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Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

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Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#601

Post by lizkm »

acdha wrote: post #317
raman162 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that this is not alcohol or tobacco, this is a digitized version of a free attention grabbing tabloid customized to the person's "interests" is always available to view at their desire. To me this makes it difficult to regulate as it's not purely based on the amount of consumption, it's based on the content you consume.

No, it's not the same as a physical product but there's a growing body of research, supported by some of Facebook's internal commentary, suggesting that it has similarly addictive characteristics, which is why I made that comparison. The point, again, is simple: most people recognize that it will not be optimal to tell everyone that it's their job to ignore a billion-dollar promotional system run by a company which m…

Cigarettes aren't highly regulated because they are addictive, they are regulated because they literally rot and kill your internal organs.

"Some people feel bad about their bodies after viewing social media" doesn't nearly meet the threshold of measurable harm that tobacco does. And algorithmic promotion can be positive, unlike the universally health-corrosive effects of cigarettes.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#602

Post by tommymachine »

EchoAce wrote: post #592
tommymachine wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in your mind, creating a category of people that excludes only one race, and affording special privileges to that category of people alone is not racist in nature?

Wait, I think you’re misunderstanding a bit. The culture of professionalism ALREADY inherently represses non-straight people (and allows straight people privilege to be who they want). For example, men suits women dresses. There is no culture of professionalism that I know of that gives the privilege to all people. Like a dress code would be fine if it wasn’t obviously biased towards certain culture standards (in thi…

Great job. I could scarcely describe the failures of multiculturalism better if I tried.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#603

Post by erikig »

elorant wrote: post #571
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Now, thanks to the internet, ..." This seems to be a common misdirection seen with defending Facebook. (Not to mention other Big Tech companies.) Facebook == "the internet" Facebook proponents, including public statements from the company, attribute the benefits we enjoy from the internet to Facebook. Criticism of Facebook == criticism of "the internet" It follows that any threat to Facebook is a threat to the inter…

For many people though, Facebook IS the Internet. Especially for those who don't own a computer and most of their online usage is done through the mobile version of FB.

In many cases this was exactly Facebook's aim and they subsidized internet access to enable this.

e.g Burma https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55929654

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#604

Post by dillondoyle »

tommymachine wrote: post #585
dillondoyle wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a non white person.

So in your mind, creating a category of people that excludes only one race, and affording special privileges to that category of people alone is not racist in nature?

what?!?! you have clear bias so this is pointless. A descriptive - factual - term has nothing to do with excluding one race or class of people.

I'm gay. That does not mean that every non gay man is excluded ffs

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#605

Post by feoren »

lxgr wrote: post #463
tester756 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about numbers / net outcome? If we trade 10 good things for 10 000 terrible, then is it worth?

Not an ethicist, but I don't think this is how ethical evaluations work in most frameworks.

It could be one input into a "utilitarian" model, which in my opinion describes all of the even remotely viable ethical frameworks.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#606

Post by Barrin92 »

joelbluminator wrote: post #14

Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power...Facebook seems to be just a platform where our natural desires can have a play. Facebook hasn't created this impossible beauty ideal, it was created long long ago by Hollywood and the fashion industry. Facebook just makes it super easy for people to become obsessed with something by "connecting" with it. It used to be…

>Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power...Facebook seems to be just a platform where our natural desires can have a play

Yes it is Facebook's or Instagram's fault. We are endowed with our natural desires (which are even more fundamentally biological than cultural in this case), that we have no choice over, but we have the choice to remove bad technologies from our societies.

This is in fact the only choice we have. You can't cure people of their desire for power or beauty, but you can destroy the tools that amplify the worst instincts we have.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#607

Post by tommymachine »

dillondoyle wrote: post #604
tommymachine wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in your mind, creating a category of people that excludes only one race, and affording special privileges to that category of people alone is not racist in nature?

what?!?! you have clear bias so this is pointless. A descriptive - factual - term has nothing to do with excluding one race or class of people. I'm gay. That does not mean that every non gay man is excluded ffs

So saying "people of color" = "non white people" has nothing to do with excluding a race or class of people?

Also, what exactly is factual about the term non-white? In what way is a person categorized as "colored" or "white"? I've never met any person with any part of their body that was entirely "white" other than the whites of their eyes, and even those are more of a very light gray. This line drawing and categorization that you're doing is anything but "factual".

I am in disbelief that someone can even say the things you've said, and not be able to see the irony and contradiction. I think you know exactly how nonsensical and racist your argument is, and it doesn't bother you one bit.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#608

Post by acdha »

lizkm wrote: post #600
acdha wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control. Kind of like how we said that the answer to alcohol & tobacco was to show self-control, not restrict sales and advertising? Expecting people to go one on one against enormous companies’ profit motives is a recipe for failures.

Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work is a recipe for failure. How many billions wasted on the war on drugs? People are always going to want to view extremist content, see beautiful people that cause body image issues, etc. If people didn't want to see it, they wouldn't click on it. Banning it or regulating it is not going to change that, it's just going to cause it to shift elsewhere. It's human na…

> Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work is a recipe for failure.

Regulations come in flavors other than draconian. Do you have a specific policy proposal which you're referring to? Otherwise it seems somewhat disingenuous to predict the failure of something which we don't even have enough detail to discuss.

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#609

Post by vineyardmike »

wussboy wrote: post #186
aspaviento wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The less I want is to defend Facebook but I think lately people don't want to acknowledge their own responsibilities. It's like every time there is a problem, the cause is someone/something else. I don't think Instagram is impossed to anyone. Young people can feel the pressure to use it because their friends use it but they aren't forced to do so. From the article it seems that young girls know about the toxicity in…

I have a personal grudge against anyone saying "Why don't the parents take some responsibility to combat a multi-billion dollar company who puts the resources of small countries in to making their children behave in detrimental ways." But I'll not get in to that. :) Facebook and Instagram are drug dealers. Sure, they're not physically distributing a substance, but the social interactions they provide are every bit as…

> the social interactions they provide are every bit as addictive.

I'm not familiar with actual research in this space, but i would imagine that its similarly addictive to being with friends IRL?

(To me) social media is a great tool to connect with friends and stay present even after we move away and work and pandemic quarantine. Its a suppliment for IRL relationships. I used to live with friends in college, and i used to go out and get food or drinks or whatever almost daily to get my "fix" of socialization.

Are social networks really that different? I recognize that some (teen girl?) people might wish they looked like a supermodel on social media or get jealousy of the lives of influences, but is that different from old magazine and movie stars? Is the mixture of "social" and "influences" to one news feed detrimental? Is there more exposure? What makes social networking more "addictive" (and therefore dangerous) than actual socialization?

Re: Facebook knows Instagram is toxic for teen girls, company documents show

#610

Post by vagrantJin »

pempem wrote: post #594
stickfigure wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably any social activity is similar. I'm willing to bet the statistics for "high school prom" are much worse. And then there's Cosmo and Vogue...

Your note that the world is sexist and many things make women, teens and girls continously negatively evaluate themselves is something I agree. The rest I would truly contest. Prom is not an every single morning, universe commenting event no matter how the teenage brain may attempt to blow it up. Cosmo and Vogue do not have the same continuous feedback loop and clearly have 100x (1000x? 1mnx?) less content being crea…

> Your note that the world is sexist and many things make women, teens and girls continously negatively evaluate themselves

How did you pull this from a rather benign statement about high school prom and magazines?

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