel "out of the loop" and I still get A LOT of weird looks when I say to people that I am off social media.

All in all I am still convinced that being off social media is a net positive and I definitely advise people to try and see how it works out for them.

View on HN

don’t forget that you typed this message on social media

can you elaborate ? This has imho nothing to do with social media. I check hackernews daily, I pick articles (or discover new tools ...) that spark my curiosity and I read them, period.

Sometimes I engage and exchange with other people, leave my opinion etc ... This is nothing close to what Facebook, Instagram and co are up to ...

Please explain.

It’s not that complicated.

If you like it (HN for example), then it’s not social media.

I mean just look at what you just typed. You talk about a site you check daily for new content and interact with other people on. That’s social media — which in this case you just happen to like.

You're correct in some sense. But the kind of "social media" we're actually talking about is the one that tries to hook you up and manipulate you. I mean, this is what I am talking about here.

In that sense, everything is social media. A blog post is social media, because the strict definition of social media is something like that :

"Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks"

Do we agree on some points or I am totally off?

> Do we agree on some points or I am totally off?

Yes.

> In that sense, everything is social media

Correct.

> But the kind of "social media" we're actually talking about

There are social media that you think are good and social media that you think are bad. Both both are still social media.

Social media’s addictive nature is driven by a personalized feed using every trick in the book to maximize the time you spend there.

Nothing about HN falls into that category. The UI is as unaddictive as it can get. The feed is not personalized. There are restrictions on how much you can post. You cannot follow anything. You cannot express interests (beyond the broad interest you’ve expressed by visiting HN in the first place). There is no endless scroll. Heck, even the pagination with very limited options is almost designed to ensure you don’t go beyond a couple of pages.

And it’s obviously not social media because there is no friend/follower/connection graph

You’ve just made up your own definition of ‘social media’ that conveniently excludes HN — much as I made up my own definition that includes HN.

No. I’ve done 2 things.

1. I’ve described the factors that make social media especially addictive.

2. I’ve defined social media.

So your criticism, however accurate, applies only to the single sentence at the end of my comment.

I think we're all correct in some sense. The thing is @paulcole is taking "social media" in the strict definition of the term, when most of the people here are talking specifically about a bunch of social media.

Which makes sense to me. Because ask someone on the street to provide the names of 3 social media platforms, they'll in 99% of the cases mention Facebook, Instagram etc ... And none of them knows that a blog post is social media ...

Indeed. Most of the time I don't even bother to read the usernames of people I'm interacting with — or just glance at them briefly to separate the voices in any given thread. The comments here, for me, are about their content and their place within the context of the article linked and the following discussion, not who wrote them.

Social media is all about following people or interests and having the platform tailor an algorithm for you in order to present you with a unique view of their data. Hacker News has none of that.

I agree with what you just said. One cannot compare HN with Facebook for instance. Even though I understand what others are saying. We need a better definition for "social media" I guess. Or we might need a new definition to target specifically those you mentioned.

> Most of the time I don't even bother to read the usernames of people I'm interacting with

This is interesting because I never really noticed that I have no idea who wrote what unless somebody else points out "hey, look, John Carmack just replied!" or whatever.

Whatever is written on HN stands on its content alone. It is meritocratic in the best way.

it seems to me that you’re confusing this idea of “harmful social media” - i.e. facebook, twitter, etc - with the concept of social media itself. HN avoids dark patterns and tries to circumnavigate the engagement trap, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an online medium through which people - including you - communicate

Social media is media that is augmented with the ability to socialize with other people. That's what we are doing here right now.

just to be pedantic, the singular of “media” is “medium”

"Social media is when u talk" has to be one of the worst internet revisionisms in recent times. The term describes big, massively centralized (micro)blogging platforms attached to your social circle and real identity. Forums are not social media, chatrooms are not social media, content aggregators are not social media.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com