We all know they're addictive, they're designed to be addictive, and they're very, very harmful, to both adults and children. The individuals who are profiting from the harm are clearly identifiable. And that harm directly targets children. That this is allowed to continue is a symptom of a sick society.
Social media feeds are designed to be slot machines. Each scroll is a pull. You may or may not get something you actually want. You can't predict what's coming up next, so you just keep mindlessly scrolling.
Early FB was bad enough when it was your actual friends posting the best (or made up) bits of their lives - and you were only scrolling when you had nothing better to do. Did you know kids, there was a time when the feed was ordered by time and you knew the people who posted stuff?
It's a shame we can't have nice things. An actual non-abusive social medium for people to share things like this - I'd use it. But I see that as soon as there is money on the table, it's a race to the bottom, sooner or later.
It's such a breath of relief to finally hear people talking about this clearly and loudly. May it continue and may this bad behaviour have repercussions. Enough.
I've lived through this entire story before in the video game wars. People said exactly the same things with exactly the same urgency about Mortal Kombat - what kind of sick society do we live in, where greedy corporations sell you the experience of shooting people and ripping their heads off? Perhaps we have to let adults buy these "murder simulators", but only a disturbed, evil person could possibly argue for letting kids do it.
If that sounds crazy to you, the moral panic over social media will sound just as crazy in a decade or two.
It's also that this is not a function of their nature, but of the way that they've been designed to function. Things were not this bad 15 years ago, and the fact that social media existed and functioned the way that it functioned back then was incredibly important in allowing movements like MeToo and BLM and Dreamers and many others to build momentum.
When social media is a tool of regular people, it's an awesome, awesome tool. But when the companies and people that own the platforms start to see users as tools themselves, for their own sociopolitical ends, that's when they become destructive forces. And there was a clear enshittification line drawn about this time 10 years ago, when the transition from one state to the other got underway.
I fear that we're looking at an attempt to manufacture consent to destroy the tool and not just the malicious function.
What these corporations were trying to do is bad and vaguely feasible to a degree. I think it's bad enough regulation could apply. But there is an additional consideration that's really important in how we as a society deal with this.
Screens are not drugs. They are not somehow uniquely and magically addictive (like drugs actually are). The multi-media is not the problem and not the device to be regulated. The corporate structure and motivations are the problem. This issue literally applies to any possible human perception even outside of screens. Sport fishing itself is random interval operant conditioning in the same way that corporations use. And frankly, with a boat, it's just as big of a money and time sink.
We should not be passing judgements or making laws regulating screens themselves because we think screens are more addictive than, say, an enjoyable day out on the lake. They're not. You could condition a blind person over the radio with just audio. The radio is not the problem and radios are not uniquely addictive like drugs.
We can't treat screens like drugs. It's a dangerous metaphor because governments kill people over drugs.
Without this distinction the leverage this "screens are drugs" perceptions gives governments will be incredibly dangerous as these cases proceed. If we instead acknowledge that it's corporations that are the problem and not something magical about screens then there's a big difference in terms of the legislation used to mitigate the problem and the people to which it will apply. The Digital Markets Act in the EU is a good template to follow with it only applying to large entities acting as gatekeepers.
Reminds me of soda. Why the hell liquid poison is allowed to exist turns my stomach. You could fill libraries with data linking it to a myriad illnesses and causes of death. Yet they are even allowed to juke it with caffeine for no other reason than to up the addiction level. Like... what are we doing here.
But so is cable television designed to be addictive. So are most restaurants and ice cream parlors and grocery stores designed to get you to spend more. Most loyalty programs are designed to be addictive to get you to come back, etc. etc.
I just worry we left no levers for the public to regulate these entities and this is the worst option of very few options. Who isn't liable under this kind of logic?
I have no love for social media, but I also really don't like the idea of the government regulating how apps are designed, or trying to circumnavigate online privacy to "protect children" which where I see this whole thing going.
On another note, personally I'm not sure I buy the "addictive" argument with social media, maybe its just me but I find social media pretty boring, but I think for a lot of younger people it is something that fills a need for meaning and connection to the world that has been diminished due to a loss of community in our society (which does predate social media).
>The verdict has forced those inside the companies to grapple with the fact that many outsiders do not view them as favourably as they have come to view themselves.
I'm not sure this rings true to me. Meta has to know that millenials and younger are giving up on their platforms, they have endless internal data showing it, right? If anything they are just afraid of endless litigation while they are struggling to gain an AI foothold.
The fact that I couldn't turn off shorts recommendations on youtube is just so, so annoying. It's such a time sink and I'm glad that the tides are finally shifting against addictive algorithms like these.
Isn’t a big part of the issue that social media is free and funded via ad revenue. So the business incentives push towards addictive engagement and increasing viewing time to see more ads. Not so different from traditional TV, but 1000x more potent since it’s a personalized algorithm.
What if instead of banning these addictive services we require companies to charge for them and disallow advertising revenue. That changes the entire business model, and there is no longer a strong incentive to have users spend as much time on the platform as possible. In fact, the best customer would be one that subscribes but barely uses the platform.
For me this all comes back to the perverse incentives that arrive when advertising is the primary source of revenue for the largest companies in the world. Social media allows advertising at scale never seen before and it’s no surprise that it’s been weaponized in ways that are actively harming people.
It's screens. We don't allow my son to use social media and he is still addicted to using an Ipad. We have to forcefully remove it. He just wants to play games on it constantly.
Heck, I am constantly looking at hacker news on my phone.
For years "addictive" had been a positive and desired adjective in description of projects, jobs, and services. So it appears... they really are... addictive.
A lot of people make their job their identity instead of something to pay off the mortgage with.
Which in turn creates a lot of denial about your actions.
Dunno how I feel about it. On the one hand, clearly something has to be done, because it all has been steadily going downhill for a while now. And heavens know, courts may be just one of the very few things big corps actually fear. Still, there is a part of me questions to what extent we are to blame.
Yes. I know corps do what they can to keep us engaged. I read HN too. I didn't say it was a big part.
Does anyone have a breakdown from the case itself about what particular features of these social media apps makes them threshold into the "addictive" classification?
- Infinite Scrolling?
- Play Next Video Automatically?
- Shorts?
- Matching to your peer group?
- Variable Reward?
- Social Reciprocity?
- Notifications?
- Gamification (Streaks)?
Was the case won on the argument that it is the aggregate of these things (and many more I am sure)? The power imbalance between the user and the company? Was it some particular subset of them that they rest their argument on? I'm just genuinely curious how you can win a very challenging case like this without inadvertently lassoing so many other industries that your arguments seem ludicrous?
I think the issue people are not acknowledging is that social media and apps and phones are addictive because they are fun. People are addicted to having fun, and to outlaw the addiction is to literally make fun illegal.
Let me take half a step backward from that provocative stance. Of course we don't need to outlaw all fun, but we perhaps we really do need to outlaw some fun, to prevent people from overindulgence. Maybe a sin tax could be the way to go.
What would be an actually good faith way of regulating this short of banning it for children (which I’d think is fine). How do you define what is too addictive?
At any given time it seems like whatever is defined as the most addictive is just the one with most market share? For me personally I think most addictive is actually hacker news (god bless you all)
Why would they fear anything? They’ve been getting away with criminal behavior for so many years now, I don’t even remember when it started. If they get fined now and then, it’s less than 1 percent of their quarterly profits, so that’s not even small change. This won’t influence their behavior in the slightest.
I have noticed that even on HN, it’s not quite popular to bring up the ills of social media. It might be the way I frame it, but one comment did stick in my mind.
Social media is one of the few good paymasters left.
This site is also guilty. Why can’t you hide your karma from the top and read all comments without the unreadable colors they give downvoted comments? Forcing you to play stupid games. Unsurprising since this site is from the same Silicon Valley.
People will give excuses for this. Guess what, meta and Google have their own too.
I am convinced that social media is addictive for some, and likely a negative influence for many. But this is just shoddy journalism:
> "The verdict has forced those inside the companies to grapple with the fact that many outsiders do not view them as favourably as they have come to view themselves."
They quote one unnamed insider for this characterization. I recall from my stats 101 class that n=1 is not a strong basis from which to make broad claims about a population of 10s of thousands.
I found it quite entertaining (as well as deeply disturbing) to picture Zuckerberg & the other social media kingpins as a modern subtype of druglords rather than "traditional" software billionaires. It's just that they deal in modulating and manipulating the dopaminergic system with code rather than chemicals. And what's worse, they give you the drug for free, and then try to sell you to the highest bidder while you're "under the influence".
I mean, it can't be that hard to imagine them, with their never-before-seen fortunes, extensive real estate portfolios and their extravagant lifestyles, in the roles of modern day Pablo Escobars and the like. Addiction is extremely profitable.
Good. Zuckerberg fought common sense regulation, and now people are suing for what he did without those regulations. Let the chickens go home to roost.
Meta has made it abundantly clear through their words and actions they dgaf what happens to anyone as long as it doesn’t get in the way of their profits so I say throw the book(s) at them. Repeatedly. Indefinetly.
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> and they're very, very harmful, to both adults and children.
And society as a whole. Even if you don't participate you don't escape the blast radius of the harm they've caused over the past 10-15 years.
It's a shame we can't have nice things. An actual non-abusive social medium for people to share things like this - I'd use it. But I see that as soon as there is money on the table, it's a race to the bottom, sooner or later.
I've lived through this entire story before in the video game wars. People said exactly the same things with exactly the same urgency about Mortal Kombat - what kind of sick society do we live in, where greedy corporations sell you the experience of shooting people and ripping their heads off? Perhaps we have to let adults buy these "murder simulators", but only a disturbed, evil person could possibly argue for letting kids do it.
If that sounds crazy to you, the moral panic over social media will sound just as crazy in a decade or two.
When social media is a tool of regular people, it's an awesome, awesome tool. But when the companies and people that own the platforms start to see users as tools themselves, for their own sociopolitical ends, that's when they become destructive forces. And there was a clear enshittification line drawn about this time 10 years ago, when the transition from one state to the other got underway.
I fear that we're looking at an attempt to manufacture consent to destroy the tool and not just the malicious function.
Screens are not drugs. They are not somehow uniquely and magically addictive (like drugs actually are). The multi-media is not the problem and not the device to be regulated. The corporate structure and motivations are the problem. This issue literally applies to any possible human perception even outside of screens. Sport fishing itself is random interval operant conditioning in the same way that corporations use. And frankly, with a boat, it's just as big of a money and time sink.
We should not be passing judgements or making laws regulating screens themselves because we think screens are more addictive than, say, an enjoyable day out on the lake. They're not. You could condition a blind person over the radio with just audio. The radio is not the problem and radios are not uniquely addictive like drugs.
We can't treat screens like drugs. It's a dangerous metaphor because governments kill people over drugs.
Without this distinction the leverage this "screens are drugs" perceptions gives governments will be incredibly dangerous as these cases proceed. If we instead acknowledge that it's corporations that are the problem and not something magical about screens then there's a big difference in terms of the legislation used to mitigate the problem and the people to which it will apply. The Digital Markets Act in the EU is a good template to follow with it only applying to large entities acting as gatekeepers.
Letting juries rob them just because the jury doesn't like it is nothing more than fascism.
I just worry we left no levers for the public to regulate these entities and this is the worst option of very few options. Who isn't liable under this kind of logic?
On another note, personally I'm not sure I buy the "addictive" argument with social media, maybe its just me but I find social media pretty boring, but I think for a lot of younger people it is something that fills a need for meaning and connection to the world that has been diminished due to a loss of community in our society (which does predate social media).
>The verdict has forced those inside the companies to grapple with the fact that many outsiders do not view them as favourably as they have come to view themselves.
I'm not sure this rings true to me. Meta has to know that millenials and younger are giving up on their platforms, they have endless internal data showing it, right? If anything they are just afraid of endless litigation while they are struggling to gain an AI foothold.
What if instead of banning these addictive services we require companies to charge for them and disallow advertising revenue. That changes the entire business model, and there is no longer a strong incentive to have users spend as much time on the platform as possible. In fact, the best customer would be one that subscribes but barely uses the platform.
For me this all comes back to the perverse incentives that arrive when advertising is the primary source of revenue for the largest companies in the world. Social media allows advertising at scale never seen before and it’s no surprise that it’s been weaponized in ways that are actively harming people.
Heck, I am constantly looking at hacker news on my phone.
Yes. I know corps do what they can to keep us engaged. I read HN too. I didn't say it was a big part.
- Infinite Scrolling?
- Play Next Video Automatically?
- Shorts?
- Matching to your peer group?
- Variable Reward?
- Social Reciprocity?
- Notifications?
- Gamification (Streaks)?
Was the case won on the argument that it is the aggregate of these things (and many more I am sure)? The power imbalance between the user and the company? Was it some particular subset of them that they rest their argument on? I'm just genuinely curious how you can win a very challenging case like this without inadvertently lassoing so many other industries that your arguments seem ludicrous?
Let me take half a step backward from that provocative stance. Of course we don't need to outlaw all fun, but we perhaps we really do need to outlaw some fun, to prevent people from overindulgence. Maybe a sin tax could be the way to go.
At any given time it seems like whatever is defined as the most addictive is just the one with most market share? For me personally I think most addictive is actually hacker news (god bless you all)
Social media is one of the few good paymasters left.
People will give excuses for this. Guess what, meta and Google have their own too.
> "The verdict has forced those inside the companies to grapple with the fact that many outsiders do not view them as favourably as they have come to view themselves."
They quote one unnamed insider for this characterization. I recall from my stats 101 class that n=1 is not a strong basis from which to make broad claims about a population of 10s of thousands.
I mean, it can't be that hard to imagine them, with their never-before-seen fortunes, extensive real estate portfolios and their extravagant lifestyles, in the roles of modern day Pablo Escobars and the like. Addiction is extremely profitable.