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fritolayofcouns

I think our justice system is arguably the bad guy here.

Parents need to tell their kids to put the phone down.

Instead they abnegate this duty, and lawyers treat Facebook like a money piñata.

Doritos make people fat, so why shouldn't we sue Frito Lay for billions?

Cars allow you to drive fast and crash, let's sue carmakers.

And so on...

Our justice system is just one big scam. It finds a big, rich corporation, greedy plaintiffs looking for a lottery ticket, and a "jury of peers" in friendly jurisdiction.

Facebook sucks but if your child is addicted to their phone take the phone away.

The litigation lottery our legal system has devolved into is a total joke. This is a nightmare for second and third order effects.

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Becoming a parent was probably the point in my life when I stopped thinking I was in control of everything.

Before you become a parent, you think it's easy. You think you can just decide things for the kid, and that's the way it goes. Especially if you're a high flier, everything just seems like it works out if you put in a little effort.

The thing that's really frustrating is that this is also a lottery. Some kids will actually simply do the thing that you want, and generally choose things that are good for them. Like my first kid. If I only had one I would think it was simple, and that everyone can just raise a kid who can read books for adults before they're ten, or do calculus before tenth grade, or cook a full meal for himself. I mean, you just tell them what you think they should do, right?

But you can also have a kid that will not do what you want. You will get all the same well-meaning advice about making it fun for them, explaining your choices to them, and providing incentives. These advisors are at a loss when you do all the things they said, and yet the kid still won't eat their vegetables. They don't want to read, they don't want to try the sports you take them to, and they are having constant tantrums.

While you think you are simply doing what you did the first time around.

As the kids get older, it also becomes clear that you are not their only parent. And I don't mean your better half. They get an awful lot of impressions from the rest of society, which you are not in control of. If everyone has a phone, you then need to decide whether you want to just go with the flow, or your kid is going to be the one without. If their friends are on social media, you then have to decide what you think about that.

Parents have the busiest schedule of anyone in our society. If we're going to hold them responsible for their choices, the least we can do is provide them with some sensible defaults.

And the point to parenting is to produce a fully independent adult.

That does not happen all at one on the 18th birthday. It’s many years of gradually growing independence.

I am specifically not a parent because I know it's not easy. I never once thought it was a breeze, even if I tried it with all my best intentions.

Having a child with technology addiction, the struggle is real. It was my first experience dealing with real addiction. My son wanted to watch YouTube videos all night long. It's easy to say "don't do that"; it's harder to make it actually happen. He was 7.

We'd take devices and lock them up, but in the middle of the night while we were asleep he'd find a way. He'd plan it out during the day. He'd borrow his friends' school Chromebook, hide it in his room, download videos for offline viewing, and then wake up at 1:00 AM and binge watch.

We set up security cameras and would punish him when we caught him, but it didn't matter, because all he wanted was to watch videos, and no punishment mattered. He was going to watch them anyway. We locked devices in a safe, and during the day he'd figure out how to pull up security video and get an idea of the combination, and try every one close to that until he got in.

We considered locking him in his room at night, but rejected it because of safety and bathroom issues. Eventually we had to set up alarms around the house that would wake us up every time he got up. It took years of our sleep and mental health suffering, but we eventually broke him of it. Or he grew out of it. Who knows.

Technology is ubiquitous today. The schools require it. Society demands it. It's like if every house had a heroin dispenser. How would you prevent a junkie from getting their fix?

We blocked YouTube, and when we did our kids were suddenly alive again. They had friends, went outside, did activities, played.

We also blocked TikTok and lots of other stuff before they discovered it, thankfully.

We do allow Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Apple TV, and those seem to be okay. They'll watch a movie or a TV show from time to time, which is fine, and they'll get bored and do something else.

But YouTube... they are dead to the world. Forever. It's unbelievable.

The stuff they'd watch on YouTube too... it's like they gravitated straight to the dumbest most vapid thing on the platform. Stuff like the worst low-quality gamer livestream videos, AI slop, videos of people unboxing products, "jump scare" cut-up cartoons that make no sense. Found one of them once watching hours of a six hour long video of someone running over things with a truck: old laptops, old phones, toys. Crunch, repeat, crunch, repeat, with some kind of loud repeating banging music playing. That's all it was. Millions of views.

It's sad because there's a huge amount of great content on YouTube. But that's not what's addictive, and if you follow the recommendation algorithm it will send you to the trash every time. The only way to find good content is to ignore recommendations and search it.

Glad I banned TikTok before they discovered it. I know one parent who had to get that one away from their kid after the kid was already hooked and the kid was screaming, hunger striking, refusing to sleep, stuff similar to what you describe.

If you haven't seen it, you don't know.

I understand you were acting in good faith, but are you sure these antics didn't contribute to it?

I remember instances in my own childhood where my parents would e.g. turn off the wifi router when they were angry at me, and I'd instead figure out how to hack the neighbor's and use that. The dopamine hit from that was crazy, and I didn't even end up using it for much. It was more about showing them I could, and they had no control over me.

I suspect the things you described above might've contributed to the thrill of it. I find it hard to imagine downloading videos in advance being very similar to how the recommendations algorithm keeps you going (I imagine only longform videos would be practical). I can't know how "bad" the situation was, but installing cameras and alarms crosses several boundaries in trust and respect, that I can't imagine being good for a growing child, coming from their own parents...

At the end of the day, you can only help an addict that wants to be helped...

I appreciate looking at it from another point of view, but no. We worked with a child therapist and checked in fairly regularly on progress and goals. We considered that aspect of it, but there were a few signs that this wasn't the case.

He wasn't very good at not getting caught. Half the time we caught him it was because he'd fall asleep watching videos and we'd find the laptop in his bed in the morning. Or some of the approaches just weren't very clever. At one point he took a computer from somewhere else in the house. He wasn't going to be able to put it back, so there was no way we wouldn't have found out.

This fit with his general problem-solving ability. He knew what he wanted, and he'd devise a way to get it, but he never thought things through after that. The consequences didn't matter; just like an addict looking for their next fix.

The addiction shifted a few times too. It wasn't always YouTube, but it was usually around technology (there was a short stint where it was about solving Rubik's Cubes, and maybe another around Lego).

It's easy to brush off 'less screen time for kids' but I honestly think that's right (not the brushing off; what they do say about it) and people like Haidt have a point

Not pointed at your or even necessarily the person you're responding to but I wonder how many people that are like "just don't let the kid use the phone" are taking their own advice? It's like the smoking parent telling the kid not to try cigarettes, "do as I say, not as I do".

Do you have children?

While parents have some control, they don't have as much control as you think. It is a constant, "but my friends can do this", and you have to deal with it all the time.

Parents now have to work 2 jobs, so the kid spends most of their time outside of home.

Also, comparing FB to cars, doritos is not fair imo, FB is closer to crack. It can also be accessed on other devices than phones, WHICH they need for school. Not every parent knows how to block it, and kids find ways around road blocks anyway.

We are far too casual about addiction, and suits that endorse language like this are doing more harm to society’s rational appraisal of risks than good.

If your kid is addicted to crack cocaine, they have a problem that is light-years further down the road to existential harm than a similar problem with Doritos or social media.

>It is a constant, "but my friends can do this", and you have to deal with it all the time.

I don't have children, but I was a child and I know parents.

It's not a given that a child has this type of 2 way negotiation/bargaining power in the home, let alone the freedom to speak their mind towards their parents.

> Facebook sucks but if your child is addicted to their phone take the phone away.

I can't really disagree with that, but I still wonder why it's okay to use the same addictive methods on adults. To me it doesn't matter if it's children or adults, not if you know this will harm people and you still do it.

It's extremely weird you're allowed to actively built in addictive properties to your product, in an attempt to make users stay. If it was a side effect which happens get a certain (low) percentage addicted that's one thing, but to actively seek out the properties is another. Again, especially when you know that it causes psychological damage and destabilizes communities. How the hell Zuckerberg, Meta management and shareholders sleep at night is beyond me.

> How the hell Zuckerberg, Meta management and shareholders sleep at night is beyond me.

Well, for Zuck, it's because he likely has a severe personality disorder.

For management, it's money.

For shareholders, it's the combination of money and the fact that they can't really hold Zuckerberg accountable. He has a majority of voting shares for the company, so there's nothing any of them can really do other than sell. The problem is, if someone with any large amount of shares sells, then there's a chance that there's a panic, and they get in a position where they can't sell all of the shares and the ones they kept have dropped in value.

And really, who in their right mind would buy Meta? Do you want to be a patsy for Zuckerberg? Because unless they issue enough shares to bring his voting power under 50%, you're just along for the ride.

If you're interested in understanding things rather than just throwing around lazy generalizations, the questions you are asking have answers!

Meta is getting sued because they knew that their product caused harm to users, could detect which users were harmed, and chose to do nothing. It's a little bit like selling food to a customer that you know will give them food poisoning. It's very different from selling someone something that's slightly less healthy than their other options.

Ofc not all of these cases are so clear cut. There are big systemic problems with our food system and our mobility system that you seem to be aware of - but also if you notice Frito Lay is not getting sued by the justice department. Neither are car manufacturers writ large. There's actually a lot of writing and reflection on where the line is between "reasonable service" and "exploiting consumers".

It is not OK to knowingly create harmful products, spend millions on A/B testint so that they are as addictive as possible ... and then blame others for not counteracting it.

I cannot believe I had to bring you out of grey

VC people are here, and it shows. They can't just be neutral, they have to downvote anything they disagree with or goes against their businesses

Yep, exactly this.

Still, even in the examples given, cars allow you to drive fast, but you can still sue a car manufacturer if they sells cars without airbags and a seatbelt. Doritos can make you fat, but you can still sue Frito Lay if they put overly addictive and harmful chemicals to keep customers coming back. Isn't this the same?

That’s a bit like blaming parents for their kids smoking cigarettes. Meta intentionally ignored warnings that bad things were happening as a result of its products, and doubled down on the addictive design.

Depending on the age, that seems entirely appropriate. Imagine, holding parents accountable for the deadly behavior they let their children engage it.

That doesn't mean we can't also hold tobacco companies accountable, but it's wild to me to suggest that parents don't bear the bulk of the responsibility here.

Again, Doritos are surely addictive and surely the flavoring they put on them, the better they get the more addictive they are.

Should they be sued for billions and trillions of dollars for that? At some point it's our job to not give in if things feel nice but are bad for us

There's something to your point of overzealous litigation and making too many rules but on the other hand Facebook's ad delivery network is allowing CSAM onto it meaning they don't vet it at all

That would be one thing except for Facebook's tendency to ban you, for any reason, while the horrific thing (like that, for example) you report is never taken down ever

I run ads on Meta's platform, and they refuse to allow all kinds of things, including things a lot more mundane than CSAM. They also take down a metric fuckload of posts, ads, etc. So while I don't doubt that things get through, it's entirely inaccurate to say that they don't vet things or that content isn't taken down.

I used to run a business selling CBD products when that was still controversial. Meta took down all my ads. Either their moderation got worse or people figured out how to sneak in illegal content. Maybe a bit of both. I regularly see ads now for 5MAPB, 7-OH, fake magic mushrooms, and other stuff like that

No scanning / safety system will be 100% you have no idea the amount and type of stuff they have to block every day

Generally aligned on the bizarrely culturally-absent parent responsibility gap, chiming in from the feedback...

It is your responsibility as a parent to raise and care for your kids, regardless of the law. It doesn't just have to do with social media or phone use, it applies to addictions, to behaviors, to their mental and physical makeup. We've had decades of unambiguous feedback that screens and especially social media are bad for kids. Yes its hard. Be the adult and do it! Consider google family link, screen time and app restrictions, taking away the phone for a time, or forever. Know that I and other parents will be cheering for you <3

I recommend reading "the anxious generation", lots of helpful grounded findings and data.

(1) Social media addiction is an addiction but taking away the phone isn't a simple solution. For one thing, apps have dominated many markets such as dating and finding out about local events. A local board game club, for instance, meets weekly in the basement of a church but if you found one of their posters at a game shop you'd find only a headline and a QR code that points to a Facebook page -- and if you log into Facebook you find out when and where they meet. And so much is like that. Like it's not just you who have to quit social media, it is all your friends and potential friends.

For all the ethical problems I have with Meta I am still on Facebook because my extended family is there and other people I interact with, like the musicians who I photograph at events, are there. Student groups are on Insta, etc.

(2) There is so much bad about Facebook. I see scam ads every day, particularly ads that reproduce UI elements from Facebook suggesting that you have notifications and then send you to some bizzaro world that is certainly some kind of fraud. I report these ads and get a nice note back about how they took action on them and two days later... the same ads appear. These idiots got it in writing [1] that they'd rather not filter the 10% of ads that are scam ads so they can make money ' https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...

(3) I'm not a Christian, in fact I am something very different, but I'm tempted to say that Meta and other social media border on the satanic in terms of social influence. In particular I'd point to the way they draw a rift between men and women, for instance there are the endless thirst traps on Instagram and the come-ons for OnlyFans performers that never stop and on YouTube some of the easiest rabbit holes to get into are "Men suck", "Women suck", "Trans people suck", "Cis people suck", ... It makes some people rich at the expense of us all.

(4) It sounds like a lot of money by ordinary standards, but it is nowhere near enough to change their behavior.

[1] ... my conspirators in relatively innocent transgressions know better!

hmm seems "Everyone can control themself" is assumed here

well, if you look at legal side, the OPPOSITE is assumed in many cases:

- age-limits on smoking cigar(rettes)/sex/drinking

- soft-limits on gambling

- hard-limits on drugs

Minnesota attorney Keith Ellison was suing car manufacturers (Kia and Hyundai) because lots of "young people" were stealing them. Instead of, you know, just making crimes auto-theft, crime again.

Why were so many people stealing Kia and Hyundais though?

"By failing to include industry-standard anti-theft technology in their vehicles, Hyundai and Kia unleashed a wave of auto thefts that cost Minnesotans their cars, their hard-earned money, and sometimes even their lives," Ellison wrote in a statement on Tuesday. "In short, they put their profits ahead of people’s safety."

As part of the settlement, Hyundai and Kia pledged to equip all future vehicles sold in the U.S. with industry-standard, engine immobilizer anti-theft technology, which prevents thieves from starting a vehicle’s engine without its “smart” key.

So, 1. Grand theft auto was already and still is a crime. 2. The car companies were being cheap and not adhering to industry-standard feature for basic anti-theft.

You should be thanking Keith Ellison for enforcing regulations that keep humans safe.

|https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/kia-and-hyundai-ag...

Auto theft was perceived as a crisis in the 1970s so cars added features like locking steering columns and immobilizers. I'd say by 1990 I had no idea how to steal a contemporary car [1] although I had a friend who owned a 1970s "boat" that didn't have a key to start it but instead had to be hot wired every time.

The real impact might not have been that big, I mean you get a few dollars a year discount from your car insurance for having an immobilizer, but people basically forgot that car theft was a problem and backed away from solutions in the 2010s, like I'd hear all these stories about telematic tricks to get cars started by making a fake key fob, relaying the signal from a key fob in your house, etc.

[1] I found out later that if you had "The Club" on your steering wheel that was advertised on The Rush Limbaugh Show somebody could use it as a lever to break your locking steering column!

There's a doctrine in the legal world called the "attractive nuisance" doctrine.

The proverbial example is a landowner has a pool on their property. A child, maybe just one in the neighborhood, sees it and wants to go swimming, so they hop in. The child isn't a good enough swimmer to do so unassisted and drowns. The parents file a lawsuit. The landowner expects their insurance provider to help aid in the defense and any judgment made against them.

The insurance provider will then look at the pool. Was it surrounded by a fence? Did the fence have a locked gate? Was there any kind of alarm to indicate that someone was in the pool?

If the answer to any of those questions is "no" (particularly to the fence and gate parts) then the insurer might very well decline to cover the claim.

Why? Because it's not unreasonable, at least not to many people who sit on juries, to expect someone to have ways of keeping children out of pools due to the threat of drowning.

I'm not a lawyer, but you can sort of make that argument with the cars Hyundai was manufacturing. People on a jury might think it's not unreasonable to expect auto manufacturers to make their vehicles more difficult to steal, especially if doing so is common across the industry. It's the most expensive thing most people own and its theft can harm both the owner of the vehicle and the community they live in since stolen vehicles are often used in other crimes.

The person stealing the car is still liable, but if they're targeting your vehicles because you didn't want to put a relatively inexpensive part in the car to boost your profits on each vehicle sold, some people think you're liable too.

Heroin sucks, but if you child is addicted to the needle, take the needle away.

You see the problem with people suing companies? The problem with the legal system is that companies aren't regulated enough and prosecuted enough for their clear crimes.

What clear crime did Meta commit here?

I actually do agree that there need to be draconian regulations on social media apps for children but those laws don't exist, it's a failure of congress to not create them, but no you can't start pursuing criminal charges for laws that don't exist, that is how countries collapse.

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