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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

#321

Post by prewett »

parpfish wrote: post #282
everdrive wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being able to find some basis for comparison between two things does not render them equivalent, and this is an extremely frequent fallacy I see with regard to technology discussion on HN.

When it comes down to it, I’m not sure how you differentiate an “addictive” product from a well-made product that I choose to keep using. When people say that Tetris and Civilization are “addictive” they aren’t implying anything malicious about the development, it’s more of a compliment about the game (and maybe a little lament about staying up too late). But the addictive nature of social media feels different and I…

Not to disagree with you, but in the case of Civilization, I do find it addicting in both senses. It is one of two games that I just cannot play, because I will be up until 3am playing. (Puzzles and Dragons was the other one, I think I had to uninstall it the day after I downloaded it)

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

#322

Post by mschuster91 »

mentalgear wrote: post #304
bogdanoff_2 wrote: post #290

The solution to this would be a law forcing these sites to allow third-party suggestion algorithms, so that you can choose who and how content is being suggested to you. It could be perhaps as simple as allowing third-party websites and apps for watching Youtube on your phone. And it's okay if this would be a premium paid feature, so there's no counter argument that "it costs them money to host videos". This is not a…

The solution to all of Big Tech's monopolies is actually pretty simple: Interoperability must become a law - this includes using custom algorithms or allowing other platforms (like your own app) to access YOUR data on whatever platform 'hosts' it. Cory Doctorow wrote a great article on it: "Interoperability Can Save the Open Web" https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability > While the dominance of Internet pl…

The foundational problem with interoperability is that it can and will immediately be abused by bad actors as long as there is no price tag attached to every piece of communication.

Among social media, Mastodon (and anything Fediverse) has it the worst, obviously, but Telegram and Whatsapp are rife with spams and scams, Twitter back when it still had third-party apps was rife with credential and token compromises (mostly used to shill cryptocurrencies).

As for the price tag reference - we've seen that with SMS. It used to be the case that sending SMS cost real money, something like 20 ct/message. It was prohibitively expensive to run SMS campaigns. But nowadays? It's effectively free at scale if you go the legit route and practically free if you manage to get someone's account at one of the tons of bulk SMS providers compromised. Apple's iMessage similarly makes bad actors pay a lot, because access to it is tied to a legitimate or stolen Apple product serial.

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

#323

Post by thin_carapace »

DavidMcLaughlin wrote: post #298
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #241

How is any app/website that 1) appeals to kids, 2) sells attention, 3) does A/B testing and/or has a self-learning distribution algorithm NOT guilty of this?

A/B testing is very, very different to handing over control of your content to a reward function that optimizes for time spent over any other criteria. We had 10 years+ plus of having products like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, hell even LinkedIn with a basic content model of "you build your own graph of people who you pull content from" and their job was to show it to you and puts ads in there to fund the whole enterp…

regarding brain rot, short form content is absolutely going to be the root physical cause - people could tolerate smartphones prior to the inception of short form content. on a cultural level, this level of destruction could be compared to the effects of a coordinated and targeted attack from enemy nation states - if not for the fact that we did this to ourselves in the name of profit. one can only hope that the old guard wakes up to systematically handle this issue that we have no familiarity with, otherwise our system will buckle under the pressure of 10-20 years worth of nonfunctional humans. i do find a technocratic dystopia far more likely, considering the aforementioned mentally castrated opposition ... hows a generation of kids going to win against trillions of dollars of zuckerberg 'engineering' steering them since birth? shame on the 'engineers' who engendered this mess, shame on their shepherd 'managers', and shame on the sociopaths at the top.

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

#324

Post by anon84873628 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #230
hansvm wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incentives drive outcomes, do they not? It's too easy to become a billionaire as a charlatan and too hard as somebody able to make a difference. Rather than granting Zuck nearly unlimited power and politely asking him to use it wisely if he doesn't overly mind the inconvenience, why not create a world where monsters can't have that much power in the first place?

I don’t think anyone would disagree with you there but that requires changing the nature of humanity. Which is a much less realistic outcome.

I don't think it requires changing humanity. Just put a 100% wealth tax after 1 billion. And step letting money run politics.

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

#325

Post by ceejayoz »

steve-atx-7600 wrote: post #248
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #241

How is any app/website that 1) appeals to kids, 2) sells attention, 3) does A/B testing and/or has a self-learning distribution algorithm NOT guilty of this?

How’s this different than tv that a kid might see that has ads and programming targeting kids? I watched 80s horror movies when I was in elementary school and had nightmares for years. Should I sue now? How about parents be held responsible for how they care for their kids or not? Maybe a culture that judged parents more strongly for how they let their kids spend their time would be an improvement.

> How’s this different than tv that a kid might see that has ads and programming targeting kids?

Those ads didn't adjust themselves on a per-child basis to their exact interests.

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

#326

Post by anon84873628 »

vjulian wrote: post #66
joecool1029 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine. Not careful enough apparently: Nicotine isn't that addictive on its own, tobacco is.

Be aware, the vast majority of people who have ever smoked cigarettes occasionally never became addicted. They were not labeled as “smokers”. A non-trivial number of people today continue to smoke cigarettes on occasion. I like to have one on my birthday. Then again, I’m able to eat a chip and not consume the entire bag. I’m not convinced of these social science studies, and when digging into individual studies I’m s…

Or you could read the studies that show addictive nature varies by person...

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

#327

Post by SecretDreams »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #241

How is any app/website that 1) appeals to kids, 2) sells attention, 3) does A/B testing and/or has a self-learning distribution algorithm NOT guilty of this?

Because most are just no where near as good and effective at ruining a kid's mind as meta. If others were as good as meta at destroying whole generations of cognitive development, they'd probably also be liable.

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

#328

Post by nlarion »

There is no personal responsibility left in America. I have a child. It's my job to teach him and watch what he watches and does. I guess I am the only one who thinks this way. Good luck having the parental government raise your child. Parody: I let my child have cocaine and now they're addicted!!!!! Hilarious.

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

#329

Post by ceejayoz »

superkuh wrote: post #301

[flagged]

Parent poster has some… interesting views on addiction. Specifically, an extremely narrow view of what counts, that rules out things like gambling and porn addiction.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=superkuh%20addiction&type=comm...

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

#330

Post by ceejayoz »

data-ottawa wrote: post #318
bogdanoff_2 wrote: post #290

The solution to this would be a law forcing these sites to allow third-party suggestion algorithms, so that you can choose who and how content is being suggested to you. It could be perhaps as simple as allowing third-party websites and apps for watching Youtube on your phone. And it's okay if this would be a premium paid feature, so there's no counter argument that "it costs them money to host videos". This is not a…

How do you prevent a Cambridge Analytica exfiltration situation with third party algorithms? And how does this prevent addictive algorithms which will win through social selection?

The Cambridge Analytica stuff never got fixed, it just got hidden out of sight. The situation is worse than ever now.
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