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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

#191

Post by uxhacker »

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…

From what I understand the argument is, and to miss quote Marshall McLuhan it is “the medium, and not the content is the addiction”.

In other words is not the posts by the influencers, but techniques such as infinite schooling, and so on.

This is why meta and google could not relay on User-Generated Content Safe Harbor (Section 230) part of the law.

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

#192

Post by gzread »

carabiner wrote: post #49
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #32

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…

Nukes are the same as knives, just different in magnitude. Should one have special rules?

I think in America the second amendment makes it legal to own a nuke.

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

#193

Post by gzread »

13415 wrote: post #112
dlcarrier wrote: post #48

This is the kind of stuff that is causing them to push for mandatory identity verification laws. If they are being held liable for the the desires of their users, they're being forced micromanage the affairs of their customers, which preclude anonymous usage.

Not only that, in my opinion the many positive reactions to this decision are a sign of a decline of personal responsibility and a desire of people to be managed by the government and treated like cattle. Blaming everyone else but themselves for personal problems and failures has become the default for many people.

Why is it bad to want the system to push people towards healthy behaviour but it's totally okay to want the system to push people towards unhealthy behaviour?

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

#194

Post by robryan »

pow_ext wrote: post #71

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

Youtube shorts will come back but you can just click the row each time to show less. Otherwise if you really don't want to see them on the desktop at least a browser extension works well.

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

#195

Post by youknownothing »

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…

Yeah, Zuck is really being a bit of d** there. You can't spend decades hiring the best engineers in the world and give them millions of dollars worth of resources with the sole aim of creating products specifically designed to retain attention and then simply shrug and say "if you don't like it, leave it". That's just not a fair fight.

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

#196

Post by _moof »

slibhb wrote: post #187
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…

The fact that you're comparing nicotine to Facebook really throws into sharp relief just how far from reality this whole "social media made me depressed" stuff has strayed.

There's a large body of evidence on the damage that social media can do to people, and on the engineered compulsion to use it.

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

#197

Post by LorenPechtel »

hnlmorg wrote: post #59
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.

We already have a distinction because it’s been known for decades already that some things are addictive purely through reinforcement psychology and some things lock people into a chemical dependence. For example see the glossary in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence

And for some reason we only use "addiction" to describe things that are recreational in nature, not drugs that have no recreational use but can be quite dangerous to discontinue abruptly.

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

#198

Post by [deleted] »

jmyeet wrote: post #121
timdev2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you believe that "Section 230 differentiates between publishers and platforms"?

Section 230(c)(i) [1]: > (c) (c)Protection for “Good Samaritan” blocking and screening of offensive material > (1) Treatment of publisher or speaker > No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. This is a protection for being a platform for third-party (including user-generated) content. Some m…

[deleted]

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

#199

Post by [deleted] »

jmyeet wrote: post #142
Dracophoenix wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't good reasoning. According to your analysis, any website, ISP, or hosting provider that uses a firewall or Cloudflare is by definition a publisher, since they algorithmically shape traffic to prohibit suspicious IP addresses from accessing content.

Not at all. Intenet matters. Is Cloudfare trying to shape user behavior or push a particular position or content? No. Just look at the Cox decision from the Supreme Court today. As long as the (Internet) service isn't designed for or sold as a method of downloading copyrighted material, the provider isn't responsible for any actions by its users. In other words, intent matters . I find that technical people really ge…

[deleted]

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

#200

Post by brailsafe »

twoodfin wrote: post #53
anon84873628 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the reasons are obvious. Where do you put gambling on the spectrum?

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…

> If something compels behavior vs. behavior remaining a free choice, a liberal society can and should treat it like any other source of compulsion.

Indeed, and if we want those behaviours to remain as things considered to be choices rather than the nearly inescapable negative life-destroying feedback loops (activities with high addiction potential, for lack of a more concise term), they should be treated with special reverence and highly restricted from outside influence. Put another way, if we want liberal societies to be sustainable, I'd argue all forms of overtly addictive behaviour should—in many cases—be banned from public advertisement and restricted from surreptitious advertisement in entertainment, and we should have definitions for those.

For ages we've not had cigarette ads on public broadcasts, and yet people still "choose" to smoke, meanwhile there's been a increasing presence of cigarettes among Oscar winning movies in the last 10 years.

If you are addicted to smoking and trying to avoid being reminded of it, you'd realistically have to stop watching movies and participating in that aspect of culture in order to regain control of that part of your life. Likewise, with gambling, you don't only have to stop going to the casino, you have to stop engaging with sports entertainment wholesale.

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