Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims.

Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with that manipulation. It's long past time to leave it permanently.

And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome.

Right. Anything that matters a blind bit to me is on WhatsApp (don't judge!), I don't consume too much from other sources, and when I do I don't expect anything more than a sensible person would expect. It is what it is. Choose your channel and you'll get what you expect. That's pretty much it.

If you're on Android, you can use revanced to patch social network apps, to, among other things, remove content from non-friends (and ads).

It's scary how empty the feed is once you do this. It can be full days with the same post at the top. And the worst part is that I hadn't noticed how empty it was until I did the change.

I think nothing has contributed to the depersonalization of social media more than the (facebook led, afaik) push to aggressively show as many people as possible everything you post. after the first few jarring reminders that random friends were being served up my comments on other random friends' posts, and that their friends were likewise being served their interactions with my posts, I drew back very sharply from the social aspect.

This article has struck a nerve in the comment section. It's describing how traditional social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are not used for social features anymore, but for content discovery. The descriptions of how people are using Facebook to find new content anonymously are not that different from how we use Hacker News, which has reignited the debate about whether Hacker News is social media.

I had to use the Wayback Machine to dig this up:

> 7 Nov: Anti-procrastination features

> Like email, social news sites can be dangerously addictive. So the latest version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site. There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100414160040/http://ycombinato...

Even Hacker News acknowledged 15 years ago that it was a social site and that social news sites could be "dangerously addictive". The goalposts for defining social media keep moving as people try to avoid any definition that captures their own internet usage, but I think it's important to be honest about what we're all doing here.

Also the noprocrast feature is still there right in your profile, though I don't know if it's documented anywhere.

Yes, the game is over, the corps have won. Where the Internet used to be a forum for creativity, it's now a weapon of influence. Where we used to have an anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) playground, we are now monitored more than anywhere else. Where we used to be able to genuinely connect, everything is now artificial and manufactured. And where we once had control, we are now the product.

Social media was never really “social” in my opinion. Reading updates from hundreds of people you have shallow interactions with offers the illusion of having a social life. So I’m not sure if this change to “fads” makes it meaningfully less social than it already was.

A new game: determine when you meet someone if they use tik-tok or not without asking them.

People's opinions are groomed and programmed. It's pretty hilarious how small minded people are.

Early in COVID I was lucky to have lots of time and a disposable budget. I was seeking experiences and practices to make me be more present, and have more time and productivity back. I ran into this guy named Tommy who led a phone-free movement called Brick.

With his insight I came up with my own system around apps and the computer that I still use today.

Here's how I'd encapsulate it in a nutshell, and the blocks ontop work fantastically to combat all forms of social media addiction. Notification Zero.

Notification Zero is when no apps can ever give you notifications, ever. Not the phone call, not the text, or sms, not slack, etc. Even for work. Now, with that as the default, you have to manually set and think through which apps in which cases do give you notifications, and this philosophy would built itself into a fine AI notifications management system some day. So what notifies me? When my phone is not on DND (rarely, when I'm expecting a call) only starred contacts calls. Texts never notify me. People know to call if it's serious. With this path I use my technology more intentionally, and when I open my phone there's nothing nagging me for my attention because it's a blank screen with no apps with no alarms set by other people ("notifications are like alarms other people set for you" - Naval R.)

I don't miss it. and it feels great, minimalist and clean, and allows my attention to stay focused on what I opened my phone or computer int he first place. (My computer is the same: blank screen, matching black, no apps or notifications. On Mac, I set the mission bar at the bottom to only show apps if they are open, and as we speak, only 7 open windows appear at the bottom though the bar is hidden unless mouse overed). The screen becomes a canvas for what I'm actively working on, tactically laid out for my particular use & focus.

Happy to share more if its of help to anyone.

If this subject interests you, and you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death

Facebook just isn't a social media site anymore. They pivoted, and did so multiple times.

Remember when they were going to be a games platform, where Farmville was their big hit? They eventually abandoned that and then wanted to be a video and streaming platform. Then Metaverse VR was going to replace everything. Now they're some sort of AI company.

People long ago started migrating to Whatsapp, Discord, and similar groups for actual socializing. They did seemingly panic a bit at that trend and bought Whatsapp.

I used to browse through my instagram feed a few times per month. Just to keep updated about those friends who often posted there. Now it's mostly crappy shorts and I can't even find the "friend feed" anymore. No idea if it's just well hidden or completely gone. Now I don't use it anymore at all.

Yes, we've moved from town squares to private parties - whatsapp chats, discord servers, even IRC still exists. (Bluesky is a bit of an exception but they'll need to get enough stable revenue at some point.)

Interestingly, in-person "nerd" events seem to be going just fine - LARP, D&D, board games, historical reenactment, trading card games and tournaments like M:tG, and a lot more.

The algorithmic feeds are to blame. This would happen less with a chronological feed.

I think we will see in the future algorithmic feeds addiction rehab, algorithmic feeds self-exclusion lists (like for casinos) and even algorithmic feeds ban, which would probably be a net positive for humanity.

I think I'm on an A/B test on the Facebook app, now whenever I open the app it goes straight to reels and starts playing videos with sound enabled. I looked through all settings to try to disable this but couldn't, so I finally just gave up and uninstalled it

I open the app to keep up with what my friends are doing, and also check the dating portion of the app for new matches. I purposely always avoid reels on any app, because I hate them and what they do to people. So when I open the app and it immediately starts playing reels with sound on and no way to disable it, it feels like a slap in the face