Social media is the worst thing we've ever created. The current political state of the world is entirely to blame on it. The misinformation. The deceit. The false impression that everyone's opinion is equal. It's not.
Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
261–270 of 323 posts
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems to me like Meta is being singled out here. It's likely not the start of a movement to change how we live and get rid of/diminish bad influences on our lives - because I don't think we wanna really do that - not for economic reasons and also values - we like our personal freedoms. This is simply targeting one company whose CEO is very disliked so we can all carry on with our lives and feel better about oursel…
Doesn’t any enforcement action “single out” a wrongdoer? People pulled over for speeding are singled out (there are other speeders), people busted insider trading are singled out (there are other inside traders), etc? I honestly don’t understand your position… it seems to be “unless you can simultaneously prosecute all wrongdoers in all industries all at once, prosecute nobody”. But that can’t be right?
> Doesn’t any enforcement action “single out” a wrongdoer? People pulled over for speeding are singled out (there are other speeders),
If everyone is speeding and only you are getting a ticket than yes you're being singled out, that's generally not how the law is enforced. They're also using cameras since it's indeed hard to give tickets to 10 cars at once.
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cigarette packages have disgusting photos of carcenogenic lung autopsies to discourage you from smoking them, so Facebook and TikTok etc should have similar disgusting photos and vidoes of what happens to you if you use their product, that you have to watch every day before using it. Sleep-deprived teenager autopsy: a teenager with enormous purple eye bags, phone surgically fused to their hand, lying face-down on a s…
Images on cigarette packages are of real patient and real impact and still smokers ignore it. A fake, stylized hypothetical image will have much lower impact.
Are you saying that fake, stylized hypothetical image will have much lower impact reducing the impact of all the fake, stylized hypothetical images in Facebook?
Maybe they should insert disgusting slices of actual carcinogenic lung tissue into boxes of cigarettes, since images of them aren't impactful enough.
That would be harder for smokers to ignore, and it would make the cigarettes harder to light, worse smelling and tasting.
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#264Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually somewhat easy... If you are creating financial exposure to an event with no underlying risk to it, and the point is exposure itself, you are gambling. In your snow example, those guys were gambling on snow for fun. The formal weather derivative - most weather derivatives have parties (usually players in the energy market, sometimes agriculture) who have real underlying risk and aren't entering those con…
How would Poker fit into that definition?
Gambling.
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you fiddle with "investments" with the intent of making money without doing anything else, that's gambling. There are lot of value investors which sit at home do stock picking occasionally. They don't work for their money. I don't think they are gambling. The only investors that fits your non gambling definition seems to be the active investors who take part in the companies. But most investors don't
Why don't you think they are gambling?
Because investing conservatively is not gambling. Your definition of gambling is weirdly associated of how money is made, instead of risk making. Nobody uses this word in this way. Gambling is about of risk. It's not about how you are making the money
For example, it's also possible to be actively taking part in the money making activity while taking unnecessary risk. A person can run his own company but recklessly making bets on the loan or spending decisions. So this is the other side of the story where they are gambling and they are actively working with their money.
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
No - it means you are exposed to - electricity / gas / oil prices. Or Wheat maybe?
Everyone is exposed to those so by that definition nobody would ever be gambling. I was trying to be charitable so assumed the bar was higher in the what-if.
You aren't exposed to football game outcomes, nor dice rolls or cards flipping. I, in california, am not exposed to electricity prices in the northeast. My exposure to wheat prices is extremely small - if I go and bet a lot on wheat going down, I'm gambling.
If you are creating risk that didn't exist, you are gambling.
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually somewhat easy... If you are creating financial exposure to an event with no underlying risk to it, and the point is exposure itself, you are gambling. In your snow example, those guys were gambling on snow for fun. The formal weather derivative - most weather derivatives have parties (usually players in the energy market, sometimes agriculture) who have real underlying risk and aren't entering those con…
Having "underlying risk" to something just means you invested in it before. So for you it's not a gambling as long as you... have gambled before in the other direction? Buy bunch of call options? Gambling. Buy a bunch of put options for stock I already hold, somehow honorable investing.
If you are an oil company entering the futures market to reduce your risk on oil prices, you aren't gambling. If I enter the market and short oil for fun, I'm gambling.
The stock market isn't gambling if you are just buying equities - you are literally purchasing a small stake in a company. The fact that prices move around a lot doesn't make it gambling per se. If I offered a new price on your house every day, it doesn't make your house purchase a gamble.
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having "underlying risk" to something just means you invested in it before. So for you it's not a gambling as long as you... have gambled before in the other direction? Buy bunch of call options? Gambling. Buy a bunch of put options for stock I already hold, somehow honorable investing.
If you are an oil company entering the futures market to reduce your risk on oil prices, you aren't gambling. If I enter the market and short oil for fun, I'm gambling. The stock market isn't gambling if you are just buying equities - you are literally purchasing a small stake in a company. The fact that prices move around a lot doesn't make it gambling per se. If I offered a new price on your house every day, it doe…
Reducing risk is a form of gambling. You're just betting on the "please don't" rather than the "please do".
The point is always the same, you want to end up better off than others that didn't buy what you bought.
If the oil futures purchase turns out to have been worthwhile because price went up due either to production going down or demand up, that doesn’t somehow create new oil. You just get to buy it cheaper than others. You coulda yoloed on spy puts and used that money to buy the more expensive oil at market prices and it's all the same. But you call one gambling and another not gambling, idk, it's all similar to me.
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#269I do wonder about intent. Meta has spent 20 years paying its engineers and others vast amounts of money to Increase Engagement, and punishes those who fail to find ways to do so (over the past few years, by firing them). And it's worked! Engagement has increased greatly over the years, Meta survived the effective end of Old social media (you know, the stuff from your friends) and thrives in the new world of infinite…
the engagement argument could be applied to every commercial service or product. anything that is sold is getting optimized for appeal/attraction/engagement/adictiveness.
No, it isn't. Nobody evaluates a drill on how long a worker spends using it. If you can get the same job done faster, you'll go with that. Even in entertainment, not all products optimize for time of use. Nobody intentionally makes the longest possible movies.
Products optimize for engagement specifically when they exist within the attention economy and their monetization model is serving ads and/or harvesting user data. If Porsche and Rolex can sell you cars and watches you almost never use, I'm sure they're fine with that.
Re: Meta's blockbuster trial draws parallels to big tobacco
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am pretty sure most people do not want to become zombies. But entertainment is not the same as intentionally creating addictive mechanisms, the lines are blurry though.
> I am pretty sure most people do not want to become zombies Well yeah they hate to think about themselves that way, but that's the life they choose. Now - would they like that choice to be taken away from that or substinatially reduced? Would they like to live without Netflix, Meta, Youtube, porn, junk food etc etc - or have these products completely transformed ? Seems like they wouldn't.
They chose? Highly debate able.. Addiction withdrawals are tough but it's time we grew a little wiser