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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever thought that the reason Facebook is successful is because people choose to use it? No one is forced to use social media.

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Lol. Go and read Hooked book. The shitty things Silicon Valley does to keep users addicted to their social media apps would blow your mind. Facebook is a net negative to the society. The reason people are using their products are because they are addicted. Not because it's making their life bettter. It's like drugs. Atleast the drug companies have ethics to not give you some unless you continue paying money. Fucking Facebook want users scrolling their shitty feeds and clicking on notifications all day so that Zuckerberg and VCs can buy more yatchs.

And that could describe, alcohol, weed, sweets, gambling....

Yes, that why those things are either illegal or heavily regulated.

Sweets are heavily regulated?

It's heavily regulated by parents.

So now we need the government to treat us all like children who are incapable of making our own rational decisions?

Yes. A government taking care of the citizens like parents do would be the best case scenario.

please tell me you are being sarcastic.

People are sometimes capable of making rational decisions, but there's a whole industry (advertising, maybe you've heard of it) dedicated to working against that.

Think of really any common sense regulation:

- Can't use leaded gasoline

- Can't use asbestos

- Must wear a seat belt

- Cannot drive while intoxicated

If people always behaved well, we wouldn't need laws. They don't, so we do.

All of those cases cause external harm to other people. Logging into FB and posting memes doesn’t.

I’ve known people who have been harmed by logging into FB. Sometimes it’s the memes, comments, DMs, and disinformation that causes harm. Sometimes it’s Facebook running a social experiment without consent to see if they can alter users’ moods.

So now we are going to regulate every company that allows you to post memes and does A/B testing?

Are we going to have the “Ministry of Truth” to make sure that no direct messages don’t have anything false?

How can you say this seriously? Disinformation on FB had a huge impact on the 2016 election in the US.

So do we want a “Central Department of Truth” to regulate Facebook?

We don’t have to choose between Ayn Rand and George Orwell here. There are plenty of things FB can do to regulate the flow of information. A couple basic ideas are to apply the libel standard and to ensure the news feed isn’t full of hyperbolic echo chamber garbage. Stuff mainstream media outlets have been doing for decades, and has been effective.

I feel like you’re not discussing in good faith; please try and be sympathetic to the idea that Facebook’s pursuit of ad revenue has an outsized negative effect on our society. You act as though nothing is wrong and any regulation we apply would be completely illiberal. Neither is true.

Would you like every platform that allows users to post comment to be held liable for the content the user posts - including HN?

Again, no one's talking about holding platforms liable or establishing "Ministries of Truth". Maybe take it down a notch?

What I would like is for Facebook to gatekeep "news" posted on its platform. Traditional media does this, it's called "the editorial process" and is--while not perfect--super effective. I'm not saying you can't post life updates or hot takes, but I am saying they shouldn't be mixed with news that's been through the editorial process and held to journalistic standards by professionals.

I would also like people who run ads libeling people to be subject to civil lawsuits, and for that Facebook would need PII for people who run advertisements. I don't know if they already have it; if they do great. They then need to make it available when a court asks for it.

Alcohol, gambling and the like are heavily regulated.

Yes and because it’s heavily regulated in the case of alcohol and because the government is so effective, it’s impossible for people under 21 to get alcohol.

And games (video and irl), food, movies, books, podcasts, amusement parks.

You're essentially arguing for the regulation of anything that gives humans a dopamine hit. If social media is bad for changing their product so that people use it more then so is Doritos for doing the same so people eat more.

> Have you ever thought that the reason Facebook is successful is because people choose to use it?

Yes, I have thought that, before I knew any better. Now I know that Facebook became successful by making people think that other people wanted them to use Facebook.

E.g. http://www.krist0ph3r.com/2009/06/reminder-kristopher-invite...

And that’s basically advertising 101. I remember being taught that in a marketing class in graduate school back in 2001.

https://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-bandwagon-advertisi...

No, advertising 101 is vague lies like "America's favorite mascara". The more specific lie that "Kristopher invited you to use Facebook" takes it to a new level.

So let’s go with Mary Kay and Tupperware....

AFAIK invitations to Mary Kay and Tupperware parties are not lies. Your friend actually does want you to go.

I remember way back in the day my parents were invited to a “dinner party”. It wasn’t until they got their that they found out that it was a pitch to some MLM scheme like Mary Kay.

If your parents got to the "dinner party" and found that their friends hadn't actually invited them, but that the invitation was sent by the Mary Kay company without your parents' friends' knowledge, then I retract my claim. But I suspect it was your parents' friends being misleading on a small scale rather than a company lying on a large scale.

The entire idea behind MLzm schemes is to con your “friends” to get them to sell your goods.

The equivalent is if a Tupperware salesperson tried to sell you tupperware by showing you a _doctored_ image of your friend buying tuperware while literally holding a sign saying "Hey [Your Name], buy this too!".

Yup.. It's how trust is built, familiarizing you with a person or a thing - like a brand - by seeing or hearing about it enough times, automatically builds trust with it - digital advertising which organizations have taken advantage of this mechanism to shallowly in a very shallow, cheap way, manipulate people - tied into network effects that the internet as a platform allows to be scaled.

The article you linked to reminds me that Mark Zuckerberg's moral compass consists of:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks

It's particularly odd to me that he's quoted 'trust me' as if the concept of trust is foreign, non-existent,

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