Social media worsens people’s perceptions of the world can actively influences what they share and consider their own opinion.

The same point applies to family, for example, and whether I need better family or not they’re all I’ve got. And Facebook has pushed them really far down whatever fringe they had a slight inclination to. Before Facebook any extreme views could be tempered a bit in family conversations, but now everyone thinks they have the weight and authority of the whole world, or at least their tribe, behind every argument.

This bait and switch is not something we agreed to as a society. We joined for the pics of partners, kids and puppies, and to stalk and ‘poke’ people we had real life crushes on. We stayed because we found a million welcoming tribes all defined by hatred and anger.

> but now everyone thinks they have the weight and authority of the whole world, or at least their tribe, behind every argument.

You hit the nail on the head. I have close relatives I'd never ever imagined I'd not want showing up at family functions :(

To be fair this is true of most online platforms. It's easy to go down the slippery slope of always doubling down on defending your argument and never admitting to be wrong. People who get caught up in this cycle can end up in psych wards, no joke

On a different note, I joined FB as part of my college's freshmen induction class. It was "part of the course". I imagine Mark really pulled some favors from his frat bros to get that going

I still don't get how this is unique to Facebook or even at all avoidable in the future. Internet facilitates communication. Unless you censor every word, it _will_ be used for pushing conspiracy theories, too, how can you avoid that? If, let's say, the government shuts down Facebook, they will go to Telegram. If the government shuts down Telegram, they will go to a bar and hang out with their tribe. Or find another new service that's not censored. It seems to be a function of communication, especially enhanced by technology, not Facebook in particular.

For me, data point of 1, I don't see a problem in my feed. I use FB to stay in touch with my friends and family all around the world, whom I would very rarely hear from otherwise, I get 0 political posts, if somebody posts something that upsets me, I mute them, yes, including family members. Even if this is your family, you are still not obligated to sign up to every one of their posts, just like you are not obligated to listen to everything they have to say in person.

Passive vs Active exposure is more the problem. If I walk past a graffiti wall that has conspiracy theories on it along with everyone in my city, the effect on my is very different from the post office choosing to deliver only pamphlets from conspiracy theorists to my mailbox instead of the mainstream newspaper.

Actively targeting fringe ideas to people to the exclusion of other mainstream ideas is different from the general availability of ideas and lack of censorship.

London has Speaker's Corner at Hyde park, for instance, where anyone is free to come and loudly discuss whatever crackpot ideas they have without censorship. Think it's been active for hundreds of years — but it does not overwhelm society because it allows the ideas to compete fairly on merit and evidence. Same for the salons of Paris, the tea shops of Calcutta and any other forums. The internet also had this mechanic during its beginning — anyone could say whatever they wanted on their geocities, myspace or livejournal, and all these ideas competed on fair terms with everything else.

Social media is a different beast altogether. Actively pushing whatever ideas are algorithmically calculated to achieve engagement is not a fair fight.

> I still don't get how this is unique to Facebook or even at all avoidable in the future. Internet facilitates communication. Unless you censor every word, it _will_ be used for pushing conspiracy theories, too, how can you avoid that?

Imagine you had control if your feed algorithm, or that engaging wasn't automatically translating into endorsing and recommending.

I still have mostly kids and puppies. Occasionally some not especially funny jokes.

YMMV

But either way, is FB really to blame for your family’s lack of discernment?

I’ve set plenty of family members to “unfollow” so I don’t have to deal with their craziness. I’m also not above to distancing myself from crazy family members in real life.

Yeah, I really don't get this all or nothing approach. Either I'm on Facebook reading every single piece of crap whoever throws my way, or I'm quitting the evil social media cold turkey. Why?

Maybe I’m old school, but there’s usually more to someone than what they share on Facebook. One of the funniest people I know, and a good real life friend for nearly a two two decades, posts dumb stuff like that all the time. We also have great conversations full of conflicting viewpoints, which I love, and we’ve both changed the others perspectives. I don’t really care what their political beliefs or medical choices are. We can find common interests outside of that. It doesn’t affect me. For some reason, that’s now the primary focus of many peoples lives and identity. He’s more than that, and I hope I am too.

Posts dumb stuff like fake news and hate speech?

You’ve identified what makes Facebook evil. If your friend shares two things, one of which enrages you and causes you to post an angry comment, and one of which causes you to smile gently and scroll on by, which one do you think Facebook is going to show you?

They probably don’t need better friends. We need a communication medium that isn’t powered by hate.

Have you ever used Facebook? You see divisive rage-bait garbage regardless of whether your connections specifically shared it. The Algorithm(tm) decides what you see, and it favors whatever is as "engagement"-worthy as possible.

Yes I've been using Facebook several times per week for years. I have hundreds of friends there and don't really see any divisive rage-bait garbage, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Maybe you're using it wrong?

What I have done is "Hide all from" most of the pages that show up in my feed. So I mostly only see original content posted by my friends and very little shared from other pages like the fake news on CNN or whatever.

So you had to modify your default Facebook experience to not see that stuff.

The algorithm is dogsh*t. It somehow got it in its head that I was a Harry Potter fan (I’ve never read a book or sat through a film - no interest at all). It kept pushing HP fan groups at me. Constantly. I would hide all from them, but there are thousands. It felt like I was going mad.

In the end I just Social Fixered the hell out of it all - bye bye ads too. I can’t imagine what it must be like it wasn’t something so innocuous.

You have to adjust your feed a little for the best experience, yes. Hard to imagine HN being against taking a little up-front effort to get something that's more efficient in the long term.

It's not friends.

Facebook's boosted content/recommended content is what it is.

Having a friends only feed would actually save the product.

Yes and no. Groups are the best part of Facebook and with good information also comes the spam.

I hear this very often and while deep down it's a reasonable take, the more you think about it, the less useful as advice it becomes.

While I can't comment about Facebook specifically (I haven't been on it for over a decade by now), but I've seen the same happen on many other platforms as social media has become staple of life.

I know people I've been friends with (and I mean, close friends) for almost two decades by now. I have all kinds of family members, far and close friends, acquaintances, online friends that go back to a decade or two ago on IRC channels, etc. I'm not saying every single one of them has changed, but a very LARGE portion of them has. We all have our own demons, our own beliefs, our own pet peeves and general grievances. People are sharing all kinds of sensationalist news and (let's say it) garbage all the time related to whatever orbits their belief or view of the world (or what they are afraid of). The more sensationalist something is, the more divisive it is, the more rounds it will do and the more it will get entrenched into the minds of someone.

Very often, that someone can be you, your friends, or your family. That doesn't make them (or you) bad people necessarily. I know people who I'd consider to be very good people, nice, caring, outgoing, friendly, etc. And yet they still share their demons on social media. The vitriol-induced "us vs them" articles, the fake news-style misinformation, the half truth, whatever fits their view of the world (because we simply don't know better).

It's a huge mental and emotional toll to be consistently bombarded by this kind of stuff. I don't mind talking about certain topics with certain people, what I do mind is getting consistently dragged (either willingly or not) into the same topics/conversations all the time, mostly fueled by emotional outrage (whether it is justified or not).

This doesn't make them "bad" friends. It just makes them "human" friends. You can definitely be completely and utterly emotionally drained talking with friends about topics that you care about, not in a bad way, it's just the way it is. The world is being more and more painted like it's all going to shit (whether or not that's true depends on what news you're being fed, I'm not making judgement here), and that does have a toll on you as a human.

Sorry for the long rant, but I just had to get it out there.

It doesn't take any mental or emotional toll on me. It helps a lot to "hide all from" all third-party pages so that you mostly just see original posts from your friends.