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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

#541

Post by mschuster91 »

pixl97 wrote: post #358
shimman wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because some hostile entity might rat fuck the a slightly better system, we're destined to use the same current shitty system because something better might have a downside? Do you understand that this is all literally made up? The rules can change anytime and society can exert its will to make better world rather than letting a dozen people decide how technology will shape humanity (mostly in a negative capacity if…

>Because some hostile entity might rat fuck the a slightly better system, And make it a worse system, is what you happened to leave off. >Do you understand that this is all literally made up You mean the existing system that evolved from billions and billions of interactions? Explain what is 'made up' about it. The thing is if you start 'making up' random ass laws that piss people off, they will run screaming back to…

> Apple is a great example here. Shit is locked down and people love it.

The key thing with Apple is that Stuff Just Works. Not necessarily with non-Apple things (the compatibility ranges from almost excellent aka AirPods on Windows/Android to disastrous aka ever tried to transfer files from an Android phone to a Mac), but as long as you stay in the Apple ecosystem of macOS + Apple TV + iOS + AirPods, the user experience is generally really, really frictionless.

In contrast, with Windows, it's an unholy mess of catastrophic drivers, Windows Update, aggressive pushing of AI and advertising. And external hardware is a hit and miss, with compatibility issues being around everywhere.

And Android, oh dear god. I used to prefer Android over iOS because the hardware was cheaper and I could reasonably root it so I could do actual backups that worked... but ever since Covid, more and more apps break on detecting root and there's still no backup solution, so I bit the bullet and went second-hand Apple. At least I got backups now.

Personally, I admit, I have aged - I'm 34, I don't want to fiddle and mess around with my daily driver constantly, and frankly I don't have time to bother with ads, so that's why I went with Apple for most of my things. When I want to fiddle, I got a fleet of Raspberrys plus a decent homelab. But there, I can choose to fiddle around if I want to.

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

#542

Post by sofixa »

timmg wrote: post #124
nkrisc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult. I don't think it's fair to ask children to resist social media through sheer willpower when there are legions of highly educated adults on the other side trying to increase engagement. It should be no surprise that children can be manipulated by highly intelligent adults.

> 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.

There are ways, like double blind age verification, in which neither the website knows anything other than "yes, >18", nor the verificator knows anything other than "I was asked if user X is >18, checked, yes". Website doesn't know actual age, verificator doesn't know which website it is or for what action was the request performed.

In fact it's even in the EU Commission's official guidance on how it should be done : https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:C... (point 46).

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

#543

Post by jf22 »

which wrote: post #505
jf22 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "overwhelming majority" standard for harm seems odd when you use 15% of smokers getting harmed as an example. 15% is not an overwhelming majority.

Is there a widely used phrase which represents the 95-97% range? One did not come to my head.

If there isn't a phrase then just say the numbers...

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

#544

Post by kouru225 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #378
kouru225 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That's just laundering the bad actions though a third-party. The winning third party algorithm will be the one that gives people the same rush the first party algorithms currently do, because people will use it for the same reasons; they get to see cute AI animals do crazy things forever.

Nah. The main issue of addiction is the lack of clarity. You allow an addiction to pretend like it has a purpose and it can stick around. Reductionism is a great tool against this: reduce your addiction down to its most clear state and it loses all the mystique. Right now, people can pretend like they're into tiktok or youtube or instagram or twitter etc because they wanna engage in the social media landscape. Pull out the algorithm and replace it with a different one and they can't keep that lie up. They have to admit they're into the dopamine itself.

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

#545

Post by danny_codes »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #527
danny_codes wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news, social media has been extensively studied and found to be addictive. So we have little need to tread carefully, we already know it’s addictive. Fortunately it also has minimal to no value to society, so even if we overreacted and banned it completely it’d be fine

Good news, the thing you like had been found to be addictive. Please relinquish your freedom, this is for your own good.

If by relinquish freedom we mean, respect other people and limit your vice to controlled settings where harm is minimized.. yes.

You can still smoke, drink, get high, and gamble. We ask that you limit these to places that minimize the damage you do to other people.

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

#546

Post by rimunroe »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #529
rimunroe wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone who had exactly that feeling about YouTube. It was a genuine struggle for them to stop even though the amount of time they spent on it was negatively impacting their life and the content was making them more anxious.

Should YouTube be banned then? YouTube provides a lot of value to a lot of people. I've learned a lot of math, physics, history, DIY from it. But it's addictive (to some)

No idea. I was just chiming in to say that is indeed the case with YouTube for some people.

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

#547

Post by aprilthird2021 »

pixel_popping wrote: post #263
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic your Grocery store can be sued for you gaining weight because they use an algorithm to time notifications to advertise to you on your phone if you install the app

Yes, and they should be if they promote products that are known to cause harm, this is why we have labels (or at least they try) to inform users that what they are buying is bad for their body and will harm their health, there is no such thing right now on Tiktok despite knowing it's likely to harm you. The fact that teenagers think it's normal to take a hundred selfie a day is a direct sign of psychological distress…

They should have labels or something is totally fine. Common sense regulation exists for this reason. But suing and winning multimillion dollar lawsuits because in the past there weren't any such labels when law didn't require it.

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

#548

Post by aprilthird2021 »

bogwog wrote: post #402
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think about how much it would actually cost to run a social media website that competes with the big social media on the core product of sharing and communicating with friends. It would cost tons man. You don't understand the scale these apps operate on at all. Meta has their own data center footprint that rivals AWS or any other cloud company and they had that before AI, and it's not just all to run ads on. On dem…

> On demand photo and video streaming and storage for free for all of humanity is incredibly expensive. Maybe you missed my edit? I specifically said not a clone of the monopolies, but a competitor big enough to be a sustainable business. The economics of a monopolist's empire are irrelevant. > Social media with only millions of users is basically worthless because it won't capture enough of an average person's circl…

> if you're a startup trying to gain marketshare and win on your product's quality, interop with other networks is a no brainer.

There are platforms that try this, like Bluesky but they are not really sustainable businesses

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

#549

Post by Valakas_ »

twoodfin wrote: post #41
strongpigeon wrote: post #12

There is a fairly low amount of details about the case in the article. This NPR article [0] has a bit more, but it's still fairly sparse. Though it's interesting how Zuckerberg thought it was a good idea to say: "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?". Given that this is a case about addiction, that feels like a shockingly bad thing to say in defense of your…

As someone who values a liberal society, I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine. I also hope the reasons are obvious.

As someone who values a conservative society, I hope we'd be exceedingly careful before releasing products to consumers before knowing whether they're addictive or not.
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