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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

#441

Post by prepend »

lokar wrote: post #155
prepend wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That book was so lame and the author leaves out how she profited millions and then only complained after she was fired. Its also funny how they “discovered” they were influencing elections after they influenced the 2008 and 2012 elections. How did the author not know this when she sought out and joined the company in like 2013! The parts about playing Settlers of Catan with Zuckerberg was funny. I wonder what his sid…

I thought she discussed her pay/stock, what a big deal it was to her and how that affected her decisions very openly.

She did write about how she decided to stay because of the money.

Her book doesn’t cover the amount and I couldn’t find anything public where she discloses.

I figured it was a lot based on standard FB salary+stock and the years she was there.

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

#442

Post by ipython »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #339
steve-atx-7600 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Parents ought to be held held responsible for how they care for their kids. This isn't just true of their use of social media and devices, but also when it comes to teaching them to look both ways when crossing the street; making sure they understand the concept of private parts, consent and personal space; making them understand the dangers of alcohol, and many other things. Does any of that obviate the need for saf…

As sibling comments point out, parents are already overly held responsible for how they care for their kids. To an absurd amount.

I have had CPS called on me by an overbearing school administrator. Have you had that happen to you? Let me tell you, it's not a fun experience.

Enough of this "blame the parents" mentality! Ironic given that the goal for all these platforms is growth at all costs. Where do you think "growth" comes from, after all? If you make being a parent so goddamn difficult that it's more rational to just not do it, guess what, poof goes your sweet, sweet growth.

So tired of this line of thinking. The parents are put into an impossible situation. Stuck between kids who by definition and by design will test the boundaries that they're given, and tech platforms that are propped up with not just trillions of dollars of valuation, but the societal expectation that you engage with them. Want your kids to compete in sports? Well, they need to have WhatsApp and Instagram to keep track of team events!

Give me a break. Equating controlling social media and devices to "look both ways when crossing the street" is disingenuous at best. There are no companies that make billions of dollars in advertising revenue telling your kids to jaywalk. But Facebook gladly weaponizes their algorithm to drive "engagement" - and, surprise, children with still-forming prefrontal cortices are drawn to content that reinforce their natural self-criticisms and doubts. So now my child, who has to be on Instagram to keep track of sports schedules, is also force fed toxic content because that's what a mechanical algorithm thinks is most "engaging" based on my derived psychological and demographic profile.

You want to talk about CSAM? X proudly proclaims that they have every right to produce deep-fake pornography with the faces of underage children. What action shall I, as an individual parent, take if my 15 year old girl's face is suddenly pasted onto sexually explicit video and widely shared thanks to xAI's actions? Shall I be held responsible for how I "let this happen" to my child?

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

#443

Post by kspacewalk2 »

ipython wrote: post #442
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents ought to be held held responsible for how they care for their kids. This isn't just true of their use of social media and devices, but also when it comes to teaching them to look both ways when crossing the street; making sure they understand the concept of private parts, consent and personal space; making them understand the dangers of alcohol, and many other things. Does any of that obviate the need for saf…

As sibling comments point out, parents are already overly held responsible for how they care for their kids. To an absurd amount. I have had CPS called on me by an overbearing school administrator. Have you had that happen to you? Let me tell you, it's not a fun experience. Enough of this "blame the parents" mentality! Ironic given that the goal for all these platforms is growth at all costs. Where do you think "grow…

You seem to imply in your reply that I disagree with you, hence necessitating a polemic style. I would have thought the last few sentences of my comment make it clear where I stand on simplistic appeals to "parental responsibility".

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

#444

Post by text0404 »

which wrote: post #417
guzfip wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It probably helps when you suppress research that shows you’re harming children and allow human traffickers to fester on your platform with 17 warnings or whatever.

The argument that research was suppressed and this is somehow damning is absurd on its face. The most obvious reason being that they obviously didn't do a very good job of suppressing it given that we hear this claim every day. The second being that they could have just not done this research at all and then there would have been nothing to "suppress" (this terminology is also very odd... if 3M analyzes different sti…

Nobody ever accused these companies of being competent at suppressing the research (which includes third parties btw, not just internal).

Companies do this research for all sorts of reasons (including legal compliance, demonstrating due diligence to regulators, to understand users and improve products, etc etc etc). For example, it's not like Zuck commissioned an internal study to show how they're harming children, more like some internal team was seeking to understand why kids love a certain feature which led them to conclusions that make the company look bad.

To your third point, that research is usually leaked by whistleblowers or conducted by third parties, not because of the altruism of these companies.

Finally, the platforms aren't doing enough and with this court case, it seems like they've persisted in finding ways to hook children because of financial incentives.

The sources cited in this article are a good primer for understanding what these companies are doing: https://www.transparencycoalition.ai/news/meta-suppressed-re...

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

#445

Post by nlarion »

dj_gitmo wrote: post #380
nlarion wrote: post #328

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.

> Parody: I let my child have cocaine and now they're addicted!!!!! Hilarious. Cocaine is illegal because it is addictive.

Yet, I know many people who've done cocaine that are in other respects law abiding citizens. Making unjust laws makes us all criminals. The government cannot protect people from themselves, no one can. The best we can do is try to educate, and we can't even seem do that. Good luck out there buddy.

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

#446

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

roughly wrote: post #394
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliminating section 230 protections would heavily disfavor any kind of intellectually stimulating content, because it's hard for a platform to scalably verify that nobody's making defamatory claims. But pointless clickbait, heavily filtered Instagram models, etc. don't really have liability concerns on a video-by-video level. To me it seems like this makes the problem worse.

It’s not eliminating section 230 entirely, it’s eliminating it for algorithmically promoted content. If you have a site that has user content and you present that content in a neutral fashion, section 230 applies. If you pick and choose what content to present to users (manually or by algorithm), you’re no longer a neutral platform, and shouldn’t be getting the benefit of 230.

I understand that. My point is that this would mean algorithmic feeds can only contain vapid, pointless content with no liability concerns. To me, it doesn't improve the world to require that Instagram and Youtube exclusively serve slop, even if that might cause some number of people to abandon them for non-algorithmic platforms with better content.

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

#447

Post by ordu »

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…

> it's because it's simply good at providing content the user wants to consume.

Well, a drug addict wants to consume his drug. Because his drug is good at keeping abstinence syndrome at a bay and probably the tolerance hasn't build up to levels when the addict couldn't feel the "positive" effects of it.

The user feels an impulse to consume the content, but whether they want it we can know only by questioning them. They can lie consciously or unconsciously, but there are no better ways to measure a desire to consume it. When talking about doom scrolling I never met a person who said they want to do it, but there are people who do it nevertheless.

> This just seems ripe for selective enforcement if not codified in law.

I agree. I'm not sure how they define "addiction" and how they measure "addictiveness". It is the most important detail in this story.

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

#448

Post by burlesona »

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…

I think a better solution would be to repeal section 230 protection for any kind of personalized or algorithmic feed. The algorithm makes you a publisher, and you should be liable for what you publish.

That would make it very hard, nigh impossible, for a platform like YouTube or TikTok to exist as it does today, and would instead favor people self-curating mechanisms like RSS readers etc.

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

#449

Post by acmecorps »

robinanil wrote: post #316

I have a somewhat unusual vantage point on this. I'm a former Google engineer, now running a children's mental health startup (Emora Health), and my toddler is already on YouTube Kids. So this verdict hits on every axis for me.I wrote up my full take here [1], but the short version: I don't think the "Big Tobacco moment" framing that NYT is pushing actually holds up. Litigation is negative reinforcement, and if you'v…

Just a tangent, interesting that you brought up Blippi. Any issues that you have with Blippi if you don't mind me asking? :D
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