Ask HN: What is the root cause of negative social media experience?

I'll share a take that comes from spending many years as a classroom teacher. Every classroom is a community. Regardless of your views on education, you have to do something to manage that community. If you do nothing, then the loudest voices will take over. The people with the loudest voices tend to drown out others, and their views and actions start to influence everyone else in a very unbalanced way. I've seen this play out in multiple classrooms, in every school I've been in, both as a teacher and as a student.

Every social media platform is a community, and often a collection of smaller communities as well. Moderation is hard, and doing it well costs money. Doing it well means losing many of the loudest users to other platforms that let them shout as loudly as they want.

Most platforms have given in to these loudest users, to the detriment of the communities they were starting to build. Some platforms have done this intentionally; some have fallen into these patterns because they're unwilling to do the hard work of moderation, or unable to figure out how to do it well at the scale they ultimately reach.

Anyone who enjoys the HN community more than some other social platforms should be aware of how much this community is actively moderated, by a small but very skilled moderation team. (I believe it's two people at the moment.)

Not exactly the root cause but also not not the root cause: Infinite Scroll.

That's my line in the sand for just about any app on my phone: If it has infinite scroll, it has no place on my phone.

"In 2006, Aza Raskin developed the infinite scrolling technique, whereby pagination of web pages is eliminated, in favor of continuously loading content as the user scrolls down the page.[3] Raskin later expressed regret at the invention, describing it as "one of the first products designed to not simply help a user, but to deliberately keep them online for as long as possible".[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrolling#Infinite_scrolling

Allow me to propose a theory:

In the realm of social media, where time is limited and the pursuit of quality content is paramount, individuals tend to gravitate towards the most extreme and polarizing statements. This often takes the form of irony, insults, and other provocative tactics, which serve to elicit "reactions" - the primary currency of the digital landscape.

In order for a meaningful conversation to take place, two parties must establish a common ground and shared context. However, in the online sphere, such foundations are often absent, as multiple parties engage in discussions without a shared set of values or contextual understanding.

The absence of physical proximity in the digital realm diminishes our capacity for empathy. It is far easier to be impolite and uncivil when communicating through a screen, as opposed to face-to-face interactions. Yet, paradoxically, we crave physical closeness and the tactile sensation of "touch" and "feeling". In the absence of physical proximity, we may resort to becoming "enraged" in order to compensate the lack of emotions.

Furthermore, the phenomenon of "echo chambers" - where our beliefs and opinions are reinforced, regardless of how outlandish they may be - only serves to exacerbate this issue. The added element of anonymity in online interactions further compounds the problem.

Infinite scroll, popularity points, public posts and monetization has produced many online forums which bring out the worst human commentary. I wasn't going to use the words human behavior because I think if two opposed people met in person they would act like decent humans and most likely people try to find things they have in common with others - sports, kids, food, etc.

HN doesn't have infinite scroll, outright monetization or any popularity points for that matter. I would imagine BB/forums back in the day also didn't have this. I don't do Discord but I imagine private forums there are similar.

I think there's a "too many people in the pool" problem that happens with everything virtual. Facebook was a big deal when I was in High School and early college, and I remember how quick the fall-off was once Instagram came out. Our parents had slowly been signing up for FB for years, and all the young people flocked to Instagram to have their "exclusive" club again.

Reddit is another great example for me. 2010-2015 was a magical time there, and if you look at it now it's filled with bot accounts pumping subreddits full of reposts. Back in the day people farmed Reddit karma to flex on other Redditors, now they do it for the financial incentive and no actual user would care about their "Reddit Score" these days.

It makes me wonder if it's possible to both be a successful platform and a GOOD platform, because ultimately something that is successful will get hijacked by bad actors who see a way to profit from it (either by money directly or by indirectly influencing opinions).

I think the problem is above all linked to the nature of humankind. In the case of haters, we see the worst part of human beings: the desire to hurt. Besides that, we have the race for likes and the desire for recognition and to be in the light. Having had an Instagram account focused on landscape photography, I fell into it without realizing it and it was a relief to stop it. The desire for “always more” becomes addictive and we end up thinking about the post before even taking the photo. What should be a pleasure at first (walking around and taking photos), becomes a perpetual search for posts for the Insta account. After that, there is a mixture of bitterness at seeing identical accounts succeed, and sadness at the idea of imagining what the people behind these accounts are going through, who spend their time thinking about their Instagram account.

It is due to the same reason why we get phishing emails and junk mail. The platform is incentivized to get views; it is not incentivized to promote quality content. Those who post the content can spam because it costs them nothing. The platform is happy with all the spam, click bait, and scams.

Is there a better way? I am hoping for a virtual public square that is organized like the US public TV stations. Run by free speech true believers and paid for by a mix of user fees and donations.

I suspect you're not curating your feeds correctly. You have to be ruthless when it comes to ditching people you follow if they go astray.

If your real life friends go overboard, you can usually find a "mute for 30 days" or equivalent, to keep the "friend" status, but reduce the noise.

I'm still having a positive experience on Twitter, believe it or not, because I'm careful with who I follow.

Instagram is like youtube now. Most of my close friends don't post and those that do post are not people I am close with, so I pruned as much as I can but there are a lot of good content creators now so I follow them. It ends up becoming like another reddit rather than a platform I use to connect with friends.

The root cause is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism

Social media which don't pursue profit and are decentralized (Mastodon, Matrix) do not suffer from that.

another hypothesis (1944): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Exit#:~:text=L%27enfer,peop... ?

(although personally I agree more with fsflover)

Back then, it was just people talking. Now it is players, playing.

The biggest problems with my social networking experience are problems with my social network.

Not problems with the social media platforms.

But, that said social media platforms have been beneficial to my social network and that's why I use them.

I mean I see more crap because I see more because my social network is larger.

Good luck.