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Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

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Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#161

Post by Timon3 »

zooq_ai wrote: post #155
Timon3 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's exactly where the "Insurance" part comes in. How does that work for people who have never been able to work (i.e. chilren in bad households and people with disabilities from birth/young age)? They can't pay for membership, so why would a private insurance company insure them for free? What if all insurance companies happen to not accept them as customers? > However, Government should also not be in the busin…

Lots of children in bad households have made out to be ok, and plenty of children with well-off families. Disabilities birth/young age is act of "god". It's perfectly fine to take care of them. However they only account 1-2% of the population. Death due to Missing Coverage is overrated. All Emergency Units take in patients and most exaggerated medical bill people actually don't pay the said bill

> Lots of children in bad households have made out to be ok, and plenty of children with well-off families.

And many of those children in bad households have been able to get where they are due to being helped by the state, which you do not want. So what do they do? Just die? If you don't give a concrete solution, that will be the outcome. Remember that we're talking about basic needs like food and shelter - a child can't do much about not having these available.

> Disabilities birth/young age is act of "god". It's perfectly fine to take care of them. However they only account 1-2% of the population.

Okay, then please explain to me what central entity should help these people, if it's not the state. As I previously said, what if all private insurance doesn't take these people on for free? What do they do except die?

> Death due to Missing Coverage is overrated. All Emergency Units take in patients and most exaggerated medical bill people actually don't pay the said bill

I am not solely talking about health insurance. You stated that you want to solve food and housing problems with similar insurance. Why would these private insurance companies give coverage to those who can't afford it? Please don't handwave this point away.

Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#163

Post by thesausageking »

zooq_ai wrote: post #55
thesausageking wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is well established that social media use by teens leads to worse mental health outcomes. I'm a parent and as my kids near the age in which social media becomes a thing, I started digging into. I had assumed it would be vague and filled with underpowered studies, but it's not. Social media is bad for kids and the data is very clear on it. This post has a list of the some of the better studies and gives a goo…

I can prove the same correlation with the rise of a) Broadband Internet b) Transgenderism c) iMessage So, why Meta?

No you can't. Read the linked studies. "correlation doesn't equal causation" isn't a magic spell that disproves all research.

For more, here's an open, collaborative review of 386 studies: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w-HOfseF2wF9YIpXwUUtP65-...

Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#164

Post by thesausageking »

katfish17 wrote: post #147
thesausageking wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is well established that social media use by teens leads to worse mental health outcomes. I'm a parent and as my kids near the age in which social media becomes a thing, I started digging into. I had assumed it would be vague and filled with underpowered studies, but it's not. Social media is bad for kids and the data is very clear on it. This post has a list of the some of the better studies and gives a goo…

This article was a good rebuttal to Haidt's post: https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evide...

That's a good analysis, but I don't find it convincing. He's trying really hard to disprove Haidt's post by poking holes in many of the studies. If you look at 386 studies in the social sciences, of course you'll find issues with the analysis or design of many of them.

The larger trends ("most of the effect is driven by teen who use no social media", etc.) aren't supported by the data he presents (look at the table of "social media time" -> Depression for example).

Are the researchers who look into this problem predisposed to finding a connection? Probably. But I do think the open, community based analysis Haidt led was done well and if you look at what they found digging through 386 studies, it's compelling.

Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#165

Post by ff317 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #134
kelseyfrog wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using people as a means is a reference to Kant[1]. > that would describe all business. What if it does? Should we avoid an honest conclusion because it has profound consequences? 1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/persons-means/

Yes, because unless there is an alternative proposal to feed and house the 8B people on this planet, then it is a waste of time to complain about the current solution being imperfect.

We don't need M&Ms in the checkout aisle to feed and house 8B people on this planet. Don't conflate what I'm saying with a general anti-business sentiment.

There are many kinds of economic transactions that occur. The best kinds are the win-win transactions. I have an excess of X and a dearth of Y, you have the opposite, and we swap them to our mutual benefit and walk away happy in the long term thinking that we both made a good deal, and even a third party analysis by experts would agree it was a good deal. This is basically the kind of transaction that happens when I swap $2 for a bunch of fresh cilantro at the market, to cook a meal with. Or when I pay a skilled mechanic a reasonable fee to do maintenance on my car that I can't do myself.

Then there's the other kinds of transactions: the exploitative ones. One person substantially and noticeably wins and the other person equally loses. There is no upside for the loser in the bigger economic picture of our lives. Lots of basic examples of this are common, and some are borderline fraud. An example would be the mechanic who charges 10x what he really /needed/ to make a healthy margin, because he's the only mechanic in town and I'm immobilized by my failed car, and I'm poor, and I'm putting it on a credit card because I don't have the money but have to get the car working to keep my job.

I'm positing that, in a larger holistic sense, the transactions for the candy in the checkout aisle (all the advertising that goes into it as well!) are like that. They're not so much economically harmful: it may in fact be a "good deal" in a basic math sense to pay $2 for the candy's ingredients and manufacturing process. But at the end of the day, they're turning a profit and you're continuing an unhealthy sugar addiction and eventually dying of diabetes. It's a transaction that's explicitly designed to exploit you and harm you for their collective profit. This is not a win-win, at least not in a larger, holistic sense.

Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#166

Post by steakknife »

LargeTomato wrote: post #160
lossolo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The dilemma parents are grappling with is this: tablets and smartphones, while beneficial for children's learning and socializing Recent reports from teachers indicate that many children are intellectually behind their peers. A concerning trend is that these children struggle to hold conversations, a problem attributed to their parents phone/social networks addiction. Rather than engaging and raising their children…

What do you mean they struggle to hold conversations? I was an awkward kid and you could say I struggled to hold conversations but it wasn't due to an addiction to tech. I'm also socially well adjusted now, as an adult.

There can be multiple reasons for the same outcome in a complex system. Prevalence of social awkwardness at certain developmental stages due to variances in individual immutable developmental schedules should remain stable over short time frames. Unless you think the researchers/teachers are incompetent enough to have not accounted for the baseline levels of social awkwardness, then the fact that some people are awkward because genetics or whatever is an irrelevant point to make.

Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#167

Post by Dweller1622 »

thesausageking wrote: post #164
katfish17 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article was a good rebuttal to Haidt's post: https://reason.com/2023/03/29/the-statistically-flawed-evide...

That's a good analysis, but I don't find it convincing. He's trying really hard to disprove Haidt's post by poking holes in many of the studies. If you look at 386 studies in the social sciences, of course you'll find issues with the analysis or design of many of them. The larger trends ("most of the effect is driven by teen who use no social media", etc.) aren't supported by the data he presents (look at the table o…

> He's trying really hard to disprove Haidt's post by poking holes in many of the studies.

Because this is how evidence based reasoning works. If the evidence that is supposed to support the hypothesis is fundamentally flawed, then our hypothesis doesn't actually have any support.

The fact that we can apparently so easily find flaws in what is supposed to be empirical evidence should make us more cautious about drawing firm conclusions. In fact, low quality literature is something of a plague in many social sciences at the moment (e.g. the replication crisis in social psychology).

This post presents a decent discussion of this sort of issue https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/beware-the-man-of-many-studies

Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#168

Post by stillwithit »

zooq_ai wrote: post #115
Timon3 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. There are many groups in our society who shouldn't have to rely on charity for survival, like the disabled, the elderly and children. Letting those without the means to provide for themselves die if they're unlucky, even though our economy can support them, is a terrible thing and shouldn't be an acceptable point of view.

That's exactly where the "Insurance" part comes in. Any act of "god" where pure bad luck is involved, some central entity should absolutely take care of them. However, Government should also not be in the business of prepping bad choices -- diet, family formation, bad lifestyle. Any society that is given unconditional support will degenerate

That’s true; we keep giving unconditional support to our Constitution based society and it’s a degenerate mess.

Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#169

Post by LargeTomato »

steakknife wrote: post #166
LargeTomato wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean they struggle to hold conversations? I was an awkward kid and you could say I struggled to hold conversations but it wasn't due to an addiction to tech. I'm also socially well adjusted now, as an adult.

There can be multiple reasons for the same outcome in a complex system. Prevalence of social awkwardness at certain developmental stages due to variances in individual immutable developmental schedules should remain stable over short time frames. Unless you think the researchers/teachers are incompetent enough to have not accounted for the baseline levels of social awkwardness, then the fact that some people are awkw…

> Unless you think the researchers/teachers are incompetent

Well the original post said

> Recent reports from teachers indicate

I don't think teachers are incompetent but they aren't researchers.

Re: Meta Designed Products to Capitalize on Teen Vulnerabilities, States Allege

#170

Post by GlibMonkeyDeath »

megaman821 wrote: post #118
GlibMonkeyDeath wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as putting actual cocaine in Coca-cola at first also optimized shareholder value. And it was perfectly legal, and not really even considered unethical - heck, it boosted energy, the user gets a beneficial service! Of course, we know how that worked out. What is galling is that Meta absolutely knows it is creating a bunch of cocaine addicted children.

Or Coca-cola was made using the coca leaf and the kola nut for flavor and energy reasons. The coca leaf has trace amounts of cocaine in it but is not like they were mixing cocaine powder into their drinks. They still use the coca leaf today but with the cocaine part bred out. Bringing up wrong historic points about "evil capitalists" doesn't really help your case against Meta.

Hmm, let me scan my words again - did I say they were evil capitalists or used cocaine powder? ...Nope don't see that anywhere.

They used a natural product that contained cocaine. They very much "put this in" their drinks. The analogy is actually excellent because probably the early makers of Coca-cola didn't understand the dangers of what they were doing, either.

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