Facebook harms its users because that’s where its profits are
jacobinmag.com
jacobinmag.com
- You're giving the government (more specifically the party in power at the time) control over a highly effective form of propaganda, which won't have a good outcome.
- The US government would only regulate FB as it relates to US citizens, leaving FB free to operate as now in the rest of the world.
- In Japan where a similar addictive product aimed at minors (tobacco) is mostly under public ownership, the Japanese government has dragged its feet at regulation to reduce harm from cigarettes - eg it only banned smoking in bars last year. In the Japanese case they don't want to imperil the profits from JTI (Japan Tobacco).
Just because we offer a utility doesn't mean that we need to shut down what's already out there.
FWIW, we dragged our feet for a very long time banning tobacco from many public places, probably in large part because of lobbying. What do you think is the mechanism by which Japanese legislators would be incentivized to systematically slow down tobacco legislation?
BBC is probably a better example. I'm thinking of domestic media.
What has happened is that everyone else has shifted hard right. NPR has stayed exactly where it was.
Note that this is a nonpartisan comment.
Nationalizing the tobacco industry is hardly necessary to create a conflict of interest here. In Ireland a pack of cigarettes costs €14, of which €11 goes to the State [0], €1 to the retailer [1], and €2 to the tobacco company (of which a pretty decent €1 is profit [2]).
Giving the extra euro to the State wouldn't change incentives that much here, even assuming they could run a business with the efficiency of the current multinational giants in the industry.
[0] https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/almost-80...
[1] https://ash.org.uk/media-and-news/press-releases-media-and-n... (UK figures, should be close)
[2] https://csimarket.com/Industry/Industry_Profitability.php?in...
> - The US government would only regulate FB as it relates to US citizens, leaving FB free to operate as now in the rest of the world.
The article acknowledges both points and partly addresses the first. Also, it's not clear to me why you'd prefer a private corp wield this power than the government, when the latter is at least ostensibly accountable to citizens/voters and the former is not whatsoever.
> - In Japan where a similar addictive product aimed at minors (tobacco) is mostly under public ownership, the Japanese government has dragged its feet at regulation to reduce harm from cigarettes - eg it only banned smoking in bars last year. In the Japanese case they don't want to imperil the profits from JTI (Japan Tobacco).
Meanwhile, smoking in bars is still not banned in much of the US...
Actually no, it'd be fully subservient to CIA and Five Eyes in general in that case. More so than it is now.
It looks to me like an old industry is scared of the new one eating its lunch. The medium is the message and in this case, the medium is the mainstream media.
There is an element of jealousy from the old media contributing to the fray. And one of the main ulterior motives is that traditional media used to live from ads that they are now losing, or have already almost completely lost, to Facebook.
I still don't like Facebook, but its conflict with other media companies isn't a morally pure drama.
OP proposed that advertising is psychologically manipulating people into believing their lives are incomplete and asked whether that is a harm. You conflated this manipulation with built-in desires; it is not that.
By analogy, it is as though OP argued that deliberately withholding food from prisoners to cause them distress from hunger is a harm and you are countering that OP may as well describe hunger itself as harmful.
> Most people don’t subscribe to the Buddhist point of view, though.
Buddhism does not consider desires an inherently harmful. Being captured by desires and constantly craving can be, but that's not the same as the mere existence of desires that can arise.
Perhaps you’re reading more into the original comment than I am, but what I took exception with was the notion that the type of emotions aroused by most ads are harmful. I don’t think it’s comparable with withholding food, in either the level of control or the magnitude.
We should confine advertising to a sandbox which users can visit when they feel like it. Then everybody can be happy, not just advertisers.
The sandbox could even be made so that consumers can fill in their personal information, so that advertisers can learn more about consumers without even tracking them. That would be an advantage for advertisers and also for consumers because they can be selective about the information they provide.
And of course advertisers will try to lure people into the sandbox with discounts etc, so we should punish any discrimination between consumers who do and consumers who don't visit the sandbox.
>>>Avoiding mass censorship efforts doesn’t mean we’re powerless to do anything. There are clear changes that can be made to Facebook’s algorithms, design, central mission, and resourcing that would bring it closer to the true public service it claims to be than the nihilistic, profit-making juggernaut it operates like, and none of them would threaten our right to speak freely or mess with our ability to stay in touch with loved ones, organize events, or such platforms’ other useful features.
The author makes a couple of attempts to characterize Facebook as a "utility", and even provides a link [1] to eff.org as proof of that claim as though being a public service is enough to constitute being declared a utility in need of direct regulation.
The author also claims that Facebook is "deliberately designed to be addictive", which I concede is true. I'd like to further point out that HN is also addictive, and seems to have been designed with absolutely no interest in making it addictive. And lastly, I'd like to mention that the US government recently relaxed its laws concerning government funded propaganda[2].
So I have a couple of questions:
1. If government wants a social media utility, then why doesn't it attempt to buy or build one that it can more easily regulate/understand?
2. Is social media itself an addictive element in our lives?
3. Is the level of addiction similar in harm to that of television, YouTube, or news aggregation sites? How would you rate it?
4. How do you justify asking government to offer (potentially) addictive services as public utilities?
5. With respect to the deregulation of propaganda, should Facebook be held to a higher standard than our government?
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/utilities-governed-emp...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...
Most of the people on HN shared the issues about Facebook with relatives, only to get a polite smile at best.
People don't care. They are OK with it. They are consenting victims.
But equally, it is correct that this is not a problem market forces alone will solve and the improvements & policies in-acted or suggested thus far do not seem to solve the problem either and have mostly served to allow Facebook to say they are trying without actually affecting their business model & profits.
More regulation & policy targeting FB? Sure. Public utility? No thank you
As true for most companies as it is for most people.
"If we place healthy and unhealthy desire on a spectrum, at one end we have the motivations that lead to some of the worst and most horrific things people do. But at the other end, desire expresses some of the most beautiful and noble aspects of human life." [https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/the-s...]