I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think that calls for generic revolt are likely to get us anywhere. It's gotta be targeted and meaningful and executed with a measure of a restraint. It needs to be clear we can be reasoned with.

So what kind of revolt are you calling for? Are we dumping GPU's into the ocean like we did with tea in Boston that one time? Are we disconnecting datacenters from the internet? Are we all gonna change our profile picture? Specifics please.

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ThrowawayR2 13 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Dump advertising into the ocean. The motivation for maximizing engagement on social media is to maximize ad impressions for revenue. Every algorithm, every dark pattern, every UX tweak, is aimed toward that sole end. The issue cannot be fixed by regulating social media itself; it is the enormous monetary incentive that is the root of the problem and until the flow of money is choked off, corporations will still doggedly pursue that revenue.

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no-name-here 11 hours ago | parent [-]

So what exactly are you proposing - that we encourage all users to only pay for ad-free versions of every service they use, instead of choosing an ad-supported version? Try to outlaw adverting globally? What is an ad - a sign for a company? A company’s circular? A sign for company with a logo next to it? (To understand what should be forbidden.)

> every algorithm … every UX tweak

Actually, is the whole comment sarcasm? Or is the proposal to ban algorithms/UX changes? Or just such things if they increase sales on a product page, etc?

	▲	__MatrixMan__ 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A good start would be to make it a criminal offence to sell the right to execute code on somebody's device without their consent. And to tax into oblivion any service that can't function without such consent. We can work our way up to eliminating all targeted advertising later, lets start with the stuff that's indistinguishable from malware.

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lll-o-lll 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

:-D I do love the image of hurling GPU’s into the sea!

My suggestion was much more modest. Put down the phone and delete your socials. Disengagement is the ultimate act of rebellion.

	▲	__MatrixMan__ 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think history is on your side there. Disengagement might be a small first step, but for no rebellion worth mentioning was disengagement in any way ultimate. Rebellion is about stripping people of power. The disengagement you're describing, if not followed up by a different sort of reengagement, would merely be getting out of the power's way.

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cons0le 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd love to lobby for "the right" to opt out of AI features.

When I google search "why is the sky blue" , it spins up an LLM. This is incredibly wasteful for simple, known answers.

When my friend googles the same thing, it spins up the LLM again. Google was a pioneer of search indexing, and now it seems like we don't attempt to index answers at all. They're spinning up an LLM every time because they're trying to run up the AI "adoption" metrics.

I'd love to be able to ask for simple things, like the address of the local restaurant 3 blocks away, without firing up a GPU in an AI data center.

I don't always want to "talk with" a computer. Sometimes I just want to "use" a computer. Maybe that makes me a fool. Or an old man yelling at clouds.

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Aurornis 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> When my friend googles the same thing, it spins up the LLM again

I just tried this from two different devices, neither logged in, both on separate IPs from different states.

Got the exact same answer.

These are almost certainly cached. It would be naive to think Google is performing the same LLM requests over and over again for the same terms for no reason.

	▲	cons0le 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		For me, google searches are defaulting to "AI mode" I just asked it the same question on 2 different devices. The question I asked was harder than why is the sky blue. I asked it "who was Edmund Fitzgerald". One device, it gives me the ship. The other device, it gives me the person. I can copy/paste the answers here, if we want to compare. Again, this could happen because I used "too hard" of a question. But I'm definitely getting 2 different answers. You can of course, do this will almost every LLM. I can ask copilot 3 times and get conflicting answers each time. Maybe for some types of questions that's beneficial. But for simple "what is X" questions, it's not as useful.

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tkiolp4 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I think it’s easier than that. We can literally start the revolution from our beds:

1. For every social media account you have: post “I’m leaving. You should too”

2. For every social media account you have: close it.

3. Profit

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Aurornis 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 1. For every social media account you have: post “I’m leaving. You should too”

Did you miss the trend in the 2010s of announcing you were quitting social media? This was already a thing. All it did was annoy people. Also 90% of the people I know who did it are back on social media.

If you want to use social media less, just use social media less. Hang out with other people who socialize instead of burying their face in their phone. Getting on a high horse and lecturing other people on social media isn’t going to do anything.

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A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 11 hours ago | parent [-]

<< Getting on a high horse and lecturing other people on social media isn’t going to do anything.

I disagree. Ostracism and generic shaming may be necessary. My kid is barely 4 and his cousin's already were fielding cellphones during our family gathering. There are times high horse riding is absolutely necessary.

	▲	__MatrixMan__ 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Necessary maybe, but insufficient. Shame other plebs all you like, the predatory tech isn't going away until we start ruining rich people over it.

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no-name-here 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is Hacker News considered social media, or only sites like x/twitter/mastodon/bluesky?

	▲	nottorp 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Everything seems to be social media for a certain age group. Even stuff that I'd call messaging applications.
	▲	SoftTalker 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Interesting point, because Hacker News doesn't serve ads, and doesn't have any personalized algorithms, yet it's quite compelling and I waste a lot of time here.

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__MatrixMan__ 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is the problem really social media though? Without some kind of long-distance-capable social medium that we participate in directly, how are we going to know when the news is lying to us? Social media's alternatives also can't resist corruption, if we give up this fight, we'll lose that one too.

I think we can handle communicating with each other at scale, we just have to be more proactive about not letting control over the medium be up for sale, and more inventive about the ways we can protect each other from those who would make us into addicts.