Small suggestion: drop the Facebook example and find a better one. Facebook was obviously not founded out of a grand prosocial vision, that was a pretty clear case of “greenwashing“ afterwards.
side point—has anyone done an analysis on the social costs of facebook and instagram? they seem to me like nothing more than enormous compulsive time sink.
Anecdotal, but: Facebook is the reason I’m married and has been, I think, enormously valuable to me as a way to connect with people in my life (relative to spending the same amount of time reading or playing video games or trying some much less efficient way of keeping up with people). I expect I’d be much lonelier without it.
Non-anecdotally, willingness-to-pay data for Facebook seems to indicate that people find it valuable (though you could argue that they are wrong in some way, if you want to e.g. make a Facebook/smoking analogy).
Overall, I suspect that Facebook (like most social networks) creates obvious harm for some users, and non-obvious benefit for many users*, leading people to see it as a more negative entity than it actually is.
*Not just extreme cases like mine — my parents, for example, mostly use Facebook to keep up with old friends and extended family, and it seems like a much better way to do this than e.g. trying to do regular phone calls with all of those people. I expect this use case is really common.
That’s interesting. My sense is that most people I know who use facebook view it as a compulsive time sink. I look back and think that probably 99% of the time I used to spend on it was wasted and that I am much better off having deactivated my account. I don’t feel I have lost anything in terms of keeping in touch with people from not being on there—people can email me, call me or whatsapp me fairly easily if they want to get in touch. People I know who have left it are happy to have done so and regret not doing it earlier.
Yeah I don’t think the willingness to pay argument works because my claim is that it’s like compulsive gambling—people’s willingness to spend time on it isn’t a sign that it is valuable. I do find it a bit of a grim view of human potential for fulfilment that the value of a business is that it aspires to do something that is very arguably marginally better than watching TV or playing video games.
I’m surprised to hear that so many people you speak with feel that way. My experience of using Facebook (with an ad blocker) is that it’s a mix of interesting thinkposts from friends in EA or other academic circles + personal news from people I care about, but would be unlikely to proactively keep in touch with (extended family, people I knew in college, etc.).
I certainly scroll past my fair share of posts, but the average quality of things I see on FB is easily competitive with what I see on Twitter (and I curate my Twitter carefully, so this is praise).
As a random sample, when I open Facebook now, the posts I see are:
A question in an EA group about making wills (I’d have answered it if someone else hadn’t already, and I’m glad that my friends in the group are seeing that post)
A cute, nerdy parenting anecdote from Scott Aaronson
A nice personal update with a lovely photo from an acquaintance (scroll past, but happy to see he’s well)
An irrelevant update from a page I followed in high school — I unfollowed it immediately and won’t ever see it again
A post from Ozzie Gooen on Zvi’s recent SFF grant writeup (I happened to know about this already, but if I didn’t, I’d be really glad I saw his post)
An amusing Twitter screenshot
A post from a friend about her recent sobriety and the journey she took to get there (I hadn’t been aware of her struggles, but this is someone I really like; I read her story with interest and came away feeling hopeful)
I wonder whether FB looks different for people who see it as a time sink, or if they just have a higher bar for “good use of idle time” than I do.
Also anecdotally I have found Facebook quite positive since I installed a feed blocker. Now I just get event invites, notifications from groups I’m interested (which are much easier to curate than a feed), a low-overhead messaging service, and the ability to maintain shallow but genuinely friendly relationships and occasionally crowdsource from a peer group in more helpful ways than Google.
Overall I’d say it’s comfortably though not dramatically net positive like this—though given that it involves deliberate hacking out of one of the core components of the service I wouldn’t take it as much of a counterpoint to ‘Facebook is generally bad’.
It’s just a judgement call. Something I thought seemed obvious to most people, but perhaps not so obvious.
As I noted below, my epistemic basis is only that when he first started spouting that “everything should be social” stuff it looked like he was just mouthing the words.
Still, according to Encyclopedia Britannica
it began at Harvard University in 2003 as Facemash, an online service for students to judge the attractiveness of their fellow students.
So it’s pretty clear that the founding was not a grand prosocial vision. Whether the later talk was ‘greenwashing’ or ‘realization that actually this can do lots of good’ is perhaps less clear-cut.
From my point of view, I think some of the Facebook employees felt motivated by the mission, and I think Mark really believes it. But at the same time, I could easily imagine there could be better examples.
If others here have suggestions, do feel free to raise them!
Maybe our friend Mark believes it now, but if so I think it’s because he convinced himself/motivated reasoning. My epistemically basis: when he first started spouting that “everything should be social” stuff it looked like he was just mouthing the words.
Small suggestion: drop the Facebook example and find a better one. Facebook was obviously not founded out of a grand prosocial vision, that was a pretty clear case of “greenwashing“ afterwards.
side point—has anyone done an analysis on the social costs of facebook and instagram? they seem to me like nothing more than enormous compulsive time sink.
Anecdotal, but: Facebook is the reason I’m married and has been, I think, enormously valuable to me as a way to connect with people in my life (relative to spending the same amount of time reading or playing video games or trying some much less efficient way of keeping up with people). I expect I’d be much lonelier without it.
Non-anecdotally, willingness-to-pay data for Facebook seems to indicate that people find it valuable (though you could argue that they are wrong in some way, if you want to e.g. make a Facebook/smoking analogy).
Overall, I suspect that Facebook (like most social networks) creates obvious harm for some users, and non-obvious benefit for many users*, leading people to see it as a more negative entity than it actually is.
*Not just extreme cases like mine — my parents, for example, mostly use Facebook to keep up with old friends and extended family, and it seems like a much better way to do this than e.g. trying to do regular phone calls with all of those people. I expect this use case is really common.
That’s interesting. My sense is that most people I know who use facebook view it as a compulsive time sink. I look back and think that probably 99% of the time I used to spend on it was wasted and that I am much better off having deactivated my account. I don’t feel I have lost anything in terms of keeping in touch with people from not being on there—people can email me, call me or whatsapp me fairly easily if they want to get in touch. People I know who have left it are happy to have done so and regret not doing it earlier.
Yeah I don’t think the willingness to pay argument works because my claim is that it’s like compulsive gambling—people’s willingness to spend time on it isn’t a sign that it is valuable. I do find it a bit of a grim view of human potential for fulfilment that the value of a business is that it aspires to do something that is very arguably marginally better than watching TV or playing video games.
I’m surprised to hear that so many people you speak with feel that way. My experience of using Facebook (with an ad blocker) is that it’s a mix of interesting thinkposts from friends in EA or other academic circles + personal news from people I care about, but would be unlikely to proactively keep in touch with (extended family, people I knew in college, etc.).
I certainly scroll past my fair share of posts, but the average quality of things I see on FB is easily competitive with what I see on Twitter (and I curate my Twitter carefully, so this is praise).
As a random sample, when I open Facebook now, the posts I see are:
A question in an EA group about making wills (I’d have answered it if someone else hadn’t already, and I’m glad that my friends in the group are seeing that post)
A cute, nerdy parenting anecdote from Scott Aaronson
A nice personal update with a lovely photo from an acquaintance (scroll past, but happy to see he’s well)
An irrelevant update from a page I followed in high school — I unfollowed it immediately and won’t ever see it again
A post from Ozzie Gooen on Zvi’s recent SFF grant writeup (I happened to know about this already, but if I didn’t, I’d be really glad I saw his post)
An amusing Twitter screenshot
A post from a friend about her recent sobriety and the journey she took to get there (I hadn’t been aware of her struggles, but this is someone I really like; I read her story with interest and came away feeling hopeful)
I wonder whether FB looks different for people who see it as a time sink, or if they just have a higher bar for “good use of idle time” than I do.
Also anecdotally I have found Facebook quite positive since I installed a feed blocker. Now I just get event invites, notifications from groups I’m interested (which are much easier to curate than a feed), a low-overhead messaging service, and the ability to maintain shallow but genuinely friendly relationships and occasionally crowdsource from a peer group in more helpful ways than Google.
Overall I’d say it’s comfortably though not dramatically net positive like this—though given that it involves deliberate hacking out of one of the core components of the service I wouldn’t take it as much of a counterpoint to ‘Facebook is generally bad’.
I have a link dump Gdoc on ‘Internet time waste / wireheading’ here.
What makes you say this? Is there some definitive story of Facebook’s founding that you think proves your point?
It’s just a judgement call. Something I thought seemed obvious to most people, but perhaps not so obvious.
As I noted below, my epistemic basis is only that when he first started spouting that “everything should be social” stuff it looked like he was just mouthing the words.
Still, according to Encyclopedia Britannica
So it’s pretty clear that the founding was not a grand prosocial vision. Whether the later talk was ‘greenwashing’ or ‘realization that actually this can do lots of good’ is perhaps less clear-cut.
I think you’re right here.
From my point of view, I think some of the Facebook employees felt motivated by the mission, and I think Mark really believes it. But at the same time, I could easily imagine there could be better examples.
If others here have suggestions, do feel free to raise them!
Maybe our friend Mark believes it now, but if so I think it’s because he convinced himself/motivated reasoning. My epistemically basis: when he first started spouting that “everything should be social” stuff it looked like he was just mouthing the words.