Facebook, WhatsApp, Snap, Twitter, YouTube, ByteDance, Twitch, Reddit, and Discord.
Specifically says Amazon, and not Twitch (though Amazon owns Twitch), which is interesting given they have Youtube but not Google/Alphabet.
FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
201–210 of 290 posts
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Friction is exactly what I believe the end answer is for social media, fake news, viral video, etc. Prior to the Internet, all communication included substantially larger amounts of friction. Broadcasting your opinion required acquiring TV, Radio, or Newspaper time/space. Sure there were low cost alternatives like standing in the public square and shouting your beliefs, but that is a far cry from tweeting out somethi…
> The friction was both a drag on productivity AND a safety mechanism to prevent mass spread of inaccurate or low quality content. I don't think this is correct. I remember a bunch of outlets from the seventies and eighties which had all of: far reach, inaccurate and low quality content. It was just restricted to few influential people with enough money. I think this is the reason why social media are fought that har…
It's a good point - the past was far from perfect. Long before the current "user generated content" fact-level problem, I remember (some) traditional internet forums offering the same problem as we have today - inane parroting of plausible sounding content, almost as mantras, to anyone who asked a question.
I learned from those days that you had to be careful as what you read on a forum was highly likely (at least in some circles where expertise is limited, the topic is complicated, and questions are plentiful) to be plain nonsense, or pseudo science.
On the other hand though, the increase in friction arguably reduces the scale of the problem you cite - making it financially based is far from ideal, but it at least reduced the breadth of the problem space to some extent.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Edited my post with some more details. While LinkedIn is a social media site of sorts, it's outside what I believe the focus of the investigation to be.
LinkedIn has a lot of teens on it actually. Very talented teens some, others are teens of average talent level. But they do have teens. They are also about 3 times bigger than discord. I think you could argue either way, because there may be a larger absolute number of teens on discord? The numbers are not broken out enough to tell. But given the nature of what we're dealing with, I wouldn't discount the idea of them…
Does LinkedIn have some children among its users? Sure.
Is LinkedIn targeting those users with its product? No.
Does LinkedIn have a business strategy surrounding those users? Probably not.
Is the way that LinkedIn interacts with these users going to be illustrative of larger industry trends? I doubt it.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
We all pay for Amazon Prime, and yet Amazon is on there. Netflix is a video streaming service which will "collect, use, track, estimate, or derive personal and demographic information". It will "determine which ads and other content are shown to consumers". It will "apply algorithms or data analytics to personal information". It will "measure, promote, and research user engagement". And "their practices affect childr…
Amazon owns Twitch... which is a completely different beast than Amazon Prime Video.
From the order "Identify each Social Media and Video Streaming Service provided or sold by the Company". It doesn't seem to be limited to only Social Media sites, it also includes any "Video Streaming Service". The broadest interpretation I could come up with from this statement also include the cloud video streaming/transcoding offerings Amazon provides.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
This seems interesting - clearly the friction in sharing everything with everyone is far lower online than before. Before, you had to consume finite resources (time, energy, postage stamps, etc.) to tell someone else about something. This gave a natural rate limit. As a thought experiment, what if the degrees of separation were less rigidly enforced, but people's "power of voice" decays the further it goes from those…
Friction is exactly what I believe the end answer is for social media, fake news, viral video, etc. Prior to the Internet, all communication included substantially larger amounts of friction. Broadcasting your opinion required acquiring TV, Radio, or Newspaper time/space. Sure there were low cost alternatives like standing in the public square and shouting your beliefs, but that is a far cry from tweeting out somethi…
I think one of the biggest challenges with modern social media is the ability for anyone to immediately engage in "broadcast" communications.
Absent the centralised media of old, broadcast simply wasn't an option in the past - at best you could try to multicast by shouting in the corner of a bar at as many friends as you could muster, or stand in the street and talk to groups of people.
Unicast was scalable and easily accessible - just pick up the phone, or write a letter. But the average person probably couldn't gain access to a significant multicast group without first gaining the "backing" of their group. And they could then attempt to grow from there. Clearly that's far from perfect as echo chambers are an issue today as well! But it does feel to me like the lack of friction, coupled with nearly instant access to a global, un-namespaced platform, and the ability to broadcast, has just removed a little too much friction. I guess the big challenge is working out how to add enough appropriate friction to improve the situation. Or do we need to revert to a more namespaced internet again?
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple Message is a message service. Its features include a way to personalize messages. It's not collecting personal/demographic information, it's not trying to increase user engagement (addictiveness), it's not serving ads. So, it clearly is outside the scope of the information that the FTC is trying to gather.
> It's not collecting personal/demographic information Sure is! On my iCloud account, Apple has my address, my location, the location of all of my devices, my Apple Card is tied directly to purchases, and much more! Did you know iMessage specifically even used to be linked directly to Facebook's evil social graph? > it's not trying to increase user engagement (addictiveness) Citation? I would bet a large amount of mo…
iMessage is a pure messaging service - there are no recommendations, no feed, no following friends, no status updates, no likes, no profiles, no stories, and no connection to Facebook at all. Most importantly, no advertising since they actually make money off the products, which means no incentive for gaming engagement metrics. They want you to have a good time and sell you another device next year, not glue your eyeballs to the screen.
Since there is no “Apple social network” to be spoken of, there would be little reason to include them.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#207Had a good laugh at the bottom of the release: "Like the FTC on Facebook(link is external), follow us on Twitter(link is external), get consumer alerts, read our blogs, and subscribe to press releases for the latest FTC news and resources."
Like us on the platforms we're issuing orders to.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#208Here is the actual order (PDF warning): https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/6b-orders... I would encourage everyone to read it. My personal take is that this is a ridiculous amount of homework to do in 45 days, and is essentially the FTC asking for not only these companies' "secret sauce" but also their confidential bookkeeping. I would be astounded if none of them challenged this order. For example, r…
I also strongly encourage people to read the dissent at https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements....
Of particular interest is that the reason why only 9 companies were targeted is that if they had targeted 10 or more, they would have have a mandatory review under the paperwork reduction act. A review that would have almost certainly said they couldn't ask for most of what they asked for in the way that they asked for it.
On this logic and this logic alone, companies like Apple, Gab, GroupMe, LinkedIn, Parler, Rumble, and Tumblr were not targeted. Think about that.
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The only plausible benefit to drawing the lines the Commission has is targeting a number of high profile companies It's almost as though the majority of the Commission recognizes that its resources are limited, and that going on a wild goose chase investigating a bunch of smaller social media companies would simply ensure that nothing would be accomplished. Apple isn't even a social media company. I have no idea wh…
> Apple isn't even a social media company It is not primarily a social media company but they have a big portfolio which includes social features, one example, I can link friends to my apple watch exercise app.
Sharing exercise data with a small group of friends is nothing like what people mean when they say ‘Social Media’
Re: FTC issues orders to nine social media and video streaming services
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not collecting personal/demographic information Sure is! On my iCloud account, Apple has my address, my location, the location of all of my devices, my Apple Card is tied directly to purchases, and much more! Did you know iMessage specifically even used to be linked directly to Facebook's evil social graph? > it's not trying to increase user engagement (addictiveness) Citation? I would bet a large amount of mo…
iMessage is a pure messaging service - there are no recommendations, no feed, no following friends, no status updates, no likes, no profiles, no stories, and no connection to Facebook at all. Most importantly, no advertising since they actually make money off the products, which means no incentive for gaming engagement metrics. They want you to have a good time and sell you another device next year, not glue your eye…
> no likes, no profiles, and no connection to Facebook at all
You can absolutely thumbs up stuff. And accounts do have a profile -- a name, a phone number, a profile pic, email address, probably your apple ID somewhere in the metadata, etc. And this is not connected to Facebook, but to your Apple account. All your activity is sync'd between devices.
> Since there is no “Apple social network” to be spoken of, there would be little reason to include them.
In a sense, iCloud is the social network: https://www.androidauthority.com/green-bubble-phenomenon-102.... Beyond being able to send special effects with your chats, you can also send money via apple pay, video call via FaceTime, and, with Apple One, share your subscriptions.
> They want you to have a good time and sell you another device next year, not glue your eyeballs to the screen.
True, but what do you think the metrics execsy are thinking of when they introduce thread replies or Memoji? And with Fitness+, News+, TV+ and Apple Arcade, more and more of Apple is increasingly reliant on customers paying them for the privilege of staring at screens.