Psychology @lemmy.ml subhomesickalien @lemmy.eco.br 2w ago

What would you suggest if you were helping design a healthier social network?

For example, would removing infinite scrolling help make it less addictive? Would you keep the upvote/downvote system, remove it, or classify posts differently to foster better discussions? How about adding a countdown timer to log the user out after a certain number of hours of use?

If psychological research can be used to keep users engaged on a social network for as long as possible, I believe it can also be applied to help prevent excessive use, improve the quality of discussions, and create a more empathetic environment. That’s why I’d love to hear suggestions from those in the field.

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Posts with heated arguments (detected as having more than a certain number of comments/replies per minute), get shown to fewer people.
- Don't you mean those replies under the heated posts should be shown to fewer people? If you mean to hide the post entirely, people could weaponize this mecanism to hide posts they don't agree with from others.
  
  You'd need a way to prevent abuse, but I meant the actual post.
  
  Current algorithms consider heated arguments to be an indicator of highly engaging content, so add fuel to the fire by showing it to more people. What's needed is the opposite.
we had healthy social media once upon a time, they all died because people prioritize their addictions over utility.
Content outside of your immediate profile should be on a kill timer: after the time is up, it's completely deleted.
No images, text only.

My hot take is that memes made the internet worse. Why make a new joke when you can copy someone else's? Why write thoughtful political commentary when you can slap 100 characters on a picture and call it a day? Don't link the article, screenshot the headline and put a picture of your favorite favorite celebrity under it. That's content, baby!
- I mean, copypastas would still exist. So long as people are trying to show off on the internet for likes or points, there will be people trying to steal other people's popular content or say the most outlandish things to get a response. You could tackle this by removing likes/points or you could remove the algorithm that gives preferential visibility towards things with the most likes/points/comments. People just don't want to feel lonely and if that part of their brain lights up when they steal jokes and get a ton of likes, maybe the solution is creating a situation that fosters real connection instead of emulating that feeling with of likes and digital attention?
  
  Copypasta is as easy to copy but memes are wayyy easier to digest so they're way more prevalent. Text uses basically no bandwidth in comparison, too.
  
  It's just filler that keeps people scrolling.
I guess the answer depends on the social media format, right? I think the old school PhpBB forums were peak for interacting with random people online (at least for me). An issue I've always had with things like Reddit and things similar to that is that there's no Avatar and signature to identify people in a conversation. And the forums that I was a part of, a moderator would always pop in to tell people to take it to PMs if there was too much back and forth conversation (or arguments) between 2 people if it got too heated, too personal, and started diverging too much from the main topic.

So, as far as "healthy" goes, I think my opinion is that communities should be more personal and much smaller. Lemmy definitely feels better to reddit and that's likely just due to the size difference and the fact that more of a percentage of us are real people and aren't part of some marketing campaign or karma farming bots. That way, there's more of a sense of community and people can remember your name from past posts/comments. If your "home" on the internet is slow and small, you won't feel the need to scroll endlessly since you can catch up to content.

As far as format goes, I like the idea of a feed (no text limit) where you can see generally what people are up to recently, but there's also topics people can follow that function more like forums. So then the question becomes should communities have artificially limited user counts and see everything (like Path was)? Or should there be a friends list so you only see things your friends are saying and the comments to those posts like facebook? I'm leaning towards artificially limited user counts since it guarantees a small and slow internet "home". And it's gotta be web based, unlike Discord communities.
- And it’s gotta be web based, unlike Discord communities.
  
  What do you mean by that?
  
  To be honest, I forgot there is a web version of discord people can use. Also, I guess I didn't go into it because I was being long winded with the rest of my message, but every barrier to entry if you want to sustain a small community has a chance to kill it or limit the addition of great users who would otherwise keep it alive. I'm sure a ton of people would like to join something like lemmy, but don't because the concept of federated servers is a real barrier for those people. Discord feels like a major barrier since you can't really find the kind of community you really want to join since you can't taste test the content of the server before you join. The discord servers I'm in are either based around a community that's already popular and it is an extension of that OR it is a more organized version of a group chat with my friends. I'm sure there are general purpose discord servers that manage to be small and friendly, but they seem really hard to find if you want to find them. It is fine if you want to connect to other people who (for example) all are fans of the same youtube channel, but if there's not that common thread, I'm not seeing how a community like that could start or thrive. Maybe I'm wrong, but I just haven't seen it before. I just think my main gripe against discord is being used by companies for troubleshooting so answers to common problems can't be searched on the web, which is an entirely different issue.
only allow images.

if you're hardcore, also ban text in images, checked by OCR between upload and publishing.
- So also avoid cat pictures or too many? He said he wants people to not obsessively spend their time in it, and guess what, the internet is crazy with cats. I don't think this is the way, text-only would do a lot better than image-only where people need to pay less attention.
I would try to steer us back to a shared reality, so for instance maybe ranking for suggested posts is calculated by geography. Not religion or politics or financial standing or whatever.

Is it perfect? No. Can it be gamed? Yes. But everybody will see the same thing, and would be an improvement over micro targeting, which by its nature polarizes us N-dimensionally.
So let me preface this by saying I understand all of the privacy and other reasons why the below would be a very bad idea, but I think it might help:

Make everyone use their real names. I already pretend that everyone knows who I am online and sees all my comments, I strive to treat all of my online interactions as if I was talking to someone in real life. If it’s something rude or something I don’t have the guts to say to a person’s face, or something I don’t want shared to everyone I know, then I don’t post it.

Edit to add after theotherben’s comment below: I definitely understand how this could be dangerous to many people and I don’t think it’s feasible. My main idea is just try to ask yourself whether you would say what you want to post or comment, to someone in person. But you guys are right, too many people ARE jerks in real life so that wouldn’t change. Idk, I mask a ton in real life and don’t use social media outside of Lemmy so I’m probably the wrong person to even think about this.
- Have you ever used a local facebook group?
  
  Nope, I don’t have Facebook or any other social media than Lemmy (used to be Reddit).
- isn't this like Linkedin?
  
  This guy is likely from Finland considering his instance or maybe not. They're nice people but they are so well more civilized on that sphere of the planet than the rest of the world, he's in a social bubble that the entire world behaves the same most likely.
- Make everyone use their real names.
  
  Yeah, because that won't make people overly anxious and some fake a lot of their interactions or be too obsessed, the best part is: the examples of this are the biggest social medias such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Also, have you thought of those who are in danger because they have an ex or a random internet user stalking them all over? Congratulations, that'd not help those people.
  
  Anonymity can be good and bad but the good can overweigh the bad if you care that much to at least moderate the bad.
  
  If it’s something rude or something I don’t have the guts to say to a person’s face, or something I don’t want shared to everyone I know, then I don’t post it.
  
  This is a psychology community, talking is healthy, you're thinking everyone must suffer of exposing themselves because the platform can't be properly moderated? Then it shouldn't even be public.
  
  Did you seriously not see that I acknowledged the privacy and safety concerns? I’m just saying, I try to use social media (which is literally just Lemmy and used to be Reddit) as if I was talking to someone face to face.
  
  It's always been my opinion that anonymity makes people more aggressive and more willing to partake in antisocial behavior. A person in a car could have their trip extended by 2 seconds before someone else decides to endanger their lives because they see "slow car" instead of "real family on a road trip".
  
  For stalkers, just have an option to lock down the account. Like, block the stalker and make your account inaccessible to those who aren't already your friend/follow you. With anonymous accounts, there's nothing stopping bypassing any moderation attempts by creating another account unless you do an IP ban, which can also be bypassed. Moderation and especially auto-moderation can be subject to silencing topics and voices the parent company of the social media platform deems shouldn't be talked about.
  
  But if your real name is attached to any number of sensitive topics, getting doxed suddenly becomes a major issue. If Reddit is half full of psyops campaigns, political campaigns, marketing campaigns, what's stopping the people who use these sort of tactics from doxing and threatening you directly to prevent dissent directly from the source? I can only imagine what happens to all those people who have basic walkthroughs for Nintendo emulation only to have hired mobs show up to their door to break their knees within the week. Or a conservative government find a reason to jail (or worse) someone asking about abortion options.
  
  So if you can't be anonymous and talk about sensitive topics without it resulting in rage and propaganda and you can't have your name attached to sensitive topics without it resulting in a risk of doxing or violence, what's the answer? I honestly have no idea. :/ Maybe it will always be a fact that there will be both anonymous websites in addition to websites attached to people's real names.
Ban all swearing and slurs. Enforce courtesy and make people spell out their position. Ban extremist news posts, including extreme rubbish like the daily mail. Freedom of speech, in the american sense, is the enemy of truth. Minimum character limit instead of maximum character limit. Posts must have meaningful content, not ^this. You must click tbe link to the article before posting. No headline reactions. All the politics goes in one place, noone gets an echo chamber. No labels.

Everypne would hate it but I would go there.
- He said healthier not age restricted healthier, swearing can be healthy if not done excessively. Some people can't go a day without swearing once because it is a stress relief, if someone manages to make an argument and still swear, is that bad? We don't live in a perfect society, if you think anyone capable of reflection thoughts don't even think about it, you're probably a minority living in a 1st world country.
  
  You must click tbe link to the article before posting. No headline reactions.
  
  Wishful thought of you to think it's that simple, some would click and read the headline and see pictures in the article and close, or just click and close so they can post. If you are that desperate to control this kind of behavior, it's better to leave those kind of posts with comments disabled to avoid it altogether.
  
  The minimum of words and no slurs is where the line should be drawn, he's not asking for SFW social media. Enforcing politeness is simply just enforcing people to follow the terms of service furthermore needless to mention. You're being a lot more idealist than pragmatist.
  
  I was totally being idealist. The idea of a social media site where people just get along is totally idealist. I believe in politeness btw, i think that it's how we get along without violence in our day to day lives. I think courtesy matters and the internet's repudiation of common courtesy is spilling into real life and the knock out game will just expand.. i believe in good manners. I get that i'm insane, but how else can we live with each other?
  
  What if the pretence of common courtesy is the norm that actually prevents mass violence? I could be wrong, but i genuinely believe it matters.

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