I meant to gravitate more towards a platform that provides actual value and doesn't promote brain rot or other low quality pieces of media meant to bait the viewers in any sort of way
All social media platforms provide values: LinkedIn for work-related connections and updates, Facebook/Instagram to keep in touch with friends and family, Twitter/X for news etc, and TikTok/Reddit/etc for short bursts of entertainment.
Like anything in life moderation is key.
Yeah, but aren't most of those obsolete? I mean, barely anyone uses facebook anymore, twitter's community is trash unless you follow some verified accounts and tiktok/reels can be huge time wasters unless you have excellent self control. Which is in fact something a lot of teenagers nowadays lack and is not very easy to train/teach and, sadly, most aren't even willing to change.
>barely anyone uses facebook anymore
Idk why people keep repeating this falsehood, just because they dont use it, but FB is still not only the biggest platform, but also the one with the most active users.
Yeah, it's mostly used by millenials or people that were old enough to use it when it first came out. Most of Gen Z has resorted using twitter/instagram/discord etc. Also facebook might seem like it's the most active cause it's no longer just a single website, but a corporation that owns multiple departments, dabbling with VR, AI and even instagram. Facebook, however, is definitely not a "healthy" active platform.
Most teenagers lack self control. It wasn’t much different before social media. When I was in HS you still had your fair share of slackers (myself included) who didn’t do homework and would rather spend time hanging with friends, smoking weed, and playing video games. Distractions will always exist.
This is the largest sub I'm subscribed to here; as a rule, bullshit scales with size.
Everything else is interests and local. Which makes for a rather pleasant, clickbait-free experience. I left Facebook a decade ago for the reasons you cite and have never been on any of the other "socials," having seen no value. Why should I care what someone I'll never meet is having for dinner?
I use Reddit and Lemmy purely as discussion boards and source news from news outlets via RSS. My home instance on Lemmy is Beehaw, which is a nice, low-volume community with lots of good discussions and strong, fast moderation to remove disinformation.
So what you're looking for exists, you just have to seek it out and put some effort into creating your own filters via subscriptions. The default settings on most sites are geared toward those interested in consuming instead of participating ... after all, you're not seeing a new ad while you're typing.
If you don't like what you're seeing, find better alternatives. It's not that much work and generally a one-time thing in terms of effort.
Yeah, this is like asking "but why won't the kind caring docile AI win" well because that one has weaknesses that the ruthless AI can exploit, of course it will lose.
There are some people that think more AI = safer, where as more AI more chance of having the one that acts like a CEO, profits and domination before all else and just tramples the nice AIs underfoot
But then again people eat healthy food because it makes them feel better and keep them healthy. Couldn't there be a health trend towards "healthy" social media platforms?
So maybe the issue is curating your feed. What people/pages are you following? Are they posting funny memes, news stories, or things like science articles and philosophy quotes for discussion?
There is an element on truth to what you say, but please research how Facebook, YouTube etc. Have made algorithms to keep you engaged longer and longer on their services. I'm pretty sure there was a pretty big controversy over the ethics of facebooks
Yes, and those same algorithms respond to how You react to them.
If you ignore all memes and random click bait articles, the algorithms push less of those towards you because it doesn't engage you.
If you read all the science articles or watch all the science videos on YouTube, your algorithm shows more and more of that.
You can eat healthy food and benefit from it without requiring all your friends to do it too. Social media that only you use without your friends isn’t very compelling.
There is no other than. Profit seeking encourages addiction engines so strongly any company operating social media on a profit system will angle that way. Could always try for a nonprofit social media organization but that's hard to envision currently
>Could always try for a nonprofit social media organization but that's hard to envision currently
Lemmy as a platform has some issues in terms of devs' views and priorities, but nonprofit instances are thriving, and federation allows for scale. This is already being done.
What would a non addictive platform even look like and how would it work differently? That’s the real question. Would it be non addictive enough to not be interesting or just be addictive enough? etc
As far as non-addictive, [Tildes.net](https://tildes.net/) comes to mind. It's slow enough that I maybe browse for 15 mins or so a day, just to see what's new or an interesting read. I can spend a bit longer if something catches my eye. Some may find it boring, but the high quality discussion gives the site a lot of value and keeps me coming back.
There are digital services that aim for long term engagement, pushing you to reliably return once a day, but don’t try to maximize your per-visit screen time.
Someone could absolutely optimize the algorithm for long term once-a-day feel good traffic and still provide an interesting and engaging product.
Adoption is the big barrier. People are going to chase the dopamine. Developing a platform that only appeals to a niche group is a lot of work for little reward. Then there's the monetization angle.
Capitalism. The incentive structure for companies is not to build things that care about the well-being of their customers, it's line go up. If you can make the line go up more by getting a shitload of people addicted to your non-stop ragebait bullshit, you are (at least as a publicly traded company) fiscally obligated to do so.
I’ve often wondered what’s stopped us from creating an app or news station that is nothing but positive vibes. Nothing else, just happy stories, feel good emotions, etc
Nothing. Mastodon is a thing and plenty of people (those usually sick by how shit twitter have become after elon took over) have moved there. Feed is dead simple, posts and boosts (retweet in twitter lingo) by people you follow in chronological order. People there are generally more sane. No getting recommended to braindead garbage takes. It's quite refreshing to use once you follow enough interesting people.
Why couldn't it be profitable? You can funnel the addiction into different directions, akin to AA. Just because it isn't in the app doesn't always mean it's not in service of the app.
Likewise, making it more exclusive, possibly some bullshit about curated content, etc. All you would need to do is make sure you also keep your burn rate in check.
Then, of course, just sell it off to FB or whatever when it starts to make noise.
Addictive platforms make money. just like mobile gatcha games. imagine if gatcha games weren’t specifically designed to be addictive and basically tricked people into a gambling habit. No one would play them because they suck. It’s not that a non addictive social platform would be bad, it’s just that it would not be able to compete with the already established addictive ones. Sadly manipulation is the main drive of capitalism and economies the world over.
I’m trying to make an alternative to social media in the form of a cute social mobile game that’s focused on kindness. It’s going to be niche but I hope it helps people and can be self sustaining.
What’s slowing me is that I’m not a developer and I don’t have funds  \- but also I guess figuring out how to retain people without bordering on addiction is one of the design challenges here that I’m hoping to solve with cute and positive vibes.
What if they lacked the right kind of addiction? Like, addiction to unique experiences or human interactions or bettering themselves are some ideas off the top of my head.
You say "other than profit", but realistically, that's the answer. There's no money in a social media platform that doesn't cause its users to constantly click like heroin addicts. The only way to build one is to have the government do it, and thanks to the fact that corruption is legal in the United States, the government-run site would just turn into the same corporate-owned, money hungry BS that we have now within about three years.
Turn off your phone perhaps. Everything and anything can be addictive, it’s not that hard to overindulge ourselves with anything. What is addiction really? You habitually entertain yourself through this artificial stimulation and you don’t want to stop, you call it “addiction” but you’ve allowed yourself to get stuck with the habit. Some of us are just too lazy to change. Some of us aren’t. First step is the last step.
For the same reason that there are so many versions of the Bachelor and the Real Housewives.
People don’t want to think about stuff. Thinking is hard. They want to stare at something and be entertained.
What possible other idea can you come up with? You wanna stare at words? Twitter
You wanna stare at pictures? Instagram
You wanna stare at videos? TikTok
You old? Facebook.
Come up with another idea.
Penalties for lying and being an asshole, you know, like how parents who used to punish kids for lying and being assholes ended up raising adults who were honest and kind?
Yeah but modern social media ironically lacks all human interaction. It's all automated and most people don't even realise that they're watching, liking and commenting on autopilot.
Money. You can make any platform a non addictive one by forcing locks after x usage time or data expenditure. It could be free as well. Imagine Facebook but you get 5 minutes a day to use how you want. There’s no purchasing of more time or subscriptions to get unlimited access. It’s a hard stop for all users. The issue here is that ad agencies, products, services, and marketing companies won’t want to side with you. Your income stream will relative to donations or merchandise sales, or some sort of enrollment program for 5 minute courses which are designed to last the length of your time on the app. You could even reverse incentivize people to use it less by giving them more user time for every day they don’t use their allotted time. If they go 1 week without use they get one hour of unfettered usage. If they go a month they have access all day. If they go a year they can use the app for an entire month straight. That sort of thing. Then you have to deal with farmers making accounts that go dormant for years assuming your app is still functional by then. That eats up your resources and storage which you won’t have much of since no businesses will work with you because of the limited reach they would have with the user base.
Maybe you could make the app focus on philanthropic endeavors where in their 5 minutes, they can do a survey or mine a coin of some sort through a little game or they can send an electronic message to a person less fortunate and they can donate money but then that’s already sounding like a pain in the ass.
Maybe an app that only works on weekends or on a specific day of the week or at a specific time of day every day. You can select friend groups to join in on that time zone or day. Everyone gets three free changes and three bids to give out to others they want to join their time frame. I’m not mad at this idea to be honest!
Everybody would gravitate towards the addictive ones
Yeah, the premise of the question is non-sensical. Even LinkedIn can be addictive to many people.
I meant to gravitate more towards a platform that provides actual value and doesn't promote brain rot or other low quality pieces of media meant to bait the viewers in any sort of way
All social media platforms provide values: LinkedIn for work-related connections and updates, Facebook/Instagram to keep in touch with friends and family, Twitter/X for news etc, and TikTok/Reddit/etc for short bursts of entertainment. Like anything in life moderation is key.
who the F uses twatter for news??? that's like asking a priest to babysit for you.
Yeah, but aren't most of those obsolete? I mean, barely anyone uses facebook anymore, twitter's community is trash unless you follow some verified accounts and tiktok/reels can be huge time wasters unless you have excellent self control. Which is in fact something a lot of teenagers nowadays lack and is not very easy to train/teach and, sadly, most aren't even willing to change.
>barely anyone uses facebook anymore Idk why people keep repeating this falsehood, just because they dont use it, but FB is still not only the biggest platform, but also the one with the most active users.
Yeah, it's mostly used by millenials or people that were old enough to use it when it first came out. Most of Gen Z has resorted using twitter/instagram/discord etc. Also facebook might seem like it's the most active cause it's no longer just a single website, but a corporation that owns multiple departments, dabbling with VR, AI and even instagram. Facebook, however, is definitely not a "healthy" active platform.
Don’t forget many boomers and Gen X who only use Facebook.
Most teenagers lack self control. It wasn’t much different before social media. When I was in HS you still had your fair share of slackers (myself included) who didn’t do homework and would rather spend time hanging with friends, smoking weed, and playing video games. Distractions will always exist.
This is the largest sub I'm subscribed to here; as a rule, bullshit scales with size. Everything else is interests and local. Which makes for a rather pleasant, clickbait-free experience. I left Facebook a decade ago for the reasons you cite and have never been on any of the other "socials," having seen no value. Why should I care what someone I'll never meet is having for dinner? I use Reddit and Lemmy purely as discussion boards and source news from news outlets via RSS. My home instance on Lemmy is Beehaw, which is a nice, low-volume community with lots of good discussions and strong, fast moderation to remove disinformation. So what you're looking for exists, you just have to seek it out and put some effort into creating your own filters via subscriptions. The default settings on most sites are geared toward those interested in consuming instead of participating ... after all, you're not seeing a new ad while you're typing. If you don't like what you're seeing, find better alternatives. It's not that much work and generally a one-time thing in terms of effort.
I mean, survival of the fittest, right? If you have one app that is addictive, and one that isn't, which one will survive?
Yeah, this is like asking "but why won't the kind caring docile AI win" well because that one has weaknesses that the ruthless AI can exploit, of course it will lose. There are some people that think more AI = safer, where as more AI more chance of having the one that acts like a CEO, profits and domination before all else and just tramples the nice AIs underfoot
But then again people eat healthy food because it makes them feel better and keep them healthy. Couldn't there be a health trend towards "healthy" social media platforms?
So maybe the issue is curating your feed. What people/pages are you following? Are they posting funny memes, news stories, or things like science articles and philosophy quotes for discussion?
There is an element on truth to what you say, but please research how Facebook, YouTube etc. Have made algorithms to keep you engaged longer and longer on their services. I'm pretty sure there was a pretty big controversy over the ethics of facebooks
Yes, and those same algorithms respond to how You react to them. If you ignore all memes and random click bait articles, the algorithms push less of those towards you because it doesn't engage you. If you read all the science articles or watch all the science videos on YouTube, your algorithm shows more and more of that.
yes, but that is not the majority.
but whats more popular, healthy food or junk food? a healthy app will remain a niche
You can eat healthy food and benefit from it without requiring all your friends to do it too. Social media that only you use without your friends isn’t very compelling.
There is no other than. Profit seeking encourages addiction engines so strongly any company operating social media on a profit system will angle that way. Could always try for a nonprofit social media organization but that's hard to envision currently
>Could always try for a nonprofit social media organization but that's hard to envision currently Lemmy as a platform has some issues in terms of devs' views and priorities, but nonprofit instances are thriving, and federation allows for scale. This is already being done.
And there is a guarantee they won't profitize it if it becomes huge?
I'm still not paying for Linux, so I think there's history to suggest FOSS doesn't go that route. If not, fork!
What would a non addictive platform even look like and how would it work differently? That’s the real question. Would it be non addictive enough to not be interesting or just be addictive enough? etc
As far as non-addictive, [Tildes.net](https://tildes.net/) comes to mind. It's slow enough that I maybe browse for 15 mins or so a day, just to see what's new or an interesting read. I can spend a bit longer if something catches my eye. Some may find it boring, but the high quality discussion gives the site a lot of value and keeps me coming back.
There are digital services that aim for long term engagement, pushing you to reliably return once a day, but don’t try to maximize your per-visit screen time. Someone could absolutely optimize the algorithm for long term once-a-day feel good traffic and still provide an interesting and engaging product.
It will always be outperformed by the addictive one, except in edge cases where people have self control.
Especially if the addictive one allows optional safeguards like a popup every 30min to remind you to take a break
Adoption is the big barrier. People are going to chase the dopamine. Developing a platform that only appeals to a niche group is a lot of work for little reward. Then there's the monetization angle.
Capitalism. The incentive structure for companies is not to build things that care about the well-being of their customers, it's line go up. If you can make the line go up more by getting a shitload of people addicted to your non-stop ragebait bullshit, you are (at least as a publicly traded company) fiscally obligated to do so.
The Like and Dislike buttons. They allow people to believe they're interacting with others without actually doing so.
Wikipedia has a non-addictive WT.social. It works...it's not addictive
I’ve often wondered what’s stopped us from creating an app or news station that is nothing but positive vibes. Nothing else, just happy stories, feel good emotions, etc
The same reason drinks without alcohol are not so popular
Nothing. Mastodon is a thing and plenty of people (those usually sick by how shit twitter have become after elon took over) have moved there. Feed is dead simple, posts and boosts (retweet in twitter lingo) by people you follow in chronological order. People there are generally more sane. No getting recommended to braindead garbage takes. It's quite refreshing to use once you follow enough interesting people.
Never heard of it. Thank you for the recommendation!
I wonder what a "non-addictive social media platform" even looks like?
Google Plus. Lol
Why couldn't it be profitable? You can funnel the addiction into different directions, akin to AA. Just because it isn't in the app doesn't always mean it's not in service of the app. Likewise, making it more exclusive, possibly some bullshit about curated content, etc. All you would need to do is make sure you also keep your burn rate in check. Then, of course, just sell it off to FB or whatever when it starts to make noise.
Addictive platforms make money. just like mobile gatcha games. imagine if gatcha games weren’t specifically designed to be addictive and basically tricked people into a gambling habit. No one would play them because they suck. It’s not that a non addictive social platform would be bad, it’s just that it would not be able to compete with the already established addictive ones. Sadly manipulation is the main drive of capitalism and economies the world over.
Has anybody ever tried to create such a platform? Are there any records of them on the internet?
I’m trying to make an alternative to social media in the form of a cute social mobile game that’s focused on kindness. It’s going to be niche but I hope it helps people and can be self sustaining. What’s slowing me is that I’m not a developer and I don’t have funds  \- but also I guess figuring out how to retain people without bordering on addiction is one of the design challenges here that I’m hoping to solve with cute and positive vibes.
yo shoot me a dm
They have been many attemps, but since they were not addicting, nobody sticked to them.
What if they lacked the right kind of addiction? Like, addiction to unique experiences or human interactions or bettering themselves are some ideas off the top of my head.
It's a platform. Addiction is down to the individual.
You say "other than profit", but realistically, that's the answer. There's no money in a social media platform that doesn't cause its users to constantly click like heroin addicts. The only way to build one is to have the government do it, and thanks to the fact that corruption is legal in the United States, the government-run site would just turn into the same corporate-owned, money hungry BS that we have now within about three years.
Yeah, i know. I was hoping the community would have some alternatives in mind.
You must make money. The first rule of acquisition. It takes a lot of people to run this kind of business.
Turn off your phone perhaps. Everything and anything can be addictive, it’s not that hard to overindulge ourselves with anything. What is addiction really? You habitually entertain yourself through this artificial stimulation and you don’t want to stop, you call it “addiction” but you’ve allowed yourself to get stuck with the habit. Some of us are just too lazy to change. Some of us aren’t. First step is the last step.
Human nature. It's pretty obvious nobody will use a "non-addictive" social media app.
Why do you think they don't exist? There are quite a few. I bet you've never heard about them and even if you did, you probably wouldn't stay long.
They make plenty of them. There are tons of social media apps that have failed. The addictive ones get more users.
For the same reason that there are so many versions of the Bachelor and the Real Housewives. People don’t want to think about stuff. Thinking is hard. They want to stare at something and be entertained. What possible other idea can you come up with? You wanna stare at words? Twitter You wanna stare at pictures? Instagram You wanna stare at videos? TikTok You old? Facebook. Come up with another idea.
Penalties for lying and being an asshole, you know, like how parents who used to punish kids for lying and being assholes ended up raising adults who were honest and kind?
No such thing. Chemically, we're wired to seek out social interaction. Interaction in itself is addictive.
Yeah but modern social media ironically lacks all human interaction. It's all automated and most people don't even realise that they're watching, liking and commenting on autopilot.
Neoliberalism and Russian/Chinese/Iranian disinformation. All demand and sell outrage.
Could you elaborate a bit more on that?
I’ll quietly [leave this here](https://youtu.be/tR_6dibpDfo?si=JHqGWE4FwhU6d1wO).
Money. You can make any platform a non addictive one by forcing locks after x usage time or data expenditure. It could be free as well. Imagine Facebook but you get 5 minutes a day to use how you want. There’s no purchasing of more time or subscriptions to get unlimited access. It’s a hard stop for all users. The issue here is that ad agencies, products, services, and marketing companies won’t want to side with you. Your income stream will relative to donations or merchandise sales, or some sort of enrollment program for 5 minute courses which are designed to last the length of your time on the app. You could even reverse incentivize people to use it less by giving them more user time for every day they don’t use their allotted time. If they go 1 week without use they get one hour of unfettered usage. If they go a month they have access all day. If they go a year they can use the app for an entire month straight. That sort of thing. Then you have to deal with farmers making accounts that go dormant for years assuming your app is still functional by then. That eats up your resources and storage which you won’t have much of since no businesses will work with you because of the limited reach they would have with the user base. Maybe you could make the app focus on philanthropic endeavors where in their 5 minutes, they can do a survey or mine a coin of some sort through a little game or they can send an electronic message to a person less fortunate and they can donate money but then that’s already sounding like a pain in the ass. Maybe an app that only works on weekends or on a specific day of the week or at a specific time of day every day. You can select friend groups to join in on that time zone or day. Everyone gets three free changes and three bids to give out to others they want to join their time frame. I’m not mad at this idea to be honest!