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Discussion (37 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
https://wtfhappenedin1971.com
Maybe whatsapp has some use, but otherwise what's even the point. I don't even have ads on whatsapp not yet anyways, I will get my family to switch when they do.
I don't care about you Meta/Facebook or whatever it is.
It would not work. What ultimately worked were laws designed to curb tobacco use combined with public education campaigns.
In 1950 tobacco was cool. By 2000 it was very definitely not. In western Europe at least, sales of premium brands were falling sharply and volumes shifting to cheap brands - a lot less profitable even for the same volume. Long before UK law changed to ban indoor smoking most offices started banning smoking indoors, and pubs started doing so too (a major chain, Wetherspoons, gradually banned smoking at all its pubs).
The manufacturers tried to grow in other markets - one tobacco company investor relations person showed me some beautiful pastel coloured cigarettes in a very fancy box aimed at Eastern Europe. It did not work in the long run as attitudes changed globally.
WhatsApp is a real hard breakup in much of the world. It's the defacto standard for communication around here, and even a bunch of businesses use it exclusively. One can hope the EU will eventually mandate unlimited SMS on cellphone plans, but I don't see WhatsApp being dethroned another way
I doubt it.
Here in France, cell plans have had unlimited SMS for a very long time now. Yet, WhatsApp still is extremely widespread. Now, I'm not the most socially connected guy around, so I may not be attuned to any new developing trends in the matter, but IME it doesn't seem to lose any popularity, and something like 95% of the people I interact with on WhatsApp are locals.
None of their other apps come close. It doesn’t even look like a Meta product to me.
Or finding any one of "social media's harms" that could not, in some world where Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok did not exist, be delivered in just as socially harmful (and beneficial) a form by sufficiently-accessible versions of the apps and protocols you value and use every day.
I met someone recently whose primary addiction is Wikipedia.
For me, Signal and Hacker News are the most addictive pieces of software I still use.
Serial television (best delivered by WebTorrent and The Pirate Bay) is by far the most addictive, for me, so much so that I had to quit.
And you can definitely run successful social movements and political campaigns (for both very good and very bad things) over HN or WhatsApp/Signal, given sufficient adoption.
The only thing will break it is a better / easier alternative. And with enough success that will probably turn into the next big bad.
I would argue that it's more or less that humans don't like change, and that boomers get upset about change. It seems that the older you get, the more egotistical/selfish you become.
I'm not saying my grandma is selfish for not wanting to switch away from WhatsApp, but I am saying that it'd be hard to convince her to switch, hence I don't try.
Ever considered that you may be the selfish one for even wanting her to switch?
You want to make your life more convenient at the expense of her convenience because switching from whatsapp is a huge inconvenience.
FTFY.
> Recent research shows that social media design features like infinite scroll and algorithmic feeds may encourage compulsive use and contribute to anxiety, depression, and social comparison.
So their design is addictive; not disagreeing. I think most of us know that, even as adults, how infinite scrolling on youtube for shorts, lead to a "just one more video" effect. But even with those shenanigans in mind, I simply do not see this anywhere on the same level as smoking. The health data with regards to smoking is all there, people lose about 10 years when smoking for a long time - at the least. You can find similar data points elsewhere, e. g. sumo wrestlers in Japan dying about 15 years earlier than the rest of the population. Those data points are absolutely significant. There is no way to deny that. But comparing this to the addictive scrolling or what not ... we don't have anywhere near similar data points.
That does not mean one should look at addictive design as anything but "innocent" or "harmless", but the comparison to smoking is simply not on a factual level. If anything Facebook should be eliminated for lobbying and bribes - we witness this right now when so many states push for age sniffing of everyone using the internet while concomitantly attacking VPNs. This is not accidental - this is deliberate. And the common lie is "but but but think anyone of the kids!!!".
> And the common lie is "but but but think anyone of the kids!!!".
I’m the first one to call out “think about the kids” bullshit, but this is directly applicable here.
Any doomscrolling effect on mental faculties in 20-30 years would be completely dwarfed by the effect of AI. It won't even be a rounding error.
I just posted on another thread where someone was proudly showing off a piece of software that they vibed. Even a single minute of googling would have shown them that their goal was already achievable on current linux distros without any extra software, but now we have someone who could have learned something instead remain completely ignorant.
Doomscrolling has nothing on the +ignorance that all-in AI users are experiencing, especially since they can't tell that they're getting objectively dumber.
What makes you think they’re ignorant instead of just not giving a shit? There’s no money to make in “achievable on current Linux distros without any extra software”. The hustle culture that permeates this is another consequence of social networks.