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Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

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Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#41

Post by ceejayoz »

basisword wrote: post #25
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, I never failed to recognize it. I just failed to be able to do anything about it. You were a teenager once, I'm sure you can remember how little influence your parents actually had over how you actually spent your time. Or at least saw that in your friends. This is a society wide thing. Parents are pretty much powerless. So yes, regulation. But you'll see how discussion of any proposal for this goes down…

Genuinely asking - is it impossible to just enforce a no phones until 16+ rule with your kids? The reasons against it I see are either “it’s too hard for the parents” or hypothetical (“they would have no social life”). There were tonnes of things I wanted to do as a teenager that my parents prevented me from doing. Including things my friends were allowed to do by their less strict parents. There was of course things…

Only if you're willing to ban them from ever going to friends' houses, where they'll use their friends' devices to do it.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#42

Post by wilsonjholmes »

nancyminusone wrote: post #40
zonkerdonker wrote: post #8

Anyone remember YikYak? I was in university at the time, the explosive growth was wild. After the inevitable bullying, racism, threats, doxxing, that came with the anonymous platform, YikYak enabled geofencing to disable the app on middle and high school grounds. I think every social media platform with an "age limit" should be required to do this as well. And open it up, so that anyone can create their own disabling…

At my college, someone got kicked out for yikyacking "gonna shoot all black people a smile tomorrow" and everyone quickly realized exactly how anonymous it really was after the guy was found a few hours later. Thing is, there was a comma between "people" and "a smile" which made his poorly thought out joke read a lot differently. Dumb way to throw away your education.

Crazy Smart (;

Edit for clarity: /s - I went to the same university which had the above slogan.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#43

Post by some_random »

stickfigure wrote: post #38
cbruns wrote: post #34

Some readers here presumably work at Snap. How do you feel about this and your work? Do you sleep soundly at night?

I don't work for Snap, but they do use some software I wrote, so I guess that's close enough. I find all of these "social media is bad" articles (for kids or adults) basically boil down to: Let humans communicate freely, some of them will do bad things. This presents a choice: Monitor everyone Orwell-style, or accept that the medium isn't going to be able to solve the problem. Even though we tolerate a lot more monit…

Are you not willing to even entertain the notion that communication platforms could influence the way that it's users communicate with each other? That totally ephemeral and private image based social media could promote a different type of communication compared to something like say, HN, which is public and text based? Sure you take your kid skiing, but presumably you make them wear a helmet and have them start off on the bunny hill, I agree that a risk-free world is an insane demand that justifies infinite authoritarian power but there is a line for everyone.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#44

Post by itishappy »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #17
Frieren wrote: post #10

Each generation of parents fails on something. This generation is failing at recognizing the dangers of social media. Teenagers and even children are being radicalized on-line, sold dangerous diets, manipulated by state sponsored creators, lied by companies, taught anti-science, and the list goes on and on. How is all this not heavily regulated? Even adults need protection from scammers, fake products, misleading ads…

As a parent, I never failed to recognize it. I just failed to be able to do anything about it. You were a teenager once, I'm sure you can remember how little influence your parents actually had over how you actually spent your time. Or at least saw that in your friends. This is a society wide thing. Parents are pretty much powerless. So yes, regulation. But you'll see how discussion of any proposal for this goes down…

> You were a teenager once, I'm sure you can remember how little influence your parents actually had over how you actually spent your time.

Actually, I remember the opposite. I had problems with screen time so my parents put a password on the computer. It wasn't 100% effective, of course, but it was closer to 90% than 0%.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#45

Post by cbruns »

stickfigure wrote: post #38
cbruns wrote: post #34

Some readers here presumably work at Snap. How do you feel about this and your work? Do you sleep soundly at night?

I don't work for Snap, but they do use some software I wrote, so I guess that's close enough. I find all of these "social media is bad" articles (for kids or adults) basically boil down to: Let humans communicate freely, some of them will do bad things. This presents a choice: Monitor everyone Orwell-style, or accept that the medium isn't going to be able to solve the problem. Even though we tolerate a lot more monit…

Pouring the resources of a company the size of Snap into addicting as many kids into their app as deeply as possible is not the same letting them communicate freely. Besides that, I don't know of any parent that would want ephemeral and private communication between their child and a predatory adult. Snap is also doing nothing to shield them from pedophiles, drug dealers, and arms dealers that are using the same app as a marketplace.

The damning part is that these companies know they harm they are doing, and choose to lean into to it for more $$$.

Thanks for your response. Your open source contributions are perhaps less damned than those of an actual Snap employee ;)

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#46

Post by neilv »

(Since the TikTok post was swapped out with this one, I'll repost my late comment here, since it applies to a lot of companies.)

> As one internal report put it: [...damning effects...]

I recall hearing of related embarrassing internal reports from Facebook.

And, earlier, the internal reports from big tobacco and big oil, showing they knew the harms, but chose to publicly lie instead, for greater profit.

My question is... Why are employees, who presumably have plush jobs they want to keep, still writing reports that management doesn't want to hear?

* Do they not realize when management doesn't want to hear this?

* Does management actually want to hear it, but with overwhelming intent bias? (For example, hearing that it's "compulsive" is good, and the itemized effects of that are only interpreted as emphasizing how valuable a property they own?)

* Do they think the information will be acted upon constructively, non-evil?

* Are they simply trying to be honest researchers, knowing they might get fired or career stalled?

* Is it job security, to make themselves harder to fire?

* Are they setting up CYA paper trail for themselves, for if the scandal becomes public?

* Are they helping their immediate manager to set up CYA paper trails?

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#47

Post by soperj »

jmathai wrote: post #31
zonkerdonker wrote: post #8

Anyone remember YikYak? I was in university at the time, the explosive growth was wild. After the inevitable bullying, racism, threats, doxxing, that came with the anonymous platform, YikYak enabled geofencing to disable the app on middle and high school grounds. I think every social media platform with an "age limit" should be required to do this as well. And open it up, so that anyone can create their own disabling…

We block a number of online properties including Snapchat and YouTube using NextDNS. We have different profiles for different devices to allow, for example, YouTube on the television but not on kids tablets or phones.

that's only good for the devices using your internet though no? not if they have data.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#48

Post by tomhow »

n4ture wrote: post #30

Hi @dang, Sorry to hijack this thread with a completely off-topic issue, but I have no idea where else to reach about this. I did a submission yesterday showcasing the work of some of my colleagues at UofT, it's satire but it is backed by serious academical work. I was very sad to see it quickly got flagged and removed from the front page when it started to generate discussion. I just wanted to ask you to unflag it o…

Please email hn@ycombinator.com with questions like this.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#49

Post by itishappy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #39
glitchc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can always take the phone away. As a parent of a teenager, sometimes I have to make hard choices. This is one of them. Kids don't need cellphones. We want them to have one often because of our own insecurities.

> We can always take the phone away. Kids are… resourceful. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-goes-viral-for-tweeting-fr... Last week, a 15-year-old girl named Dorothy looked at the smart fridge in her kitchen and decided to try and talk to it: "I do not know if this is going to tweet I am talking to my fridge what the heck my Mom confiscated all of my electronics again." Sure enough, it worked. The message Dorothy s…

I'd posit that social media restricted-solely-to-a-fridge is still significantly less harmful than social media literally-always-within-arms-reach.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#50

Post by danielbln »

ceejayoz wrote: post #39
glitchc wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can always take the phone away. As a parent of a teenager, sometimes I have to make hard choices. This is one of them. Kids don't need cellphones. We want them to have one often because of our own insecurities.

> We can always take the phone away. Kids are… resourceful. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teen-goes-viral-for-tweeting-fr... Last week, a 15-year-old girl named Dorothy looked at the smart fridge in her kitchen and decided to try and talk to it: "I do not know if this is going to tweet I am talking to my fridge what the heck my Mom confiscated all of my electronics again." Sure enough, it worked. The message Dorothy s…

I ran a secret Ethernet cable to the router to circumvent parental Internet restrictions, that was in the early 2000s. Teenagers will be teenagers.
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