It is creepy how much social media wants to monitor kids.
It's like the nicotine business. It turns out all businesses that dabble in addiction end up wanting to monitor and control kids from a young age.
Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
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Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#172I'm convinced that a decade or two from now we are going to look back on social media exactly like we see the tobacco industry today. The companies knew what they were selling, knew the harm, but put profit over public good.
And countless employees happy to take a paycheck while looking the other way.
I personally don't blame the fastfood worker for giving me a Big Mac.
Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who is "we" and how do you sleep at night?
Profile checks out > Ethically challenged software engineer working for a major tech company you know Though scanning the account's comment history, they appear to use this site almost exclusively to brag about their unethical and occasionally criminal behavior. Not "challenged," but "bankrupt." Downvotes encourage them to continue this trail of evidence, apparently.
in their bio:
> Help me get to 1000 karma and I’ll stop posting forever.
Maybe we should give them that last 50 karma.
Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#174It is creepy how much social media wants to monitor kids.
I wonder if ads shown to kids "make more revenue" over the lifecycle of the kid than ads aimed at adults. Like the Youtube videos for kids that are nonsense but rake millions of views
I get asked weekly for an ad-bait app that my kids find though an ad-bait app that they previously had approved. Fun fact: once you’ve approved an App on Apple’s App Store, you can’t unapproved it. Hit the wrong button, too bad. Game switched from purchase to free-to-play and full of ads. Too bad.
The only option is to uninstall the app and then block App Store altogether, at which point they can’t update anything.
Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#175Aside from the measurable harmful effects, these companies have simply accrued too much political power. Being able to manipulate what 100s of millions or billions of people see every day on their screens is an unprecedented amount of power. Democratic nations are not going to tolerate these companies much longer.
Not that I like social media or tech companies (I detest them). But it's not a special case. Media companies, cable companies, newspapers, etc. They've all enjoyed the ability to manipulate and 'guide' what people see and what opinions they form, for a long time. It's nothing new.
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Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#176> with features like “infinite scroll” and persistent alerts used to hook young users
> Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies
Are we talking about infinite scroll or heroine? It would make more sense to sue Kelloggs over Lucky Charms commercials, but we're all use to them so there's no outrage.
It's politically popular to sue big tech and especially Meta. That's the whole story.
To be clear, the lawsuit is not about the content on instagram or privacy. They're saying kids spend too much time on Instagram. Let me introduce you to the parental controls that are already on your kid's phone.
Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Profile checks out > Ethically challenged software engineer working for a major tech company you know Though scanning the account's comment history, they appear to use this site almost exclusively to brag about their unethical and occasionally criminal behavior. Not "challenged," but "bankrupt." Downvotes encourage them to continue this trail of evidence, apparently.
in their bio: > Help me get to 1000 karma and I’ll stop posting forever. Maybe we should give them that last 50 karma.
You really believe their promise to leave, and that they won't, say, bump the threshold to 1500 and keep posting?
Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#178Irrespective of the incidental value "Meta" provides, let's keep in mind that no business has a right to exist independently from its standing in the system of laws and the health of its users - especially children. Social media companies argue that they can't monitor every post and do appropriate age verification online because it would be "impossible to scale". Well, tough luck. Not being able to scale is YOUR prob…
> Not being able to scale is YOUR problem, not MINE. Following your reasoning, anything that could possibly harm children should be banned. Cars sometimes kill children, shall we ban them too? Now, suppose we do ban Meta. Where should we stop? should we ban open decentralized social media too? You may not like social media, but a lot of people use them without any particular issues.
I think the lawsuit in the article draws a reasonable, if not conservative, line at knowingly exploiting vulnerable people to boost profits, which a whistleblower is saying Meta is doing. It's not just that the product is harming people, but that it is going out of its way to harm people. Is open decentralized social media doing this?
There are restrictions around advertising for cigarettes, I think for the same reason. To take it a step further in discussing around cars, I think companies who sell certain sized trucks are aware of the blind spots that make it hard to see people in certain spots. Reasonably, these trucks should be banned, or at least more conservatively, no new trucks with this flaw should be built or sold or require a commercial license.
Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not being able to scale is YOUR problem, not MINE. Following your reasoning, anything that could possibly harm children should be banned. Cars sometimes kill children, shall we ban them too? Now, suppose we do ban Meta. Where should we stop? should we ban open decentralized social media too? You may not like social media, but a lot of people use them without any particular issues.
That's not following their reasoning at all, it's a strawman. His point was that a business shouldn't be able to claim that doing something we want/require them to do is too hard and just not do it, which is what they currently do with content moderation.
How do you know they're not doing it and that it's unreasonable to ask more considering the difficulty of the task? His point is that there's no excuse for not doing it, even if the task is impossible. We don't ask the impossible to car manufacturers, why should it be different with Meta? who's to decide?
Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
#180The FTC is looking to hire child psychologists to evaluate the affects of these platforms, so expect more of this to come https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/23/ftc-plans-to-hire-child-psyc... There's a thin line to be walked between privacy and regulation, but Facebook's own research has pointed at the harmful effects of Instagram on the mental health of children... so I think some scrutiny here is overdue. https://www.the…
> Facebook's own research has pointed at the harmful effects of Instagram on the mental health of children Facebook’s own research has found both positive and negative effects, depending on the child’s status among their peers. The Verge is quick to point out that: > Instagram makes teen girls feel worse about their bodies but more discreet in reminding people that fashion magazines, including The Cut (also published…
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