Jaron Lanier interview on how social media ruins your life
Why Hacker News recommends it
Offered as a concise summary of the economics and manipulation behind social media addiction in Facebook-related threads.
What it is
A Channel 4 News interview with technologist Jaron Lanier, who argues that social media damages people's lives. He discusses how Facebook, YouTube and Google use algorithms and data collection to shape what users see.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2018 to 2019.
What Hacker News said
Recommends colllectorof · 2018-10 · on “Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app”
>Remove the YOU from social media, and use it to have fun about whatever it is you do to have fun, and it can actually be ... fun. This doesn't change the fact that 99% of things people give credit for to social media can be easily done without mediation through a multi-billion dollar corporation. Neither does it change the fact that Twitter and Facebook have a whole slew of horrible social effects. Centralization of the web, political polarization, emergent mobs trying to ruin people's lives, rise in depression and suicide rates, normalization of global surveillance, normalization of censorship, etc, etc. Jaron Lanier has some interesting thoughts on the economy behind some of this: [this video]
Recommends randomsearch · 2019-01 · on “Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach”
Couple of points people are missing: - The biggest problem with Facebook in terms of immediate impact is not loss of privacy, though that’s real. It’s behavioural manipulation, which has lots of very negative outcomes for you as a user as well as society. Don’t think you’re not been manipulated, you are, and you are susceptible to it. Your behaviour and emotions are negatively impacted by the fact you use facebook. - This is not “capitalism” or “consumer voting with their money”. Firstly, due to network effects Facebook has a monopoly on their kind of product. The choice is Facebook vs no facebook. Second, the currency is time and attention to sell ads. Finally, most people are addicted to s
Cites teleclimber · 2019-03 · on “U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says”
Interestingly that's exactly how algorithms make things go viral. They pick up on things that get a quick reaction with complete disregard for what happens in the long term. Jaron Lanier explains this in his talks [0]. So features on social media are decided based on short term gains and posts on social media are promoted like that too. It's like an entire industry forgot their parents warnings about thinking about the future. [0] [this video]