Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by micromacrofoot » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

Emanation wrote: post #41

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?

Self control is a weird thing, depending on the addiction. Self control can spawn from simply being self aware of how a thing affects you. I'm willing to bet it's not immediately obvious how scrolling through social media makes a person feel, unless they have experience with it (something psychologists teach to help their patients deal with situations.) So, if it's something that can be taught, does it affect how res…

> I'm willing to bet it's not immediately obvious how scrolling through social media makes a person feel, unless they have experience with it

Right, and the scary thing from my perspective is that a company like Facebook has actually experimented with manipulating emotion on real users. People don't understand to what extent they're being manipulated, but the manipulators often harvest this data for their own purposes.

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

#52

Post by micromacrofoot » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #37

oblio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> Most people aren't addicted to anything let alone social media

Even if it's just 5-10% (difficult to prove one way or the other, but some have estimated it's within this range) that's a massive amount of people on a global scale. That's enough to influence elections, for example. Scrutiny seems reasonable.

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

#53

Post by erellsworth » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #39

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.

> controversial topics have a well documented negative effect on both attention and engagement.

Citation needed.

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

#54

Post by rightbyte » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:16 PM UTC

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.

Why? Less population density means more places are without authority presence.

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

#55

Post by thebean11 » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

micromacrofoot wrote: post #52

thebean11 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Most people aren't addicted to anything let alone social media Even if it's just 5-10% (difficult to prove one way or the other, but some have estimated it's within this range) that's a massive amount of people on a global scale. That's enough to influence elections, for example. Scrutiny seems reasonable.

Sure let's say it's 10%, is the conclusion you draw from that that free will doesn't exist? Do 100% of people need to give up the freedom of choice to lower that figure?

Not sure what you're getting at about elections, are you saying that's a reason to intervene? I don't really want the government making policy for the purpose of influencing election outcomes.

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

#56

Post by oblio » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:18 PM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #37

oblio wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> What's your solution? Ban sugar, alcohol and social media? Padding on the sidewalks?

There isn't "one solution". And bans generally are not a solution.

But we need to fight with the same weapons they're fighting, for example, let's take sugar and unhealthy foods.

They're presenting their food as fun and glamorous, let's blow that up, like we did for tobacco.

No more mass advertising for it, anywhere. Horrible labels showing disfigured obese people that are suffering because of their addiction to junk food.

The food is cheap because they use crap ingrediens? Let's tax food based on universal standards agreed upon not by the industry, but by healthcare specialists. The more you're off the mark from healthy food, the more you get taxed (excises, same as for alcohol and tobacco).

Heck, I'd earmark those excises as funding for subsidies meant for producers of healthy, bio foods.

These junk food companies are making their stuff cool, so let's prevent that and they're making it cheap by passing their externalities to us (diminished long term health) so let's make their food more expensive and let's make the healthy stuff cheaper.

Ah, more than that, quotas of healthy food in every place serving or offering food. Get rid of food deserts. Poor people with low mobility should have access to healthy food at decent prices.

Yes, this is all very complicates. Yes, it's very political.

But doing nothing achieves nothing. Worse than that, doing nothing actively degrades the situation since these actors are actively harming people in very subtle ways.

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

#57

Post by oblio » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

thebean11 wrote: post #55

micromacrofoot wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people aren't addicted to anything let alone social media Even if it's just 5-10% (difficult to prove one way or the other, but some have estimated it's within this range) that's a massive amount of people on a global scale. That's enough to influence elections, for example. Scrutiny seems reasonable.

Sure let's say it's 10%, is the conclusion you draw from that that free will doesn't exist? Do 100% of people need to give up the freedom of choice to lower that figure? Not sure what you're getting at about elections, are you saying that's a reason to intervene? I don't really want the government making policy for the purpose of influencing election outcomes.

So dramatic.

100% of people will need to give up some luxuries so that everyone can benefit, and especially > can benefit.

Taxes work the same way. Laws in general work the same way (otherwise we'd assume everyone is smart, fair and calculated heck, perfect, all the time).

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

#58

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:20 PM UTC

justinclift wrote: post #48

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> illegal Don't you mean "legal"?

No, illegal as in “vaping is not allowed at all in Australia.”

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

#59

Post by thebean11 » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #57

thebean11 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure let's say it's 10%, is the conclusion you draw from that that free will doesn't exist? Do 100% of people need to give up the freedom of choice to lower that figure? Not sure what you're getting at about elections, are you saying that's a reason to intervene? I don't really want the government making policy for the purpose of influencing election outcomes.

So dramatic. 100% of people will need to give up some luxuries so that everyone can benefit, and especially > can benefit. Taxes work the same way. Laws in general work the same way (otherwise we'd assume everyone is smart, fair and calculated heck, perfect, all the time).

Can you be more specific then about what we're discussing, if it's not "ban things that the 10% is addicted to"?

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

#60

Post by ahallock » Fri, Jun 10, 2022, 2:26 PM UTC

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…

It's not a trope. If you cannot learn to resist things and have a strong constitution, it will just be something else that swallows you up.

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

This sounds so dramatic, as if these pros have actual mind control abilities. You're being hyperbolic. Also, how do you know it's a minority? Sounds like you just made that up to suit your argument.