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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?

#61

Post by stickfigure »

some_random wrote: post #43
stickfigure wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I make my kid wear a helmet. I make sure his bindings are set properly. I make sure he's dressed warmly. I make sure he's fed and hydrated.

I am the parent. The ski resort provides the mountain, the snow, and the lifts.

He's a bit too young to be interested in taking pictures of his wang but I'd like to think this is a topic I can handle. Teaching him to navigate a dangerous world is sort of my job. I'm not losing sleep over it.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#62

Post by itishappy »

ceejayoz wrote: post #51
itishappy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This was the best they could come up with on short/no notice. $50 (or a hand-me-down from a friend) will buy you an Android burner phone that can hop on the neighbor's wifi.

Confiscate the hell out of it. That's what parenting is for. How much money is a kid going to spend on burner phones before deciding to just stop bringing them to the house?

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#63

Post by sanarothe »

ViktorRay wrote: post #58

Does anyone remember the Hacker News thread last week about Black Mirror? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43648890 Many in the comments were criticizing Black Mirror for being unrealistic. Especially in Black Mirror’s assumption that negative technologies would be introduced into society and ruin people without folks realizing. Well…Snapchat is basically a Black Mirror story. It was introduced and became widespr…

I take the opposite viewpoint as the criticisers -- they're too real, too foreseeable, that I would almost ask the Black Mirror writers not to give "them" any more ideas.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#64

Post by aylmao »

> “Think it would be interesting to investigate how healthy Snapstreak sessions are for users… If I open Snapchat, take a photo of the ceiling to keep my streak going and don’t engage with the rest of the app, is that the type of behavior we want to encourage? Alternatively, if we find that streaks are addictive or a gateway to already deep engagement with other parts of Snapchat, then it would be something positive for “healthy” long term retention and engagement with the product.”

For I second I thought this employee was talking about what's healthy for the user. Certainly not though; they mean what's healthy for the "user-base". I find very interesting how this sort of language leads to certain employee behaviour. Using the concept of "health" to mean retention and engagement, might overcast thinking about health from a user's perspective— it's similar terminology but very different, and sometimes even opposite, goals.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#65

Post by abletonlive »

ViktorRay wrote: post #58

Does anyone remember the Hacker News thread last week about Black Mirror? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43648890 Many in the comments were criticizing Black Mirror for being unrealistic. Especially in Black Mirror’s assumption that negative technologies would be introduced into society and ruin people without folks realizing. Well…Snapchat is basically a Black Mirror story. It was introduced and became widespr…

How is Snapchat a black mirror episode? Do you think even 10% of Snapchat users are harmed in the ways discussed in this article?

This is like saying we are living in Dune because we have some people in space.

So just because some people are harmed in society suddenly black mirror is not too on-the-nose or unrealistically pessimistic?

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#66

Post by ceejayoz »

itishappy wrote: post #62
ceejayoz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the best they could come up with on short/no notice. $50 (or a hand-me-down from a friend) will buy you an Android burner phone that can hop on the neighbor's wifi.

Confiscate the hell out of it. That's what parenting is for. How much money is a kid going to spend on burner phones before deciding to just stop bringing them to the house?

> Confiscate the hell out of it.

People in prisons manage to conceal contraband (including cell phones) in their cells, and they have substantially fewer hiding spots.

Turning your house into a prison with random room tossings has consequences, too.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#67

Post by mugwumprk »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #21
radicaldreamer wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulation of social media probably polls pretty well, I think polls have even found that most high schoolers want to reduce or end their usage of it

Phone use during class time is banned in my kid's high schools. Makes no difference -- it's completely unenforced by the teachers. They're practically physically adults, teachers don't want to risk the confrontation, etc. And the kids suffer for it. And my youngest uses no social media but their mind is still eaten by constant phone usage. More than social media, the problem is the device. The form factor. The "smart…

Petition to build Faraday cages into every public school classroom in the country

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#68

Post by ClumsyPilot »

kennywinker wrote: post #36
rollcat wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technological solutions to societal problems just don't work. Some $EVIL technology being fashioned to harm individuals isn't to blame - the companies behind that technology are. You can pile up your geofencing rules, the real solution lies somewhere between you deleting the app and your government introducing better regulation.

Geofencing around schools is the kind of thing you might see if government attempted to regulate this

Don’t we geofence sale of alcohol and tobacco around schools?

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#69

Post by koolba »

myko wrote: post #59
nancyminusone wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm being obtuse but I don't see the comma thing making the "joke" come off differently, what am I missing?

To shoot a smile means to smile at someone. So the pun is that he is going to smile at every black person he sees.

Re: Snapchat is harming children at an industrial scale?

#70

Post by kridsdale1 »

neilv wrote: post #46

(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…

My team at Facebook in the 2010s made many such reports.

We did that work because our mandate was to understand the users and how to serve them.

We did that with full good natured ethical intent.

We turned the findings in to project proposals and MVPs.

The ones that were revenue negative were killed by leadership after all that work, repeat cycle.

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