Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 492 posts

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#481

Post by left-struck »

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #163
left-struck wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s interesting that you bring up wrongthink. Banning free speech would be something like out of 1984, but what we have is far more subtle and insidious. A system that shows you only what it wants you to see, while tricking you into thinking you’re seeing what you want to see. Anyway, you can support free speech while hating this algorithm crap at the same time.

The system isn't tricking anyone, if an individual is not aware of how social media algorithms work that is due to willful ignorance (in the case of children that falls on the parents willful ignorance). I do personally believe banning the algorithms begins to fall into the realm of free speech regulation. I can hate the algorithm crap without thinking the government should regulate the internet.

I actually don’t think banning “the algorithm” is the right solution either, nor are the identity verification disguised as age gates. But I would like to see the US government do something. I actually think Lina Khan was doing some good things.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#482

Post by dprkh »

Melatonic wrote: post #377
bsimpson wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they? I know a lot of my peers went to college for free with the Millennium Scholarship. But so many young people vape now that it's becoming cool to smoke analog cigarettes. I barely knew anyone who smoked 10-20y ago. Many people that age now do.

Maybe you know different young people now ? I saw way more smoking 10-20 years ago. All have quit now. I see a good amount vape but rarely see cigarettes these days

I can't go outside in Toronto without having to smell cigarettes/cannabis.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#483

Post by grvdrm »

loeg wrote: post #372
bsimpson wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have they? I know a lot of my peers went to college for free with the Millennium Scholarship. But so many young people vape now that it's becoming cool to smoke analog cigarettes. I barely knew anyone who smoked 10-20y ago. Many people that age now do.

Vaping is distinctly less harmful than smoking.

I suspect (anecdote) vaping is just as bad if not worse. People vape EVERYWHERE. Almost any place you can't smoke, people still vape. So - that it happens that way makes me think the total exposure is a lurking problem.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#484

Post by BeetleB »

e12e wrote: post #449
BeetleB wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I pay for a streaming service, I'll compare it with other paid streaming services. Youtube is, for me, the worst streaming experience - by a significant margin. Terrible curation. Terrible recommendations. Terrible UI. No way would I pay for it. (Oh, and if I paid, can I get it not to show me any Shorts?)

Don't necessarily disagree - I have premium because of Google Music (although the official app is now so bad I use Metrolist). I don't see YouTube as a streaming service - more as a social(ish) video sharing/Indy publishing platform. For things like conference talks or training techniques and so on. If I had to watch ads, I'd stop using it.

I'd be happy with it as a service where I search for a video, and get a decent result, and not see shorts.

In particular, what I don't want to see is a hundred videos where all the person does is use clips from other videos as background and just states talking points. An example is searching for "2026 Ioniq 5 Review". I'm looking for someone who test drove a car, and is reviewing it. While those exist, I get a lot of videos from people who've likely never seen the car, and are just narrating talking points from other videos. The video is spliced stuff from other videos, and the audio stream is that of the narrator.

Pure waste. This happens over, and over again for any review I search.

If I get so much crap when I'm searching, why the #$I&%(* would I pay them money?

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#486

Post by compass_copium »

wyre wrote: post #477
compass_copium wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong about smoke always being bad--there's a reason American Spirits have to have a disclaimer about "additive-free" not meaning healthier. Tobacco takes up alpha emitters from the soil and leaves them in your body--never good. Pipe and cigar smokers are much less likely to smoke a pack's worth of tobacco a day. You also don't inhale them into your lungs, you hold the smoke in your mouth. Smoking cigarett…

Fun fact: the stress that smoking cigarettes relieves is only the stress caused by the addiction/relapse from nicotine. Surely, there might be some placebo effects going on, but nicotine is not a stress relieving chemical. So really it is just about getting nicotine, but over time the ritual around the addiction adds to the addiction.

True, but I am vaguely aware of people taking like Zyn for performance enhancement reasons, and I don't think anyone starts smoking like that.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#487

Post by wyre »

compass_copium wrote: post #486
wyre wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact: the stress that smoking cigarettes relieves is only the stress caused by the addiction/relapse from nicotine. Surely, there might be some placebo effects going on, but nicotine is not a stress relieving chemical. So really it is just about getting nicotine, but over time the ritual around the addiction adds to the addiction.

True, but I am vaguely aware of people taking like Zyn for performance enhancement reasons, and I don't think anyone starts smoking like that.

Zyn is freebase nicotine which does show some signs of being performance enhancing; mostly around focus. There are a lot of people with unmedicated ADHD self-medicating with Zyn, or vapes, or smoking due to the this.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#488

Post by nyxtom »

vrganj wrote: post #467
nyxtom wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a moderate, I tend to think things even out eventually - though it is usually what appears to be generational shifts in behavior that causes markets to adapt. It's costly (whole generations get f'd physically/mentally/financially), but the next generation (maybe?) pushes for something different idk

I appreciate the perspective and I can see the logic, thank you for explaining your position. That being said, the timescale of change in that proposed mechanism seems too slow to me given the extreme urgency I see in the climate crisis. Do you see a way out of it without systemic change? Do you not share the same assessment of urgency?

I'd rather not entire generations get the brunt of a entire class of problems (generations prior had significant health consequences). The best thing a society can do it seems is educate ourselves on what is damaging. When social media first came out no one was talking about what's happening now. Hard to see that very early on before it became a significant problem then aligned with corporate incentives.

Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children

#490

Post by [deleted] »

jimbob45 wrote: post #429
rwyinuse wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you inhale the smoke, it's quite irrelevant whether smoking an industrial cigarette, pipe or a hand-crafted cigar without additives. You'll probably get lung cancer anyway if you continue it long enough. Smoke is always carcinogenic. I don't really get the point when there are many ways of getting nicotine without the smoke.

It’s true and smoking marijuana is arguably as harmful as cigarettes but the pro-weed crowd throws a fit any time anyone points that out.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN