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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

#161

Post by intended »

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…

That’s different. A friend at one of the SM platforms didn’t think they were the “bad guys”. Even now if you talk to people at Meta, they will point out the good they do.

I am sympathetic, because there is actual good that Meta does and teams that still try to fight the good fight.

But this is different from the way they are perceived in the broader public, which includes more than teens.

This is ignoring the strong America centricism that permeates decision making at an American firm. The emotions in the rest of the world are not even given the same degree of consideration.

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

#162

Post by systemsweird »

Isn’t a big part of the issue that social media is free and funded via ad revenue. So the business incentives push towards addictive engagement and increasing viewing time to see more ads. Not so different from traditional TV, but 1000x more potent since it’s a personalized algorithm.

What if instead of banning these addictive services we require companies to charge for them and disallow advertising revenue. That changes the entire business model, and there is no longer a strong incentive to have users spend as much time on the platform as possible. In fact, the best customer would be one that subscribes but barely uses the platform.

For me this all comes back to the perverse incentives that arrive when advertising is the primary source of revenue for the largest companies in the world. Social media allows advertising at scale never seen before and it’s no surprise that it’s been weaponized in ways that are actively harming people.

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

#163

Post by ineedasername »

superkuh wrote: post #12
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.

What these corporations were trying to do is bad and vaguely feasible to a degree. I think it's bad enough regulation could apply. But there is an additional consideration that's really important in how we as a society deal with this. Screens are not drugs. They are not somehow uniquely and magically addictive (like drugs actually are). The multi-media is not the problem and not the device to be regulated. The corpor…

so… choices, as you see them in this issue, the lenses through which on the one hand you think is extreme and the other appropriate… are either screens-as-drugs or sports fishing?

Some middle ground might be there somewhere. But if forced to choose… the choices for interpreting behavioral engineering funded by $billions in research for over a decade + data harvesting on a scale unprecedented, for the purpose of manipulating users:

Doesn’t sound a lot like fishing to me.

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

#164

Post by InvertedRhodium »

twoodfin wrote: post #59
InvertedRhodium wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More or less, yeah. There might be some nuance about the threshold for maladaptive behaviour, but if it’s all or nothing I’ll take all.

How would you get around the First Amendment difficulties?

I live in New Zealand, so I don't have to.

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

#165

Post by intended »

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…

TLDR: This isn’t a moral panic, and this has been building up for a decade plus now.

Heck no. Year after year after year these issues have been brought up and ignored.

I worked in this damn domain, and have seen better people than me try their best to avoid exactly this outcome, for these exact same firms.

I can give credit to the people at these firms who try to do the right thing, but the firm itself needs to answer in terms of revenue and growth figures.

The fact is that your policy and T&S teams are cost centers, while the quarterly shareholder report is God. There is only one way these incentives line up.

It’s been YEARS of teams within these firms raising the issues of user harms and getting no where.

I remember having T&S folks cry on MY shoulder about how they couldn’t get engineering resources even while working at a FAANG company.

Others talked about how, out of sheer repetition, they developed a protocol for the times an engineering team would inevitably come in to “fix” T&S issues. They knew they would get sidelined, till eventually the PM/engineers/Savior would run into the same problems they had been dealing with forever, and then ask for help.

Public research also has issues - If you want to do actual research on tech, you can’t even get the data.

If you get the data, you also get the NDA, which means your results need to make tech look good, or the report becomes an internal report that will never see the light of day.

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

#166

Post by zparky »

ktimespi wrote: post #76

The fact that I couldn't turn off shorts recommendations on youtube is just so, so annoying. It's such a time sink and I'm glad that the tides are finally shifting against addictive algorithms like these.

if you're on android, advanced is a blessing to de-shorts your YouTube.

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

#167

Post by thunderbong »

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.

Yes, it is. You just have to visit a dimly lit restaurant or bar with a nice big window facing the street. You'll see everyone mesmerised with what's happening outside during the day. The same place will might end up being a great conversation place after dusk!

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

#168

Post by thunderbong »

zparky wrote: post #166
ktimespi wrote: post #76

The fact that I couldn't turn off shorts recommendations on youtube is just so, so annoying. It's such a time sink and I'm glad that the tides are finally shifting against addictive algorithms like these.

if you're on android, advanced is a blessing to de-shorts your YouTube.

Did you mean revanced?

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

#169

Post by gitaarik »

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…

Interesting argument, but I think statistics about video game addiction & mental problems etc was never really serious, and with social media it is.

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

#170

Post by intended »

twoodfin wrote: post #87
kjkjadksj wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point we limit your freedom of expression to do things like dump toxic waste up river. This ought to be no different. The poisoning of the american mind for profit.

The traditional solution to speech you don’t like is more speech you do like.

The traditional solution worked for traditional problems.

I suspect most people don’t remember WHY free speech itself is valued. It’s often treated in a talismanic sense.

At least in America, a good part of the value of Free speech comes because it is a fundamental building block to having a vibrant market place of ideas.

Since no one has a monopoly on truth, our best model is to have a fair competitive market place that allows good ideas to thrive, even if they are uncomfortable.

The traditional risk to the free exchange of ideas was government control; the suppression of trade.

However, in the era we live in, we have evolved to find ways to shape the market through market capture. Through overwhelming the average user, instead of controlling speech. Bannon called this “flooding the zone”.

The traditional solution ensured a working and vibrant marketplace for its era. I don’t know what tools we will develop for the modern era.

Do note, we depend on content moderation to keep forums like HN running. The fundamental power of content moderation is censorship. Without the exercise of these censorial powers, we would not be able to have this discussion.

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