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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

#531

Post by Ferret7446 »

petre wrote: post #116
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 that smoking causes lung cancer why do they keep smoking?

Because they use smoking to fill a hole in their lives. If they are somehow forced to stop, they will just switch to another vice as long as the actual problem isn't solved.

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

#532

Post by Ferret7446 »

janalsncm wrote: post #227
bryan_w wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's probably a good idea. That law never really did anything anyway, kids have never had problems getting their hands on alcohol

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

#533

Post by vjulian »

anon84873628 wrote: post #326
vjulian wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be aware, the vast majority of people who have ever smoked cigarettes occasionally never became addicted. They were not labeled as “smokers”. A non-trivial number of people today continue to smoke cigarettes on occasion. I like to have one on my birthday. Then again, I’m able to eat a chip and not consume the entire bag. I’m not convinced of these social science studies, and when digging into individual studies I’m s…

Or you could read the studies that show addictive nature varies by person...

...and postulate, for science doesn’t truly know why, and frankly, my guess is as good as any scientist’s. Much like in public education, policy makers in public health cater to and enforce the average. What a crappy way to do things.

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

#534

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

tim333 wrote: post #519
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…

A lot of smokers don't feel they are having a good time and want to quit but can't. I'm not sure the same applies to youtube.

I know lots of adults who talk about "curing their phone addiction". I don't think someone would find it necessary to write a book "How To Break Up With Your Phone" (using what's referred to as a "digital detox program") if there weren't a substantial number of people who wanted to stop infinite scrolling behavior on their phone but found it difficult.

https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/k3vzaa/how_to_break... - used the reddit link because the existence of r/nosurf is another example of people who want to stop but find it difficult.

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

#535

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #529
rimunroe wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew someone who had exactly that feeling about YouTube. It was a genuine struggle for them to stop even though the amount of time they spent on it was negatively impacting their life and the content was making them more anxious.

Should YouTube be banned then? YouTube provides a lot of value to a lot of people. I've learned a lot of math, physics, history, DIY from it. But it's addictive (to some)

Nobody is arguing for "banning YouTube". But "the algorithm", and many user interface features explicitly designed to keep you going to the next video or down "YouTube rabbit holes", is what this case is about.

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

#536

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #530
youknownothing wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Zuck is really being a bit of d** there. You can't spend decades hiring the best engineers in the world and give them millions of dollars worth of resources with the sole aim of creating products specifically designed to retain attention and then simply shrug and say "if you don't like it, leave it". That's just not a fair fight.

Is designing for retention bad then? God forbid you write a story that captivates readers; if they don't stop reading after a few chapters, why, that's illegal mate

Lol, so then cigarette makers weren't deliberately modifying drug levels in their product to addict smokers, they were "designing for retention".

More to the point, though, your comments here are all straw men. This was specifically a case about targeting children with addictive features of their products.

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

#537

Post by gzread »

13415 wrote: post #518
gzread wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it bad to want the system to push people towards healthy behaviour but it's totally okay to want the system to push people towards unhealthy behaviour?

I want "the system" to neither push people towards healthy nor towards unhealthy behavior if by "push" you mean "force by law." I want a system that maximizes personal freedom and individual responsibility. I'm fine with "the system" providing advice and nudging, though.

Would you say it should be a property owner's individual responsibility to protect their property from thieves?

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

#538

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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…

> 180-190 degrees Fahrenheit, vs 140 or so for coffee brewed at home

Did you just make up that 140 number? To add to the other sibling comment, SCA (https://sca.coffee/) requires that water contacts the grounds at a temp of 195-205 F and that the coffee be at a temp of 175-185 up to 30 mins after brewing in order to certify home brewers:

> The SCA ensures that the brewer's carafe is appropriately sized for its designated machine and can maintain the coffee's warmth. Specifically, the brew must stay within the range of 176 °-185°F (80°-85°C) for at least 30 minutes post-brew. While retaining this warmth, the machine must never actively reheat the brew, ensuring the coffee's nuanced flavors remain intact. (from https://us.moccamaster.com/blogs/blog/certified-by-the-sca-m...)

Then you say

> Other customers had suffered similar burns, and McDonald's knew about it and did not change the policy

Again, lots of people cut their fingers off, accidentally, with knives. I don't think this means knife makers were "willfully and inevitably causing injury to random customers" because their product was too sharp.

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

#539

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

throwaway85825 wrote: post #203
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…

In terms of expectation, how many people think coffee is normally capable of causing 3rd degree burns?

Have other people never made coffee? Boiled soup? Been in a kitchen at all?

It wasn't just that the plaintiff spilled coffee on herself, it's that she spilled it while she was in her car and didn't immediately try to get it off (not blaming her, she was elderly). So yeah, I'm not surprised that spilling a very hot liquid on yourself and then sitting in it for an extended period causes severe burns.

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

#540

Post by mike_hearn »

burlesona wrote: post #488
mike_hearn wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if that blog is a newspaper or other aggregator? What makes the RSS feed of the CNN front page fine, but not the RSS feed of the YouTube front page? There's really no difference. Media companies all aggressively optimize for engagement, often to the point of A/B testing headlines.

There’s a huge difference. Everyone sees the same front page on CNN, or HN for that matter. Nobody sees the same page twice on YouTube or TikTok. That’s a fundamental distinction between human curated media (even with A/B testing), versus machine curated media.

People don't all see the same front page on CNN or HN. I just said, media companies all do things like A/B test headlines, they show different content to people based on geolocation, they change what ads people see and they select stories based on what they know will maximize engagement with their specific audiences. The fact that it's partly done by a human editor backed up by dashboards doesn't change what they're doing.

HN also shows different pages to different people. The set of headlines and their ranking is constantly changing, and user settings change whether you see dead/flagged articles or not.

The idea there's some fundamental difference here is people working backwards from the wealth of the operators to some conclusion they'd like to be true, usually one that lets them blame other people for their own decisions. But there's no validity to this.

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