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Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

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Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#161

Post by irae »

1bpp wrote: post #44
shaftway wrote: post #11

I feel like there are some key differences between the companies though. The second one outlined for Meta is: > Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day). This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive. The first one outlined for YouTube is: > Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s au…

My YouTube use definitely isn't healthy, but it's still the only social app that asks me to take a break if I use it too long or late at night. That should be standard in any of these apps.

Instagram has it as a tool, not as default. You need to actively go, find, and enable timeframes for it to alert within your rest period.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#162

Post by irae »

shaftway wrote: post #11

I feel like there are some key differences between the companies though. The second one outlined for Meta is: > Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day). This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive. The first one outlined for YouTube is: > Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s au…

I believe the whole point is that some people inside acknowledge the issue, made leadership aware of it, yet, youtube still pushed sorts aggressively. The documents are prof of awareness, so they can't pretend they were unaware of the issues.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#163

Post by irae »

phatfish wrote: post #121
alamortsubite wrote: post #90

The "weird" thing about YouTube Shorts is no matter how many times you hide them (by clicking "Not Interested" or "Show fewer of these", however they label it), YouTube will continue to show them to you in your feed. I've hidden that crap 100 times and no doubt it'll be back soon.

Revanced YouTube app, turn off all the crap. Sometimes I open the official YouTube app to check my subscriptions and wonder how anyone uses it. If Google wasn't so ghastly and YouTube Premium had all the features of Revanced I would happily pay for it. I use the Revanced patched app logged out so Google doesn't decide to ban my account on a whim. Yes, one day I will dump Gmail, its getting closer with the state of th…

Dumping Gmail is a long process. I've had people sending to my old address for 5 years. Better start sooner than later.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#164

Post by irae »

sagacity wrote: post #6

It's good to see that many countries are working on lesiglation to protect children and teens against this, since the companies clearly aren't trying.

Government will do a terrible job at it. Society lost the capability of creating good and simple laws that can be disputed on courts based on law intention. Instead, laws nowadays are full of details hard to understand that attack the symptom and not the cause.

For instance, a simple law like "Companies should take measure, even if it lowers revenue and growth, to reduce addictive behavior. They should to it more emphatically on under age users and even more on under 13 years old.". But no. Instead, they will write 40 pages of what companies should implement in their software, and than have the 40 pages be quickly outdated, partially impossible to implement and hell for developers who try to do the right thing to comply. Total crap of standards and regulation bodies that help nothing and slow down all innovation.

Solution will only come from social pressure, movements to delete the apps, parents actually educating their children to avoid adicitive features. It will take time. But Government will solve nothing.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#165

Post by irae »

sharts wrote: post #9

This is obvious for anyone that understands sales and marketing. The real question isn’t whether this was true—the question is why does anyone expect this revelation would change anything? They made their wealth. They bought their politicians. In the worst possible case for them they would pay some fee that amounts to absolutely nothing making a dent in their personal day to day lives as a consequence of their action…

Awareness is more important than government regulation. Assuming you are a parent, we as parents should be more concerned and help our kids grow with a healthy relationship with aggressive marketing and addictive features, by actively avoiding it, setting up time restrictions, etc.. No one else can help kids besides their parents. Everything else is too slow to be effective and with mild efficacy.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#166

Post by program_whiz »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #139
program_whiz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a surprising take. So you know that this gun salesman is targeting the youth, and that parents can only resolve it by massive collective action, but they are to blame, and the gun salesman should be allowed to continue on his merry way? Do you think a crack dealer should be allowed to hang around on the playground and every kid has to talk to him too (and its up to parents to make sure the kids know not to bu…

> and the gun salesman should be allowed to continue on his merry way? I see nothing in their comments to suggest that. They argued against the government tracking people, that's it.

I was responding to this:

"I totally understand that "the salesman" is everywhere and that a single person can't fight against that, but he is everywhere because most parents are not blocking him in the first place, and that's exactly my point. Those are the parents that need to be blamed."

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#168

Post by f30e3dfed1c9 »

uniq7 wrote: post #132
mikkupikku wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted it because he invoked the analogy of alcohol and tobacco while simultaneously arguing that it should be totally on the parents. That's not how it's done for alcohol and tobacco! If that were true then any shop could sell booze and cigs to kids, and if that were the case then how could parents possibly hope to stop it? The premise that parenting is wholly on the parents and society at large doesn't need to…

Age verification for alcohol/tobacco doesn't require full identification nor keeps any records that can be later used for tracking people for other perverse purposes. I didn't say that "parenting is wholly on the parents", that's a straw man argument. I said that parents who don't keep their children away from digital dangers should be blamed. Parents have a huge radius of action, they can: - Avoid using Youtube for…

"Age verification for alcohol/tobacco doesn't require full identification"

In my state, buying cigarettes requires presenting your driver's license, which is scanned at every purchase. Not sure about alcohol.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#169

Post by Dylan16807 »

program_whiz wrote: post #166
Dylan16807 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the gun salesman should be allowed to continue on his merry way? I see nothing in their comments to suggest that. They argued against the government tracking people, that's it.

I was responding to this: "I totally understand that "the salesman" is everywhere and that a single person can't fight against that, but he is everywhere because most parents are not blocking him in the first place, and that's exactly my point. Those are the parents that need to be blamed."

I see that sentence. Your paraphrase is not accurate to it. They're talking about how to fight back effectively, which is different from allowing him to continue on his merry way.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#170

Post by weare138 »

1bpp wrote: post #44
shaftway wrote: post #11

I feel like there are some key differences between the companies though. The second one outlined for Meta is: > Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day). This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive. The first one outlined for YouTube is: > Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s au…

My YouTube use definitely isn't healthy, but it's still the only social app that asks me to take a break if I use it too long or late at night. That should be standard in any of these apps.

Youtube isn't doing that for your health. It's so they're not wasting ads and bandwidth on users who aren't watching anymore to maximize their profits. The sole purpose of a for-profit corporation is to generate revenue for its owners and shareholders. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Do not expect anything different. Corporations only care so long as its profitable.
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