Psychology

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A place for articles, discussions and questions about psychology – the science of mind and behavior. It is a multidisciplinary field, covering behavioral, cognitive, developmental, educational, neuro-biological, personality, and social studies (and more!).

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What would you suggest if you were helping design a healthier social network? (self.psychology)

submitted 1 day ago by subhomesickalien to c/psychology@lemmy.ml

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Posts with heated arguments (detected as having more than a certain number of comments/replies per minute), get shown to fewer people.

[–] theotherben@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 2 points 1 day ago

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.