Ban engagement algorithms already, its been terrible for society
Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
491–500 of 501 posts
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#492Squinting real hard to see a silver lining here, but when a settlement is reached, does that mean they can be tried again for the same thing? If the states can't, can individuals try their own class action suit?
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#493Earlier quoted context omitted.
You describe the apps as though they are recreational drugs with no other purpose but to produce endorphins. These 'apps' have a high level of utility - which is, I imagine, why most start to use them in the first place.
The utility is not of existential importance. Yes, you can uninstall Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the sky will not fall, life will just go on.
A lot of small businesses use these platforms for outreach. Without them they wouldn't have an avenue to reach and stay in contact with customers. An example would be a potter showing their work on Instagram and then linking back to their Shopify website.
Big tech literally has fingers in every single pie imaginable and it's real money for a lot of people, unfortunately.
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#494It's kind of funny that Facebook tried to launder its brand by renaming itself Meta, and its vile reputation is haunting that brand now too. New name is so abstract is sounds vaguely dystopian. Not sure that it matters though, because Instagram and WhatsApp are still in everyone's pockets. Even in hippie circles, they're almost mandatory to stay connected.
And even open source software such as OpenClaw encourages people to use WhatsApp and it's hard to escape.
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
Precisely, this is the point. There is systemic misalignment that encourages companies to behave this way.
I know this is not a popular viewpoint around here, but as a socialist, let me ask you this question: have we considered that the market itself might be the problem? That maybe the incentives it creates are toxic for humanity?
The lay understanding of markets is wrong.
The zeroth law of economics is that wants are infinite and resources limited. Economics is the study of how subjective wants can be best fulfilled given the constraints of reality.
Meaning that markets are always designed to achieve certain outcomes, and the idea of unregulated markets that work magically is fiction.
This is why you have (had) people like Lina Khan who identified how Amazon could be anticompetitive, even if kept prices low for customers. All markets have to be tuned, policed, kept clean and rules refreshed to achieve the outcomes we want as a society.
We design markets, and have the knowledge to do it well.
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#496I think worse than social media nowadays is youtube shorts. That thing is so addictive to kids. I wish there was a way to delete shorts from youtube and have only long form videos available in the app.
Not just kids. With one of my friends, even when I'm playing a game together with them, I'll sometimes hear some audio over their headset... there was a dull moment for like 10 seconds and they're already on their phone... "Are you watching YouTube Shorts again?" "No, this time it's Reels!" Shorts, reels, clips, doohickey whatever-the-fucks it doesn't matter what they're called, I hate it.
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I currently live in one of those countries where businesses only post on facebook. I do fine without it. If I need something I google it and it shows up on google maps. I only see what I want to see instead of being inundated with unwanted ads from irrelevant businesses.
How do you get news and events? I mean yeah I can just ignore businesses
Most news is unnecessary noise that most normal people can do nothing about so why waste emotional cycles reading that? For everything else, like important weather alerts, holiday events, etc, I go to the weather website for my country and for events I see signs up around the city. I keep up with tech news by reading HN, financial stuff I can find on yahoo finance, and for global stuff, which I rarely check, I read Ground News.
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#498Earlier 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.
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…
Well, I suppose less radiation could be one of the advantages of a crack habit
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#499>Meta will impose daily usage limits and restrict nighttime usage by children who use Facebook and Instagram, and enhance measures to prevent children from accessing age-restricted content So meta won. The only thing I'm asking for is better control over my social media. Let me remove infinite scroll on Instagram and don't show me things I have explicitly followed on Facebook. And do this setting by default and a cig…
As someone who doesn't use social media please explain. Is it not possible for people to just delete the apps and stop using them? Is the addiction so strong at this point that people don't have the willpower to stop?
> Is the addiction so strong at this point that people don't have the willpower to stop?
Yes. I've stopped Facebook and Instagram, and it simply got replaced by more time on HackerNews and YouTube. I've failed to cut those out as well. The addiction is a lot stronger than we'd all like to assume in my opinion.
Re: Meta reaches $17B settlement over social media harms to children
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
The utility is not of existential importance. Yes, you can uninstall Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, and the sky will not fall, life will just go on.
A lot of small businesses use these platforms for outreach. Without them they wouldn't have an avenue to reach and stay in contact with customers. An example would be a potter showing their work on Instagram and then linking back to their Shopify website. Big tech literally has fingers in every single pie imaginable and it's real money for a lot of people, unfortunately.
Yeah, that's a very good counter-argument. I recently talked to a potter exactly like that, they said Instagram is their primary sales channel. Unlike for me, for them leaving would have significant financial consequences. The majority of users are not in this situation though.