Google reads your e-mails to develop its ads. Psychological profiles are collated from every click you take on each of these platforms and pulled into ad brokerships. The people that are hired to do this profiling often have crossovers into government sectors, as this is just another form of surveillance. I am personally shocked (not necessarily appalled) at anyone feeling OK with this level of scrutiny being applied to themselves at all the times by government bureaucrats, or companies just looking to make a buck off of your behavior without you even knowing. We're past the point where anyone can claim ignorance of these facts.

Another example regarding Google and more precisely Youtube. When my daughter was younger we created an account on a smart TV and watched a few videos for kids on a newly created Youtube account... Over time I realised that they tweak recommendations in such a way that kids are presented with highly addictive (and sometimes borderline disturbing) content. With kids content it is more obvious, but the same is true for adult users, even though the "addictiveness" aspect tends to be more nuanced. A couple of years ago there was a TechCrunch article that talked about this topic: https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/12/i-watched-1000-hours-of-yo...

That's creepy and all but I thought we were talking about mental well-being?

This is the classic advertising doesn't work on me mentality.

Whether you realise it or not, the algorithms behind these services are having a subtle impact on you and show you things for various shady reasons. For me, that was enough just to ditch those services.

It's good to see that you're limiting your exposure to them though.

To be honest, advertising DOES work on me, but only insomuch as it alerts me to potential things. I presume all ads are lies, and research the thing before I by. I have a strong anti-authority reflex and trust VERY little (if anything) on face value. I don't even trust myself. "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”

> I don't even trust myself

But you trust yourself so much that "advertising DOES work on me, but only insomuch as it alerts me to potential things"

That sounds a bit contradictory to me. (I think I could describe myself somewhat like you did in the latter part, and I still have absolutely no illusions that ads would not be able to get me. So I just actively try to avoid them. And I do not need or want anyone to alert me on potential things. Even further, I try to live by the principle of never, ever making any kind of commercial transaction with anyone where I have not been the intiator of the communication.)

Well, I stated that it queues my interest, then I research it understanding it's probably not as good as it looks. I'm not sure I agree that's contradictory. I'm not saying they don't succeed in attracting me, I'm saying I don't buy based on ads.

The fact that you do not seem to believe that ads may be able to affect your behavior beyond your analytical research is the thing that is contradictory with you not trusting yourself. Or at least that is something I can't trust myself, even if I also happen to think I am beyond ads. But based on my observations in the society and other people, ads are way, way too powerful for me to trust my non-lizard brain here. So I just try to not give my lizard brain the ad exposure at all.

> This is the classic advertising doesn't work on me mentality.

Only if you're massively moving the goalposts.

The claim wasn't anything about "subtle impact" or "shady reasons". It was about whether those services are causing major stress and problems.

Thank you for sharing your experience!

> how were they negatively impacting your mental wellbeing?

I think the answer to your question is obviously very personal and will change from an individual to another.

For me personally the stress came in 2 forms:

* Outrage/politics, especially on Twitter and Reddit. On Twitter, it's impossible to escape this, even if you carefully sanitise the list of those who you follow, due to the trending section being visible to everyone. On Reddit, if you visit the site while you are not logged in, again you will see all of the above.

* Time sink. The worst offender here was Youtube. E.g. "I need to do X in my aquarium let me just quickly double check that video by Aquarium Co-op" - 2 hours later (spent watching "recommended next" videos) I would realise "wow I just wasted 2 hours of my life". Note that I can still quickly view a video without having an account, but due to not having followlists and such, the recommendations are less addictive. Facebook and Instagram were also a time sink and unlike Youtube they weren't really useful in any obvious way, except maybe a couple of Facebook Groups I was part of (e.g. my daughter's school parents group where I could get some news about the school - I now subscribe to their newsletter instead).

* Instigating compulsive spending, e.g. Amazon - this is quite obvious due to it being an e-commerce website and knowing well what you're thinking to buy. I now shop on local retailers whenever possible and as a last resort on eBay, since at least it is less pervasive - unlike Amazon which entices you to take advantage of the rest of their ecosystem e.g. Prime Video or Kindle or Twitch, then "follows" you in all those places with tracking ads.

> Google Search is by far the best, IMO, and saves me hours every day.

If you use Duckduckgo, you can add !sp at the end of your search, and you will get proxied Google results. You don't need to have a Google account for that.

> I have my personal domain go to gmail, and it makes managing ages of email a breeze.

Having a personal domain is a great first step, well done! I didn't have it so I had to setup an "out of office" message, warning everyone that my Gmail address would be deactivated soon...

I reddit daily, I like it a lot. I just gloss over the propaganda crap there, on twitter, facebook, etc. When I want to do politics for real, I do actual fact-based research (as opposed to "my facebook friend watched a youtube video about chemtrails!"). I personally find it easy.

Youtube CAN be a time sink, but so can movies, books, and music. It's my responsibility to manage my time, but I appreciate that it makes it easy to find content I WANT rather than crap.

I grew up dirt poor, homeless twice before I was ten. I make 6 figures now because I work hard, I'm good at what I do (and also because being a white male in America is very useful), and because I know how to spend and not to spend. Good tea is worth it, grocery store milk and butter are fine. A good car is essential, it should work well and look nice, but I'm not buying a Mercedes ever. I have an $1,000 TV that I got for $450 because I love to bargain hunt like some people like to actually hunt.

I don't _generally_ care about remarketing ads, as long as they don't go on for months. My biggest problem is when I see ads for three weeks AFTER I BOUGHT THE DAMN THING.

So I can go to Duck Duck Go, get Google results, but without the benefit of having a profile to determine what's most likely more relevant to me? That doesn't sound useful. I LIKE that Google says, "hey, the last three things he searched were actors in the same TV show, I bet when he's typing a name it's probably related to that same show." I like that Google knows if I search "stars fell on alabama" the chances I want the lyrics to the Frank Sinatra song are 100%. That's beneficial to me.

I have a personal domain for vanity reasons, and also control, yes. If I decide to leave, it's on my terms.

I applaud you for being in charge of your own life, I think I am too. I will say, however, that I think you probably concern yourself with the concept of privacy than me. I'm not a big "what if" person, not a big existential question person. To me, privacy was ALWAYS a lot less encompassing than we ever thought, and at the same time, no one cares about us nearly as much as we think they do. Do FAANG know a lot about me? Yep. but I don't care, because they don't care about me, I don't matter to them. I'm a line in a database, nothing more.

My life philosophy is, "The universe wants to kill me. Eventually it will. My priority is prolonging the magic." That doesn't include worrying about how many databases know I like BSG, Sinatra, Mountain Dew, and liberal politics.

> I applaud you for being in charge of your own life, I think I am too.

Oh of course, I never suggested otherwise! We all have different priorities, and also our heads all work in different ways.

But, I wanted to make it clear that, if one has moral exceptions, then they can quit those services and be OK. Many are under the impression that they could not possibly live without X or Y, that's the idea I wanted to dispel.

>So let me ask you a question, how were they negatively impacting your mental wellbeing? I ask this genuinely, because I have a tendency to feel these tools only negatively impact people who use them in stress-creating ways.

They use highly optimized and self-optimizing techniques and psychological tricks (including A/B testing, consulting experts in cognition, using dark patterns, and everything) to get you hooked on dopamine hits, make you jealoush of your timeline peers, anger you, milk your engagement etc.

The idea that "I'm different, these ads don't work on me" is basically the 21st century version of "I'm not addicted can't quit anytime" of the drug addict (not to mention that it's not just ads, but the feed that's problematic, from reasons that range from echo-bubbling to comparing yourself to 1000s of people you don't know but are your "friends" -- and even with actual friends, people used to have less visibility to their spending habbits, vacation photos, etc, not share everything including pics of their branch).

It's very possible I AM different. I have an insanely high tolerance for alcohol and most drugs (legal and otherwise). I've had situations where I was prescribed vicodin for months at a stretch, and when the pain was gone, half a bottle sat in the drawer until I threw it out (TMJ neuralgia and gallstones leading to gallbladder removal). If I don't look at FB for a day or two, I feel no compulsion to look at it. Sometimes I don't open twitter for weeks. I use them to fill time in the bathroom or waiting on the wife. Maybe I'm just disproportionately well-balanced. I've had incredible hard times throughout my life, so maybe I just understand what's actually important better than the average bear.

I completely agree with the echo-chamber effect, but I also don't feel Facebook or Twitter are actually good sources for political discourse or information so I'm not exactly trusting anything I see there. I think cable news is far more "addictive" and mood-warping than Facebook, though. It's totally passive, you just sit there and absorb the anxiety-laden "coming up in just minutes, how some politician is literally trying to kill you and your family with new regulations on ocean cargo ships! After these ads."

Yes, they absolutely want to boost engagement and use. Yes, they use tested algorithms to select content appealing to you. Yes, some of them even have sleazy policies on content and ads. Some types of content and some types of personalities lend themselves well to that type of information dissemination, especially right-wing content due to the more conformist/authority-pleasing nature of those mentalities. Do I think Facebook and Twitter actually want to make me angry at people? No. People that use FB and Twitter for propaganda reasons do, but that's what propaganda from any source is meant to do, highlight differences between groups and increase inter-group tension to reinforce tribal identity.

But, you didn't actually answer my question. I asked how they affected YOU, not what the goals of these platforms are. I want to hear how they actually affected a person, not how they might affect groups. I'd really like to know how Google and Amazon fit in there too. Again, feel like it boils down to "maybe you shouldn't be so affected by people you don't know and ideas you haven't checked" but also again I don't want to victim blame. I also don't generally like blaming tools for problems, so I'm trying to get more data.

You might or might no be that different.

But it's worth to note that most people are delluded in this regard, thinking they're different. Besides "different in tolerance" and "hookable" are not entirely contradictory. One might resist Vicodin and fall for social media echo- bubbling for example, the same way some can resist alcohol, but fall for drugs or food at obesity-level, and so on. In other words, some are different in the set of tolerances, but still human, in that they have their soft spots.

>But, you didn't actually answer my question. I asked how they affected YOU, not what the goals of these platforms are.

That would still be asking the wrong question. We don't live in isolated fishbowls. What negatively affects others also affects me (that's not even to mention the direct harm to my family, relatives, and friends, I'm speaking in more general community terms).

Yes I agree, the main point that led me to quit is that all of those services are created to "maximise screen time", in other words designed to be addictive.

> I have a tendency to feel these tools only negatively impact people who use them in stress-creating ways

I came to the same conclusion. It is much easier to blame some internet website (which is basically just some pixels on a screen) instead of figuring out internal psychological reasons for being addicted. If a person is looking for addictions, they will find them. If it won't be facebook, it will be porn, binge-watching, sugar, compulsive excercise, compulsive talking, etc. etc. The list is endless.

I just don't buy an idea that some pixels have more responsibility for their choices than the person itself does.

Also when they start mentioning "dopamine" it makes me laugh. Brain just doesn't work that way. Dopamine doesn't make you do things, you make you do things. Dopamine is just a way for the brain to encode whatever you like. If you want to be addicted to facebook - it will encode facebook. If you want to have a healthy life - you'll get your dopamine exactly the same way when you get up in the morning, look outside and just think for yourself "this is a beautiful day", or when you solve a particular puzzle in your work, or when you say hi to a stranger. Brain has no shortage of dopamine and it is you who decide when it is released. Unless you are addicted of course. But don't blame the thing, work with the addiction instead, it's the only truthful way to stop being addicted.

Now, for some people who are highly addicted, quitting facebook completely - might be a good thing. Like for an alcoholic, it might be good to quite 100% of alcohol for a while. But it doesn't mean that a healthy person can easily enjoy a glass of wine every now and then and don't have any problems with it.