this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Buddy, doomscrolling is your own issue. Are you old enough to remember "doomscrolling" cable television for hours at night? We're all choosing to distract ourselves from something else or we're just bored. It's nothing new.
I mean, if you're having trouble stepping away from something, it almost sounds like you're describing an addiction problem. Everyone should make it a practice to step outside themselves for a moment and assess all their habits.
You're not seriously suggesting that a platform prevent its users from using it, are you? LOL where have I seen that in the news this week?
Jeez, this feels quite hostile.
I'm a developer. I'm working on this problem myself. You can craft features which promote a behavior or inhibit it. For example focusing only on live oriented features, making sure that posts show up constantly and with little ability to see what previous came, i would argue, focuses behavior on addictive FOMO. Features that help summarize historical posts to leave you with less of a feeling of FOMO does the opposite.
Features promote behavior. Some drive engagement, some reduce engagement. I seek features which reduce engagement by way of inhibiting FOMO and promoting the feeling of being informed on what it is you were seeking.
I'm suggesting a platform which focuses on features that help users avoid what i feel are negative outcomes. Which is wholly different than saying that all platforms need to do this. Why is this controversial to you? Should i, and users like me, not be able to use a platform which tries to eradicate (as best able) FOMO? Is FOMO other people experience somehow essential to you?
You can have whatever platforms you like. Just because an option exists does not mean it is hostile to your preferences. To me your reply seems short sighted, entirely focused on your individual use case and ignorant of a wide array of methods people want to use to interact with these products.
I am focused on my slice and my pie. You can have yours too, it's okay.
To add to your point, let's not forget that a certain social media site used their algorithm to boost content that angers people because it also boosts engagement. It shouldn't be controversial to want a social media that, like, doesn't exploit negative behaviors to generate more dollars, and I think your working towards something that specifically doesn't do that is admirable.
This argument that a social media platform not doing evil things also exclusively means it cannot attract an audience in some other way is a false dichotomy.
Seconding everything here — hostile/destructive platform design is so normalized for users (of Reddit and in general) that designing services that don’t encourage doomscrolling/“anger-tainment”/FOMO/etc feels completely foreign to them, or even impossible. But it’s gotta happen, otherwise we’ll just repeat the worst parts of Reddit (and other platforms) all over again.