Facebook’s causal mental health harm and a regulatory strategy (Comment to FTC)
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Re: Facebook’s causal mental health harm and a regulatory strategy (Comment to FTC)
#2I've seen many angles on how Facebook's kind of repeating history, including the parallels with tobacco's history. It's a very strong stance that I believe will be proven over time, and I'm worried about the negative impact Facebook will have on many lives in the meantime.
If the commenter's sources are legitimate, I could see this being the start of real progress to create change. Facebook is dodging questions and, possibly, hiding research which is deceptive and disturbing. I'm not fully bought-in on the financial incentives outlined here. I agree with the limit on the negative impact (ie. reduction in addiction outcomes). My biggest question is -- is there a reliable scale for social media addictiveness and depression/anxiety impact? It seems like figuring out this piece is critical to the FTC being able to enforce a fined threshold.
In the end, Facebook is a company driven by metrics to an extreme. Tech is incentivized to optimize for engagement and ads revenue, and these employees are not only incentivized with more influence but with money through promotions and bonuses. I believe they're good people, but at times the wrong incentives. Given Facebook's audience size, any small "optimization" on their end for money can be devastating for a large group of people. I hope the FTC does something about this, and soon.
Re: Facebook’s causal mental health harm and a regulatory strategy (Comment to FTC)
#3Corporations exist to bring value to shareholders. They do this by defining their own targets with their own economic interests in mind. Maximize paperclip sales YoY, minimize costs.
Just as a corporation cannot exist in a vacuum, neither should it's measure of success. It is impossible to have a corporation without financial, social and cultural impact in its operating environment.
Why do we let corporations decide unilaterally what their success looks like, without input from the society they are operating in?
How would our society look like if McDonald's was regularly taxed xcompanyScalepopulationObesity% for its operating country or region?
Or Marlboro taxed companyScaley^(zpopulationLungCancer%)?
There is certainly evidence linking those 2 societal, highly impacting "metrics" with the products of those corporations. The effects of which are amplified by the limitless maximization of burgers/cigarettes sold YoY.
Maybe if depression can be somehow measured, and linked to social media usage, the same could apply to Facebook. It's way more complicated than burgers or cigarettes though.
But the underlying cause is the same, the Friedman mantra of maximizing returns to shareholders, when taken from an exclusively economic perspective, is simply wrong and unethical.
The societies impacted by the operations of a corporation, should have a say in what success looks like for that corporation.
Re: Facebook’s causal mental health harm and a regulatory strategy (Comment to FTC)
#4The website you've linked is nothing more than the "suggestion box" of a leviathan. They don't read the comments. When they're absolutely legally required to do so, they figure out their arguments first, based on politics and the possibility that a Court will or will not overturn their regulations, then they'll look for comments that exemplify the arguments they're making -- in order to satisfy the bare minimum legal requirement for appearing to address comments that are submitted. They certainly don't form "regulatory strategy" based on comments. As a commenting strategy, I'd urge you not trust the FTC's UI, and instead, learn about the legal framework -- and more importantly, the realities of administration -- driving the fictions and optics of regulatory policymaking.
Re: Facebook’s causal mental health harm and a regulatory strategy (Comment to FTC)
#5Corporations exist to bring value to shareholders. They do this by defining their own targets with their own economic interests in mind. Maximize paperclip sales YoY, minimize costs. Just as a corporation cannot exist in a vacuum, neither should it's measure of success. It is impossible to have a corporation without financial, social and cultural impact in its operating environment. Why do we let corporations decide…
We do allow society input. They are called laws. A corporation must consider laws and the fines and punishments involved in its metrics.
In Facebook's case, they have repeatably been fined billions of dollars, but the gain more than the fine, so they continue.
There is no abstract principle that needs to be advanced here, just pass laws and set the punishments at a level to discourage them.
Re: Facebook’s causal mental health harm and a regulatory strategy (Comment to FTC)
#6Corporations exist to bring value to shareholders. They do this by defining their own targets with their own economic interests in mind. Maximize paperclip sales YoY, minimize costs. Just as a corporation cannot exist in a vacuum, neither should it's measure of success. It is impossible to have a corporation without financial, social and cultural impact in its operating environment. Why do we let corporations decide…
We do allow society input. They are called laws. A corporation must consider laws and the fines and punishments involved in its metrics. In Facebook's case, they have repeatably been fined billions of dollars, but the gain more than the fine, so they continue. There is no abstract principle that needs to be advanced here, just pass laws and set the punishments at a level to discourage them.
But that was just what GP suggested: passing laws. Just laws with a more specific granularity, acknowledging the specific externalities and societal impact a company produces.
Re: Facebook’s causal mental health harm and a regulatory strategy (Comment to FTC)
#7When Zuckerberg is brought to Congress, he’s often asked questions about Facebook’s impact on mental health and addictiveness. Zuckerberg frequently answers by saying that Facebook’s north star metric is Meaningful Social Interaction (MSI), yet one employee, who was on the well-being team that was shut down, describes this metric as a marketing gimick. This employee shared internal metrics that more than 99% of Facebook usage is passive browsing, the kind that is more likely to reduce self-esteem, anxiety, and harm mental health.
Re: Facebook’s causal mental health harm and a regulatory strategy (Comment to FTC)
#8Some recent experimental evidence consistent with Facebook being addictive and showing that helping people quit makes them happier: http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/facebook.pdf