Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 290 posts

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#161

Post by jedberg »

oarsinsync wrote: post #141
Firerouge wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, if you restrict access based on degrees of separation, you're essentially restricting access to information by geography, which is sure to reinforce regional differences and radicalize people further by hiding dissenting opinions

Pre social media, we lived in a world where information was generally separated by geography. Your comment suggests that by returning to such a state, it would result in increased radicalisation. The implication is therefore that social media has decreased radicalisation. I’m not sure I agree.

Social media has both increased and decreased radicalization at the same time. For those who already had radical ideas, who previously couldn't find others with the same ideas, they are now more radicalized (think conspiracy theories and so on).

For those with open minds, it's allowed them to learn new things from people far away with very different ideas.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#162

Post by jedberg »

rsynnott wrote: post #155
jedberg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would propose that people are allowed x degrees of separation. That's an absolutely terrible idea. For example, I doubt you and I are two degrees away. I would have never seen this. I doubt I have two degrees of separation from most of the interesting content posted on this site.

> For example, I doubt you and I are two degrees away. I would have never seen this. Well, then, you'd never have seen this terrible idea, and nor would basically anyone else. So, the terrible idea, paradoxically, works, by keeping people from seeing terrible ideas!

I had a feeling someone would point this out. But I would contend me seeing this was still good. I was able to provide feedback to the proposer, and others were able to comment and think about it as well.

At the end of the day we've all expanded our minds a bit.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#163

Post by cblconfederate »

jcjdbdndndthrow wrote: post #87

Transparency coming? How about if I see an ad I should be allowed to see who bought the ad? How about how they chose to target me? Is it because of my race or interests or gender or age? How about the option to opt out? How about the option to configure your future ad targets / attributes? How about no special black box algorithms? Past the addiction issues, how can these exist while guaranteeing no racial and other…

I like the idea of users being able to directly reach to the advertiser , and maybe vice versa. Something maybe for a future technology

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#164

Post by trident1000 »

asciident wrote: post #35
kodah wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'd like to go back to an age before social media. It seems social media has had limited substantive success for anyone and has really created more problems than it's worth. Historically I've avoided expressing my views on abolishment but now people are trying to develop fear-mongering strategies around decentralization, so here I am back at abolition. I'd love to find a happy medium but I don't think it's…

So I like social media, and get a lot of benefit from it. I like that it's free and supported by targeted ads, rather than a paid service. Since we disagree, and I imagine there are many people with the same opinions as both you and me, why not make it opt-in, so you only encounter social media if you choose to make an account, and then still only see it if you go to it and/or install it intentionally? Wait, that's h…

Platforms like Facebook are not realistically opt-in. Thats actually why social networks work. Its a self-reinforcing mechanism that makes it punitive to leave.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#165

Post by phatfish »

jrockway wrote: post #92
laurent92 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder which is worst for health. I’d say tobacco, but social media probably causes more obesity than Coca Cola itself. Also causes people to procrastinate instead of engaging in intellectual activities, especially school or work, so the cost to society might be enormous. I wonder whether this is quantifiable, but it is definitely visible. But if it slows careers, we also have to reckon it creates careers and side-…

> Also causes people to procrastinate instead of engaging in intellectual activities, especially school or work, so the cost to society might be enormous. I doubt it. Before social media, people were playing solitaire on their computers. Before that, they were standing around the water cooler gossiping. Slacking off and procrastinating are nothing new.

The distraction aspect is due primarily to having so much information available instantly. That is a result of the internet, but smartphones supercharged it as they add constant availability to the mix.

The issue with social media is that it is specifically designed to distract and grab attention, and the information they use is mostly gossip crowd sourced by their users to sell advertising against.

There needs to be some real education about how to use social media responsibly during schooling, and the companies also need some strong regulation to stop the exploitation.

The harm done is similar to gambling in my view and needs to be regulated in a similar way. Some people have the self restraint to log off and focus on real life, for others it is an addiction.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#166

Post by trhway »

jawzz wrote: post #67

From the dissenting opinion by Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips: > These are different companies, some of which have strikingly different business models. And the orders omit other companies engaged in business practices similar to recipients, for example, Apple, Gab, GroupMe, LinkedIn, Parler, Rumble, and Tumblr, not to mention other firms the data practices of which have drawn significant government concern, like…

>Paperwork Reduction Act

sounds funny as they just disturbed the hives of the probably best financed legal departments out there and they did it using the core issue for the companies owning those legal departments.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#167

Post by josho »

_2d30 wrote: post #131
duskwuff wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only plausible benefit to drawing the lines the Commission has is targeting a number of high profile companies It's almost as though the majority of the Commission recognizes that its resources are limited, and that going on a wild goose chase investigating a bunch of smaller social media companies would simply ensure that nothing would be accomplished. Apple isn't even a social media company. I have no idea wh…

By some metrics, iMessage is the biggest messaging service in the US. Arguably, from the POV of the FTC as a US regulator, WhatsApp shouldn't be included but Apple SHOULD be. This is of course ignoring other social features of Apple products such as Game Center, Find My Friends and Facetime.

Apple Message is a message service. Its features include a way to personalize messages. It's not collecting personal/demographic information, it's not trying to increase user engagement (addictiveness), it's not serving ads. So, it clearly is outside the scope of the information that the FTC is trying to gather.

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#168

Post by josho »

bilbo0s wrote: post #132
duskwuff wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edited my post with some more details. While LinkedIn is a social media site of sorts, it's outside what I believe the focus of the investigation to be.

LinkedIn has a lot of teens on it actually. Very talented teens some, others are teens of average talent level. But they do have teens. They are also about 3 times bigger than discord. I think you could argue either way, because there may be a larger absolute number of teens on discord? The numbers are not broken out enough to tell. But given the nature of what we're dealing with, I wouldn't discount the idea of them…

Somehow if my teenaged kids spent as much time in LinkedIn networking business relationships as they did in Snapchat I wouldn't quite mind as much.

Regardless, I think you've missed the part where the FTC said what they were gathering information on, e.g. "how[social media] practices affect children and teens."

Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services

#169

Post by nathanyz »

chopin wrote: post #144
nathanyz wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friction is exactly what I believe the end answer is for social media, fake news, viral video, etc. Prior to the Internet, all communication included substantially larger amounts of friction. Broadcasting your opinion required acquiring TV, Radio, or Newspaper time/space. Sure there were low cost alternatives like standing in the public square and shouting your beliefs, but that is a far cry from tweeting out somethi…

> The friction was both a drag on productivity AND a safety mechanism to prevent mass spread of inaccurate or low quality content. I don't think this is correct. I remember a bunch of outlets from the seventies and eighties which had all of: far reach, inaccurate and low quality content. It was just restricted to few influential people with enough money. I think this is the reason why social media are fought that har…

I agree that it wasn't perfect, no doubt about that. It definitely restricted the ability to mass communicate into fewer hands.

In general, the reduction in communication friction is THE big advance brought about by the Internet. Instant, effortless, and basically free communication for everyone everywhere.

Businesses like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter are economically incentivized to push as hard as possible to get you to consume and create more so that they can show more ads. That means that when a video catches the attention of 50 people long enough to show an ad, then they can quickly encourage the spread of that video very rapidly to maximize that attention grabbing clip.

Nowhere in that equation is there an evaluation of the benefit/harm of that content to the end user. The evaluation is solely on whether it grabs attention. Because the product now being sold is human attention and its being bought by advertisers. The humans being influenced have no say and don't actually reap any gains from the transaction.

Car wrecks are attention grabbing and slow down traffic even the other side of the highway as people gawk. But of course they are not great for anyone....UNLESS you somehow have a business model that makes more money when there are more car wrecks. What happens then?

Post reply on HN