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The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

(www.nber.org)
506 points imakwana | 1 comments | 21 Apr 25 04:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.426s | source
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8s2ngy ◴[21 Apr 25 05:47 UTC] No.43748792[source]▶
I believe many of the problems in our current social media landscape could be solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media and could go against what most people have become accustomed to. Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can stay connected with my school friends, college friends, and distant family without having to see irrelevant posts, like some stupid remark from a politician halfway around the world or influencers doing something outrageous just for attention.
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1. kccqzy ◴[21 Apr 25 14:16 UTC] No.43752274[source]▶
I cannot agree more. It's amazing that WeChat, a Chinese app, has figured this out years ago; its Moments feature had no ads, no influencers, only posts by contacts. It even suppresses comments made by people you don't know, even if the subject of a comment is a post by people you do know.

Of course there are other Chinese apps that operate entirely based on feeds. What I found interesting is that on Rednote it tried to suppress your posts from what it infers to be your friends in real life.

I think it is a great approach. There are sometimes I just want to see updates from friends and family. There are other times when I only want to see something interesting to me without necessarily telling all my friends what I'm interested in. These are two entirely different categories of social media and it is a good thing to require users to switch apps.