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Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

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Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#71

Post by worik »

hansvm wrote: post #12
Shamar wrote: post #2

The documents provide smoking-gun evidence that Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok all purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens with no regard for known harms to their wellbeing, and how that mass youth addiction was core to the companies’ business models. The documents contain internal discussions among company employees, presentations from internal meetings, expert testimony, and e…

How did that work mechanically though? At YT we were banned from doing basically anything with pre-18yo data, even if we only suspected they might possibly not be an adult -- no A/B tests, no ML, no ad targeting, no nada. Did leadership design a system where those sorts of things would happen anyway? Were there just enough rogue teams to cause problems?

> At YT we were banned from doing basically anything with pre-18yo data

I guess things are different at Google now.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#72

Post by ghurtado »

michaelt wrote: post #32
RajT88 wrote: post #27

And why not? AAA game companies have been reported to have psychologists on staff to help make their games more addictive. We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive. We seem to be fine with expanding gambling - where I live (not Nevada!) slot machines are everywhere. Nice restaurants even will dedicate corners to slot machines - not just seedy bars. Sports betting apps are all over…

> Why would we regulate big tech if we don't bother with anything else? I’m pretty sure we do, in fact, ban under 18s from tobacco, alcohol, and real-money gambling.

Not to mention strict limits on advertising of these products, licensing required to sell them, and very highly taxed.

If that's not enough, in the US we created a federal level agency that oversees 3 things only. Two of those things are alcohol and tobacco. And the third thing isn't even regulated half as much as those two.

Why on earth anyone thinks these things are unregulated is beyond me.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#73

Post by socalgal2 »

Where are the smoking guns? All I see is normal talk for how to get customers. A smoking gun would be "Teens love posts about X even though we know X is really bad for them. Let's promote lots of X". But I don't see any of that. I just see market research etc.

I could post every quote on the page and respond to it how it's not a smoking gun but not one of them seemed like a smoking gun to me. Anyone care to point to one that seems like a smoking gun to them?

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#74

Post by uniq7 »

sagacity wrote: post #47
uniq7 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is when government's solutions go through identifying everyone and collaterally tracking their actions. In the same way parents can be blamed for not keeping their children safe around guns/alcohol/drugs, they should also be blamed for not keeping the children out of digital dangers, and keep mandatory age verifications out of here.

This is like saying parents are at fault when a gun salesman sells a weapon to their 12 year old.

More like saying parents are at fault when a gun salesman enters their home every day, talks for hours with their children, and sells them weapons.

Have these parents tried to not let the salesman in?

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#75

Post by rafram »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #19
shaftway wrote: post #11

I feel like there are some key differences between the companies though. The second one outlined for Meta is: > Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day). This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive. The first one outlined for YouTube is: > Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s au…

> This sounds like YouTube taking actual steps to improve the situation. And yet here we are years later without change. So we've got proof that they knew this and have done nothing. Don't need to speculate at all.

No, they actually added a bedtime reminder feature for all users that they couldn't verify to be adults: https://www.reddit.com/r/youtube/comments/1pmcr04/what_the_h...

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#76

Post by probably_wrong »

shaftway wrote: post #11

I feel like there are some key differences between the companies though. The second one outlined for Meta is: > Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day). This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive. The first one outlined for YouTube is: > Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s au…

> This sounds like YouTube taking actual steps to improve the situation.

The issue I take with statements like that is that they are saying one thing while doing the opposite. This document [1], for instance, shows that YouTube knew as early as April 2025 that infinite feeds of short form content can "displace valuable activities like time with friends or sleep", but that hasn't stopped them from aggressively pushing YouTube shorts everywhere.

The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that there are two factions, one worried about the effects of YouTube in teens and a second one worried about growth at all costs. And I don't think the first one is winning.

[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.40...

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#77

Post by iwontberude »

1bpp wrote: post #44
shaftway wrote: post #11

I feel like there are some key differences between the companies though. The second one outlined for Meta is: > Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day). This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive. The first one outlined for YouTube is: > Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s au…

My YouTube use definitely isn't healthy, but it's still the only social app that asks me to take a break if I use it too long or late at night. That should be standard in any of these apps.

What country are you in? I have never seen this in the US although I have been a very long time subscriber to YouTube Premium.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#78

Post by AlexandrB »

pembrook wrote: post #68

This reads like an Onion headline. Gosh, I hope the media never unearths the documents on my company. They’ll learn that keeping my customers coming back was also my top priority. The horror! If they dig a little deeper they might uncover a vast conspiracy, that every business on earth has been secretly conspiring for decades to give people a service so good they’ll come back again and again for it. If this isn’t Pul…

> every business on earth has been secretly conspiring for decades to give people a service so good they’ll come back again and again for it

You're out of touch. The modern approach is to give people a service just barely good enough so they don't leave outright and keep them coming back with fomo, clickbait, and pandering to their worldview. I doubt user satisfaction is even a column in a table at social media companies.

Most services I use are worse than they were 10 years ago but make far more money.

Edit:

> They’ll learn that keeping my customers coming back was also my top priority. The horror!

By the way, the customers here are not the users, they're the advertisers. The users are largely disposable eyeball inventory.

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#79

Post by Izikiel43 »

helterskelter wrote: post #43
RajT88 wrote: post #27

And why not? AAA game companies have been reported to have psychologists on staff to help make their games more addictive. We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive. We seem to be fine with expanding gambling - where I live (not Nevada!) slot machines are everywhere. Nice restaurants even will dedicate corners to slot machines - not just seedy bars. Sports betting apps are all over…

I know Doom Eternal had one, I believe she was even credited. But the line between "making a game more fun" and "making a game addictive" is a little blurry.

Addictive in this case you mean could be out of spite? Like, I don't like this but it's pissing me off and by god I will beat it?

Re: Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"

#80

Post by AnthonyMouse »

mikkupikku wrote: post #15
sagacity wrote: post #6

It's good to see that many countries are working on lesiglation to protect children and teens against this, since the companies clearly aren't trying.

American tech corps act like cigarette companies but we're still at the point where banning them for kids is considered weird, fringe and even dangerous. Crazy.

The general problem is that nobody actually needs cigarettes but communication is fundamental to the human experience. How do you even propose to define "social media" in a way that can distinguish between it and any other public forum for discussion?

The actual problem is not that kids are using group communications technology, it's that the network effect in public interaction has been captured by private companies with a perverse incentive to maximize engagement.

That's just as much of a problem for adults as for teenagers and the solution doesn't look anything like "ban people from using this category of thing" and instead looks something like "require interoperability/federation" so there isn't a central middle man sitting on the chokepoint who makes more money the more time people waste using the service.

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