This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media. I even followed the advice of trying to stay in touch by email. Sure.
Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it.
Maybe that’s an ok tradeoff to make, but it’s worth knowing that before getting into it.
> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on
This doesn't really seem that important if your only method of knowing this was a post blasted to hundreds (or thousands) of people. Or, to put it another way: if you mattered, you would've gotten a direct message or call from them.
I'd argue that social media has normalized keeping up with people who aren't supposed to be part of your life forever. But, we should take a step back and realize that not everything should or will last forever. If you cross paths again then you can catch up, but having life updates constantly? No thanks.
>Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on.
TBH I have no idea where or if my friend post stuff on social media anymore. I know maybe 1 person that posted updates often on Facebook, and that was pre-pandemic. Some post more business stuff on twitter.
But overall I just kind of accept that sometimes I'll meet up with someone after a few years and realize "oh yeah, they're married now, took a trip to Japan for 6 months, and is getting some local attention from their band they made a few years ago"
Of course, the first thing men will say after that meeting is simply "I've been fine, can't complain. How about you?". Maybe they'll mention their new job, but the rest will come after some 15-30 minutes of observation and chatting about the newest media.
>but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it.
likewise, but I'm not sure if social media would have saved that for me. It's definitely a cultural issue, especially with men.
I think it's perfectly fine to learn about huge life updates from people the next time you actually speak with them. That seems normal.
Seeing people's updates on a wall isn't truly keeping up with friends. Keeping up and staying in touch requires consistent deliberate effort from both parties, via phone calls, messaging, and seeing each other in person. If you're not doing that with someone, then yeah, learning about life updates when you actually chat and catch up just makes sense to me.
This is just said from my perspective and I understand that others might not share it -
Fine with me. They're acquaintances. Nobody has 200+ "friends", we have a handful of them. Is it nice to know that someone I hung out with a handful of times twenty years ago but otherwise don't really know and haven't said a word to in a decade made a big life change? Sure, I guess, but for the most part it has absolutely no bearing or impact on my day-to-day life nor the lives of those most important to me, and that's where I'm putting my energy.
I never had any social media account. Never. When Facebook was still in diapers I have predicted what will happen (while what really happened was far worse) and distance myself from it and warned all the others who, normally, didn't listen.
Dont have FB, twitter, reddit, linkedin, tiktok, not even google account... none of that crap. I am successfully avoiding getting my name anywhere on the internet, I am not posting my photos, videos,...
I have 7 friends I meet regularly, I have friends where our life separated years back and we meet once or twice per year and I have phone with 473 phone numbers of various contacts, from former colleges to dishwasher repair technician, etc.
And guess what, people call me, sms me (oh yes, it works so much better than having 20 various clients installed for different groups of people) or send me email if something important has happened and I am actually physically invited to birthdays, "i got son" celebrations, notified about death (luckily only one, former schoolmate).
When we meet, in person (i hate long phone calls), we have a quality chat as I dont know anything about their ingrown hair on the tip of their toe and they don't know anything about me changing job or having knot on hair in my beard.
For anyone else, I dont care. I dont disillusion myself how I have 473 good friends on some stupid online platform who need to share every intimate detail with me. I cant even handle so many people.
So maybe those tradeoffs are not really the real tradeoffs but rather self deception, how much you matter to the people and to how many people.
I can count them using my fingers. Which is perfectly fine.
> I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely
I think that’s a feature, not a bug.
Most of the life updates people post on social media are the best of the best, which is what triggers so much fomo and trying to measure up. That’s why social media makes most people feel worse about their own lives. (Not to mention all of the other garbage these platforms try to push on you that you didn’t even ask for.)
If these people are really important to us, then we’d find other means of staying in touch: text them, call them, invite them over (if that’s feasible).
And if enough people get off social media, everyone else might also realize they need to make an effort to stay in touch with others, instead of the lazy post of glamour shots for the purpose of internet likes and feeding the dopamine addiction.
Losing touch with old acquaintances is just part of getting older. fwiw, my experience is that I stayed on social media (although I don't post anything, I just keep the account) and still missed huge life updates. I reckon about 80-90% of my FB friends don't post to FB or Insta anymore. They just don't post anywhere.
I quit social media 12 years ago and it's been an amazing boost to my personal psychology and productivity. My life is 10x better without it. I've forgotten many acquaintances and gained many more, and forgotten them again. Life is like that, but the core group of people is there, and I'm happy with that.
I did the same thing. Now all I have is github, stackoverflow, and HN. I end up missing out on all sorts of things that I'd like to have been along for. I'm not about to go back, I think that being at the business end of somebody's propaganda machine was even worse for me, but it's still a significant sacrifice.
Which is why I don't think the way forward is for everybody to leave social media. It's just not going to happen en masse, that's asking too much. We need to build media which can't be owned. If we ask people to sacrifice something, it should be an extra few cents on their electric bill and yesteryear's phone plugged in somewhere and hosting their share of it.
I've only been exploring it for a few days now, but nostr seems promising for this kind of thing. The content is awful, just coin bro stuff, but as something to plug into and build apps for... seems legit.
I quit on and off and came to the opposite conclusion. The acquaintances I never heard from, we weren’t really in touch in any way, seeing their posts had just tricked me into thinking we were.
And that’s okay. It means 5 years later when we cross paths for real there’s lots to catch up on.
Yes, everyone uses social media differently and gets different things out of it.
I've got my Facebook feed so well-curated that it rarely causes me distress. And like you, I like keeping up with old acquaintances, seeing their kids' milestones, etc. I get real enjoyment out of that.
Instagram I post pics when I travel and otherwise ignore it.
Twitter OTOH is probably a net negative for me. I still keep it around to follow sports pundits during games, and I usually only follow my sports list. But I do check in on my main feed during major events, and then inevitably end up doomscrolling. For example, the LA fires hashtags are so far beyond toxic - nothing but engagement farming, malicious misinfo, political nonsense, etc. Amidst all that crap, maybe 1 in 10 tweets has good info, but I have to destroy my psyche to find it.
You could just call the people most important in your life and speak and hear their updates. It would mean more to them than a comment on FB or whatever other social they are on.
Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media
My impression is „how can one be so self centered” to imagine everyone HAS to know about their big event if they were not part of it and were not invited directly.
Is that person Kardashian family or something ;).
Even if it was a wedding and they posted photos. I wouldn’t remember a week later - if it is a person I see once in 5 years face to face and I was not invited. There are many big life events of such people.
If your acquaintances didn't take the time to update you directly, then maybe either the updates or the acquaintances themselves aren't really relevant for you. And that's ok.
I just deleted my FB account yesterday. Believe or not, your experience makes me feel OK about it because even with FB, I’ve drifted apart from all but a few close friends. That makes me think it’s the norm and social media doesn’t do nearly as much to keep us connected as it would like us to believe.
Thinking you can blast something on social media and your friends and family will see it is an old mentality. Even non super tech-savvy people know now what the algorithms are, and they know that everyone regularly misses updates from everyone else.
And that light connection to people through social media wasn't a thing that created "close friends" anyway. It add to those weak connections that do have value but I doubt many people create intimate friend relationships solely through social media.
also eschewed social media. it's a different way of relating. normal people now react the way minor celebrities used to react when I'd meet them and not know anything about them, either insulted or very relieved.
I think it has made me a better friend in some ways, as I'm a respite from the narratives they sustain, but to others, also a kind of legacy friend who may be an attachment to an old life, and who isn't part of their present.
there's an aspect where watching their social media would be to participate in the change in their lives, and separating from it (perhaps selfishly) preserves things that might be left behind. but on the other hand, I'm interested in relating in one way too. social media profiles are strange because they say, "see, I am all these things now!" and in not seeing them, it declines to recognize those, like an old uncle you're always going to be a kid to because that's how you always were.
I have more old friends than most, and I often think about whether there is an essential self we see in each other, like a character that all these stories happen around where we can peer across them to one another, protagonist to protagonist, as companions in the real. or are the relationships artifacts of the stories, and when they change, we do? it's prob a mix, but I don't think those essential(ist) aspects of friendship survive being mediated by the churn of updates and the curation of a public persona.
anyway, being outside social media is a very different way to relate and not everything survives.
If neither you nor they bothered reaching out, did either of you actually care? It might be a good time to reevaluate the nature of your relationships and start maintaining the ones you actively (instead of passively) care about outside of corporate shopping mall websites.
People drift apart over time sometimes. I’m on Facebook still (TBH it is hard to see much by my friends, between all the algorithmic stuff). Despite being on there, there are some folks I’ve just kind of… lost contact with.
Maybe have a text chain for your friends or something? The folks I really expect to know things about… they’d tell me while we were interacting.
The messages about going cold turkey are popular, but you do miss out on a lot. I deleted all my social media in 2015, and didn’t mind too much, but years later when I met my wife (and there was more pressure to be social) I made accounts again so people could message me and I’ve been able to hold back from spending all my time doomscrolling.
I think the social part of social media can be good for us, and we have to figure out a way to avoid the toxicity. I’d like to see more posts about how to bend the algorithm to show you less toxicity- at least on Instagram I’ve managed to use the “not interested/relevant” button enough and turned on content filtering that it mostly shows me wholesome content. I don’t know if everyone realizes that if you hate-watch a video or hate-read a post then the algorithm sees that as engagement and will show you more. You have to nope yourself out of the dark corners as fast as you realize where you are.
> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on.
I wish I would still see those. While I have an account, I rarely use FB nowadays, because the algorithm thinks I’ll be more interested in stuff I don’t care about. So when I go to FB I tend to close the tab again a few seconds later…
I recently learned that the daughter of a friend of mine got married and had two children. That happened in the last 5 years, when I actually didn't hear from that friend of mine. Given that we didn't feel the need to send messages to each other for 5 years, are we really friends or only acquaintances? In the latter case it's OK not to be informed about what is going on.
My social media are WhatsApp and Telegram. I get in touch there with people I care about and I don't get streams of useless information like I would if I'd be on FB, X, Instagram or TikTok. I do look for videos on YouTube when I want to learn something for which watching is better that reading.
In general I agree with you that there are some tradeoffs to make. IME it's still worth it. For example, my mental wellness has improved immensely. Also, I tend to use my time in more purposeful ways instead of wasting it doomscrolling.
Regarding life events: I quit all social media about 5 years ago[1]. People I care about know about that, and if they want to tell me about life events they do it with other means. Those who don't, they weren't really friends, just acquaintances. I am OK with that.
[1] with the exception of Linkedin, which I hate and never use, but I have been asked by people in my company to keep a profile for PR-related reasons.
I also quit social media . I did not have this experience. I had no problem following what went on with friends and acquaintances?! I don't know why you had this experience. I'm sorry you felt like that. but for me the info that is important always gets to me. And I enjoy emailing and using the phone and meeting people for social events in stead. And when I miss some post on face I always hear it from someone else....
I think if people want to 'quit' social media, then just use it to keep up to date with friends/family. You follow ONLY friends/family, and limit consumption to only that, don't consume content outside of that circle.
These full fledged 'quit' posts are nothing more than an attempt at a political statement that falls on deaf ears.
If someone relies on broadcast notifications to communicate, whether it be by snail mail, SMS, email, megaphone, or otherwise, maybe it is not really worth hearing?
To me, it seems like if someone has so many friends or is so busy that they need to manage their life using this strategy, you probably aren't going to have much of a connection anyway.
I totally understand you. What find is that when I need to get into touch with old acquaintances an call or email seems to do just fine. It is a bit more inconvenient.
Another reason to not use big social media is that I would rather not have my network to be exploited by some big corp for who knows what they do with that info.
> I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it.
I feel like that's the downside of social media in general, like the network effect - since most people are on social media, that's the place where people will post life updates, as opposed to talking to others about that stuff directly as much.
Maybe there could be a healthy way to use social media: to catch up with the people in your social circle, maybe look at a few cute pictures of animals or memes, but don't obsessively doomscroll or compare yourself to the highlights of others' lives.
Dropped FB for HN in 2017... and eventually I find myself now again on X for some #genaury stuff which is basically nowhere else to find. Happily most reasonable tech stuff lists on HN, some interesting stuff on MR, both being more-or-less a social network (of sorts) in a 90s disguise.
Conventional media can be ok for casual reading/scrolling, but feels increasingly out-of-touch. Interestingly these days cnn, bbc, dw, en, and aj list different headlines, which is not what it was 15 y.ago.
Still I'd strongly advise against all push media, and in particular Meta's products which pose a very high-risk of (screen) addiction thanks to hundreds of hidden retention mechanisms.
Maybe that was possible with Facebook from 2009. Right now, to have any friend updates, you first you need to scroll through a firehose of bots, AI schlock, and ads. Then risk getting pulled into it and wasting valuable hours of your life.
The only winning move is not to play.
I just got together with two friends in RL. One I have not seen for 10 years. There were a lot of missed news we all had to catch up on. This is how it's always been, and it's completely normal. Even the olden Facebook way of being so plugged in into your friends' lives was very unhealthy. If you HAVE to know something, life will find a way of letting you know.
> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on.
I had the same thing happen, but both they and I were Facebook users, it's just the algorithm decided I don't need to see posts from my friends and it's better that I see adverts (I can live with that, I don't pay to use the platform after all) and hundreds of random pages/groups that I have zero interest in following.
This 2nd "feature" is slowly driving me towards the point where the FOMO of no longer passively interacting with my friends may longer keep me on there.
This is my experience too. While I do maintain some accounts, I don't check them much anymore except for updating my statuses and life events, and even then I haven't done those in a while now.
The advice to "quit social media" , "get a FairPhone", " get an FTP account and mount it with curlftps... " is often tossed around HN a lot, but real life flies in the diametrically opposite direction. While I'm not largely affected by it, I still feel a twinge of disappointment not finding out when an old friend has had a major life event.
Also good to consider for that tradeoff: Those people are completely fine to ignore you without some Zuck accounts.
Bring that together with your idea about friendship before you run behind them.
Maybe it's fine for you. Maybe your conclusion is that it's not worth the thing.
It's not a new topic. For me, iit was around 15 years ago. I never had FB or WA. Not even for a day. And that brought a lot of friendships to an end. Most of my friendships in fact. And that was sad!! But well, no other way would even be an option, admittedly! It's sad, but it was the best I could do.
I agree completely, I did the same thing and now I've been going back gradually. Staying in contact passively makes starting conversations much easier, commenting on their stories, them reacting to a big event, etc. It keeps people in contact, because nobody reaches out of the blue now.
Losing such a network of people is costly, socially and from an opportunity perspective.
Still trying to not click anything not related to people I follow, the algorithms on meta apps are just insane.
I'm just not reading any of it - not interested. SM addiction is so 2015. I have technical accounts to be able to search for something (e.g. while training loras) or to watch without annoying popups when someone links me to it.
This dramatic deletion is overreaction, solve the underlying problem instead.
Rather than scrolling instagram and tiktok, visit /news and /newest, and then /ask, /show. If nothing interesting there, refresh the /newest until there is. You can be first in upvoting or commenting on it, and can get a good bump to your score if you say something that sounds smart before it hits the frontpage. Then you can re-read the quality content you produced and count how much is left to the round number, like it's only 40 to 9700, only 340 to 10000, etc. Much healthier than just scrolling endlessly and sharing memes.
While I agree that HN usually gathers much interesting content, I don't understand why getting more karma on HN matters anyway. Chasing points anywhere isn't healthy by the way. Say something interesting because it is interesting and sparks a conversation and not for the sake of saying something.
I wouldn't delete social media accounts because they might become available to register for malicious actors who can then impersonate you. Keep the accounts, just don't use them any more.
There isn't anything unique about your account on most social media platforms. This isn't a "plant your flag" situation like when trying to prevent identity theft. You don't need to register your account before a bad actor does. Sure, I created an online account with the IRS, credit bureaus, etc. before somebody else could. That's important because they are tied to unique identifiers like your SSN, etc. But somebody could just create a social media account impersonating you even if you already have an account on that social network. There isn't anything enforcing the uniqueness.
I have a very common name, and monkey's paw wish managed to get the unnumbered version for my gmail address.
It has been a significant amount of work just dealing with all the derppelgängers out there who use an address they don't own for important things. Medical records. Divorce papers. Mortgages. The short of it is that it doesn't even require maliciousness on someone else's part to be affected by impersonation, accidental or otherwise. So yeah, keep what you've got, because there's no guarantee the next person to get it will not somehow affect you.
Agreed. I’ve done this and I’d you have an existing fan base on those platforms, a final post that explains where you are and why you’re not active can help keep those folks engaged.
Plus I feel like I’m still costing the platform the fractions of fractions of a cent to keep my data stored, replicated and active somewhere
That is poor advice. There are now roughly a dozen people who have social media accounts in my name, because it’s their name too. This isn’t impersonation. It’s also not a problem.
Agree. Hold onto them, else someone can snatch them up and you may have to clean up the reputational mess later. See this happen to an acquaintance of mine.
Some, like LinkedIn, allow you to place the account in "hibernation." Which removes the ability to login without reactivating it, but doesn't completely remove it.
They will do this either way. Fake profiles are created all the time that are copied exactly from a real person's profile. If you have an account, and don't log in and check it every now and then, this will probably happen to you too.
When something is used by billions of people its kinda futile to argue about its utility. But then billions are addicted to tobacco, alcohol, drugs, gambling etc. and those benefiting from providing these "services" will do everything they can to keep people addicted while arguing that they are solving a real problem.
The reality is always a mundane core that gets complicated by human tragicomedy. Of course its wholesome to be able to connect digitally with friends and family. Its also a great economic enabler to connect digitally with professionals. Or to be able to publish to a bulletin board about your brilliant accomplishments.
But to paraphrase Gates, we need these connections, we don't need the self-appointed universal connectors.
Its 2025, and this is HN. I put it to you that technically the only thing preventing us today from having good "connections infrastructure" is the corrupting influence of big adtech. One possible vision of how to organize the digital space in technical and economic terms has become the only vision.
I stay in touch with ppl that are important to me by writing or calling them once every 2 months.
I do not care if they do the same. I am old now (almost 30) and came to the realization that all of our lifes are packet and busy and ppl are very bad at keeping up with other ppl that are not continuously presented to them.
This is the price I have to pay to not be on instagram: writing my friends and ask them how they doing.
"Maybe I’ll go old-school and write more blog posts. Like back in the early 2000s, when you actually had to think before sharing your thoughts with the world. Sounds quaint, doesn’t it?"
I use croissant to cross post on social media accounts but I never use the services themselves to read any content. I’m screaming into the void and I’m fine with it.
It is quaint but if my friends and family each had their own blog that they wanted me to look at, I wouldn't. There's a reason these social media places caught on, because they act as aggregators.
I get it, it's different types of content, one requires more effort than the other, and the argument is that, if you don't have anything of substance to say, don't say it, but it still requires extra effort to read that I probably don't feel inclined to give.
I deleted social media around 2.5 years ago. After feeling extreme anxiety and withdrawal for about a week I realized this was the right move. I gained massive amounts of productivity, felt more awake than ever, and realized just how many HOURS I was killing browsing. It sounds like the usual rant, but I truly think that in 10-15 years there will be a huge anti social media movement after we fully realize the damage. Social media as a concept is wonderful but in reality it adds nothing meaningful to our lives.
IMO the problem with these social-networks now is that they all turned into ad-machines & "like-bait". The original products worked extremely well - but you gotta make money somehow, and ads seem to be the go-to model.
"So, I quit. Twitter, TikTok, Facebook — all gone"
I'm always curious here what counts as Social Media, and what's just a useful site?
Github? HackerNews? Reddit? Facebook, but only for FB Marketplace which is now a better local sales site than Craigslist?
What makes it social? Originally with FB and before it with MySpace it was the ability to put up a page about yourself, and then chat with others. HN has a profile and communication, so do the others listed.
For the modern definition of social, nowadays: incentives to generate engagement (connect with people, post, like, comment) to build up data to drive advertising sales.
It always shocked me that isn’t the way for all. When I was on FB, I only friended people that I “knew” in real-life. I guess that’s why I only had a handful of friends :)
Tell me you're young without telling me you're young. Friendships are more than just meat space meetings. Children, moving countries, crazy work schedules are all reasons that can prevent you being in the physical presence o your friends. Does not seeing them for years at a time make them less friends? No, not to me.
I’m hoping we look back at the social media era with some embarrassment at the amount of time we confused typing in a text box with meaningful communication.
I think commenters here are missing out on one beneficial part of social media - Facebook groups and communities of interest especially private, moderated groups. Broadcast and discussions are a perfect use case for it.
And people talk about how bad Facebook is, LinkedIn is far worse. Everyone is trying to be a “thought leader” and no one is genuine on it.
I have a decent LinkedIn Profile with recommendations, up to date career information. But I never post to it.
I’m only really active when I’m looking for a job. I will respond to messages and try to keep my network somewhat warm.
> I think commenters here are missing out on one beneficial part of social media
A small group of people surely do, but for others the benefit doesn't outweigh the negative. Social media is great, in theory, but Facebooks implementations suck and I won't support a company like Facebook who I believe negatively impacts society. The problems and much of the anger stems from feeling almost forced to use the products of a company I think manipulates and exploit it's users. It's almost impossible for my kid to have a social life and for me to be involved without a Facebook account and I can't even offer an alternative form of communication because pretty much anything else would be more work for everyone else.
Agree on you with Linkedin. It's basically an account to a job board, that you keep active in case you need to look for work. The people trying to get engagement on their posts are almost all pretty much insane.
I have to facebook friends that I don't interact with very much outside some electronic music events. This helps me find events that might interest me.
Some venues don't even put the dates on their website.
My father and a few army friends were able to find each other and sometimes find another guy from their year through Facebook. They do big cookouts together and they started with 3 guys and progressively found more of each other and they had long lost contact. They are now great friends again and in their retirement this brings them a huge happiness.
But some people just can't fathom there's different lives too their own and throw the baby out with the bath water.
Social media has become a river of trash(and for me that’s what advertising and peddling to sell stuff is) that if you spend effort on you can find some good gems. But the effort spent is not worth the gems. It’s more or less rescuing fully undigested peanuts in turds.
Another problem with Twitter is that majority of content there is provided by content farms, and then it gets reacted by bots. It is difficult to get interactions with real individuals there.
I'm not sure if it should called "social" anymore.
I quit facebook long ago. Recently I found out an old friend from years ago had died in the past 6 months, and I had no idea. I got an email at an old email address but that aside everyone knew except me.
I had FB account when it was novelty and it was still a social network.
I removed account like 10 years ago when it already was clear it is not social network anymore.
I also never had a twitter really besides some account to check what it is and left it unused.
Only LI is one I keep for business purposes but I don’t care about social aspect or discussion there - it is basically a virtual business card and it is quite popular so it’s useful I guess.
> Once the accounts were finally gone, I realized just how much of a grip these platforms had on me. The number of times I reflexively typed "t" or "f" into my browser bar (which autocompletes to twitter.com or facebook.com) was honestly terrifying. Waiting for assets to build? Hit Twitter. Software update running? Quick Facebook check
How many different accounts do you have to delete though? For many of those people "t" and "f" would be substituted by "y"toube, "r"eddit, etc. It doesn't have to be a social media site, might be news you're intrested in, tech sites, deals aggregator.
I get what you mean, but for someone with habit of looking for distraction whenever they have nothing to do it won't be a cure, bandaid at best.
It's a stepping stone. The mere act of noticing yourself typing "t" and remembering it's not there, and feeling the feelings and realizations that accompany that, can lead to real behavioral change.
If you care about yourself and want to have healthier and more mindful habits, you will hopefully start redirecting what were once mindless impulses of avoidance or boredom into more meaningful activities for yourself.
The answer is completely subjective, whatever the individual feels is important for them to quit.
>I get what you mean, but for someone with habit of looking for distraction whenever they have nothing to do it won't be a cure, bandaid at best.
This is something society seems to have forgotten to do, and what I've focused on helping my kids remain capable of as they grow older - knowing how to be bored.
Yes, that's right. But social media platforms always tend to have something new on it each time you check them, which creates a strong incentive to check them even more often. News sites, for example, on the other hand, don’t use algorithms that encourage doom scrolling and keep you engaged far longer than you intended.
I've felt this too - in the end, especially if you're distraction or addiction prone (e.g. ADHD), you'll mostly find something else to fill that void.
But, some options are better than others. I used to be on Twitter a lot, and had that reflex for a time after deleting it. Now... it's just not there. I did replace it with a handful of communities and some other forms of content, but it still feels better than before.
A decision to quit - it’s not easy! I deleted Instagram. It feels like even my mind has been cleared. I don’t want to and won’t go back. And the alternative to slow down and share thoughts more intentionally sounds good.
Don't agree with author, but related to the desire to delete social media... I've noticed Instagram has been adding more features to bait time from users. A new one being, if you wait long enough on a given reel, it'll suggest you posts your follows liked (or commented on) in the top right corner. This is super creepy and I imagine could be easily gamed by stalkers. These types of features that try to engage me even deeper have made me consider actually removing IG altogether like I deleted Facebook a long time ago
I recently joined social media again.
Turns out the group that shared my interest in my region was here.
So I made a new account and joined.
And the thing is, I am interested still. But I do miss a lot, because the group is chaotic and really important announcements are mixed in with memes and chatter, so it was a chore to waddle through that everyday, only to discover that nothing important was announced.
They kinda have to do it, I guess, because engagement metrics are no joke, and if you don't have them, then why are you here. But it really opened my eyes to how to social media completely failed on its premise when it decided that time spent on app would be a good metric.
Sometimes people just have nothing important to say other to announce, and them it should be okay to keep silent for a while, without being downranked.
And seeing how those, who always chatter even when they having nothing to say, will ultimately rise to the top on any platform that values time wasted, I left social media again.
People in comments say how it's better to have a few close friends then shallow connections, but social networks did allow us to meet someone that shared our more specific interests. My best friend I have met on a forum: our interests aligned and we spend hours talking about things we couldn't discuss with real friends before meeting up.
There is value in shallow connections when they are based on shared interests.
This value is lost on most social networks today.
IMO mastodon and blue sky are "good social networks" for people who want to connect over specific topics.
I only use social media for work and WhatsApp for staying in touch with people. WhatsApp is really the killer one that keeps me hooked into the Zuckertrump empire. Just not enough iPhones around me to use Messages, Signal use is very low even among tech friends.
People often ask me why I don't have Instagram: I'm in the business of making these platforms and Pablo Escobar never used cocaine either. I know how these platforms are built and I know how we think about the people that use it.
I'm not really tethered to social media as much as some. I still text and call my closer friends regularly. Similar for family.
I do find the reactionary response a bit disturbing. Having been caught up in the trap of "fact checkers" for reposting a political cartoon and similar, I'd definitely prefer the community notes approach. All said the inability of many to have a rational conversation with those they don't completely agree is very wrong on so many levels.
My issue with lack of moderation in social media is not the political polarization. My issue is the blatant scams pushed by bots, or by questionable companies paying sub celebrity influencers.
Criminals are not willing to have rational conversations. But they just won a free pass from the platforms.
It's not about accounts, it's more about engagement. I still have my Facebook account, and I actually used it two years ago to fund my gym trainer and tell him I couldn't come.
Social media is a reality one can't simply ignore completely. One can complicatedly ignore it though to some level of success. For me, the minimal rules are: don't write on reddit, don't read on linkedin. Don't touch anything else. The orange site is ok-ish.
Social media is for our generation what news and political shows on tv were for the previous. Brain rot.
I hate to promote Reddit, because it’s not worth it, but I have a pretty nicely curated home page of just “good things”, cats, pics, etc that I love to browse when I want to jeep my mind idly occupied. If I make the mistake and go back to popular I get filled with rage, feeling of injustice and hopelessness.
Ngl if I were Zuckerberg I'd be doing the exact same thing. I feel like the majority of people are severely underestimating the impact this last election will have and still are in denial. If you think he's doing the wrong thing it's cause you don't know what the consequences will be if he doesn't do this.
The motivation is basically "social media now its more diverse in thought". He even signs off with an acknowledgement he might try BlueSky.
Honestly, there are good reasons to quit social media because of their intrinsic toxicities, but at least if you are doing it for ideological motives admit that its about you.
You can always choose to unfollow people if their perspectives don’t resonate with you—you don’t have to leave social media entirely for that. By curating your feed, you can focus on content you enjoy, which naturally creates a personal thought bubble. When censorship comes into play, that thought bubble is shaped for you, removing the need to manage it yourself.
It’s worth reflecting on what democracy means in this context. For me, it means being willing to tolerate other thought bubbles, even when it’s challenging. This openness is preferable to having our thoughts policed. In an ideal world, thought bubbles would be more permeable, fostering trust and understanding between people with differing perspectives. That trust can’t grow if we only defend our own bubble. Overcoming the divide is crucial if we want democracy to thrive (or not die).
I have mostly left social media, but I have not seen the need to delete my accounts yet. For Twitter, I never use the feed but rather bookmark links to one specific account that I read. Facebook I open about twice a month just to see if I have been invited to a birthday party or anything like that. Instagram I just went 7 weeks without opening.
Turning off the machine feeding stuff to my brain really has helped me. I feel better, cleaner and less disturbed/distracted.
Now I am actually considering leaving YouTube as well, although it has been such a lovely place at times, since I notice it is deteriorating my health.
I recommend you try it; nothing has to be deleted. It's simply removing the habit of using it. It does make life a bit better :)
Oh, and a good first step is to install the extension `News Feed Eradicator`. This is how I got started. I run it on everything.
Anyone feel like the article is thinly disguised moral policing and rather than a post about social media it is more of a broadcast announcement of acceptable thought?
Very little discussion of the actual problems with regulating speech the way the EU or Fact Checkers does. Just an implicit statement it was correct.
Yep, I got lost when he started complaining about teens and social media without discussing anything of substance. I understand where he is coming from, he is a father of 2, and is likely already busy with his family and close social circle, however for most people today, they can't grow up today without social media, you'll just isolate yourself since nobody wants to bother be your friend if they can't reach you without friction. The problem as more pointed out is related to controlling its usage, not its deletion
Browsing social media while working is easily solved by not logging in on these services on your work machine or browser. I have social media logged in on another instance of my browser, so I actively have to switch profiles to browse social media.
This added step makes it hard enough to not mindlessly browse it.
>> The number of times I reflexively typed "t" or "f" into my browser bar (which autocompletes to twitter.com or facebook.com) was honestly terrifying.
I reflexively type "news" into the browser. It may not be quite as bad as FB or X, but I should probably stop.
I haven't had social media for 10+ years. There's been periods where I create a facebook account again, but it is soon deleted within a week or so. I only use WhatsApp to talk to real-life people and Discord to talk to online gaming "friends". I do have accounts obviously on some websites to make comments like this.
It is awfully lonely I must admit. I have a partner of over a decade which helps but not having social media is very isolating. My wife has all the social medias and knows what happens with my family before I do!
My last 'experiment' was the shortest - I registered for an Instagram account and when it suggested that I add my real-life next door neighbour in the sign-up process I immediately stopped and deleted the account. That is scary.
I got rid of Instagram and Facebook and have never looked back. It did lead to me losing touch with some people and slightly less serendipity (i.e. someone being in town, which I see on their Instagram story and then we hang out).
Instagram went first and then I realized I hadn't logged on to Facebook in 2 years so why bother keeping it around?
I think for people who can just decide to keep the account and no longer use it, they should keep it just to stay in touch with some folks. But I realize that as long as I'd have an account, I'd keep using it.
Personally, for me the tradeoff between 2+ hours every day on Instagram for an occasional few hours with an acquaintance isn't worth it.
For me outright deletion just led to other issues like missing out on events / family photos / chats with people I otherwise wasn’t connected to. The target for most people is probably low-moderate use. <shamelessplug> Personally I struggled to achieve balance with my social media usage for years and spent the last two years building out a coaching service to help people like myself keeping social media under a daily time allowance…think of it as a personal trainer (with real accountability and all) for social media and other everyday habits. We just launched this week at zabit.com if anyone wants to check it out.</shamelessplug>
I don't understand what people are doing on social media that they can get addicted by it, or at least specifically by the social aspect of it.
E.g. facebook for me is mainly the messenger and a few random photos or people. Everything else on there is not enjoyable.
Reddit is like a forum where I can occassionally say things about my hobbies. Also nothing that sucks me in, in an unhealthy way.
X and Mastodon are mostly news and random people showing off things.
Youtube is like TV where at some point you watched what you wanted to watch for the day.
The only thing that seems addicting to me are Apps like Tiktok or Instagram, where you are just one simple swipe away from the next bit of short term entertainment.
Yes, yes, heard it all before. And it’s never matched my lived experience.
Social media does have a powerful use case: keeping in touch with friends and family you don’t see often. It feels trite to watch a video of them with their kid and give it a ‘like’ but I’d miss it if it were gone. Especially if it was still there for everyone else, I’d miss their collective presence more than they’d miss my singular one.
Rather than another scolding post telling everyone to delete social media I’d much rather folks think and talk about how we can make a better social media, preferably divorced from the control of giant corporations.
This all sounds to me like complaining about fast-food restaurants because you’re overweight. Do they serve trash? Yes. But there’s a simple solution: don’t eat it. And don’t feed it to your kids. I have a facebook app and the only time I use is to check updates for my son’s soccer practice. I also go to McDonalds to buy coffee because it’s good and cheap over here. No corporate entity will ever put your health amd well-being over their business interest. Why is this so hard for people to comprehend? You want fact checking? Read NYT.
While not wrong, your advice of simply not doing it is as usefull as telling a smoker "simple don't put another cigarette in your mouth" or telling the overweight person "just diet and excercise". Been in both camps, and I know that neither is that easy. Giving up addictions are simple, but they are not easy.
There's a simple solution: just don't eat at the food places that dominate every region, because their addictive food and capital allowed them to crush any local competition
I want to be a producer more than a consumer. I produce videos (admittedly that are technical and dry) so it's not like I get hundreds of thousands of views.
On my downtime I still participate in social media though usually anonymously in the form of shit posting. Or just watching YouTube. I did get sucked into that crap of posting everyday about my glamorous life. Eventually I found I didn't know what to post anymore. Had to find something to post. I'm glad I never got sucked into it completely like TikTok/Instagram.
A few strange things you will miss when deleting social media that are nonobvious.
1. Some companies will not look at your resume or do business with you unless you have a LinkedIn account, especially in the age of AI. Fine by me.
2. If you go to start a business, you will find most of these social
media companies require you to have a personal account in order to make a business/marketing account. This is very annoying.
3. Damn I miss Facebook Marketplace. But it's not worth having FB. You can usually have a friend do marketplace stuff for you.
For point #2, I've started evaluating business ideas by how much I can either outsource social media posting or not need it at all. Preferably the latter.
It rightfully explains how X, meta and others have taken a turn for the worse to say the least, but it doesn't say why I should delete my Facebook or Twitter account.
Neither do the hundreds of calls to delete such accounts in the past few weeks or months have.
I get that the point is "You should stop using such social media", but I don't get what __deleting your account__ actually adds on top, especially when put in relation to the political reasons behind stopping to use them.
Deleting your account makes somebody's numbers look bad. It also marks a more serious commitment. (I deleted my Facebook in 2016. I did make a new one recently when I got my Meta Quest 3. I was hoping to get into Instagram recently because (i) I think the content I post on Mastodon/Bluesky would do great there and (ii) was thinking about doing a marketing project where that was the right venue. Meta won't let me create an Instagram account, probably because I deleted my Facebook account, I sure as hell haven't done anything else offensive with a Meta property)
> It rightfully explains how X, meta and others have taken a turn for the worse to say the least, but it doesn't say why I should delete my Facebook or Twitter account.
Isn't it a tautology? If you continue using a product that sucks rather than abandon it, you're using a bad product and it also has license to keep getting worse. Deleting an account is the strongest signal of rejection.
Suppose someone was attacking you on some social media site and the site's algorithm was promoting that attack greatly enhancing its damage, and you wanted to try to sue the site. There will almost certainly be something in their terms of service (TOS) that says you have to arbitrate (with an arbiter chosen by the site) instead of sue.
Even if the TOS doesn't require this so you can actually sue they would likely have a choice of venue provision that would make it inconvenient for you and/or a choice of law provision that would be favorable to them.
If you have an account at the site it will likely be very hard to get out from under the arbitration/venue/law provisions of the TOS.
If you no longer have an account you will probably have a better chance of escaping the TOS, especially if whatever you want to sue over took place entirely after you deleted your account.
It’s not clear, yes: I think they have way too much power in the wrong hands. Now, hypothetically speaking: If they were to lose most of their users, they would lose their power. So, in one way or another, everyone supporting those platforms (by using them) is part of the problem - and that would be the reason to stop using them (again, I know this is quite hypothetically).
No imo. no real names, no real profiles, no following or friending people aka no connections, no chat/DMs, no personal updates, no tagging, no pictures/videos/stories
By the dictionary definition, yes. However, there are three key differences. (1) People rank the HN feed instead of an algorithm; (2) the incentives of YC, companies, and the HN community seem better aligned; (3) the user experience degrades significantly when posts get too many comments.
No, it’s a forum. Everyone sees the exact same website (except for user-setting tweaks). There is no concept of “friends” or “followers”. The wensite intentionally looks boring so that the design doesn’t lure you too stick around too long.
Delete your HackerNews acct too, even this platform is beyond corrupted by bad actors and arrogant fools. The Web is 100% dead, killed by AI and poisoned human hearts.
> Delete your HackerNews acct too, even this platform is beyond corrupted by bad actors and arrogant fools. The Web is 100% dead, killed by AI and poisoned human hearts.
I use social media in a write-only manner. I keep it around for two reasons:
- I write blogs and share them there. On multiple occasions, I’ve received job offers in my inbox. Job opportunities from acquaintances on Twitter are far better than LinkedIn DM spam.
- Staying up to date with the latest fads also teaches me what not to chase. Sometimes, the firehose is the only way to get that information.
I never had problems dropping the mic and not arguing with strangers.
For those who have achieved this, well done. I've experienced the positive impact of reducing my social media usage over the years, while still keeping my accounts for the occasional need to connect. I've taken steps to limit social platforms from accessing my phone contact list and have set a cap of 20 contacts, including on WhatsApp. This has significantly reduced Meta's profiling and advertising targeting.
OMG! This is crazy. I literally drafted up a blog post with the same plan of action. I just didn't want to delete my social presence just yet and was trying to figure out how to do it. Reading through every sentence of your blog post, I could totally relate. Wow. This really is such a uncanny coincidence.
You are targeting an order of magnitude larger organization than it's necessary. The EU doesn't build anything, people in countries do.
The problem with the EU market is that if I launched anything social, I'm immediately hit with a localization problem so I have to launch first either in English (you lost 53% of people)* or start with a few select countries first with their native language.
It's kinda a mess. Money is not really the issue with EU startups, it's the cultural fragmentation.
There are also many small niche social platforms, but of course nothing like FB/X/etc..
Has anyone pursued ADA accessibility claims against social media platforms? Their algorithms seem clearly predatory toward ADHD users. Basic accommodations like 'focus mode' should be required, just like other accessibility features.
I don't oppose deleting social media, but I can't see to understand one simple thing.
LinkedIn is the de-facto standard for looking for a job in certain places. I wonder, people who deleted LinkedIn, how do they get along with looking for a job?
LinkedIn is an oddity in that, while there is a (very strange) social network there, the vast majority of LinkedIn users do not use it as a social network, they use it as a CV host, and may not even look at it in any given year.
(I do think think contributes to extreme weirdness of LinkedIn posts; there's really ~no-one normal using the social network bit of LinkedIn.)
Usually in the context of deleting social media, it is Facebook, Xitter, TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit.
LinkedIn is closer to other portfolio sites (ArtStation, Behance, SoundCloud, etc). It’s basically professional achievements with comments.
I suppose it is social media in the broadest sense. But a lot of evils of social media aren’t there, just how perfect people pretend their lives are. But there aren’t many echo chambers, instances of shock content, manufactured outrage, cancel culture, politicking, lord of the fly-ing, etc.
Less censorship on Facebook and less regulations sounds like a good thing (doubt the latter will happen anyway). The problem with Facebook has never been that it allows harmful content. It's that it actively promotes it.
This article is written from an extreme far left perspective if the author thinks it is "far right" to support free speech and oppose intrusive government regulations.
for me is not the daily use that is useful, but from time to time, I need to buy or sell something and Facebook marketplace is good for that. Or I need to find the contact information of someone and it is also useful for that (Facebook). And for twitter, before I didn't even need to create an account I just use it for seeing updates of government officials or app/services updates
Yeah social media has gotten very predatory, especially since short form content blew up due to TikTok. I’ll have chats with people that are just an exchange of instagram reels and reactions.
HN is my only form of social media now on my phone. Now, it’s time to build meaningful relationships in my life again.
Obviously, FB, twitter, insta, LinkedIn etc. are a toxic cesspool. I've left my accounts there pretty much dormant for 10+ years.
Ideally, I'd have maintained connections and contacts with my own network, using my own media, direct emails / texts, phone calls, in contexts that I controlled. The problem is... I didn't. I basically just buried my head in the sand and withdrew.
I guess the takeaway is to try to use these platforms in a positive way, as a means to an end, and not get sucked in, or to network in some other, better way, rather than withdrawing, because that's not actually a good alternative.
I don't think deleting social media accounts is a good idea. Used appropriately, social media can be very useful and open doors that would otherwise not be available.
The problem is when you are just looping[1], absentmindedly opening and closing news and social media sites for hours. This can eat a lot of time, and is generally pretty draining.
I've been adding separate user accounts based on what tasks I'm doing, and locking them down so they can only perform those tasks.
I have a social media account (which I'm on right now), I have a coding account which I can not access news or social media from, and I have a few other accounts. This creates friction when task switching, and makes it so I have to be a bit more deliberate with how I use the computer. (I have social media blocked on my phone, as I find that's just not compatible with a happy life)
I've also recently been setting up Site Specific Browsers[2], basically custom PWAs, a web browser with no URL bar and no tabs, to further add barriers between tasks (like checking CI) and just noodling on the web. (I use electron to do this, but you can also use chrome by starting it with --app=https://www.example.com/ . Sadly Firefox has removed the ability to do this. )
(Corporate) social media is a casino or shopping mall. There are fun things to do there but it's not a place for serious things. It's designed by intelligent people to be addictive like a drug. They hide the clocks and outside world, comp you food and drinks, and dazzle you with lights and sounds to keep you there as long as possible. Every moment you spend there is profit for them and a loss for you. The only thing you gain is the rush of being there.
Like everything else, community is key. I simply deleted some of my social media because I realized I'd come out more angry than social connected. Deletion is simply a nice hard cold turkey approach if you find yourself commenting for hours on end everyday. I'd prefer a hard freeze for X amount of time, but IIRC no one does it in a meaningful way. FB can freeze your account, but it's not hard to unfreeze.
But it's not like all my social media is gone. I'm still obviously here on HN. I have a tildes account for more general news. I have two discord for personal and semi-anonymous servers. And for future connections I semi-regret missing in the Twitter age, I have a Bluesky ready.
I'm simply being more mindful of what sites I use and and what communities I join to prevent the issues that arose with Reddit, Facebook, and Tumblr.
> he casually mentioned that Meta is teaming up with Trump to fight EU regulations affecting their platforms.
I really hope EU just bans Meta from operating here.
"There you go Zuck, you don't need to worry about our regulations anymore"
I think we would live just fine around here without their awful products. It would also serve as a cautionary tale to other companies willing to undermine regulations around here.
Anyone who needs to advertise they deleted their social media accounts with more than a sentence on said networks is gonna be back on there in a week. They crave approval and engagement and likes and without it will spiral out of control.
The right-turns on FB and Twitter make for big openings in the space.
It strikes me as quite an opportunity to eat FB's lunch, just as BlueSky has been eating Twitter's lunch.
... this was me in 2016. (Facebook had Cambridge Analytica, LinkedIn had taken on a demonic element to me in that I'd spent years prospecting and it had brought so many grifters and bullshitters into my life I felt like I was becoming a bullshitter... It would have been one thing if I was making money but I wasn't.)
I got back into social media about 1.5 years ago when Mastodon seemed to be coming on strong. I've lately gotten into Bluesky and all I can say is: (1) come on in, the water is fine, and (2) sure it will go bad someday when the money gets tight but back in the day we expected platforms to decay and for the cool kids to move on to the next one.
The distictions between made "deleting the accout" and "just stop using it" are really mute. The main point is to disengage from such platforms.
Of course, almost no will. In spite of the clear conection between these platforms and individual mental health, and even more importantly massive distribution of seriously mileading "fake news", most people quite frankly just don't give a shit.
Look at the near total indifference to the petro mafia's distruction of the natural world. Most people just can't be bothered.
So when you compare something like failing to respond to corporations eliminating the ecosystem services required for life on earth, to a call to action against the crimes of asocial media, do you really expect a significant number of people to care?
I'm puzzled as to why people rage about Twitter and Facebook going down the drain, and then switch to new services like Bluesky or Threads and try to convince everyone to do the same.
I mean, why on earth would you expect anything different this time from yet another "social" thing made and run by a corporate entity?
I moved to Mastodon, which at least has the benefit of not being owned by a corporation, which will perhaps save it from the usual paths of ensh*ttification.
To be frank, I don't. That migration when a bad community becomes "the" community is simply inevitable and a part of social media. I haven't seen a good way to stop it without extreme measures like paid entry or an invite system. So that's the cost of "free" here.
It's still useful, but it's more like a a car than a town square. you'll have a lot of fun in the beginning, you'll normalize it, it'll start to break down as you try to keep it running, and then eventually it gives up the ghost. So you either accept that and not own a car or you buy a new one.
> The content? Let’s just say it made me want to yeet my phone into the nearest ocean. How anyone can take that level of garbage seriously is beyond me. But hey, bubbles are cozy, right? Musk, Zuckerberg, and Trump — what a trio. Honestly, this could be the perfect setup for a dystopian sci-fi thriller. Except, spoiler alert: no happy ending here.
He doesn't explain further what "garbage" he's talking about.
Sorry but I just can't take your grievance seriously if you won't at least explain it. This type of writing is the epitome of the echo chamber. If you don't already know what the author is talking about and already aggressively agree with them, not only are you not the target audience but they intentionally make the writing impenetrable to you.
This is the absolute worst type of internet dreck. It's ironic that the author rails against "bubbles" in the quoted paragraph.
tl;dr; - My left-wing social media bubble is compromised and there is a risk I may hear opposing view points. Please everyone watch as I performatively delete my accounts.
Honestly this is the tech equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and posting "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU." just in case someone says something you disagree with.
I had a dream recently, where Elon Musk said the following:
I'm not actually the bad guy you think I am. It was basically all a show. You had suuuuuuch a hard and looong time understanding the danger of all these corporate social media silos. Where we control what opinions are visible and what not so much. Social media (in that particular fashion) was always a trap, a problem to definitely avoid, since day 1, but it was sooooooo teeeeerribly hard to make you understand.
So I though, well, if you are all too stupid to understand it, I will make a veeeeeery bizarre and freaky show for you that you will never forget. It will be so unreal, even you all will actually _get_ it now!!! Because it's such an important lessons for the upcoming future...
I've been social media free going on almost 10 years ... would never go back. I haven't missed anything important, but skipped all the time waste and bullshit / misinformation / disinformation.
I always forget that we're not quite the normal crowd here in Hacker News. I think I need to stop reading so many comments on this site. Trying to convince me that I'm a sociopath for posting my grandma's obituary on my timeline.
Are you relying on mainstream media again in the same way you did in the pre-social media era?
Oh no, it has something to do with the president-elect Trump and of course politics too. The first two paragraphs explained a lot and the later paragraphs were there to cover up his opinions by dragging in morality, teens and how bad the world had become due to social media.
I didn't read a single about misinformation, disinformation, fake news and how to counter them.
Hacker News was created by Paul Graham, and he is using social media. Which means ignoring social media isn't a wise decision.
> Mark Zuckerberg recently announced that Meta is ditching its fact-checkers
There is a global recession coming, everybody is trimming the fat where possible, all tech industries are cutting where possible. I think it can be reasonably argued that the very nature of fact-checking is a dangerous one anyway - by nature of which facts are used (perspective problem) and what gets checked.
> Meta is teaming up with Trump to fight EU regulations affecting their platforms
Why is this a problem? What specific EU regulation being removed causes issue? The ones that curtail freedom of speech? The EU is a largely undemocratic body, where significant positions are not even voted on. Do you really want to be controlled by this unaccountable body?
> Recently, he hosted a live chat on Twitter with Alice Weidel, the co-leader of Germany’s AfD, a party flagged by the “Verfassungsschutz” as a far-right extremist group.
It's the only popular right wing party that has been allowed to exist, and they picked up a large range of unrepresented voters. A unified block of right wing voters is exactly the situation created by trying to suppress an entire wing of politics. The right-wing party of Germany is technically somewhat ideologically aligned with the government Elon will be working for - this is far from crazy that they talk to each other.
> Alice Weidel claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was not "right-wing," but a communist instead.
When you get to such extremes, the difference between fascism and communism become difficult to see. Putting people in death camps for example, are we talking about the concentration camps or gulags? Extreme nationalism is unique to which ideology? Which ideology was uniquely a dictatorship?
> Profit First, Morality... Somewhere in the Basement
Nothing new. If something is for free, then _you_ are the product.
> Teens and Social Media: A Toxic Cocktail
I have said this for a long time, stop exposing children to unfiltered access on the internet, under any context.
> Once the accounts were finally gone, I realized just how much of a grip these platforms had on me. The number of times I reflexively typed "t" or "f" into my browser bar (which autocompletes to twitter.com or facebook.com) was honestly terrifying.
The trick is to know your limitations and account for them. I don't use social media on my work computer at all, and until recently I didn't even have any chat apps. These were all relegated to my phone, and it's purposefully slow and old.
> Honestly? No idea. Some friends recommended Bluesky, but I’m holding off for now. Maybe I’ll go old-school and write more blog posts. Like back in the early 2000s, when you actually had to think before sharing your thoughts with the world. Sounds quaint, doesn’t it?
The magical new social media will not resolve your issues with social media, social media has been around long enough to know this.
> There is a global recession coming, everybody is trimming the fat where possible, all tech industries are cutting where possible. I think it can be reasonably argued that the very nature of fact-checking is a dangerous one anyway - by nature of which facts are used (perspective problem) and what gets checked.
What recession??? We've heard this line for 5+ years now. They're cutting where possible because they can and because the job market is in a dumpster at the moment.
I agree that community notes works well. But for breaking news, by the time it kicks in the damage is already done. I've seen malicious misinfo about the LA fires get millions of views and 20k retweets before the community note was finally approved.
It’s the why, the how, and the context of how the replacement will be built, and the context of how he’s selling the change. Zuck told Trump’s team before he told his own content board. He’s building something aligned to the new administration more than the principle of relaxing a problematic fact checking solution.
He complained about undue influence from the Biden administration, as if he isn’t going to be subject to undue influence by the Trump administration.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
nindalf|1 year ago
Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media. I can’t speak for everyone, but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it.
Maybe that’s an ok tradeoff to make, but it’s worth knowing that before getting into it.
hypeatei|1 year ago
This doesn't really seem that important if your only method of knowing this was a post blasted to hundreds (or thousands) of people. Or, to put it another way: if you mattered, you would've gotten a direct message or call from them.
I'd argue that social media has normalized keeping up with people who aren't supposed to be part of your life forever. But, we should take a step back and realize that not everything should or will last forever. If you cross paths again then you can catch up, but having life updates constantly? No thanks.
johnnyanmac|1 year ago
TBH I have no idea where or if my friend post stuff on social media anymore. I know maybe 1 person that posted updates often on Facebook, and that was pre-pandemic. Some post more business stuff on twitter.
But overall I just kind of accept that sometimes I'll meet up with someone after a few years and realize "oh yeah, they're married now, took a trip to Japan for 6 months, and is getting some local attention from their band they made a few years ago"
Of course, the first thing men will say after that meeting is simply "I've been fine, can't complain. How about you?". Maybe they'll mention their new job, but the rest will come after some 15-30 minutes of observation and chatting about the newest media.
>but I know a lack of social media meant that I have lost touch with old acquaintances completely. I have a few close friends and that’s it.
likewise, but I'm not sure if social media would have saved that for me. It's definitely a cultural issue, especially with men.
aaarrm|1 year ago
Seeing people's updates on a wall isn't truly keeping up with friends. Keeping up and staying in touch requires consistent deliberate effort from both parties, via phone calls, messaging, and seeing each other in person. If you're not doing that with someone, then yeah, learning about life updates when you actually chat and catch up just makes sense to me.
jjulius|1 year ago
Fine with me. They're acquaintances. Nobody has 200+ "friends", we have a handful of them. Is it nice to know that someone I hung out with a handful of times twenty years ago but otherwise don't really know and haven't said a word to in a decade made a big life change? Sure, I guess, but for the most part it has absolutely no bearing or impact on my day-to-day life nor the lives of those most important to me, and that's where I'm putting my energy.
stiray|1 year ago
Dont have FB, twitter, reddit, linkedin, tiktok, not even google account... none of that crap. I am successfully avoiding getting my name anywhere on the internet, I am not posting my photos, videos,...
I have 7 friends I meet regularly, I have friends where our life separated years back and we meet once or twice per year and I have phone with 473 phone numbers of various contacts, from former colleges to dishwasher repair technician, etc.
And guess what, people call me, sms me (oh yes, it works so much better than having 20 various clients installed for different groups of people) or send me email if something important has happened and I am actually physically invited to birthdays, "i got son" celebrations, notified about death (luckily only one, former schoolmate).
When we meet, in person (i hate long phone calls), we have a quality chat as I dont know anything about their ingrown hair on the tip of their toe and they don't know anything about me changing job or having knot on hair in my beard.
For anyone else, I dont care. I dont disillusion myself how I have 473 good friends on some stupid online platform who need to share every intimate detail with me. I cant even handle so many people.
So maybe those tradeoffs are not really the real tradeoffs but rather self deception, how much you matter to the people and to how many people.
I can count them using my fingers. Which is perfectly fine.
jader201|1 year ago
I think that’s a feature, not a bug.
Most of the life updates people post on social media are the best of the best, which is what triggers so much fomo and trying to measure up. That’s why social media makes most people feel worse about their own lives. (Not to mention all of the other garbage these platforms try to push on you that you didn’t even ask for.)
If these people are really important to us, then we’d find other means of staying in touch: text them, call them, invite them over (if that’s feasible).
And if enough people get off social media, everyone else might also realize they need to make an effort to stay in touch with others, instead of the lazy post of glamour shots for the purpose of internet likes and feeding the dopamine addiction.
2024user|1 year ago
WhyOhWhyQ|1 year ago
__MatrixMan__|1 year ago
Which is why I don't think the way forward is for everybody to leave social media. It's just not going to happen en masse, that's asking too much. We need to build media which can't be owned. If we ask people to sacrifice something, it should be an extra few cents on their electric bill and yesteryear's phone plugged in somewhere and hosting their share of it.
I've only been exploring it for a few days now, but nostr seems promising for this kind of thing. The content is awful, just coin bro stuff, but as something to plug into and build apps for... seems legit.
coffeefirst|1 year ago
And that’s okay. It means 5 years later when we cross paths for real there’s lots to catch up on.
suzzer99|1 year ago
I've got my Facebook feed so well-curated that it rarely causes me distress. And like you, I like keeping up with old acquaintances, seeing their kids' milestones, etc. I get real enjoyment out of that.
Instagram I post pics when I travel and otherwise ignore it.
Twitter OTOH is probably a net negative for me. I still keep it around to follow sports pundits during games, and I usually only follow my sports list. But I do check in on my main feed during major events, and then inevitably end up doomscrolling. For example, the LA fires hashtags are so far beyond toxic - nothing but engagement farming, malicious misinfo, political nonsense, etc. Amidst all that crap, maybe 1 in 10 tweets has good info, but I have to destroy my psyche to find it.
itbeho|1 year ago
ozim|1 year ago
Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on social media
My impression is „how can one be so self centered” to imagine everyone HAS to know about their big event if they were not part of it and were not invited directly.
Is that person Kardashian family or something ;).
Even if it was a wedding and they posted photos. I wouldn’t remember a week later - if it is a person I see once in 5 years face to face and I was not invited. There are many big life events of such people.
shaky-carrousel|1 year ago
DougN7|1 year ago
ofcourseyoudo|1 year ago
And that light connection to people through social media wasn't a thing that created "close friends" anyway. It add to those weak connections that do have value but I doubt many people create intimate friend relationships solely through social media.
motohagiography|1 year ago
I think it has made me a better friend in some ways, as I'm a respite from the narratives they sustain, but to others, also a kind of legacy friend who may be an attachment to an old life, and who isn't part of their present.
there's an aspect where watching their social media would be to participate in the change in their lives, and separating from it (perhaps selfishly) preserves things that might be left behind. but on the other hand, I'm interested in relating in one way too. social media profiles are strange because they say, "see, I am all these things now!" and in not seeing them, it declines to recognize those, like an old uncle you're always going to be a kid to because that's how you always were.
I have more old friends than most, and I often think about whether there is an essential self we see in each other, like a character that all these stories happen around where we can peer across them to one another, protagonist to protagonist, as companions in the real. or are the relationships artifacts of the stories, and when they change, we do? it's prob a mix, but I don't think those essential(ist) aspects of friendship survive being mediated by the churn of updates and the curation of a public persona.
anyway, being outside social media is a very different way to relate and not everything survives.
noman-land|1 year ago
bee_rider|1 year ago
Maybe have a text chain for your friends or something? The folks I really expect to know things about… they’d tell me while we were interacting.
parsimo2010|1 year ago
I think the social part of social media can be good for us, and we have to figure out a way to avoid the toxicity. I’d like to see more posts about how to bend the algorithm to show you less toxicity- at least on Instagram I’ve managed to use the “not interested/relevant” button enough and turned on content filtering that it mostly shows me wholesome content. I don’t know if everyone realizes that if you hate-watch a video or hate-read a post then the algorithm sees that as engagement and will show you more. You have to nope yourself out of the dark corners as fast as you realize where you are.
Semaphor|1 year ago
I wish I would still see those. While I have an account, I rarely use FB nowadays, because the algorithm thinks I’ll be more interested in stuff I don’t care about. So when I go to FB I tend to close the tab again a few seconds later…
pmontra|1 year ago
My social media are WhatsApp and Telegram. I get in touch there with people I care about and I don't get streams of useless information like I would if I'd be on FB, X, Instagram or TikTok. I do look for videos on YouTube when I want to learn something for which watching is better that reading.
oysterville|1 year ago
mastazi|1 year ago
Regarding life events: I quit all social media about 5 years ago[1]. People I care about know about that, and if they want to tell me about life events they do it with other means. Those who don't, they weren't really friends, just acquaintances. I am OK with that.
[1] with the exception of Linkedin, which I hate and never use, but I have been asked by people in my company to keep a profile for PR-related reasons.
monssooon|1 year ago
incoming1211|1 year ago
These full fledged 'quit' posts are nothing more than an attempt at a political statement that falls on deaf ears.
ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7|1 year ago
To me, it seems like if someone has so many friends or is so busy that they need to manage their life using this strategy, you probably aren't going to have much of a connection anyway.
Refusing23|1 year ago
i deleted fb 10ish years ago.
and since then every family event that had been planned, was done on fb (just like before) and i find out about it by a text from my sister.
the trick is to not give a shit. Coz they don't.
macagain|1 year ago
Another reason to not use big social media is that I would rather not have my network to be exploited by some big corp for who knows what they do with that info.
KronisLV|1 year ago
I feel like that's the downside of social media in general, like the network effect - since most people are on social media, that's the place where people will post life updates, as opposed to talking to others about that stuff directly as much.
Maybe there could be a healthy way to use social media: to catch up with the people in your social circle, maybe look at a few cute pictures of animals or memes, but don't obsessively doomscroll or compare yourself to the highlights of others' lives.
larodi|1 year ago
Conventional media can be ok for casual reading/scrolling, but feels increasingly out-of-touch. Interestingly these days cnn, bbc, dw, en, and aj list different headlines, which is not what it was 15 y.ago.
Still I'd strongly advise against all push media, and in particular Meta's products which pose a very high-risk of (screen) addiction thanks to hundreds of hidden retention mechanisms.
renegade-otter|1 year ago
The only winning move is not to play.
I just got together with two friends in RL. One I have not seen for 10 years. There were a lot of missed news we all had to catch up on. This is how it's always been, and it's completely normal. Even the olden Facebook way of being so plugged in into your friends' lives was very unhealthy. If you HAVE to know something, life will find a way of letting you know.
richrichardsson|1 year ago
I had the same thing happen, but both they and I were Facebook users, it's just the algorithm decided I don't need to see posts from my friends and it's better that I see adverts (I can live with that, I don't pay to use the platform after all) and hundreds of random pages/groups that I have zero interest in following.
This 2nd "feature" is slowly driving me towards the point where the FOMO of no longer passively interacting with my friends may longer keep me on there.
fakedang|1 year ago
The advice to "quit social media" , "get a FairPhone", " get an FTP account and mount it with curlftps... " is often tossed around HN a lot, but real life flies in the diametrically opposite direction. While I'm not largely affected by it, I still feel a twinge of disappointment not finding out when an old friend has had a major life event.
pino82|1 year ago
Bring that together with your idea about friendship before you run behind them.
Maybe it's fine for you. Maybe your conclusion is that it's not worth the thing.
It's not a new topic. For me, iit was around 15 years ago. I never had FB or WA. Not even for a day. And that brought a lot of friendships to an end. Most of my friendships in fact. And that was sad!! But well, no other way would even be an option, admittedly! It's sad, but it was the best I could do.
jacooper|1 year ago
Losing such a network of people is costly, socially and from an opportunity perspective.
Still trying to not click anything not related to people I follow, the algorithms on meta apps are just insane.
wruza|1 year ago
This dramatic deletion is overreaction, solve the underlying problem instead.
Rather than scrolling instagram and tiktok, visit /news and /newest, and then /ask, /show. If nothing interesting there, refresh the /newest until there is. You can be first in upvoting or commenting on it, and can get a good bump to your score if you say something that sounds smart before it hits the frontpage. Then you can re-read the quality content you produced and count how much is left to the round number, like it's only 40 to 9700, only 340 to 10000, etc. Much healthier than just scrolling endlessly and sharing memes.
insane_dreamer|1 year ago
it's more prevalent today than it was then, so no.
> solve the underlying problem instead
that would be to get rid of FB, X etc. altogether; but since we can't do that, we can do the things that we have control over, i.e., our own accounts
MinimalAction|1 year ago
walthamstow|1 year ago
Karrot_Kream|1 year ago
bflesch|1 year ago
atrettel|1 year ago
Baeocystin|1 year ago
It has been a significant amount of work just dealing with all the derppelgängers out there who use an address they don't own for important things. Medical records. Divorce papers. Mortgages. The short of it is that it doesn't even require maliciousness on someone else's part to be affected by impersonation, accidental or otherwise. So yeah, keep what you've got, because there's no guarantee the next person to get it will not somehow affect you.
ipython|1 year ago
Plus I feel like I’m still costing the platform the fractions of fractions of a cent to keep my data stored, replicated and active somewhere
austin-cheney|1 year ago
mattgreenrocks|1 year ago
stevenAthompson|1 year ago
olyjohn|1 year ago
amelius|1 year ago
TSA officer: "please log in to your social media account"
You: "I have no social media"
TSA officer: "step out of the line please"
openrisk|1 year ago
The reality is always a mundane core that gets complicated by human tragicomedy. Of course its wholesome to be able to connect digitally with friends and family. Its also a great economic enabler to connect digitally with professionals. Or to be able to publish to a bulletin board about your brilliant accomplishments.
But to paraphrase Gates, we need these connections, we don't need the self-appointed universal connectors.
Its 2025, and this is HN. I put it to you that technically the only thing preventing us today from having good "connections infrastructure" is the corrupting influence of big adtech. One possible vision of how to organize the digital space in technical and economic terms has become the only vision.
i5heu|1 year ago
I do not care if they do the same. I am old now (almost 30) and came to the realization that all of our lifes are packet and busy and ppl are very bad at keeping up with other ppl that are not continuously presented to them.
This is the price I have to pay to not be on instagram: writing my friends and ask them how they doing.
And it is a very nice price to pay.
Sander_Marechal|1 year ago
I'm 45 and wondering if I should be offended by this....
markatkinson|1 year ago
karles|1 year ago
chmaynard|1 year ago
"Maybe I’ll go old-school and write more blog posts. Like back in the early 2000s, when you actually had to think before sharing your thoughts with the world. Sounds quaint, doesn’t it?"
layble|1 year ago
SketchySeaBeast|1 year ago
I get it, it's different types of content, one requires more effort than the other, and the argument is that, if you don't have anything of substance to say, don't say it, but it still requires extra effort to read that I probably don't feel inclined to give.
amikaeel|1 year ago
dehrmann|1 year ago
asdfasvea|1 year ago
vasco|1 year ago
kashyapc|1 year ago
What you say reminds me of an ancient Greek saying (I think it was Epictetus). I'm paraphrasing from memory:
"You starved for a whole day to practice discipline? Great! Now resist not telling it to anyone."
Karrot_Kream|1 year ago
timeon|1 year ago
joduplessis|1 year ago
hnbear|1 year ago
I'm always curious here what counts as Social Media, and what's just a useful site?
Github? HackerNews? Reddit? Facebook, but only for FB Marketplace which is now a better local sales site than Craigslist?
What makes it social? Originally with FB and before it with MySpace it was the ability to put up a page about yourself, and then chat with others. HN has a profile and communication, so do the others listed.
Juliate|1 year ago
For the modern definition of social, nowadays: incentives to generate engagement (connect with people, post, like, comment) to build up data to drive advertising sales.
Over2Chars|1 year ago
If after a few months you have zero "facebook friends" nuke the account.
Internet updates are no substitute for good old meat space.
EmmEff|1 year ago
mariusor|1 year ago
mattgreenrocks|1 year ago
XorNot|1 year ago
johnnyanmac|1 year ago
scarface_74|1 year ago
And people talk about how bad Facebook is, LinkedIn is far worse. Everyone is trying to be a “thought leader” and no one is genuine on it.
I have a decent LinkedIn Profile with recommendations, up to date career information. But I never post to it.
I’m only really active when I’m looking for a job. I will respond to messages and try to keep my network somewhat warm.
mrweasel|1 year ago
A small group of people surely do, but for others the benefit doesn't outweigh the negative. Social media is great, in theory, but Facebooks implementations suck and I won't support a company like Facebook who I believe negatively impacts society. The problems and much of the anger stems from feeling almost forced to use the products of a company I think manipulates and exploit it's users. It's almost impossible for my kid to have a social life and for me to be involved without a Facebook account and I can't even offer an alternative form of communication because pretty much anything else would be more work for everyone else.
Agree on you with Linkedin. It's basically an account to a job board, that you keep active in case you need to look for work. The people trying to get engagement on their posts are almost all pretty much insane.
Mashimo|1 year ago
I have to facebook friends that I don't interact with very much outside some electronic music events. This helps me find events that might interest me.
Some venues don't even put the dates on their website.
vasco|1 year ago
But some people just can't fathom there's different lives too their own and throw the baby out with the bath water.
4dregress|1 year ago
onemoresoop|1 year ago
fullstackwife|1 year ago
toephu2|1 year ago
You should try it too!
duxup|1 year ago
It’s hard to quit when everyone else doesn’t.
ozim|1 year ago
I removed account like 10 years ago when it already was clear it is not social network anymore.
I also never had a twitter really besides some account to check what it is and left it unused.
Only LI is one I keep for business purposes but I don’t care about social aspect or discussion there - it is basically a virtual business card and it is quite popular so it’s useful I guess.
fredzel|1 year ago
How many different accounts do you have to delete though? For many of those people "t" and "f" would be substituted by "y"toube, "r"eddit, etc. It doesn't have to be a social media site, might be news you're intrested in, tech sites, deals aggregator.
I get what you mean, but for someone with habit of looking for distraction whenever they have nothing to do it won't be a cure, bandaid at best.
noman-land|1 year ago
If you care about yourself and want to have healthier and more mindful habits, you will hopefully start redirecting what were once mindless impulses of avoidance or boredom into more meaningful activities for yourself.
jjulius|1 year ago
>I get what you mean, but for someone with habit of looking for distraction whenever they have nothing to do it won't be a cure, bandaid at best.
This is something society seems to have forgotten to do, and what I've focused on helping my kids remain capable of as they grow older - knowing how to be bored.
joemanaco|1 year ago
epolanski|1 year ago
While I deleted all of my social media, I will still end up spamming on reddit or reading HN or watching Youtube.
But I have to say I find them better alternatives, as those social medias are nothing but people screaming for attention.
During work time I have an extension that blocks them all.
TheCapeGreek|1 year ago
But, some options are better than others. I used to be on Twitter a lot, and had that reflex for a time after deleting it. Now... it's just not there. I did replace it with a handful of communities and some other forms of content, but it still feels better than before.
veunes|1 year ago
penjelly|1 year ago
lesostep|1 year ago
And the thing is, I am interested still. But I do miss a lot, because the group is chaotic and really important announcements are mixed in with memes and chatter, so it was a chore to waddle through that everyday, only to discover that nothing important was announced.
They kinda have to do it, I guess, because engagement metrics are no joke, and if you don't have them, then why are you here. But it really opened my eyes to how to social media completely failed on its premise when it decided that time spent on app would be a good metric.
Sometimes people just have nothing important to say other to announce, and them it should be okay to keep silent for a while, without being downranked.
And seeing how those, who always chatter even when they having nothing to say, will ultimately rise to the top on any platform that values time wasted, I left social media again.
People in comments say how it's better to have a few close friends then shallow connections, but social networks did allow us to meet someone that shared our more specific interests. My best friend I have met on a forum: our interests aligned and we spend hours talking about things we couldn't discuss with real friends before meeting up. There is value in shallow connections when they are based on shared interests. This value is lost on most social networks today.
IMO mastodon and blue sky are "good social networks" for people who want to connect over specific topics.
dep_b|1 year ago
People often ask me why I don't have Instagram: I'm in the business of making these platforms and Pablo Escobar never used cocaine either. I know how these platforms are built and I know how we think about the people that use it.
pixxel|1 year ago
Did the Hive approve this, or are you breaking the rules of individualism?
UberFly|1 year ago
tracker1|1 year ago
I do find the reactionary response a bit disturbing. Having been caught up in the trap of "fact checkers" for reposting a political cartoon and similar, I'd definitely prefer the community notes approach. All said the inability of many to have a rational conversation with those they don't completely agree is very wrong on so many levels.
bluepizza|1 year ago
Criminals are not willing to have rational conversations. But they just won a free pass from the platforms.
okaleniuk|1 year ago
Social media is a reality one can't simply ignore completely. One can complicatedly ignore it though to some level of success. For me, the minimal rules are: don't write on reddit, don't read on linkedin. Don't touch anything else. The orange site is ok-ish.
ronnier|1 year ago
noncoml|1 year ago
I hate to promote Reddit, because it’s not worth it, but I have a pretty nicely curated home page of just “good things”, cats, pics, etc that I love to browse when I want to jeep my mind idly occupied. If I make the mistake and go back to popular I get filled with rage, feeling of injustice and hopelessness.
kouru225|1 year ago
4dregress|1 year ago
Eextra953|1 year ago
mellosouls|1 year ago
Honestly, there are good reasons to quit social media because of their intrinsic toxicities, but at least if you are doing it for ideological motives admit that its about you.
manaut|1 year ago
It’s worth reflecting on what democracy means in this context. For me, it means being willing to tolerate other thought bubbles, even when it’s challenging. This openness is preferable to having our thoughts policed. In an ideal world, thought bubbles would be more permeable, fostering trust and understanding between people with differing perspectives. That trust can’t grow if we only defend our own bubble. Overcoming the divide is crucial if we want democracy to thrive (or not die).
chrisvalleybay|1 year ago
Turning off the machine feeding stuff to my brain really has helped me. I feel better, cleaner and less disturbed/distracted.
Now I am actually considering leaving YouTube as well, although it has been such a lovely place at times, since I notice it is deteriorating my health.
I recommend you try it; nothing has to be deleted. It's simply removing the habit of using it. It does make life a bit better :)
Oh, and a good first step is to install the extension `News Feed Eradicator`. This is how I got started. I run it on everything.
nobodywillobsrv|1 year ago
Very little discussion of the actual problems with regulating speech the way the EU or Fact Checkers does. Just an implicit statement it was correct.
Cortex5936|1 year ago
tobyhinloopen|1 year ago
This added step makes it hard enough to not mindlessly browse it.
ramon156|1 year ago
phkahler|1 year ago
I reflexively type "news" into the browser. It may not be quite as bad as FB or X, but I should probably stop.
flumpcakes|1 year ago
It is awfully lonely I must admit. I have a partner of over a decade which helps but not having social media is very isolating. My wife has all the social medias and knows what happens with my family before I do!
My last 'experiment' was the shortest - I registered for an Instagram account and when it suggested that I add my real-life next door neighbour in the sign-up process I immediately stopped and deleted the account. That is scary.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
FinnLobsien|1 year ago
Instagram went first and then I realized I hadn't logged on to Facebook in 2 years so why bother keeping it around?
I think for people who can just decide to keep the account and no longer use it, they should keep it just to stay in touch with some folks. But I realize that as long as I'd have an account, I'd keep using it.
Personally, for me the tradeoff between 2+ hours every day on Instagram for an occasional few hours with an acquaintance isn't worth it.
roddylindsay|1 year ago
Double_a_92|1 year ago
E.g. facebook for me is mainly the messenger and a few random photos or people. Everything else on there is not enjoyable.
Reddit is like a forum where I can occassionally say things about my hobbies. Also nothing that sucks me in, in an unhealthy way.
X and Mastodon are mostly news and random people showing off things.
Youtube is like TV where at some point you watched what you wanted to watch for the day.
The only thing that seems addicting to me are Apps like Tiktok or Instagram, where you are just one simple swipe away from the next bit of short term entertainment.
afavour|1 year ago
Social media does have a powerful use case: keeping in touch with friends and family you don’t see often. It feels trite to watch a video of them with their kid and give it a ‘like’ but I’d miss it if it were gone. Especially if it was still there for everyone else, I’d miss their collective presence more than they’d miss my singular one.
Rather than another scolding post telling everyone to delete social media I’d much rather folks think and talk about how we can make a better social media, preferably divorced from the control of giant corporations.
jjulius|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
skoczko|1 year ago
littlecranky67|1 year ago
bugtodiffer|1 year ago
simple as that, just avoid them
ge96|1 year ago
On my downtime I still participate in social media though usually anonymously in the form of shit posting. Or just watching YouTube. I did get sucked into that crap of posting everyday about my glamorous life. Eventually I found I didn't know what to post anymore. Had to find something to post. I'm glad I never got sucked into it completely like TikTok/Instagram.
upghost|1 year ago
1. Some companies will not look at your resume or do business with you unless you have a LinkedIn account, especially in the age of AI. Fine by me.
2. If you go to start a business, you will find most of these social media companies require you to have a personal account in order to make a business/marketing account. This is very annoying.
3. Damn I miss Facebook Marketplace. But it's not worth having FB. You can usually have a friend do marketplace stuff for you.
TheCapeGreek|1 year ago
iLoveOncall|1 year ago
This is not actually explained in the article.
It rightfully explains how X, meta and others have taken a turn for the worse to say the least, but it doesn't say why I should delete my Facebook or Twitter account.
Neither do the hundreds of calls to delete such accounts in the past few weeks or months have.
I get that the point is "You should stop using such social media", but I don't get what __deleting your account__ actually adds on top, especially when put in relation to the political reasons behind stopping to use them.
PaulHoule|1 year ago
add-sub-mul-div|1 year ago
Isn't it a tautology? If you continue using a product that sucks rather than abandon it, you're using a bad product and it also has license to keep getting worse. Deleting an account is the strongest signal of rejection.
tzs|1 year ago
Even if the TOS doesn't require this so you can actually sue they would likely have a choice of venue provision that would make it inconvenient for you and/or a choice of law provision that would be favorable to them.
If you have an account at the site it will likely be very hard to get out from under the arbitration/venue/law provisions of the TOS.
If you no longer have an account you will probably have a better chance of escaping the TOS, especially if whatever you want to sue over took place entirely after you deleted your account.
joemanaco|1 year ago
qwertytyyuu|1 year ago
2024user|1 year ago
mch82|1 year ago
syndicatedjelly|1 year ago
CmdrKrool|1 year ago
Deprogrammer9|1 year ago
pessimizer|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
arisbe__|1 year ago
HelloUsername|1 year ago
Yet you still have an account?
ChrisArchitect|1 year ago
Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42581119
rednafi|1 year ago
- I write blogs and share them there. On multiple occasions, I’ve received job offers in my inbox. Job opportunities from acquaintances on Twitter are far better than LinkedIn DM spam.
- Staying up to date with the latest fads also teaches me what not to chase. Sometimes, the firehose is the only way to get that information.
I never had problems dropping the mic and not arguing with strangers.
hugoromano|1 year ago
Kim_Bruning|1 year ago
Don’t build your castle in other people’s kingdoms (2021)
https://howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/dont-build-your-cast...
HN Discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41712885
yard2010|1 year ago
RHSman2|1 year ago
calmbonsai|1 year ago
I deleted LinkedIn (after the MSFT acquisition) 10 years ago, due to the business model change. Even prior to that, it was getting too spammy anyways.
I keep a token Instagram just for viewing the rare family/friend that insists I see something from a trip, but I never post there.
thallavajhula|1 year ago
amelius|1 year ago
What if they structured the financing like they do with science?
tiborsaas|1 year ago
The problem with the EU market is that if I launched anything social, I'm immediately hit with a localization problem so I have to launch first either in English (you lost 53% of people)* or start with a few select countries first with their native language.
It's kinda a mess. Money is not really the issue with EU startups, it's the cultural fragmentation.
There are also many small niche social platforms, but of course nothing like FB/X/etc..
* https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2979
recursivedoubts|1 year ago
https://risingstars.js.org/2024/en#section-framework
so... it depends.
junto|1 year ago
They were so good and knew exactly what kinds of things would interest me, that it kept me coming back (subconsciously).
However in Amazon’s own app and website, they really have poor suggestions.
jkc101|1 year ago
skwee357|1 year ago
LinkedIn is the de-facto standard for looking for a job in certain places. I wonder, people who deleted LinkedIn, how do they get along with looking for a job?
rsynnott|1 year ago
(I do think think contributes to extreme weirdness of LinkedIn posts; there's really ~no-one normal using the social network bit of LinkedIn.)
caseyy|1 year ago
LinkedIn is closer to other portfolio sites (ArtStation, Behance, SoundCloud, etc). It’s basically professional achievements with comments.
I suppose it is social media in the broadest sense. But a lot of evils of social media aren’t there, just how perfect people pretend their lives are. But there aren’t many echo chambers, instances of shock content, manufactured outrage, cancel culture, politicking, lord of the fly-ing, etc.
Juliate|1 year ago
LinkedIn is merely a glamour social network + "pro" dynamic address book + kind of a standardised CV, nothing much more.
entropyneur|1 year ago
silexia|1 year ago
pmarreck|1 year ago
Because of what nindalf said, basically: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42678031
kelvinjps10|1 year ago
Over2Chars|1 year ago
plutoh28|1 year ago
HN is my only form of social media now on my phone. Now, it’s time to build meaningful relationships in my life again.
__coder__|1 year ago
tacostakohashi|1 year ago
Obviously, FB, twitter, insta, LinkedIn etc. are a toxic cesspool. I've left my accounts there pretty much dormant for 10+ years.
Ideally, I'd have maintained connections and contacts with my own network, using my own media, direct emails / texts, phone calls, in contexts that I controlled. The problem is... I didn't. I basically just buried my head in the sand and withdrew.
I guess the takeaway is to try to use these platforms in a positive way, as a means to an end, and not get sucked in, or to network in some other, better way, rather than withdrawing, because that's not actually a good alternative.
staticBr|1 year ago
Hi Jochen wink
marginalia_nu|1 year ago
The problem is when you are just looping[1], absentmindedly opening and closing news and social media sites for hours. This can eat a lot of time, and is generally pretty draining.
I've been adding separate user accounts based on what tasks I'm doing, and locking them down so they can only perform those tasks.
I have a social media account (which I'm on right now), I have a coding account which I can not access news or social media from, and I have a few other accounts. This creates friction when task switching, and makes it so I have to be a bit more deliberate with how I use the computer. (I have social media blocked on my phone, as I find that's just not compatible with a happy life)
I've also recently been setting up Site Specific Browsers[2], basically custom PWAs, a web browser with no URL bar and no tabs, to further add barriers between tasks (like checking CI) and just noodling on the web. (I use electron to do this, but you can also use chrome by starting it with --app=https://www.example.com/ . Sadly Firefox has removed the ability to do this. )
[1] https://xkcd.com/1411/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_browser
noman-land|1 year ago
johnnyanmac|1 year ago
But it's not like all my social media is gone. I'm still obviously here on HN. I have a tildes account for more general news. I have two discord for personal and semi-anonymous servers. And for future connections I semi-regret missing in the Twitter age, I have a Bluesky ready.
I'm simply being more mindful of what sites I use and and what communities I join to prevent the issues that arose with Reddit, Facebook, and Tumblr.
chenlian|1 year ago
surgical_fire|1 year ago
I really hope EU just bans Meta from operating here.
"There you go Zuck, you don't need to worry about our regulations anymore"
I think we would live just fine around here without their awful products. It would also serve as a cautionary tale to other companies willing to undermine regulations around here.
pluc|1 year ago
chrsw|1 year ago
slackfan|1 year ago
jpmattia|1 year ago
jjulius|1 year ago
I argue that the whole thing was a net mistake and any "openings" should not be filled. The lunch has spoiled, don't eat it.
PaulHoule|1 year ago
I got back into social media about 1.5 years ago when Mastodon seemed to be coming on strong. I've lately gotten into Bluesky and all I can say is: (1) come on in, the water is fine, and (2) sure it will go bad someday when the money gets tight but back in the day we expected platforms to decay and for the cool kids to move on to the next one.
danlugo92|1 year ago
johnea|1 year ago
The distictions between made "deleting the accout" and "just stop using it" are really mute. The main point is to disengage from such platforms.
Of course, almost no will. In spite of the clear conection between these platforms and individual mental health, and even more importantly massive distribution of seriously mileading "fake news", most people quite frankly just don't give a shit.
Look at the near total indifference to the petro mafia's distruction of the natural world. Most people just can't be bothered.
So when you compare something like failing to respond to corporations eliminating the ecosystem services required for life on earth, to a call to action against the crimes of asocial media, do you really expect a significant number of people to care?
I'm doubting it...
jwr|1 year ago
I mean, why on earth would you expect anything different this time from yet another "social" thing made and run by a corporate entity?
I moved to Mastodon, which at least has the benefit of not being owned by a corporation, which will perhaps save it from the usual paths of ensh*ttification.
add-sub-mul-div|1 year ago
I got good years out of Twitter before it sucked, I have no regrets about getting in early on it.
johnnyanmac|1 year ago
It's still useful, but it's more like a a car than a town square. you'll have a lot of fun in the beginning, you'll normalize it, it'll start to break down as you try to keep it running, and then eventually it gives up the ghost. So you either accept that and not own a car or you buy a new one.
rahidz|1 year ago
Deprogrammer9|1 year ago
constantlm|1 year ago
johnnyanmac|1 year ago
Then you realize you're not bound to the tracks and it's probably best to simply let the trainwreck happen rather than add one more fatality to it.
camus21|1 year ago
codr7|1 year ago
mvdtnz|1 year ago
> The content? Let’s just say it made me want to yeet my phone into the nearest ocean. How anyone can take that level of garbage seriously is beyond me. But hey, bubbles are cozy, right? Musk, Zuckerberg, and Trump — what a trio. Honestly, this could be the perfect setup for a dystopian sci-fi thriller. Except, spoiler alert: no happy ending here.
He doesn't explain further what "garbage" he's talking about.
Sorry but I just can't take your grievance seriously if you won't at least explain it. This type of writing is the epitome of the echo chamber. If you don't already know what the author is talking about and already aggressively agree with them, not only are you not the target audience but they intentionally make the writing impenetrable to you.
This is the absolute worst type of internet dreck. It's ironic that the author rails against "bubbles" in the quoted paragraph.
joemanaco|1 year ago
gadders|1 year ago
Honestly this is the tech equivalent of putting your hands over your ears and posting "LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU." just in case someone says something you disagree with.
vlachomir|1 year ago
The truth is that nobody cares if we delete our accounts on social media.
pino82|1 year ago
I'm not actually the bad guy you think I am. It was basically all a show. You had suuuuuuch a hard and looong time understanding the danger of all these corporate social media silos. Where we control what opinions are visible and what not so much. Social media (in that particular fashion) was always a trap, a problem to definitely avoid, since day 1, but it was sooooooo teeeeerribly hard to make you understand.
So I though, well, if you are all too stupid to understand it, I will make a veeeeeery bizarre and freaky show for you that you will never forget. It will be so unreal, even you all will actually _get_ it now!!! Because it's such an important lessons for the upcoming future...
50208|1 year ago
PawgerZ|1 year ago
shahzaibmushtaq|1 year ago
Oh no, it has something to do with the president-elect Trump and of course politics too. The first two paragraphs explained a lot and the later paragraphs were there to cover up his opinions by dragging in morality, teens and how bad the world had become due to social media.
I didn't read a single about misinformation, disinformation, fake news and how to counter them.
Hacker News was created by Paul Graham, and he is using social media. Which means ignoring social media isn't a wise decision.
bArray|1 year ago
There is a global recession coming, everybody is trimming the fat where possible, all tech industries are cutting where possible. I think it can be reasonably argued that the very nature of fact-checking is a dangerous one anyway - by nature of which facts are used (perspective problem) and what gets checked.
> Meta is teaming up with Trump to fight EU regulations affecting their platforms
Why is this a problem? What specific EU regulation being removed causes issue? The ones that curtail freedom of speech? The EU is a largely undemocratic body, where significant positions are not even voted on. Do you really want to be controlled by this unaccountable body?
> Recently, he hosted a live chat on Twitter with Alice Weidel, the co-leader of Germany’s AfD, a party flagged by the “Verfassungsschutz” as a far-right extremist group.
It's the only popular right wing party that has been allowed to exist, and they picked up a large range of unrepresented voters. A unified block of right wing voters is exactly the situation created by trying to suppress an entire wing of politics. The right-wing party of Germany is technically somewhat ideologically aligned with the government Elon will be working for - this is far from crazy that they talk to each other.
> Alice Weidel claimed that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was not "right-wing," but a communist instead.
When you get to such extremes, the difference between fascism and communism become difficult to see. Putting people in death camps for example, are we talking about the concentration camps or gulags? Extreme nationalism is unique to which ideology? Which ideology was uniquely a dictatorship?
> Profit First, Morality... Somewhere in the Basement
Nothing new. If something is for free, then _you_ are the product.
> Teens and Social Media: A Toxic Cocktail
I have said this for a long time, stop exposing children to unfiltered access on the internet, under any context.
> Once the accounts were finally gone, I realized just how much of a grip these platforms had on me. The number of times I reflexively typed "t" or "f" into my browser bar (which autocompletes to twitter.com or facebook.com) was honestly terrifying.
The trick is to know your limitations and account for them. I don't use social media on my work computer at all, and until recently I didn't even have any chat apps. These were all relegated to my phone, and it's purposefully slow and old.
> Honestly? No idea. Some friends recommended Bluesky, but I’m holding off for now. Maybe I’ll go old-school and write more blog posts. Like back in the early 2000s, when you actually had to think before sharing your thoughts with the world. Sounds quaint, doesn’t it?
The magical new social media will not resolve your issues with social media, social media has been around long enough to know this.
oblio|1 year ago
https://companiesmarketcap.com/meta-platforms/operating-marg...
What recession??? We've heard this line for 5+ years now. They're cutting where possible because they can and because the job market is in a dumpster at the moment.
wordofx|1 year ago
Community notes is far superior to the bias enforcers.
suzzer99|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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browningstreet|1 year ago
He complained about undue influence from the Biden administration, as if he isn’t going to be subject to undue influence by the Trump administration.
And if all this is so he can buy TikTok, then…
chautumn|1 year ago
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count_d3|1 year ago
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unknown|1 year ago
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hammon|1 year ago
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unknown|1 year ago
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aeternum|1 year ago
They're clearly hypocrites as posting to a blog or HN is pretty much the same thing.