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Meta and YouTube found negligent in landmark social media addiction case

nytimes.com

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

#381

Post by freshtake »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #336
baggy_trough wrote: post #279

Doritos now liable for creating a good tasting chip? This is madness.

Yeah, people keep making the comparison to cigarettes but to me this is wildly different. Cigarettes directly cause physical harm and even death. Social media can sometimes, under certain circumstances, depending on who exactly you're interacting with on social media, indirectly contribute to emotional harm. Cigarettes are also physically addictive. Your body actually becomes dependent on them and will throw a fit if…

There are different kinds of addiction. The difference is physical vs. mental.

The best example of this is heroin, which has both a severe physical and mental addiction component, and it's the mental addiction that makes relapse so common.

Mental addictions rewire the brain's chemistry, causing the user to seek and only find joy in the substance. This is a better comparison for social media (albeit not as destructive and instantaneously harmful as narcotics)

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

#382

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

mentalgear wrote: post #304
bogdanoff_2 wrote: post #290

The solution to this would be a law forcing these sites to allow third-party suggestion algorithms, so that you can choose who and how content is being suggested to you. It could be perhaps as simple as allowing third-party websites and apps for watching Youtube on your phone. And it's okay if this would be a premium paid feature, so there's no counter argument that "it costs them money to host videos". This is not a…

The solution to all of Big Tech's monopolies is actually pretty simple: Interoperability must become a law - this includes using custom algorithms or allowing other platforms (like your own app) to access YOUR data on whatever platform 'hosts' it. Cory Doctorow wrote a great article on it: "Interoperability Can Save the Open Web" https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability > While the dominance of Internet pl…

That just leads to embrace/extend/extinguish

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

#383

Post by malfist »

banannaise wrote: post #349
mschuster91 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The foundational problem with interoperability is that it can and will immediately be abused by bad actors as long as there is no price tag attached to every piece of communication. Among social media, Mastodon (and anything Fediverse) has it the worst, obviously, but Telegram and Whatsapp are rife with spams and scams, Twitter back when it still had third-party apps was rife with credential and token compromises (mo…

Paywalls can have the opposite of the effect you want. Implemented incautiously, they can fail to disincentivize parties who can make profit in excess of the cost, and it can succeed at disincentivizing genuine, non-profit-motivated interaction. Imagine how much less you would use text messages if they still had a per-message cost.

I would reply to your comment, but my 2GB data allocation for my cell phone is already spent this month.

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

#384

Post by spwa4 »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #382
mentalgear wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to all of Big Tech's monopolies is actually pretty simple: Interoperability must become a law - this includes using custom algorithms or allowing other platforms (like your own app) to access YOUR data on whatever platform 'hosts' it. Cory Doctorow wrote a great article on it: "Interoperability Can Save the Open Web" https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability > While the dominance of Internet pl…

That just leads to embrace/extend/extinguish

Exactly. The deal of all these platforms is that there is a fuckton of up-front costs. Hard drives. Networks. Peering. Transit. Operators. Payment. Lawyers. SREs. And so on and so forth.

The solution to this used to be that governments provide the platform. You would think this wouldn't be hard to do, since people have now shown that this can work and so it's a guaranteed money maker, or as close as you're going to get.

Yet I can't find a single initiative.

So any such rules will just make all internet platforms disappear ... and nothing.

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

#385

Post by pegasus »

theturtletalks wrote: post #348
mentalgear wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to all of Big Tech's monopolies is actually pretty simple: Interoperability must become a law - this includes using custom algorithms or allowing other platforms (like your own app) to access YOUR data on whatever platform 'hosts' it. Cory Doctorow wrote a great article on it: "Interoperability Can Save the Open Web" https://spectrum.ieee.org/doctorow-interoperability > While the dominance of Internet pl…

We can’t depend on these platforms to offer interoperability or even laws to force them to do so. The DMA forced Apple to allow 3rd party app stores in Europe and they still hampered it so rarely anyone uses it. We need platforms to offer that interoperability and simply connect to these “marketplaces.” Take Shopify for example, sellers use that platform to list on Amazon, Google Shopping, TikTok shop, etc. We need o…

> For Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, each person having their own website where they post and that post being pushed to these platforms is also another way to force interoperability on them or be left behind.

There's an acronym for this: POSSE (Publish [on your] Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere). Part of the IndieWeb movement, for those who want to explore this worthwhile idea further.

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

#386

Post by malfist »

freshtake wrote: post #352

Short form video is a different beast altogether, and much more concerning. The fact that these platforms don't offer a way to avoid short form altogether is a big issue. YouTube allows you to "show fewer shorts" but what if you don't want them popping up at all? AI Slop is the best thing to happen to these platforms - because it will lower trust and engagement as people (hopefully) become tired of inauthenticity. Ra…

That "show fewer shorts" button doesn't do a damn thing. I click it, refresh the page and whala, shorts.

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

#388

Post by alex1138 »

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…

> "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?"

A statement that's been brought up even by HN commentators

Facebook is not a free market where you can choose. You're compelled to use it for several different reasons (and before some wiseass comments "you're not forced to. you can delete it" yes I know)

- They captured the early market. There was a small window of time in which to get users

- They ruthlessly bought up the competition

- They've deleted links to competitors

- They outright hijacked people's email addresses. It makes it hard to transfer users to another service or to email them outside the walled garden

- Even while they change privacy settings for users to make things more public, they wall off public pages. Your local neighborhood has a place where they post information? Even if everyone selects "Public" in the audience you can't see it without an account

Edit: Oh, and shadow profiles. And making it nigh-impossible to delete an account permanently

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

#389

Post by IncreasePosts »

dj_gitmo wrote: post #380
nlarion wrote: post #328

There is no personal responsibility left in America. I have a child. It's my job to teach him and watch what he watches and does. I guess I am the only one who thinks this way. Good luck having the parental government raise your child. Parody: I let my child have cocaine and now they're addicted!!!!! Hilarious.

> Parody: I let my child have cocaine and now they're addicted!!!!! Hilarious. Cocaine is illegal because it is addictive.

LSD and hallucinogenic mushrooms aren't addictive and aren't legal. Cigarettes and alcohol are addictive and are legal.

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

#390

Post by Ajedi32 »

freshtake wrote: post #381
Ajedi32 wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, people keep making the comparison to cigarettes but to me this is wildly different. Cigarettes directly cause physical harm and even death. Social media can sometimes, under certain circumstances, depending on who exactly you're interacting with on social media, indirectly contribute to emotional harm. Cigarettes are also physically addictive. Your body actually becomes dependent on them and will throw a fit if…

There are different kinds of addiction. The difference is physical vs. mental. The best example of this is heroin, which has both a severe physical and mental addiction component, and it's the mental addiction that makes relapse so common. Mental addictions rewire the brain's chemistry, causing the user to seek and only find joy in the substance. This is a better comparison for social media (albeit not as destructive…

Everything you do or even just think about "rewires" your brain to some extent. The difference with addictive drugs is that they do so in a way that bypasses your brains' natural processes. The same cannot be said for "addiction" to games or social media, or other entertainment.

There can still be social ills associated with these forms of natural "addiction" (e.g. gambling), and I'm okay with regulating those ills, but I'm less okay with the courts doing so unilaterally based on their subjective opinions with no concrete law backing them up.

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