I think what he meant by meritocracy is that the merits from doing projects hands on and having solid results, as opposed to the “scholastic” meritocracy which I had initially assumed he meant (and which may be confusing other readers too).
I mean, a lot of relatively smart people I know these days have gotten over fb and I don’t see many of people in fb or social media that much. Fb gets old after college and then it takes people a few years in their mid twenties to grow out of it. By late twenties I’d say the majority of smart folks know to keep their distance from fb and such ilk.
Does it really matter what social network it is, FB, Reddit, HN, etc.? The effects are similar - people immerse in the digital while at the same time being absent from the physical.
Facebook is primarily organised around the individual. You are following individuals, talking with individuals, and participating on a reciprocal basis as an individual with all the others. There are groups, but it's less prominent.
Reddit and HN are centred around discussion. Be it individual articles of interest (HN) or further grouped into specific topics (Reddit).
I don't think either are benign. The upvote/downvote mechanism does "gamify" the experience and adds some additional meta-effects to participation, which I don't think are necessarily healthy. However, it's not as bad as Facebook by a large margin. There's no pressure to participate; I can read interesting articles, make the odd contribution, and dip in and out as the fancy takes me. It's not nearly as addictive. Though I have to say, I still spent a reasonable amount of time on both HN and Reddit, I could step away for weeks without feeling like I was losing anything. I'm participating on my own terms.
All good points. I wonder if instead of a voting mechanism, a site could crunch things like number of posts, type of posts, length of posts, frequency of posts, replies to posts, and so forth to calculate something like participation/activity/clout scores, assuming this could be used to add value for the community of users. Essentially, mask any gamification of the system so the focus is textual/graphical interaction among users, instead of engaging directly in a ranking/award system.
IME, communities in the analog world engage in ranking, albeit largely unconsciously, and perhaps mimicking this pattern in a digital environment would be beneficial compared to current systems.
> The upvote/downvote mechanism does "gamify" the experience
A key benefit to me is that the points aren't visible to others. Up/Down voting is fine, and there's no real public benefit to the karma given to an individual post, nor any way to even see what it is. Sorting isn't based only on the post score either, and it's not in your face -- it's a much better system that slashdot in my view.
I am in complete agreement that the system is better than slashdot. However, I think even being able to see your own score can be detrimental to the way you behave. Is it healthy to check back and see if your comments were well received, or generally disliked? It's less bad than the alternatives. However, I think that it will still have some effect, and it might still have some negative consequences.
I wouldn't presume the problem is delving into a computer.
I would assume the problem is more along the lines of; treating it as a substitute to talking to friends/family. Only responding in short bursts or assuming a "like" is enough to sate your need for other human connections.
Reddit/HN/fora are _great_ at connecting you to communities across the globe that have a shared interest. You don't talk to your sister/girlfriend/mother via hackernews, therefore it doesn't "replace" actual discussion with them.
I think one of the things that makes HN and Reddit very different, is that the content is not personalized and tailored to maximize user engagement. Facebook seems to constantly show me things that make me more upset or concerned or outraged about something. I remember reading articles documenting this effect, but I can't seem to find them now.
The other type of posts I tend to see are about friends bragging about how many km they ran today or how great their vacation was. Not that it's that bad to post these things, but I wouldn't be surprised if exposing yourself to them constantly increased feelings of jealous and reinforce one's need to compare oneself to others.
On the other hand, I've discovered a lot of interesting books and projects through HN and learned about different topics, since there seem to be a lot of knowledgeable people here that comment on topics I know nothing about. The only type of posts that may be prone to making others feel worse are the ones about salaries / financial issues, but they are not that common.
Regarding the "bragging" posts, according to this Hidden Brain podcast [1], it has a more negative effect than anything and is usually not the truth about people current situation in life. For instance, we might see the great vacation pictures, but turns out they were fighting the whole time and it wasn't fun at all, but it is not like they are gonna share that part on FB.
>I think one of the things that makes HN and Reddit very different, is that the content is not personalized and tailored to maximize user engagement. Facebook seems to constantly show me things that make me more upset or concerned or outraged about something.
This really depends on whether or not you set up your own account with subreddits in reddit. It is just as personalized and outrage generating as Facebook if you self-subscribe to it.
Fair enough, though the separation into categories possibly helps somewhat. If someone is reading r/some-topic-they-are-interested in, it wouldn't also show them stories about, say, cops shooting unarmed civilians in the back 67 times, in between the topic-specific content.
This is probably different on the main page though.
I believe it matters. For example, here in HN I spend time yes, but it usually teaches me stuff. I read expert opinions, and this is a platform helping me to reach good articles. Reddit is also somewhat valuable in this sense, but I do not think FB is like that.
Orthogonal to being physically outside and interacting with people, is the issue of social networks and their effect on mental health. I’d argue that reddit and other anonymous social networks (ahem hn) which allow users to register under any nick and without a forced email or phone verification, are much healthier for people’s mental health. There is a large gulf between semi anonymous and “real-name-enforced” social media.
I only started reading Hacker News when I got a job and left the house and had the combined feelings of "oh geez commuting sure is boring", "I need to stay up to date with technology", and "Reddit users, mods, and admins only know how to feign knowledge and sure make me want to shoot myself"
I'm not using HN as some sort of substitute for social interaction. I'm not on HN all day engineering every post to garner maximal attention and approval like the people who abuse FB the hardest are. I AM getting that constant stream of novelty that is typical of social media. However tech IS constant novelty so that's unavoidable regardless.
I agree that any social network can be used as an escape. People can get addicted to almost anything. The difference is in the funding source of the owners of the social network. How do they make money?
On most social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, etc.) the answer is simple: advertisement. To maximize revenue from ads, they focus on:
1) Getting people to spend as much time as possible on their platform (so they can show more ads), and;
2) Gathering as much information as possible about people (so their ads are more effective).
Which isn't exactly what people want when they go on Facebook. This puts the objectives of the social network and its users at odds.
Compare that to Hacker News, which is in itself an advertisement for Y Combinator (I wouldn't know of YC if it wasn't for HN, or at least it wouldn't be the first accelerator in my mind). I feel the objectives of Y Combinator with HN are much more aligned with my own objectives than Facebook's (the company) with Facebook (the social network).
I'd be worried when/if ads start appearing on HN...
Quite possibly! Or maybe at install or link time. Or maybe we're looking at a future where almost all code goes through a JIT engine and you've only got a few normal cores that run the OS that manages everything. Or possible everything will be Javascript[1].
