Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 549 posts

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#31

Post by aprilthird2021 »

hash872 wrote: post #29

At least even money that an appellate court throws this verdict out entirely. Reminder that the US is the only developed country that uses juries for civil trials- everywhere else, complex issues of business litigation are generally left to a panel of judges. It's not that hard to rile up a bunch of randomly impaneled jurors against Big Bad Corporation. The US is kind of infamous for its very large, very unpredictabl…

Thanks for this take. Also explains why this did not result in much stock price movement today

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#32

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

This just seems ripe for selective enforcement if not codified in law. I agree the algorithm they use can be addicting, but it's because it's simply good at providing content the user wants to consume.

Besides a general 'don't be too good' I'm really not sure what companies should do about it. It just seems like it'll lead to some judges allowing rulings against companies they don't like.

Television's goal was always viewer retention as well, they were just never able to target as well as you can on the internet.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#33

Post by aprilthird2021 »

fraywing wrote: post #5

I'd hope the next iteration of social media tools humanity builds are less about reinforcing the individual ego and more about collective improvement, learning, and supporting the health of our species. Anecdote, but it does seem like a lot of younger folks I speak with are exhausted by the dark patterns and dopamine extraction that top-k social media platforms create. If agents/AI/bots inadvertently destroy the curr…

> If agents/AI/bots inadvertently destroy the current incarnation of social media through noise, I think we'll be better for it.

They are going to be (and AI slop already is) so much worse. Once they get ads to work well / seem natural the dark patterns will pop right back up and the money spigot will keep flowing upwards

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#34

Post by dmix »

> During his first-ever appearance before a jury in February, Meta's chairman and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, relied on his company's longstanding policy of not allowing users under the age of 13 on any of its platforms.

> When presented with internal research and documents showing that Meta knew young children were in fact using its platforms, Zuckerberg said he "always wished" for faster progress to identify users under 13. He insisted the company had reached the "right place over time".

Soon there will be government IDs required to use social media sites because parent's can't take phones away from their kids.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#35

Post by aprilthird2021 »

benoau wrote: post #16
idle_zealot wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd hope the next iteration of social media tools humanity builds are less about reinforcing the individual ego and more about collective improvement, learning, and supporting the health of our species Do you have a mechanism for this in mind, incentives-wise? I can't see this making money.

I guess the real question is whether a website where you communicate with friends and close ones needs to be a multi-trillion dollar company in the first place... historically most of them have not been worth very much at all.

It needs enough revenue to fund its operations. And most people won't pay for such a website, so if you want one place where most people you know are, then...

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#36

Post by pixl97 »

slopinthebag wrote: post #21
pixl97 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, I too love free servers and bandwidth.

Lol, it doesn't have to run for free and servers are really powerful these days (especially if you don't use a slow language). There are other monetisation strategies besides exploiting users for profit.

It doesn't have to run for free, but if you're competing against anyone else running for free you've already lost the game as they suck the air out of the room with the network effect.

Next, text only platforms are nice, but niche on the modern internet. People seem to love multimedia which takes tons of bandwidth/cpu.

Paid for services don't mean spam free either. If it's worth people to pay for, it's worth spammers paying to get in and spam.

Then you have all the questions on what happens if you grow, how do you deal with working with all the laws around the world, how do you deal with other legal issues.

Having a site/service of any size can quickly become an expensive mess.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#37

Post by zahlman »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #31
hash872 wrote: post #29

At least even money that an appellate court throws this verdict out entirely. Reminder that the US is the only developed country that uses juries for civil trials- everywhere else, complex issues of business litigation are generally left to a panel of judges. It's not that hard to rile up a bunch of randomly impaneled jurors against Big Bad Corporation. The US is kind of infamous for its very large, very unpredictabl…

Thanks for this take. Also explains why this did not result in much stock price movement today

Also at least partially explained by being priced in. The trial was known about and given the conditions described in GP it's not surprising that the verdict went this way.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#38

Post by sosborn »

pixl97 wrote: post #18
benoau wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the real question is whether a website where you communicate with friends and close ones needs to be a multi-trillion dollar company in the first place... historically most of them have not been worth very much at all.

The question then becomes how can you make a website with all your friend (and by association all their friends) make enough profit to run itself?

Early Facebook was kind of a great mix. It had enough people on it, it was making money, and the advertising was much more reasonable. At the time it really was a place to connect with IRL friends.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#39

Post by andai »

fraywing wrote: post #5

I'd hope the next iteration of social media tools humanity builds are less about reinforcing the individual ego and more about collective improvement, learning, and supporting the health of our species. Anecdote, but it does seem like a lot of younger folks I speak with are exhausted by the dark patterns and dopamine extraction that top-k social media platforms create. If agents/AI/bots inadvertently destroy the curr…

I hear word that in some countries, the government makes it so that screen time is limited, and algorithms promote educational content. Fortunately we civilized peoples are free of such a brutal oppression ;)
Post reply on HN