Meta sued by states over harmful youth marketing
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
There are plenty of other countries that have just as much social media usage as the US but don't have the same widespread emotional dysfunction, so wouldn't that suggest that social media isn't to blame?
Are you sure? A quick search says otherwise. E.g Effect of social media on youth in [country].
I guess my search term is favouring a conclusion but not sure where / how to find proof of your claim.
This causes mental health issues to go unaddressed, but, ironically, it also helps in a way, because peer pressure certainly helps reinforce individual discipline to develop techniques to keep it together. Peer pressure is a very powerful motivator.
For example fat shaming is certainly bullying but it's also certainly effective at discouraging overeating
I think you should back that statement up with a citation.
As far as I know, it just traumatizes people and discourages them from eating in front of the people shaming them. Then, as we all do, they relieve the trauma by using their usual coping mechanism - in their case, eating.
It's just like hitting kids. It teaches them to avoid getting hit; they learn nothing about their behavior.
But if you materially get fat you will get fat shamed regardless. So while it doesn't make you stop eating garbage, you will somehow, someway figure out how to keep a decent figure. This can either be exercise or more awful methods like surgery.
What makes you say that? Lots of people remain overweight, lots of research shows that shaming doesn't have the impact you say.
Also, lots of people can't physically do anything about it.
That sort of thing used to be only something you’d share with close friends, if that. It was a big deal if someone let you know they had bipolar, depression, etc.
Communism never really took off, so it didn't have far to fall. But nothing lasts forever, so surely capitalism and democracy will give way eventually(in some ways it already has).
Anywho, my reference to communism not taking off is mostly to the utopian idealogy, I understand many people live/d under communism, but it was really just socialism with some caveats.
Mental diseases are metabolic diseases.
It is the food that destroys our brains and even worse, our women eat shit even during pregnancy, so the brains of newborns already start out with defects.
If we were eating a proper human diet (ie beef and eggs), we would not have these issues on this scale.
Take your pick.
Let's not scapegoat the real problems at play: climate disaster, the rise of authoritative leaders in democracies that use fear as their biggest selling point, crippling debt to merely exist in a healthy manner (in the US), disinformation turning friends and family into anti-vaxx Q-following idiots, capitalism squeezing blood out of every penny... The list goes on.
> but instead would rather
It sounds like you are implying something wrong with the very line of thinking you have presented.
On monetary relief:
On the joint COPPA claim, it asks the court to “Award the Filing States damages, restitution, and other compensation”
On the state law claims, each and every state asks for monetary relief under its own law in the form of civil penalties, damages, disgorgement, and/or restitution.
If I encourage my kid to engage in the dangerous sport of snowboarding (this is an analogy) and they take it way too far despite obvious signs of egregious injury to their person is that the ski resort's fault?
No, at some point it is the parents' fault. If your kid killed themselves because the screen told them they aren't airbrushed enough their parents should be held legally liable.
Parents shouldn't let their kids smoke, sure. But that's not the end of the public conversation.
It's not easy or perhaps even possible for a parent's influence to outweigh social programming coming from all around.
So many parents are against smoking, yet naive teenagers still get addicted due to friends/coolness pressure
It is easier to punish fb, so we should do.
Parents can't surveil kids 24/7. It simply isn't possible. You have to have some trust that your society is a safe place for kids to grow up. Independence is an important part of growing up. Making your own decisions with or without your parent's approval.
Don't you remember being 13 and wanting to make your own decisions about your life? At some point a kid becomes an individual and they will make their own choices whether you like it or not.
Blaming parents for societal treatment of children is the same as blaming climate change on people who don't recycle. It's utter nonsense because the outside factors are massively larger than any individual.
What they use most is TikTok and Snapchat. My point being the harmful marketing cannot be proven if hardly any children actively use it
edit: grammar
There are plenty of things to measure. Just pick one and stop trying to play this ridiculous game of "what about-isms".
Really this lawsuit is just a meta for safety-ist culture that probably causes mental health issues in the first place.
It's like I spent hours per day playing soccer when I was a kid, and regularly got injured, broke my leg once. I got bullied there too on occasion, by some definition. Oh, and we used to play games where the losing team would bend over at the goal line and the winning team would try to kick the ball as hard as possible at their asses (or legs) from like 15ft - I dunno if this is bullying (I've done a lot of both bending and kicking), but I'm pretty sure someone has to think of the children...
So I guess the parents (or no, not parents - states!) shoulda sued the town that provided us with a public soccer field, cause "harms" happened there :)
EDIT: come think of it, unlike other cases - parents cannot control the other kids' behavior in school or out in the neighborhood - preventing their own children from using social media is comparatively trivial. So, there's also that - I guess if facebook is responsible for harms, all of the parents affected should be sued for neglect :)
If they 1) know of such bullies and 2) do nothing or even enable it, yes. I would agree with that. I don't know the legal details, but schools should have a moral duty not to promote harmful factors to kids, and to make sure kids are safe on campus.
> Or why ads, sue the media companies that publish them.
Depending on the ad, sure. Wouldn't be the first time. Ads targeting children have a ton of regulations behind them.
>Or maybe vendors that sell the magazines, or all of them - since they make up a platform like Facebook.
The magazine would be under scrutiny. I'm not sure if there are any laws against that (the national enquirer is still on my grocery store checkout line after all), so I'm guessing freedom of press overrides that. It's really just libel they worry about (feel free to look up Hulk Hogan vs Gawker for one if the few cases where the press loses such charges. Since Libel laws are very strong in the US).
>Majority of their time on social media" is not a harm. The rest are similar and/or not clearly linked to anything.
Not by itself no. The lawsuit seems to be arguing that meta knowingly deploys algorithms and utilizes data in a way that Is harmful. TBD.
>parents cannot control the other kids' behavior in school or out in the neighborhood - preventing their own children from using social media is comparatively trivial. So, there's also that - I guess if facebook is responsible for harms, all of the parents affected should be sued for neglect :)
Regardless of my opinion on that, children's anything (media, ads, internet websites) have regulations and the argument here is that meta had continually and knowingly ignored such regulation. It involves minors but summarizing down to "social media harms kids" belittles all this regulation setup over the years. It's not just about "being too addicting"
>They§constitute unfair and/or deceptive acts or practices under the state consumer protection statutes,violate COPPA, and further constitute unlawful acts under common law principles.
And given an example
>§For example, on September 30, 2021, Davis denied that Meta promotes harmful content, such as content promoting eating disorders to youth, when she testified before Congress, stating, “we do not direct people towards content that promotes eating disorders. That actually violates our policies, and we remove that content when we become aware of it. We actually use AI to find content like that and remove it. [Redacted]
There are 40+ plaintiffs and over 100 lawyers on the lawsuit so I'm not too surprised they have some basic definitions there. Will it be effective, who knows?
I believe that no single person sits down and says "let's make kids get addicted to our product," but they do run A/B tests or new features and keep the better performing variant. The end result of many of these cycles is the same.
You can't ban a communication tool. That is just absurd.
Research shows 100% of bullying is caused by humans and eliminating all human contact reduces bullying by 100%
Amazing!
nothing will change until people stop enabling meta with their labor
>I believe that no single person sits down and says "let's make kids get addicted to our product," but they do run A/B tests or new features and keep the better performing variant.
Television stations make pilot programs to see if a show is any good. Intentionally making bad shows isn't a great business model. Television stations want shows people will watch, otherwise they are wasting a ton of money. I suspect social media is similar.
Stats show people are inherently resistant to join any social media, until all their friends are already on there.
If none of your peers use social media actively or you don't keep in touch with large group of people, it wouldnt offer much value for you
2) There really needs to be a rule for frivolous shakedown lawsuits of the kind EU and now apparently US states practice, where monetary damages are paid either way - if the fake harms and violations pan out, to the state; if they don't pan our, by the states to the company with the same order of magnitude fine.
other kids not on social media/ your kid not on social media Δ0 happiness
other kids not on social media/ your kid on social media Δ-3 happiness
other kids on social media/ your kid on social media Δ-10 happiness
other kids on social media/ your kid not not social media Δ-50 happiness
Maybe some form of co-ordination might be in the parents best interest... maybe some form of representative could do something about it if it's in the kids best interest?
Parent: All the other kids are on it.
...
PS There's some in between, https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103340
Of course good parents have to be involved in raising there kids well but that doesn't mean we shouldn't subsidide education or restrict companies from sending kids down coal mines(even if they really want the money). Mostly because good parents can fail and bad parents exist and if society isn't going to aim for turning kids into good adults then it'll just get worse generation on generation.
Parents control the phone and the phone plan. Parental controls that exist today can set how long an app can be open per day. What's the outcome from suing Meta that's more effective?
I agree that policy should protect kids and to do that it needs to be effective, not just cathartic.
[0] https://www.fightcancer.org/news/department-justice-lawsuit-...
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/23/ftc-plans-to-hire-child-psyc...
There's a thin line to be walked between privacy and regulation, but Facebook's own research has pointed at the harmful effects of Instagram on the mental health of children... so I think some scrutiny here is overdue.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/10/6/22712927/facebook-instagr...
Facebook’s own research has found both positive and negative effects, depending on the child’s status among their peers.
The Verge is quick to point out that:
> Instagram makes teen girls feel worse about their bodies
but more discreet in reminding people that fashion magazines, including The Cut (also published by Vox), have the same negative effects and none of the positive ones, like helping gender minority find a safe space, re-socialising people with physical handicaps or anxiety. The critique makes sense —I’m not denying it— but it doesn’t come. from “the algorithm.” It comes from having a lot of money poured into the Instagram creation ecosystem. Instagram has very little control over that as most of it is through brand deals or magazine raising their own profile. That behemoth of money and attention comes from an industry that has decades of well-documented problematic practices behind it, including the unrepentant glorification of using self-starvation and drugs, notably cocaine, to reach unhealthy thinness.
If you condemn Instagram but don’t include that industry among the culprits, you’ll have Snap with unhealthy models, TikTok with unhealthy models, or whatever comes next with unhealthy models.
Who is actually ok with this?
That’s of course assuming that Reddit and Discord wouldn’t get much bigger if Meta were to close, but I’m not sure the negative effects would vanish because the owner is different.
The post is about instagram so I'm talking about instagram, feel free to post an article about magazines if you want to talk about magazines... legislation aimed towards instagram will create precedence to pursue other platforms like tiktok and can also become ingrained as policy. Just because we're focusing on one subject here doesn't mean we're ignoring the others or playing favorites.
Those are not two similar but separate problems.
This is like saying that mail bombs are the problem of the post office and not people having access to explosives: the problem isn’t envelopes. It’s people with access to explosives, and FedEx would likely have the same issue—unless federal rules allow them to scan and to refuse to deliver explosives.
I’m not being crass with a bad metaphor: focusing on the support has been a key issue in the argument for a while. Fashion magazines used to be decried as “glossy paper,” but no one thought the difference between magazines sending problematic self-image and serious news was that newspapers came on broad sheets of mate paper. Still, it’s now how the problem is presented: without clear separation.
I did work at Meta on the team looking at Teenagers, and I did raise that point internally: should we look at gambling and alcohol and extend the same rules to fashion? Should we boost peers over brands to avoid problematic ideation?
Those conversations, without the shadow of fashion partners, were generally productive. It wasn’t perfect: the goal remained “engagement” but there were no sacred cows to avoid.
As soon as the findings about teenage body dysmorphia were put in the context of fashion (and presented to one particular executive who cared about advertising more than algorithmic boost), that question was buried. Several friends of mine got blackballed hard not for suggesting Instagram-specific treatment, but for instance, for asking Anna Wintour about the quip where she fat-shamed her best friend in _The September Issue_ (it’s a niche fashion reference, but it’s widely considered a smoking gun in the industry).
There are inherent biases to how Instagram and Facebook work: you post when you achieve something, and there’s a bias towards success, but the internal findings rarely found that those were crippling. Thinness, on the other hand, leads to clear, widespread medical issues. I remember asking if the issue became more prevalent because teenagers didn’t have access to that many magazines before but that the dose effect was comparable. I don’t think anyone has looked into that.
I’m not saying that to disengage Meta’s responsibility: I had argued for explicit filters, like giving teenage boys who know they can’t resist and will behave in a way they think is unhealthy, the ability to exclude scantly clad women in their feed. I used another example, naturally (more typical of internal debate). That idea could have had legs ten years ago; now, with the debate being a lot less constructive, I'm not sure.
from my perspective, this is the kind of regulation the FTC should seek out — so for different reasons I agree with your analogy
magazines are an entirely different beast and it's strange to not address that — I have to physically go out of my way to purchase a magazine or have one delivered... that's something I opt in to
people opt-in to instagram, but for teenagers there are much larger stakes involved... instagram has become an integral part of many teens' social life (by design) and they're constantly getting targeted and personalized ads fed to them directly
the fact that the goal remains engagement makes it pretty clear where meta's priorities lie, and it's not on the side of safety
If we can't trust parents to parent their kids then why not ban everything that possibly could be bad for kids?
Just getting to that point with social media will be a big win.
The social media industry came on quick and got a free pass for a while, but it’s now more mature and needs to become more mindful of its social consequences just the same as other industries. Whether that needs to come through bans and regulation or can be achieved through voluntary self-restraint is up to the big players and their egos.
What I am saying is that why you and other corporativists think that its ok for kids to suffer if their parents aren’t able to show them a balanced way to live and approach tech?
I will also argue that things like Soda can harm you but are much easier to restrict compared to Social Media access and social media has compounding effects on your mind especially if you are a child.
We can absolutely look at products and services that are actually harmful and deem them unacceptable for children without banning every other thing on the planet that might possibly be bad. Some states feel that Facebook has risen to the level where it's harmful enough to do something at the government level. I think that's probably what's needed since facebook has demonstrated that they're unwilling or unable to stop the harm they're causing without government intervention.
Allowing it and not making young adults hide what they’re doing is so important. That way it can be regulated by a responsible adult, and someone on hand to make sure there’s a bucket, some water and a blanket with no danger or fear of recourse.
Reference: https://youtu.be/DkS1pkKpILY?si=SIn7pg3ebRGbHcXQ
Alcohol is so ingrained in popular culture that criticising it is almost taboo.
Culture will play a big part in what people under the legal age to buy consume with family. It can be a good think but I reckon once a month have a glass of wine.
This is empirically completely and utterly false; the US has far more alcoholics than many countries with a lower legal drinking age and responsible drinking cultures.
Most countries offer a counterexample.
Extreme binge-drinking to the point of harm and even death is quite particular to the US. It's a result of the prohibition on drinking, so the forbidden fruit is abused. In most contries kids drink mildly with family from 13-14 and with friends after that, but it is never seen as a big deal. So there's no pressure to go crazy at 21, or to hide it before that. When something is normal and not a big deal, it's not abused.
Interesting logic to think through.
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-social-m...
Social media may have its problems, but these terrible comparison to drugs is silly. It is not going convince anyone but those who already don't like social media.
It’s similar to the superstimulus effect in junk food. The stuff is designed to hijack your instincts without providing much in return. We think we get more value out of social media (or a bag of chips) than we actually do because it’s purposefully designed to make us feel that way.
Facebook has an easier time doing studies, but companies have spent decades trialing different ads, marketing campaigns, sales pitches, etc.
Another way of phrasing what you've said is that we should prevent companies from building products that people really like and want to use. No one is forcing anyone to use Facebook.
What level of “harm” triggers the law?
Am I harming you if I make an online store and you browse it too much? How do I know what too much is? How much browsing of a social network is too much?
I don’t understand how you think this is all crystal clear :)
Well, I can see how some people might be negatively impacted by this sites but it has to be marginal considering we're taking about billions of users. And what's new? the same could be said by tons of other businesses (how many people are obese with reduced life expectancy because of agressive marketing from Mac Donald's and Coca Cola for instance?). I mean, is Meta that bad?
So not only will they fail to achieve their goal, they're not even going after the right player.
But hey the cultural movement of Americans these days are to hate on big tech, and Facebook in particular. So here we go.
if only we could have such giants in Europe...
> Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies
Are we talking about infinite scroll or heroine? It would make more sense to sue Kelloggs over Lucky Charms commercials, but we're all use to them so there's no outrage.
It's politically popular to sue big tech and especially Meta. That's the whole story.
To be clear, the lawsuit is not about the content on instagram or privacy. They're saying kids spend too much time on Instagram. Let me introduce you to the parental controls that are already on your kid's phone.
Of all the examples you might offer, it's ironic that you chose this one!
There's a TON of political history around breakfast cereal composition and advertising as well as ongoing reform campaigns and media criticism. In some cases, this has settled into formal regulations about things like what cereal boxes can look like and when advertisements can run. In other cases, it's involved collective industry "good behavior" meant to forestall regulation. But it continues to a problem because financial incentive always leads to optimizing for whatever can be gotten away with.
And yeah, social media companies are maturing as an industry and are now due to play that same perpetual game of government regulation, industry self-policing, and boundary-testing.
Does anyone think this stuff works, though? It's an cycle of outrage and performative regulation. I'm not sure the same path in another industry is a good idea.
Lucky for parents today there's TV options without commercials.
so, good observation. regulate aspects of these products like heroin
Alternate path: attach electrodes to kids, measure dopamine levels, and turn off the app if they go too high.
Simpler, but less fun: set the max time an app can be open.
If you want the make the case that IG is unhealthy you need to argue along a different axis because the problem with IG and heroine isn't that it makes dopamine.
Why can't we educate parents about controls and stop Meta from intentionally making their software addictive? Heck, we could even fine Meta and have the money go to efforts to reduce the behaviors they've worked so hard to create.
By regulating the existence of a 'next page' button? Curious if you can think of user interface rules that are less absurd.
I've assumed that the suit is over the fact that Meta intentionally and algorithmically seeks to test what content gets you to stay on their site and feed you more of that.
I also don't remember the last time I saw a Next button on Instagram or Facebook. Maybe they have one for children? But if they're still proactively encouraging addictive behaviors, I'm not sure the specific UI element matters as much.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.41...
Whether we're regulating UI elements or a recommendation algorithm... It's one thing to say they're "encouraging addictive behaviors", but what's a rule that identifies what what part of a mobile app needs to change? It's an unproductive path.
Same with oil companies.
Of course there are many entities doing bad things, but few have such a dramatic impact on all of civilization.
In the sense that the downsides are documented in the relevant scientific literature, sure. But popular perception of those downsides is very different. A whole lot of people think those downsides are a pack of lies: that cannabis isn't habit forming, that it doesn't make the average user lazy and complacent, that it doesn't increase the risk of schizophrenia, that driving under the influence of it isn't unsafe and is probably even safer, etc. The downsides are all "DARE lies" according to many of the people who think legalizing cannabis is worth it, who weighed the harms of criminalization against 'cannabis is literally harmless.'
(FWIW I voted to legalize it in Washington in 2012.)
People recognize that cannabis is habit forming, it's just not as physically addictive as the things we label "dangerous addictive drugs." Most people are addicted to caffeine and we generally accept that it's fine. In the same way that moderate drinking for almost everyone doesn't turn into alcoholism it's the same for cannabis. In contrast everyone who smokes nicotine with any regularity at all will become addicted to it.
"average user lazy and complacent" -- That's like why we're here man.
I don't know a single person who thinks it's fine to drive while high, I do know some stoners whose tolerance for "sober enough to drive" is suspect but that happens when we hit the bars too.
I think you're applying the word harmless to a degree that no one else does and then are arguing against that. Like that cheeseburger increases your risk of heart disease but no one's out here being like "cheeseburgers considered harmful."
You say that, but there's a lot of people who flat out deny it. You're saying that everybody knows this, but that isn't true. Same thing with the driving under the influence thing. A lot of people have told me that they drive safer when high because it heightens their senses and slows their roll and makes them paranoid and therefore careful, and a whole lot of cope like that invented to excuse themselves for doing it.
The downsides of cannabis that you claim everybody understands and recognizes are in fact flat out denied by many people.
I bet this case would never have been brought if Facebook had a "This product is addictive" warning every time you open the app.
Historically, though, most doomsayers are proven wrong. Let's hope we are too.
I hope the money is worth it.
The fines are just a cost of doing business for them.
Also, how is nobody in the government responsible?
It really feels like the Sackler family has been bundled up as a nice solution to the whole thing.
The fines only slightly raise the cost of this raw material from $0, so it's unlikely to deter Meta's behavior until someone faces a more severe penalty there.
Doesn't make it right, but we shouldn't assume the people responsible don't feel responsible simply because we aren't hearing about it.
If we don't like how something works, we should understand the factors that shape it. If someone's internal preferences are contrary to their actions, that's worth knowing, as it says something about the strength of the incentive structures. This is true for any person of any status, not least the rich, who, ideally, should not be destructive forces in society.
Private preferences and feelings are relevant to the analysis.
It'd be great if the USA had some kind of effective consumer protection agency, but I guess then we might have fewer billionaires here.
Suicides seem to have gone up and social media use might have something to do with it.
https://news.byu.edu/intellect/10-year-byu-study-shows-eleva...
> Girls who used social media for at least two to three hours per day at the beginning of the study—when they were about 13 years old—and then greatly increased their use over time were at a higher clinical risk for suicide as emerging adults.
https://socialmediavictims.org/mental-health/suicide/
> Over the last ten years, there has been a significant rise in the risk of teenage suicide. Although several factors play a role in an individual’s choice to take their life, recent studies have established connections between mental health issues such as depression and suicidal ideation, and social media usage.
Yes, bullying has always been a problem. Yes, society has always been force-feeding kids dangerously unattainable body images. The problem is not that these things have just been repackaged into a different kind of book or TV show. The problem is that it takes much less effort than any time in history to fake a "community" all parroting the same dangerous lie.
The old adage went "If I run into one asshole today, then I ran into an asshole. If I run into 100 assholes today, then I am the asshole, and I should reflect", and it was pretty good advice. But if one asshole can create the illusion that you ran into 100 of them, what's the appropriate response. The whole problem with facebook and instagram is that it has made coordinating bullying campaigns much MUCH cheaper from a labor standpoint. Couple that with the constant drive to keep kids on the platform and you have a system that seems purpose built to drive already anxious kids to suicide.
I can 100% keep my kids off social media. But I can't keep their classmates from assembling pages impersonating them and driving bullying via that avenue. Facebook and Instagram's engagement algorithm plays a serious role in that operation.
https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/13-explanations-mental-...
If they’re bad, they’re bad for adults, too?
If they’re not inherently bad, then they can be safely used by responsible 16 year olds as well as responsible 18/19 year olds?
We let 16 year olds operate deadly machinery traveling at many meters per second. Social media is at least less potentially harmful than automobiles.
> Sealioning is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method
Essentially using questions to challenge assumptions in the form of argumentative dialogue.
This is a legitimate form of having a debate and it has been used for thousands of years. To compare it to the internet trolling practice of sealioning where somebody just asks for evidence repeatedly is disingenuous
Such as a bicycle. And not a car, in almost every country in the world.
The issue is billion dollar companies manipulating people for profit, not that people are able to communicate with each other over the internet. It's entirely possible to host communities that aren't corrupted by investors who want 1000x returns on their investments.
However, the Utah law defines social media as any online forum belonging to a site with more than 5m users that allows people to register accounts and interact with others[1]:
> (9) "Social media company" means a person or entity that:
> (a) provides a social media platform that has at least 5,000,000 account holders worldwide; and
> (b) is an interactive computer service.
> (10)(a) "Social media platform" means an online forum that a social media company makes available for an account holder to:
> (i) create a profile;
> (ii) upload posts;
> (iii) view the posts of other account holders; and
> (iv) interact with other account holders or users.
The law uses broad strokes to ban much more than just social media, it bans any group or community that might belong to a parent site that has a moderately-sized user base.
In effect, the law isolates anyone under 18 who might want to find community outside of their potentially abusive or extremist parents.
[1] https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title13/Chapter63/13-63-S101.html?...
> My reason for reducing my social media presence is the Like count next to every thought expressed. By adding a publicly visible number next to every expressed human thought, you influence behavior and thinking.
What do some people under 18 think of the problem and solutions? I'm not sure how many are here, but maybe some HN members could ask their kids.
Look at the mechanical loom (industrialisation), pesticides (agricultural yield increase), penicillin (life expectancy increase), painkillers (life quality increase), clean water (wide-spread infrastructure), cheap microwaves (overseas slave labour), reliable vehicles for all (fossil fuel infrastructure).
We need to continue this trend to fix the problems. The billionaires aren’t blocking us. Yes, it’s unfair that they hold so much wealth and power. The world has been that way for a long time.
When electric lightbulbs came to the masses, it made some rich people even richer, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that the masses’ lives were better.
Next steps for us:
- Find manufacturing processes that don’t require overseas slave labour
- Agricultural processes that don’t need as much pesticide
- Better, cheaper medicine (recent developments in quantum computing suggest we may be able to crack protein folding within 10 years, which will lead to an explosion in medical research)
- Automated construction (see Hadrian X)
- A replacement for fossil fuels (if we crack fusion, we can use that for the grid and we can create our own combustion juice for vehicles using the enormous amount of energy available)
- Protocells that allow extremely precise manufacturing at scale (protocells are programmed cells or completely custom cells that we can equip & program for certain tasks, like “remove all the iron ore from the ground here” — they will change everything)
These are the things that will bring the rest of the world out of poverty. And, depending on how we adapt to the irrelevancy of capitalism as these technologies develop, it may solve the inequality/unfairness problem too.
Taxing billionaires won’t accelerate any of this.
Increases in productivity doesn't translate into more leisure time, it translates into just getting more work done in the same time frame and being paid as if you're doing the same amount of work.
[1] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...
The important bit to note here is the allocation of that gain in efficiency. I agree tech is the driver of the positive sum games we call the economy, but it's important to note that on top of technology we need a political apparatus that allocates the efficiency gain. Ie a 30% increase in productivity should yield not a 30% increase in profits but maybe a 5% increase and a 25% reduction of time spent doing labor or 25% increase in wages. Obviously the numbers are variable, but I thought it important to note this too.
>The billionaires aren’t blocking us.
People hoarding more wealth than BILLIONS combined aren't blocking us?
You can seriously, earnestly think, in your heart of hearts, that hoarding that much wealth for yourself doesn't deprive some other more worthy endeavor of resources??
>When electric lightbulbs came to the masses, it made some rich people even richer, but that’s not the important part.
Not THE important part, I can agree with you. But AN important part, still. It might not be sensible to accost the inventor of the light bulb for the effect of his invention, but it should always be carefully noted the above mentioned calculation of where the efficiency gain is allocated. Did allowance of working at night, doubling the possible working hours allow any reduction of labor or increase in wages? Or did it simply increase profit?
I agree the profit itself is not the problem, the billionaires themselves aren't technically the problem, merely a symptom of an ill designed allocation of the fruits of technology. But to act like 9 people hoarding more than billions of people combined isn't detrimental to any goal other than the enrichment of those 9? I name you silly, sir.
>Taxing billionaires won’t accelerate any of this.
I mean, if we JUST tax them and then burn the tax money we get from them, sure... But if we spend the taxes on the above mentioned goals... You somehow think they wouldn't be achieved quicker???
There's also the 40-hour, 5-day workweek; the end of child labor, parental leave - those developments, and more like them, led to more time with children than the mechanical loom.
In fact, as technology has improved, it's possible that the proportion of children with a parent devoted full-time to them has decreased (because now families need two incomes).
Are you trying to say that you think that some manual labor roles are overpaid? Why can't a jackhammer operator play golf if they want to?
In my country an entry level jackhammer operator makes about $60K and an experienced one about $100K. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
It's no secret that technology companies (especially social media companies) spend billions coming up with ways to keep users on their apps/services. Engagement is a palatable way to measure addiction.
Kids are autonomous humans with free will, and despite what many adults think, they have opinions worth listening to.
As usual, American society superficially protects children while the most harmful perpetrators are given near-absolute access.
I really think the addictive qualities of video games should garner the amount of attention these social media companies generate. Actually, anything that takes your time and gives you nothing is suspect. As always, nothing will save you from a grift except knowledge.
Oh I'm sure this particular lawsuit will be the one that solve these problems once and for all. Hint: it won't. This is performative politicking. Meta and co will continue to pay minuscule fines (not too much though, META is in alot of ETF and mutual funds), they'll continue to spread lobbying money around to both political parties, parents will point fingers (without taking any responsibility), young adults/teens will drone on about "mental health" because its fashionable (if social media is giving you an eating disorder or making you anxious, how about putting down the phone?), and nothing will change.
Ah, yes, technical solutions to social problems. Those always work.
Here's a better idea: raise your kids to value things that are real, and then teach them that nothing they see on a screen is real.
This is just as irrational as believing anything on a screen is real.
Frankly you come off a lot more like Diogenes than Plato.
we know what happens when the government creates uninformed regulations, so I think it's worth supporting them when they appear to take a reasonable approach
kids need to be able to operate within the world that technology has created, and parents need informed guidelines and tools to enforce them
the all or nothing approach probably isn't the way to go... how's abstinence only sex education going, for example?
Id say that access to Instagram isn't a biological function and normalizing it will lead to it ever entrenched in our lives. Make 18 the age requirement. I don't care about privacy concerns because you have no privacy if you participate with these companies.
Do you actually have any real exposure to the kind of things that are targeted to women on social media? It's more like young girls shouln't get sold that it's reasonable for them to achieve with a full schoolday and budget of a teenager the same appearance as a wealthy woman who has access to time, dieticians, personal trainers, and a plastic surgeon, except the wealthy woman tells you her one secret trick is actually a 75$ green powder she takes in the morning (the powder making company is paying her of course).
"Just put down the phone" is this generation's Nancy Reagan "Just say no" moment. It was a joke amongst my young peers back in the day. But the real war on drugs, the War on Tobacco, has been incredibly effective - smoking used to be ubiquitous in the US, now it is just about gone. Social media, with attention-engineered timelines, is tobacco.
To be fair, for many young adults and teens the parents are demanding the kids have their phones so that the parents can track their location and other surveillance shit.
Additionally, we know for a fact that these social media companies are hiring tams of people with full doctorate degrees in keeping you online and responding. How is a 13 year old's underdeveloped brain supposed to compete with that when most adults can't even do it?
1. https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Instagram-Te...
I wasn't presenting myself as a subject matter expert. I'm speaking as an individual who has lived through the evolution of social media and can see how and why Instagram and TikTok are as addictive as they are.
There absolutely needs to be more research done in this area. Hoping this lawsuit will shine more light on the connection between mental health, concentration issues, and social media.
This was the study that triggered all the "Facebook knew Instagram was harming teens' mental health" stories. It was also the study that formed the basis of the whistleblower's argument.
No, it would imply the regulation of advertisements that are displayed on social media not the actual content or algorithms of social media. Advertisements are regulated, the rest of the content people put on social media is not (outside of very narrow things like credible, true, threats).
Content doesn't suddenly become saddled with the same regulations as advertisements themselves just because it's hosted on an ad-supported platform.
You and I probably both agree that that a substantial revision to the First Amendment would be terrible, and so what we probably want is for these corporations to act in voluntary consideration of what's socially responsible so that it's not necessary.
It's not just a question of addictiveness but also of potential level of harm.
Social media companies argue that they can't monitor every post and do appropriate age verification online because it would be "impossible to scale". Well, tough luck. Not being able to scale is YOUR problem, not MINE.
We routinely prevent certain business from existing, like a factory that wants to dump harmful chemical on water people use for drinking. If the factory investors say that there is no alternative, we will still prevent, to the best of our ability, the construction of the factory because it's a business that simply shouldn't exist in the proposed manner.
1000%. I think there are more complex problems in the world that are solved that this. If you look at youth and teenagers activities in Instagram, their photos and videos, and social graph I don't think it is so difficult to detect them, within a high percentile.
You’re all very welcome to whatabout but working at FB is a stain on your character.
"Knowingly preying on vulnerable young people to boost profits" is different from blindly optimizing for engagement without understanding what works.
I honestly don't know, but I don't like so disingenuously simple shoot the messenger answers. That being said, if Facebook amplified it willfully knowing the damage already -- then it's a different issue. And I think there is some evidence of that.
Either way its different than tobacco which was created by the company itself.
One could argue that Meta willingly boosted toxic engagement themselves.
This didn't happen in a vacuum. When a controversial post or comment suddenly pops up in your feed, out of nowhere, participants may be responsible for the responses to it, but Meta is very clearly seeking, targeting, and amplifying that toxic behaviour for profit.
You're on hacker news you should know these types of system design issues...
That may have been true fifteen years ago. There is now a decade worth of scientific literature on social network effects on human behaviour, and I think we can agree that this is hardly something not a single Meta executive know anything about.
> You're on hacker news you should know these types of system design issues...
What I'm suggesting is that this is not an issue for them, but a feature.
The problem is not exclusive to children!
Even if you could successfully bar all children from participating on Facebook, the problem would still exist, and Facebook would continue to harm people.
Now personally I don't use alcohol, don't do drugs (including caffeine), don't gamble, and barely ever use social media (except HN, my one guilty pleasure). But I still think those things should all be legal.
Following your reasoning, anything that could possibly harm children should be banned. Cars sometimes kill children, shall we ban them too?
Now, suppose we do ban Meta. Where should we stop? should we ban open decentralized social media too?
You may not like social media, but a lot of people use them without any particular issues.
If a cop can kill a man in broad daylight for selling loose cigarettes, we should be able to kill a company like meta for breaking the law.
Google.
On public roads, but not otherwise.
Yeah if they sold cars with 0-star zero safety rating claiming that it's just too hard to do anything about making cars safer when you sell cars at scale.
If Meta was a low-margin business, we might buy their argument that "it's just too hard".
There are restrictions around advertising for cigarettes, I think for the same reason. To take it a step further in discussing around cars, I think companies who sell certain sized trucks are aware of the blind spots that make it hard to see people in certain spots. Reasonably, these trucks should be banned, or at least more conservatively, no new trucks with this flaw should be built or sold or require a commercial license.
None of these are cut and dry. How vulnerable does someone have to be before you can exploit them? How harmful does the behavior have to be before it’s exploitation? What is “knowingly” in an organization? How should events be handled if it’s a single engineer operating in the shadows vs a board decision? etc etc etc
The answers to these question may seem obvious to you, and someone else nay have a completely different answer that seems equally obvious to them.
I'm having a very hard time buying this. I may be wrong but I'd assume that Meta is audited and well-regulated. Besides, the company is very transparent. I know a bunch of people working there and they don't strike me as people who would purposely harm people. Besides, every employee has access to the whole code base and freely talk about what they work on. I don't believe in some conspiracy.
That being said, it's perfectly reasonable that we keep these companies under the microscope given the power they have, and they may be making mistakes.
> Is open decentralized social media doing this?
Arguably, decentralized social media without moderation would be more harmful than Facebook/Instagram.
"hurr durr lets ban cars now". PLEASE.
Unlike social media, to drive a car you need a license, you need insurance, and if you run over a kid you most likely will go to prison. Or maybe you weren't driving your car, but it was unsecured, or had a mechanical malfunction. You are still responsible and you will in one way or another have to pay.
But, you can create ads on social media targeting minors with toxic messaging, and nobody bats a damn eye.
It's about time that online commercial endeavors, like ad networks, get reigned in and have rules applied to them, same as for other activities.
let's ban meta because they can't prevent that some kid somewhere is gonna be able to create an account (and may see really horrible things there)
let's ban car because some kids are going to get run over because car manufacturers can't prevent it.
You're welcome
Since we still have cars post regulation, maybe we would still have social media as well.
The poster said laying down requirements and them being unable to scale whilst adhering to those requirements is not an argument for removing said requirements.
Our priority is the safety and health of society, if the only way they can scale is to put people at risk then maybe as a society we don't WANT them to scale.
I was shocked over the summer when I received an email saying I was going to lose some of the Xbox controls we have in place, as if 13 was some milestone of maturity and self-control. AFAICT, I’m legally responsible for my children until they’re 18, and at least at the moment, they are completely dependent on their parents for food, shelter, and transportation. Just because they’re online, I don’t abdicate my responsibility as their guardian, but companies think it’s a good idea to allow kids to bypass the restrictions that were in place because they’ve reached an age that was meant as a minimal age for tracking in a very young Internet.
Unfortunately for our kids, we’ve become extremely restrictive to the service they have access to, they can only use platforms that allow communicating with people we know, etc. Is that the right move? For us, right now, it seems to be.
COPPA was the culmination of a series of progressively more narrow attempts to restrict internet content and practices using “think of the children” as a justification, the previous efforts were, but for some standalone bits (like Section 230, which survived from the mostly-unconstitutional Communications Decency Act) struck down as unconstitutional, which is why there haven't been attempts to update it with more broadly applicable restrictions—its already the outcome of a process of backing off to the maximal constitutional restriction (OTOH, with a socially conservative Supreme Court that is unusually unconcerned with respecting precedent, I suppose now would be the time, if you wanted to do that.)
I know of exactly zero places I take my children (activities, sports, clubs, etc.) that would speak to them privately to coerce them to use that service more without parental consent. That's what Meta and a million other online services are doing to children.
If hobbyists can't comply, maybe it's about time we prevented small independent forums from existing.
My home kitchen doesn't routinely serve strangers. The forum I host trough a server in my cupboard does.
If you want to make a comparison, it's between a small family restaurant and a giant fast food chain. It may surprise you but food inspectors treat both in roughly the same way.
Face it. Nothing meaningfully separates my forum from giant social media companies apart from scale.
Hence, small forums hosted by hobbyists and volunteers should be shut down.
Most states have cottage food laws, with basic regulations for small-scale commercial production. E.g. you need to take a course on food safety, you need your water tested, and you can only sell up to $X per year, but you aren't subject to random inspections. There is no reason why the web shouldn't be regulated similarly, with different rules based on the size of the audience.
If we have different rules depending on scale, how is it OK for the rules for large scale social media platforms to be impossible to comply with by large scale social media platforms?
In practice though, it's not unreasonable to say that we should expect more from companies that can cause harms at a much larger scale. Perhaps there's some kind of threshold where we can accept some harm being done at a small scale while still not allowing harm at a much larger scale. Seems fair enough.
Moderating the News board became too arduous and carried potential legal liability.
So they turned the board off.
It’s really not that hard.
And anyway, just because you can’t fix everything, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try and fix something.
All or nothing thinking leads to inaction.
It's invite only Groups on Telegram, FB Messenger, or Apple Messages mostly.
So it has ended well for my social circle ;-)
Before the obvious argument "where do you draw the line?", I may add that only a select and obvious number of social platforms reach the level of Meta's.
Now you want to exempt everyone apart from giant social media companies from that same rule?
This is getting a bit Kafkaesque.
Your example is describing an externality, a cost imposed on a unwilling third party. Facebook is a platform that individuals can choose to avoid or restrict their children from using if they deem it harmful. These situations are not comparable.
> no business has a right to exist independently from its standing in the system of laws and the health of its users - especially children.
I disagree. Businesses and websites ought to have a right to exist as long as they do not inflict harm on third parties and their users participate willingly. Individuals ought to be free to make decisions regarding their own health and that of their children. If we were to consider otherwise, can you fathom the sheer volume of things we'd need to prohibit?
Yeah just like alcohol and drugs, you can easily restrict your children from using them so companies should be free to sell to whomever. Good parents ensure their children aren’t doing this.
Nope. It's also your problem, because it has to be enforced somehow. Few websites are age appropriate for young children (this one certainly isn't), so perfect enforcement would mean essentially no viewing websites without login, and all logins requiring display of face and government issued ID to live webcam.
The ID check is already in place for several countries with YouTube if you try to view an age restricted video.
I don't understand what that means, and how I can know if my business in inside or outside the law.
Simply put this sentiment on the landing page of your website, labeling on your product or, if you have a mailing list, in the subject field of your next newsletter. “I do not understand if my business is inside or outside the law” is bound to generate useful feedback
So often I've seen the opinion that effectively expresses that some company or business plan has a God-given right to be viable. Not directly of course but through about-face when someone points out that the company's business proposition conflicts with something—but how will the business make a profit if it has to [submit to government regulation] because of [concerns about marketing to children]?
Some people could probably steadfastly support a new business that was selling something dangerous but that was new and “innovative”. “Oh well people just have take responsibility for their own well-being—regulating crystal dust fumes™ would be way too onerous and impractical.”
Indeed, it is doubtful that these mega-sized websites were intended by the original architects of the www. More likely, they may have imagined the web as a whole would grow (scale) as more people gained internet access. Instead the "Silicon Six" intend only to scale their own gargantuan websites that they now refer to as "platforms". All web publishing and even internet communications are expected to be intermediated by a handful of surveillance advertising companies. What a disaster.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/11/25/silicon-si...
This, I think, is roughly true but the issue is nuanced. The history of the web can be characterized by ever-decreasing barriers to entry. At first you needed a physical host and apache. Then, you could have a shared host and put html files in your user directory. Then, you could run wordpress. Then, you could sign up for myspace and never have to run anything. The 'like' is the smallest unit of content that can be captured by such systems. TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, wikipedia, etc are what you get from this evolution.
The unexpected downside is that with reduced friction to content-creation, the content has become quite awful. In part because people are awful, but also because of money and how effective it is to hire people to say things using these systems. If the friction to create content remained high, it may have been a "better" internet in some measures. It would certainly be a much smaller one.
Who knows how it will turn out? I suspect that AI will have a significant impact on all these systems, to wit, injecting massive amounts of noise that will reduce their utility significantly, if not to zero. No empire lasts forever.
I find the history interesting. But I started using the www in 1993. There were no so-called "tech" companies like Facebook or Google. Younger web users born into a web intermediated and surveilled by so-called "tech" companies for the purpose of advertising may have no such interest.
Not to jump to the defense of social media companies, because I honestly think they're not worth the cost of keeping around, but who gives a shit what the original architects of the www intended?
They weren't forming a country and making a constitution. Hell, even for constitutions I don't really care what original founders wanted, and for the most part, and most of them also thought you shouldn't care either, as they meant for them to be amended.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/31/23854369/texas-porn-age-v...
> Ethically challenged software engineer working for a major tech company you know
Though scanning the account's comment history, they appear to use this site almost exclusively to brag about their unethical and occasionally criminal behavior. Not "challenged," but "bankrupt." Downvotes encourage them to continue this trail of evidence, apparently.
> Help me get to 1000 karma and I’ll stop posting forever.
Maybe we should give them that last 50 karma.
The only option is to uninstall the app and then block App Store altogether, at which point they can’t update anything.
But: I know some PMs and designers at various social media companies. There are also probably many among us here on HN. The thing is, I don't think most of them think to themselves "I am going to build a harmful, exploitative application". I think most of them, like many of us, wake up in the morning and aim to do a good job. To do good work. To design and build to the best of their abilities. AND - importantly - to excel in their careers, become more senior, and make more money.
The problem is their incentives. They are paid, promoted, and bonused to maximize things like "engagement". The more people use their (likely well-intentioned) feature or design, the more they're praised by their colleagues, the more they're promoted, the more they're paid. So they keep doing things to get more people to click and scroll more and get more praise and money for it. They make a button easier to understand - a post easier to share - a picture easier to like. They fill the feeds with more things that more people click and share and like. And they make more money and get more senior and the cycle continues ad infinitum.
I think SOME likely step back and consider the ramifications and maybe look at what they've built and see depression and rage and anger and misery, but those are the ones who aren't promoted and maybe leave the companies because that kind of observation doesn't make number go up. And number must go up to pay for that $5000/month apartment in SF or the $30k/year private school.
And others likely consider this but justify it by all the not-horrible things they see too -- the people who are happy, the influences who make a career out of using their tools - the "creators" who power the "creator economy". And their numbers go up too so they're happy and they tell the PMs and designers and engineers what a good job they're doing and so on and so forth.
So the problem is this cycle will continue as long as it's rewarded as richly as it is. And frankly, the free market WILL continue to reward it as long as number keeps going up (and that number is the stock price). Which is why a lawsuit by someone NOT part of that free-market cycle (or part of a different part of it) might actually make a small dent in this horrible infinite cycle.
The designers answer was…… interesting. They basically said (and I’m paraphrasing) that their aim every morning was to go to work to ensure that users were not being mistreated by dark patterns and unclear design. Their aim was to was to design the best experience for their users to ensure that their users could find an easy way to stop gambling if they wanted to.
I was on the fence about their stance. However they truly believed that they would never intentionally do harm to users, they always wanted the best for their users.
This is the logic of psychopaths.
Its like hacker news poetry.
Maybe they should stop putting kids at risk in the first place.
Those downvoted are badges of honor on this one. Shameful.
Kids can sign up to social media from a friend's phone/ computer/ tablet, from a library computer etc., and self-certify their claimed age. They can get phones (without cellphone contract) from other people without their parents' knowledge.
Being able to manipulate what 100s of millions or billions of people see every day on their screens is an unprecedented amount of power.
Democratic nations are not going to tolerate these companies much longer.
For old media to have the same qualities as new media, newspaper publishers would have to know in real time if you were a new or returning reader, how long you spent reading page 32, which article you talked about with your friends, who your friends were, what their and your demographic profile was and then be able to serve up customised content within an instant based on all of those factors. And then say that they aren't responsible for any of it because they're just a platform.
Really, the only thing that old and new media have in common is that they are broadcasting words and images to the general public. The comparison ends there.
All these companies know they're a target for accountability now, and even many people inside of them acknowledge a need for reform and possibly restitution. Your comment seems focused on the practical matters of these lawsuits (many of which probably are frivolous or will otherwise be lost), but what really matters are the unsettled societal costs that transcend them.
You may feel that accountability is being "misplaced", but it's much bigger than ambulance chasers and grandstanders. People are genuinely concerned about real problems and are hungry for some kind of action on them.
The same plays out with "just talk to your kids". In conversations about regulating businesses, the narrative is that parents can simply talk to their kids and persuade them to not use social media. But in other conversations, the narrative is that kids are naturally rebellious and have a strong "always do the opposite of what my parents suggest" instinct.
Unfortunately the studies are reasonably solid. They aren't double-blind control group studies but they are correlative, so not the highest most pure studies. Social media use seems to be heavily correlated with depression and other markers of mental illness and struggle.
That isn't very surprising - social media networks are designed for "engagement" and that comes from strong negative emotions. If you constantly bombard someone with a drip feed of negative emotions.. that probably does them harm.
This doesn't mean the litigants will prevail because correlation and causation aren't 1:1 but it's probably a good idea to push your kid away from social media by explaining this to them.
https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...
Consider this analogy: Just because the DA doesn't have enough evidence to convict in a murder trial, that doesn't mean that the defendant is innocent. I just means they haven't been proven guilty.
Also, when you say "We tend to presume innocence", that's not really true. It's true (or is supposed to be true) for the government and people who want to be civically responsible, but a whole lot of the general population does not actually think this way. People think OJ did it, have various theories about who killed JFK, etc. People read the news about somebody accused of murder and think "yeah, that guy probably did it."
It's up to Meta to handle PR on such things. Unfortunately when your company is accused of, for instance, contributing to a genocide, your PR department probably doesn't have a lot of options.
Following from that, I can imagine a few viewpoints: 0) Parents are wrong, Facebook is awesome! 1) Facebook has violated existing laws (these lawsuits are exploring that space). 2) Parents should be frustrated with legislators for failing to regulate social media. 3) Parents should be angry with themselves for allowing their children to use Facebook's products.
I'm curious which (if any) of these viewpoints you hold.
But I have to say, they're basiacally just exploiting an existing weakness.
The modern youth mental health "crisis" is fundamentally caused by a willingness to believe that an instagram avitar is "real life".
Being lost in an electronicly hosted make believe land is really the root cause of the giant increase in "mental health" issues.
Why do people do it? Simple: monkey brain...
That is, especially for adolescents, people want to do what's "popular".
This is why people who give up on popularity are less affected.
But of course, every manic mellennial on ritalin is going to flame me now. Becaseu OBVIOUSLY thinking that your player in fortnight is the "real" you couldn't possibly lead to psychosis...
I'm not familiar with this argument, as I've never heard it. Could you provide some examples or a study or similar showing this is widespread?
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B97804...