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Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

psycnet.apa.org

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Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#121

Post by FloorEgg »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #117
Aurornis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much value they extract from it exactly is likely something not even Google knows. But given that it can be exchanged on dark data broker markets in perpetuity, Companies like Google and Meta don't sell your data, on dark markets or otherwise. They keep it in-house for advertising targeting purposes. If they sold it to other companies it would reduce their competitive advantage. It's not even worth it for them.…

They won’t sell your raw data, but they will use your data to charge a premium for their ads. It’s indirectly “selling your data”.

Its monetizing the data. Selling the data (directly or indirectly) is inaccurate.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#122

Post by largbae »

nearbuy wrote: post #68
1970-01-01 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want more of your money. They will monetize you as much as they can. You're just a well-supported, paying product.

They don't make more money from showing you shorts once you've paid to remove the ads. The default reason some feature doesn't exist is simply because no one bothered to make it. Maybe they don't think there's a big demand from their users to disable shorts completely.

They can still use it to learn your preferences and tighten their profile of you for all the searching and other ad-enabled activities you take.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#124

Post by jonners00 »

arthurjj wrote: post #98
bogwog wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is a monopolist. They have no real competitive pressure, so they're incentivized to extract as much value from you as possible rather than waste time trying to retain you as a user (cuz where are you gonna go lol). Forcing short form video on you could be seen as either an attempt to get you addicted to the format, or just a way for some product manager to fluff up their metrics for a promotion. No matter what…

But Youtube isn't a monopoly. It's competing with Netflix, Prime Video, Hulu Instagram, Tiktok and Twitch off the top of my head. So they do have to make Youtube competitive Your theory of > just a way for some product manager to fluff up their metrics for a promotion. is the most likely culprit

It is a monopolist in the format it specialises in - medium length 'creator content' that the creators typically post every 2-10 days. Some do post to Nebula and Patreon, but really, there's nowhere else to go for that kind of content, and that's the content that most of their ad revenue is attached to.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#125

Post by markeroon »

hodgehog11 wrote: post #102
markeroon wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it important to stress that though? This feels like a personal responsibility argument while also acknowledging that it disproportionately affects people who don't have a ton of control over their response to it.

It is important; if SFV cause these symptoms, that could be grounds (long-term) to ban them. Not so if they only exacerbate preexisting conditions.

I think that this is an opinion. For instance, one might think online gambling should be illegal, regardless of whether it causes addictive behavior or exacerbates some genetic predisposition to it.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#126

Post by dylan604 »

So the old saying "I can feel myself getting dumber for watching" has some merit. I used to say that for things like Housewives/Kardashian style tripe, as well as bad sitcoms with laugh tracks like Big Bang Theory that was supposed to be so smart

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#127

Post by ddtaylor »

occupant wrote: post #49

I found myself nodding in agreement and patting myself on the back about not consuming SFVs, until I realized that I had just read the abstract and closed the page.

What's the problem with that?

I'm not in that field of study and I'm not going to attempt to perform all of that science. That has been delegated to other scientists. They produced a comprehensive study, which summarizes to layman terms as "short form bad."

You're not required to understand the nuts and bolts of why. Hell, if you want you can just blindly accept whatever you want, but I think accepting highly peer reviewed studies to do the research for you.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#128

Post by vacuity »

occupant wrote: post #49

I found myself nodding in agreement and patting myself on the back about not consuming SFVs, until I realized that I had just read the abstract and closed the page.

In fairness, I think reading abstracts is a good way to 1) quickly gain information and 2) figure out if the paper is worth the time to read. Especially for paywalled papers, and when I'm trying to get a broad sense of different ideas, consuming a few tens of abstracts is a nice way to get a feel for the research.

On a somewhat different note, I also tend to only read the comments of HN threads and Youtube videos...

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#129

Post by imiric »

Aurornis wrote: post #115
imiric wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's right, but it's not just products that they can "sell" you. It's all about your data, which is worth much more than any upsell opportunity. Whether the user pays for YouTube Premium or not, they still have access to your behavioral data, your interests, they can easily determine your location, and so on. All of these data points contribute to your profile, which is a literal gold mine for their entire business…

> How much value they extract from it exactly is likely something not even Google knows. But given that it can be exchanged on dark data broker markets in perpetuity, Companies like Google and Meta don't sell your data, on dark markets or otherwise. They keep it in-house for advertising targeting purposes. If they sold it to other companies it would reduce their competitive advantage. It's not even worth it for them.…

Whether they're directly doing business with data brokers or not is not the point. They're indirectly profiting from the profiles they build by selling access to them via their advertising platform. It's just a roundabout way of doing business, as is common in advertising.

Besides, even if they're not selling these profiles, they will end up on data broker markets one way or another. Whether their lack of security allows companies to export it, as in Meta's case, or simply by using their tools to gather as much information about people as possible.

The reality is that nobody outside of these companies, and likely only people in executive positions, knows how they operate internally. They have an army of PR and legal people to do their bidding. Whatever practices the public thinks these companies are or aren't involved with is mere guesswork, but one thing is certain: they don't maintain their size and power by keeping their hands clean. But then again, I'm probably on the wrong forum for this line of thinking.

Re: Cognitive and mental health correlates of short-form video use

#130

Post by abixb »

Insightful paper. Policy/lawmakers needs to take much more input from high-quality, publicly funded (aka unbiased) research and make informed decisions on restricting content type. The social media companies rn are akin to tobacco companies selling products/services to kids (and adults!) with zero meaningful restriction or warnings. There's a mountain of research showing cognitive performance impacts from content consumed through smartphone, especially fluffy, low quality "algorithmic feed" content.

BTW, I still need to use YouTube and this one extension has protected my YouTube experience from being TikTok-ified -- "ShortsBlocker - Remove Shorts from YouTube" [0]

When people do send me random Shorts, I use another browser (consciously) to watch that particular video and shut it back down. You can also pair that with "Block YouTube Feed - Homepage, Sidebar Videos" [1] for another layer of YouTube cruft removal.

Finally, I've also installed "Turn Off YouTube Comments & Live Chat" [2] which keeps me from scrolling down to comments and letting that 'color' my perception of the video -- has restored my own ability to judge the value of a video.

[0] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/shortsblocker-remov...

[1] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/block-youtube-feed-...

[2] https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/turn-off-youtube-co...

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