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Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

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Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#161

Post by mekdoonggi »

guywithahat wrote: post #45

There is a humor that these law firms won a case against Meta and the first thing they did is give them advertising money won from the court case. That said the ads sound pretty aggressive, and from what I've read it sounds like it wasn't a very fair decision. I understand the conflict of interest but I have sympathies for Meta here

I think these ads were to bait Meta into banning them (which they've done) and now the firm will follow up with a lawsuit because Meta suddenly is able to very rapidly decide what ads get shown if it's going to hurt their bottom line.

I do not have any sympathy for Meta.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#164

Post by nielsbot »

hn_acker wrote: post #159
PaulHoule wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him? Sure this will slow down the personal injury lawyers finding clients but it won't stop them, meantime it is more ammunition for Facebook's enemies to use against it. It is one thing to do shady business, it is another thing to incriminate yourself. If you were involved with weed and somebody sent you…

> Does Zuckerberg have some kind of clinical condition where he just can't imagine how other people might see him? Cory Doctorow describes Mark Zuckerberg's and Elon Musk's attitude toward other people as billionaire solipsism [1]. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/05/fisher-price-steering-whe...

Good writing. thanks for sharing.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#165

Post by neilv »

Idea of something that undergraduate colleges could do, to encourage reflection about ethics in careers:

Annually poll all the students, to get rankings of how the ethics of well-known companies/brands are perceived by the students.

Then publish the results to students, in a timely fashion, before they're deciding job offers and internships.

I speculate that effects of this could include:

1. Good hiring candidates modifying what offers they pursue and accept -- influenced by awareness, self-reflection, and/or peer-pressure.

2. Students thinking and talking about ethics, when they didn't before. Then some of them carry this influence with them, as part of their character and intellect, going forward (like is one of the ideals of college education).

Also, maybe the second year of the poll, the sentiments are better-informed, because a lot more people have started paying more attention to the question of ethics of a company.

The perception breakdowns by college major would also be interesting, but maybe don't publish those, to reduce internal incentives to game the results. (Everyone knows some majors tend a bit more towards sociopathic than others, but some would rather that not be officials.)

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#166

Post by freejazz »

deeponey wrote: post #112
LocalH wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater? I believe we need to strengthen 230, but with the added caveat that affected platform owners must stop gaming the algorithms, that it must require user-driven curation. Let me curate my own feed, stop shoving shit in front of my eyes. When you do so, you're making heavy editorial decisions, and should be open to liability.

This is really the essence of it. Section 230 is critical to a healthy internet, but there is large grey area between editorial and platform. Places like youtube, meta, X, etc. are pretending to be platforms when really they are algorithmic editors, gatekeepers, and curators. They are much more like traditional media newspapers than say your ISP, and they need to be treated as such.

What about the internet today is healthy such that anyone could point to Section 230 as the reason why?

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#167

Post by petre »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #162
elAhmo wrote: post #156

We can effectively trace all of the problems we have today in a global scale back to social media.

Exactly. Without social media there would have been no nazis.

Bierhalle, the social media of the 20s, to only without the personal data hoarding.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#168

Post by boelboel »

wvenable wrote: post #130
ginkgotree wrote: post #100

Social Media, and specifically Facebook / Meta, will go down in history as one of the worst developments in technology in the 21st century. As Frances Haugen stated in her testimony, Mark Zuckberg needs to be removed from the helm at Meta.

I think television has done more harm, politically.

Radio did plenty of harm as well (especially post 1987). Rush Limbaugh had a peak audience of 20-30 million listeners a week in the 90s. The current state of politics might've been unpreventable, at least in the US.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#169

Post by Fraterkes »

raincole wrote: post #70
Fraterkes wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment brings up the ToS as an example of why it's naive to believe Meta is obligated to do something, but what Meta is obligated to do depends on the law.

And which laws state that Meta is obligated to show ads like this?

Irrelevant. My point is that the parent comment did imply that the ToS created obligations for Meta in the way that laws do, which means your first comment was incorrect.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#170

Post by NERD_ALERT »

elAhmo wrote: post #156

We can effectively trace all of the problems we have today in a global scale back to social media.

I don’t disagree that social media has played a massive role in changing the world in a negative way. This is a very far reaching claim though and one that kinda misses the forest for the trees. The problem is that fundamentally capitalism demands that companies find more ways to siphon more money from customers every quarter or they fail.

Social media is a perfect storm for the elites in this system. It’s a CIA wet dream. It’s literally a globalized and hyper personalized propaganda distribution platform. This is the inevitable outcome of capitalism and human behavior. Meta’s whole purpose is to create the most optimized pipeline for accepting money from 3rd parties in exchange for convincing as many people as possible of what they want those people to believe.

Social media is evil but it’s also the natural course of what happens with current technology and the incentives of capitalism.

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