| ▲ | kryogen1c 3 hours ago |
| >Meta is like one giant cancer Cancer is a great metaphor because its a perversion of natural, healthy processes. So called social media is nearly that, but actually grotesquely unhealthy. People are dramatically unwell when they are not social, but that unregulated process is also negative up to and including being lethal. |
|
| ▲ | rolandog 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Exactly. It started out as something good: see what friends and family are up to. But now: scroll infinite algorithmically placed or sponsored rage bait trying to trigger you into behaving the way that advances certain corporate or foreign interests at the expense of whatever was left of our already tattered social fabric and our collective mental or literal health. |
| |
| ▲ | tinfoilhatter 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Actually it didn't start out as something good. Facebook emerged from a failed DARPA project called lifelog. It was always meant to be a tool to enable government surveillance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_LifeLog
[2] https://whyy.org/segments/facebook-a-computing-pioneer-a-sec... | | |
| ▲ | CrazyStat 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Your own source [2] says: > But to be clear, there is no evidence DARPA or the U.S. intelligence services had any role in the creation of Facebook. | | |
| ▲ | tinfoilhatter 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you require everything you read to spell out everything for you point blank? Are you unable to connect dots? The DARPA lifelog project ended the day Facebook was announced by a college dropout no one had ever heard of before. Facebook just happened to have the exact same goals / features as the lifelog project. Must just be a giant coincidence huh? | | |
| ▲ | CrazyStat 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I require at least some evidence. Your own source says there is none. | | |
| ▲ | ohyoutravel an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I think they’re trolling you, see their username. | |
| ▲ | tinfoilhatter an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Oh yes, because intelligence agencies are known for broadcasting their moves to everyone. I can guarantee you believe in a lot of things that you have no actual evidence of happening - just some perceived authority figure you trust for whatever reason, telling you it happened. Also - WHYY.org has received support through NewsMatch partner funds, which often includes contributions from large technology firms like Facebook (Meta) to support local journalism. These funds are generally used to match donations, helping stations like WHYY increase their financial sustainability and support public media. What a surprise! | | |
| |
| ▲ | Quarrelsome an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | yeah I'm sure an immensely powerful and shadowy conspiracy trusted their most critical operation to a 20 year old college dropout. Makes sense to me. |
|
| |
| ▲ | dmoy 43 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | No way, we've known for 15 years that it was the CIA, not DARPA, after The Onion broke the story: https://youtu.be/ZJ380SHZvYU |
| |
| ▲ | 1over137 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > It started out as something good No it didn’t. That was just like the first free sample from the drug dealer. Give a “good” free service to rope them in, always with the next steps in mind. | | |
| ▲ | Quarrelsome an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I disagree. I feel like earlier social networks hadn't yet huffed the "lean startup" gas and weren't obsessed with engagement and thus were not yet trying to hook their users into an engagement cycle like where we are today. I feel like the Myspace/Friendster and early Facebook were nowhere near as harmful (albeit for addiction, those sites were still vulnerable to grooming) as where we are today. | |
| ▲ | danny_codes 18 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | OG Facebook was perfectly fine. In your analogy it’d be more like someone replacing your Diet Coke with actual cocaine. Like, yeah Diet Coke isn’t great for you, but it’s not cocaine. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | rel_ic 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Being on "social media" is a fundamentally unsocial activity: you do it alone, it makes you lonely, and it separates you from others. Some people manage to bootstrap a social layer on top of the base medium, but most are being driven apart for profit. I call it _anti_social media. |
