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Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No amount of money can fix that or punish them. I think that sharing things can

Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No amount of money can fix that or punish them. I think that sharing things can be wonderful, but monetizing that or adding Like counts to gamify it is very damaging to people. This idea that everyone should know better and take a ideological stand against some dumb app is ridiculous. Life can be hard at times, and these apps manipulated that.

jjulius 22d ago
>Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No, Meta just amplified it to the nth degree. Humanity has always put an outsized emphases on such affirmation, whether it's reputation, status, belonging, approval, prestige, attractiveness, respectability, yadda yadda yadda. Consumer culture and mass media were already firmly entrenched and doing a damn good job of turning those into visible measures of personal worth in the form of wealth, possessions, beauty standards, popularity, professional success, celebrity... I could go on and on. Meta just put a big ol' bright spotlight on the worst aspects that we were already amplifying, and perhaps sped-run that amplification.
- runarberg 22d ago
  This is the “If I wouldn’t have done it, somebody else would have”. And I personally find it to be a very lame excuse. Villains have agency, and deserve to get the blame for their malicious actions.
  - jjulius 22d ago
    >This is the “If I wouldn’t have done it, somebody else would have”. This is a disingenuous read of my comment. >Villains have agency, and deserve to get the blame for their malevolent actions. On this we absolutely agree, especially in regards to Meta. Nothing in life is that black and white, and there's nuance - to ignore our culture's outsized desire for things like that as a part of what pre-disposes us to being addicted to Meta/et al's bullshit is a fallacy.
- krunck 22d ago
  It is that amplification that is the problem. Everyone has a voice. But if one actor chooses which voices to amplify it is responsible for the results. This episode will come to an end, only to be replaced by a more subtle - surely AI driven - form of amplification/attenuation. Social media is manipulation. Period.
- cimi_ 22d ago
  > No, Meta just amplified it to the nth degree. > [...] > Meta just put a big ol' bright spotlight on the worst aspects that *we* were already amplifying, and *perhaps* sped-run that amplification. No, pick one. If it's the former, it's essentially the same as saying they warped society. I agree that these traits are human and were there before social media, but amplifying, gamifying and exploiting addiction is reprehensible.
  - jjulius 22d ago
    >I agree that these traits are human and were there before social media, but amplifying, gamifying and exploiting addiction is reprehensible. I never said that it wasn't reprehensible.
- matherial 22d ago
  I'd put it differently. The affirmation we were accustomed to generally had some substance. If someone called, sent you a postcard, or met with you, it probably meant they cared at least to some extent. Social media strips all that away to the point where affirmation costs no effort to give but also means nothing. Here's a test I like to recommend: don't post anything on HN, X, or Facebook for a month. See how many people notice or reach out and ask if you're OK. The most likely answer is zero. Hundreds or thousands of "friends", zero meaningful return. This also makes us feel that we constantly need to work for these affirmations. If you don't post, no one likes you. This is not a Facebook problem, but Facebook built its business around it, so they deserve to be singled out.
  - jjulius 22d ago
    >The affirmation we were accustomed to generally had some substance. If someone called, sent you a postcard, or met with you, it probably meant they cared at least to some extent. For the Average Joe, absolutely! Completely agreed. >Social media strips all that away to the point where affirmation costs no effort to give but also means nothing. Here's a test I like to recommend: don't post anything on HN, X, or Facebook for a month. See how many people notice or reach out and ask if you're OK. The most likely answer is zero. Hundreds or thousands of "friends", zero meaningful return. This is what it had been like for celebrities, people of fame, of massive wealth, of great success/achievements, and so forth for a very long time. Cultures put those on a pedestal and encouraged people to want to reach for those same things, to want to be more than the Average Joe. We wanted it, and Meta gave everyone the ability to have it.
    - shepardrtc 22d ago
      > We wanted it, and Meta gave everyone the ability to have it. Slight modification: We wanted to feel good about things, and Meta, knowing exactly what they were doing, took advantage of that to enrich themselves while gaslighting everyone that their manipulation and exploitation was totally ok and normal. Its easy for people without a conscience like Zuckerberg to do that and laugh about it.
- pertymcpert 22d ago
  > No, Meta just amplified No. "Just" is understating the effect.
- intended 22d ago
  > Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation > No, Meta just amplified it to the nth degree. Humanity has always put Those statements are the same. Our species was not designed to deal with the pressures of a A/B tested content fairy, designed by the most well paid minds our most advanced societies have trained, running on infrastructure that is more expensive than the GDP of many nations. There are bounds within which a system functions optimally. When pushed far beyond those bounds, indefinitely, it is absolutely accurate to say the system becomes warped.
- leirtjalwirj 22d ago
  Tobacco existed for eons, and then American tobacco companies engineered it to make it a hundred times as addictive with full knowledge of what they were doing. They intentionally created dependencies. I have no sympathy for them. This is too light of a settlement.
deleted 22d ago
[deleted]
doctorpangloss 22d ago
when florida banned phones from schools, a gold-standard causation study found a benefit of 0.9 percentiles on standardized tests between students who were under the ban and those who could use phones freely. this is about the same impact as studying for a standardized test for 1 hour. we have had a lot of chances to study this stuff, and the results - like the teen sleep study and the teen wellness studies, both conducted by the same people and NOT capable of determining causation, but nonetheless the best publicized in the media - are real, but they are small. so the stuff you are saying might be true, but the effect might be so small as to be meaningless. there are bigger threats to society than social media.
- thinkingtoilet 22d ago
  There are of course bigger threats, but have you ever talked to one of these gen Z zombies that have fried their brain on their phone? My nephew is one. He has the thousand yard stare, can barely have a conversation, and has no ability to do anything off his phone. Of course, it's not everyone, but the effects of phone use are beyond obvious and clearly destructive.
  - SpicyLemonZest 22d ago
    I remember being a zombie nephew, although back in those days it was the Game Boy that purportedly fried my brain. (It was entirely normal, of course, for the uncle who told me that to then leave the conversation and retreat to his armchair for his daily 3 hours of baseball watching; that's sports, you can't fry your brain with sports!)
    - thinkingtoilet 22d ago
      Obviously it's not healthy to plop down in front of a TV for hours ever day. The science behind what social media is doing to young brains is very real, and to compare it to gameboy is arguing in bad faith.
  - doctorpangloss 22d ago
    personally i reject any frame of mind that makes stubborn, labeled generalizations about kids based on one or a handful of interactions. the people who conduct their business this way: they are always projecting.
deleted 22d ago
[deleted]
cyanydeez 22d ago
Meta is capitalism. You're talking about capitalism.
- matchbok3 22d ago
  Capitalism forces parents to let their kids use their phones and social media all day? Hm, odd. I didn't know parents didn't have authority or agency. Good to know.
  - cyanydeez 21d ago
    Yes, do you think Parents spend every waking hour hovering over their kids? Good to know how childless you are, or fortunate enough to grow helicopter wings. The grift is strong when the marks are the fault. Black people are also at fault for living in a ghetto and getting addicted to crack served by the CIA in the 80s. Yes, yes, it's all the addicts fault.
    - matchbok3 21d ago
      In fact I have 3 children, thanks! And controlling your child's screen time + social media is a very possible thing! It's called "raising your children". Please stay on topic lest everyone get confused by your nonsense about unrelated topics. People like you really do make the comments on HN quite bad. Do better!
- leirtjalwirj 22d ago
  Okay, I don't like capitalism either
- tsss 22d ago
  No it isn't.
dismalaf 22d ago
> Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. As someone who graduated high school just before Facebook became a thing: it's always been like this. For better or worse, Facebook and Instagram just meant you could now seek affirmation from a larger community than your local community. While there's definitely some harm with social media (comparing yourself to a perfectly curated profile) there's also plenty of benefits (it's democratized advertising, news, made it easier for small businesses to reach customers, etc...).
jimbokun 22d ago
The people building the app didn’t know any better either. Maybe at some point they realized how addictive and corrosive to society the app had become. But I don’t believe they set out with that as an end goal.
imposter 22d ago
[dead]

jjulius 22d ago

>Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. No, Meta just amplified it to the nth degree. Humanity has always put an outsized emphases on such affirmation, whether it's reputation, status, belonging, approval, prestige, attractiveness, respectability, yadda yadda yadda. Consumer culture and mass media were already firmly entrenched and doing a damn good job of turning those into visible measures of personal worth in the form of wealth, possessions, beauty standards, popularity, professional success, celebrity... I could go on and on. Meta just put a big ol' bright spotlight on the worst aspects that we were already amplifying, and perhaps sped-run that amplification.

runarberg 22d ago
This is the “If I wouldn’t have done it, somebody else would have”. And I personally find it to be a very lame excuse. Villains have agency, and deserve to get the blame for their malicious actions.
- jjulius 22d ago
  >This is the “If I wouldn’t have done it, somebody else would have”. This is a disingenuous read of my comment. >Villains have agency, and deserve to get the blame for their malevolent actions. On this we absolutely agree, especially in regards to Meta. Nothing in life is that black and white, and there's nuance - to ignore our culture's outsized desire for things like that as a part of what pre-disposes us to being addicted to Meta/et al's bullshit is a fallacy.
krunck 22d ago
It is that amplification that is the problem. Everyone has a voice. But if one actor chooses which voices to amplify it is responsible for the results. This episode will come to an end, only to be replaced by a more subtle - surely AI driven - form of amplification/attenuation. Social media is manipulation. Period.
cimi_ 22d ago
> No, Meta just amplified it to the nth degree. > [...] > Meta just put a big ol' bright spotlight on the worst aspects that *we* were already amplifying, and *perhaps* sped-run that amplification. No, pick one. If it's the former, it's essentially the same as saying they warped society. I agree that these traits are human and were there before social media, but amplifying, gamifying and exploiting addiction is reprehensible.
- jjulius 22d ago
  >I agree that these traits are human and were there before social media, but amplifying, gamifying and exploiting addiction is reprehensible. I never said that it wasn't reprehensible.
matherial 22d ago
I'd put it differently. The affirmation we were accustomed to generally had some substance. If someone called, sent you a postcard, or met with you, it probably meant they cared at least to some extent. Social media strips all that away to the point where affirmation costs no effort to give but also means nothing. Here's a test I like to recommend: don't post anything on HN, X, or Facebook for a month. See how many people notice or reach out and ask if you're OK. The most likely answer is zero. Hundreds or thousands of "friends", zero meaningful return. This also makes us feel that we constantly need to work for these affirmations. If you don't post, no one likes you. This is not a Facebook problem, but Facebook built its business around it, so they deserve to be singled out.
- jjulius 22d ago
  >The affirmation we were accustomed to generally had some substance. If someone called, sent you a postcard, or met with you, it probably meant they cared at least to some extent. For the Average Joe, absolutely! Completely agreed. >Social media strips all that away to the point where affirmation costs no effort to give but also means nothing. Here's a test I like to recommend: don't post anything on HN, X, or Facebook for a month. See how many people notice or reach out and ask if you're OK. The most likely answer is zero. Hundreds or thousands of "friends", zero meaningful return. This is what it had been like for celebrities, people of fame, of massive wealth, of great success/achievements, and so forth for a very long time. Cultures put those on a pedestal and encouraged people to want to reach for those same things, to want to be more than the Average Joe. We wanted it, and Meta gave everyone the ability to have it.
  - shepardrtc 22d ago
    > We wanted it, and Meta gave everyone the ability to have it. Slight modification: We wanted to feel good about things, and Meta, knowing exactly what they were doing, took advantage of that to enrich themselves while gaslighting everyone that their manipulation and exploitation was totally ok and normal. Its easy for people without a conscience like Zuckerberg to do that and laugh about it.
pertymcpert 22d ago
> No, Meta just amplified No. "Just" is understating the effect.
intended 22d ago
> Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation > No, Meta just amplified it to the nth degree. Humanity has always put Those statements are the same. Our species was not designed to deal with the pressures of a A/B tested content fairy, designed by the most well paid minds our most advanced societies have trained, running on infrastructure that is more expensive than the GDP of many nations. There are bounds within which a system functions optimally. When pushed far beyond those bounds, indefinitely, it is absolutely accurate to say the system becomes warped.
leirtjalwirj 22d ago
Tobacco existed for eons, and then American tobacco companies engineered it to make it a hundred times as addictive with full knowledge of what they were doing. They intentionally created dependencies. I have no sympathy for them. This is too light of a settlement.

deleted 22d ago

[deleted]

doctorpangloss 22d ago

when florida banned phones from schools, a gold-standard causation study found a benefit of 0.9 percentiles on standardized tests between students who were under the ban and those who could use phones freely. this is about the same impact as studying for a standardized test for 1 hour. we have had a lot of chances to study this stuff, and the results - like the teen sleep study and the teen wellness studies, both conducted by the same people and NOT capable of determining causation, but nonetheless the best publicized in the media - are real, but they are small. so the stuff you are saying might be true, but the effect might be so small as to be meaningless. there are bigger threats to society than social media.

thinkingtoilet 22d ago
There are of course bigger threats, but have you ever talked to one of these gen Z zombies that have fried their brain on their phone? My nephew is one. He has the thousand yard stare, can barely have a conversation, and has no ability to do anything off his phone. Of course, it's not everyone, but the effects of phone use are beyond obvious and clearly destructive.
- SpicyLemonZest 22d ago
  I remember being a zombie nephew, although back in those days it was the Game Boy that purportedly fried my brain. (It was entirely normal, of course, for the uncle who told me that to then leave the conversation and retreat to his armchair for his daily 3 hours of baseball watching; that's sports, you can't fry your brain with sports!)
  - thinkingtoilet 22d ago
    Obviously it's not healthy to plop down in front of a TV for hours ever day. The science behind what social media is doing to young brains is very real, and to compare it to gameboy is arguing in bad faith.
- doctorpangloss 22d ago
  personally i reject any frame of mind that makes stubborn, labeled generalizations about kids based on one or a handful of interactions. the people who conduct their business this way: they are always projecting.

deleted 22d ago

[deleted]

cyanydeez 22d ago

Meta is capitalism. You're talking about capitalism.

matchbok3 22d ago
Capitalism forces parents to let their kids use their phones and social media all day? Hm, odd. I didn't know parents didn't have authority or agency. Good to know.
- cyanydeez 21d ago
  Yes, do you think Parents spend every waking hour hovering over their kids? Good to know how childless you are, or fortunate enough to grow helicopter wings. The grift is strong when the marks are the fault. Black people are also at fault for living in a ghetto and getting addicted to crack served by the CIA in the 80s. Yes, yes, it's all the addicts fault.
  - matchbok3 21d ago
    In fact I have 3 children, thanks! And controlling your child's screen time + social media is a very possible thing! It's called "raising your children". Please stay on topic lest everyone get confused by your nonsense about unrelated topics. People like you really do make the comments on HN quite bad. Do better!
leirtjalwirj 22d ago
Okay, I don't like capitalism either
tsss 22d ago
No it isn't.

dismalaf 22d ago

> Meta has warped society to think that life is meaningless without affirmation. As someone who graduated high school just before Facebook became a thing: it's always been like this. For better or worse, Facebook and Instagram just meant you could now seek affirmation from a larger community than your local community. While there's definitely some harm with social media (comparing yourself to a perfectly curated profile) there's also plenty of benefits (it's democratized advertising, news, made it easier for small businesses to reach customers, etc...).

jimbokun 22d ago

The people building the app didn’t know any better either. Maybe at some point they realized how addictive and corrosive to society the app had become. But I don’t believe they set out with that as an end goal.

imposter 22d ago

[dead]