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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

#341

Post by PokemonNoGo »

dmbche wrote: post #293
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…

Or algorithms have to be submitted and approved by a government body before being allowed to be implemented and are frequently audited

I guess this is the only way. I don't think we need novel approach and I don't consider this a novel one since we already have government agencies verifying approved processes in other areas so why not content distrubution.

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

#342

Post by bitwank »

ceejayoz wrote: post #335
bitwank wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not. People don’t want the slop they push, the anxiety provoking, salacious, clickbaity spam that it has devolved into. Anybody that used YouTube before the last few years can tell you the difference is pretty major. This is not content people want, it’s content that maximizes clicks and ad sales.

> People don’t want the slop they push… That's also true for heroin. Plenty of people really want to break the addiction. The slop exists because people are attracted to it.

Heroin is a different business model than advertising. Respectfully, you are wrong.

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

#343

Post by ToucanLoucan »

ramon156 wrote: post #260
sampullman wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a little more nuance than that, but it seems roughly correct. Wouldn't it be better if apps/websites targeting kids didn't use A/B testing to be more addictive?

They'd find another method. Why are we allowing this in the first place? I don't have an answer to fix this whole mess, but it starts with our attitude towards addiction. We've built a system that rewards addiction in all sorts of places. Granted, every addiction is different, and I'm of the opinion that it's not (drug = bad), it's how you use it and react to it. We can control the latter, but we choose to ignore it…

> Why are we allowing this in the first place?

Exactly what I keep coming back to.

For me, it feels like you could cut this problem down substantially by eliminating section 230 protection on any algorithmically elevated content. Everywhere. Full stop.

If you write or have an algorithm created that pushes content to users, in ANY fashion, that is endorsement. You want that content to be seen, for whatever odd reason, and if it's harmful to your users, you should be held responsible for it. It's one thing if some random asshole messages me on Telegram trying to scam me; there's little Telegram can do (though a fucking "do not permit messages from people not in my contacts" setting would be nice) but there is nothing at all that "makes" Facebook shovel AI bullshit at people, apart from it juices engagement, either by genuine engagement or ironic/ragebaiting.

And AI bullshit is just annoying, I've seen "Facebook help" groups that are clearly just trawling to get people's account info, I've seen scam pages and products, all kinds of shit, and either it pisses people off so Facebook passes it around, or they give Facebook money and Facebook shoves it into the feeds of everyone they can.

It's fucking disgusting and there's no reason to permit it.

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

#344

Post by anon84873628 »

SauntSolaire wrote: post #69
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.

> Not careful enough apparently: Nicotine isn't that addictive on its own, tobacco is. That is a very strong claim to make when the current scientific consensus strongly disagrees.

They're likely referring to this:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4536896/

>However, nicotine can also act non-associatively. Nicotine directly enhances the reinforcing efficacy of other reinforcing stimuli in the environment, an effect that does not require a temporal or predictive relationship between nicotine and either the stimulus or the behavior. Hence, the reinforcing actions of nicotine stem both from the primary reinforcing actions of the drug (and the subsequent associative learning effects) as well as the reinforcement enhancement action of nicotine which is non-associative in nature.

You can find other studies about the addictiveness differences between cigarettes, vapes, chew, patches, pouches, etc. Basically, the methods with the most ceremony and additional stimulus are more addictive.

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

#345

Post by monarchwadia »

mschuster91 wrote: post #322
mentalgear wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (mo…

This is a confusing comment. Interoperability and bad actors are separate concerns, because you get bad actors in systems of all kinds, not just in interoperable systems. Paywalling a system does not necessarily mitigate bad actors, either.

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

#346

Post by kouru225 »

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…

Yes please. Algorithms should be plug-in-and-play and not endemic to the app. You should be able to take popular algorithms and plug them into any app

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

#347

Post by ceejayoz »

bitwank wrote: post #342
ceejayoz wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don’t want the slop they push… That's also true for heroin. Plenty of people really want to break the addiction. The slop exists because people are attracted to it.

Heroin is a different business model than advertising. Respectfully, you are wrong.

Gosh, if you say so...

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

#348

Post by theturtletalks »

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…

We can’t depend on these platforms to offer interoperability or even laws to force them to do so. The DMA forced Apple to allow 3rd party app stores in Europe and they still hampered it so rarely anyone uses it.

We need platforms to offer that interoperability and simply connect to these “marketplaces.” Take Shopify for example, sellers use that platform to list on Amazon, Google Shopping, TikTok shop, etc. We need open source alternatives to those where the sellers own the platform and these marketplaces are forced to be interoperable or left behind by those that are.

For Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, each person having their own website where they post and that post being pushed to these platforms is also another way to force interoperability on them or be left behind.

It’s a tall task, but achievable and it will happen given enough time.

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

#349

Post by banannaise »

mschuster91 wrote: post #322
mentalgear wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 (mo…

Paywalls can have the opposite of the effect you want. Implemented incautiously, they can fail to disincentivize parties who can make profit in excess of the cost, and it can succeed at disincentivizing genuine, non-profit-motivated interaction.

Imagine how much less you would use text messages if they still had a per-message cost.

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

#350

Post by anon84873628 »

tqi wrote: post #50
anon84873628 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Where would you put 24x7 political content?

A little further down then social media apps, but mostly the same. After all, it's the main source of outrage bait for those apps. If we're talking about Fox News or CNN there's less specific user targeting and the delivery mechanism is more constrained.
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