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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

#101

Post by oblio »

ahallock wrote: post #60
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…

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?…

It is a trope, especially in American and and by extension libertarian circles promoted by the US groups around the world.

Personal responsibility is just one variable in this equation and a weak one at that.

What do all developed countries have in common? A large, well run (in comparison to developing countries) government and an active civil society that operates at scale, through various collective actions (voting, protests, etc).

Personal responsibility is maybe #5 on this list and is the number one thing being peddled by companies whose business interests are under attack.

Look up Ralph Nader and auto companies. Whistleblowers in tobacco companies and tobacco companies. Etc, etc.

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

#102

Post by oblio »

throw10920 wrote: post #86
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…

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).

Ok, bring it on.

We have obesity rates reaching 50% in many countries. Morbid (morbid comes from the Latin word for death...) obesity in the US is 7% and growing.

Pray tell, how are you going to solve this epidemic through personal responsibility?

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

#103

Post by tossthere »

alpaca128 wrote: post #12
dragonsky wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven’t seen anybody successfully sue a alcohol company for being addicted to booze.

You can absolutely find cases of companies getting in trouble for serving alcohol to minors. Or selling them cigarettes. Or running a secret casino/gambling business. You cannot rely on people being responsible with substances and mechanisms that make them behave irresponsibly. That's the whole point of regulating addictive things.

> You cannot rely on people being responsible with substances and mechanisms that make them behave irresponsibly. That's the whole point of regulating addictive things.

This statement is so profoundly simple and rational and true.

My childhood was severely impacted by addiction in the family, and “It’s A Disease” is a refrain I’ve heard from every doctor and group therapist and concerned friend and public health official.

The problem with “It’s A Disease” is that when you have a drug-addicted family member, you spend years or decades being trapped in extremely emotionally complicated and potentially catastrophic situations over and over again, and often the ONLY way to break free of it is to do things, say things, and make decisions that are very deeply hurtful to both you and your own family. Things you’re not proud of, that no reasonable or kind or loving person would ever say or do to somebody merely for having a disease.

“It’s A Disease” turns the addict into an innocent victim of their own family.

Anyway, I’ve always thought the cyclic part of drug addiction was desire -> gratification -> withdrawal, with negative behaviors as a consequence of that. Seeing drug addiction as a cycle of one’s behavior toward a substance being altered by that very same substance, literally never even occurred to me. I can accept that and not blame myself or my family. Thank you.

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

#104

Post by smolder »

memorable wrote: post #35
mayowaxcvi wrote: post #3

Wait till they find out about Hacker News …

I do use Hacker News a lot, but not to a point where I feel being addicted. Might feel that in the long run though...

When I take many-days breaks from HN it's nice to come back and just read through a few pages of the "Best" list available through the lists link at the bottom. In my experience the important stuff ends up there, so while I can't participate in active discussion of some of the older links, there's not much FOMO from time away. That's a nice feature.

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

#105

Post by 9991 »

Aerroon wrote: post #97
9991 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self-reports of mental harm are not worth anything. Why do people keep quoting these useless stats?

It doesn't matter what the stats are. The point is that that specific line is often mischaracterized to imply something that it doesn't imply.

I don’t understand what you’re saying. What does the line actually imply? And what do people think it implies?

(Part of my confusion is that I don’t think the stats imply anything at all.)

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

#106

Post by justinclift »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #58
justinclift wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> illegal Don't you mean "legal"?

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

Thanks, didn't realise that'd been made illegal as well. eg:

https://www.tga.gov.au/blogs/tga-topics/nicotine-vaping-laws...

Good. :)

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

#107

Post by Aerroon »

9991 wrote: post #105
Aerroon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter what the stats are. The point is that that specific line is often mischaracterized to imply something that it doesn't imply.

I don’t understand what you’re saying. What does the line actually imply? And what do people think it implies? (Part of my confusion is that I don’t think the stats imply anything at all.)

To reiterate:

1. The article claims that Facebook's own internal research found that Instagram exacerbates mental health issues in teen girls. No surrounding context given. It implies that it's straight up harmful.

2. The actual research said that 31% of teen girls felt that Instagram made body image issues worse. 45.5% said Instagram had no impact and 22% said Instagram made it better. For the other 11 out of 12 mental health issues surveyed teen girls said that Instagram made it better, on average.

They somehow read number #2, but then wrote #1 based on that. And this type of statement been repeated over and over again online.

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

#108

Post by jwalton »

chihuahua wrote: post #36
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 a…

I’d be happy to know what my friends are doing, but that doesn’t seem to be a service Facebook offers anymore. When I am stupid enough to go load my Facebook feed, it’s about 2/3 ads, 1/3 “recommended for you” posts that I have no interest in, and very rarely something from someone I follow will show up in between, and then half the time it’s someone sharing a news article or a meme instead of actually talking about themselves. The signal to noise ratio for Facebook is essentially zero.

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

#109

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

jjulius wrote: post #75
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.

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

The OP worked there at the time. You're probably not going to get a better citation than that.

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

#110

Post by nl »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #91
nl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, vaping in Australia is illegal, I assure that it isn't. (I'm Australian)

https://lungfoundation.com.au/lung-health/protecting-your-lu...

I'm not saying it's good!

But it isn't illegal. The closest thing is that imports of nicotine vape products has been banned[1].

But you can still get them with a prescription and - more importantly - vaping itself is still legal with non-nicotine products. For example [2] is a story about how sweet flavored vapes are popular with schoolkids.

[1] https://www.tga.gov.au/blogs/tga-topics/nicotine-vaping-laws...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-25/qld-ecigarettes-vapes...

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