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

Insanity

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.

everdrive

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.

45612987

Given that even reaction videos from modern Jerry Springer figures with 20 million subscribers can attract 20,000 comments that all parrot their guru and demand doxxing of the target or worse, it is no longer a mystery how totalitarian states form. Maybe that is unfair to Jerry Springer. He at least heard both sides of a story.

gwbas1c

I (mostly) stopped looking at Facebook around 2016. It just wasn't fun anymore; and at least for me, my feed was all political nonsense trying to manipulate me.

SirFatty

And this is a revelation to the BBC? Who doesn't know this?

sublinear

> What we're seeing is social media splitting in two [...] young people publish a lot of content but it's more funny parodies and remixes of existing material. The goal is to make people laugh, not to tell people about their lives. [...] Whether it's TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, we are a long way from the "digital town square" of personal interaction that social media was even just a few years ago. I don't understand why this article has to play dumb. This is how most of the internet always was until commercial interest invaded social media. They yelled their billions of dollars worth of messaging so loudly for over a decade that it drowned out anything authentic. Now that there's a political break away from all the tone deaf pseudoprogressive messaging and the money for it has dried up, what did they expect to see there? Most people never posted sincere "life updates" unless they had something to sell or were a naive part of the bandwagon.

avaer

Imagine if everyone called it "fad media" or something more accurate. It would be dead overnight. The only thing keeping it afloat is the lie that it's social.

lo_zamoyski

In other news, water is wet. This has virtually always been the case and it is only "social media" is an Orwellian sense. It is an antisocial consumerist machine. In consumerism, everything is for sale.

IshKebab

Now? It's been like that for a decade.

lenerdenator

Friends haven't been a focus of social media feeds for almost 20 years now. There's not a lot of money in hosting a website where people share in-jokes and comment on each others' graduations, engagements, and baby announcements. Well, maybe there is, but there's a lot more money in farming engagement through ragebait and division. Meta in particular is a great example of why you cannot judge companies purely by profitability and why you shouldn't ever let the CEO also be the primary shareholder and chairman of the board that's meant to govern the company's behavior.

armchairhacker

HN is social media. Social media is a spectrum. You can imagine HN like a documentary channel compared to Facebook’s reality TV, but even “documentaries” can be dopamine sinks that aren’t actually informative (or accurate). (But personally, I see lots of short and pure opinion posts here, documentaries are long and at least pretend to contain facts; so I’d hesitate to compare it to a documentary channel even with the caveat.)

andix

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.

keybored

I deleted my FB when they gave us the Your Data Or Your Subscription ultimatum. I don’t scroll TikTok, Instagram, or any other video “content”. I do watch some YouTube shorts but only while sitting at a personal computer type laptop or the ones which are connected to external monitors. I read this site. But lately it’s been more difficult since the AI “content” stresses me out. Maybe social media always did that. But it’s come to the point where I cannot kid myself. Many times it just makes me more wound-up than it winds me down. So then what’s the point? Then I intentionally search for specific topics. When I’m out of those I can stare out the window. Which is a nice change.

PcChip

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

exabrial

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.

abhaynayar

I've been able to quit short-form content, but does anyone have any tips on how to quit long-form content like YouTube or Netflix?

spking

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

defmetrix

The only social media I really use is linkedin and X. I find linkedin useful for following companies and colleagues, and im pretty picky about who I accept or request as a friend. I also find X to be insightful, but I only use it to follow people for stock research.

close04

Why is nobody here defining social media, put down the clear criteria? "I say this, I am tired of people saying that" isn't productive if everyone has their own interpretation of what's being discussed.

j45

As soon as devices inserted themselves as a barrier between people and called it social, when it was really the media in waiting, they could hide and direct the nature of interactions, and ultimately, attention.