I have no strong feelings on Instagram. That said, i find it interesting how suddenly people care about teen mental health when it aligns with their opinions on big tech. And how little they care about (say) school shooting drills or advertising or education funding or a dozen other issues that affect mental health in kids...
Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
61–70 of 216 posts
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know an American civil engineer who has one of these rings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineer%27s_Ring Wikipedia says the oath that goes with it is: I am an Engineer. In my profession I take deep pride. To it I owe solemn obligations. As an engineer, I, (full name), pledge to practice Integrity and Fair Dealing, Tolerance, and Respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and dignity of my profession, consc…
Those other engineering professions some harmful things too. Didn't engineers design prisons, casinos, nuclear weapons, land mines, plants that manufacture harmful chemicals, etc..? The only way to believe that these oaths make a difference is to ignore all those things. Anyway, at my university (CS/computer eng. major) everyone in the engineering school goes through the same induction ceremony that I think had a sim…
Nothing inherently wrong with prisons. They're necessary. Even the most egalitarian societies will have at least one person who is relentlessly violent and needs to be forcefully confined.
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#63Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21
> Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21 By the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Eyal : > In 2014 Eyal published his first book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which became a Wall Street Journal best seller.[12][13] The title reflects Eyal's idea of the "hooked model", which ai…
He also wrote Indistractible, a book about how to create healthy habits and not get Hooked on all the stuff he talked about in his first book.
Ultimately you’re responsible for your own life. The government isn’t going to save you.
Of course, government wants you to think they’re going to save you, and they’ll happily take all the power over your life that you care to give them.
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#64> Facebook annotated the reports, appearing to downplay the results. Next to one slide in the research that said “teens who struggle with mental health say Instagram makes it worse,” the company added that the headline was imprecise. Instead, it wrote, “The headline should be clarified to be: ‘Teens who have lower life satisfaction more likely to say Instagram makes their mental health or the way they feel about them…
'Teens who have lower life satisfaction' sounds like a euphemism for 'teens with low self esteem'.
Someone had to really mince those words for a while to make them sound like something different.
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Imagine needing a license to write software. It would mean the end of free and open source software as we know it. i don't think so because as you said: > It's about legal responsibility and liability. Make professional programmers directly responsible for the code they get paid to write. we urgently need liability for for-profit software in order to stop softwares race to the bottom.
My company has liability insurance. I'm indirectly liable, in that I can lose my job, however. If I were a contractor, I would also buy liability insurance.
> I'm indirectly liable, in that I can lose my job
If an engineer negligently (note: not knowingly) signs off on a bridge that collapses, they face fines, expulsion from their profession and jail time. At this point, every developer at Facebook should know the harm they’re causing. The most they face is job loss. That’s the problematic asymmetry.
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those other engineering professions some harmful things too. Didn't engineers design prisons, casinos, nuclear weapons, land mines, plants that manufacture harmful chemicals, etc..? The only way to believe that these oaths make a difference is to ignore all those things. Anyway, at my university (CS/computer eng. major) everyone in the engineering school goes through the same induction ceremony that I think had a sim…
All of the things you've listed aren't universally bad. Prisons keep bad people out of society (and yes, I'm aware that some folks shouldn't be in prison, and I wish that'd change, but majority are in the clink for violent crime). Nuclear weapons ensure superpowers can't attack each other - that's why we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years in spite of some pretty crazy tensions. Land mines make land invasion…
> we haven't had a world war in the past 76 years
This is of little comfort to the many victims of US foreign policy over that same period
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Last couple days ~ many articles related to an ex- Top Mind @ Facebook who asserted that they 1) knew effects of insta on young children's minds, 2) used these incantations for profit, 3) tried to hide it, and 4) downplayed the relevance of the previous 3 in order to pursue their yotta-growth strategy at the expense of human civilization. On the back of the findings from a couple of weeks ago that most human traffick…
Isn't it extremely ironic that the media, which almost always has a liberal slant, would complain about "the decline of Western values"? If they want teens to stop killing themselves maybe they should also consider stopping pushing all kinds of degeneracy to them. Also, the average Joe doesn't care about this. People won't stop using Instagram. All of these stories are nothing but masturbation for intellectuals. Thus…
[deleted]
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact you can justify land mines says it all about the ability of some oath to ensure anything about the behaviour of large groups of people.
Yes, soldiers on the battlefield are very thankful for the land mines, assuming they're the ones who installed them. With any luck a dude from the other side might not be able to cross the field and slit their throats in the dead of the night. Just as pilots are thankful for fighter jets not crapping out in mid-air, and nuclear submarine sailors are thankful for the engineering that went into the hull, and a gunner i…
The big problem with landmines is they are not generally cleaned up after the war, leaving them around for innocents to trigger and get hurt, maimed, or killed.
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#69Irony is Facebook will not attract the talent it needs to work constructively on these unsolvable problems. It will attract thd clueless and the most ambitious. People who are ready to defend it for their own profit. Its a trap where the hole they are in just keeps growing deeper.
Investment banking has no problem attracting smart people. Smart people know that you gain nothing by sacrificing yourself for society. Even if you cared enough to say no, all that would happen is that Facebook would pay somebody else to work for them.
> Investment banking has no problem attracting smart people.
I've worked in banking and my ex worked for Facebook, and I genuinely don't see the comparison beyond rather inaccurate tropes. Bankers aren't tearing apart society and sowing division like Facebook is.
Re: Facebook Struggles to Quell Uproar over Instagram’s Effect on Teens
#70I have no strong feelings on Instagram. That said, i find it interesting how suddenly people care about teen mental health when it aligns with their opinions on big tech. And how little they care about (say) school shooting drills or advertising or education funding or a dozen other issues that affect mental health in kids...
Considering this is a tech-focused website, my guess is it's less that it confirms our pre-existing biases, and more so that the community feels strongly about tech and its impact.
Similarly, if there were a website on gun control, I'm sure they would be more focused on how school shooting drills impact mental health than how Instagram impacts mental health.