[HN Gopher] Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, ...
___________________________________________________________________
Meta buried 'causal' evidence of social media harm, US court
filings allege
Author : pseudolus
Score : 602 points
Date : 2025-11-23 01:09 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| MengerSponge wrote:
| "It can make quite a difference not just to you but to humanity:
| the sort of boss you choose, whose dreams you help come true."
| -Vonnegut
|
| Meta delenda est.
| thfuran wrote:
| Ads delenda est
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > To the company's disappointment, "people who stopped using
| Facebook for a week reported lower feelings of depression,
| anxiety, loneliness and social comparison," internal documents
| said.
|
| I don't think it's even a stretch at this point to compare Meta
| to cigarette companies.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Complete with the very expensive defence lawyers, payoffs to
| government, and waxing poetic about the importance of the
| foundation of American democracy meaning they must have the
| freedom to make toxic, addictive products and market them to
| children, whilst they simultaneously claim of course they would
| _never_ do that.
| tqi wrote:
| Journalist love that study but tend to ignore the likely causal
| reason for the improved outcomes, which is that users who were
| paid to stop using Facebook had much lower consumption of news
| and especially political news.
| majormajor wrote:
| What does political news have to do with loneliness and
| social comparison?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Teens don't care about politics for the most part and have
| absolutely horrible outcomes from social media
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's a pretty good reason to leave FB though.
| energy123 wrote:
| Cigarettes aren't the only source of smoke
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| At minimum, Stricter and revised gambling laws should certainly
| apply to attention consumption where recommendation algo's are
| used.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The usual reminders apply: you can allege pretty much anything in
| such a brief, and "court filing" does not endow the argument with
| authority. And, the press corps is constrained for space, so
| their summary of a 230-page brief is necessarily lacking.
|
| The converse story about the defendants' briefs would have the
| headline "Plaintiffs full of shit, US court filing alleges" but
| you wouldn't take Meta's defense at face value either, I assume.
|
| https://www.lieffcabraser.com/pdf/2025-11-21-Brief-dckt-2480...
| pinnochio wrote:
| This is a weird comment to make, given that they're citing
| "Meta documents obtained via discovery."
|
| Doesn't seem like you're making this comment in good faith,
| and/or you're very invested in Meta somehow.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Every time they contact me I tell Meta recruiters that I
| wouldn't stoop to work for a B-list chucklehead like Zuck,
| and that has been my policy for over 15 years, so no.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| You're not speaking to a jury. Regular people just living their
| lives only have to use their best judgment and life experience
| to decide which side they think is right. We don't need to be
| coerced into neutrality just because neither side has presented
| hard proof.
| thijson wrote:
| Companies can't really be expected to police themselves.
|
| I remember reading that oil companies were aware of global
| warming in internal literature even back in the 80's
| MstWntd wrote:
| true that.. but it seems that they are fostering an environment
| for SA and even p3dofeelia.. Channel 4 news did a piece on it..
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > Companies can't really be expected to police themselves.
|
| Not so long as we don't punish them for failure to. We need a
| corporate death penalty for an organization that, say,
| knowingly conspires to destroy the planet's habitability. Then
| the bean counters might calculate the risk of doing so as
| unacceptable. We're so ready and willing to punish individuals
| for harm they do to other individuals, but if you get together
| in a group then suddenly you can plot the downfall of
| civilization and get a light fine and carry on.
| measurablefunc wrote:
| "It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are
| punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound
| of trumpets." -- Voltaire
| candiddevmike wrote:
| See also: just war theory
| measurablefunc wrote:
| People can manage to find justifications for all sorts of
| atrocities, including destruction of the biosphere.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Just a few days ago, someone replied to one of my
| comments saying that considering the lives of people who
| aren't born yet is a completely immoral thing to do,
| meaning making anyone alive today sacrifice something to
| protect the planet in 100 years is immoral. So I guess
| people can find all sorts of justifications.
| measurablefunc wrote:
| It is the inevitable outcome of materialism, hedonism, &
| short-term thinking. I think it's going to get worse
| before it gets any better.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| Of course that is wrong and it is not immoral; but, if
| you want to do it in the moral way, you have to consider
| the lives of any living things (plants and animals),
| including but not limited to humans. Furthermore, there
| is the consideration of what exactly has to be sacrificed
| and what kind of coercion is being used (which might be
| immoral for a different reason); morals is not as simple
| like they would say.
|
| But, yes people do find all sorts of justifications,
| whether or not they are any good (although sometimes it
| is not immediately clear if it is any good,
| unfortunately).
| lenkite wrote:
| People are being harmed _today_ , not just hypothetical
| people born 100 years later.
| immibis wrote:
| Just yesterday another HN user told me that always-on DRM
| is a pure benefit for the consumer, when it comes from
| Valve Software.
| CWIZO wrote:
| Prime example: animal agriculture. By far the biggest
| driver of biodiversity loss and nature destruction. Yet
| people justify it constantly with trivial things like
| taste, convinience, tradition, etc.
| aniviacat wrote:
| Perhaps also being uninformed? I personally don't know
| why loss of biodiversity would be bad. Is that common
| knowledge?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Problem remains: What do we do, if others don't care and
| violently start killing our group? Do we reward them,
| throwing away all our weapons and making them our new
| government?
|
| This question of course currently has a very real real
| world parallel.
| popalchemist wrote:
| Well said, and yes, this is practically what must happen.
| pear01 wrote:
| Corporate death penalty as in terminate the corporation?
|
| Why not the actual death penalty? Or put another way, why not
| sanctions on the individuals these entities are made up of?
| It strikes me that qualified immunity for police/government
| officials and the protections of hiding behind incorporation
| serve the same purpose - little to no individual
| accountability when these entities do wrong. Piercing the
| corporate veil and pursuing a loss of qualified immunity are
| both difficult - in some cases, often impossible - to
| accomplish in court, thus incentivizing bad behavior for
| individuals with those protections.
|
| Maybe a reform of those ideas or protocols would be useful
| and address the tension you highlight between how we treat
| "individuals" vs individuals acting in the name of particular
| entities.
|
| As an aside, both protections have interesting nuances and
| commonalities. I believe they also highlight another tension
| (on the flip-side of punishment) between the ability of
| regular people to hold individuals at these entities
| accountable in civil suits vs the government maintaining a
| monopoly on going after individuals. This monopoly can easily
| lead to corruption (obvious in the qualified immunity case,
| less obvious but still blatant in the corporate case, where
| these entities and their officers give politicians and
| prosecutors millions and millions of dollars).
|
| As George Carlin said, it's a big club. And you ain't in it.
| bikelang wrote:
| Just nationalize the company. Make shareholders fear this
| so much that they keep executives in check.
| pear01 wrote:
| Sounds like a very extreme remedy. Not sure you want
| whatever government is elected every four years to have
| this power. Doesn't address the concern re regulatory
| capture, could lead to worse government incentives. Why
| not focus on allowing regular people to more
| realistically hold corporations and their owners/officers
| liable in civil courts? It's already hard enough given
| the imbalance of funds, access and power... but often
| legal doctrine makes the bar to clear impossible at the
| outset.
| bikelang wrote:
| I would posit that we are in the current political
| situation precisely because we do not hold the capital
| class accountable. Do you sincerely believe that
| investors losing their investment is a "very extreme"
| response to gross corporate lawbreaking on their behalf?
| pear01 wrote:
| Why not make the civil case path easier then? The extreme
| nature of your remedy is the idea of a government taking
| over and owning a corporation. That creates bad
| incentives. I think if individuals could reasonably
| expect to be able to knock people like Mark Zuckerberg
| out of the billionaire class in a civil suit, then yes,
| he and the types of people he represents would behave
| better. Having the government run Facebook or Enron or
| Google or whatever both sounds less desirable than
| empowering individuals and weakening corporate
| protections in civil cases, and frankly; worse than the
| prevailing situation re the "capital class". If you think
| the current political situation is bad the last thing you
| should want is more government power.
| tock wrote:
| We are in this situation because we elect people who do
| not hold the capital class accountable. Look at the
| people we elect. How would them running companies be any
| better?
| lenkite wrote:
| We are in the situation because the capital class have
| turned the people we elect into servile puppets. Because
| they have simply been allowed to become too big and
| powerful.
| tock wrote:
| I disagree with you there. We need to stop infantilising
| politicians.
| vkou wrote:
| They aren't servile puppets because they are children,
| they are servile puppets because that's what they are
| paid (and threatened, via financing their more pliable
| opponents) to do.
| TFYS wrote:
| The capital class chooses and presents the people you can
| vote for. They decide what issues are talked about in the
| media, they decide who gets the most funding, and they
| probably have ways of getting rid of or corrupt the
| people who somehow get popular without first being
| accepted by at least some people from the capital class.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| My view is that the corporate death penalty is either
| dissolution or nationalization, whichever is less
| disruptive. If you make your company "too big to fail"
| without hurting loads of people, then use it to hurt
| people, then the people get your company. If it's a
| smaller operation it can just go poof. The priority
| should be ensuring the bad behavior is stopped, then that
| harm is rectified, and finally that an example be made to
| anyone else with a clever new way to externalize harm as
| a business model.
| terminalshort wrote:
| So punish the owners of the company because it's harmful,
| but keep the harmful company around just now controlled
| by the government?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Sometimes harm is a matter of degree and intent
|
| Doctors selling you fentanyl so you can be sedated for
| surgery is a good thing.
|
| Drug Dealers selling you fentanyl so you can get high is
| a bad thing
| johnisgood wrote:
| Except drug dealers do not sell you fentanyl just so you
| can get high because they do not care. They do not care
| about YOUR OWN intention. People demand, they supply. And
| these people can have legitimate reasons.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| You ever been approached by anyone selling drugs?
|
| Of course they care about you getting high, that's their
| sales pitch
| sofixa wrote:
| What would they fear about it? Nationalisation would
| include compensation (as per relevant laws), so the
| shareholders don't lose a lot. Maybe the compensation
| would be less than the potential highs of the stock
| price, but it's not like they entirely lose out
| BrenBarn wrote:
| In my conception, part of the corporate death penalty would
| be personal asset forfeitures and prison time for
| individuals who knew or should have known about the
| malfeasance.
| pear01 wrote:
| In these cases, what is prison time going to accomplish
| that a severe enough monetary remedy would not? Putting
| someone in a prison cell is a state power (criminal
| remedy). I think that is a useful distinction generally,
| and a power that should be employed only when legitimized
| through some government process which has a very high bar
| (beyond a reasonable doubt, criminal rules of evidence,
| protections against self incrimination etc), as it
| deprives someone of their physical liberty.
|
| It strikes me that if you also appreciate this
| distinction, then your remedy to corporations that have
| too much power is to give the government even more power?
|
| Personally, I would like to see more creative solutions
| that weaken both government and corporations and empower
| individuals to hold either accountable. I think the
| current gap between individuals and the other two is too
| severe, I'm not sure how making the government even more
| powerful actually helps the individual. Do you want the
| current American government to be more powerful? Would
| your answer have been different last year?
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I do not see any equivalence between corporate power and
| government power. The population as a whole controls
| government power. Corporate power is constrained only by
| government power. I think one of the most pernicious
| notions in our society is that the idea that "the
| government" is something separate from ordinary people.
|
| Of course, our current government has a lot of problems,
| but that doesn't mean I don't want the government to have
| power. I just want it to have power to do what the
| population actually wants it to do (or, perhaps, what the
| population will actually be happiest with).
|
| What would be your proposed mechanism for empowering
| individuals? How would such a mechanism not ultimately
| rely on the individual leveraging some larger external
| power structure (like a government)? I think if we want
| to empower all individuals roughly equally (i.e., not in
| proportion to their wealth or the like), then what we
| wind up with is something I'd call a government.
| Definitely not the one we have, but government
| nonetheless.
| pear01 wrote:
| It's a fair rejoinder, except I think it mixes idealism
| about government for realism. In reality, the government
| becomes an entity unto itself. This is a universal
| problem of government. Democratic institutions are
| themselves supposed to be a check on this impulse.
| However, as you are aware these are not absolute. A check
| that foresees a need to restrain government also sees a
| need to empower the government to restrain people.
|
| I think however when we acknowledge that men are not
| angels, and that therefore government itself is dangerous
| merely as a centralization of power, then no, you cannot
| simply say well government is supposed to be of a
| different type of power than corporations. Because again,
| in reality this is often not the case. This is why
| several of the American founders and many of those who
| fought in that revolution also became anti federalists or
| argued against constitutional ratification.
|
| I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think there
| has ever been a situation where it is accurate to say the
| population as a whole controls the government. In
| practice it doesn't work that way, and is about as useful
| as saying well the market controls corporations. I think
| something more like anti federalism could use a
| renaissance... the government should be weak in more
| cases. Individuals should be empowered. A government
| power to hold a corporation accountable could then rest
| on simply its strict duty to enforce a civil remedy. That
| is of a different nature than the government deciding on
| its own who (and more importantly - who not) to
| prosecute.
|
| But I appreciate your push back, there are indeed no easy
| answers.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Bullshit. I have no control whatsoever over the
| government. It is completely separate from me. I have
| 1000x more power over Amazon by my ability to choose to
| not buy from them than my vote gives me over government
| bureaucracy. That's why whenever I have a problem with an
| Amazon order it is resolved in minutes when I contact
| support. Good luck if you have a problem with the
| government.
| smdyc1 wrote:
| Amazon are not resolving your issue in minutes because
| you have power over them. They do it because it is
| efficient and profitible for them to keep customers
| happy. Your actual influence over a trillion dollar
| company is tiny compaired to your influence as a voter.
| One customer taking there business elsewhere does not
| affect Amazon in any meaningful way. One vote is counted
| directly. The gap is between how it feels and how the
| power actually works. This of course assumes you live in
| a democratic country.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Your firat two sentences are a total contradiction
| the_gipsy wrote:
| AMZN shareholders shiver by the sheer control you have
| over them. Will he return that usb dongle?
| deaux wrote:
| Hah. Try the same with Google now. Getting a problem
| resolved with them as a consumer is a cakewalk compared
| to the government.
| terminalshort wrote:
| You are a user of Google, but you probably aren't a
| customer.
| justinclift wrote:
| > prison time for individuals
|
| Corporal punishment exists for individuals too.
|
| Perhaps it should be on the table for executives (etc)
| whose companies knowingly caused the deaths or other
| horrific outcomes for many, many people?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| This is what China does. The problem is that the
| application is a little, uh, selective. As soon as you
| get any kind of corruption it becomes a power play
| between different factions in the elites.
|
| You can't do any of this without a strong, independent,
| judiciary, strongly resistant to corruption. Making that
| happen is harder than it sounds.
|
| And it still won't help, because the perps are sociopaths
| and they can't process consequences. So it's not a
| deterrent.
|
| The only effective way to deal with this is to bar
| certain personality types from positions of power.
|
| You might think that sounds outrageous, but we
| effectively have that today, only in reverse. People with
| strong moral codes are actively excluded from senior
| management.
|
| It's a covert farming process that excludes those who
| would use corporate power constructively rather than
| abusing it for short-term gain.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| The actual death penalty is not a good idea for several
| reasons, including possibility of error (even if that
| possibility is small).
|
| (In the case of a corporation, also many people might be
| involved, some of whom might not know what it is, therefore
| increasing the possibility of error.)
|
| However, terminating the corporation might help (combined
| with fines if they had earned any profit from it so far),
| if there is not an effective and practical lesser
| punishment which would prevent this harm.
|
| However, your other ideas seem to be valid points; one
| thing that you mention is, government monopoly can (and
| does) lead to corruption (although not only this specific
| kind).
| foxglacier wrote:
| The group of pretty much all humans is such a group because
| we all conspire to burn fossil fuels. Do you really think a
| global civilization death penalty is a good idea? That's
| throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
| defanor wrote:
| > We're so ready and willing to punish individuals for harm
| they do to other individuals, but if you get together in a
| group then suddenly you can plot the downfall of civilization
| and get a light fine and carry on.
|
| Surely "plot the downfall of civilization" is an
| exaggeration. Knowing that certain actions have harmful
| consequences to the environment or the humanity, and
| nevertheless persisting in them, is what many individuals
| lawfully do without getting together.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| "Companies can't really be expected to police themselves."
|
| so does government
| smt88 wrote:
| No one expects government to police itself.
|
| Government in functioning democratic societies is policed by
| voters, journalists, and many independent watchdog groups.
| notpushkin wrote:
| Any examples of such societies?
| justinclift wrote:
| Currently, not sure.
|
| Maybe there is a reference country, at some period in
| living memory hopefully, we could use as a reference?
| sofixa wrote:
| France, Germany, UK, Switzerland , Netherlands, Belgium
| are a few I'm familiar with. There are of course areas of
| improvement, but in all of those you have strong press
| that can annihilate politicians for for crimes, as well
| as more or less working institutions that punish
| corruption.
|
| Take a look at France, where a former president went to
| prison. Okay, it got commuted to house arrest (same
| sentence as a former PM candidate for president), but
| that's still a pretty serious punishment, especially for
| a such a high level politician.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Take a look at France, where a former president went to
| prison. Okay, it got commuted to house arrest
|
| There is no house arrest, he appealed and is innocent
| until proven guilty. People stay in prison after
| appealing in case there is a serious risk of them fleeing
| the country or in case they present a danger to society,
| both of these have been deemed low enough
| vkou wrote:
| > so does government
|
| The public is supposed to police the government, and replace
| it if it acts against the public interest.
|
| But now that you mention it, perhaps we should also give
| _everyone_ an equal vote on replacing the boards of too-big-
| to-fail corporations
| realo wrote:
| Not so sure about that.
|
| The US-ians voted twice for Trump so far. I have difficulty
| seeing the good it did for the world , let alone the USA
| and the US-ians.
|
| Specifically for corporations, giving everyone in the world
| the power to vote for dismantling Meta (a world mega-corp)
| might be interesting to see , though.
| vkou wrote:
| He is doing good to his supporters, at least as far as
| they think. He has delivered all sorts of stupid, cruel
| and self-destructive stuff that they want.
|
| The problem is that they wants have been steered in that
| direction by decades of cynical media manipulation, but
| that's just the nature of democracy.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| he is choosed to replace the DEI/Woke infested government
| and succesfully achieve that
| vkou wrote:
| His whole cabinet is a bunch of unqualified 'DEI' (and
| DUI) hires who only have a job because of their loyalty
| to the fuhrer and his culture war.
|
| But yes, a lot of people look at the insanity of putting
| an unqualified moron who doesn't believe in germ theory
| in charge of public health and thunderously applaud. He
| certainly that delivered to them.
| Qwertious wrote:
| The problem is that our current ideology basically assumes they
| will be - either by consumer pressure, or by competition. The
| fact that they don't police themselves is then held as proof
| that what they did is either wanted by consumers or is
| competitive.
| silisili wrote:
| Your second point is right, but depressingly it was the 50s
| instead of the 80s.
| vasco wrote:
| Maybe more parallels to tobacco companies. Incredible amount of
| taxes and warnings and rules forbidding kids from using it are
| the solutions to the first problem and likely this second one
| too.
| pjmorris wrote:
| To your point...
|
| 1. "The Tobacco Institute was founded in 1958 as a trade
| association by cigarette manufacturers, who funded it
| proportionally to each company's sales. It was initially to
| supplement the work of the Tobacco Industry Research
| Committee (TIRC), which later became the Council for Tobacco
| Research. The TIRC work had been limited to attacking
| scientific studies that put tobacco in a bad light, and the
| Tobacco Institute had a broader mission to put out good news
| about tobacco, especially economic news." [0]
|
| 2. "[Lewis Powell] worked for Hunton & Williams, a large law
| firm in Richmond, Virginia, focusing on corporate law and
| representing clients such as the Tobacco Institute. His 1971
| Powell Memorandum became the blueprint for the rise of the
| American conservative movement and the formation of a network
| of influential right-wing think tanks and lobbying
| organizations, such as The Heritage Foundation and the
| American Legislative Exchange Council."
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Institute
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_F._Powell_Jr.
| richev wrote:
| 1970s
|
| https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-a...
| dudinax wrote:
| Global warming was understood for almost a century by 1980
| michelb wrote:
| >Companies can't really be expected to police themselves.
|
| Companies can't. Employees can. If someone's still working at
| Meta, they are ok with it.
| tremon wrote:
| _even back in the 80 's_
|
| The 1980s is when the issue was finally brought into the
| political conversation. Shell internal documents go back as far
| as 1962: https://www.desmog.com/2023/03/31/lost-decade-how-
| shell-down...
|
| As for science itself: the first scientific theories on
| greenhouse effects were published in the 1850s -- and the first
| climate model was published in 1896:
| https://daily.jstor.org/how-19th-century-scientists-predicte...
| cs702 wrote:
| No entity can police itself. Not even the police.
|
| Companies, non-profits, regulators, legislative branches of
| government, courts, presidential administrations, corporate
| bureaucrats, government bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, regular
| citizens. They cannot self-police.
|
| That's the motivation for having a system of _checks and
| balances_[a]: We want power, including the power to police, to
| be distributed in a society.
|
| ---
|
| [a] https://www.britannica.com/topic/checks-and-balances
| rohan_ wrote:
| These discussions never discuss the priors, is this harm on a
| different scale then what preceded it? Like is social media worse
| than MTV or teen magazines?
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Why does it matter? We can't go back and retroactively punish
| MTV for its behavior decades ago. Not to mention we likely have
| a much better understand of the impact of media on mental
| health now than we did then.
|
| The best time to start doing the right thing is now. Unless the
| argument here is "since people got away with it before it's not
| fair to punish people now."
| ares623 wrote:
| Plus if we don't do anything about it now, rohan_2 twenty
| years from now will use the same argument about whatever
| comes next!
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| What policy proposals would you have made with respect to MTV
| decades ago, and how would people at the time have reacted to
| them? MTV peaked (I think) before I was alive or at least old
| enough to have formative memories involving it, but people
| have been complaining about television being brain-rotting
| for many decades and I'm sure there was political pressure
| against MTV's programming on some grounds or another, by
| stodgy cultural conservatives who hated freedom of expression
| or challenges to their dogma. Were they correct? Would it
| have been good for the US federal government in the 80s and
| 90s to have actually imposed meaningful legal censorship on
| MTV for the benefit of the mental health of its youth
| audience?
| olelele wrote:
| I think passively watching something on television is very
| different from today's highly interactive social media.
| Like instagram is literally a small percentage people
| becoming superstars for their looks and lifestyles and kids
| are expected to play along..
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| > people have been complaining about television being
| brain-rotting for many decades
|
| This was a broad, simplified, unsupported claim that cannot
| be compared to the demonstrable, well-studied impacts of
| social media on people's - especially young people's -
| minds. They are not even remotely on the same level.
|
| If we want to debate MTV specifically yes there are well
| studied, proven impacts of how various media can make
| people think of their own bodies and lives etc. that can be
| harmful. But again it's not remotely to the same degree.
| Social media can be uniquely poisonous. There are a myriad
| of studies out there that confirm this but I'm happy to
| link some if you want me to.
|
| If somebody wanted to it would probably not be very
| difficult to write an article all but conclusively proving
| that Instagram is more harmful than MTV.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It matters because it points towards a common failure mode
| which we've seen repeatedly in the past. In the 1990s, people
| routinely published news articles like the OP (e.g.
| https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/26/business/technology-
| digit...) about how researchers "knew" that violent video
| games were causing harm and the dastardly companies producing
| them ignored the evidence. In the 1980s, those same articles
| (https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/31/arts/tv-view-the-
| networks...) were published about television: why won't the
| networks acknowledge the plain, obvious fact that showing
| violence on TV makes violence more acceptable in real life?
|
| Is the evidence better this time, and the argument for
| corporate misconduct more ironclad? Maybe, I guess, but I'm
| skeptical.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| My response I gave to the other person basically covers how
| I'd respond to this:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46023313
| Libidinalecon wrote:
| It is a completely different scale.
|
| I loved MTV as a kid but it was as different to social media as
| can be.
|
| Half the time you would turn it on and not like the video
| playing then switch the channel. Even if you liked the video
| that was playing, half the time the next video was something
| you didn't like so you would switch the channel.
|
| Now imagine if MTV had used machine learning to predict the
| next video to show me personally that would best cause me to
| not change the channel.
|
| That is not even really a different scale but a different
| category.
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| I quit Facebook in the early to mid 2010s, well before social
| media became the ridiculously dystopian world it is today.
|
| Completely coincidentally, I had quit smoking a few weeks before.
|
| The feelings of loss, difficulty in sleeping, feeling that
| something was missing, and strong desire to get back to
| smoking/FB was almost exactly the same.
|
| And once I got over the hump, the feelings of calm, relaxation,
| clarity of thought, etc were also similar.
|
| It was then that I learnt, well before anyone really started
| talking about social media being harmful, that social media (or
| at least FB...I didn't really get into any other social media
| until much later), was literally addictive and probably harmful.
| smt88 wrote:
| That's interesting. When I quit Facebook after years of heavy
| use, I felt no better or worse.
|
| The News Feed killed the positive social interaction on the
| site, so it had essentially become a (very bad) news aggregator
| for me.
| hshdhdhj4444 wrote:
| I wouldn't say I felt better.
|
| Which is why I found it so comparable to quitting smoking.
|
| A smoker doesn't feel "better" after quitting smoking. Even
| over a decade after having quit I bet if I smoked a cigarette
| right now I would feel much nicer than I did right before I
| smoked it. However, I would notice physiological changes,
| like a faster heart rate, slight increase in jumpiness,
| getting upset sooner, etc.
|
| Quitting FB was similar. I didn't feel "better", but several
| psycho-physiological aspects of my body just went down a
| notch.
| theoldgreybeard wrote:
| I quit Twitter/X about a month ago. Had the exact same feeling.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| I never really liked fb or any other big application that much,
| so kicking them after 2016 was not that bad, but I used to be
| heavy user or forums and kicking some of them felt pretty
| similar to kicking tobacco back in the day.
|
| We are super social insane monkey creatures that get high on
| social interaction, which in many ways is a good thing, but can
| turn into toxic relationships towards family members or even
| towards a social media application. It is not very dissimilar
| how coin slot machines or casinos lure you into addiction. They
| use exactly the same means, therefore they should be regulated
| like gambling.
| Denzel wrote:
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1320040111
|
| In 2014, Facebook published a paper showing how they can
| manipulate users' emotions with their news feed algorithm.
|
| Facebook ran this test on 700k users without consent.
|
| I deactivated my account the day I read that paper and never
| looked back.
| isodev wrote:
| So does this apply to all social medias? (Threads, X, Bluesky,
| IG, etc) how come they didn't have this evidence from their users
| well? Or maybe they didn't bother to ask..
|
| I suppose the harm from social networks is not as pronounced
| (since you generally interact only with people and content you
| opted to follow (e.g. Mastodon).
| api wrote:
| The harm is from designing them to be addictive. Anything
| intentionally designed to be addictive is harmful. You're
| basically hacking people's brains by exploiting failure modes
| of the dopamine system.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| If I remember correctly, other research has shown that it's
| not just the addictive piece. The social comparison piece is
| a big cause, especially for teenagers. This means Instagram,
| for example, which is highly visual and includes friends and
| friends-of-fiends, would have a worse effect than, say,
| Reddit.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What about it being addictive by its nature? I find myself
| spending too much time on HN and there's no algorithm driving
| content to me specifically.
| api wrote:
| I think there's a difference between something just being a
| bit addicting and scientifically optimizing something to be
| addicting. Differences in magnitude do matter because there
| are thresholds in almost everything where a thing becomes
| harmful.
|
| Coca leaves can be chewed as a stimulant and it's
| relatively harmless, though a bit addictive. Extract
| cocaine and snort it and it's a lot more addictive. Turn it
| into freebase crack and it hits even harder and is even
| more addictive.
|
| If this is coca leaves, Twitter is cocaine and TikTok is
| crack.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| I had a similar thought. I wonder if any social media on a
| similar scale as FB/IG would have the same problems and if it's
| just intrinsic to social media (which is really just a
| reflection of society where all these harms also exist)
| isodev wrote:
| I think group chats (per interest gathering places) without
| incentives for engagement are the most natural and least
| likely to cause harm due to the exposure alone.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| > _In a 2020 research project code-named "Project Mercury," Meta
| (META.O), opens new tab scientists worked with survey firm
| Nielsen to gauge the effect of "deactivating" Facebook and
| Instagram, according to Meta documents obtained via discovery._
|
| Did they pick people at random and ask those people to stop for a
| while, or is this about people who choose to stop for their own
| reasons?
| sidcool wrote:
| Sad thing is that nothing will come out of this. Meta will go
| scott free.
| hinkley wrote:
| I already knew Zuck was a piece of shit before readying Careless
| People but holy shit.
| fakedang wrote:
| > In a text message in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg said that he
| wouldn't say that child safety was his top concern "when I have
| a number of other areas I'm more focused on like building the
| metaverse."
|
| > Zuckerberg also shot down or ignored requests by Clegg to
| better fund child safety work.
| jmyeet wrote:
| One of the worst outcomes of the last 20 years is how Big Tech
| companies have successfully propagandized us that they're neutral
| arbiters of information, successfully blaming any issues with
| "The Algorithm" [tm].
|
| Section 230 is meant to be a safe harbor for a platform not to be
| considered a publisher but where is the line between hosting
| content and choosing what third-party content people see? I would
| argue that if you have sufficient content, you could de facto
| publish any content you want by choosing what people see.
|
| "The Algorithm" is not some magical black box. Everything it does
| is because some human tinkered with it to produce a certain
| result. The thumb is constantly being put on the scale to promote
| or downrank certain content. As we're seeing in recent years,
| this is done to cozy up to certain administrations.
|
| The First Amendment really is a double-edged sword here because I
| think these companies absolutely encourage unhealthy behavior and
| destructive content to a wide range of people, including minors.
|
| I can't but help consider the contrast with China who heavily
| regulate this sort of thing. Yes, China also suppresses any
| politically sensitive content but, I hate to break it to you, so
| does every US social media company.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Your solution to the government putting pressure on social
| media companies to censor is to give the government more power
| over them by removing section 230?
| jmyeet wrote:
| I'm saying social media companies are using Section 230 as a
| shield with the illusion of "neutrality" when they're
| anything but. And if they're taking a very non-neutral stance
| on content, which they are, they should be treated as a
| publisher not a platform.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| At this point, I think all of the big tech companies have had
| some accusations of them acting unethically, but usually, the
| accusations are around them acting anticompetitively or issues
| around privacy.
|
| Meta (and social media more broadly) are the only case where we
| have (in my opinion) substantiated allegations of a company being
| aware of a large, negative impact on society (mental wellness, of
| teens no less), and still prioritizing growth and profit. The mix
| is usually: grow at all costs mindset, being "data-driven",
| optimizing for engagement/addiction, and monetizing via ads. The
| center of gravity of this has all been Meta (and social media),
| but that thinking has permeated lots of other tech as well.
| stanleykm wrote:
| We have evidence for this in other companies too. Oil & Gas and
| Tobacco companies are top of mind.
| rocqua wrote:
| It's a well worn playbook by now. But Meta seems to be the
| only one where we now have proof of internal research being
| scuttled for showing the inconvenient truth.
| hopelite wrote:
| The tobacco industry also did that, but in many ways it
| also seems different, because where tobacco was something
| that has existed for millennia and was a scourge introduced
| to the world by the tribes of the "new world"; Facebook was
| a primary player in creating the whole social media space,
| something that effectively did not exist in the predatory
| and malignant manner that it was used for to create a
| digital panopticon, or more accurately and way worse, where
| your participation is required for a certain kind of
| success.
|
| Social media is abusive and utterly psychotic and
| narcissistic, because that is the type of people who
| created it using basic psychological abuse and submission
| tactics. Banks, casinos, games, hollywood/TV,
| news/politics, social media, contemporary academia and
| religion, etc.; they all function on being endorphin
| dealers/dispensers.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| True, but there haven't even been publicly known internal
| research attempts at for example YouTube/Google about the
| content they are pushing and probably more importantly the
| ads they keep pushing into people's faces. I bet FB/Meta
| are kicking themselves now, for even running such internal
| research in the first place.
|
| My point is, that all of these big tech giants will find,
| that they are a harmful cancer to society, at least in
| parts. Which is probably why they don't even "research" it.
| This way they can continue to act oblivious to this fact.
| somenameforme wrote:
| > I bet FB/Meta are kicking themselves now, for even
| running such internal research in the first place.
|
| 100%. This is what people miss in this thread when
| they're talking about seeing to punish companies who
| knowingly harm society. All that is going to do is
| discourage companies from ever seeking to evaluate the
| effects that they're having.
| hrimfaxi wrote:
| Won't the absence of punishing companies that knowingly
| harm society in a way _encourage_ more of the same
| conduct? What 's your suggestion?
| hananova wrote:
| Then internal evaluation must be made mandatory. This is
| something that can be regulated, there just isn't the
| will for it.
| salawat wrote:
| Petrochemical, Dow & Industrial Big Chem, Pharmaceutical
| companies, health insurance companies, finance companies,
| Monsanto, mining companies.
|
| I mean, let's be real. That's really isn't a big company that
| achieves scale that doesn't have skeletons in the closet.
| Period.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| Don't forget the All-Fats-Are-Bad sugar scam.
| jordanb wrote:
| It's on the same scale of chemical companies covering up
| cancerous forever chemicals.
| lazide wrote:
| Cigarette companies hiding known addictive effects?
| rkomorn wrote:
| And more recently, pretending vapes are a solution to
| cigarettes.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| PG/VG base is exactly the same stuff that has been used
| in foggers/hazers for decades. If there were negative
| health effects associated with the stuff, we'd have
| spotted it long ago. As for nicotine, well, it's the same
| stuff as in cigarettes, we know about its effects again
| thanks to decades of research.
|
| The only thing left is questionable flavoring agents and
| dodgy shops with THC oil vapes (although that kind of
| contamination is now known and it's been ages since I
| last heard anything).
|
| At large, vapes _are_ better than cigarettes.
| stackskipton wrote:
| >PG/VG base is exactly the same stuff that has been used
| in foggers/hazers for decades. If there were negative
| health effects associated with the stuff, we'd have
| spotted it long ago.
|
| How many people are directly exposed to it daily?
| Technicians and performers are probably it. Everyone else
| is very rare so it's possibly any side effects took a
| while for medical community to pick up on until everyone
| started vaping.
|
| >At large, vapes are better than cigarettes.
|
| Better yes, they are harm reduction over cigarettes.
| However, it's not "good" and should be as regulated as
| cigarettes are.
| lazide wrote:
| Cite?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There is zero comparison. Atmospheric 'fog' versus closed
| system directly into lungs with intention of cellular
| respiration is the same thing.
|
| Before this the pro-vape crowd used to push the trope of
| "it's used in nebulizers", nope, it's not. Ventolin does
| not use propylene glycol:
| https://www.drugs.com/pro/ventolin.html Maxair? Nope:
| https://www.drugs.com/pro/maxair-autohaler.html Airomir
| did not.
|
| > There is one study looking at the potential to use PG
| as a carrier for an inhaled medicine
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18158714) and
| another which mentions that PG or ethanol may be used as
| a cosolvent
| (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12425745) in
| nebulizers, but no evidence presented of an asthma
| inhaler or nebulizer that is actually used today
| containing PG.
|
| Even then, there's a huge difference between "being on
| stage with a fog machine", and 3-4 puffs a day of a
| smaller amount of a nebulizer, than chronic hundreds of
| puffs a day with vapes.
| mike50 wrote:
| It wasn't inhaled in the way vapes are. The dose is
| higher and the exposure is chronic.
| chroma205 wrote:
| > Meta are the only case where we have substantiated
| allegations of a company being aware of a large, negative
| impact on society
|
| Robinhood has entered the chat
|
| Why would one specific industry be better? The toxic people
| will migrate to that industry and profit at the expense of
| society. It's market efficiency at work.
| Ozzie_osman wrote:
| I do think an industry is often shaped by the early leaders
| or group of people around them. Those people shape the
| dominant company in that space, and then go off to spread
| that culture in other companies that they start or join. And,
| competitors are often looking to the dominant company and
| trying to emulate that company.
| chroma205 wrote:
| > I do think an industry is often shaped by the early
| leaders or group of people around them
|
| Yes, but did any industry live long enough to not become
| the villain?
|
| Early OpenAI set the tone of safe, open-source AI.
|
| The next few competitors also followed OpenAI's lead.
|
| And yet, here we are.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Early OpenAI set the tone of safe, open-source AI.
|
| Um, wat?
| chroma205 wrote:
| > Um, wat?
|
| https://github.com/openai
| Peritract wrote:
| > Early OpenAI set the tone of safe, open-source AI.
|
| Early OpenAI told a bunch of lies that even (some of)
| their most-ardent fans are now seeing through. They
| didn't start off good and become the villain.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| not sure how much sense that makes when the overarching
| culture is profit seeking
| slaterbug wrote:
| For the uninformed, what large negative impact has Robinhood
| had on society?
| bnjms wrote:
| Gamifying day trading is just turning the retail market
| into gambling. Obvious objections will be that this has
| been possible for a long time now. But never did I know
| young men to casually play the market day to day like Wall
| Street Bets do now the way they would follow sports in the
| past.
| virtue3 wrote:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/gambling-
| addi...
|
| tip of the iceberg.
| vkou wrote:
| Gamifying and advertising the shit out of options trading
| to make it more attractive to morons isn't, strictly
| speaking, an improvement of our world.
| mike50 wrote:
| Exploring unsophisticated investors. Trading on margin used
| to be for extremely experienced and educated people working
| for a large financial institution. The risk of margin
| trading is extreme with unlimited losses.
| vintermann wrote:
| Also, tobacco companies and oil companies famously got into
| trouble from revelations that they were perfectly aware of
| their negative impacts. For the gambling and alcohol
| industry, it probably wouldn't even make the news if some
| internal report leaked that they were "aware" of their
| negative impact (as if anyone thought they would not be?)
|
| Social media is way down on the list of companies aware of
| their negative impact. The negative impact arguably isn't
| even central to their business model, which it certainly is
| for the other industries mentioned.
| somenameforme wrote:
| What do you think the social effects of large scale advertising
| are? The whole point is to create false demand essentially
| driving discontent. I've no idea if Google et al have ever done
| a formal internal study on the consequences, but it's not hard
| to predict what the result would be.
|
| The internet can provide an immense amount of good for society,
| but if we net it on overall impact, I suspect that the internet
| has overall had a severely negative impact on society. And this
| effect is being magnified by companies who certainly know that
| what they're doing is socially detrimental, but they're making
| tons of money doing it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The positive benefits in education, science research and
| logistics are hard to understate. Mass advertising existed
| before the internet. Can you be more explicit about which
| downsides you thibk the additional mass advertising on the
| internet caused that can come anywhere close to the
| immeasurable benefits provided by the internet?
| somenameforme wrote:
| I'm somewhat unsurprised that my off the cuff hypothesis
| has been tested, and is indeed likely accurate. [1]
| Advertising literally makes people dissatisfied with their
| lives. And it's extremely easy to see the causal
| relationship for why this is. Companies like Google are
| certainly 100% aware of this. And saying that advertising
| existed before the internet is somewhat flippant. Obviously
| it did but the scale has increased so dramatically much
| that it's reaching the point of absurdity.
|
| And a _practical_ point on this topic is that the benefits
| of the internet are, in practice, fringe, even if freely
| available to everyone. For instance now there are free
| classes from most of all top universities online, on just
| about every topic, that people can enroll and participate
| in. There are literally 0 barriers to receiving a free
| premium quality education. Yet the number of people that
| participate in this is negligible and overwhelmingly
| composed of people that would have had no less success even
| prior to the internet.
|
| By contrast the negatives are extremely widespread on both
| an individual and social level. As my post count should
| demonstrate, I _love_ the internet. And obviously this site
| is just one small segment of all the things I do on the
| internet. In fact my current living would be impossible
| without it. Yet if I had the choice of pushing a button
| that would send humanity on a trajectory where we sidestep
| (or move along from) the internet, I wouldn 't hesitate in
| the slightest to push it.
|
| [1] - https://hbr.org/2020/01/advertising-makes-us-unhappy
| shkkmo wrote:
| > I'm somewhat unsurprised that my off the cuff
| hypothesis has been tested, and is indeed likely
| accurate.
|
| That study is a correlation with self reported
| satisfaction. The effect size is that a doubling of ad
| spend results in a 3% change in satisfaction. I struggled
| to find good numbers but it appears as if ad spending in
| the USA has been a more or less constant percentage of
| GDP growth.
|
| Thus the only real conclusion you can draw from your
| argument is that any increase in unhappiness caused by
| the internet was caused by its associated GDP growth
| increasing ad spend per capita.
|
| Personally, I do think advertising has become more
| damaging precisely due to the internet but good luck
| proving it.
|
| > And a practical point on this topic is that the
| benefits of the internet are, in practice, fringe, even
| if freely available to everyone
|
| Ok, nevermind. I can't take anything else you say
| seriously when you call the ways the the internet has
| improved people's lives "fringe". I take it you never
| tried to take a bus pre-internet? Drive a car across the
| cohntry? Or lookup any information? The internet's
| effects on people is so far from fringe that it has
| seeped into almost everything we do at a fundamental
| level. Perhaps because of that you can't see it.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| I agree false demand effects exist. But sometimes ads tell
| you about products which genuinely improve your life. Or just
| tell you "this company is willing to spend a lot on ads,
| they're not just a fly-by-night operation".
|
| One hypothesis for why Africa is underdeveloped is they have
| too many inefficient mom-and-pop businesses selling uneven-
| quality products, and not enough major brands working to
| build strong reputations and exploit economies of scale.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| > But sometimes ads tell you about products which genuinely
| improve your life.
|
| I'd argue that life improvement is so small it's not worth
| the damage of false demand. I can maybe think of one
| product that I saw a random ad for that I actually still
| use today. I'd say >90% of products being advertised these
| days are pointless garbage or actually net negative.
|
| Advertising is cancer for the mind and our society severely
| underestimates the harm it's done.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Meta (and social media more broadly) are the only case where
| we have (in my opinion) substantiated allegations of a company
| being aware of a large, negative impact on society (mental
| wellness, of teens no less), and still prioritizing growth and
| profit
|
| Them doing nothing about hate speech that fanned the flames for
| a full blown genocide is pretty terrible too. They knew the
| risks, were warned, yet still didn't do anything. It would be
| unfair to say the Rohingya genocide is the fault of Meta, but
| they definitely contributed way too much.
| transportgo wrote:
| The leaders and one of the announcers of Radio Television Libre
| des Mille Collines got 30 years to life sentences for their
| part in the Rwandan genocide.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| I just hope that in 100 years time, people will be shocked at the
| prevalence of social media these past 2 decades
| Aurornis wrote:
| I predict that in much sooner than 100 years social media will
| be normalized and it will be common knowledge that moderating
| consumption is just as important as it is with video games, TV,
| alcohol, and every other chapter of societies going through
| growing pains of newly introduced forms of entertainment. If
| you look at some of the old moral panic content about violent
| video games or TV watching they feel a lot like the
| lamentations about social media today. Yet generations grew up
| handling them and society didn't collapse. Each time there are
| calls that this time is different than the last.
|
| In some spaces the moral panic has moved beyond social media
| and now it's about short form video. Ironically you can find
| this panic spreading on social media.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| We moderate consumption of alcohol, sugar, gambling, and
| tobacco with taxes and laws. We have regulations on what you
| can show on TV or films. It is complete misuse of the term to
| claim a law prohibiting sale of alcohol for minors is 'moral
| panic'. It is not some individual decision and we need those
| regulations to have a functioning society.
|
| Likewise in few generations we hopefully find a way to
| transfer the cost in medical bills of mental health caused by
| these companies to be paid by those companies in taxes, like
| we did with tobacco. At this point using these apps is
| hopefully seen to be as lame as smoking is today.
| justinclift wrote:
| > We moderate consumption of alcohol, sugar, gambling, and
| tobacco with taxes and laws.
|
| For the US, would it be accurate to put "sex" on there as
| well?
| mike50 wrote:
| Only over the air TV is regulated by the FCC. Films and non
| broadcast TV are only regulated if they contain obscene
| content. If anything there was more regulation of film
| production in the past. Hayes Code etc.
| jraby3 wrote:
| I don't think any of those items have had the significance
| and decisiveness of social media, or have been controlled by
| billionaires who have corrupted the election systems.
|
| Social media seems far more dangerous and harder to control
| because of the power it grants its "friends". It'll be much
| harder to moderate than anything else you mentioned.
| hollerith wrote:
| "Society didn't collapse" is a very very low bar.
| squigz wrote:
| > Yet generations grew up handling them and society didn't
| collapse.
|
| Society did not collapse. That does not mean those things did
| not have negative effects on society.
| wisty wrote:
| In 100 years time they will be so fried by AI they won't be
| capable of being shocked. Everyone will just be swiping on
| generated content in those hover chairs from Wall E.
| neilk wrote:
| In Mad Men, we have these little moments of mind=blown by the
| constant sexism, racism, smoking, alcoholism, even attitudes
| towards littering. In 2040 someone's going to make a show about
| the 2010s-2020s and they'll have the same attitude towards
| social media addiction.
| pier25 wrote:
| Not only social media but addiction to phones too. The impact
| on kids and teenagers is well documented by now.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Where are the parents when you need them?
| udev4096 wrote:
| Who is surprised? Fuck zuckerberg
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| I don't understand why things like social media are meant to be
| regulated by the government.
|
| Isn't religion where we culturally put "not doing things that are
| bad for you"? And everyone is allowed to have a different version
| of that?
|
| Maybe instead of regulating social media, we should be looking at
| where the teeth of religion went even in our separation of church
| and state society. If everyone thinks their kids shouldn't do
| something, enforcing that sounds like exactly what purpose
| religion is practically useful for.
| olelele wrote:
| The Spanish Inquisition has entered the chat.
| moshegramovsky wrote:
| Are you serious? People don't need religion to be moral. If
| what I see from religion these days is any indicator, I am
| extremely happy we kept our kids far far far away from it. From
| all of it. I will concede that not all religion is bad, but
| quite a lot of it is grift at best and cleverly disguised
| totalitarianism at worst. Many religious figures have
| absolutely no problem talking publicly about their "diety-
| given" right to dominate and control the lives of others for
| their own personal gain. I don't see how that fits inside any
| accepted definition of morality.
| justinclift wrote:
| > If everyone thinks their kids shouldn't do something,
| enforcing that sounds like exactly what purpose religion is
| practically useful for.
|
| Alternatively, being raised well by their parents and the
| Community around them.
|
| Religion is not a needed component of that.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Well, the more scientific and pluralistic our society becomes
| the more religion is necessarily sapped of its ability to
| compel behavior. If you lived in 13th Century France the
| Catholic Church was a total cultural force and thus could
| regulate behavior, but the very act of writing freedom of
| religion into law communicates a certain idea about religion:
| its so unimportant that you can have whatever form of religion
| you want.
|
| In any case, one ought to distinguish between "You shouldn't do
| things which are bad for you," and "You shouldn't do things you
| know are bad for others." Especially, "Giant corporations with
| ambiguous structures of responsibility shouldn't be allowed to
| do things which are bad for others."
| u12 wrote:
| > Meta required users to be caught 17 times attempting to traffic
| people for sex before it would remove them from its platform,
| which a document described as "a very, very, very high strike
| threshold." I don't get it. Is sex trafficking driven user growth
| really so significant for Meta that they would have such a policy
| ?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| The "catching" is probably some kind of automated detection
| scanner with an algo they don't fully trust to be accurate, so
| they have some number of "strikes" that will lead to a
| takedown.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Of course it's not. We could speculate about how to square this
| with reason and Meta's denial; perhaps some flag _associated
| with_ sex trafficking had to be hit 17 times, and some people
| thought the flag was associated with too many other things to
| lower the threshold. But the bottom line is that hostile
| characterizations of undisclosed documents aren 't
| presumptively true.
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| We don't know. But as you read from the article, Meta's own
| employees were concerned about it (and many other things). For
| Zuck it was not a priority, as he said himself.
|
| We can speculate. I think they just did not give a fuck.
| Usually limiting grooming and abuse of minors requires limiting
| the access of those minors to various activities on the
| platform, which means those kids go somewhere else. Meta
| specifically wanted to promote it's use among children below 13
| to stimulate growth, that often resulting in the platform
| becoming dangerous for minors was not seen as their problem.
|
| If your company is driven by growth uber alles a la venture
| capitalism, it will mean the growth goes before everything
| else. Including child safety.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Reading _Careless People_ by Sarah Wynn Williams is eye
| opening here, and it 's pretty close to exactly that.
|
| > I think they just did not give a fuck.
|
| It's that people like Zuck and Sandberg were just so happily
| ensconced in their happy little worlds of private jets and
| Davos and etc., that they really could not care less if it
| wasn't something that affected them (and really, the very
| vast majority of issues facing Meta, don't affect them, only
| their bonuses and compensation).
|
| Your actions will lead to active harm? "But not to me, so, so
| what, if it helps our numbers".
| FireBeyond wrote:
| There is always a complexity to this (and don't think I'm
| defending Meta, who are absolutely toxic).
|
| Like Apple's "scanning for CSAM", and people said "Oh, there's
| a threshold so it won't false report, you have to have 25+
| images (or whatever) before it will"... Like okay, avoid false
| reporting, but that policy is one messy story away from "Apple
| says it doesn't care about the first 24 CSAM images on your
| phone".
| jackhuman wrote:
| I've recently had to deal with my father cognitive decline &
| falling for scams left & right using Meta's apps. This has been
| so hard on our family. I did a search the other day on
| marketplace and 100% of all sellers were scams, 20-30 of them.
|
| Meta is a cancer on our society, I'm shutting down all my
| accounts. Back when TV/Radio/News paper were how you consumed
| news, you couldn't get scams this bad at this scale. Our parents
| dealt with their parents so much easier as they cognitively
| declined. We need legal protections for elders and youth online
| more than ever. Companies need to be liable for their ads and
| scam accounts. Then you'd see a better internet.
| olelele wrote:
| The old, mentally disabled guy in New Jersey falling over and
| dying trying to get to a date with a meta bot really broke
| something in me.
| motbus3 wrote:
| That was horrible. This also makes me think that all those
| researches on "unhappiness Vs spending"
| cedws wrote:
| My grandmother has been through the same thing. She was scammed
| out of all of her savings by accounts impersonating a
| particular celebrity. Thankfully the bank returned all of the
| money, but the perpetrators will never be caught, they operate
| out of Nigeria (one of them attached their phone to her Google
| account.)
|
| Unfortunately these fake celebrity accounts are swarming her
| like locusts again. We tried to educate her about not using her
| real name online, not giving out information or adding unknown
| people as friends, but there's a very sad possibility that she
| doesn't fully understand what she's doing.
|
| It was emotionally difficult going through her laptop to gather
| evidence for the bank. They know exactly how to romance and
| pull on heart strings, particularly with elderly people.
|
| Meta's platforms are a hive of scammers and they should be held
| accountable.
| Drunkfoowl wrote:
| My friend is a bank manager. He says everyday 2-3 elderly
| people come in confused about a scam.
|
| This is a silent crisis impacting almost eveyone. My grandma
| personally had her gold stolen by a scammer.
|
| She is now in a home for dimensia.
| stogot wrote:
| It really is a silent crisis. I warn my family constantly
| about ones targeting elderly, but even people my age fall
| for others
| ryandrake wrote:
| Children who are not cognitively and emotionally ready
| for the Internet shouldn't have access to it. Similarly,
| any elderly folks who are not cognitively able to deal
| with social media (or the Internet in general) should be
| cut off from it, too.
|
| You can (and should) have That Talk with your parents
| about scams on the internet, but if they're still falling
| for them and not getting the message, maybe it's time to
| gently steer them off the Internet. We take the car keys
| away from people who can't handle driving anymore.
| dagmx wrote:
| I don't think it's a silent crisis per se, but just one
| people ignore.
|
| There's tons of media about it, tons of people are aware of
| elder fraud etc but people don't want to think about the
| vulnerable of society. There's been jokes about it and
| media about it going back decades.
|
| People are aware but solving it requires an uncomfortable
| level of change in society, training and regulations.
|
| As an aside, both Thelma and The Beekeeper are recent
| movies about elders being scammed and revenge being taken.
| Both very different but enjoyable.
| specialist wrote:
| Cable media is filled with ads for scams purporting to
| prevent other scams.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > adding unknown people as friends
|
| The number of my outer circle of friends who fall for the
| "copied profile" adding of unknown people or accept a friend
| request from the attractive young woman who somehow is
| interested in them is shocking. (I'm gauging this from
| looking at the "mutual friends" in the friend request.)
| qwertox wrote:
| One must also check what YouTube recommends their elderly
| parents, because it is easy for them to slide into getting
| recommended harmful content, mostly things like psychological,
| religious or alternative-medicine topics. Note that not all of
| them are harmful, but most of them are published by very odd
| channels.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| YouTube should be held liable for what it is pushing. It
| literally can kill and seriously harm people.
| xethos wrote:
| The president of the United States of America pushed a
| horse de-wormer as a preventative during a world-wide
| pandemic
|
| Good luck getting him, his administration, or his
| Department of Justice, to hold YouTube to a higher
| standard.
| tclancy wrote:
| Well, let's post a deepfake about some left strawman and
| watch him find the time pronto.
| alex1138 wrote:
| Ivermectin has scientific evidence behind it. But I can't
| say that without accruing downvotes, I suppose
| teamonkey wrote:
| Scientific evidence as a topical treatment for skin
| conditions!
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| It would help your argument, if you actually pointed to
| that evidence, rather than just claiming it.
| stOneskull wrote:
| youtube also has kitboga, pirogi, deeveeaar, etc which are
| very helpful. i introduced my mother, who has early
| dementia and can't do much, so watches a lot of netflix and
| youtube, to kitboga and she loved it and found other
| scambaiters. i'm stoked. i know she will tell a scammer to
| f off now.
| toofy wrote:
| this seems like credit bureaus charging us to protect our
| data they keep losing.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Kitboga guy is a saint! Very entertaining, every now and
| then.
| beached_whale wrote:
| I think that any of these algorithmic feeds, by any
| company, should be held as if the companies have vetted the
| content and it is theirs. And the culpability that goes
| with that.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Opening YouTube on a new machine / OS / browser / without
| login is eye opening in terms of the awful stuff that gets
| recommended by default and how quickly it tilts worse if you
| watch any of it.
| shmeeed wrote:
| This, so much! It's outright disgusting. I have no idea why
| we tolerate this as a society. I fear it is because this
| diagnosis isn't widely known, it's happening on the
| fringes.
|
| Everybody, including journalists and tech people, is moving
| about their own algorithmic bubble nearly all the time.
| They just can't imagine _how bad_ the situation has become
| out there. We 're turning a blind eye to the very thing
| that is destroying our societies.
| fakedang wrote:
| Every time I open YouTube in incognito mode, depending on
| the region I'm in, I get recommended either far-right
| content, Bitcoin grifters, Israel shills, nauseating
| YouTube vitality factories or straight up
| Jihadist/Hindutva/Christian-right content.
| luke5441 wrote:
| For me it is empty here (EU). They don't even have a link
| to trending in the side-bar anymore. It just tells to
| search for something.
| immibis wrote:
| If you really want to hurt Meta, don't delete your accounts -
| sell these real, aged accounts to spammers for a few bucks.
| vintermann wrote:
| That may hurt Meta, but not nearly as much as it hurts the
| elderly people who the spammers will defraud.
| immibis wrote:
| Then instead use them to scrape your friends' timelines and
| republish as RSS.
| estearum wrote:
| Why would that hurt Meta? The entire point here is that they
| don't care and if anything benefit from such activity.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I'm in a group chat and one member is a Cambodian slave that
| periodically tries to start romance scams
|
| and we're like "you're free now, go home" (because of the
| economic sanctions and raid)
|
| we recently had a vote on whether she should be booted from the
| chat, we voted no for the comedic value
|
| so anyway sorry you're going through that, its wild out there
| michelb wrote:
| Unfortunately I have a similar experience. If someone's working
| at Meta right now, and has been in the past 10 years, they're
| willingly and actively contributing to making society worse.
| Some open-source tech is not going to undo any of this, nor any
| of the past transgressions. I get the pay is probably great,
| but have some decency.
| stodor89 wrote:
| But hey, at least the money is good..
| echelon wrote:
| I suggested a hiring ban on anyone who ever worked at Meta
| some years back. It was not met with open arms. Going to try
| again here...
|
| I think it's a valid suggestion that might result in people
| rethinking working for Meta if it was taken seriously.
|
| Working for Meta is ethically questionable. The company does
| unspeakable damage to our country. It harms our kids, our
| elders, our political stability. Working for it, and a number
| of similar companies, is contributing to the breakdown of the
| fabric of our society.
|
| Why not build a list of Meta employees and tell them they're
| not eligible for being hired unless they show some kind of
| remorse or restitution?
|
| It could be an aggregation of LinkedIn profiles and would
| call attention to the quandary of hiring someone with
| questionable ethics to work at your organization. It might go
| viral on the audacity of the idea alone. That might cause
| some panic and some pause amongst prospective Meta hires and
| interns. They might rethink their career choices.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Generally it is a bad idea to punnish defectors.
| devsda wrote:
| What's the end goal of that? Do you think Meta will run out
| of good engineers to hire ?
|
| With that attitude, how long does it take to justify going
| after the next Meta?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| My litmus test is, do you think that the person managing
| Meta's coffee supply is ethically questionable? If you met
| them, would you tell them that they need to quit, and would
| you consider them a bad person if they don't? There are
| organizations that meet that bar, but I really don't think
| Meta is one of them.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Surely there are employees at Meta who are not making the
| world a worse place. There may even be people in
| technical roles who are not. I can imagine Meta probably
| has some kind of ethics or privacy department (what a
| demoralizing place to do that kind of work!) who are even
| trying against the tide to do good! You can't just use
| "worked at Meta" as the filter. I'd want to know exactly
| what they worked on, and have them explain their ethical
| rationale for continuing.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| >I'd want to know exactly what they worked on, and have
| them explain their ethical rationale for continuing.
|
| Now I'm imagining I meet someone who is on the other side
| of the interview table having these thoughts. Are my
| capabilities ignored because they are already prejudiced
| to a decision I made years prior? What if my answer,
| trying to improve issues from within, is not good enough?
|
| This new world is scary..
| ryandrake wrote:
| I guess this is just a risk that you have to accept when
| you decide to work somewhere like Meta. I wouldn't accept
| a job at Philip Morris for the same reason.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| What about Meta AI? For reasons I cannot comprehend they
| have been releasing quality research for free for years
| like PyTorch, FastText vectors, and the LLaMa models.
|
| I don't know how to reconcile the one side of the company
| that should be burnt to the ground and the one that's
| pushing local models forward, but I'd say it's worth
| considering.
| carefulfungi wrote:
| So many of us have been there - it is brutal. These platforms
| are ripping us apart from each other, providing criminals easy
| access to the most vulnerable, and concentrating wealth to an
| unimaginable degree.
| amelius wrote:
| But hey, it's a free market /s
|
| Maybe EU's regulation of digital markets isn't such a bad
| idea after all.
| hammock wrote:
| What did you search for on marketplace to find the scams?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| One third of all scams in the US are operated on Meta
| platforms.
|
| They have a policy that if a scammer's ad spend makes up more
| than 0.15% of Meta revenue, moderators must protect the scammer
| instead of blocking it.
|
| Meta is working hard to scam your dad for ad spend. It's hugely
| profitable for them and they are helping to grow it per
| internal policy. They are only interested in fostering big-time
| scammers.
| filoleg wrote:
| > One third of all scams in the US are operated on Meta
| platforms.
|
| And 100% of all internet scam traffic in the US goes through
| either US ISPs or US cell carriers.
|
| Should those entities be held liable instead? Or maybe, Meta
| instead should scan users' private messages on their
| platforms and report everything that might seem problematic
| (whatever the current US administration in power considers as
| problematic) to the relevant authorities?
|
| My personal take: there should be more effort in going after
| the actual scammers, as opposed to going after the "data
| pipes" (of various abstraction levels) like Meta/ISPs/cell
| carriers/etc.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Meta is not a pipe. Meta curates the feed to maximise their
| income to the detriment of everyone else.
| alex1138 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15956811
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14147719
| jddj wrote:
| > Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from
| ads for scams and banned goods
|
| https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-
| fortu...
| slumberlust wrote:
| If the ISP was taking ad money they know were scams...yes
| they should be liable.
|
| International law and extradition has already proven to be
| too slow and small scale to be effective.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I would like to understand the downvotes: is it from doubting
| these facts? If so, I will post the sources (which were
| recent mainstream news on the front page of HN). Or is it
| because of the negative sentiment about Meta? Or disagreement
| that Meta has any responsibility over moderating scams they
| promote?
|
| These are verified facts that make up the substance of my
| message:
|
| - Meta protects their biggest scammers, per internal policy
| from leadership
|
| - Meta makes a huge profit from these scammers (10% of total
| revenue; or in other words, their scam revenue is
| approximately 5x larger than the total Oculus revenue)
|
| - The scams that Meta promotes represent one-third of the
| total online scams in the US
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I would like to understand the downvotes: is it from
| doubting these facts? If so, I will post the sources (which
| were recent mainstream news on the front page of HN). Or is
| it because of the negative sentiment about Meta? Or
| disagreement that Meta has any responsibility over
| moderating scams they promote?
|
| It may be as simple as "there are a lot of Meta employees
| browsing HN."
| specialist wrote:
| > _We need legal protections for elders and youth_
|
| Offline too.
|
| Predation on the elderly is an industry.
|
| Our own attempts to do something about (successful) scammers
| were meant with utter indifference by my parent's state's
| (Arizona) attorney general, county sheriffs, local police.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| My dad had fallen for two scams - one through WhatsApp, the
| other texts.
|
| I'm not sure how much we can blame individual companies for
| this. Obviously they should be doing more - shutting down
| accounts that message people at random, for instance, but I
| feel like the scammers will find a way.
|
| I also don't know what else we can do. It should be easier for
| kids (or anyone else) to shut down their parent's accounts at
| least once this happens, stop all wire and crypto transfers,
| etc.
|
| Past that, I really don't know.
| Lerc wrote:
| There are certain statements that should make you wary of study
| findings.
|
| People who x reported y is one of those phrases.
|
| "people who stopped using Facebook for a week reported lower
| feelings of depression, anxiety, loneliness and social
| comparison,"
|
| This is the same argument you see in cosmetic advertising as
| "Women who used this serum reported reduction in wrinkles"
|
| If the study has evidence that people who x actually shows y, It
| would be irresponsible to not say that directly. Dropping to
| "people reported" seems like an admission that there was no
| measurable effect other than the influence of the researchers on
| the opinions of the subjects.
|
| Mental state can be difficult in this respect because it is much
| harder to objectively measure internal states. the fact that it
| is harder to do, doesn't grant validity to subjective answers
| though.
|
| I was once part of a study that did this. It was fascinating
| seeing something that appeared to have no effect being written up
| using both "people reported" and "significant" (meaning, not
| likely by chance, but implying a large effect to the casual
| reader).
| crossbody wrote:
| Dude, who cares about study design and methodological validity!
| Let's just burn Meta down and put Zuck to jail! /s
|
| What you a saying is valid criticism of the study but people
| here already made up their mind, so they downvote.
|
| Another point to add is that 1 week is way too short - assuming
| there is an effect it might disappear or go in reverse after 1
| month.
|
| To all downvoters: if you think of yourself as smart rational
| people, please just use search/AI to see for yourself whether
| there is high quality evidence of _causal_ impact of social
| media on kids/mental health. The results are mixed at best.
| Lerc wrote:
| Interestingly the post is climbing it's way back to zero.
|
| I find the downvote without counterargument to be an odd
| response to a good faith post. It seems like it would
| strengthen the argument if the message they send is "I don't
| have a counter to this but I don't like it and I don't like
| that others will see this point of view"
|
| I have come to realise that I have a much higher threshold
| when it comes to upvoting, downvoting, or rating things. It
| seems like a lot of people freely upvote, like, heart, or
| downvote without a care. We live in a world where a 4.8 star
| rating (comprised entirely of an aggregate of zero and five
| star ratings) is considered a concern. So I try not to be
| bothered by it, but I'm pretty sure subconsciously a downvote
| hurts more than someone saying "I disagree"
| intended wrote:
| I remember reading case studies on the Tylenol recall.
|
| Meta leadership has had opportunity after opportunity to do the
| hard thing, and be the force for good in a manner that they can
| live with.
|
| Even more frustrating - the decision making shares give
| Zuckerberg control.
| Devasta wrote:
| Unironically, Zuckerberg and the rest of the top brass of Meta
| should be in the Hague.
| letmetweakit wrote:
| Meanwhile I'm sitting here deliberating for the 200th time to
| delete my Whatsapp account, meaning I won't take part in group
| chats with my friends anymore ... in the end I won't delete it
| and next up is deliberating for the 201st time to delete my
| Whatsapp account ...
| ThouYS wrote:
| I deleted it a couple of years ago, leaving all group chats.
| Haven't looked back since.
|
| Everyone that is important to me (and not a slave, nor enslaver
| of their friends) is on Signal anyways
| motbus3 wrote:
| Someone should include the owl really meme into this process
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| Of course they did. Anyone not blind to what is going on knows
| this, of course. It is merely a matter of proving it in front of
| the law. That's all this is about. It's no longer about the
| question whether or not they acted despicably.
|
| I doubt serious consequences will follow this time, as there
| haven't been following serious consequences all the previous
| times Meta/Facebook has been found guilty of crimes. However, it
| can serve as one more event to point out to naive people, who
| don't want to believe the IT person, that FB/Meta is evil,
| because they don't want to give up some interaction on it, or
| some comfort they have, using FB/Meta's apps or tools. I think
| it's a natural tendency most of us have. We use something, then
| we want extra good proof when someone claims that thing is bad,
| because we don't want to change and stop using the thing. Plus
| FB/Meta will do anything they can, to make people addicted to
| their platforms.
| dgpy wrote:
| "Priorities" quote: Mark Zuckerberg said that he wouldn't say
| that child safety was his top concern "when I have a number of
| other areas I'm more focused on like building the metaverse."
| pfortuny wrote:
| You need to be careful with those arguments because you can
| fall into the trap of "think of the children" for everything.
| As an example, I doubt any of us would appreciate any novelist
| of not focusing on saving children more than on writing
| books...
|
| But I get what you are saying.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| > You need to be careful with those arguments because you can
| fall into the trap of "think of the children" for everything
|
| _In a text message in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg said that he
| wouldn't say that child safety was his top concern "when I
| have a number of other areas I'm more focused on like
| building the metaverse." Zuckerberg also shot down or ignored
| requests by Clegg to better fund child safety work._
|
| Fair point, but the fuller context is absurd--the OP's
| rendering is correct in tone and emphasis.
| pfortuny wrote:
| OK, the context makes it clearer, right. Thanks.
| game_the0ry wrote:
| We need to boycott Meta. Otherwise, social media will destroy our
| children.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Big oil, big tobacco, big social, there seems to be a clear
| pattern of burying evidence of negative impacts of their products
| to satisfy some personal greed. These people are mentally ill and
| we need to help them.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Relevant. CEOs lie. Boldly.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ZDQKq2F08
| asim wrote:
| We all know this. As people in the tech industry. As people on
| this website. We know this. The question is, what are we going to
| do about it? We spend enough time complaining or saying "I'm
| going to quit facebook" but there's Instagram and Threads and
| whatever else. And you alone quitting isn't enough. We have to
| help the people really suffering. We can sometimes equate social
| media to cigarettes or alcohol and relate the addictive parts of
| that but we have to acknowledge tools for communication and
| community are useful, if not even vital in this day and age. We
| have to find a way to separate the good from the bad and actively
| create alternatives. It does not mean you create a better
| cigarette or ban alcohol for minors. It means you use things for
| their intended purpose.
|
| We can strip systems like X, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube,
| TikTok, etc of their addictive parts and get back to utility to
| value. We can have systems not owned by US corporations that are
| fundamentally valuable to society. But it requires us, the tech
| savvy engineering folk to make those leaps. Because the rest of
| society can't do it. We are in the position of power. We have the
| ability.
|
| We can do something about it.
|
| I wrote something to that effect two days ago on a platform I'm
| building. https://mu.xyz/post?id=1763732217570513817
| afinlayson wrote:
| At the moment the biggest hope I have is there's client side
| tech that protects us from these dark patterns. But I suspect
| they'll have their own dark patterns to make them profitable.
| asim wrote:
| I guess we can speculate or theorise on potential strategies
| but beyond hope we should also try to do something. I have
| seen some X clones with variations but a lot of the same
| behaviour plays out when you have no rules around posting,
| moderation, types of content, etc. Effectively these
| platforms end up in the same place of gamification and
| driving engagement through addictive behaviours because they
| want users. Essentially I think true community is different,
| true community keeps each other accountable and in check.
| Somehow we need to get back to some of that. Maybe co-
| operative led tools. Non profits. I think Mastodon meant well
| and didn't end up in the right place. Element/Matrix is OK
| but again doesn't feel quite right. Maybe we should never try
| to replicate what was, I don't know. BitChat
| (https://bitchat.free/) is an interesting alternative from
| Jack Dorsey - who I think is trying to fix the loss of
| Twitter and the stronghold of WhatsApp.
| webdoodle wrote:
| They should have been shutdown and all the C-Level exec arrested
| after Cambridge Analytica. The weapons grade psyops they used too
| get Trump elected are crimes against humanity.
| dwa3592 wrote:
| Social media has become a tool box for powerful people. They use
| it for public manipulation. Why would any powerful entity do
| anything against that?
| alex1138 wrote:
| "Social media harm" sounds like one of these nebulous things
| which has no real definition
|
| "Social media was a mistake, just like the internet" oh ok so we
| should just give up our gmails and reddits and everything because
| people insist on the widest possible swathe of categories
|
| But actually when it comes to Metabook... I don't think
| Zuckerberg cares about anybody, and more to the point they refuse
| to give you a chronological service just for starters
|
| People have died and their friends haven't known about it because
| the algorithm never showed them. People have noticed messages
| they've got from people trying to get in touch with them years
| later, because Zuck feels you should be using Facebook all the
| time, not email https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433
|
| When your company is run by a megalomaniac this is what you
| get...
| bentt wrote:
| Meta is Zuck. Zuck is bad. Accept it everyone. Why people hate
| Elon Musk but not Zuck is beyond me. Zuck has done real harm as
| well, some of it worse than Musk.
| tlobes wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
| salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair
|
| HN has seen this quote many times; tech workers willfully or
| naively ignore the harm their contributions cause as long as the
| life changing paychecks keep coming, letting them pretend that
| they are too far removed from the damage to be responsible.
|
| Then comes the classic post "I'm leaving FAANG, so brave of me
| <quiet-part>funded entirely by the same extraction and harm I
| once insisted I didn't see.</quiet-part>"
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