Facebook Researchers Find Its Apps Can Make Us Lonelier (bloomberg.com) 31
An anonymous reader shares a report: When Facebook hosted an internal competition a few years ago to develop new product ideas, a handful of employees teamed up to build a robot named Max. Shaped like a small, upside-down bowl, Max was designed to be a companion -- a physical device humans could talk to that could detect their mood, according to two people familiar with the hackathon project. The creators gave Max little ears and whiskers so the device would be more fun and approachable, like a cat. Max never evolved beyond the hackathon. But engineers and researchers at the company, now called Meta Platforms, are still grappling with the thorny problem the experimental robot cat was designed to combat: loneliness.
Meta, with a mission to help people connect online, has discovered through internal research that its products can just as easily have an isolating effect. As the company struggles to retain and add users for its already-massive social networks, making sure those people are happy is key to Meta's financial success. Loneliness has come into sharper focus at Meta during the Covid-19 pandemic, as people use its social media apps as alternatives to in-person experiences. Meta has promoted its role as a digital connector, running ads touting its groups and messaging products. "We change the game when we find each other," reads a tagline for one of its recent commercials. But internally, employees are questioning their products' impact on mental health.
Meta, with a mission to help people connect online, has discovered through internal research that its products can just as easily have an isolating effect. As the company struggles to retain and add users for its already-massive social networks, making sure those people are happy is key to Meta's financial success. Loneliness has come into sharper focus at Meta during the Covid-19 pandemic, as people use its social media apps as alternatives to in-person experiences. Meta has promoted its role as a digital connector, running ads touting its groups and messaging products. "We change the game when we find each other," reads a tagline for one of its recent commercials. But internally, employees are questioning their products' impact on mental health.
Facebook is NOT healthy. (Score:2)
Meta, Facebook, is not good for mental health.
Good social connections are achieved partly by choosing to limit your social connections to what functions well. Facebook doesn't allow limits.
Also, it is not healthy to be constantly pressured to buy things.
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The comment area of the Internet Including Slashdot, and I am well aware I am fueling my own bad habits, is not good for your health.
The main issue is that there is no consequences for pissing someone off. So we are more apt to speak our mind, despite how well thought out, or if it will do more harm than good. as well conversely it is so easy to dismiss someones comments as just being partisan trolling or just the random chaos that some people want to bring.
These are not free exchanges of ideas, but chest t
Slashdot helps us understand technology in general (Score:2)
Slashdot allows "free exchanges of ideas". For me, that is excellent! I want to know how people in general think.
Slashdot has a very different purpose than Facebook. Facebook attempts to be personal social involvement. Slashdot helps us understand technology in general by helping us understand what people think.
For example, when someone makes a comment on Slashdot that shows a lack of understanding, that helps me understand how technology is being understood, in general.
Does that seem
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The idea of Free exchange of ideas is great. However in practice on Slashdot this doesn't happen too well.
The Slashdotter is getting old, old people including myself are mostly stuck in our ways, new ideas and technology are less exciting and could be seen as threatening, So the free exchange of ideas on Slashdot covered technology is how much it sucks.
While it is a counter to the often paid news plant pushing the technology, the comments tend to focus and get promoted when it is showing off all the possib
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I haven't used the Usenet much, but I was on the FidoNet. The BBS operators tended to be rather strict on what people did on their computers. As a BBS SysOp of the early 1990's if I saw a user Spamming a FidoNet board (or my public boards) I would just kick them off my BBS, and perhaps go as far as blocking that number.
Universities would also have the Sysadmins being very strict on what happened on their network. Back then Access to a network and a system was a privilege not a right, and you had 0 expect
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Mod parent up, though moderation sort of negates jellomizer's point about the lack of consequences. Or at least it would if the Slashdot moderation system wasn't so borken [sic]. (And karma needs work, too.)
Having nodded at the fine post, I'll repeat my own complaint about the financial models driving bad behaviors. At Slashdot that's why there are no financial resources to fix the moderation. Much worse at Facebook, because advertisers are driving the clown car and they fundamentally hate truth and reality
Re: Facebook is NOT healthy. (Score:2)
a little late (Score:3)
FB you are a little late to the party. Everyone, literally everyone, noticed this before you.
At least it's "researched" now. (Score:2)
Maybe these "researchers" would even manage to notice in due time that the first paragraph of the summary is completely irrelevant to summarising and therefore should go.
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I'm very interested in what you say! Is there someplace we can discuss this further? Maybe connect with others who have similar ideas?
Wait ...
Financial propaganda (Score:1)
I wasn't surprised to see this piece of "journalism" comes from bloomberg. They conveniently spout out negative articles on a company ad nauseum, driving share prices down, until they can buy in at a discount then they move on to the next company in their sight. I'm actually surprised they even require a subscription, I guess it makes them appear more legit.
It's not just Facebook (Score:2)
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Facebook is not much better but at least on Facebook, rather than getting screamed at by a stranger, you are getting screamed at by a second-grade
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By its very nature, with few characters to use for nuance, Twitter forces polarization and the use of stronger and stronger statements to the point of absolutism. This seems to be built-in to the whole thing.
Absolutely agree. Twitter is an interesting experiment, but when the dust settles I think we'll agree that it caused far more problems than it solved.
Covid19 side effect (Score:3)
This was known and documented already 5 years ago, possibly more.
However, Covid19 brought the phenomenon of online loneliness to a new level. Before Covid19 we were kind of OK not seeing most people in our relationship circles on a regular basis, specially those people in the "second circle" (colleagues, lesser friends, etc.). Learning about there whereabouts online was OK. We had the opportunity to meet them if/when we wanted. But after 2 years of Covid19, most people are not craving interactions-at-a-distance anymore. We have been frustrated by the lack of real-life interactions. We want to see real people in real life.
If one thing is likely to kill Facebook, it's likely to be Covid19 - let's rejoice!
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They'll probably get Moderna to develop a new vaccine especially for the Facebook servers.
Life happens offline (Score:3)
I got a dog to help me feel connected. I got out of the house. I built real in-person relationships again. Fell in love. Got married. Had children. All because I turned off social media.
I feel like I lost years feeling a false sense of connectedness without actually being connected. My time after social media has been so much more fulfilling and I donâ(TM)t miss it.
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The moral of the story: use social media for family planning. Don't want kids? Use Facebook.
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Also: even people who use Macs can learn not to overuse social media. Alas, they'll never learn not to post curly apostrophes to Slashdot.
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That sounds like a happy story! At least so far. Here's to hoping that the scourge of divorce never afflicts your family.
I also agree that social media is addictive and emotionally harmful. I have little sympathy for adults who can't recognize this, but young children are naturally naïve and vulnerable to this sort of thing. The wheels are turning slowly, but I think that our culture is experiencing a mass awakening to this problem, so perhaps future generations of children will have better protec
Facebook is designed to be addictive (Score:2)
Facebook knows this but let's not get ourselves here they're a corporation and a business and in the absence of either government regulation (tough to do without stomping all over free speech and a free internet) or society is a whole abandoning them (equally tough to do because our media is going to support Facebook because of the enormous
Modest Mouse predicted this.. (Score:2)
Wow - Baby Blue Sedan is practically about FB:
And it's hard to be a human being
And it's harder as anything else
And I'm lonesome when you're around
And I'm never lonesome when I'm by myself
People need real people, not screens (Score:2)
I agree (Score:3)
I will for sure not visit any restaurant with a FB-page only and no website.
Substituting Infotainment for Connection (Score:2)
Meta, with a mission to help people connect online, has discovered through internal research that its products can just as easily have an isolating effect.
It is very, very difficult to establish and foster a genuine personal connection with someone over social media-- especially with the way that social media has evolved (short messages, links, and likes).
Additionally, if social media is a major part of your social life and you're not interacting as you would as if you're speaking to the person in real life, you're not actually socializing-- you're probably just consuming. It's like consuming fried ramen noodles for the majority of your daily calories and it
Facebook should really strive to make people happy (Score:1)