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Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

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Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#31

Post by oblio »

xvector wrote: post #2

This is lame. Is an addictive algorithm an illegal substance of some sort? Is personal responsibility not a thing people care about anymore?

This trope of "personal responsibility" needs to go away.

Only a minority of people can withstand an onslaught of determined, highly paid professionals, working together to basically harm them.

Our brains have flaws. These people know those flaws and work actively every day of their working lives to exploit them. What hope can the always tired, always stressed out average person have of resisting, long term?

Personal responsibility is failing, just look at obesity rates in countries with reduced malnutrition rates.

We need systemic solutions, not blaming the poor idiot.

That's how we solved other collective problems like air travel safety and road fatality rates.

Your approach was the old, antiquated one, where we always blamed the pilot or the driver. Guess what? Even if the person is an idiot, we're all idiots. Let's make stuff that doesn't kill us even if we're idiots.

Similar principle here.

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#32

Post by seanmcdirmid »

behnamoh wrote: post #21
notRobot wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> potentially soon there will be banning of tobacco sales to people born before a point in time year (2005 maybe?) so they're never allowed to smoke Minor typo: the ban will be for people born after a particular year, not before.

easier to enforce such laws in a low populated country such as Australia than in places like the US.

Australians generally live in big dense cities. In fact, this is probably why the ban will work, they are also more into rule of law than the USA is.

Also, vaping in Australia is illegal, making the ban even more impressive.

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#33

Post by oblio »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #29
micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How far does personal responsibility go? what if there are 100 psychologists working to undermine your self control? do you stand a chance?

This is an interesting point, especially considering that people are born with various levels of self-control. People with little to no self-control stand no chance, but there are many people I’m sure that would survive psychologists, especially knowing that they work in a field where almost nothing is reproducible :)

It's also data scientists, computer scientists, and plenty of other folks in fields which are considered "hard sciences", that are working together with the psychologists.

Plus, if it's "only" 20% of people we lose to these addictions, that's still a major tragedy.

The dig at psychologists was funny, but this is a super serious topic, unfortunately.

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#36

Post by chihuahua »

mayowaxcvi wrote: post #3

Wait till they find out about Hacker News …

I find FB and Instagram so unappealing that there isn't any risk of addiction, for me. The basic idea - sharing pictures and text telling your friends what you're doing - is brilliant, but in practice, most people I know are annoying, and their posts are tedious.

Hacker News, on the other hand, can be slightly addictive, because every time I load the front page, there's a chance there could be something interesting and not groan-inducing.

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#37

Post by thebean11 »

oblio wrote: post #31
xvector wrote: post #2

This is lame. Is an addictive algorithm an illegal substance of some sort? Is personal responsibility not a thing people care about anymore?

This trope of "personal responsibility" needs to go away. Only a minority of people can withstand an onslaught of determined, highly paid professionals, working together to basically harm them. Our brains have flaws. These people know those flaws and work actively every day of their working lives to exploit them. What hope can the always tired, always stressed out average person have of resisting, long term? Personal…

> Only a minority of people can withstand an onslaught...

Is that true? Most people aren't addicted to anything let alone social media..I really don't buy the claim that people have literally no control over their actions. What's your solution? Ban sugar, alcohol and social media? Padding on the sidewalks?

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#38

Post by Eupraxias »

oblio wrote: post #31
xvector wrote: post #2

This is lame. Is an addictive algorithm an illegal substance of some sort? Is personal responsibility not a thing people care about anymore?

This trope of "personal responsibility" needs to go away. Only a minority of people can withstand an onslaught of determined, highly paid professionals, working together to basically harm them. Our brains have flaws. These people know those flaws and work actively every day of their working lives to exploit them. What hope can the always tired, always stressed out average person have of resisting, long term? Personal…

Younger, more libertarian-ish me would have disagreed.

But humans have changed. The information age has changed us in deep ways. When Facebook appeared, all of the problems that have manifested over the past 15 years or so were immediately apparent to me. Facebook was so clearly toxic that I never touched the service. And I was an enthusiastic first-on-the-bandwagon type back then.

Trying to warn others, which I embarrassed myself trying to do, was useless. It was senseless to try - I was under the assumption that people had control of their person. I was assuming that people had personal responsibility.

Personal responsibility implies control of your person, which we have inadvertently relinquished in the Information Age, as we outsource aspects of our minds and persons to the technology that 'makes our lives easier'. Add to this the fact that these companies have experts dedicated to undermine your control of yourself, and it's hopeless for most people.

Older, more exhausted me agrees with the parent comment. sigh

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#39

Post by bertil »

hourago wrote: post #6

Many social media sites evolved from time sorted posts to algorithm sorted posts. The algorithms are data driven and designed to maximize engagement, as it improves revenue. This creates an incentive to push highly controversial topics over more casual content. - China is already regulating this: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/07/china-to-regulate-tech-giant... > Users must be able to opt out of having recommendation s…

Facebook algorithm hasn’t been optimised to maximise time spent on the site since 2014, and controversial topics have a well documented negative effect on both attention and engagement.

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#40

Post by bertil »

yamrzou wrote: post #4

The title is editorialized which breaks HN guidelines. But I hope you get away with it, because I'd like to see a discussion around this :)

Happy to explain what really happened with Facebook, but I typically don’t get a lot of positive feedback when I do.
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