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Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

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Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#111

Post by twoodfin »

wredcoll wrote: post #107
twoodfin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some quick Googling tells me Instagram has something like 3B users who spend an average of around 30 minutes a day in the app. Rewind 30 years or so, how long did the typical New York Times subscriber spend with their paper every day? Was the Times addictive? And I won’t even get started on network television for half a century.

"average of 30 minutes" covers a pretty massive range. Lots of people can get drunk once a month and suffer or cause no real harm. Some people get drunk everyday which is slightly more harmful.

So any producer of X should be regulated or otherwise held liable for the injuries of unhealthy individuals who misuse X?

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#112

Post by slopinthebag »

twoodfin wrote: post #96
slopinthebag wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anybody making any claims about social media usage leading to clinically meaningful addiction. So why are you asking for evidence of that? Also fwiw I'm not in favour of regulating social media, but I am in favour of bringing lawsuits to companies who engage in societally harmful behaviour, and punishing them financially.

So what the heck are we talking about ITT? “I’m so addicted to Firefly !” That kind of thing?

No. It's been established that social media use can produce addiction-like behaviors, that it uses mechanisms similar to gambling and substance addiction, and that a subset of people experience significant impairment as a result of social media consumption. It's still debated if it should be classified as a form of Substance Use Disorder, which is what the term "clinically meaningful" refers to, but the debate is more a matter of classification and semantics, not if the issue exists at all. And not what people are referring to in the context of this case and discussion.

If you're interested in the topic further, you could consider reading 'Toward the classification of social media use disorder: Clinical characterization and proposed diagnostic criteria', which should shine some more light on what people are referring to as "addiction" in this circumstance :)

If you're interested in the neuroscience, consider reading "Neurobiological risk factors for problematic social media use as a specific form of Internet addiction: A narrative review".

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#113

Post by fc417fc802 »

twoodfin wrote: post #108
fc417fc802 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a specially designed endless bag of such were aggressively marketed and chemicals to induce appetite added to them then sure.

None of those attributes are necessary beyond those of an ordinary bag of Lays to meet the definition: “things which are harmful and which people have trouble not doing”

It's a matter of degree.

I don't impulsively drive to the store to purchase another bag immediately after finishing the one I have whereas (for example) many people exhibit such behavior when it comes to tobacco.

In the case of social media the feed is intentionally designed to be difficult to walk away from and it is endless (or close enough as makes no practical difference). Even if it weren't endless, refreshing an ever changing page is trivial in comparison to driving to the store and spending money.

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#114

Post by wredcoll »

dolebirchwood wrote: post #90
maxaw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know a single person who after exposure to short form video has not had to exert special effort to regulate their consumption.

Is this a young people thing? I'm 40. I have never liked Shorts. What am I supposed to get out of 10 seconds of video? And all the sudden jump-cuts, and big obnoxious one-word-at-a-time subtitles... They're all literally unwatchable.

Please, I beg you, stop and think about these things.

"is it a young people thing": no, obviously not because nothing is.

You're just as prone to addictive behaviours at 20 as at 40 at 80.

There might be some differences as to how you happen to be exposed, perhaps because of how your literal social network is behaving, but that's obviously not intrinsic.

I mean, yes, perhaps "young people" are slightly more likely to be exposed to it via advertising/peers/etc, but anyone with a similar exposure can be a victim.

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#115

Post by im3w1l »

I think the issue people are not acknowledging is that social media and apps and phones are addictive because they are fun. People are addicted to having fun, and to outlaw the addiction is to literally make fun illegal.

Let me take half a step backward from that provocative stance. Of course we don't need to outlaw all fun, but we perhaps we really do need to outlaw some fun, to prevent people from overindulgence. Maybe a sin tax could be the way to go.

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#116

Post by wredcoll »

twoodfin wrote: post #100
bigDinosaur wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You dropped the second half of my sentence which pointed to a specific harm. You consequently argued against something which I didn't say. You are not arguing in good faith and this 'conversation' has clearly run its course as you are not capable of engaging the actual points someone is making. Someone saying that someone shouldn't be able to promote specific harm x is not saying that the idea of 'promotion' of anyth…

OK, sorry, so using behavioral psychology to encourage an audience to stay on the couch watching TV for prolonged periods should be illegal? This is the Netflix business model, right now.

Netflix makes the same profit whether you watch 30 minutes or 30 hours a month.

Tiktok gets paid for every extra second you spend there.

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#117

Post by salawat »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #83
wheelerwj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even close and you know it.

You don't know much about the advertising or food businesses, I take it. Suggest Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation . It'll open your eyes.

The problem isn't X domain of business is more scummy than Y. They all are. That's kind of the problem. Tech is just egregious though in it's non-reliance on physical matter, meaning anything that can be digitally rendered is instantly a world scale fucking problem.

If it were one building in one state doing this shit, no one would care, and we'd just block or tell people don't go in the building. That doesn't work with digital products that started benign, then had the addictive qualities turned up to 11. That's malice, at scale. If every ice cream parlor, or link in the ice cream supply chain started adulterating ice cream with drugs, regulators would have dropped the hammer at the site of adulteration. Meta et Al have had no such presence forced upon them due to lack of regulation in some jurisdictions, or being left to self implement the regulation, thereby largely neutering the effort.

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#118

Post by alex1138 »

munificent wrote: post #72
operatingthetan wrote: post #6

>The verdict has forced those inside the companies to grapple with the fact that many outsiders do not view them as favourably as they have come to view themselves. I'm not sure this rings true to me. Meta has to know that millenials and younger are giving up on their platforms, they have endless internal data showing it, right? If anything they are just afraid of endless litigation while they are struggling to gain…

> Meta has to know that millenials and younger are giving up on their platforms, they have endless internal data showing it, right? Facebook is dwindling, but Instagram is still thriving.

I hate that they own it. The case for antitrust is less than in the case of Whatsapp (though with Instagram Zuckerberg had to hasily backpedal in an email, probably because his lawyer furiously told him not to say certain things about buying up the competition) but they tried merging all the backend systems for messaging once

Instagram doesn't make Zuckerberg "successful". He's a black hat that deserves jail

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#119

Post by twoodfin »

slopinthebag wrote: post #112
twoodfin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what the heck are we talking about ITT? “I’m so addicted to Firefly !” That kind of thing?

No. It's been established that social media use can produce addiction-like behaviors, that it uses mechanisms similar to gambling and substance addiction, and that a subset of people experience significant impairment as a result of social media consumption. It's still debated if it should be classified as a form of Substance Use Disorder, which is what the term "clinically meaningful" refers to, but the debate is mor…

Ah. “Can produce addiction-like behaviors”!

Like, I dunno, really getting into running or yoga or fantasy football?

Where is the line, according to experts in addiction-like behavior?

Re: Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

#120

Post by alex1138 »

troad wrote: post #75
jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #64

I have no love for social media, but I also really don't like the idea of the government regulating how apps are designed, or trying to circumnavigate online privacy to "protect children" which where I see this whole thing going. On another note, personally I'm not sure I buy the "addictive" argument with social media, maybe its just me but I find social media pretty boring, but I think for a lot of younger people it…

It's wild to me how many people are willing to throw basic civil liberties overboard because they don't like the other guys. Today's media circus is about addictive social media. Before that it was video games and rock music and D&D clubs. Before that it the Satanic panic of the 80s, gay 'recruitment', Soviet spies. Much before that it was witches and heretics. And so on and so on, forever. If you have a choice, mayb…

Perhaps but then you get stuff like this https://bradfrost.com/blog/post/facebook-you-needy-sonofabit...

They need to play fair or GTFO

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