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Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

nytimes.com

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

#101

Post by myroon5 »

Zigurd wrote: post #64
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.

A $4.99/mo subscription would yield more revenue than Facebook makes in ARPU from all that fancy, creepy, and intrusive ad tech. Paying YouTube to not advertise to you makes it a 10X better experience.

> $4.99/mo subscription would yield more revenue than Facebook makes in ARPU

Even ignoring the adverse selection of who'd subscribe, their ARPU is higher than that in North America: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

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

#102

Post by SauntSolaire »

jwardbond wrote: post #70
twoodfin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If something compels behavior vs. behavior remaining a free choice, a liberal society can and should treat it like any other source of compulsion. Personally, I am leery of any technical definition of “addictive” that operates outside the traditional chemical influences on physiology. So I would not describe gambling in that sense. One might have a malady that causes gambling to take on the same physiological vibe fo…

I am not a neuroscientist, but I thought the actual physiological cause of addiction was similar in both nicotine and gambling: you crave the predictable release of dopamine. If that is the (heavily simplified) case, is there a distinction for you between a chemically-induced dopamine release from smoking and, say, and a button you can press that magically releases dopamine in your brain?

You're missing the negative affect node of the Koob addiction cycle, which exists for gambling but to a lesser degree than for nicotine.

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

#103

Post by nkrisc »

twoodfin wrote: post #41
strongpigeon wrote: post #12

There is a fairly low amount of details about the case in the article. This NPR article [0] has a bit more, but it's still fairly sparse. Though it's interesting how Zuckerberg thought it was a good idea to say: "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?". Given that this is a case about addiction, that feels like a shockingly bad thing to say in defense of your…

As someone who values a liberal society, I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine. I also hope the reasons are obvious.

Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult. I don't think it's fair to ask children to resist social media through sheer willpower when there are legions of highly educated adults on the other side trying to increase engagement.

It should be no surprise that children can be manipulated by highly intelligent adults.

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

#104

Post by 0x3f »

amelius wrote: post #27
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'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. This sounds like the original internet. Before adtech took over.

The original internet wasn't about that at all, it was just in limbo while people were figuring out what it was going to be. It wasn't developed or optimized enough to be _anything_.

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

#105

Post by fraywing »

iamnothere wrote: post #96
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'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. To me this statement reads as both inaccurate and ignorant of human nature. Social media was actually better when it was about individual ego (Myspace/LiveJournal); as obnoxious as that can be, today everything is w…

> To me this statement reads as both inaccurate and ignorant of human nature

> But average people are not interested in this kind of platform, and will not participate in good faith in such an environment.

I'm not ignorant of human nature and tribalistic tendencies. The undercurrent of my comment is of an optimistic hope (or cope) that we can move past competitive individual validation programming. I'm aware that it's due to our nature, but also aware that it's exploited by dark patterns and extraction at scale through software.

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

#106

Post by ryandvm »

pow_ext wrote: post #71

Apps like instagram and YouTube should be required at least to give an option to disable reels and shorts

There should be a law to require the ability to disable algorithmic customization of content. If these apps are so compelling it shouldn't take a Spark cluster riffing on my private viewing habits to come up with content for me.

I don't recall a lot of complaints about Facebook or Instagram when it was actually your friends' content. But now it's force-feeding everybody their own "guilty pleasure" viewing material 24 hours a day. It's fucking sick.

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

#108

Post by yabutlivnWoods »

twoodfin wrote: post #41
strongpigeon wrote: post #12

There is a fairly low amount of details about the case in the article. This NPR article [0] has a bit more, but it's still fairly sparse. Though it's interesting how Zuckerberg thought it was a good idea to say: "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?". Given that this is a case about addiction, that feels like a shockingly bad thing to say in defense of your…

As someone who values a liberal society, I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine. I also hope the reasons are obvious.

Mmhmm those are words. Words that are hand wavy pretexts for conservatism rather than liberalism; as a lover of liberal society you hope it acts conservatively!

This just comes off as poorly obfuscated self selection. You own a bunch of Meta, Alphabet and other media stocks?

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

#109

Post by Barbing »

nkrisc wrote: post #103
twoodfin wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who values a liberal society, I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine. I also hope the reasons are obvious.

Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult. I don't think it's fair to ask children to resist social media through sheer willpower when there are legions of highly educated adults on the other side trying to increase engagement. It should be no surprise that children can be manipulated by highly intelligent adults.

>[There are] legions of highly educated adults [at Meta] trying to increase [child] engagement

Why is this not only OK but the best way for Mark to spend every waking moment of his life?

Money thing? But often would he think about his bank account versus his products, maybe it’s pure drive?

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

#110

Post by 0x3f »

andai wrote: post #42
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.

Well, another example comes to mind. Coordinated efforts to preserve the biosphere for all mankind are probably not going to be great for GDP. We've tied our incentives to a structure which is not in alignment with continued survival. The real question is how can we incentivize ourselves to continue to exist? The "the incentive structure says we should all destroy our brains" thing is just a small aspect of that.

Actually that's probably really good for GDP, just not over the kind of time periods an individual human deals with or cares about.

> We've tied our incentives to a structure which is not in alignment with continued survival. The real question is how can we incentivize ourselves to continue to exist?

The continued survival of individuals or humanity as a whole? The individuals seem to survive OK, and arguably there's nothing that could convince them to prefer the survival of the amorphous group, save for some kind of brainwashing.

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