I've switched to email and chat for social connection, works a lot better for me than I think any ranked feed ever will, no matter how many court decisions try to shape it.
NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
111–120 of 247 posts
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#112This is government overreach. These are novelty/fun apps. They are not critical infrastructure or needed in any way. This would be like a court ordering a local bar to serve more than just beer and wine, to accomodate people who like sake and soju. You have free choice to use the social platforms that you want to use. Really don't understand this kind of action tbh.
Bars are heavily, heavily regulated actually. You could have chosen a better example.
They're heavily regulated but not regarding what liqueur and beer they have to offer...which is exactly what OP was comparing it to.
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why you want a government agency to dictate product strategy.
Because things in the State should help people, not exploit them. If the thing, in this case, a corporation, is harming people, why not force it to stop?
> If the thing, in this case, a corporation, is harming people
Having messaging feature inside an app is harming people? Have we lost all perspective?
Why stop at this? Why dont we have a dedicated device just for messaging because if you really think about it, iPhones are actively harming people.
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#114They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…
I suspect it will be politically difficult to outright ban the ad model... might the same effect be achieved however by enforcing strict online advertising requirements & making websites (specifically the owner of the domain name used to access the site?) liable for all ads that they host as well as liable for all data gathering activities that drive those ads? Ideally with a requirement that all ads shown must contain a link to information about all parties involved in producing the ad & any profiling used to determine whether or not to show it to the user viewing it.
So if any ad is shown based on user profiling from data gathered illegally (i.e. without a proper opt-in as per GDPR etc) then the site showing the ad could potentially be sued?
Essentially, make it so onerous to legally advertise without risking a large class action lawsuit that the practice more or less dies out without technically being "banned" per se...
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#115This is government overreach. These are novelty/fun apps. They are not critical infrastructure or needed in any way. This would be like a court ordering a local bar to serve more than just beer and wine, to accomodate people who like sake and soju. You have free choice to use the social platforms that you want to use. Really don't understand this kind of action tbh.
Let me offer a different opinion.
Facebook is a massive part of social media. Billions of users. It is apart of society in its sheer size. A society decided “we want to make this better” and acted appropriately. I think it’s a noble pursuit for a society to attempt to reduce the clearly negative aspects of social media.
There is no real freedom of choice. The network effect cements big players positions. Try telling an 80 year old grandma with a 20 year old laptop to use mastodon. Likely no one she knows is on it.
Finally, individuals make essentially no difference when choosing to not use FB. But when choosing to not go to a local bar, that may be 0.03% loss of their monthly revenue. The only actor that can reasonably bargain with huge organizations is other huge organizations.
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know why you want a government agency to dictate product strategy.
Because things in the State should help people, not exploit them. If the thing, in this case, a corporation, is harming people, why not force it to stop?
> If the thing, in this case, a corporation, is harming people, why not force it to stop?
Lack of a messaging app is harming people? Let's be serious here.
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#117They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…
They are not just selling ads, they are also selling 'targeting' services for those ad campaigns.
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think people more or less understand that. Nobody likes ads. Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away. Many won't even create a free a…
> Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. Really? It took me until like 2012-2013 to realize Google searches stalked me to other websites. Then again much critics at that time of big tech was disregarded as lunatic crackpots. And nowadays your are a crackpot if you claim they are not spying on you. I guess that matters.
When I watch YouTube on an Apple TV the ads seem slightly relevant - when I watch on a mobile device they are completely awful, literally no idea why I'm being shown most of them.
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#119They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…
I'm not entirely against ads. Ads in my print media don't piss me off because they're clearly ads and separate from other content.
Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system
#120They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…
Exactly. The very existence of these apps and websites is based on such “user hostile” behavior. Same with the cat and mouse game between YouTube ads and ad blockers and third party YouTube apps. If the side wanting to completely stop Youtube ads becomes successful, YouTube will cease to exist (as a free app). I am not arguing for this model, my feed is getting more useless every day, but the only other model is subs…
YouTube offers an ad-free subscription called YouTube premium. It's reasonably priced and includes access to YouTube Music.
I like the hybrid approach of being able to be ad-supported or paid with no ads. I would like to see more of it.
What I don't like is a paid service like Amazon Prime that also includes ads. They include ads in their search results and they include tons of ads in their video library.
FWIW: Hulu offers paid access to content with ads but offers an upgrade to get rid of most of the ads, so there seems to be a whole lot of testing what works in this area going on right now, which I see as a good thing, I just hope that once everything settles the predominant model will be fair and respect user privacy.