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

Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 549 posts

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#221

Post by zombar »

twoodfin wrote: post #41
strongpigeon wrote: post #12

There is a fairly low amount of details about the case in the article. This NPR article [0] has a bit more, but it's still fairly sparse. Though it's interesting how Zuckerberg thought it was a good idea to say: "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?". Given that this is a case about addiction, that feels like a shockingly bad thing to say in defense of your…

As someone who values a liberal society, I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine. I also hope the reasons are obvious.

What's obvious to me likely isn't obvious to you or anyone else, therefore nothing is obvious.

I wish we'd delete that word from the English language.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#222

Post by pseingatl »

I think all important public policy decisions should be left to random personal injury courtrooms, as long as the PI lawyers collect their customary fee. It's silly to let a regulator or legislative body butt in and so prevent the PI lawyers from collecting their cash. So what if you have no say in the result?

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#223

Post by magicalhippo »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #211
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the punchline "woman sues McDonalds for coffee being too hot" (distinct from that actual case, which was less ridiculous than the headline). Whenever the McDonald's coffee case comes up, I always see caveats about how the actual case was a lot less sensational than the "woman sues McDonald's for coffee being too hot" headline implies. I strongly disagree. I'm very familiar with the details of the actual case, and t…

You neglected to mention: - It was company policy to keep coffee excessively hot (180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, vs 140 or so for coffee brewed at home). This was to make customers drink it more slowly and request fewer refills - Other customers had suffered similar burns, and McDonald's knew about it and did not change the policy McDonald's, then, was willfully and inevitably causing injury to random customers in order…

> It was company policy to keep coffee excessively hot (180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, vs 140 or so for coffee brewed at home).

The "official" recommendation for keeping coffee that I've seen, eg here[1], has always been around 80-85C, which translates to 176-185F.

Good home brewers, like this[2], will hold the coffee at that temperature.

[1]: https://kaffe.no/7-bud-for-god-kaffe/

[2]: https://no.moccamaster.com/products/optio

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#224

Post by Nevermark »

jarjoura wrote: post #202
randycupertino wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish for once one of these egomaniacal billionaires would actually put all their efforts and resources into solving climate change or ending world hunger. Even his medical initiative Chan-Zuckerberg biohub is a self-congratulatory shell game. I worked in the same building as them for years, literally all they did was have parties, conferences, networking events and self-congratulatory schmooze things and never…

I just find it ridiculous that we as a society have allowed CEOs to become that wealthy. It's one thing to make your money from lucky investments, and become a billionaire. It's another to get there by simply running a corporation.

I don't mind them getting uberwealthy.

I mind the tolerance of society when some of these billionaires make their money on the back of negative externalities.

When "small" conflicts, like unpermissioned surveillance they use to psychological leverage against us, literally paying for content that gets eyeballs without taking any responsibility for the misinformation and hate they are financing to get produced, actively algorithmically pushing attention getting material without taking any responsibly for misinformation or hate material they are actively promoting, when they get paid for ads, but take no responsibility for taking money from scams and promoting them, and all the other seemingly "minor" but pervasive negative externalities that they hyper scale, people get hurt, and all of society gets degraded.

As everyone points out: incentives. If you don't take perverse incentives away from billionaires, or continue to give them perverse safe harbors, then those billionaires will relentlessly reinvest and innovate, in more harms, at ever greater scales. Things we still think are minor ethical issues, are not when they are hyper scaled.

This isn't some passive, life is rough sometimes situation, that people should be expected to weather. This highly financed, highly managed psychological, social and political harm, for profit. Even if the harm is distributed and seemingly low in any given incident. It adds up to a visibly degraded society.

Somehow social media gets treated with all the lack of responsibility of a neutral web site server. But they are highly active in how they operate. They should be responsible for their very active choices.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#225

Post by bryan_w »

janalsncm wrote: post #127
easytiger wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not make personal responsibility illegal whilst we are at it. It is egregious that an individual can be held accountable for their own behaviours.

How much personal responsibility should we expect children to have? Genuine question. Because there was a time where some people believed that it was ok for kids to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.

> How much personal responsibility should we expect children to have?

This is what parents are for.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#226

Post by rf15 »

slibhb wrote: post #187
strongpigeon wrote: post #12

There is a fairly low amount of details about the case in the article. This NPR article [0] has a bit more, but it's still fairly sparse. Though it's interesting how Zuckerberg thought it was a good idea to say: "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?". Given that this is a case about addiction, that feels like a shockingly bad thing to say in defense of your…

The fact that you're comparing nicotine to Facebook really throws into sharp relief just how far from reality this whole "social media made me depressed" stuff has strayed.

Do you use Facebook regularly?

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#227

Post by janalsncm »

bryan_w wrote: post #225
janalsncm wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much personal responsibility should we expect children to have? Genuine question. Because there was a time where some people believed that it was ok for kids to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.

> How much personal responsibility should we expect children to have? This is what parents are for.

In that case, maybe we don’t need to card people anymore at the liquor store. If underage kids happen to buy, that’s the parents’ fault.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#228

Post by hnlmorg »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #197
hnlmorg wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have a distinction because it’s been known for decades already that some things are addictive purely through reinforcement psychology and some things lock people into a chemical dependence. For example see the glossary in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence

And for some reason we only use "addiction" to describe things that are recreational in nature, not drugs that have no recreational use but can be quite dangerous to discontinue abruptly.

I’m not a doctor but I’m pretty sure that’s not the case.

Substances like caffeine, sugar, and painkillers are definitely still referred to as “addictive”.

Whereas substances like sertraline (antidepressant) are referred to as a “dependence” because it’s dangerous to discontinue abruptly (as you said) but there isn’t any psychological addiction involved.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#229

Post by psychoslave »

dmitrygr wrote: post #80
psychoslave wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So is the judicial system that is not making this illegal or don't enforce laws to prevent people targeting kids to create early dependence on drugs.

That is a fair point, I did not attempt to make a complete list, of course, but you are right, there are more layers that could be named. All valid. The point I was making is that parents are also responsible. eg: I grew up in a very nasty place. My neighborhood had a few pregnant 13 year old girls and a lot of drunks and smokers, including kids in their early teens. My parents kept me away from it all, while also bo…

Sure, sounds like that's great parents you got.

But at systemic level, we must consider the effect of social dynamics globally, not only how the most virtuous citizen deal with the direct situation. Pauperisation of the masses will mechanically lead to more social problem on the overall, even if they will always be brilliant heroes to point to as possible through exceptional behavior. And society that are structurally helping everyone to fall in distress or weak situation also help the exceptional people go further as they are freed from many cognitive loads they would have to deal with otherwise.

Re: Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

#230

Post by hnlmorg »

hansvm wrote: post #209
randycupertino wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wish for once one of these egomaniacal billionaires would actually put all their efforts and resources into solving climate change or ending world hunger. Even his medical initiative Chan-Zuckerberg biohub is a self-congratulatory shell game. I worked in the same building as them for years, literally all they did was have parties, conferences, networking events and self-congratulatory schmooze things and never…

Incentives drive outcomes, do they not? It's too easy to become a billionaire as a charlatan and too hard as somebody able to make a difference. Rather than granting Zuck nearly unlimited power and politely asking him to use it wisely if he doesn't overly mind the inconvenience, why not create a world where monsters can't have that much power in the first place?

I don’t think anyone would disagree with you there but that requires changing the nature of humanity. Which is a much less realistic outcome.
Post reply on HN