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Comment by softwaredoug | Hacker News Reader

Social media can mean so many things these days, I can't tell anymore.

Each of these things need to be studied separately, IMO. As different social media sites have/less of each of these:

* Algorithmic feed - encouraging rabbit holes, reinforcing clicbait and ragebait

* Comment sections - encouraging pile-ons, and vitriolic debate

* Short form content - TikTok videos, etc, quick, snackable content and destroying people's attention span . Then there's the overall ad-based incentive to put all these together to keep you engaged. TBH the fact hacker news has a different model, makes me feel better about it, rather than caring if its social media or not.

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> Comment sections - encouraging pile-ons, and vitriolic debate

The early millennium blogosphere had comments sections, and lots of vitriolic debate. They inspired XKCD 635, after all. I think the problem today is not the opportunity to comment and debate, but rather the fact that the phone keyboard is the input device for the majority of internet users. Population-wide, phone keyboards discourage longform text and nuance, even if some individuals will claim they can comfortably type just as much as on a physical keyboard.

It's crazy how much vitriol there is in local newspaper websites, and this is something that's been going on since the 2000s indeed. It wasn't just flamewars, it was law breaking stuff.

A bunch of the local ones that were super vitriolic just started removing them 5-10 years ago. Godspeed.

Ha, I just recently had uBlock Origin remove all HTML elements on news sites that 1) link to comments (in my country this is usually in the form of comment count right after the headline - and typically the comments are printed in red, ugh), and 2) allow me to comment (usually a button at the end of the article).

News comments in my country have really become almost completely pointless. It's ridiculous or even incredible - honestly, you have something like 1 sensible comment out of 30 or 40. Things started to go noticeably downhill during Covid, and it got worse with the war in Ukraine (we are battling Russian trolls over here). In this light, the uBock Origin solution has really worked wonders for me. Having also removed some other "cruft" like content marketing stories etc, I can read news in a calm, peaceful atmosphere again. Not thinking about commenters (dubbed "commentariat" by a witty local intellectual - scornfully hinting to "proletariat", obviously) or commenting at all.

A lot of sites removed even tranquil and harmonious comments sections due to fear of legal liability, and also because moderating them was a cost center. IMDB used to have a comments section where film buffs could talk about cinema, often in much greater depth and competence than one would find on e.g. Reddit today. Lonely Planet had the Thorn Tree forums where one could discuss travel with a real community of fellow travel nerds. All gone.

Beyond the decline of longform text due to phone keyboards, I actually think that the restriction of active communication to a handful of detrimental social-media platforms is a big part of why people report feeling more lonely today. Back when the blogosphere and Phpbb forum ecosystems were healthy, people talked about finding friends around the world online.

I was wondering if the removal of IMDB's comment section coincided with Amazon's purchase of IMDB, but I looked it up, and apparently Amazon has owned IMDB since 1998?! Somehow I thought it was more recent, like within the past 10 years, at most.

I guess Amazon was content to leave it alone for many many years, but more recently decided to push harder at monetizing it. Even the mobile IMDB app now has ads for random products on amazon.com. It's gross.

I never participated in IMDB's comment forum, but I would sometimes read through some of it, and generally found the quality of discussion to be very high.

Yeah, IMDB losing its discussion board was definitely a loss for the planet.

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