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

California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 225 posts

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#141

Post by yardstick »

smt88 wrote: post #130
benatkin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a very bad thing. There are a lot of different types of social media. How about projects with Discourse forums? That could be considered social media. Do you want to force them onto Facebook?

Discord doesn't have an addictive algorithm and seems like it would be totally safe.

They send notifications to your phone whenever someone messages you. Those unread icons are addictive, at least for me I always have to actively think to not open them immediately.

That’s just the natural outcome of blurring chat rooms with social media.

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#142

Post by stickfigure »

esrauch wrote: post #67
voidfunc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we just put everyone in a box after they are born and feed them through a straw like a hamster so they can't possibly ever harm themselves? People need to take responsibility for themselves.

Do you think cigarettes and alcohol should be legal for sale to children? What about advertising specifically targeted at getting kids interested and hooked on cigarettes? What about child labor? Why not let just parents decide what's right for their kids? There's some behaviors of corporations interacting with children that are correctly regulated in the interest of the broader society we live in. It is completely v…

Social media is not in the same category as cigarettes and alcohol. Full stop.

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#143

Post by bcrosby95 »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #27
tintor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you do it (serious question)? I live in US, and like China's approach on this specific issue. 1) Disallow smartphone until certain age. Which age? 2) Allow smartphone, but with parental controls. Which ones? Many of them are hackable. 3) Allow smartphone, but with time of day/week restrictions that you enforce by taking away the phone?

1) We decided for highschool for the first phone. Some parents give smart watches so the kids are contactable but don't have a big screen. 2) I have the Google controls. That said, its as you say kids can circumvent controls so the best thing you can do is have this conversation. We've spoken a buch of times with the kids about how other kids will look at gore/porn out of interest/shock value but they should choose n…

I generally agree. However:

> Ultimately this one its about having a good/trusting parent child relationship I feel than via digital restrictions.

Your children still need someone you trust for when they don't want to go to you. Your friend, your sister, someone. Because regardless of how good of a parent you are, there will be times they don't want to go to you.

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#144

Post by stickfigure »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #122
czhu12 wrote: post #72

Creating regulations like this may end up acting as a regulatory moat for existing social network companies. This probably makes the overall social media pie smaller overall but guarantees incumbents slice of the pie. We've seen this happen in other highly regulated areas such as healthcare, telecommunications, etc. I suspect the way things are trending, in 10 years, very few entrepreneurs would be willing to start a…

> very few entrepreneurs would be willing to start a new social media company. I’m not sure this is a bad thing. Is the world better and happier from social media? Do we want it to keep rising from the ashes and sowing misery, ignorance, and depression? Maybe it is my nostalgia glasses but I feel like everyone I know was happier when the only way to communicate long distance for the average person was a rotary phone…

> Is the world better and happier from social media?

Yes, absolutely. I actually lived in the rotary phone era and it was fucking lonely. It's much easier to stay connected with friends now. That's especially true now that I've moved out of the city and started a family.

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#145

Post by 9ghgy »

jquery wrote: post #88
falcolas wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does seem easy to scapegoat companies for these issues though When the addictive factor is deliberately manufactured into a product (AKA engagement), the company absolutely bears some (IMO, a large amount of) responsibility.

Indeed, some of the smartest individuals in the world are hyper-optimizing their products for addictive properties with multi-armed bandit optimization strategies. The average overworked parent doesn’t have a chance in comparison. If this law isn’t perfect and has some unintended side effects, we can adjust and stay flexible.

[flagged]

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#146

Post by Barrin92 »

I think the angle of these laws as well as the parenting response here in the thread are both wildly off because they both take a completely individualistic approach to something that's a systemic issue.

The litigation culture of having individual people sue for damage doesn't go to the root cause and is a bureaucratic and legal nightmare. Delegating something that is effectively an environmental issue to the responsibility of individual parents is like blaming parents for not protecting their kids from drinking lead water.

Technology and social media are ubiquitous, there's only an illusion of choice. It's digital infrastructure and the water we swim in. In fact the covid pandemic has shown that it is not even a choice as it turned into the primary means for kids to have a social life and education.

What's necessary is clear rules that align the behavior of companies with social ends. If they can't square making money with keeping public discourse healthy or not making teens mentally ill they need to be culled, it's that simple. Clear, strong and unambiguous legislation, rather than private legal threats will not harm the kind of entrepreneurs that build tools that are in the interest of the public. It will give them a better shot, just like environmental laws for cars have aided electric car makers. For every billionaire incumbent there are thousands eager to build good products to take a slice of the pie. The anti-regulatory argument has very little merit.

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#147

Post by judge2020 »

mewse wrote: post #137
benatkin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a very bad thing. There are a lot of different types of social media. How about projects with Discourse forums? That could be considered social media. Do you want to force them onto Facebook?

From the article: > The proposal would only apply to social media companies that had at least $100 million in gross revenue in the past year And also: > Also, companies that conduct regular audits of their practices to identify and remove features that could be addictive to children would be immune from lawsuits. ...if a company is earning $100 million per year from their social media product I think I'm kind of okay…

Self-audits never work, which is why there are regulatory agencies everywhere to 'double check' a company's work when ensuring legal compliance.

The real issue with this bill is that "addiction" isn't the same for everyone. The Twitter "trends" paradigm itself could be considered addictive if you really stretched it, maybe a 15 year old looks at it every waking hour of their day and goes through it all looking for tweets to reply to? Since the law doesn't only apply in a class-action sense, any parent could bring this to court with their anecdote and the court's main argument would be on whether that specific feature is 'addictive', not "addictive to all children".

For reference:

> An operator of a social media platform shall be found to have violated their duty if the social media platform is found to have addicted a child user by either of the following means:

> (1) The use or sale of a child user’s personal data.

> (2) The development, design, implementation, or maintenance of a design, feature, or affordance.

Quite literally anything could be grounds for the $25k + 2x attorney's fees in damages.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#148

Post by ma2rten »

czhu12 wrote: post #72

Creating regulations like this may end up acting as a regulatory moat for existing social network companies. This probably makes the overall social media pie smaller overall but guarantees incumbents slice of the pie. We've seen this happen in other highly regulated areas such as healthcare, telecommunications, etc. I suspect the way things are trending, in 10 years, very few entrepreneurs would be willing to start a…

Maybe there could be some kind of loophole where companies spin out their California operations into a separate company which has less revenue?

Re: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction

#150

Post by judge2020 »

yardstick wrote: post #141
smt88 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord doesn't have an addictive algorithm and seems like it would be totally safe.

They send notifications to your phone whenever someone messages you. Those unread icons are addictive, at least for me I always have to actively think to not open them immediately. That’s just the natural outcome of blurring chat rooms with social media.

That still applies for non-social media. My iOS IRC client connected to my znc bouncer also shows notifications. Same for iMessage which is more profile-like, since you can send memoji and stickers and play games with your friends (eg. GamePigeon), which is why the bill tries to exclude 'chat' apps and email apps.
Post reply on HN