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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

#71

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

thebean11 wrote: post #59
oblio wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

They aren't talking about bans, but other controls. Cigarettes are not banned outright, but cigarette companies are banned from advertising in a lot of mediums and cigarette cartons have a warning label about the harmful effects of smoking them. For a long time there were PSAs about how bad they were for you too, to counteract the damage already done by the tobacco industry's marketing. And we tax them pretty harshly. People still smoke, it is still legal to smoke. We could do similar things for food and social media without outright banning it.

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

#72

Post by azekai »

oblio wrote: post #30
whiplash451 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a slippery slope, though, because then any provider of food with sugar in it would be a potential target.

Well, maybe they should, unless their food is clearly labeled as a dessert, and if their servings also have clear and obvious markings of how much of the daily intake is covered by them. More than that, food for which the average servings exceed the daily needs of the average person should have danger warnings. Maybe not that far off from what cigarettes show as health damage caused by them. Edit: Why is this downvot…

I didn't downvote, but I think your solution isn't particularly effective. Part of the problem is food is more fundamental than tobacco; nearly everyone finds some kind of sweet treat appealing. Slapping labels on all the poptarts saying they are 'desserts' doesn't fix the fact that we are almost all hardwired to seek out fats and sugars.

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

#73

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

bertil wrote: post #64
erellsworth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If I call you a child-eating asshole, and every story is either about how much of a goat-fucking moron you are, or gruesome stories with graphic murders, will you want to stay on Hacker News?

>>citation needed

>strawman provided

Dictionary needed?

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

#74

Post by thebean11 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #71
thebean11 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They aren't talking about bans, but other controls. Cigarettes are not banned outright, but cigarette companies are banned from advertising in a lot of mediums and cigarette cartons have a warning label about the harmful effects of smoking them. For a long time there were PSAs about how bad they were for you too, to counteract the damage already done by the tobacco industry's marketing. And we tax them pretty harshly…

Yeah that's fair. Like I alluded to in a sibling comment thread, though, I think doing the same thing for food is pretty dangerous given our still pretty limited understanding of what foods are actually bad for you. Eggs are still oscillating between healthy and unhealthy every few years (although I think we're settling on healthy? Who knows!). Cigarettes aren't needed to sustain life so there's not as much risk to meddling like that.

The only thing I can really get behind is stricter controls on individual ingredients that are very clearly unhealthy and obviously don't need to be part of your diet (BPAs, trans fats, etc). Once you start messing with society's macros though it's fraught territory and very easy to do harm IMO.

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

#75

Post by jjulius »

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.

>Facebook algorithm hasn’t been optimised to maximise time spent on the site since 2014...

Citation needed.

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

#76

Post by pmoriarty »

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.

How does a user verify that anything Facebook claims to do behind the scenes is true?

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

#77

Post by Nextgrid »

bertil wrote: post #64
erellsworth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If I call you a child-eating asshole, and every story is either about how much of a goat-fucking moron you are, or gruesome stories with graphic murders, will you want to stay on Hacker News?

Direct insults aren't what FB is promoting. FB promotes biased if not outright fake coverage of real-world events that stir up outrage and controversy and encourage people to "engage" by arguing in the comments or seeking more of such content.

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

#78

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #23
tejohnso wrote: post #20

Have packaged food and fast food manufacturers been sued for deliberately making their products addictive, knowing full well that the addictive substances cause physical and mental harm?

No, not that I'm aware of, but I'm also surprised they haven't: they'd just need to follow the model proven to work by the case against Big Tobacco. Any business model that depends on exploiting their customers is inherently illegal and following the established case law to this conclusion is the only sane outcome. The only reason we haven't is that Big Sugar (or whatever it ends up being known as when they write the…

OK, but "Big Tobacco," is still around and still makes an ass-load of money from its customers. Wherever taxes made consumption too expensive within the US, the companies were more than able to make up for it with new overseas customers.

Most governments around the world also actively exploit their own people. Should these governments be made illegal, too? And if so, what, pray tell, would we ever replace them with that would be better?

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

#79

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

azekai wrote: post #72
oblio wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, maybe they should, unless their food is clearly labeled as a dessert, and if their servings also have clear and obvious markings of how much of the daily intake is covered by them. More than that, food for which the average servings exceed the daily needs of the average person should have danger warnings. Maybe not that far off from what cigarettes show as health damage caused by them. Edit: Why is this downvot…

I didn't downvote, but I think your solution isn't particularly effective. Part of the problem is food is more fundamental than tobacco; nearly everyone finds some kind of sweet treat appealing. Slapping labels on all the poptarts saying they are 'desserts' doesn't fix the fact that we are almost all hardwired to seek out fats and sugars.

We are also hard-wired to seek out salt, not to mention the energy boost and the hand occupation offered by cigarettes.

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

#80

Post by thirtyfivecent »

oblio wrote: post #30
whiplash451 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a slippery slope, though, because then any provider of food with sugar in it would be a potential target.

Well, maybe they should, unless their food is clearly labeled as a dessert, and if their servings also have clear and obvious markings of how much of the daily intake is covered by them. More than that, food for which the average servings exceed the daily needs of the average person should have danger warnings. Maybe not that far off from what cigarettes show as health damage caused by them. Edit: Why is this downvot…

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