Some readers here presumably work at Snap. How do you feel about this and your work? Do you sleep soundly at night?
I find all of these "social media is bad" articles (for kids or adults) basically boil down to: Let humans communicate freely, some of them will do bad things.
This presents a choice: Monitor everyone Orwell-style, or accept that the medium isn't going to be able to solve the problem. Even though we tolerate a lot more monitoring for kids than adults, I'm still pretty uncomfortable with the idea that technology platforms should be policing everyone's messages.
So I sleep just fine knowing that some kids (and adults) are going to have bad experiences. I send my kid to the playground knowing he could be hurt. I take him skiing. He just got his first motorcycle. We should not strive for a risk-free world, and I think efforts to make it risk-free are toxic.
I am the parent. The ski resort provides the mountain, the snow, and the lifts.
He's a bit too young to be interested in taking pictures of his wang but I'd like to think this is a topic I can handle. Teaching him to navigate a dangerous world is sort of my job. I'm not losing sleep over it.
I also do everything correctly, but one time a drunk driver still almost killed me.
Oh really? I'd love to hear a few examples.
The damning part is that these companies know they harm they are doing, and choose to lean into to it for more $$$.
Thanks for your response. Your open source contributions are perhaps less damned than those of an actual Snap employee ;)
That’s just normal phone calls - no one is complaining about those.
But social networks have algorithms that promote one kind of content over another.
I keep getting recommended YouTube videos of gross and mostly fake pimple removal, on Facebook AI generated fake videos of random crap like Barnacle removal, and google ads for an automated IoT chicken coop.
I have never searched for these things and no living person has ever suggested such things to me. The algorithm lives its own life and none of it is good.
Maybe you're starving the algorithm and it's trying random things? Look up how to reset the YT algo, I'm sure it's possible. Then try subscribing/liking a few things that you actually like.
If you're within a standard deviation or two of the typical HNer, look up "Practical Engineering" and like a few of his videos. That should get you started.
There is no need for location based recommendations, streaks, nudges, etc. They should be building their social networks in the real world. And if they need friends outside of school, that can come through parentally facilitated activities like sports, clubs, etc. Later you start playing Magic the Gathering at the nerd shop or go to "shows" at the VFW hall.
It makes no sense to group these things together; "youtube leads to sexploitation" is nonsense. What I think I'm hearing is ennui about technology in general, which I can understand, but keep your arguments straight.
I have some support to the Trust&Safety team at the same period of the whole debate about the section 230; and from what I can tell Snap has some flagging mechanisms quite good related with people selling firearms, drugs and especially puberty blockers.
The thing that I can say is that a lot of parents are sleeping at the wheel with teenagers and not following what is going on with their child.