This company is the drug dealer of Silicon Valley. They have consciously destroyed a generation attention span using psychological tricks.
Hoping they start losing some of the good talent + the US implement something similar to GDPR.
Hoping they start losing some of the good talent + the US implement something similar to GDPR.
I hope they go down. Social networks were a net negative on the world at the end of the day.
But their business models depend upon getting people hooked up like a drug addict.
My comment is subjective, but yours is too, so what gives here it goes: I doubt this is the case. I think I just see people post "more" on Twitter.
If I'm looking for quality content from experts I'd go to StackExchange, indpenendet websites/blogs or just go buy Nature magazine.
He literally teaches his students how to make psychologically addictive products and is proud of it (and rich). His disciples are the priests of "engagement".
B=MAP reads much like any self helpy gimmick, something so obvious and so useless you somehow feel smart for having had your obvious thoughts on a topic reworded and handed back to you in corny new configuration you can share with your vapid fake friend group.
Sounds like 90% of the "business" books I've read
While there have been some studies on the negatives of social media like nicotine vaping, it is not that bad as what we currently give people the choice to consume and I think we should swing even further towards more freedom of choice even if it negatively effects people long term.
Although, the whole "They have people who's sole job is to make sure Facebook users are on the platform for as long as humanly possible" part makes me the most skeptical.
Psychologists running studies on users: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...
Then of course there's this guy: https://theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-cambridge-...
I think all this is terrible-- the world ends up becoming landmine after landmine of companies trying to pull you in and get your money-- but lets keep in mind it's nothing new or unique. Just standard business in an free market economy.
Instead, they chose to implement the minimum legal requirements of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which prevents companies from collecting certain information from kids under 13, and kids who are under 13 just lie about their age. Facebook has really good data, collected for advertising, to know that kids are signing in, and do not make an effort to stop it, beyond a stern "Don't lie to us" phrasing in their TOS.
I think the point made here, especially with Disneyland, Candy, and Television is that children are targeted and manipulated for profiteering. And that's surprisingly legal.
But it is not ethical. Each company has a choice. I hope public opinion will see FB as unethical and unforgivable in the future.
Instead, they chose to implement the minimum legal requirements set by the FDA with a tiny number on tucked-away table. CocaCola has really good data on how much sugar their drinks have and they do not make an effort to really surface it to people assuming they are acting in their own interest, will read the label, and that will be enough to deter them from drinking a third can.
And the same can be said about pretty much any other company. They all implement "the bare minimum" required by law if it potentially affects their numbers.
> I think the point made here, especially with Disneyland, Candy, and Television is that children are targeted and manipulated for profiteering. And that's surprisingly legal.
Yes, but is it that surprising? We can't expect companies to regulate themselves.
> But it is not ethical. Each company has a choice. I hope public opinion will see FB as unethical and unforgivable in the future.
I agree, though I also think Facebook is a much lesser concern than other companies out there. That's not to say it should be put to the side or nothing can be done before something is done about big Tobacco, big Pharma or even big Sugar. I just think comparing it to a drug company is disingenuous, and lessens the urgency of dealing with companies dealing with proven, dangerous physical addiction.
Do we blame TV makers for wanting to sell additional techniques?
Facebook seems to conduct its business in a relatively ethical way, it certainly doesn't seem to go out of its way to make it addictive, they're preocupied with making it more functional - they're adding features constantly.
I'm not saying we should make these sorts of things illegal, but to require the industry to display proper warnings, to actively give money to organizations that work against them (such as how tobacco companies must pay for anti smoking commercials), seems like a logical step forward.
Or I can create a special dose for you based upon your data that get you most high.
But everyone is selling customer data. And my words are coming from the very unusual coincidence that I'm in a bar in Brooklyn and two data scientists are discussing 10 years of customer data needing to be parsed (and I heard the word verticalization). I'm not making this up (it's live).
I remember the internet and social media used to be so much better than TV. TV was controlled by big corporations who wanted to brainwash everyone. 1/3 of the time was ads that only stupefied you, and the rest were shows that did the same. They would do anything for ratings-- CNN was a bastion of treachery dividing the country by presenting politics as sports for the sake of viewership. People were glad Crossfire got canceled (now all of CNN is essentially Crossfire).
But social media? What a tool for free speech and change! It was the breath of fresh air that fought away big corporations, that gave us the Arab Spring, that let anyone with something to say become famous and have a voice and an audience, for free! It provided a platform for critical thinking instead of passive consumption! This data "dance" was the 8th wonder of the world and news articles were being written about how clever Obama's campaign had been to use analytics and "research" to get the edge on the campaign.
I'm not saying any one view is right and the other wrong but something I've noticed about Americans is that they are a very scared people and are very quick at painting things black or white (: The world is not so scary, and most things lie somewhere on a grayscale.
This can be seen a lot and it seems quite like the Christian narrative has deep roots in some parts of the world even among non-believers. The idea that everybody is looking at the world through a good-vs-evil lens explains a lot. Mythology is a powerful force, it can't just be dumped, it needs updating.
But without it, it is difficult to say that damage did or didn't happen.
You could certainly do a study of some metric and X's effect on it and find a few that were affected negatively, call that 'damage', and write blog posts about it. X would continue to thrive, adults would continue to complain about it, and the next generation would find a new X to use, abuse, and irritate their parents.
Philosophically, 'damage' is more like 'change' and there are a lot of people who like complaining about it because they have forgotten or misremembered what it was like to be young and have limited capacity to empathize with a different generation. If there are things about the change which are right and wrong, they probably aren't the ones being discussed or even understood until enough time has passed to see the change with the perspective of time and by then whatever problems have likely resolved themselves anyway.
Over time I have grown increasingly irritated by the talk about things being "bad for you". At this point if you don't have a decades long history of studies holding up to meta-analysis backed up by a philosophy of life and what is good and bad for it, I really think what is being said is nonsense. I'll believe hyper-specific cause-and-effect data, but I just don't care about the latest opinion about if something is bad for me.
Until you can show me a study proving that listening to that sort of constant what-I-call-nonsense leads to quantifiable improvements I can be convinced to care about, I'd rather people spend their energy doing something other than complaining about change and/or the status quo. It holds the same status, in me, as celebrity gossip.
>"The MTV Generation," Lazin said, directly addresses the pros and cons of MTV, which has been criticized for everything from placing too much emphasis on image to promoting short attention spans and the need for constant entertainment in its audience.
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-11-10/news/tv-1845_1_mtv-ge...
That sounds EXACTLY like a criticism you'd hear about facebook. s/MTV/Facebook/ and you couldn't tell if that was written in 1991 or 2018.
>"They have consciously destroyed a generation attention span using psychological tricks"
MTV at the height of music videos in 1980s and 1990s was never accused of using "psychological tricks."
You could Google “Facebook harmful effects research” for several pages of citations.
Facebook has shown a willingness to provide my country's adversaries a powerful tool to subvert the foundations of its society. Fomenting racial strife and spreading pernicious rumors is just the start of it.
The country and the world would be a better place without Facebook.
It sounds a lot like the drug war. The approach that DRUGS are the problem, as opposed to situations that lead users to abuse them in destructive ways, has lead to a very demonstrable half-century of ineffectual policy and violent/sad outcomes.
I have not so entirely given up on ones ability to tread a path through this insanity, and am more worried of an escalating trend to put that responsibility in the hands of some gatekeeper as opposed to ones own agency as a sentient human. I don't even disagree with your final statement; I'd just want to see it come from rejection by the individual than mandate from on high.
> It sounds a lot like the drug war. The approach that DRUGS are the problem,
"facebook" is not the drug; "http://facebook.com" is the drug, and that's not he problem. "Facebook Inc" is the problem, much like purdue pharma is a significant cause of the current heroin epidemic. And not, purdue has not been addressed either. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/health/purdue-opioids-oxy...
But you draw your line way too aggressively. If merely using an online community like FB is something that you should decide for other people, there's very little personal choice left. I, for one, certainly wouldn't want to live in a society so judgmental over individual choice.
I don't even mention the fact that FB is far less damaging, in any sense, then bad diet, lack of exercise, getting news from tabloids, trusting politicians, and arguably watching most the TV programs in this country.
Now, if you told me you only discourage your own family or close friends from using FB, I'd think you're very reasonable -- just like you can discourage them from eating junk food and spending weekends on the couch. But by imposing your judgment on billions of people, you present a greater evil, IMHO, than the worst of the FB misdeeds.
Not trying to justify Facebook's behaviour here but are you familiar with the tabloid press? Facebook certainly didn't invent this concept.
You are an addict, you just don't realize it.
Edit: We'll pass a law that protects your privacy while we ourselves don't abide by it.
Oh, did you interpret the law wrong? We'll take the greater of 20 million or 4% revenue kthanksbye.
Unsurprisingly, companies are deciding that EU users are not profitable customers without targeted advertising and thus not worth serving these users causing them to block all EU users even if some EU users would accept the previously agreed upon terms of targeted advertising in exchange for the content they wish to receive.
This is a terrible precedence of anti-choice in my opinion since the EU has forced upon all EU people the inability to accept a business model of targeted advertising in exchange for content and thus causing many companies to leave the EU altogether.
Well, that sounds good to me. If user wants targeted advertising, he should show that desire, i.e. opt in. It's privacy by default.
> EU users are not profitable customers without targeted advertising
So, they can't find profitable business model without stealing users' data? Well, then let them fall. And yes, I do mean stealing, if it is done without users' explicit consent.
> the EU has forced upon all EU people the inability to accept a business model of targeted advertising
It's not the EU that forced this, but rather companies which don't care even enough to provide basics of privacy.
Btw, I also don't think companies blocked EU users, because the targeted advertising model became unprofitable; rather it's because they don't want to spend time and resources to figure out what they would need to change.
It simply does not.
Paragraph one of the Article 27 which states the requirement for a representative is followed by
Paragraph 2: The obligation laid down in paragraph 1 of this Article shall not apply to:
a) processing which is occasional, does not include, on a large scale, processing of special categories of data as referred to in Article 9(1).
If you're wondering what is "special categories of data", they're reasonably sensitive data,
Art 27. 1: Processing of personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, or trade union membership, and the processing of genetic data, biometric data for the purpose of uniquely identifying a natural person, data concerning health or data concerning a natural person’s sex life or sexual orientation shall be prohibited.
Which is again, exempt, under Paragraph 2 of the same Article, which states:
2. a) Paragraph 1 shall not apply if one of the following applies:
the data subject has given explicit consent to the processing of those personal data for one or more specified purposes.So basically, responsibility and transparency.
They did the same thing CNN, MTV and all media does. They do the same thing movies, music, tv, news, etc does. They do the same thing Google does, Twitter does, reddit does, snapchat does, like everyone does. What's with the organized and targeted hate towards facebook?
I'll make a bet with anyone here. Once FB gives in to the mob like google did, like twitter did or reddit did, I guarantee you the outrage will magically disappear like it did for google, twitter and reddit.
> the US implement something similar to GDPR.
You want free speech curtailed in the US? You want more regulation of the internet? That's last thing you'd expect in a "hacker" news site. But like most social media, it's less tech people on tech forums and more political people with an axe to grind it seems.