'They're knowingly addicting kids': the attorney challenging social media firms
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Social media as it is right now leverages the instincts of bullies, and turns people into mobs. Period. It elevates the one human instinct that is a priori most antithetical to both individual liberty and social cohesion: The desire for naked attention, good bad or otherwise. The only justification it holds out for doing so is that it has identified a profitable vice, a flaw in the human operating system (like gambling) and that there's no law against capitalizing on it.
Binding, truly binding legislation or regulatory oversight is clearly the desirous end state. How in the hell we take even a single step towards that is the 1-3T dollar question.
SBF is in prison, so is Holmes, as was Madoff.
But the burden now trivially rests on the person asserting that the public has any say in the matter to show that it ever happens in the modern era.
The first rule of Crime Club is don’t steal from other rich people. The second rule of Crime Clib is: there are no rules.
I read this sentence 3 times and I still don’t know what it means.
They launder the commons through some remarkably banal linear algebra and assert copyright on the resulting entropy coding.
They smash and partially re-hire and then smash staffing, washing out a bunch of ESOP in the process, timed to the week in many instances, not 15 years after the last time they got popped in Federal court for flagrant wage fixing.
They violate Sherman with App Store tariffs at payday loan vig, get popped for that, and fail to perform.
They pay OSHA penalties calibrated to a different monetary regime and just ignore it being illegal.
Do I really need to keep going? It’s a long list.
Numerous lawsuits are in varying stages of process around this practice, but the one shaping up to be a “test case” is currently looking to be https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-t...
They broke the first rule of Crime Club.
You’re just trolling me now right
All of this, including the legal filings are trivially searchable.
How is it me that’s trolling you?
If you disagree on a technical basis from a position of any sophistication, elaborate. If you think this isn’t serious as a heart attack, read the trade press.
1. You're actually trolling. You're writing maximally obtuse prose to poke fun at lefties, which you're actually not. In fact, if @pmarca himself had an HN troll account I'd expect it to look a lot like yours, incl referring to himself as @pmarca.
2. You're capable of writing deeply sophisticated text, with 5 commas per sentence and metaphors for metaphors for what you actually mean, yet you truly, genuinely do not understand the sentence "I do not understand what this means"
3. You're a deeply cynical person, who'd use "I do not understand what this means" as a tactic for undermining the other person's actual argument in a sleazy way, and you think other people would do the same.
Either way, I keep saying "I don't understand" and you keep layering on more of the same argument in the same incomprehensible style. Consider that maybe I, really truly, cannot understand what you're writing, and that I'm not the only one.
I'm leaning towards 2 - I think you mean well and that you somehow really believe that I disagree with you and need convincing. For what it's worth, I agree with most of the things you wrote that I could understand. I'm a lefty too, I think the bigcos have way too much power.
I’ve all but googled the source material for you.
Mute.
Two times, and the second time wasn’t even an accusation.
> I’ve all but googled the source material for you.
Yeah but.. I’m not asking you to! I’m telling you that I find your words, your sentences, so full of meta-metaphors and commas and cultural references that I can’t parse them anymore. I’m telling you that I’m too stupid to understand you and that others are likely too (and judging by some sister comments, that’s true).
I should have assumed positive intent, that’s my bad, and I apologize. But I never asked you to layer on the evidence, I merely asked you to present it in simpler terms. You then ignored that completely, multiple times, and kept arguing with me on the topic at hand. But I don’t even disagree with you!
The language is florid. But the commenter makes a valid take on a complex problem.
The massive land-grab that is "AI+social media" is something we might better understand through the lens of Native American and Aboriginals. When they're not aware that they even own something, and cannot conceive the harms afoot, it's like taking candy from kids.
Oh, wait a minute... they /are/ kids in this case.
That said, these comments don't directly address the issue at hand, which is the shameless and continued use of dark pattern UX psychology against minors.
But do ask for clarification if you don’t understand but still care enough to comment?
That has never been truer than in the UK at present, with the Fujitsu Horizon scandal at the Post Office. We'd rather throw 3,500 lives under a bus than investigate a serious problem with a govt. preferred supplier.
The fungibility of windfall profits into induced market failure to generate more windfall profits has historically only ended one way.
Then came social media, and it was pseudo socialization all the time. And at first it's pure ecstasy. But then you get used to it as the new normal, and without it feel empty like you need it. More and more.
It sounds like I'm describing a drug, and honestly, for most it seems to behave similarly and should be treated as such. It's hard to regulate or argue because on paper, it's harmless. So I have no idea what the solution could ever possibly be other than intervention or introspection.
(in full transparency, I went through this as well, but it's not easy to see when it's happening to yourself.)
Spend a day hiking or with friends at a party or traveling and I don’t get social media withdrawal and in fact I feel better.
That’s a lot different than cigarettes or heroine. Which is good because it means there is hope to break the habit.
When I was young I couldn't stand to be bored. And any second not doing something I was bored. As I got older, I realized I can just stare at the wall for an hour thinking about something and never really feel bored.
The wife and I got out of it by doing just as you said, going out everyday walking around for hours.
Didn't work on the kid. That was broken with brute force internet control, that she continues to try to find ways around.
If you are forcing a rule without right alternatives, you'll have to fill that time with something. If you leave them, they'll take easiest option i.e. social media not very diff. from what I am doing on HN. If they are mid-late teens maybe you just need to provide them the right resources but anyone younger, you should find activities to fill that time.
However that was working for me, social media never being deeply part of me growing up. I suspect this gets only harder for the next generations
This is the real issue.
Maybe people don't need to try very hard to make things addictive. Maybe we just "like" being addicted to things. Maybe we have strange reasons for it. (And maybe addiction is mostly a coping mechanism when we can't figure other things out.)
I'm not sure we can put all the blame on the creators of social media. At least sometimes I'm not sure they even need to try that hard.
I've recently started developing a game for fun and found my self having to put a lot of effort into figuring out whether "is this _actually_ fun and fulfilling?" or "does it only make me compulsively feel like I have to continue, waiting for the fun that's around the corner (but never shows up)?"
I suspect social media is the same.
Just as a generation destroyed their lungs beyond repair through decades of cigarette use, another generation might be in the process of fundamentally altering their brains, for life, through heavy daily use of an intentionally addictive product.
Ten years ago, there was more uncertainty, but today the studies are making it pretty clear that heavy social media use shortens attention spans, can lead to social anxiety and depression, and who knows what else.
It's complicated because there are a lot of good things about social media too. But I do think it makes some sense to try to crack down on companies that intentionally target children with addictive, harmful products, just like we eventually did with cigarettes.
It isn't hugely different from other media; Fox will show you right leaning content and some other left. The two main differences are quantity of content/metrics available allowing for individual level personalization and phone/iPad being in every hand 24/7.
So, while commonly assumed the solution to force Social Media companies to show diverse and boring content. But most successful will be to simply reduce the time spent on these sites/apps. 5 yo don't need own iPad and 10 yo don't need a smartphone. I don't see why anyone younger than 14-16 need phone/computer in school. Books are cheaper than ever; Parks and Skate parks are still there and so are swimming pools. Cooking pizza/burger with kids should still be fun.
If parents are not ready to do parenting, one option is do China have hard limits in devices/accounts on time a child can spend online but that won't work in USA and Western sensibilities.
Imagine really just going on the internet and saying this.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/30/facebo...
Please note that article is from _2014_
I don't think the "idea of social media" is a thing at all. What is that idea? We can't really define it. There are some people even claiming that this hacker forum is "social media" and I definitely don't come here to be "connected with family through social media".
A whole bunch of diverse ideas have been shoe-horned into a mass-media neologism "social media" - including; gaming, gambling, advertising, self-promotion, entertainment, collaboration. Some people's full time job is basically "social media".
It's become a harmless term that really stands in for talking about a handful of massive companies that run a sectarian Internet.
More precise, direct and courageous language is needed to approach problems like this.
YouTube is an example of a Media company that has social media elements but isn't a social media site. But when we look at TikTok at least in its original state it was purely short form media in which a user can socially communicate thoughts and ideas through a short clip. With comments. Those elements and that being the main appeal make it social media.
Because the business only gets revenue from attention, it needs to create more attention. So it engages in these really harmful tactics (knowingly) to create addiction and engagement, because that's how it makes money.
If everyone had to pay for their social media and it didn't display ads, the problem wouldn't exist. Social media companies would be incentivised to reduce your engagement with their platform. They would pay attention to what their customers wanted (the user, not the advertiser) and probably give more of a shit about our mental health.
We see the same with journalism, where the ad-driven business model produces clickbait, outrage porn and the enshittification of the reading experience.
The whole internet would work much better if we just banned advertising on it. I know this is impractical, but it's true.
2. Throw around some pseudo facts
3. Gauge the public response
4. "It's tepid at best"
5. Sweep it back under the rug, but now you have your talking points in the next election
And as if that isn’t enough, tech companies are only loyal to their boards of directors, who are only loyal to quarter-over-quarter growth, and nothing else.
A hypothetical back and forward might be something like:
“How does Facebook make money?”
“By selling ads.”
“Does Facebook ever target those ads to kids?”
“Yes”
“So is it in facebook’s financial interest for kids to spend as much time as possible on the platform?”
Clearly the senator was trying to highlight the fact that Facebook can't have its users' best interests at heart, because its very existence depends on pillaging their data and whoring out their eyeballs to the highest bidder. But by playing the fool he made himself actually look like a fool, because he left himself wide open to Zuck's "Senator... we run ads" zinger.
For one such example, the question "how Facebook makes money" provides context so that other people would better understand what follows.
For one immediate example, I do not know what or who Finsta is. The answer to that question, as well as preceding dialogue, would help me to navigate through Facebook's business, and my path would be skewed to favor viewpoint of the interrogator.
This is not discussion of peers, but discussion before a jury.
No one learns anything new at these hearings. And everyone is posturing.
In the 60s and 70s there was a lot of research into the effects of television. Likely you've heard of theorist Marshall McLuhan. To this day [1] experimental psychologists are fascinated with the problem that while film/TV is an effective medium for news and education, it basically hypnotises people into a suggestible state.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39354-4
Actually I did. It was a birthday gift from Radio Shack back in the late 90s. I was totally that nerd kid, but yes it was a literal TV.
> Everyone else didn't and you weren't pressured by peers to have it
Everyone had gameboys though. I found Pokemon a bit boring so I was often excluded.
> The TV didn't track you and basically try to abuse you secretly
The adults had cell phones and/or PDAs with abusive bosses on the other end. Soon enough us kids had them too. Helicopter parenting found a new gear and sexting and group text bullying became a thing. That was around 20 years ago.
Social media firms should be held liable for the massive social damage they've inflicted and externalized. The entire paradigm needs to be reduced to dust just as much as Hamas does. It's an internal enemy and a time bomb for our civilization.
Specially we need advertising out of the news business, to higher the level of education for the kids who choose it, and an alternate path for the kids who for whatever reason have no interest so they’ll get out of the way. In other words, some children need to be left behind so they’ll stop dragging everyone else down. Bring back real expulsion and make real requirements for graduation.
Even more to the point, their inane debates (see: Fox News and MSNBC comments sections, Twitter, etc) wouldn't have generated advertising money. Their comments are not something that a sane civilization with a sense of self-preservation would wish to elevate to be seen by other people. The perversion of social media writ large is to make itself a Tribune of the People and compete with malevolent force of riot against protagonists of rhetoric. It is an insurgency in every sense of the word. Many of us who used to relish the idea of anarchist speech have realized that this insurgency is itself manipulated, that no free speech actually exists on these platforms but that they are simply used to whip the proletariat into frenzied riot on behalf of whoever controls them.
Not dissimilar to any religious cult that, in trying to attain power, allows its adherents to incite violence while simultaneously denying its own culpability.
Please explain how Hacker News is doing that.
The very nature of social media is addicting, Facebook didn't have to do anything special to get kids addicted to it.
If your father is a religious zealot who hates a certain group of people, and your primary social contact is hanging out with your friends drinking coffee, you may end up extremist or not. If your primary social contact is being saturated with hate speech 24/7 on social media, where you're punished for dissent, you will almost certainly turn into a zealot yourself. Yet this isn't even the whole problem, because almost no one you read on social media should even have access to a keyboard, let alone be allowed to bully peers into acquiescing to hate and violence.
Facebook is responsible for genocide in Myanmar, and I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that its model (and social media's model in general) is responsible for the enormous wave of terrorist radicalization, school shootings, and violent antipathy toward civilized society that has overwhelmed the world since 2008.
Ban the use of dark patterns.