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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

#81

Post by mountain_peak »

thebean11 wrote: post #70
oblio wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 20 years ago the sugar lobby told everyone that sugar was good and fat was bad. And we're 20 years from that and now we know better. Which lobby is it this time, the healthy living one, that's lying to us? ... > Just to make sure I understand what you’re proposing, taco trucks and ice cream shops would be illegal in your ideal world yeah? Did I stutter? Did I propose bans anywhere? And why is having quotas for heal…

I’m not a libertarian at all, I think taxes should be pretty high and there should be universal healthcare. Pretty silly I need to say that, though, and bringing it up is a non sequitur. I’m curious, do you think most non libertarians would agree with what you’re proposing? But yeah, if you think forcing an ice cream shops to sell sides of broccoli (that nobody will order) to comply with some silly 20% law, we probab…

Oddly enough just yesterday, I was thinking of why alcohol and foods with low nutritive value haven't suffered the same fate as tobacco.

If you advocate for universal healthcare (like my country has), then it's ultimately in society's best interest to keep everyone as healthy as possible to avoid burdening the healthcare system, which does mean that government needs to step in and place limitations on advertising, sales to minors, laws, etc.

Just as a few examples, we (my country) currently has: no advertising to children under 13, seat belt laws, helmet laws, smoking packaging laws, alcohol advertising laws, and so on. It's odd that communities are spending millions on active living infrastructure, and simultaneously allowing companies to run ramshod marketing unhealthy and addictive products. And by 'odd', I mean that these organizations have enough backing to influence politicians to the detriment of society.

As I recall, tobacco companies only took action when laws changed or when they started losing lawsuits - given how destructive alcohol is for society it wouldn't be a stretch to make it less socially-acceptable to consume 'empty' calories. Some industries are mandated to spend part of their advertising budget on 'preventative' campaigns, but in almost 100% of the cases, these 'anti-whatever' messages are cleverly disguised to sell even more of their product (e.g., anti-gambling, soft drink recycling). There may be no perfect solution, but doing nothing isn't an answer either.

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

#82

Post by Agamus »

Eupraxias wrote: post #38
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…

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 emba…

I'll reply on my own comment here to add that the same reasoning applies to gun rights. We need a critical mass of the populous to have personal responsibility, or we are missing parameters in the calculus of our right to bear arms.

Until we are generally intelligent enough to understand this, the gun rights issue, and any other related ones like the parent here, will be played out as a surreal dance of contrasting political interests.

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

#83

Post by fknorangesite »

cronix wrote: post #65
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…

sorting from newest first is also a data driven algorithm

Yes, everyone on HN knows this. But the usage of "algorithm" in the context of social media feeds has long had the colloquial meaning of "building a feed that is anything other than chronological."

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

#84

Post by yeahSo »

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #73
bertil wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No post body was provided.

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

#85

Post by litesaber »

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 think I agree with you in some ways. You may be being downvoted because "clearly labeled as a dessert" is too strong. Maybe we need categorization for quantity of sugar per serving, eg. 1-10g, 10-20g, 30g+ or whatever with different colors or labels. It's very easy to fall for feel-good marketing (eg. healthy/low-fat/organic or whatever) and not realize how full of sugar something is.

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

#86

Post by throw10920 »

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…

What really needs to go away is this epidemic of emotionally-manipulative special pleading that has drastically increased in density on Hacker News over the past five years or so.

Comments like this one are antithetical to the goals of HN - curious, reasonable, intellectual discussion (including about topics that may be somewhat political in nature).

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

#87

Post by throw10920 »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #26
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?

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

You stand far more than a chance - you have complete control over whether you use Facebook or not.

I've had, at different points in my life, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit, and Facebook installed on my phone. At no point did I ever feel like I was somehow compelled to use any those apps.

Android has operating-system-level controls on notifications. If you don't want to get Facebook notifications, and you turn them off, it is impossible for the application to notify you.

I have more of a problem checking Hacker News than I ever had with any of the above platforms, and there's no HN app, no notifications, no psychologists trying to control me. This clearly shows that Facebook-checking is purely a discipline problem.

Now, this obviously wouldn't be the case if, for instance, some big corporation was injecting some kind of addictive chemical into your food, and there was no way to limit your exposure to this chemical because, well, you have to eat. In that case, it's pretty clear that that company is doing something illegal and unethical and regulatory action should absolutely be taken.

But this isn't that. You can't survive without food. Facebook is entirely optional. You don't want to be addicted? Don't use Facebook. All of your relatives are on Facebook? Don't use Facebook; give them a call or text, invite them over, video call, share a meal, play a video game together.

Facebook. Is. Optional. If you get "addicted" to it, it's solely because you chose to repeatedly expose yourself to it without taking the proper precautions.

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

#88

Post by erellsworth »

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?

First, that's not a citation. Where's the data that shows controversy reduces engagement?

Second, that's not at all what happens on Facebook though. On Facebook every other story is about how people outside of your tribe are child-eating assholes.

This very discussion is a counterfactual to your claim. Someone posts a topic that is somewhat controversial, and we're all arguing about it in the comments. That's engagement. That's what most social media optimizes for, and it's why most social media is cesspit.

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

#90

Post by strulovich »

prophesi wrote: post #43
bertil wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their own leaked internal docs say that angry, love, sad, and wow reactions had 5x more weight than traditional likes. It should be easy to infer that this will promote more controversial posts than uncontroversial ones. It seems like their attention & engagement tweaks are spent on Instagram. One frustrating recent change was the introduction of a non-algorithmic feed, but it's not on by default, and it hides storie…

This is from when reactions where being rolled out. The intent was that choosing a specific reaction Carrie’s more meaning than a generic like.

If love, laugh, wow, all positive carry the same as sad and angry why would that mean more controversial?

People love having angry content as viral sire, but that’s human nature and existed much before the angry reaction was added.

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