Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 276 posts

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#181

Post by pocksuppet »

Pxtl wrote: post #102
epistasis wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago this seemed a bit too extreme for me. Now, with the web mostly burned down anyway, I see little to lose and lots to gain in a section 230 repeal. My, how the Overton Window changes on some ideas. And when it's changing on some things it tends to accelerate on others too, like a social momentum on reconsidering past norms.

My compromise pitch, since the "You need ID from your users" ship has sailed: Companies are not liable if they have proper ID of the person who submitted the content and can provide that to a plaintiff. If they have not made a good-faith effort to know who submitted this info (like taking ID, not just an email address) then they're taking responsibility for the submitted content. Which means sites that have responsib…

That's basically how things used to work in Germany. It used to be that if someone torrented movies on your internet connection, you were fined. No ifs, no buts, they monitored 100% of the public torrents and courts agreed with 100% of the fines. And they didn't care who did it - if they didn't know (which is almost always true) they fined the owner of the internet connection. It was a really really bad law. For 10-15 years after every other country had public wifi hotspots, Germany didn't because the owner would get fined for every torrent. After a very long time, they eventually passed a law saying public wifi operators didn't have to pay.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#182

Post by finghin »

arendtio wrote: post #180

I love it, because it shows that advertisement is communication as well. Communication is highly regulated for good reasons, and advertisement is not. This is as if telecommunication companies would disconnect calls when what is being said does not fit their agenda. This should be illegal for advertising companies as well.

I rarely say this, but very fitting username.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#183

Post by pocksuppet »

k33n wrote: post #22
nkrisc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. If they're not impartial then lets hold them accountable for the content published in their platform.

I’m not against these companies losing their Section 230 immunity. Social media platforms are, in my personal opinion, publishers in their current form. If they went back to operating as “friends and family feed providers” then letting them keep their 230 immunity would be easier to justify.

Section 230 doesn't say anything about publishers. That was entirely made up by chronically online arguers.

What it does say is you aren't liable for something someone else wrote.

It doesn't create liability for things not covered by it.

Guess who decides the order and contents of Facebook feeds? Facebook does. So they wouldn't be liable for someone writing a post saying "gas the jews" but they would still be liable for choosing to show it at the top of everyone's front page, if that was a choice, because the front page was choice-based rather than chronological.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#185

Post by engeljohnb »

Legend2440 wrote: post #178
elAhmo wrote: post #156

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

All the problems? Really?

The words "scale back to" are vague, but I'm struggling to think of any current global problems that weren't at least exacerbated by social media.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#186

Post by MandieD »

boelboel wrote: post #168
wvenable wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Radio did plenty of harm in 1930s Germany - Hitler was a master of the new medium.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#187

Post by mrweasel »

elAhmo wrote: post #156

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

Assuming that we'll come to our senses, I think well be looking back at social media, in it's current form, the same way we now look at the Victorians using opium as cough medicine. It works, but holy shit are you doing it wrong.

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#188

Post by nickff »

engeljohnb wrote: post #185
Legend2440 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the problems? Really?

The words "scale back to" are vague, but I'm struggling to think of any current global problems that weren't at least exacerbated by social media.

"[G]lobal" is doing a lot of work in this sentence if I'm reading it as intended; this seems to exclude international conflict and intra-national strife (which are very big issues).

Re: Meta removes ads for social media addiction litigation

#190

Post by jerf »

At the risk of going against the gestalt, Facebook openly and publicly rejecting the ads is actually one of the better outcomes. They could have just put their thumbs on the scale, deprioritizing them, serving them to people they think are least likely to bite, etc. Lying about the number of times it was served because, after all, who can check? Many of us suspect the ad platforms already do this pretty routinely through one mechanism or another anyhow, after all.

It isn't reasonable to ask a platform to host content that is literally about suing them, not because of "freedom" concerns or whether or not Facebook is being hypocritical, but more because in the end there isn't a "fair" way for them to host that. The constraints people want to put on how Facebook would handle that ends up solving down to the null set by the time we account for them all. Open, public rejection is actually a fairly reasonable response and means the lawyers at least know what is up and can respond to a clear stimulus.

Post reply on HN