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Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

the-independent.com

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Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#71

Post by baggachipz »

dijit wrote: post #48
baggachipz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Children are not emotionally or intellectually prepared to repel this hostile takeover of their minds. Neither are most adults. The current situation in the world is plenty of evidence for that.

"You are not immune to propaganda" is a phrase that doesn't hit hard enough. It applies to you dear reader, yes you , not u/baggachipz.. YOU. I am also not immune, I believe myself to be, constantly. My worldview is truth and I am "open to other ideas"- yet I have very obviously anchored myself to things the first time I hear of them, despite actively making steps to try to see all angles and explain away facts with…

Sure, but lots of people are way more susceptible. Self-reflection is important here. The ability to question one's state and beliefs is the only tool to combat propaganda. Most people don't seem to do that; they parrot party lines and stay glued to their "news" networks.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#72

Post by CJefferson »

matterhorn2000 wrote: post #4

Question is not whether they were designed to be addictive (of course it was - that’s the product), but whether it can be proven.

From the article there's this. If this isn't proof, well, I don't know what would be:

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.”

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#73

Post by kridsdale1 »

rg2004 wrote: post #18
matterhorn2000 wrote: post #4

Question is not whether they were designed to be addictive (of course it was - that’s the product), but whether it can be proven.

Feels like you'd just need a former employee who was in an engagement engineering meeting.

Here I am.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#74

Post by Roark66 »

A good example. In cases where social media are clearly intentionally harmful they should be prosecuted under existing laws.

Instead of blocking under 16 year old from social media we should fix it. Via courts if needed.

Also the CEOs should go to jail if convicted.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#75

Post by cryo32 »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #54
imglorp wrote: post #27

Meta is a symptom; the whole business is rotten. We've all heard the vocabulary: engagement maximization, a/b testing, emotional targeting, ad auctions, user surveillance, sentiment analysis. Children are not emotionally or intellectually prepared to repel this hostile takeover of their minds. Civilization needs to rein in all these terrible things corporations do to humans.

I worked in the team at Facebook (2017-2019) relevant to this stuff. I saw (did not write) some of the documents cited. The rank and file engineers and designers and PMs doing the work were all morally correct people, working very hard all the time to steer the ship away from harm to normal people and toward establishing healthy relationships and media diet. We were consistently undermined and overruled by the Direct…

If you can't make the board do good or hold them to account when they do bad things, you should leave.

No leadership position can function without enough resources to do their bidding.

And yes, I have done that.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#76

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

austin-cheney wrote: post #47
imglorp wrote: post #27

Meta is a symptom; the whole business is rotten. We've all heard the vocabulary: engagement maximization, a/b testing, emotional targeting, ad auctions, user surveillance, sentiment analysis. Children are not emotionally or intellectually prepared to repel this hostile takeover of their minds. Civilization needs to rein in all these terrible things corporations do to humans.

In all fairness social media is in the same kind of business model as porn and gambling. None of that is forced on anybody. If you don't want those in your life then just don't consume them. If you don't want them in your household use a DNS blocker. How much should we really parent the rest of society?

Facebook chose that business model. It wasn't forced on it.

The terrible thing about social media is that has real utility. If you take away the addictive optimisation and surveillance and leave the local networking, forums, discussion groups, and small sales and basic ads you still have a very viable business - somewhat smaller, but still wildly successful.

But the point of Facebook is surveillance and belief/behaviour modification. The services provided are secondary.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#77

Post by intended »

rf15 wrote: post #35
imglorp wrote: post #27

Meta is a symptom; the whole business is rotten. We've all heard the vocabulary: engagement maximization, a/b testing, emotional targeting, ad auctions, user surveillance, sentiment analysis. Children are not emotionally or intellectually prepared to repel this hostile takeover of their minds. Civilization needs to rein in all these terrible things corporations do to humans.

What HUMANS do to humans. Any one of the people in power could have stopped this, and none of them did.

Yes and no.

At the scale of these firms, it is an issue of incentives, more than it is personal responsibility.

I know that many of the people who worked in safety flagged issues. I know NGOs and victims reached out to people in the firm over and over again.

Humans wanted to do the right thing. Its just that for other humans, they had to answer to shareholders and they had a far stronger set of incentives to ensure they made “number go up”.

Your string of people doing the right thing, makes little headway in the face of the tide of other humans who have incentives to increase time on site.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#78

Post by kridsdale1 »

nradov wrote: post #62
josefritzishere wrote: post #8

TBH, I think this should be prosecuted as a felony. In the past, fines have not proven to motivate Meta to change.

Which criminal law did Meta or its employees allegedly violate? Please to give a specific citation. I'm not endorsing their actions but criminal charges can't be based on vibes.

“Harm” to be found is the job of the trial.

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#79

Post by Synthetic7346 »

johng wrote: post #57
999900000999 wrote: post #51

I actually like Instagram, primarily for the ads. Most people don’t buy VSTs( music production software plugins ). I spend at least 50$ a month on them. Sunday I spent an hour browsing instagram waiting for an ad to appear again. It wasn’t in my ad history for some reason. I found it and made a purchase. I think these types of sites can work, if users can strictly op into what they see. For the most part my instagram…

I've purchased so many things off Instagram in the past couple of years. I'm building a new house and half of it is going to be filled with Instagram advertised stuff. It just seemed so accurate for the stuff I needed. (my kitchen sink, master shower set, furniture, etc.)

How do you trust advertisements? Do you do your own research after?

Re: Mark Zuckerberg's biggest legal nightmare yet could cost Meta $1.4T

#80

Post by specialist »

nradov wrote: post #62
josefritzishere wrote: post #8

TBH, I think this should be prosecuted as a felony. In the past, fines have not proven to motivate Meta to change.

Which criminal law did Meta or its employees allegedly violate? Please to give a specific citation. I'm not endorsing their actions but criminal charges can't be based on vibes.

As you know, law lags behind. Even when defendants are found not guilty, these cases are (apparently) necessary precedent for future remedies. Not least of which is creating social stigma.

I'm thinking of how organized crime ('60s - '80s) were untouchable, and how prosecutors learned how to use then new RICO laws to bring (some) of them down.

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