In 2026, expecting articles about social media to contain a definition of the term ‘social media’ is so peculiar as to seem disingenuous. Can you perhaps explain exactly what you think is so ambiguous about how they use the term that we can’t just assume the common meaning?
And the content discovery algorithm is tuned to please the masses, the users drive the algorithm which promotes or buries the content for everyone else. I think the moment you use a socially driven algorithm to show/hide content from users is when you're planted firmly in social media territory.
It's why I prefer not to get bogged down in litigation over what counts as social media. It's far more productive to look at the individual mechanisms that make web platforms bad for socialising.
Agreed. For me, "social media" is just any website/app that allows users to contribute content and make comments.
HN is absolutely "social media", as it Facebook and WhatsApp.
With that said, I do believe social media platforms exist on a spectrum of "mostly benign, maybe even useful" to "mostly harmful" with closed groups/forums well to the benign end, targeted subjects with heavy moderation somewhere to the benign end of the spectrum (HN falls here), and "free for all" well to the "harmful" end (this is where most of Meta lives).
HN is not benign. Far from it. It's an extremely toxic echo chamber in the iron grip of limp wristed "No soup for you" Nazis.
The comment ' ' moderation ' 'system has been carefully designed to promote groupthink and tribalism, and to bury and silence anyone who opposes the owners' chosen narratives.
This place is evil, and is a harbinger of the future hellscape to come. Prison Planet.
EDIT: After reading your comment more carefully, I see you're one of the evil ones who believes in heavy handed censorship. (Which you falsely label "moderation.") You just don't care who you hurt in your quest to destroy all non conforming thoughts, do you? Because you're the smartest guy on the planet, and therefore should have the power to rule other people's self expression with an iron fist, right?
I’m not sure how much it makes sense to pick this nit for a public opinion survey of this nature. The survey is being sent to people who mostly won’t think of the term in such precise ways, and even in social sciences it’s considered poor form to try to measure more precisely than your noise floor permits.
That said, I would assume most respondents have a more popular conception of the term. That’s going to be inherently a little fuzzy, but implies implies sites like X, Facebook and TikTok count, that Reddit is marginal, and that more “oldschool” things like webforums, chat services and even Hacker News are out.
big normie social media yes, but people still have hella actual conversations on bluesky and mastodon and (i think) they use chronological fields by default
And then, tomorrow, it will be some other social media platform because someone said something wrong on one of those. Because they have to. Not because they need to.
for instance, when you say because they have to, not because they need to...
"have to" and "need to" mean the same thing, so i'm left with the choice of concluding your post is just mush or asking you to rephrase what you're trying to say in a way that's intelligible.
i switched from twitter to bluesky and the first thing i noticed was the feed looking really boring so i almost quit. turns out the default is following only but then i found a great third party feed at [foryou.club] and now i can use it without getting bored. thank god for spacecowboy and their gaming pc.
I hope we can reach a point where there's enough research on the negative effects of social media (or more specifically which features of it e.g. scrolling videos) that we can inform people from a young age.
But nothing's going to change as long as we continue pretending that billionaires hoarding pieces of "special" paper (or numbers in a bank account) are less mentally ill than people hoarding pieces of regular paper (or other things).
>But nothing's going to change as long as we continue pretending that billionaires hoarding pieces of "special" paper (or numbers in a bank account) are less mentally ill than people hoarding pieces of regular paper (or other things).
We agreed that people have more or less power depending on this silly thing called "dollars", and because we agreed they have power, they have power. It's pretty weird how we did that even though them having so much power is massively detrimental to human civilization.
> "Political content is pushing users toward the exit"
The culture war is exhausting. The idealist dream of some sort of Athenian public deliberation has been overwritten by ragebait. It's both very effective at meeting social media goals (getting people to spend too much time online arguing with strangers), and political goals (Project 2025; the Hungarian/Russian/American conserviative project CPAC; whatever it is that Musk is doing with X; Cambridge Analytica; and so on).
I never had a Facebook account till about 10 years ago when I went to a funeral and found out about relatives who had one and encouraged me to join them there. I did but, today, they might post there three or four times a year to show vacation pictures and that's it. I, too, only look at it once every week or two in case there's an event that happened but that's maybe once a year.
It takes some effort, but you can get the recommendation algo to clean up your feed. My youtube account of 15 years was flooded with political content. Mainly just opinion stuff and lot of AI slop. So I just unsubbed all channels and started clicking the don't recommend this channel or I don't like this content. It took couple of months, but my recommended videos are back to what I liked watching. Mainly dev and hobby stuff. For channels that I do like that are non-political, I just keep bookmarked links that go directly to their channel page.
One of the most insidious aspects of social media is how the reward and discoverability mechanisms train users to become their own marketing department. It's most obvious on LinkedIn, where your presence is materially tied to career growth, but each platform does it in its own way.
Its strange for me. Some years ago, I only thought that the younger kids/adults was had the "separation anxiety" when it came to social media, but I have a 40 year old sister in law that is purely obsessed and it is crazy. I'm a big tech person but I know how to put my phone down. Heck most of the time I don't even have it on me.
Understand that social media endorphin-inducing algorithm optimizers, have made these sites optimized for _all_ ages, so it should not be a surprise. Very few of us are immune.
My MIL in her 70s has been staying with us for the past month or so and her phone habits are bonkers. I rarely use my phone at home, have young kids that are small-screen free; so we tend to engage in conversations and activities during family time, or even just watch big-screens movies/TV as a family. The MIL is glued to the phone/tablet and constantly wants to talk to everyone about it like it’s a shared experience. “Who’s this lady in the photo with Janet?” Like we know or care, maybe ask Janet or just scroll on. Anyways I don’t criticize her directly but my wife has even become annoyed by it and I’ve asked her to have a etiquette conversation with her or give her feedback some way because I can’t stand it for another month lol.
Yup, my parents (mainly dad) are the same, reading social media, putting the speakers on, falling for all of the AI generated stuff, rage bait, etc, and broadcasting it to the world because idk, they still seek engagement and interaction I suppose.
Anecdata here but my 60-something year old mother acts like a sullen teenager around my kids/her grandchildren. She just scrolls endlessly on her phone until my father/her husband calls her out on it.
I agree, and I think it’s due to the decline of executive cognition and the behavioral training of the TV generation. They believe the news, and grew up in a time when trust was aplenty.
My partner was for a bit. She deleted Instagram and started reading books again. This was surprisingly difficult to pick up again after a year of Instagram apparently. It does form very bad habits.
Similar experiences. Many people are surprised when I do have the phone wiht me in person during walks, at meetings, etc. In the sea of digitals, I find peace in writing with pen/paper.
The concerning thing is you still feel the `itch` of like... I can't just sit here and stare out the window or listen to this boring person or whatever event. So even with social media deleted my brain reaches out for something: Hacker News or Zillow or even stock market tickers get swapped in as the void-fillers.
I wonder if life was always sort of boring and lacked meaning and people used to just sit in that reality patiently or if modern life has siphoned meaning off of it so we have had to replace it with these mindless activities.
I've heard people say that if your post on social media isn't making you money, then it isn't worth making. This is very different from early Facebook/Twitter where the majority of posts were mundane things about one's life.
Going on Japanese Twitter was a very different and refreshing experience, because people still post random little life updates. But Westerners rarely do that now.
Burnout is a symptom of prolonged unsustainable engagement.
I think it is a false narrative to say that the majority of people who are leaving platforms were overcommitted to that extent.
I think it is the simple fact that the platforms no longer provide enough to justify sticking around,
People came for the pie, stayed for the pie, and left when the vendors started serving cardboard wrapped razor blades and tried to convince you it was still a pie.
Related (should've been source at): "Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media" 12-jul-2026 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48879902 183 comments
I am on a path to recovery from social media addiction (Twitter/x > Instagram > Youtube Shorts). Here is what has worked for me so far -
1. Uninstall the apps, but replace them with mobile browser views. All these services have functional web views that will feed your withdrawal, but adds friction to slowly wind you out.
2. Desktop/laptop (that you use for studying/working) - modify you /etc/hosts and map x.com to localhost.
3. Leave phone in the car when you get back home from work.
1) Mobile browser views: I do this too, for extra friction don't store your password in your mobile browser and force yourself to type it manually when logging in.
Retr0id | 9 hours ago
N_Lens | 6 hours ago
bcjdjsndon | 9 hours ago
The article is just noise without specifying what they're talking about
inigyou | 8 hours ago
This comment is just noise without specifying what they're talking about.
bflesch | 8 hours ago
The way you use the term hysteria feels wrong to me.
bunderbunder | 8 hours ago
rob-lag | 8 hours ago
There are many social media platforms, some of them similar, but some are also vastly different from each other (e.g. Hacker News vs. TikTok)
Making statements about all of social media without such clarifications makes them pretty unreliable for me.
bcjdjsndon | 8 hours ago
alistairSH | 8 hours ago
close04 | 8 hours ago
cryptopian | 7 hours ago
alistairSH | 7 hours ago
HN is absolutely "social media", as it Facebook and WhatsApp.
With that said, I do believe social media platforms exist on a spectrum of "mostly benign, maybe even useful" to "mostly harmful" with closed groups/forums well to the benign end, targeted subjects with heavy moderation somewhere to the benign end of the spectrum (HN falls here), and "free for all" well to the "harmful" end (this is where most of Meta lives).
hnisnotbenign | 49 minutes ago
The comment ' ' moderation ' 'system has been carefully designed to promote groupthink and tribalism, and to bury and silence anyone who opposes the owners' chosen narratives.
This place is evil, and is a harbinger of the future hellscape to come. Prison Planet.
EDIT: After reading your comment more carefully, I see you're one of the evil ones who believes in heavy handed censorship. (Which you falsely label "moderation.") You just don't care who you hurt in your quest to destroy all non conforming thoughts, do you? Because you're the smartest guy on the planet, and therefore should have the power to rule other people's self expression with an iron fist, right?
bunderbunder | 7 hours ago
That said, I would assume most respondents have a more popular conception of the term. That’s going to be inherently a little fuzzy, but implies implies sites like X, Facebook and TikTok count, that Reddit is marginal, and that more “oldschool” things like webforums, chat services and even Hacker News are out.
bcjdjsndon | 8 hours ago
One is about communications, the other is a more general concern about content that could extend to and audiovisual form.
Yet another definition is essentially a synonym for tiktok. Or sometimes they mean just twitter.
The UK online safety act leans heavily towards communication (ie comments or DMs, hence Wikipedia being caught up in it)
> assume the common meaning?
Which is? Point me to a defintion
TomMasz | 8 hours ago
gnoll_of_gozag | 8 hours ago
assimpleaspossi | 8 hours ago
inigyou | 7 hours ago
assimpleaspossi | 7 hours ago
pasquinelli | 7 hours ago
for instance, when you say because they have to, not because they need to...
"have to" and "need to" mean the same thing, so i'm left with the choice of concluding your post is just mush or asking you to rephrase what you're trying to say in a way that's intelligible.
assimpleaspossi | 6 hours ago
inigyou | 6 hours ago
peaseagee | 7 hours ago
tancop | 2 hours ago
daveydave | 8 hours ago
callmeal | 8 hours ago
https://thehighwire.com/news/metas-internal-research-proves-...
But nothing's going to change as long as we continue pretending that billionaires hoarding pieces of "special" paper (or numbers in a bank account) are less mentally ill than people hoarding pieces of regular paper (or other things).
high_na_euv | 8 hours ago
Wut
inigyou | 7 hours ago
dexterdog | 7 hours ago
qup | 8 hours ago
datadrivenangel | 7 hours ago
cryptopian | 7 hours ago
TheOtherHobbes | 7 hours ago
A non-hoarding economy would look very different, be far more exciting and inventive, and wouldn't be staging an ecological suicide run.
lazide | 6 hours ago
If you're rich, well, you're just eccentric.
Because you can pay your way, mainly.
pjc50 | 8 hours ago
The culture war is exhausting. The idealist dream of some sort of Athenian public deliberation has been overwritten by ragebait. It's both very effective at meeting social media goals (getting people to spend too much time online arguing with strangers), and political goals (Project 2025; the Hungarian/Russian/American conserviative project CPAC; whatever it is that Musk is doing with X; Cambridge Analytica; and so on).
nottorp | 8 hours ago
Still, I open it about once per week to check for events at my favorite saturday evening hang outs, look at some cat photos and close it.
assimpleaspossi | 7 hours ago
nirav72 | 7 hours ago
inigyou | 8 hours ago
q8zd3 | 8 hours ago
Well, because it is. Social media turned most of its users into digital beggars.
account42 | 7 hours ago
kijin | 7 hours ago
cryptopian | 7 hours ago
charltonraven | 8 hours ago
da-x | 7 hours ago
charltonraven | 7 hours ago
reactordev | 7 hours ago
conductr | 6 hours ago
Cthulhu_ | 5 hours ago
But at least it's only part of their day.
RationPhantoms | 6 hours ago
It's maddening and sad.
warshinder | 5 hours ago
cryo32 | 7 hours ago
j45 | 7 hours ago
Silencing all notifications and checking it on a timer is a big step.
charltonraven | 6 hours ago
j45 | 6 hours ago
By notifications I mean the ones that aren't phone calls.
You know, the social media updates, the emails, the instant messaging that thinks it's more important than whatever you're doing.
Notification silencing can be selective and blissful.
Interruptions can be the enemy of productivity that everyone is chasing.
Brajeshwar | 5 hours ago
weagle05 | 8 hours ago
ericmcer | an hour ago
The concerning thing is you still feel the `itch` of like... I can't just sit here and stare out the window or listen to this boring person or whatever event. So even with social media deleted my brain reaches out for something: Hacker News or Zillow or even stock market tickers get swapped in as the void-fillers.
I wonder if life was always sort of boring and lacked meaning and people used to just sit in that reality patiently or if modern life has siphoned meaning off of it so we have had to replace it with these mindless activities.
smcg | 8 hours ago
Going on Japanese Twitter was a very different and refreshing experience, because people still post random little life updates. But Westerners rarely do that now.
Lerc | 7 hours ago
I think it is a false narrative to say that the majority of people who are leaving platforms were overcommitted to that extent.
I think it is the simple fact that the platforms no longer provide enough to justify sticking around,
People came for the pie, stayed for the pie, and left when the vendors started serving cardboard wrapped razor blades and tried to convince you it was still a pie.
high_5 | 7 hours ago
HelloUsername | 7 hours ago
brador | 7 hours ago
The void is coming and everyone knows it.
NoGravitas | 5 hours ago
j45 | 7 hours ago
a1000regrets | 6 hours ago
soramimo | 6 hours ago
galleywest200 | 4 hours ago