https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.41...

Communism never really took off, so it didn't have far to fall. But nothing lasts forever, so surely capitalism and democracy will give way eventually(in some ways it already has).

Anywho, my reference to communism not taking off is mostly to the utopian idealogy, I understand many people live/d under communism, but it was really just socialism with some caveats.

There are plenty of other countries that have just as much social media usage as the US but don't have the same widespread emotional dysfunction, so wouldn't that suggest that social media isn't to blame?

This causes mental health issues to go unaddressed, but, ironically, it also helps in a way, because peer pressure certainly helps reinforce individual discipline to develop techniques to keep it together. Peer pressure is a very powerful motivator.

For example fat shaming is certainly bullying but it's also certainly effective at discouraging overeating

As far as I know, it just traumatizes people and discourages them from eating in front of the people shaming them. Then, as we all do, they relieve the trauma by using their usual coping mechanism - in their case, eating.

It's just like hitting kids. It teaches them to avoid getting hit; they learn nothing about their behavior.

But if you materially get fat you will get fat shamed regardless. So while it doesn't make you stop eating garbage, you will somehow, someway figure out how to keep a decent figure. This can either be exercise or more awful methods like surgery.

What makes you say that? Lots of people remain overweight, lots of research shows that shaming doesn't have the impact you say.

Also, lots of people can't physically do anything about it.

I think you should back that statement up with a citation.

Are you sure? A quick search says otherwise. E.g Effect of social media on youth in [country].

I guess my search term is favouring a conclusion but not sure where / how to find proof of your claim.

Let's not scapegoat the real problems at play: climate disaster, the rise of authoritative leaders in democracies that use fear as their biggest selling point, crippling debt to merely exist in a healthy manner (in the US), disinformation turning friends and family into anti-vaxx Q-following idiots, capitalism squeezing blood out of every penny... The list goes on.

That sort of thing used to be only something you’d share with close friends, if that. It was a big deal if someone let you know they had bipolar, depression, etc.

Mental diseases are metabolic diseases.

It is the food that destroys our brains and even worse, our women eat shit even during pregnancy, so the brains of newborns already start out with defects.

If we were eating a proper human diet (ie beef and eggs), we would not have these issues on this scale.

Take your pick.

On monetary relief:

On the joint COPPA claim, it asks the court to “Award the Filing States damages, restitution, and other compensation”

On the state law claims, each and every state asks for monetary relief under its own law in the form of civil penalties, damages, disgorgement, and/or restitution.

edit: grammar

There are plenty of things to measure. Just pick one and stop trying to play this ridiculous game of "what about-isms".

Really this lawsuit is just a meta for safety-ist culture that probably causes mental health issues in the first place.

It's like I spent hours per day playing soccer when I was a kid, and regularly got injured, broke my leg once. I got bullied there too on occasion, by some definition. Oh, and we used to play games where the losing team would bend over at the goal line and the winning team would try to kick the ball as hard as possible at their asses (or legs) from like 15ft - I dunno if this is bullying (I've done a lot of both bending and kicking), but I'm pretty sure someone has to think of the children...

So I guess the parents (or no, not parents - states!) shoulda sued the town that provided us with a public soccer field, cause "harms" happened there :)

EDIT: come think of it, unlike other cases - parents cannot control the other kids' behavior in school or out in the neighborhood - preventing their own children from using social media is comparatively trivial. So, there's also that - I guess if facebook is responsible for harms, all of the parents affected should be sued for neglect :)

If they 1) know of such bullies and 2) do nothing or even enable it, yes. I would agree with that. I don't know the legal details, but schools should have a moral duty not to promote harmful factors to kids, and to make sure kids are safe on campus.

> Or why ads, sue the media companies that publish them.

Depending on the ad, sure. Wouldn't be the first time. Ads targeting children have a ton of regulations behind them.

>Or maybe vendors that sell the magazines, or all of them - since they make up a platform like Facebook.

The magazine would be under scrutiny. I'm not sure if there are any laws against that (the national enquirer is still on my grocery store checkout line after all), so I'm guessing freedom of press overrides that. It's really just libel they worry about (feel free to look up Hulk Hogan vs Gawker for one if the few cases where the press loses such charges. Since Libel laws are very strong in the US).

>Majority of their time on social media" is not a harm. The rest are similar and/or not clearly linked to anything.

Not by itself no. The lawsuit seems to be arguing that meta knowingly deploys algorithms and utilizes data in a way that Is harmful. TBD.

>parents cannot control the other kids' behavior in school or out in the neighborhood - preventing their own children from using social media is comparatively trivial. So, there's also that - I guess if facebook is responsible for harms, all of the parents affected should be sued for neglect :)

Regardless of my opinion on that, children's anything (media, ads, internet websites) have regulations and the argument here is that meta had continually and knowingly ignored such regulation. It involves minors but summarizing down to "social media harms kids" belittles all this regulation setup over the years. It's not just about "being too addicting"

>They§constitute unfair and/or deceptive acts or practices under the state consumer protection statutes,violate COPPA, and further constitute unlawful acts under common law principles.

And given an example

>§For example, on September 30, 2021, Davis denied that Meta promotes harmful content, such as content promoting eating disorders to youth, when she testified before Congress, stating, “we do not direct people towards content that promotes eating disorders. That actually violates our policies, and we remove that content when we become aware of it. We actually use AI to find content like that and remove it. [Redacted]

There are 40+ plaintiffs and over 100 lawyers on the lawsuit so I'm not too surprised they have some basic definitions there. Will it be effective, who knows?

I believe that no single person sits down and says "let's make kids get addicted to our product," but they do run A/B tests or new features and keep the better performing variant. The end result of many of these cycles is the same.

You can't ban a communication tool. That is just absurd.

nothing will change until people stop enabling meta with their labor

Research shows 100% of bullying is caused by humans and eliminating all human contact reduces bullying by 100%

Amazing!

What they use most is TikTok and Snapchat. My point being the harmful marketing cannot be proven if hardly any children actively use it

2) There really needs to be a rule for frivolous shakedown lawsuits of the kind EU and now apparently US states practice, where monetary damages are paid either way - if the fake harms and violations pan out, to the state; if they don't pan our, by the states to the company with the same order of magnitude fine.

other kids not on social media/ your kid not on social media Δ0 happiness

other kids not on social media/ your kid on social media Δ-3 happiness

other kids on social media/ your kid on social media Δ-10 happiness

other kids on social media/ your kid not not social media Δ-50 happiness

Maybe some form of co-ordination might be in the parents best interest... maybe some form of representative could do something about it if it's in the kids best interest?

Parent: All the other kids are on it.

...

PS There's some in between, https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103340

Of course good parents have to be involved in raising there kids well but that doesn't mean we shouldn't subsidide education or restrict companies from sending kids down coal mines(even if they really want the money). Mostly because good parents can fail and bad parents exist and if society isn't going to aim for turning kids into good adults then it'll just get worse generation on generation.

Stats show people are inherently resistant to join any social media, until all their friends are already on there.

If none of your peers use social media actively or you don't keep in touch with large group of people, it wouldnt offer much value for you

[0] https://www.fightcancer.org/news/department-justice-lawsuit-...

Allowing it and not making young adults hide what they’re doing is so important. That way it can be regulated by a responsible adult, and someone on hand to make sure there’s a bucket, some water and a blanket with no danger or fear of recourse.

Reference: https://youtu.be/DkS1pkKpILY?si=SIn7pg3ebRGbHcXQ

Alcohol is so ingrained in popular culture that criticising it is almost taboo.

Culture will play a big part in what people under the legal age to buy consume with family. It can be a good think but I reckon once a month have a glass of wine.

Most countries offer a counterexample.

Extreme binge-drinking to the point of harm and even death is quite particular to the US. It's a result of the prohibition on drinking, so the forbidden fruit is abused. In most contries kids drink mildly with family from 13-14 and with friends after that, but it is never seen as a big deal. So there's no pressure to go crazy at 21, or to hide it before that. When something is normal and not a big deal, it's not abused.

This is empirically completely and utterly false; the US has far more alcoholics than many countries with a lower legal drinking age and responsible drinking cultures.

If we can't trust parents to parent their kids then why not ban everything that possibly could be bad for kids?

Just getting to that point with social media will be a big win.

The social media industry came on quick and got a free pass for a while, but it’s now more mature and needs to become more mindful of its social consequences just the same as other industries. Whether that needs to come through bans and regulation or can be achieved through voluntary self-restraint is up to the big players and their egos.

We can absolutely look at products and services that are actually harmful and deem them unacceptable for children without banning every other thing on the planet that might possibly be bad. Some states feel that Facebook has risen to the level where it's harmful enough to do something at the government level. I think that's probably what's needed since facebook has demonstrated that they're unwilling or unable to stop the harm they're causing without government intervention.

I will also argue that things like Soda can harm you but are much easier to restrict compared to Social Media access and social media has compounding effects on your mind especially if you are a child.

What I am saying is that why you and other corporativists think that its ok for kids to suffer if their parents aren’t able to show them a balanced way to live and approach tech?

Well, I can see how some people might be negatively impacted by this sites but it has to be marginal considering we're taking about billions of users. And what's new? the same could be said by tons of other businesses (how many people are obese with reduced life expectancy because of agressive marketing from Mac Donald's and Coca Cola for instance?). I mean, is Meta that bad?

So not only will they fail to achieve their goal, they're not even going after the right player.

But hey the cultural movement of Americans these days are to hate on big tech, and Facebook in particular. So here we go.

if only we could have such giants in Europe...

> Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies

Are we talking about infinite scroll or heroine? It would make more sense to sue Kelloggs over Lucky Charms commercials, but we're all use to them so there's no outrage.

It's politically popular to sue big tech and especially Meta. That's the whole story.

To be clear, the lawsuit is not about the content on instagram or privacy. They're saying kids spend too much time on Instagram. Let me introduce you to the parental controls that are already on your kid's phone.

Of all the examples you might offer, it's ironic that you chose this one!

There's a TON of political history around breakfast cereal composition and advertising as well as ongoing reform campaigns and media criticism. In some cases, this has settled into formal regulations about things like what cereal boxes can look like and when advertisements can run. In other cases, it's involved collective industry "good behavior" meant to forestall regulation. But it continues to a problem because financial incentive always leads to optimizing for whatever can be gotten away with.

And yeah, social media companies are maturing as an industry and are now due to play that same perpetual game of government regulation, industry self-policing, and boundary-testing.

Does anyone think this stuff works, though? It's an cycle of outrage and performative regulation. I'm not sure the same path in another industry is a good idea.

Lucky for parents today there's TV options without commercials.

Why can't we educate parents about controls and stop Meta from intentionally making their software addictive? Heck, we could even fine Meta and have the money go to efforts to reduce the behaviors they've worked so hard to create.

By regulating the existence of a 'next page' button? Curious if you can think of user interface rules that are less absurd.

I've assumed that the suit is over the fact that Meta intentionally and algorithmically seeks to test what content gets you to stay on their site and feed you more of that.

I also don't remember the last time I saw a Next button on Instagram or Facebook. Maybe they have one for children? But if they're still proactively encouraging addictive behaviors, I'm not sure the specific UI element matters as much.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.41...

Whether we're regulating UI elements or a recommendation algorithm... It's one thing to say they're "encouraging addictive behaviors", but what's a rule that identifies what what part of a mobile app needs to change? It's an unproductive path.

so, good observation. regulate aspects of these products like heroin

Alternate path: attach electrodes to kids, measure dopamine levels, and turn off the app if they go too high.

Simpler, but less fun: set the max time an app can be open.

If you want the make the case that IG is unhealthy you need to argue along a different axis because the problem with IG and heroine isn't that it makes dopamine.

https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/study-social-m...

Social media may have its problems, but these terrible comparison to drugs is silly. It is not going convince anyone but those who already don't like social media.

It’s similar to the superstimulus effect in junk food. The stuff is designed to hijack your instincts without providing much in return. We think we get more value out of social media (or a bag of chips) than we actually do because it’s purposefully designed to make us feel that way.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

Facebook has an easier time doing studies, but companies have spent decades trialing different ads, marketing campaigns, sales pitches, etc.

Another way of phrasing what you've said is that we should prevent companies from building products that people really like and want to use. No one is forcing anyone to use Facebook.

Facebook’s own research has found both positive and negative effects, depending on the child’s status among their peers.

The Verge is quick to point out that:

> Instagram makes teen girls feel worse about their bodies

but more discreet in reminding people that fashion magazines, including The Cut (also published by Vox), have the same negative effects and none of the positive ones, like helping gender minority find a safe space, re-socialising people with physical handicaps or anxiety. The critique makes sense —I’m not denying it— but it doesn’t come. from “the algorithm.” It comes from having a lot of money poured into the Instagram creation ecosystem. Instagram has very little control over that as most of it is through brand deals or magazine raising their own profile. That behemoth of money and attention comes from an industry that has decades of well-documented problematic practices behind it, including the unrepentant glorification of using self-starvation and drugs, notably cocaine, to reach unhealthy thinness.

If you condemn Instagram but don’t include that industry among the culprits, you’ll have Snap with unhealthy models, TikTok with unhealthy models, or whatever comes next with unhealthy models.

That’s of course assuming that Reddit and Discord wouldn’t get much bigger if Meta were to close, but I’m not sure the negative effects would vanish because the owner is different.

Those are not two similar but separate problems.

This is like saying that mail bombs are the problem of the post office and not people having access to explosives: the problem isn’t envelopes. It’s people with access to explosives, and FedEx would likely have the same issue—unless federal rules allow them to scan and to refuse to deliver explosives.

I’m not being crass with a bad metaphor: focusing on the support has been a key issue in the argument for a while. Fashion magazines used to be decried as “glossy paper,” but no one thought the difference between magazines sending problematic self-image and serious news was that newspapers came on broad sheets of mate paper. Still, it’s now how the problem is presented: without clear separation.

I did work at Meta on the team looking at Teenagers, and I did raise that point internally: should we look at gambling and alcohol and extend the same rules to fashion? Should we boost peers over brands to avoid problematic ideation?

Those conversations, without the shadow of fashion partners, were generally productive. It wasn’t perfect: the goal remained “engagement” but there were no sacred cows to avoid.

As soon as the findings about teenage body dysmorphia were put in the context of fashion (and presented to one particular executive who cared about advertising more than algorithmic boost), that question was buried. Several friends of mine got blackballed hard not for suggesting Instagram-specific treatment, but for instance, for asking Anna Wintour about the quip where she fat-shamed her best friend in _The September Issue_ (it’s a niche fashion reference, but it’s widely considered a smoking gun in the industry).

There are inherent biases to how Instagram and Facebook work: you post when you achieve something, and there’s a bias towards success, but the internal findings rarely found that those were crippling. Thinness, on the other hand, leads to clear, widespread medical issues. I remember asking if the issue became more prevalent because teenagers didn’t have access to that many magazines before but that the dose effect was comparable. I don’t think anyone has looked into that.

I’m not saying that to disengage Meta’s responsibility: I had argued for explicit filters, like giving teenage boys who know they can’t resist and will behave in a way they think is unhealthy, the ability to exclude scantly clad women in their feed. I used another example, naturally (more typical of internal debate). That idea could have had legs ten years ago; now, with the debate being a lot less constructive, I'm not sure.

from my perspective, this is the kind of regulation the FTC should seek out — so for different reasons I agree with your analogy

magazines are an entirely different beast and it's strange to not address that — I have to physically go out of my way to purchase a magazine or have one delivered... that's something I opt in to

people opt-in to instagram, but for teenagers there are much larger stakes involved... instagram has become an integral part of many teens' social life (by design) and they're constantly getting targeted and personalized ads fed to them directly

the fact that the goal remains engagement makes it pretty clear where meta's priorities lie, and it's not on the side of safety

Who is actually ok with this?

Same with oil companies.

Of course there are many entities doing bad things, but few have such a dramatic impact on all of civilization.

I bet this case would never have been brought if Facebook had a "This product is addictive" warning every time you open the app.

People recognize that cannabis is habit forming, it's just not as physically addictive as the things we label "dangerous addictive drugs." Most people are addicted to caffeine and we generally accept that it's fine. In the same way that moderate drinking for almost everyone doesn't turn into alcoholism it's the same for cannabis. In contrast everyone who smokes nicotine with any regularity at all will become addicted to it.

"average user lazy and complacent" -- That's like why we're here man.

I don't know a single person who thinks it's fine to drive while high, I do know some stoners whose tolerance for "sober enough to drive" is suspect but that happens when we hit the bars too.

I think you're applying the word harmless to a degree that no one else does and then are arguing against that. Like that cheeseburger increases your risk of heart disease but no one's out here being like "cheeseburgers considered harmful."

You say that, but there's a lot of people who flat out deny it. You're saying that everybody knows this, but that isn't true. Same thing with the driving under the influence thing. A lot of people have told me that they drive safer when high because it heightens their senses and slows their roll and makes them paranoid and therefore careful, and a whole lot of cope like that invented to excuse themselves for doing it.

The downsides of cannabis that you claim everybody understands and recognizes are in fact flat out denied by many people.

Historically, though, most doomsayers are proven wrong. Let's hope we are too.

If they’re bad, they’re bad for adults, too?

If they’re not inherently bad, then they can be safely used by responsible 16 year olds as well as responsible 18/19 year olds?

We let 16 year olds operate deadly machinery traveling at many meters per second. Social media is at least less potentially harmful than automobiles.

> Sealioning is a type of trolling or harassment that consists of pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence, often tangential or previously addressed, while maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity, and feigning ignorance of the subject matter

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

Essentially using questions to challenge assumptions in the form of argumentative dialogue.

This is a legitimate form of having a debate and it has been used for thousands of years. To compare it to the internet trolling practice of sealioning where somebody just asks for evidence repeatedly is disingenuous

Such as a bicycle. And not a car, in almost every country in the world.

I hope the money is worth it.

The fines are just a cost of doing business for them.

Also, how is nobody in the government responsible?

It really feels like the Sackler family has been bundled up as a nice solution to the whole thing.

The fines only slightly raise the cost of this raw material from $0, so it's unlikely to deter Meta's behavior until someone faces a more severe penalty there.

It'd be great if the USA had some kind of effective consumer protection agency, but I guess then we might have fewer billionaires here.

Doesn't make it right, but we shouldn't assume the people responsible don't feel responsible simply because we aren't hearing about it.

If we don't like how something works, we should understand the factors that shape it. If someone's internal preferences are contrary to their actions, that's worth knowing, as it says something about the strength of the incentive structures. This is true for any person of any status, not least the rich, who, ideally, should not be destructive forces in society.

Private preferences and feelings are relevant to the analysis.

Yes, bullying has always been a problem. Yes, society has always been force-feeding kids dangerously unattainable body images. The problem is not that these things have just been repackaged into a different kind of book or TV show. The problem is that it takes much less effort than any time in history to fake a "community" all parroting the same dangerous lie.

The old adage went "If I run into one asshole today, then I ran into an asshole. If I run into 100 assholes today, then I am the asshole, and I should reflect", and it was pretty good advice. But if one asshole can create the illusion that you ran into 100 of them, what's the appropriate response. The whole problem with facebook and instagram is that it has made coordinating bullying campaigns much MUCH cheaper from a labor standpoint. Couple that with the constant drive to keep kids on the platform and you have a system that seems purpose built to drive already anxious kids to suicide.

I can 100% keep my kids off social media. But I can't keep their classmates from assembling pages impersonating them and driving bullying via that avenue. Facebook and Instagram's engagement algorithm plays a serious role in that operation.

Suicides seem to have gone up and social media use might have something to do with it.

https://news.byu.edu/intellect/10-year-byu-study-shows-eleva...

> Girls who used social media for at least two to three hours per day at the beginning of the study—when they were about 13 years old—and then greatly increased their use over time were at a higher clinical risk for suicide as emerging adults.

https://socialmediavictims.org/mental-health/suicide/

> Over the last ten years, there has been a significant rise in the risk of teenage suicide. Although several factors play a role in an individual’s choice to take their life, recent studies have established connections between mental health issues such as depression and suicidal ideation, and social media usage.

https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/13-explanations-mental-...

What do some people under 18 think of the problem and solutions? I'm not sure how many are here, but maybe some HN members could ask their kids.

Are you trying to say that you think that some manual labor roles are overpaid? Why can't a jackhammer operator play golf if they want to?

In my country an entry level jackhammer operator makes about $60K and an experienced one about $100K. Doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

Look at the mechanical loom (industrialisation), pesticides (agricultural yield increase), penicillin (life expectancy increase), painkillers (life quality increase), clean water (wide-spread infrastructure), cheap microwaves (overseas slave labour), reliable vehicles for all (fossil fuel infrastructure).

We need to continue this trend to fix the problems. The billionaires aren’t blocking us. Yes, it’s unfair that they hold so much wealth and power. The world has been that way for a long time.

When electric lightbulbs came to the masses, it made some rich people even richer, but that’s not the important part. The important part is that the masses’ lives were better.

Next steps for us:

- Find manufacturing processes that don’t require overseas slave labour

- Agricultural processes that don’t need as much pesticide

- Better, cheaper medicine (recent developments in quantum computing suggest we may be able to crack protein folding within 10 years, which will lead to an explosion in medical research)

- Automated construction (see Hadrian X)

- A replacement for fossil fuels (if we crack fusion, we can use that for the grid and we can create our own combustion juice for vehicles using the enormous amount of energy available)

- Protocells that allow extremely precise manufacturing at scale (protocells are programmed cells or completely custom cells that we can equip & program for certain tasks, like “remove all the iron ore from the ground here” — they will change everything)

These are the things that will bring the rest of the world out of poverty. And, depending on how we adapt to the irrelevancy of capitalism as these technologies develop, it may solve the inequality/unfairness problem too.

Taxing billionaires won’t accelerate any of this.

There's also the 40-hour, 5-day workweek; the end of child labor, parental leave - those developments, and more like them, led to more time with children than the mechanical loom.

In fact, as technology has improved, it's possible that the proportion of children with a parent devoted full-time to them has decreased (because now families need two incomes).

Increases in productivity doesn't translate into more leisure time, it translates into just getting more work done in the same time frame and being paid as if you're doing the same amount of work.

[1] https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_...

Kids are autonomous humans with free will, and despite what many adults think, they have opinions worth listening to.