491–500 of 549 posts
Coming from someone who hate social media (and has kids) this might seems like a good thing on the surface, but I worry it will be another case used to allow the government to limit speech on the internet for adults.
This is a civil trial between a regular person and corporations about product liability. It has nothing to do with the government.
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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.
Literally every social media site I'm aware of has had, in varying strengths and at varying times, many still currently, a movement among users asking for a fucking chronological ordered feed. Just, what the fuck my friends are saying, in the reverse order that they said it, displayed in a list. Not only is this seemingly the most desired feed among end users, it was also the default one. MySpace didn't have a choice…
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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…
Tetris and civilization are also harmfully addictive, but the scope of the behavior they can hijack is lower. "One more turn" at 2am is harmful. Just not as harmful as something that knows about and interacts with every aspect of your social life and your view of the real world around you like social/media apps do today. A really well built hammer doesn't make you want to spend all your time using a hammer, it's just…
In general professionals must be licensed and bonded. The state requires a degree and a test for the first license, then, for my spouse's, something like 8000 additional hours of training, and something like 100 hours of continuing education per year. a CEU is 1 hour of continuing education. you have ~5 years of time to transition your license by doing the above training and CEU - as a rolling window. Doctors, nurses, etc all have to do this sort of thing.
Would any of you put up with that kind of stuff to make $80k a year?
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…
> if you've ever tried telling a toddler "no" you know how well that works long-term Parent here. Acting like it’s impossible and you have no choice but to let them have their way is a cop-out. Telling kids “no” and enforcing boundaries is part of the job. > my toddler is already on YouTube Kids. > I will give you a simple experiment. Try blocking Blippi from YouTube Kids, man, it's crazy, even if you block the main…
I believe you're conflating two things: parenting discipline and product design. The question isn't whether I can physically take the TV away. I do.
When I say "block Blippi," I don't mean I dislike the content. I mean I'm done with screen time and the UX makes that transition harder than it needs to be. Autoplay is off, but the end-of-episode screen still shows a grid of next videos. Of course he wants the next one.
So I block Blippi. Except Blippi's main channel cross-posts through Moonbug into hundreds of other channels. It's a hydra
YouTube already does content fingerprinting for music industry DRM. The technology to let a parent say "block this creator everywhere, and let me turn it back on when I choose" exists today. They just haven't built it for parents. Because the system isn't designed for children. It's designed for engagement.
So yes, parental responsibility matters. But "just don't use it" isn't a scalable answer when the product is specifically engineered to undermine your choices. That's the design problem I'm talking about.
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 only solution is to outlaw all recommendation algorithms. Accounts should only have access to a chronological feed they choose to follow. The host can promote whatever they want, but it has to be the same promotions for everybody.
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That just leads to embrace/extend/extinguish
Exactly. The deal of all these platforms is that there is a fuckton of up-front costs. Hard drives. Networks. Peering. Transit. Operators. Payment. Lawyers. SREs. And so on and so forth. The solution to this used to be that governments provide the platform. You would think this wouldn't be hard to do, since people have now shown that this can work and so it's a guaranteed money maker, or as close as you're going to g…
Beyond that, there really isn't much that a small shop couldn't manage unless you are trying to be the next FAANG (and lotsa luck with that).
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> Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult. This obviously means that tech is going to have no choice but to do "age verification". And I don't think there's much of a way to do that that wouldn't be uncomfortable for a lot of us.
Or assign responsibility to…parents and legal guardians…who are not children.
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>[There are] legions of highly educated adults [at Meta] trying to increase [child] engagement Why is this not only OK but the best way for Mark to spend every waking moment of his life? Money thing? But often would he think about his bank account versus his products, maybe it’s pure drive?
I just wish for once one of these egomaniacal billionaires would actually put all their efforts and resources into solving climate change or ending world hunger. Even his medical initiative Chan-Zuckerberg biohub is a self-congratulatory shell game. I worked in the same building as them for years, literally all they did was have parties, conferences, networking events and self-congratulatory schmooze things and never…
So, if you want "these egomaniacal billionaires" to end world hunger then you're effectively asking them to form private militias and impose peace by force in the developing world. The new colonialism. Is that what you want?
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…
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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.