NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system • Hacker News Board

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#221

Post by balder1991 » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 8:42 PM UTC

whalesalad wrote: post #96

This is government overreach. These are novelty/fun apps. They are not critical infrastructure or needed in any way. This would be like a court ordering a local bar to serve more than just beer and wine, to accomodate people who like sake and soju. You have free choice to use the social platforms that you want to use. Really don't understand this kind of action tbh.

This is true when there’s plenty of competition that matter. When everybody and every business is in one app, the network effect forces everyone to be there or be invisible. So the “essential infrastructure” label is kinda debatable. I suppose it’s essential for many businesses.

So your analogy should be more like there’s one big shopping mall network in the city that basically everyone has to go because certain stores are only there — and the owners bought any competitor that seemed to start becoming popular in the past so there’s no perspective of competition either.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#222

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 8:51 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #40

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fines in general aren't effective. Perhaps this case doesn't warrant it, but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option. If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook, it should be no different with a company.

> but generally speaking I'd like to see allocating jailtime across the top shareholders as an option. Shareholders don’t control day to day operations of a company. Top shareholders rarely have enough shares by themselves to control anything about the company. Remember the VW emissions cheating scandal where people were jailed? It would be completely unreasonable to jail top shareholders because some manager somewhe…

The only sense in which punishment of any kind is reasonable is when it works to disincentivise harmful behavior. If higher risks for shareholders convince them to take a more active role in ensuring that their investment isn't causing harm to the rest of us, then they're at least as reasonable than any other sort of punishment.

If the cheating had gone unnoticed, the shareholders would've been rewarded, so they should bear some risk whether or not they sold after the crime was committed.

As it is, we've got incentives set up to encourage investment in bad behavior so long as you get out before your people get caught.

As for the government abusing the justice system... What rules would create justice is sort of orthogonal to the circumstances under which the rules are broken.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#223

Post by balder1991 » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 9:28 PM UTC

bitpush wrote: post #43

55555 wrote: post #20

Please for the love of god make it a legal requirement that messaging must be made available as a separate app without addictive feeds. Or make it such that users can disable the feed in settings. We need to be able to message our friends without seeing a feed without having to convert all of our friends to a new platform.

I don't know why you want a government agency to dictate product strategy.

I suppose that’s because people already lost faith in the current system and where things are going as it is.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#224

Post by npc_anon » Thu, Oct 02, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #68

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…

"If you don't like it, don't use instagram."

I get what you're saying but by current EU privacy law interpretation this approach is not allowed.

You can of course charge for services but you cannot charge people just to get rid of tracking. This is not to be confused with ads. You can run ads and offer a paid version without ads. It's about the tracking.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#225

Post by eru » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 1:02 AM UTC

N70Phone wrote: post #180

eru wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you just stop using Facebook, if you don't like it?

An important matter in this particular case: It's about elections as well. You can opt to not use facebook yourself to protect your own data, that is more or less fine. (Though we can talk about Facebook's collection of non-user data another time) You can't individually opt out of the election influence.

Facebook's election influence is pretty minor.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#226

Post by Hilift » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 1:32 AM UTC

Hilift wrote: post #85

Workaccount2 wrote: post #68

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…

> I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work That is unfortunate, due to Mark Zuckerberg has redefined the successful business model. META is on track to clear $80 billion per year in net profit. Like it or not, they have a mutually beneficial relationship with advertisers and investors. It's like a Unicorn reproduced with an ATM. It's one of the stocks that seem like neutral…

*Medicaid, not Medicare. And the actual amount is $85 billion, due to Medicaid is available to nearly anyone, and it is only a coincidence it is the reason for the government shutdown.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#227

Post by inetknght » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 2:17 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #61

inetknght wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those people are in the app because of the social features and the feed in the first place. Well, I suppose that's one take on it. I would argue that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger. Then Facebook changed how Facebook Messenger works. You could call it a rugpull, I would call it US business practices.

> I would argue that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger. Messenger was never the primary draw of Facebook. It came long after Facebook was popular. I should have known better than to step into a conversation about Facebook on HN. Doing anything other than blindly agreeing with anti-Facebook comments, even if they’re factually incorrect or illogical, attracts downvotes and more illogica…

> Messenger was never the primary draw of Facebook.

I didn't say it was. Remember, my statement was: ... that people are in the app because Facebook gave out Facebook Messenger

Indeed, I remember using Facebook just for messages. So when Facebook Messenger came out, I used that exclusively.

Now, I've long since moved off of Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Some of my family still use it though, and I've seen it. It's not what it used to be. So, I then expanded on that to say: Then Facebook changed how Facebook Messenger works

> they’re factually incorrect or illogical

So, where's the factually incorrect or illogical argument?

The final straw for me to move off of Facebook was Cambridge Analytica. Once I realized how terrible not just Facebook was for not only permitting that kind of shit, but practically inviting it as a feature... that was very telling. And I've since stopped using nearly all social media, present website excluded.

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#228

Post by bitpush » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 2:38 AM UTC

array_key_first wrote: post #206

bitpush wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you want a government agency to dictate product strategy.

Because most products are not only shit, they're designed in such a way to be as shit as possible. Because that legitimately works. Even if the government agency makes the worse decision possible, which they probably will, that's still an improvement, because we're completely maxed out on shit levels. That's how bad many products are today.

Really? You think government officials are best positioned to come up with next ChatGPT feature, or what how to implement authentication in a webapp?

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#229

Post by wkat4242 » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 2:41 AM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #68

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…

Not just that. If you pay Instagram to turn off the ads, they're still tracking you so they can show you targeted ads elsewhere.

For me the tracking is a lot more harmful than the ads. Ads are much more noticeable but tracking is a lot more insidious.

It's really that tracking that I want to see gone

Re: NL Judge: Meta must respect user's choice of recommendation system

#230

Post by wkat4242 » Fri, Oct 03, 2025, 2:44 AM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #84

Workaccount2 wrote: post #68

They need to just ban the ad model and make subscriptions (including free with no ads, if the provider wants it) mandatory. I don't think people understand how the economics of these apps (and websites) work, and it's been so long now that their incorrect assumptions (the feeds are free and the greedy providers shove ads in them) have turned into bedrock beliefs. You pay for instagram with your personal data, which i…

I think people more or less understand that. Nobody likes ads. Everyone realizes that the ads they're seeing are targeted. But I think every web designer knows that putting even the slightest barrier between the user and the content drives away vast numbers of people. Making them enter a credit card -- even if you told them it would never be charged -- would send enormous numbers away. Many won't even create a free a…

Ads can be done without tracking though. The main reason they're not is that Google and meta actively undermine them. They make it really difficult to buy ethical ads.

The reason is of course that tracking is their moat. Nobody else has tracking networks as pervasive as them. But everyone can sell context-based ads