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Fear and denial in Silicon Valley over social media addiction trial

bbc.com

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

#151

Post by bradlys »

fromMars wrote: post #124

It's screens. We don't allow my son to use social media and he is still addicted to using an Ipad. We have to forcefully remove it. He just wants to play games on it constantly. Heck, I am constantly looking at hacker news on my phone.

I don’t think it’s even screens. It’s something more broad. I don’t get how people can see third spaces and so forth dwindling even in the 80s and 90s before screens in everyone’s hands were a thing.

People want community but at a distance and only when they want it at a specific time. Everyone talks about how great it is to have community/village for raising kids but then they deal with their family teaching their kids bad habits, others being slightly neglectful compared to them, and having to put up with giving back to others to make it more fairly compensatory.

Shocker. Many people didn’t like that shit and decided it was better to do it all alone than deal with any inconveniences from others. You what your parents to help raise your kids? Nope. They often did bad things to you that you didn’t like. Also it means someone’s family has to move or live with the other. Another dealbreaker.

We just live in expensive times and these things are harder to do in a more globally competitive economy. People have lower tolerance.

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

#152

Post by troad »

twoodfin wrote: post #137
techblueberry wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is trying to regulate speech. And actually, the traditional solution was a duel to the death.

What else could “at some point we limit your freedom of expression” possibly mean?

Yes, such a coherent argument: "no one is trying to restrict your speech, and if they were it would be good actually."

There are people who just can't admit to themselves they actually hate free speech. Because they're people who've never needed it. They've never been abolitionists speaking against slavery, or civil rights leaders speaking against apartheid - whether in South Africa or the American South. They've never been gay people fighting for equality, or trans people fighting to survive. They've never been an unfavoured minority - ethnic, religious, sexual, linguistic, what have you. They don't need free speech, so why should you? Everyone else already has all the rights that they could possibly want or need, so as far as they're concerned, all these people are needlessly disruptive to the public order. So they maintain a fiction of collectivism, in reality a majoritarian hegemony, while silencing anyone who'd speak out against it. They can't quite bring themselves to say they oppose free speech, but they act in practice to undermine it.

It is a contemptible stance.

Somewhere out there is a young lesbian in Russia finding her people on social media, a young atheist in Saudi Arabia making friends online. And the majority is as ever ready to throw the most vulnerable under the bus, so that they, the majority, don't need to take a modicum of responsibility for their own idle doomscrolling. And if they need to whip up a moral panic to do so, fine. More efficient that way, helps override people's rationality.

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

#153

Post by intended »

twoodfin wrote: post #77
bjt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of public interest limitations on free speech. Food labels, cigarette warnings, deceptive ad laws. Regulating addictive social media isn't really an outlier here.

Even commercial speech regulations need a stronger basis than, “People spend a lot of time listening to it.”

The parent comment set up a false choice and then had to adapt to the response calling their bluff.

The issue isn’t with reading or consuming content, as was set up in the challenge above.

The issue is with designing feeds and surfacing content in ways that take advantage of our brains.

As an analogy, loot boxes in video games, and slot machines come to mind. Both are designed to leverage behavioral psychology, and this design choice directly results in compulsive behavior amongst users.

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

#154

Post by intended »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #39
mmaunder wrote: post #5

We all know they're addictive, they're designed to be addictive, and they're very, very harmful, to both adults and children. The individuals who are profiting from the harm are clearly identifiable. And that harm directly targets children. That this is allowed to continue is a symptom of a sick society.

I absolutely do not know they're addictive. I've lived through this entire story before in the video game wars. People said exactly the same things with exactly the same urgency about Mortal Kombat - what kind of sick society do we live in, where greedy corporations sell you the experience of shooting people and ripping their heads off? Perhaps we have to let adults buy these "murder simulators", but only a disturbed…

Having lived through those panics, fought against them, and then raised the alarm on Lootboxes and FarmVille the day they came out - these are not the same things.

This isn’t a moral panic.

Mortal Kombat did not result in changed behavior in its users. As I recall, The best study on video games only showed that there was some change in behavior for a short time after playing a game, and then children reverted to their baseline.

On the other hand, social media has not survived that scrutiny, with multiple studies show a causal link between anorexia, depression, anxiety, addictive design and social media.

People defended cigarettes too back in the day, and it took years for people to stop smoking cigarettes in public.

Tobacco was not a moral panic.

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

#155

Post by fc417fc802 »

twoodfin wrote: post #146
fc417fc802 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you intentionally being obtuse? It means whether or not the product was intentionally designed to be addictive. What was the intent behind the design? Why were the decisions made? Was there a reasonable alternative that was otherwise functionally equivalent? The limiting principle on liability is quite complicated. You'd have to go ask a lawyer. At least in the US (and I believe most of the western world) it has…

This is begging the question. Doritos are designed to taste good and encourage you to eat them to your satisfaction. The latest Mario game is designed to be playable & fun for as long as you have time and energy to play it. My Instagram feed is designed to engage me with interesting and relevant content for as long as I have time to scroll. All three can be used in unhealthy ways, and would be less likely to be so us…

No, it is not begging the question. Can you point to where I presupposed my own conclusions? You are (I suspect disingenuously) pretending not to understand intent.

It doesn't matter if the outcome is the same here what matters is the intent behind the design when considered in the context of the intended usecase. That's in addition to lots of other factors (some of which I listed) plus any relevant legislation plus any relevant case law and that will all be examined in great detail by a court. At the end of the day what is legal and what is not is decided by that process. A large part of the point of employing corporate lawyers is to prevent a situation where your past behavior is examined from arising in the first place.

I'd suggest the essay "what color are your bits" if you're genuinely struggling to understand this concept.

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

#157

Post by ux266478 »

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…

> I also really don't like the idea of the government regulating how apps are designed

I agree with this whole heartedly, but the government works on mass-scale patterns. It's essentially their entire job to regulate such things. Wind the clock back 20 years and the regulation seems insane. With how prolific computers have become? How they've been shoehorned into everyone's lives, whether or not they have any business or interest in actually interacting with one? It's a logical necessity.

I don't like it and I don't think this is a real solution. We should instead be looking to wind things down. Less people using less computers in a smaller fraction of their day. That's it. Unfortunately it looks like instead we're just going to be losing all of our computing freedoms while doubling down on the bullshit because Grandma needs email or something.

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

#158

Post by ehnto »

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #144
shoobiedoo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of soda. Why the hell liquid poison is allowed to exist turns my stomach. You could fill libraries with data linking it to a myriad illnesses and causes of death. Yet they are even allowed to juke it with caffeine for no other reason than to up the addiction level. Like... what are we doing here.

its called freedom, do we really need the government to protect us from everything they deem bad or unhealthy?

At some point we end up defending the freedom for corporations to exploit people though. I think addiction is one of those times.

If a company has a product that relies on addiction mechanisms to succeed, that is a different situation, that is a corporate entity exploiting citizens for profit.

Cigarettes are a great example of where we can draw lines in the sand. If you want to smoke them go ahead you have that freedom, but I think companies should be banned from putting nicotine in them. Simple and obvious lines in the sand.

Vapes, whatever, smoke your bubblegum water. Vapes with nicotine? Clearly exploitive behaviour. Yes they can help you quit, but quit what? Nicotine addiction! If it weren't in cigarettes already you wouldn't need to quit it.

Social media is harder to draw lines in the sand for, but I think algorithmic feeds may be one place to target regulation.

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

#159

Post by 16mb »

jimmyjazz14 wrote: post #144
shoobiedoo wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of soda. Why the hell liquid poison is allowed to exist turns my stomach. You could fill libraries with data linking it to a myriad illnesses and causes of death. Yet they are even allowed to juke it with caffeine for no other reason than to up the addiction level. Like... what are we doing here.

its called freedom, do we really need the government to protect us from everything they deem bad or unhealthy?

I mean, I think they should at least be required to display its negative effects on your health prominently on the product.

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

#160

Post by edb_123 »

I found it quite entertaining (as well as deeply disturbing) to picture Zuckerberg & the other social media kingpins as a modern subtype of druglords rather than "traditional" software billionaires. It's just that they deal in modulating and manipulating the dopaminergic system with code rather than chemicals. And what's worse, they give you the drug for free, and then try to sell you to the highest bidder while you're "under the influence".

I mean, it can't be that hard to imagine them, with their never-before-seen fortunes, extensive real estate portfolios and their extravagant lifestyles, in the roles of modern day Pablo Escobars and the like. Addiction is extremely profitable.

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