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Posted by Shamar 1 day ago

Unsealed court documents show teen addiction was big tech's "top priority"(techoversight.org)
290 points | 164 commentspage 2
benoau 1 day ago|
Not just teens, addiction has been weaponized and monetized relentlessly - the whole concept of "whales" is contingent on fostered addiction.
eimrine 1 day ago||
Why Zuckerberg is any better than the jeevacation?

Both cases makes teens as victims, both cases was a great deal for them but only from the first look. Both cases are piramid-like schemes when the victims attract new victims to keep benefitting from the system. Is it just like in alcohol case, when having too many victims justifies a bad spirit as the new norm?

Throwaway12907 1 day ago|
He's arguably even worse if we consider just how much harm social media has done to teens and kids, but I'm sure the Meta folk here would prefer to believe that that's not the case. "Just following orders", right?
jackdoe 1 day ago||
Johnny Cash - God's Gonna Cut You Down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJlN9jdQFSc
guerrilla 1 day ago|
Awesome song. Gives me chills. Wish I believed in a just God like that.
jackdoe 1 day ago||
you are made either of reason or of faith, but the choice what you are made of you can not make nor with reason nor with faith

reason can not choose reason, and faith can not choose faith

mikkupikku 1 day ago||
I fully expect this to get ignored like all the other similar revelations. Heads should roll, literally, but nothing will happen. Does anybody have any earnest hope for reform? Even in Europe where the public is supposedly keyed in, and where there is some political traction for getting away from American companies, nobody seems to take the idea of banning these corporations seriously.
jmusall 1 day ago||
I think the possibility of banning certain sites at least for minors is being discussed, after Australia set the precedent. But this of course has downsides, too, as some form of verification has to be implemented, that would almost certainly reduce anonymity and carry risks to personal data protection. A complete ban is unrealistic since people actually like to use these platforms. Plus, it would certainly entail massive political repercussions from the US government. This is already happening when US American companies are simply fined in the EU.
reorder9695 1 day ago||
Does that outweigh the loss of privacy involved? I really don't think it does personally, I should not have to show anyone ID to have an Instagram account, privacy and anonymity is a feature not a bug.
dylan604 1 day ago|||
To me, the claim of privacy is the wrong concept. Anonymous would be a better description. People are posting things on a public website to be viewed by the public.
mikkupikku 1 day ago|||
The privacy issue is one of the reasons I favor a total ban.
integralid 1 day ago|||
The idea of banning meta or Google is indeed not serious. What's realistic is forcing them to behave by issuing fines that make such behavior prohibitively expensive. Admittedly there's nobody doing that in Europe seriously yet, but that's because the current unhinged head of American state has meltdown every time American bigtech get a wrist slap.
mikkupikku 1 day ago||
> What's realistic is forcing them to behave by issuing fines that make such behavior prohibitively expensive.

Europeans have been saying that for what, 20 years now? How long does it have to not work before we stop saying that it's a realistic solution?

fsflover 1 day ago||
There were no serious attempts at enforcing the rules.
mikkupikku 1 day ago||
If that's so, then is it realistic to expect that to somehow change? These corps have been fined more times than I can count, but it's clearly not working.
fsflover 1 day ago||
The fines were too low. If Europe is serious now, it can change.
tryauuum 1 day ago|||
how would you ban it?

I don't want the russian-style ban enforced by ISPs

Probably punishing companies who pay YouTube for ads would work

mikkupikku 1 day ago|||
Much if not all of Europe already has ISP level bans. If they can use those bans against football streaming sites, why not Facebook?

And actually I think just banning them from conducting any business, accepting payments/etc, would be mostly sufficient. They could continue to operate at a loss, but it would put American corps at such a disadvantage that domestic social media might be able to compete, and enforcing regulations against domestic companies should be far more feasible.

tryauuum 1 day ago||
Your name sounds finnish... Finland ISPs have only primitive dns based blocklists which can be bypassed by any kid, they need to purchase dpi-capable hardware to block websites by (still not encrypted) SNI

Man it's nice to live in the country not prioritizing internet censorship

soco 1 day ago|||
On which grounds would you punish some companies which are using a fully legal platform? If you had beef with the ad contents, you'd punish them already for that. But if you have beef with the platform algorithms, punish them for exactly that. Not over proxies! As long the algorithm was designed for creating dependence, than regulate that - exactly like you (should) regulate other substances creating dependence. And some countries are going exactly this way: not only Australia but also Finland, Spain...
tryauuum 1 day ago||
Ok, imagine a law punishing a platform comes out. How will it be enforced? You can fine the companies but they can just close presence in europe. YouTube will continue to work even if all the YouTube's servers in europe are gone.

Or should the only outcome of the law be that the police could confiscate phones from kids? punish parents for allowing social media? Laws are not useless, at least teachers and parents will have a clear call to action. But still

mmooss 1 day ago||
Social media is being banned for minors in multiple countries, and more are seriously considering it.

But if people keep proselytizing that nothing will happen and all is hopeless, it's going to be hard to get people together to support a change. You and others here are doing the work of social media companies by spreading that - on social media. In fact, nothing can stop the public if they want something.

commandlinefan 1 day ago||
This is just normal par-for-the-course business chasing an expanding market. Entertainment companies, in particular, _always_ focus on the youth market. When I was a teenager, record companies were obsessed with what teenagers liked: that's just the nature of the business. Headline is deliberately misleading. The (few) references in here to "addiction" are negative; suggesting ways to reach the youth market _without_ risking addictive behavior.
stubish 1 day ago|
This is all relatively new in human timescales. My parents as children saw the start of modern advertising, with ads targeted at them. But they did not see entertainment engineered to sell them product. I think in the 60s you started seeing bands manufactured and aggressively marketed to youths (such as The Monkeys), because companies wanted their share of Beatles money. And 70s, when George Lucas and Kiss realized how much money was in branded merchandise. And late 70s, when He-Man reversed things and media was created specifically to sell merchandise. On human timescales, the results are starting to come in on this experiment.
skirge 1 day ago||
"make customer come back" - every (good) car dealer
buckwheatmilk 1 day ago||
By now I reached a point where I don't believe that big tech companies will do anything to improve outcomes for user if it will have a hit on their bottom line, and I'm sure that opposite is true, they will do anything to improve their bottom line even if it hurts the user. So it's fair to say that this relationship can't work in long term.

I'm not really on the platforms mentioned except of YouTube, and it's considered to be the lesser offender here but still I can't avoid seeing how bad it got.

I remember 2007-2012 the platform was mostly for entertainment, silly cat videos pranks, a low budget documentary here and there. 2012-2015 felt like the period where YouTube became a platform for more useful things, people showing how they are fixing cars, professors uploading their recorded classes, history channels, but on the sidelines people were starting to make money off doing weird things, like unboxing stuff on camera, drop testing phones, etc.

If you were told in early 2000's that people will be getting extremely rich by unpackaging products on camera, you would have been called insane, no one would have considered wasting their free time watching things like that. It might be more difficult to convince older folks to engage but younger generation was malleable and was easy to hook, and slowly it became normal.

2015 to present days became a period where it's completely normal to make user to watch the ad disguised as content. People testing/showcasing/unboxing products or even political ideology propaganda presented as discussion in form of a podcast.

It's obvious that the quality what is offered on YouTube has gotten worse, but they can counter it with autoplay, infinite scroll, landing page filled with eye grabbing content. The only way to watch things on YouTube and not be effected by this nonsense is to use a different client (freetube, jaybird, newpipe, there are plenty more). You can define of your homepage will look like, weather you want to see shorts or not, infinite feed, suggestion etc.

RajT88 1 day ago||
And why not? AAA game companies have been reported to have psychologists on staff to help make their games more addictive.

We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive. We seem to be fine with expanding gambling - where I live (not Nevada!) slot machines are everywhere. Nice restaurants even will dedicate corners to slot machines - not just seedy bars. Sports betting apps are all over streaming ads, and their legality is expanding even though when they are legalized in an area the divorce and loan default rates go up measurably.

Why would we regulate big tech if we don't bother with anything else?

The kids are just the latest victim of a long ongoing trend.

michaelt 1 day ago||
> Why would we regulate big tech if we don't bother with anything else?

I’m pretty sure we do, in fact, ban under 18s from tobacco, alcohol, and real-money gambling.

sidrag22 1 day ago|||
> real-money gambling

this is doing a lot of heavy lifting for how loose we have become with under 18 questionable products.

RajT88 1 day ago||||
Let's check in on how we're doing preventing the tobacco industry from marketing to children.

Hmm, candy flavored vapes both for THC and nicotine. Teen psychosis from THC. Popcorn lung. Not so good it seems!

https://www.lung.org/research/sotc/by-the-numbers/8-things-i...

ghurtado 1 day ago||||
Not to mention strict limits on advertising of these products, licensing required to sell them, and very highly taxed.

If that's not enough, in the US we created a federal level agency that oversees 3 things only. Two of those things are alcohol and tobacco. And the third thing isn't even regulated half as much as those two.

Why on earth anyone thinks these things are unregulated is beyond me.

mmooss 1 day ago|||
Just looking at the US, tobacco comes with warnings, there are limits on advertising (see any tobacco product commercials on TV?), and the manufacturers lost a lawsuit leading to massive fines and many of these outcomes.

The idea that we don't regulate things would be shocking to the anti-regulation crowd, and the staffs at the FDA, FCC, etc.

jacquesm 1 day ago|||
> And why not?

Because it is simply wrong.

> AAA game companies have been reported to have psychologists on staff to help make their games more addictive. > We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive.

Three wrongs don't make a right I guess.

RajT88 1 day ago||
My exact point. Our current moment seems to be us being happy to expand societal harms for whatever reason. I'd hazard a guess it's our political system getting more and more susceptible to lobbying money.
malfist 1 day ago|||
This is defeatist. Just because something is bad doesn't mean we shouldn't care at all and just let everything be bad.
helterskelter 1 day ago|||
I know Doom Eternal had one, I believe she was even credited. But the line between "making a game more fun" and "making a game addictive" is a little blurry.
Izikiel43 1 day ago||
Addictive in this case you mean could be out of spite? Like, I don't like this but it's pissing me off and by god I will beat it?
helterskelter 1 day ago||
I found the gameplay loop really fun, but the rest of it was definitely not up to the standard of Doom 2016.
draw_down 1 day ago||
[dead]
insane_dreamer 1 day ago||
Big Tech of 2020s is like Big Tobacco of the 1990s. May they meet the same fate.
insane_dreamer 1 day ago|
I think the solution is to ban social media networks from being ad-based and force them to be subscription based.

Once you're a subscriber, there's no incentive to get you to increase your engagement (beyond the threshold that makes it interesting and useful to you so you continue to subscribe) because unlike an ad-based network you're not generating more revenue the more you use it (in fact, you're increasing costs)

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