Earlier quoted context omitted.
You still haven't convinced me that is inherently bad that is warrants some sort of monetary damages. All entertainment is addictive. That's the whole point. This is just people seeing dollar signs asking for handouts. Nothing of an real value to society. Why is it okay for FB to be sued but not say Pokemon? I think Pokemon is way more dangerous, addictive, and is basically gambling with the card packs. Have some per…
Have some personal responsibility for once. We literally treat minors differently under the law because they are assumed to be incapable of personal responsibility.
Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
51–60 of 84 posts
Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#52Large groups of people just don't know how to solve these sorts of problems. A government will never say "facebook should either not exist or should radically modify its product so that it is no longer successful" At best, they will push for identity verification or age verification. These are not the only two possible courses, but these will be the choices put in front of us. Get used to reading books and going on w…
Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
But when governments do regulate (UK, AUS etc all) - people cry foul.
The entire age verification push in AUS was started by an advertising consulting company to distract from proposed online gambling regulation. Protecting children is a noble goal that I personally agree with, but it's also often used to sane-wash further erosion of privacy. As has been discussed here and elsewhere, age verification turns out to be the complete loss of Internet anonymity due to its implementation tech…
No doubt that it will be good news to gambling advertisers, but the push for age verification was already underway in 2020, well before government recommended an end to gambling advertising (2023).
It's a neat explanation, so an easy sell, but doesn't match the chronology.
Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#54Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
MKULTRA was about using _drugs_ to alter state. It has literally zero other than pop culture memes and conspiracy theory in relation to what facebook is doing. The facts are basically: Facebook's own researchers and independent researchers presented real harms caused by Facebook's algorithms, and they fired them, ignored them and took the datasets away and continued doing as they want. You don't need to go to any con…
MKULTRA was about using drugs to alter state and produce uninhibited truthfulness. Social media has a direct impact on dopamine and uninhibited oversharing. The mechanism isn’t even ambiguous, which is exactly why there’s a case, about the production of a deliberately addictive substance. The chemicals and effects differ, but it’s deliberate use and production as the same exact means to an end do not. There’s zero am…
Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have some personal responsibility for once. We literally treat minors differently under the law because they are assumed to be incapable of personal responsibility.
They are already blocked from the platform. What do you want Meta to do? Specifically.
Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#57Large groups of people just don't know how to solve these sorts of problems. A government will never say "facebook should either not exist or should radically modify its product so that it is no longer successful" At best, they will push for identity verification or age verification. These are not the only two possible courses, but these will be the choices put in front of us. Get used to reading books and going on w…
Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#58Companies like Facebook and Tiktok are incentivized to behaviorally modify their users in a way that's harmful to society: they make more money the longer everyone in society has their face glued to a phone. They'd be thrilled and printing money as society collapsed into every person staring into a slab of glass 20 plus hours per day.
Tax that time directly so it's no longer profitable to glue everyone to their phone.
Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#59As someone who grew up as OG (original geek), it's now amazing to look around and see that technology seems to be having an ever more negative impact on my everyday life.
Re: Meta loses bid to dismiss US states' claims that FB, Instagram addict children
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government regulates plenty of complex products and markets. Software isn't that special.
The trick is to cut away at the user-hostile foundations of the product. In theory, a product like Facebook or Instagram would have no need to be regulated, but the sale of user data, the engineered addictiveness (looking at you “Data Scientists”), etc. are all worthy of being regulated.
But also I think people forget: this is not cut and dried. This is not simple. This is not just "these companies are evil and should be stopped". It is: there is a market pressure to do these things. "I enjoy the product and use it a lot" and "I am addicted" is blurry and market pressure is not going to recognize that limit because it does not care about human suffering unless that suffering meaningfully impacts the bottom line.
If these companies hit regulations that effectively cap their advertising revenue per user (i.e. the "addictiveness"), they are dead. That may be totally fine, and I'm sure majority of people would rejoice hearing this. But remember: advertising dollars are earned, especially at tech company scale, by the effectiveness of the targeting to get get more $ / DAU since DAU cannot grow beyond the Earth's population and that is the scale that these companies have already achieved.
If you cap advertising dollars, you cap advertising effectiveness. You cap the ability for small companies to connect quickly with prospective customers without being locked out because they have to spend too much to find them. Yes you also cap scammers and other nefarious actors too, but thats arguably a different issue. The impact of reducing advertising effectiveness is disproportionately concentrated on small business where cheap and effective advertising is so important.
My hope is that there is a way to do both and I don't have to be constantly horrified when I look at my screen time hours.