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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

#452
post #417
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…

The jury disagrees with you.

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

#453

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…

That’s like saying the solution to cigarettes is that tobacco shops must be forced to sell clove cigarettes as a not-addictive alternative.

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

#454

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…

But bad actors already do this, as there is a monetary incentive to implement adversarial interoperability. There is then an incentive to not scale it up too much, lest that implementation get cut off sooner. For example, I certainly don't think all of the spam ads I see on Faceboot Marketplace are from individual people manually creating accounts and typing them out.

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

#455

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?

I would argue that no app/website should be selling itself to kids. No corporation should be trying to tether its ARR to children's attention.

When my kids were young, we canceled our Disney Channel / etc cable subscription and showed them more PBS and similar.

It was really annoying turning on a show for 30 minutes then for the next week hearing about that new toy they just have to get. It was exhausting.

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

#456

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…

This seems like a clever (but perhaps overly clever) amendment to Section 230 protections for social media.

However, I've always thought that it's pretty bizarre for Section 230 protections to apply when the social media company has extremely sophisticated algorithms that determine how much reach every user-generated piece of content gets. To me there's really no distinction between the "opinion" or "editorial" section of a traditional media publication and the algorithms which determine the reach of a piece of user-generated content on Twitter, YouTube, etc.

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

#458

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.

How is RSS self curating? It's just a way to get a feed from somewhere. And under the maximally external-locus-of-control culture this jury is using, those feeds would themselves be deemed evilly addictive.

There is no solution for this kind of verdict beyond appeal, or changes to the law to rule such suits out, because it's not rooted in any logical or legal principle beyond the idea that people should not be responsible for their own actions (or their children's actions). But there's no limiting factor to that belief. You can't fix it with RSS or federation or making people select who they follow or chronological feeds. Those would just get blamed for "addiction" instead.

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

#459

Oh man if they think YouTube and Instagram are addicting they should see what Roblox does lol

As someone who maybe fired about Roblox once like three years ago, what does Roblox do that is way more addicting than YouTube and Instagram, and also I guess they're ignoring reports showing the harm even more than YouTube and Instagram, if I understand you correctly?

It's an interactive world - where games can be built by anyone (I personally know/met some of the devs) and all the games have some randomization/gambling mechanics involved. Lootboxes is just one tiny example. Infinite novely - there's literally infinite number of games one can play.

I don't have time right now to provide a full/quality answer with more examples - you can do a bit of seraching online to learn more.

Also from personal expeirence as well (from family and friends). When their kids comeover they have tiktok on their phone and roblox on their laptop

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

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parents ought to be held held responsible for how they care for their kids. If YouTube detects that a child is watching 5 hours of video a day, should Google alert child protective services?

Why don't we start with a mechanism for user registration that does not involve a simple pinky-swear "over 13?" checkbox and then continue the conversation about further steps.

How would that hold anybody responsible? What did you have in mind with respect to parental accountability? Does anything other than the legal system actually have power to make changes when it comes to bad parents?
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