Me and 4 Billion happy users don't care.
HN must understand that they are not a representative sample of anything.
HN must understand that they are not a representative sample of anything.
It is reasonable to assume the majority of humans are intellectually lazy to the point of killing themselves and their families if told to with the right marketing.
We should all make our own individual well researched choices and not ever buy into the worthless argument of "everyone does it".
There are plenty of happy, successful people who didn't die because they used a Meta product.
In fact I'd even argue that all things equal, a Meta user is happier than a paranoid-meta-hater who worries every minute that someone is going to serve them an Ad that fits them
"oh, the horror!!!. How am I ever going to recover from the trauma and financial ruin of seeing a targeted ad."
Did you just move the goalposts to “it didn’t kill me”?
We’re talking about society-wide effects here, including harm to children for which Facebook is paying 17 billion dollars.
https://oag.dc.gov/release/attorney-general-schwalb-announce...
Your comment implies no harm matters so long as people can sue for it later?
There is ZERO proven causality between social media usage (specifically Meta products) and long-term happiness of a person. All the social science are spurious correlations that can be attributed to anything (including higher education where hysteria about the modern world reins)
As far as $17B settlement, it has nothing to do with causality. It's just some $$$ set aside for Meta to remove operational headaches.
I could even say Meta-haters make more irrational life decisions compared to normal people who just browse Instagram and use WhatsApp without paranoia
I don’t have any vested interest in upholding those studies, for all I know you might be entirely right. But if they’re the only studies out right now, the onus is on you, as a minority dissenter, to say specifically why they’re wrong. To just handwave it away is to undercut your own position because it makes you look like a crank who is just casually attacking the state of the field. And in the context of a forum such as this, it’s very off-putting, obnoxious behavior.
You’d get no pushback if you actually substantiated your points rather than tossing around general criticisms.
And plenty of teens that never became happy and successful people because they used a Meta product.
These companies are predatory, and have nothing to offer us we cannot easily setup at home these days with privacy and sovereignty.
Note: Unless you spin an alternative universe there is no way you can prove causality of social media usage => happiness/depression.
But it is the undeniable opinion of most mental healthcare professionals that giving teens an endless stream of content about unattainable body images or suicide content... results in more suicides.
Meta -knew- this and then fired the team that told them about it and doubled down on pressing the gas. They knowingly and substantially increased the chances of teen suicides for money.
And people want to give these monsters -MORE- data and power? I cannot comprehend anyone defending this company still.
I mean some of the smartest people on HN fall for it, where is the hope for general masses?
Every time their stock price takes a hit my hope in humanity gets a little boost.
All proprietary technology will fail. I really wish it would fail faster though.
Well yeah that... and the spread of misinformation on Meta platforms leading to deaths from COVID. And the genocide in Myanmar they caused.
Information and outcomes are not separate. If you think the words you see, which are very carefully curated, truly have no effect on outcomes then you must have never attended a history class. Like, ever.