I honestly love this as someone who never has a consistent identity in terms of the name I use online and not keeping a long history such as re-creating accounts whenever it is convenient.
This is especially relevant on social media platforms where I don't want to feel like someone can just dig up something I've said or shared 5 years ago and use that against me. It also helps me stay myself without changing my behavior to align with others.
This was an interesting time. In some ways I felt like the internet was even more bifurcated then than now, between US political parties. This is when primitive chatbots, before GPT LLMs, could have mostly only been used by large nation states. This is when concerns about significant numbers of bot accounts on reddit became plausible. It felt like a time when the internet was being manipulated in a more subtle way than it is now.
It's important to note that this page is almost 10 years old.
I do find myself self-censoring in 2025, but it's for a far more boring reason than surveillance capitalism. It's because leaders on the far right literally said people should snitch on each other and dox each other.
Much as I hate to say it, I'm sure people on the right have felt the same way for at least a decade.
Is the self censoring of big boy and girl worlds like "murder," "suicide," "execution," "Nazi," and "genocide" on videos and posts related to this? It's been driving me crazy. Do not go quietly into that night and whatnot... Do not comply in advance.
The idea of changing my speech so my words look nice next to a Toyota advertisement fills me with disgust and anger.
That's something that drives me crazy as well. I don't actually use the big 'algorithmic social media' sites, only Telegram and Discord mostly, and seeing screenshots/memes with those words censored there made me wonder why, at first. Then i saw people auto-censoring themselves in those places where there's no such thing as algorithmic de-ranking. The social media generation already find it normal, acceptable, and is specially ironic to me that a lot of people who are vocal against those services have conformed to what they say to stand against.
That behavior also highlights how people within those services care so much about reach, clout, 'going viral', instead of communicating with other people.
I find that awareness of the deep rabbit hole of surveillance capitalism, and how it increasingly extends into political and ideological realms to wield power and influence, makes me feel uneasy on all the physical gadgets I see all around me. And also the pervasive use of camera's everywhere, that send video streams into the cloud where numerous AI applications do who knows what with the data.
Like in the Netherlands in the Jumbo supermarket chain, which is the first to introduce an AI glaring at you through the camera while you walk through the store, and at the checkout self-scan, doing sentiment analysis to see if you are suspicious. It feels outright dystopic, and I avoid the Jumbo if I can. Also it is crazy how Tesla camera platforms are surveilling the streets of the world for the richest man in the world.
It seems these tech developments have cooling effects on society in the physical space. Cooling effects that serve the ones in power, I suppose.
The good thing about younger zoomers and alpha is they've already incorporated this into their lives, so none of this is grotesque or surprising. They've adapted their culture to match.
Yeah, it's fascinating how seamlessly younger generations adapt to the tradeoffs. Privacy feels less like a right and more like a strategic resource they know how to manage
You don’t need some kind of “social score” to have the chilling effect, if anything I think people self censor more because of the fear of getting berated by others for their beliefs—both by those they know and don’t.
Interestingly I don’t think it’s really “cooling” that happened - if anything it’s been some people becoming extremely hot, and then the majority of people, myself included, are experiencing cooling.
Unfortunately liberals lately reinforce this by being vitriolic over everything and endorsing toxic behaviors like cutting off friends and family because they disagree on politics, which probably undermines the democratic ideals they think they’re defending. [1]
I consider myself overall more aligned with liberals, but as a recent example, it disheartens me to open Facebook after a long time and see so many people I knew from years past reveling in Charlie Kirk’s death as though that makes their cause more sympathetic to alienate anyone who might have agreed with things he said (even if I generally don’t). This just reinforces division and increases the social cooling effect.
> Unfortunately liberals lately reinforce this by being vitriolic over everything and endorsing toxic behaviors like cutting off friends and family because they disagree on politics
Perhaps some American left-wingers do. But these behaviours are fundamentally the opposite of liberal and I would like to see the label taken back from them.
As other people have noted, this is an old site, they also note that genz have partially learnt from our mistakes, and turned to ephemeral media, amongst other things.
The rise of AR glasses will of course kneecap anonymity in "real life"
Yes, I can't help but think that things turned out exactly the opposite of how this site predicted. In my view, it would be a good thing if people were a little more self-conscious about what they wrote on social media!
re "behavioral sink" that wikipedia article is kind of a credulous stub that's missing the pile of criticisms of the "Universe 25" experiment (lack of reproducibility, much of the dysfunction being attributable to how the setting trapped the population in each other's scent+sight lines, akin to shoving humans in a transparent panopticon and calling it a test of urban life)
I hate being that guy. Scroll is broken on this site.
Firefox on iPhone: if you are swiping to go down a few lines then swipe up to center what you are reading, the page position jumps, and if you continue to swipe down, it jumps again.
The Americans (†) who grew up with constant surveillance (social media, cameras everywhere) aim for ordinariness. The entire generation is less likely to express a non-consensus opinion than prior generations. For good reason: with everything being recorded and broadcast, personal errors are both accentuated and persist longer with no corresponding rise in upside. Bold opinions and creative ideas are simply too risky under such an equation.
I find this sad and worrisome. I like chaos and healthy disorderliness. I enjoy skilled conversationalists with fresh ideas. And I worry about a "chilled" populace too afraid to express morality when it becomes socially inconvenient.
(† Footnote: It isn't just Americans but youth coming of age in every culture. The "social cooling" effect is more pronounced among Americans as they exhibit greater variance in expression in the first place and thus have more to move toward the baseline.)
I'm shocked how all this crept up across society. Maybe I was just naive, but still. A society is a very subtle fabric, and the last 20 years distorted a lot of aspect of this fragile equilibrium.
How do you think the current political climate has shifted this? It seems maybe individuals won’t express a non conformist view as easily, but politics has grown more extreme in terms of what acceptable positions are in the first place.
> And I worry about a "chilled" populace too afraid to express morality when it becomes socially inconvenient.
The social cooling effect always existed. It is just, previously, information and reactions traveled way slower. We are just adjusting to the new speed. Culture is a complex emergent product of the various basic human interactions. My guess is that this product doesn't make much sense when reactions travel fast as culture changes very slowly.
So instead, the future will be culture-less. You decide your behavior everyday based on your first few (100) shorts/snaps/tiktoks of the morning. It does help that these snaps disappear by tomorrow. This new society will have no memory.
> The entire generation is less likely to express a non-consensus opinion than prior generations.
I think that's pretty arguable, and I'd want to see actual research. Certainly kids today are wildly more likely to embrace Stuff that Pisses Off their Elders than at any time since the 60's counterculture revolution. Think gender fluidity and pronoun choice, body modification, protest culture, rejection of career paths, embrace of the "neuro-atypical" as routine personality types... all that seems qualitatively but inarguably higher than when I was growing up 30-40 years ago.
People say this but is it true? Young people, for instance, increasingly say that political violence may be justified. That doesn't sound like a safe opinion.
> For good reason: with everything being recorded and broadcast, personal errors are both accentuated and persist longer with no corresponding rise in upside. Bold opinions and creative ideas are simply too risky under such an equation.
Or, repression will build up for so long that it will explode.
Pity that "social cooling" gets attached to that meaning instead of, e.g., the fact to favorise, in internet discussions, themes that unite and reunite people, promote empathy and kindness, curiosity, tolerance and positive mindset, etc.
Funny it is posted on HN where your user score, which is called karma here for some reason, decides if you can or can't do stuff to engage with entire community fully. So either you are conformist or you will be downvoted and basically invisible.
I feel both bad and good about the concept of "social cooling."
It's nothing new. Societal pressure is as old as humanity. Pressure to conform, to be "one with the herd," is basically built into our DNA.
Constant surveillance is simply a new feature of an old pattern. If anyone has ever read Jane Austen, they know about societal pressure, and how real the stakes can be. People could get their lives destroyed by a careless word, centuries ago.
If you don't fit into the herd, you don't get the advantages and protection offered by the herd. The outliers get picked off by the predators.
But we need to give up quite a bit, to fit in. For some, the cost is too high.
Even the "outliers" get commoditized. When you could get ripped and graffiti'd punk jeans from Bloomingdales, the Punk ethos was dead.
Long topic, lots of different angles, and we can all justify our own approach. Not sure there's any answer that would make everyone satisfied.
This idea is old, but today it conveys a much bigger meaning. There are two new developments since then that are very scary. The first is that artificial intelligence is supposedly replacing some jobs, but not only that, it is also being used to select jobs, and the latter is something that I have seen firsthand. The other phenomenon is the advance, in places of the world that classically were liberal, of political ideas that will hinder or directly eliminate the right to private communication over the Internet.
Combine these three factors: data brokerage, the use of AI to replace and select jobs, and the political landscape around the right to encryption, and we get a recipe for a future where the word dystopian falls short.
Don't forget AI being used to replace friends. AI being used for validation in place of a varied social group is scarier than anything I see on the jobs market.
Asking ChatGPT if breaking up with your girlfriend is a good idea or not? Terrifying. People should be using human networks of friends as a sounding board and support network.
I'm more concerned about the fact I have no idea if the article and the HN comments are all AI generated or not. Can you tell if this comment is AI or not?
What happens when social discourse is polluted by noise that is identical to signal?
People game their social scores by being provocative edgelords. There’s almost no incentive on social media to conform. And every incentive to stand out.
Just look around at our political situation, you see far less conformity, and extremes in political expression. We even elected President Edgelord.
Provocative, sure. But people are generally provocative within a very narrow, uninformed window. Taking an extreme view on a hot political issue. Democrats are stupid. Republicans are evil. Science is broken and unrecoverable.
There is very little room to have a nuanced perspective. You'll lose viewership on BOTH sides.
47 comments
[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 93.8 ms ] threadThis is especially relevant on social media platforms where I don't want to feel like someone can just dig up something I've said or shared 5 years ago and use that against me. It also helps me stay myself without changing my behavior to align with others.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 (2692 upvotes, 1099 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882 (389 upvotes, 190 comments)
Like Oil Leads to Global Warming, Data Leads to Social Cooling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38482582 - Dec 2023 (15 comments)
The reputation economy is turning us into conformists (2017) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28744471 - Oct 2021 (204 comments)
What Is Social Cooling? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25746131 - Jan 2021 (246 comments)
Social Cooling (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 - Sept 2020 (1058 comments)
Social Cooling – How big data is increasing pressure to conform - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882 - June 2017 (185 comments)
I do find myself self-censoring in 2025, but it's for a far more boring reason than surveillance capitalism. It's because leaders on the far right literally said people should snitch on each other and dox each other.
Much as I hate to say it, I'm sure people on the right have felt the same way for at least a decade.
The idea of changing my speech so my words look nice next to a Toyota advertisement fills me with disgust and anger.
That behavior also highlights how people within those services care so much about reach, clout, 'going viral', instead of communicating with other people.
Like in the Netherlands in the Jumbo supermarket chain, which is the first to introduce an AI glaring at you through the camera while you walk through the store, and at the checkout self-scan, doing sentiment analysis to see if you are suspicious. It feels outright dystopic, and I avoid the Jumbo if I can. Also it is crazy how Tesla camera platforms are surveilling the streets of the world for the richest man in the world.
It seems these tech developments have cooling effects on society in the physical space. Cooling effects that serve the ones in power, I suppose.
Interestingly I don’t think it’s really “cooling” that happened - if anything it’s been some people becoming extremely hot, and then the majority of people, myself included, are experiencing cooling.
Unfortunately liberals lately reinforce this by being vitriolic over everything and endorsing toxic behaviors like cutting off friends and family because they disagree on politics, which probably undermines the democratic ideals they think they’re defending. [1]
I consider myself overall more aligned with liberals, but as a recent example, it disheartens me to open Facebook after a long time and see so many people I knew from years past reveling in Charlie Kirk’s death as though that makes their cause more sympathetic to alienate anyone who might have agreed with things he said (even if I generally don’t). This just reinforces division and increases the social cooling effect.
[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/theargument/p/were-not-all-goi...
Perhaps some American left-wingers do. But these behaviours are fundamentally the opposite of liberal and I would like to see the label taken back from them.
The rise of AR glasses will of course kneecap anonymity in "real life"
But I look at the general collapse of "civility" in the USA and cant help but think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
Yes, I can't help but think that things turned out exactly the opposite of how this site predicted. In my view, it would be a good thing if people were a little more self-conscious about what they wrote on social media!
Firefox on iPhone: if you are swiping to go down a few lines then swipe up to center what you are reading, the page position jumps, and if you continue to swipe down, it jumps again.
I find this sad and worrisome. I like chaos and healthy disorderliness. I enjoy skilled conversationalists with fresh ideas. And I worry about a "chilled" populace too afraid to express morality when it becomes socially inconvenient.
(† Footnote: It isn't just Americans but youth coming of age in every culture. The "social cooling" effect is more pronounced among Americans as they exhibit greater variance in expression in the first place and thus have more to move toward the baseline.)
The social cooling effect always existed. It is just, previously, information and reactions traveled way slower. We are just adjusting to the new speed. Culture is a complex emergent product of the various basic human interactions. My guess is that this product doesn't make much sense when reactions travel fast as culture changes very slowly.
So instead, the future will be culture-less. You decide your behavior everyday based on your first few (100) shorts/snaps/tiktoks of the morning. It does help that these snaps disappear by tomorrow. This new society will have no memory.
I think that's pretty arguable, and I'd want to see actual research. Certainly kids today are wildly more likely to embrace Stuff that Pisses Off their Elders than at any time since the 60's counterculture revolution. Think gender fluidity and pronoun choice, body modification, protest culture, rejection of career paths, embrace of the "neuro-atypical" as routine personality types... all that seems qualitatively but inarguably higher than when I was growing up 30-40 years ago.
Or, repression will build up for so long that it will explode.
On the other hand, in Europe and with the coming chat control regulations, these systems will likely emerge in the West.
I feel both bad and good about the concept of "social cooling."
It's nothing new. Societal pressure is as old as humanity. Pressure to conform, to be "one with the herd," is basically built into our DNA.
Constant surveillance is simply a new feature of an old pattern. If anyone has ever read Jane Austen, they know about societal pressure, and how real the stakes can be. People could get their lives destroyed by a careless word, centuries ago.
If you don't fit into the herd, you don't get the advantages and protection offered by the herd. The outliers get picked off by the predators.
But we need to give up quite a bit, to fit in. For some, the cost is too high.
Even the "outliers" get commoditized. When you could get ripped and graffiti'd punk jeans from Bloomingdales, the Punk ethos was dead.
Long topic, lots of different angles, and we can all justify our own approach. Not sure there's any answer that would make everyone satisfied.
Combine these three factors: data brokerage, the use of AI to replace and select jobs, and the political landscape around the right to encryption, and we get a recipe for a future where the word dystopian falls short.
Asking ChatGPT if breaking up with your girlfriend is a good idea or not? Terrifying. People should be using human networks of friends as a sounding board and support network.
What happens next?
What happens when social discourse is polluted by noise that is identical to signal?
Is there anyone else out there?
People game their social scores by being provocative edgelords. There’s almost no incentive on social media to conform. And every incentive to stand out.
Just look around at our political situation, you see far less conformity, and extremes in political expression. We even elected President Edgelord.
There is very little room to have a nuanced perspective. You'll lose viewership on BOTH sides.