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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

#401

Post by superultra »

Hobadee wrote: post #267

Is the addictiveness of social media great? No. But the blame shouldn't be placed squarely on the companies either. What happened to personal responsibility? I was addicted to Facebook, I realized it, and I disconnected from it. I had withdrawals for a while (pulling out my phone and trying to open the app I had deleted without really thinking about what I was doing) but I quit. I know I am addicted to YouTube shorts…

I’m glad you went through that and came out ok.

It seems though, increasingly, that the ability to avoid addiction is less about pulling one up by one’s own bootstraps, and in many ways determined more by genetics. That is to say, what might have been possible for you is much harder for others.

Look no further than GLP-1. People who have struggled for years - decades - with overeating are almost immediately able to cut back on addictive eating. It’s not that they suddenly discovered willpower. It’s a biochemical effect.

It’s no wonder then that kids are more susceptible to addictive building behaviors. Their minds are pliable and teachable.

Why would we not legislate things that take advantage of that?

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

#402

Post by bogwog »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #215
bogwog wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, don't hand wave over the obvious. Think about how much it would actually cost to run a social media website that competes with the big social media on the core product of sharing and communicating with friends. It would be extremely realistic to build something that's both free and sustainable with just regular ads, as was done decades before. (EDIT: to clarify, I don't mean to build an alternative monopoly,…

> Think about how much it would actually cost to run a social media website that competes with the big social media on the core product of sharing and communicating with friends. It would cost tons man. You don't understand the scale these apps operate on at all. Meta has their own data center footprint that rivals AWS or any other cloud company and they had that before AI, and it's not just all to run ads on. On dem…

> On demand photo and video streaming and storage for free for all of humanity is incredibly expensive.

Maybe you missed my edit? I specifically said not a clone of the monopolies, but a competitor big enough to be a sustainable business. The economics of a monopolist's empire are irrelevant.

> Social media with only millions of users is basically worthless because it won't capture enough of an average person's circle to be useful to them

There's so much wrong with this statement. First of all, I will never meet anywhere near a million people in my lifetime. A regular human being's real social connections won't be anywhere near that big.

But even if it is (or users want to discover/follow random people), it doesn't take a computer science genius to discover how to interoperate between social networking apps. Meta and Google would never do this, but that's because they're anti-competitive monopolists; if you're a startup trying to gain marketshare and win on your product's quality, interop with other networks is a no brainer. We probably don't even need regulation to require interop, as the market will see it as a useful thing to develop on its own.

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

#404

Post by kspacewalk2 »

criddell wrote: post #398
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents ought to be held held responsible for how they care for their kids. This isn't just true of their use of social media and devices, but also when it comes to teaching them to look both ways when crossing the street; making sure they understand the concept of private parts, consent and personal space; making them understand the dangers of alcohol, and many other things. Does any of that obviate the need for saf…

> Parents ought to be held held responsible for how they care for their kids. If YouTube detects that a child is watching 5 hours of video a day, should Google alert child protective services?

Why don't we start with a mechanism for user registration that does not involve a simple pinky-swear "over 13?" checkbox and then continue the conversation about further steps.

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

#405

Post by xp84 »

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…

Anything that’s a premium paid feature will be irrelevant. Most people don’t subscribe to YouTube premium, even though they know their kids are watching a ton of ads. Adoption has also been incredibly brisk on the ad tiers of the formerly ad-free TV services like Netflix and Hulu.

I realize “less addictive algo” is a different thing to pay for than removing ads - but it’s, if anything, an even harder sell - I think the layperson wouldn’t even acknowledge that they are vulnerable to being psychologically manipulated. They think they spend so much time on these apps because it’s so enjoyable.

From most parents’ point of view, paying a monthly bill for their children to have a less toxic experience on TikTok, or YouTube will be considered an extravagance instead of a responsible safety expense.

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

#406

Post by criddell »

wffurr wrote: post #262
everdrive wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, selling attention inevitably leads to harm.

As a parent, the only solution is sticking to ad-free subscription services. PBS is a godsend here, but there's other good options out there too. Tragic that the public broadcasting funding was cut when there's clear harms in the free* commercial options. *Except for your time and mental health of course

PBS is great if you are looking for a workable harm reduction strategy. Eliminating that type of entertainment is probably an even better goal.

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

#407

Post by butlike »

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…

Or just stop suggesting content. The landing page is just a matrix of already followed accounts with the text "Start by following some accounts you like..." as a placeholder if it's a new account.

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

#408

Post by another-dave »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #353
bitwank wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not. People don’t want the slop they push, the anxiety provoking, salacious, clickbaity spam that it has devolved into. Anybody that used YouTube before the last few years can tell you the difference is pretty major. This is not content people want, it’s content that maximizes clicks and ad sales.

People don't want to want it. But it's not obvious that merely allowing a choice of recommendation algorithms would allow people to escape the slop. Isn't anyone strong enough to choose a less addictive algorithm necessarily strong enough to not scroll Instagram for hours in the first place?

I mean, the court case is about these platforms being addictive to kids, so if they said "accounts for users under X years have the algo and time caps delegated to their parents' account by default" it'd go along way to negate what they're being accused of.

They've already built all the tools they need around this at the moment, it's just they give them to advertisers rather than end-users.

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

#409

Post by mindcrime »

basisword wrote: post #340
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 real solution is going back to a chronological feed of people you actively choose to follow.

At the very least, that should certainly be an option that users can select. And when the user selects a feed algo, it should stay fucking set until that same user actively chooses to change it.
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