11–20 of 194 posts
I feel like everyone implicitly knows the algorithm is designed to be addictive. Its like smoking. At some point were going to look back and wonder why we let kids do that. Its more insidious than smoking though because it has arguably positive benefits.
I have no love for Meta, but what about tiktok and youtube? What social media doesn't attempt to keep its users engaged?
Question is not whether they were designed to be addictive (of course it was - that’s the product), but whether it can be proven.
If you know it, and I know it, and everybody knows it, why the hell are we paying huge amounts to mince words over the proof?
Question is not whether they were designed to be addictive (of course it was - that’s the product), but whether it can be proven.
If you know it, and I know it, and everybody knows it, why the hell are we paying huge amounts to mince words over the proof?
If so, what is your definition of addictive because it seems to differ from mine.
"Meta knew what it was doing"
In December 2015, CEO Zuckerberg listed as one of Meta’s goals for 2016: “Time spent [on the Platorms] increase by 12%” over the following three years. And as of November 2016, Meta’s “overall goal remain[ed] total teen time spent … with some specific efforts (Instagram) taking on tighter focused goals like U.S. teen total time spent.”
Between October 2022 and April 2023, Meta’s own internal metrics show that an average of 208,000 Mississippi young adults used Instagram daily and 345,000 used it monthly. In fact, Meta monitored key metrics for Mississippi, including:
• Ratio of teen daily active users to monthly active users: 0.72
• Increase in monthly active users over a two-month period: 7,894
• By 2020, Meta estimated 100% of MS teens were monthly active users of Instagram
A 97-page internal presentation, “Teen Fundamentals,” in May 2020, described its goal as to “look … to biological factors that are relatively consistent across adolescent development and gain valuable unchanging insights to inform product strategy….”
That presentation conceded, “due to the immature brain they have a much harder time stopping even though they want to – our own product foundation research has shown teens are unhappy with the amount of time they spend on our app.”
One internal communication noted that Meta could “[l]everage teens’ higher tolerance for notifications to push retention and engagement,” while another noted that some users are “overloaded because they are inherently more susceptible to notification dependency.”
As it noted in its 2019 internal presentation, “Teen Mental Health Deep Dive,” “Young people are acutely aware that Instagram can be bad for their mental health, yet are compelled to spend time on the app for fear of missing out on cultural and social trends.”
In another internal presentation, Meta employees express concerns about “content on IG triggering negative emotions among tweens and impacting their mental well-being (and) our ranking algorithms taking into negative spirals & feedback loops that are hard to exit from.”
Question is not whether they were designed to be addictive (of course it was - that’s the product), but whether it can be proven.
If you know it, and I know it, and everybody knows it, why the hell are we paying huge amounts to mince words over the proof?
Question is not whether they were designed to be addictive (of course it was - that’s the product), but whether it can be proven.
If you know it, and I know it, and everybody knows it, why the hell are we paying huge amounts to mince words over the proof?
Question is not whether they were designed to be addictive (of course it was - that’s the product), but whether it can be proven.
I absolutely don’t think there’s any chance in hell that Meta incurs a $1.4 trillion judgement or settlement.
The tobacco settlement in 1998 was $206 billion, or $423 million after inflation adjustment.
I have no love for Meta, but what about tiktok and youtube? What social media doesn't attempt to keep its users engaged?