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Discussion (57 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
These are not the only two possible courses, but these will be the choices put in front of us. Get used to reading books and going on walks. The internet is almost dead.
But also I think people forget: this is not cut and dried. This is not simple. This is not just "these companies are evil and should be stopped". It is: there is a market pressure to do these things. "I enjoy the product and use it a lot" and "I am addicted" is blurry and market pressure is not going to recognize that limit because it does not care about human suffering unless that suffering meaningfully impacts the bottom line.
If these companies hit regulations that effectively cap their advertising revenue per user (i.e. the "addictiveness"), they are dead. That may be totally fine, and I'm sure majority of people would rejoice hearing this. But remember: advertising dollars are earned, especially at tech company scale, by the effectiveness of the targeting to get get more $ / DAU since DAU cannot grow beyond the Earth's population and that is the scale that these companies have already achieved.
If you cap advertising dollars, you cap advertising effectiveness. You cap the ability for small companies to connect quickly with prospective customers without being locked out because they have to spend too much to find them. Yes you also cap scammers and other nefarious actors too, but thats arguably a different issue. The impact of reducing advertising effectiveness is disproportionately concentrated on small business where cheap and effective advertising is so important.
My hope is that there is a way to do both and I don't have to be constantly horrified when I look at my screen time hours.
Fourth option: product becomes less addictive and the algorithms stop optimising on "angry users click more". Less advertising profits, perhaps less engagement but probably still profits on advertising.
Fifth option: don't aim to continually increase profits and instead change the rules of capitalism to be less focused on making "profit at any price" to perhaps a more gentler form. After all, Monopoly(TM) is restarted once one player has all the money, it's about time that we do that in real life too or how many more trillionaires do we need?
So there are also grey choices here and not only b/w.
As someone who does both, it's quite lovely! You might even be happier doing that than whatever it is the modern internet has become.
Companies like Facebook and Tiktok are incentivized to behaviorally modify their users in a way that's harmful to society: they make more money the longer everyone in society has their face glued to a phone. They'd be thrilled and printing money as society collapsed into every person staring into a slab of glass 20 plus hours per day.
Tax that time directly so it's no longer profitable to glue everyone to their phone.
There's no hard evidence that Facebook et al are a direct continuation of the MKULTRA program but even if they aren't it should be very concerning that they are deploying similar techniques on a planetary scale.
The facts are basically: Facebook's own researchers and independent researchers presented real harms caused by Facebook's algorithms, and they fired them, ignored them and took the datasets away and continued doing as they want.
You don't need to go to any conspiracy anything; that just makes the claims sound crazy aby unnecesary ssociation.
Social media has a direct impact on dopamine and uninhibited oversharing.
The mechanism isn’t even ambiguous, which is exactly why there’s a case, about the production of a deliberately addictive substance. The chemicals and effects differ, but it’s deliberate use and production as the same exact means to an end do not.
There’s zero ambiguity here of the alignment on an end goal.
Side note: is META hiring and can you refer me?
Im glad you agree with me on the stuff about Facebook being evil. im not sure i understand why you said this was not a conspiracy immediately after describing a series of events perpetrated by facebook which could easily form the basis of a criminal conspiracy prosecution.
> There's no hard evidence
There are thousands of manchildren living in moms' basements, with corkboards festooned with scraps of photographs that are connected by colored yarn and pushpins, and they would all vehemently argue to the contrary!
I think this is a fun historical example. Ships passing through Denmark needed to pay a tax of 1-2% of the value of their cargo. They self-assessed that value.
The twist that makes it interesting was that the King could choose to purchase any cargo immediately at the reported value. If a ship underreported, they might save on tax, but they risked taking a hefty loss.
I have no idea how effective this was, but it's compelling. I wonder whether great self-regulation might need clever design like that example.
Basically, for $x amount, a competitor can buy the winning car (or its engine, or similar). Where $x is the amount the group decides should be a reasonable amount to spend on building a car.
A racer is free to spend more, but if they win too much, somebody will write a check and buy the car.
In theory. In reality, plenty of people have the money to spend $x^2 and risk the loss.
Protecting children is a noble goal that I personally agree with, but it's also often used to sane-wash further erosion of privacy.
As has been discussed here and elsewhere, age verification turns out to be the complete loss of Internet anonymity due to its implementation techniques. There are proposed alternative implementations, very conveniently for some, this is not part of the discussion.
This is exactly the time when nerds like us should speak up.
https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu...
No doubt that it will be good news to gambling advertisers, but the push for age verification was already underway in 2020, well before government recommended an end to gambling advertising (2023).
It's a neat explanation, so an easy sell, but doesn't match the chronology.
As someone who grew up as OG (original geek), it's now amazing to look around and see that technology seems to be having an ever more negative impact on my everyday life.
The feeds are and have been for years highly random (at least one anecdote of two people who were 'married' - relationship status - on FB yet none saw the others' posts)
If you don't go on FB they really don't like it and they spam you to death
Can Zuck meaningfully claim they're not in the business of addiction, whatever else? No. His life philosophy is "dumb fucks"
Edit: Oh, and People You May know. Now everyone can friend you and you have 2000 friends... none of whose posts you'll ever see. And the psychological baggage. Is the cute girl I like looking at my profile and that's why they're on there, or is it shamelessly pulled from geolocation data?
Disclaimer: I do not have a FB account.
This is just people seeing dollar signs asking for handouts. Nothing of an real value to society. Why is it okay for FB to be sued but not say Pokemon? I think Pokemon is way more dangerous, addictive, and is basically gambling with the card packs.
Have some personal responsibility for once.
But not all entertainment is made equal, a simple example is single player games and microtransactions based games.
Similarly, social media as we know it abuses reward mechanism specifically to maximise engagement and screen time with complete disregard of the person's well being and proclivity for compulsive behaviour.
> Have some personal responsibility for once.
I am of this same opinion, people need to assume some level of responsibility for them to get better, but the fact is that addiction forces people to make choices they regret later. It robs the person from their individuality.
We literally treat minors differently under the law because they are assumed to be incapable of personal responsibility.
its probably a bit unrealistic to expect children to "Have some personal responsibility for once." id agree with you if a 50 year old said, "omgolly meta, you used trickery on me."
but if the evidence shows they have specifically targeted children, then i can understand the concerns.
and yes, im aware how dangerous it is to declare "lets protect the children" but we also have to recognize this is a messy situation, and one that needs to be sorted out. i dont pretend to hold the answers, but to hand waive it away as hysteria or whatever is probably not a good solution.
As in, the only form of entertainment that society should (or does) offer should be specifically designed to trigger as much addictive behavior as possible?
I can see why a person, looking at our current world, might think that. Hello Dopamine Fracking.
But is that the world we want? It certainly is not the world that existed before modern extractive capitalism started turning to extracting from the people it is supposed to serve.
Fortunately, capitalism is more efficient that state/centralized planning, so capitalism is doing a better job of turning us into their farm animals than lords ever could do for their serfs.
this is exactly facebook's business model ???
My personal preference would be laws to restrict ad surveillance and laws to mandate third-party interoperability to break that calculus. But absent that, I'll take massive damage awards from the legal system.
[0] Or Instagram, or Whatsapp, or...
This is fraud. Promising something you didn't deliver is fraud
Sure some tech bros won't get their Lambos but I can live with that.