221–230 of 274 posts
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If I give you 5 dollars is that a chemical addiction? Obviously not, but you believe gambling can be addictive right?
My point is, dopamine is addictive. Banning or controlling anything that releases dopamine is a futile effort.
Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this. Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, the…
What I think is interesting about the events in the article is the way the that politicians and media express concern without proposing anything. Could this kind of talk be reasonably interpreted as a negotiation between Facebook and the political class relating to Facebook’s add sales practices and political influence?
People are certainly talking about excessive social media use whether FB likes it or not. I have seen tons of articles and prominent quotes on the subject of social media harm to health. I just searched for “excessive social media use” and got articles from Forbes, The Telegraph, Time, BBC, HuffPo, thetimes.co.uk, Vancouver University, and a large pile of high impact journal articles that seem to contain related language, like “impact of social media use on children.”
So lots of people are upset but neither Soros nor the author proposed any particular remedy, and the problem sounds awfully hard to clearly understand, let alone to effectively regulate. The economics of social media seem to necessitate maximizing user engagement, and wining at network effect. If Facebook didn’t do it this way, would whoever did have won the space instead? How do we incentivize social media companies to make products that are somewhat compelling, but not too much?
Is it cynical to suppose that politicians are using the implicit threat of regulation and bad press to compel FB to limit it’s add sales and suppress “fake news”, while actually having little appetite to intervene in the interest of public health? Also, are conventional media outlets afraid of Facebook because it threatens their revenue model, and undermines their credibility?
Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this. Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, the…
You may be right that cries of "society is being ruined" are nothing new. However, I think Facebook is different enough from what came before (such as TV) in a few ways that matter, that we should take this more seriously.
* FB is _interactive_. The effects of somebody responding to you, liking your posts, etc., are much deeper than you passively consuming some content on a screen.
* FB is _intrusive_. It sends you notifications on your phone, reminder emails, inserts calls-to-action in your news feed, etc. It's really hard to ignore.
* FB is a lot more _personalized_. It knows a lot about you. Ads are personalized. Content is specifically targeted towards your interests. Stuff is "recommended by ". This makes it a much harder addiction to kick.
FWIW, I don't think FB is _that_ bad. Many mobile "free to play" games, on the other hand, ... They use so many dark patterns and insidious techniques to purposely capture people's (and especially kids') attention and time, while simultaneously trying to get them to spend real money. Geez. I hate them with a passion.
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How? You spend less time channel surfing trying to find what you're into?
You spend more time watching the TV because the extra information provided tells them exactly how to extract that extra attention. I think the best example are little kids with no self control watching endless amount of dopamine hitting videos like kinder eggs. People realized little kids loved these simple toy opening videos and the algorithm was more than happy enough to increase engagement by feeding kids these vi…
What's wrong with this? Lots of people like television. I like television. My life isn't that great and I'll take the distraction, thanks.
Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this. Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, the…
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If you won't comment civilly and substantively we'll ban the account. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I said the argument was stupid. Not the person making it. Smart people can sometimes make stupid argument. Even I make stupid arguments sometimes. I can only pray that the people around will tell me straight that my argument is stupid. Are you telling me that people in HN cannot tell me when my argument is stupid? Is there some flag that I can toggle to let people know that it is ok to tell me when I make a stupid ar…
Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this. Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, the…
I think the pervasive availability and highly engineered and data driven optimization for engagement that are possible with phones and social media create a novel condition. You couldn’t play Everquest on the bus, in the toilet, in class, and in bed, but it’s now possible to basically never not be on Facebook. Also, Everquest and TV didn’t have anything like the degree of user data and monitoring that we have now. It…
The goal of propaganda is not to make people think a certain way; it's to get people to act a certain way. Entertainment is centered around consumption, not interaction. If I can get people who dislike something to read entertaining articles about how it's bad instead of going out and protesting or canceling accounts, then I've successfully suppressed dissent.
The solution to Facebook was already spelled out in the article. There just wasn't a call to action.
Facebook’s revenue, for example, is almost entirely a function of the number of minutes the average user spends per week engaging with the service. Reducing this by even 5 to 10% — by tamping down or eliminating some of Facebook’s most addictive features — would have a disastrous impact on the quarterly earnings of this $500 billion company.
Just stop using it and it will die. I don't. Why can't you?
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> When you press people (like in person, not on the internet) why they think he's the devil incarnate, you usually get some really wild ad hominem not rooted in reality or a realization that they don't really know why they hate him so much other than he's a benefactor of their political opposition and they were told to. Sure, but we could probably say the same of the Koch brothers. They both occupy similar positions…
I've never seen people claim the Koch's literally aided and abetted the Nazis (this is something that's actually claimed about Soros in spite of fleeing Europe with his parents as an adolescent). There's a hatred and fear of Soros that surpasses his political activities. He's pretty active with bonafide "do gooder" stuff and it's equated with Pizzagate-style conspiracies and worse that you don't see on the opposite s…
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/12/us/politics/father-of-koc...
Along with a significant portion of other U.S. industry, including IBM, AT&T, Coca Cola, Ford, GM, and more.
This isn't the quality of reference I'd generally provide, but it's a quick find and seems generally accurate in the basics:
http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_nastybiz.html
And:
https://listverse.com/2013/10/24/10-big-business-nazi-profit...
(Several of the listed companies are in fact German, which isn't surprising. There are several American firms as well, including Kodak and Standard Oil.)
Washington Post on Ford and GM:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/n...
The IBM case is exceedingly well documented:
http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/black-ibm.html
Getting back to the Kochs and various Nazi, anti-semitic, and Holocaust-denial elements:
Reason Magazine, almost wholly backed by the Koch Brothers, ran a Holocaust-denial special issue, and doubled down on it when called out:
https://pando.com/2014/07/24/as-reasons-editor-defends-its-r...
Regnery Press, strongly associated with Chicago School economists (it published Milton Friedman, George Stigler, F.A. Hayek, and others), and long a standard of the conservative Right and Libertarian movements, is strongly associated with the alt-right:
Regnery has become major figure in the white nationalist movement, having founded the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist “think tank,” and the Charles Martel Society, which publishes The Occidental Quarterly, a racist, anti-Semitic and pseudo-scholarly “journal.”
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...
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Your gross simplification of the issue is unfortunate. TV has never been able to track you and change its programming to the extent Facebook can.
Who cares? Would TV have been that worse if it did the same thing?
Moreover, "who cares" now includes numerous former (and current) Facebook employees, executives, and investors.
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>Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. What about monetizing and marketing people's affection? The dowry would be the classic example, I'd be curious why you (presumably) are against dowries. To me it's basically the same, certain things are corrupted by their commodification, affection, attention, others. Besides when you say: >The world su…
This will sound like I'm vehemently defending Facebook, but I found some considerable gaps in your counter argument that I thought I'd make you aware of, for the sake of constructive debate. > What about monetizing and marketing people's affection? The dowry would be the classic example, I'd be curious why you (presumably) are against dowries. No, the dowry wouldn't be the classic example because that's more akin to…
It's not quite the same level, but we're finding increasing evidence that Facebook and general social media use is associated with increased anxiety and depression [1]. Since depression is now the leading source of disability world-wide, the comparison is not entirely overblown.
I do like and agree with your alternate example of Valentine's Day.
[1] https://psychnews.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/appi...