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

the-independent.com

121–130 of 194 posts

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

#121

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…

If you need Instagram ads to tell you which VSTs to buy, you haven't: 1. spent enough time on KVR or Gearslutz, discussing with other musicians, hobbyists, plugin nerds and developers who are building and battle testing these plugins. 2. spent enough time making music....which is why you spend money on VSTs to begin with. 3. spent time learning to build your own plugins or VCV Rack modules. 4. watched YT videos made…

I don’t solely rely on Instagram for this. My more expensive VSTs, the complete Korg Collection, I purchased after owning Korg Gadget for a while.

But if I see something cool for 20$ on instagram, why not?

> 3. spent time learning to build your own plugins or VCV Rack modules.

I don’t like C++ or other low level programming languages.

I guess I could now vibe code something, but then the comments would chastise me for that.

I probably do have enough VSTs at this point to sit down and actually finish a project. But ehh.

I think advertising can be ethical. It just needs to be honest.

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

#122
post #99
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.

> Children are not emotionally or intellectually prepared to repel this hostile takeover of their minds. Then their parents shouldn't let them use the internet. I find it interesting that so much of how people think about morality involves attributing free will unevenly. I.e. "facebook execs" are using their free will to addict people but those people have no ability to resist. It's so obviously corrosive to think so…

I don't really see how this applies in the specific thread? I understand your overall point, and I agree. But, here, we're talking about individuals pushing a company & its' employees towards creating what can be considered poison. They themselves would not be immune to their poison, and I'd wager plenty of them are probably equally addicted to their devices. Children will also be susceptible, and potentially more-so due to their developing brains.

I don't really see how this scenario is an uneven attribution of morality.

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

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Those leaders own full responsibility for this. Sorry, no free pass. No doubt there's lots of decent people working at FB. But through their work they do support a company with questionable ethics. Same goes for FB users. Not judging any of FB's employees (or users) here! But unless you're starving or someone's whipping you, you have a choice to go elsewhere.

This framing is directly at odds with the top-level comment. "the whole business is rotten."

If someone is a professional programmer and wants to maintain a similar level of income, where do you propose they go? There are similar perverse incentives at every other big tech company. While I agree that it's certainly possible for someone to avoid working for big tech and horrible companies in general, it's not possible for everyone to do so. Framing things the way you have merely supports unproductively railing at individuals who have worked for big tech, while actually making it harder to critique the underlying structural incentives.

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

#124

  AfD MEP Mary Khan, on the other hand, complained that a law that had already been rejected was being revived through the back door using salami-tactics until the desired outcome was achieved. No one wants to weaken child protection, but that should not justify putting all citizens under general suspicion and legitimizing mass surveillance.
Pretty reasonable stance compared to Social Democrats:

  Nevertheless, the Social Democratic group caved in beforehand and signaled its approval for the urgency procedure, which ensured the necessary majority.

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

#125
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.

[deleted]

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

#126
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.

[deleted]

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

#127
post #103

We look back on the (at the time influential) claim that rock/metal/etc "corrupts the youth" as a quaint moral panic. Modern views about social media are our version of that same silly claim. Future people will look back on all these comments comparing Facebook to crack with the same amused bewilderment as we look back on the PMRC.

[deleted]

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

#128

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…

[deleted]

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

#129
post #33

Unfortunately, I think we all know how this story ends. The company will settle for a slap on the wrist, a paltry fine that is but a fraction of the profit that was made as a result of the infraction. The company will not admit to any wrongdoing as a result of the settlement. The company will continue their behavior but in a stealthier, more obfuscated fashion.

[deleted]

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

#130
post #33

Unfortunately, I think we all know how this story ends. The company will settle for a slap on the wrist, a paltry fine that is but a fraction of the profit that was made as a result of the infraction. The company will not admit to any wrongdoing as a result of the settlement. The company will continue their behavior but in a stealthier, more obfuscated fashion.

[deleted]
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