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Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

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Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#321

Post by zachthewf »

mptest wrote: post #306
wolverine876 wrote: post #299

Several comments say we should ban social media for people under 18. Such a blunt, indiscrimate, careless solution may indicate the typical ages of HN members! What do some people under 18 think of the problem and solutions? I'm not sure how many are here, but maybe some HN members could ask their kids.

I'm mid 20's and it's obvious what to do. Universal child care, housing, healthcare, etc, and parents would have more time to parent their kids instead of slaving away to make someone else enough money to buy their fifth yacht or passing their childcare off to an ipad. We have worse than gilded age inequality, 9 people own more wealth than 3.6 BILLION combined. Maybe address that first??? I'd wager we'd find 99% of p…

While I agree with the general sentiment, poverty and inequality are wildly different problems (e.g. modern capitalism tends to increase inequality but also decrease poverty).

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#322

Post by autoexec »

username332211 wrote: post #275
Alex3917 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My home kitchen doesn't routinely serve strangers. Most states have cottage food laws, with basic regulations for small-scale commercial production. E.g. you need to take a course on food safety, you need your water tested, and you can only sell up to $X per year, but you aren't subject to random inspections. There is no reason why the web shouldn't be regulated similarly, with different rules based on the size of…

How does that mesh with the original post's point? If we have different rules depending on scale, how is it OK for the rules for large scale social media platforms to be impossible to comply with by large scale social media platforms?

Ideally, no matter what the size of the platform is, if it's genuinely impossible for the people running that platform to not harm children, that should be their problem. If they can't figure out how to not be harmful to children, they don't get to exist. That's how it's supposed to work.

In practice though, it's not unreasonable to say that we should expect more from companies that can cause harms at a much larger scale. Perhaps there's some kind of threshold where we can accept some harm being done at a small scale while still not allowing harm at a much larger scale. Seems fair enough.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#323

Post by logicchains »

DougN7 wrote: post #62

Growing up, I knew maybe two or three kids that had emotional problems. Now (as an adult with grown kids) I hardly know any families that don’t have such a person. I’m sure part of it is we’re more open, which is great, but I can’t attribute all of it to that. The rising generation is really struggling. My guess is social media, but maybe it’s environmental pollution or something similar. I live in the US for what it…

>My guess is social media, but maybe it’s environmental pollution or something similar

There are plenty of other countries that have just as much social media usage as the US but don't have the same widespread emotional dysfunction, so wouldn't that suggest that social media isn't to blame?

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#324

Post by zeroonetwothree »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #267
glimshe wrote: post #129

Irrespective 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." Indeed, it is doubtful that these mega-sized websites were intended by the original architects of the www. More likely, they may have imagined the web as a whole would grow (scale) as more people gained internet access. Instead the "Silicon Six" intend only to scale their own gargantuan websites that they now refer to as "platforms". All web publishing and even int…

Not saying I think it's a good outcome but I don't see why it's relevant what the "original architects" thought. This is just a variant of 'argument from authority'.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#325

Post by quest88 »

b20000 wrote: post #314
balls187 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn’t bother asking my kids what’s their opinion regarding cigarettes.

social media is more like crack or some other terrible drug

Really? It bankrupts its users? People can't hold a job because of it? People will rob stores to get more money to use more social media? It causes families to painfully detach themselves from addicts?

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#326

Post by lexandstuff »

balls187 wrote: post #308
wolverine876 wrote: post #299

Several comments say we should ban social media for people under 18. Such a blunt, indiscrimate, careless solution may indicate the typical ages of HN members! What do some people under 18 think of the problem and solutions? I'm not sure how many are here, but maybe some HN members could ask their kids.

I didn’t bother asking my kids what’s their opinion regarding cigarettes.

You probably should. Many of my school friends started experimenting with tobacco and marijuana in elementary school, which were the prevalent vices of my time.

Kids are autonomous humans with free will, and despite what many adults think, they have opinions worth listening to.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#327

Post by zeroonetwothree »

edgyquant wrote: post #222
olalonde wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a factory that wants to dump harmful chemical on water people use for drinking Your example is describing an externality, a cost imposed on a unwilling third party. Facebook is a platform that individuals can choose to avoid or restrict their children from using if they deem it harmful. These situations are not comparable. > no business has a right to exist independently from its standing in the system of laws and…

> Your example is describing an externality, a cost imposed on a unwilling third party. Facebook is a platform that individuals can choose to avoid or restrict their children from using if they deem it harmful. These situations are not comparable. Yeah just like alcohol and drugs, you can easily restrict your children from using them so companies should be free to sell to whomever. Good parents ensure their children…

The prohibition on selling alcohol and drugs has clearly had no effect on their availability. So I'm not sure what you are trying to argue.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#328

Post by logicchains »

seanw444 wrote: post #201
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #138

"harmful youth marketing" ? Adults are just as dumb as kids, and can actually impact the rest of the world with their dumbness. We should be suing them for harmful marketing, period. I have had adult friends have literal emotional breakdowns because of social media's harmful effects.

Adults have a lot more responsibility for their actions. One of those actions is choosing to participate in a system that is widely considered harmful in multiple ways.

It's harmful for emotionally damaged people; the rest of us shouldn't have to suffer because a few people never learned that envy is a flaw to be overcome not a virtue to be cultivated.

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#329

Post by heavyset_go »

huytersd wrote: post #248

Good. For once I’ll agree with the governance in Utah and say we should ban social media for kids until they are 18.

The law in Utah exists to prevent young people from communicating with like-minded peers in communities like r/exmormon or r/lgbt.

The issue is billion dollar companies manipulating people for profit, not that people are able to communicate with each other over the internet. It's entirely possible to host communities that aren't corrupted by investors who want 1000x returns on their investments.

However, the Utah law defines social media as any online forum belonging to a site with more than 5m users that allows people to register accounts and interact with others[1]:

> (9) "Social media company" means a person or entity that:

> (a) provides a social media platform that has at least 5,000,000 account holders worldwide; and

> (b) is an interactive computer service.

> (10)(a) "Social media platform" means an online forum that a social media company makes available for an account holder to:

> (i) create a profile;

> (ii) upload posts;

> (iii) view the posts of other account holders; and

> (iv) interact with other account holders or users.

The law uses broad strokes to ban much more than just social media, it bans any group or community that might belong to a parent site that has a moderately-sized user base.

In effect, the law isolates anyone under 18 who might want to find community outside of their potentially abusive or extremist parents.

[1] https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title13/Chapter63/13-63-S101.html?...

Re: Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing

#330

Post by quest88 »

paxys wrote: post #8

I'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.

Yea, all this cancer and burden on the healthcare system caused by social media. Just like tobacco.
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