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Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

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Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#41

Post by Emanation »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #26
xvector wrote: post #2

This is lame. Is an addictive algorithm an illegal substance of some sort? Is personal responsibility not a thing people care about anymore?

How far does personal responsibility go? what if there are 100 psychologists working to undermine your self control? do you stand a chance?

Self control is a weird thing, depending on the addiction. Self control can spawn from simply being self aware of how a thing affects you.

I'm willing to bet it's not immediately obvious how scrolling through social media makes a person feel, unless they have experience with it (something psychologists teach to help their patients deal with situations.)

So, if it's something that can be taught, does it affect how responsible someone is with their social media usage?

Is their environment equipt to impart such information? Are they equipt to learn? Do they just enjoy it anyway?

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#42

Post by monetus »

bertil wrote: post #40
yamrzou wrote: post #4

The title is editorialized which breaks HN guidelines. But I hope you get away with it, because I'd like to see a discussion around this :)

Happy to explain what really happened with Facebook, but I typically don’t get a lot of positive feedback when I do.

Please do; don't hold back. Tell us what went down. Thanks - hope you're doing alright

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#43

Post by prophesi »

bertil wrote: post #39
hourago wrote: post #6

Many social media sites evolved from time sorted posts to algorithm sorted posts. The algorithms are data driven and designed to maximize engagement, as it improves revenue. This creates an incentive to push highly controversial topics over more casual content. - China is already regulating this: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/07/china-to-regulate-tech-giant... > Users must be able to opt out of having recommendation s…

Facebook algorithm hasn’t been optimised to maximise time spent on the site since 2014, and controversial topics have a well documented negative effect on both attention and engagement.

Their own leaked internal docs say that angry, love, sad, and wow reactions had 5x more weight than traditional likes. It should be easy to infer that this will promote more controversial posts than uncontroversial ones.

It seems like their attention & engagement tweaks are spent on Instagram. One frustrating recent change was the introduction of a non-algorithmic feed, but it's not on by default, and it hides stories from the view, which makes it unusable for most people.

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#45

Post by 9991 »

charcircuit wrote: post #7

>internal research showed that the app exacerbated mental health issues for teen girls in particular. This is twisting the truth. Specifically FB had found that for teenage girls with body image issues the ones they surveyed on average thought Instagram on average made it worse. 31% said worse, 22% said better, and 45.5% said it had no impact. For the other 11 other mental health issues they said Instagram made it be…

Self-reports of mental harm are not worth anything. Why do people keep quoting these useless stats?

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#46

Post by FollowingTheDao »

chihuahua wrote: post #36
mayowaxcvi wrote: post #3

Wait till they find out about Hacker News …

I find FB and Instagram so unappealing that there isn't any risk of addiction, for me. The basic idea - sharing pictures and text telling your friends what you're doing - is brilliant, but in practice, most people I know are annoying, and their posts are tedious. Hacker News, on the other hand, can be slightly addictive, because every time I load the front page, there's a chance there could be something interesting a…

In my opinion, the addiction to Facebook is dependent of your oxytocin receptor (OXTR) genetics. It would be similar to the Dopamine 2 receptor (DRD2) genetics link with alcohol addictions.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/could-oxytocin-rec...

http://www.fastcompany.com/1659062/social-networking-affects...

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#47

Post by justinclift »

notRobot wrote: post #18
justinclift wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tobacco then? Pointing those out because in my current country (Australia), laws are being gradually introduced to - eventually - eliminate tobacco consumption. eg plain paper packaging mandate, banning of smoking in more and more places, and potentially soon there will be banning of tobacco sales to people born before a point in time year (2005 maybe?) so they're never allowed to smoke

> potentially soon there will be banning of tobacco sales to people born before a point in time year (2005 maybe?) so they're never allowed to smoke Minor typo: the ban will be for people born after a particular year, not before.

Oops, yeah. :)

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#48

Post by justinclift »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #32
behnamoh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

easier to enforce such laws in a low populated country such as Australia than in places like the US.

Australians generally live in big dense cities. In fact, this is probably why the ban will work, they are also more into rule of law than the USA is. Also, vaping in Australia is illegal, making the ban even more impressive.

> illegal

Don't you mean "legal"?

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#49

Post by avgDev »

chihuahua wrote: post #36
mayowaxcvi wrote: post #3

Wait till they find out about Hacker News …

I find FB and Instagram so unappealing that there isn't any risk of addiction, for me. The basic idea - sharing pictures and text telling your friends what you're doing - is brilliant, but in practice, most people I know are annoying, and their posts are tedious. Hacker News, on the other hand, can be slightly addictive, because every time I load the front page, there's a chance there could be something interesting a…

I read a lot of books on personal finance, investing and very interested in psychology. I also read medical studies etc.

Facebook is quite interesting. There are few people who I know that are living in misery but are in complete denial. They work really hard on their image and showing off how perfect their family is on facebook. Showing off expensive cars when they are one large bill away from defaulting. I find this fascinating.

Just yesterday one individual had a facebook story, showing the private message she was getting from her friends, that she looks young and so hot etc. It is so bizarre.

Re: Meta sued for social media addiction caused by its algorithm

#50

Post by micromacrofoot »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #29
micromacrofoot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How far does personal responsibility go? what if there are 100 psychologists working to undermine your self control? do you stand a chance?

This is an interesting point, especially considering that people are born with various levels of self-control. People with little to no self-control stand no chance, but there are many people I’m sure that would survive psychologists, especially knowing that they work in a field where almost nothing is reproducible :)

Personally I find social media so addicting that the only thing I could do is quit entirely. I occasionally have to use TikTok for trend research, and it's shockingly addicting... to the point where I think the algorithm should be legally required to be publicly accessible or explained in some plain language way (to some extent, there are a lot of logistical hurdles).
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