<story><title>I quit Instagram and Facebook and it made me happier</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/01/social-media-detox-christina-farr-quits-instagram-facebook.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CamelCaseName</author><text>Please let me know if you have any ideas for reversing this.&lt;p&gt;I help moderate a mid-size subreddit (100,000-500,000 subscribers) and we&amp;#x27;re completely overrun by low quality content.&lt;p&gt;We tried adding new rules, silently removing&amp;#x2F;banning offending users, and making repeat announcements, but it seems like it&amp;#x27;s too little too late. A rehashed joke post can easily receive 100+ points in an hour while a good post may receive, at most, 20 points in the same time.</text></item><item><author>Mediterraneo10</author><text>Even Reddit subs for niche interests can suck now, precisely because of Instagram culture. I follow some subs for certain outdoor hobbies, and while in the past we would discuss gear or the specifics of various routes, now all most people want to do is post selfies in impressive locations. Reddit has killed off many of the old forum websites, so it is not as if one can just go back to those to get substantive conversation. Indeed, substantive conversation seems to be dying out overall, because just posting selfies gets one more social appreciation.</text></item><item><author>vlunkr</author><text>I’m also tired of the “global” culture. Reddit is a terrible offender of this. The same opinions always prevail, and dissenting ideas are pushed out of sight. This applies to politics, religion, humor, pop culture, everything. It rewards conformity and it’s so boring. Smaller subs are usually lots better, simply because there are fewer people there to perform their predicatable voting.</text></item><item><author>propman</author><text>I deleted Instagram a few months ago and I’ve not missed it once. The people who post more take up most of my bandwidth and those people I sincerely do not care about but due to social etiquitte have to follow. As I grow older I find that I really don’t care about maintaining superficial relationships with acquaintances, many of whom I might not see ever.&lt;p&gt;Other negatives- I click on one picture of a scantily clad woman and  my entire search feed turns into softcore porn for a month.&lt;p&gt;Culture is too vain. Selfies, blatantly showing off, spending hours on touch up apps were looked down upon in the entire history of the internet until that Ellen selfie photo that got huge. Apple, Facebook, Google, the media all advertised and made it socially accepted that the vanity is good. That had it’s pros and cons but I feel like we are crossed over on the cons side too much.&lt;p&gt;The culture is too global. Everyone’s opinions&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;comments all converge to the same dumbed down pop culture accepted norms&amp;#x2F;memes. Everyone tries to be funny in the exact same socially accepted way and there is no originality.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tokyodude</author><text>This is just an idea but ...&lt;p&gt;Don&amp;#x27;t make voting visible and don&amp;#x27;t show people their points. You still need voting so popular topics bubble to the top. You still maybe need user points so users who post bad content get bad scores? (maybe you don&amp;#x27;t need this).&lt;p&gt;What you don&amp;#x27;t need is for any of it to be visible. User&amp;#x27;s seeing their points go up is a gamification technique that pushes their (and my) button. &amp;quot;Oh! I just got 150pts!&amp;quot; feels so good so I&amp;#x27;m compelled to try to get more points.&lt;p&gt;I notice my point total here on HN. Every time I see it go up I&amp;#x27;m conscious of a little pleasure bump I get &amp;quot;oh, some people agreed with me or thought my post was useful!&amp;quot;.  I&amp;#x27;ve thought about writing a browser extension to hide it from myself. Mostly the only thing I want to know is if I got replies.</text></comment>
<story><title>I quit Instagram and Facebook and it made me happier</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/01/social-media-detox-christina-farr-quits-instagram-facebook.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>CamelCaseName</author><text>Please let me know if you have any ideas for reversing this.&lt;p&gt;I help moderate a mid-size subreddit (100,000-500,000 subscribers) and we&amp;#x27;re completely overrun by low quality content.&lt;p&gt;We tried adding new rules, silently removing&amp;#x2F;banning offending users, and making repeat announcements, but it seems like it&amp;#x27;s too little too late. A rehashed joke post can easily receive 100+ points in an hour while a good post may receive, at most, 20 points in the same time.</text></item><item><author>Mediterraneo10</author><text>Even Reddit subs for niche interests can suck now, precisely because of Instagram culture. I follow some subs for certain outdoor hobbies, and while in the past we would discuss gear or the specifics of various routes, now all most people want to do is post selfies in impressive locations. Reddit has killed off many of the old forum websites, so it is not as if one can just go back to those to get substantive conversation. Indeed, substantive conversation seems to be dying out overall, because just posting selfies gets one more social appreciation.</text></item><item><author>vlunkr</author><text>I’m also tired of the “global” culture. Reddit is a terrible offender of this. The same opinions always prevail, and dissenting ideas are pushed out of sight. This applies to politics, religion, humor, pop culture, everything. It rewards conformity and it’s so boring. Smaller subs are usually lots better, simply because there are fewer people there to perform their predicatable voting.</text></item><item><author>propman</author><text>I deleted Instagram a few months ago and I’ve not missed it once. The people who post more take up most of my bandwidth and those people I sincerely do not care about but due to social etiquitte have to follow. As I grow older I find that I really don’t care about maintaining superficial relationships with acquaintances, many of whom I might not see ever.&lt;p&gt;Other negatives- I click on one picture of a scantily clad woman and  my entire search feed turns into softcore porn for a month.&lt;p&gt;Culture is too vain. Selfies, blatantly showing off, spending hours on touch up apps were looked down upon in the entire history of the internet until that Ellen selfie photo that got huge. Apple, Facebook, Google, the media all advertised and made it socially accepted that the vanity is good. That had it’s pros and cons but I feel like we are crossed over on the cons side too much.&lt;p&gt;The culture is too global. Everyone’s opinions&amp;#x2F;posts&amp;#x2F;comments all converge to the same dumbed down pop culture accepted norms&amp;#x2F;memes. Everyone tries to be funny in the exact same socially accepted way and there is no originality.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>laurieg</author><text>On another mid size sub we decided to take a hard line: Text posts only, automod flags on image links, banning people who break the rules.&lt;p&gt;It changed the sub significantly. Some people liked the more serious tone, some people felt like the fun had been sucked out. At the end of the day, you can&amp;#x27;t please everyone.</text></comment>