> a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to TIME. "The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens
Omegalol. Cigarette maker introduces filter, cares about your health.
Cigarette makers were a dying cry of the old aristocracy. Silicon Valley is the rallying cry of the new aristocracy.
While I don’t quite believe they’ll achieve their Feudal dreams in the near-medium future. I do expect the US to transition to a much more explicitly an oligarchic republic as a large, with the pretense of “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” is largely pushed to the side.
Only solution seems to be to drop out of society to whatever degree possible.
The government and massive corporations being in bed with each other is nothing new. Different breed same species. Except tech execs think they're a lot smarter than they are.
Cashless payments, always connected software and devices, and required app use for basic services like power, water, and heat as well as extreme data collection as it exists today makes dropping out of society more difficult than ever.
While his crimes were atrocious, Ted Kaczynski might be right in some ways. The industrial and technological revolutios have improved life dramatically for n many humans and we live in a tube of astonishing abundance, but at what cost?
Look, most of us here know that meta is a terrible company that has done terrible things. But what is actually being done about it? So far just some token fines and petty wrist slaps. What’s really the plan here? Because they’re not going to stop.
At the surface, it's an antitrust issue (the scale of Meta doesn't have the capacity to behave better, so it doesn't). This, like so many other things, can be traced back to a broken system of governance on a root level.
Our system of incentives, operating within a system of governmental authority baked in an age where gunpowder was the new hotness, leads to a place where the movement of individual bits of law or policy don't matter. The forces at work will roll back whatever you do to make the social situation better, if they are antithetical to the interests of capital. Fix healthcare, and the insurance companies will find ways to twist it to their profit. Fix housing, and the banks and real estate developers will find ways to charge rent anyway.
The coupling between decision making and the vox populi is weak and must be strengthened. The coupling between decision making and capital is strong and must be broken. Unless we can accomplish either, any change we make is cosmetic.
I think what we need is a dissolution of representatives in favor of a more direct form of democracy, but most dismiss this as looney/impossible. I'm inclined to agree about the impossibility but that just kind of lands us back at 'what the hell do we do about it'.
Ranked choice is a good start, perhaps. Might not 'fix it' but maybe it's a foot in the door.
For a while I worked for a company that was doing some shady
and unethical things, but just within the law.
I took em a while to understand how things worked and when I did
I found a different job.
Now this enterprise I left, could never have done what they did
it was not for the developers that made it possible.
When we talk about the giants on social media, it it us,
the developers who make it possible for them to do what they do.
If you are frustrated about how they are not being stopped from
doing what they do, encourage people to leave.
They money is great, but doe sit make it worth it?
From the other side, let us say that the US shut down Meta and
the rest of the social media beasts, how many developers would
be out on the street?
Serious question: What exactly do you want to see done? I mean real specifics, not just the angry mob pitchfork calls for corporate death penalty or throwing Mark Zuckerberg in jail.
Amend Section 230 so that it does not apply to content that is served algorithmically. Social media companies can either allow us to select what content we want to see by giving us a chronological feed of the people/topics we follow or they can serve us content according to some algorithm designed to keep us on their platform longer. The former is neutral and deserves protection, but the latter is editorial. Once they take on that editorial role of deciding what content we see, they should become liable for the content they put in front of us.
So Hacker News should lose section 230 protection?
Because the content served here isn't served in chronological order. The front page takes votes into account and displays hotter posts higher in the feed.
Technically sorting by timestamp is an "algorithm" too, so I was just speaking informally rather than drafting the exact language of a piece of legislation. I would define the categories as something like algorithms determined by direct proactive user decisions (following, upvoting, etc) versus algorithms that are determined by other factors (views, watch time, behavior by similar users, etc). Basically it should always be clear why you're being served what you're being served, either because the user chose to see it or because everyone is seeing it. No more nebulous black box algorithms that give every user an experience individually designed to keep them on the platform.
This will still impact HN because of stuff like the flame war downranker they use here. However, that doesn't automatically mean HN loses Section 230 protection. HN could respond by simplifying its ranking algorithm to maintain 230 protections.
I think the best way to put it is, users with the same user picked settings should see the same things, in the same order.
That's a given on HackerNews, as there's only one frontpage. On Reddit that would be, users subscribed to the same subreddits would always see the same things on their frontpages. Same as users on YouTube subscribed to the same channels, users on Facebook who liked the same pages, and so on.
The real problem starts when the algorithm takes into account implicit user actions. E.g., two users are subscribed to the same channels, and both click on the same video. User A watches the whole video, user B leaves halfway through. If the algorithm takes that into account, now user A will see different suggestions than user B.
That's what gets the ball rolling into hyper specialized endless feeds which tend to push you into extremes, as small signals will end up being amplified without the user ever taking an explicit action other than clicking or not suggestions in the feed.
As long as every signal the algorithm takes into account is either a global state (user votes, total watch time, etc), or something the user explicitly and proactively has stated is their preference, I think that would be enough to curb most of the problems with algorithmic feeds.
Users could still manually configure feeds that provide hyper personalized, hyper specific, and hyper addictive content. But I bet the vast majority of users would never go beyond picking 1 specific sport, 2 personal hobbies and 3 genres of music they're interested in and calling it a day. Really, most would probably never even go that far. That's the reason platforms all converged on using those implicit signals, after all: they work much better than the user's explicit signals (if your ultimate goal is maximizing user retention/addiction, and you don't care at all about the collateral damage resulting from that).
But Meta's content ranking would conform to this too: in theory a user that had the exact same friends, is a member of the exact same groups, had the exact same watch history, etc. would be served the same content. Although I'm pretty sure there's at least some degree of randomization, but putting that aside it remains unclear how you're constructing a set of criteria that does Hacker News, and plenty of other sites but not Meta.
Even that, I don't think is entirely true. I'm pretty sure they use signals as implicit as how long you took to scroll past an autoplaying video, or if you even hovered your mouse pointer over the video but ultimately didn't click on it.
Same with friends, even if you have the exact same friends, if you message friend A more than friend B, and this otherwise identical account does the opposite, than the recommendation engine will give you different friend-related suggestions.
Then there's geolocation data, connection type/speeds, OS and browser type, account name (which, if they are real names such as on Facebook, can be used to infer age, race, etc), and many others, which can also be taken into account for further tailoring suggestions.
You can say that, oh, but some automated system that sent the exact same signals on all these fronts would end up with the same recommendations, which I guess is probably true, but it's definitely not reasonable. No two (human) users would ever be able to achieve such state for any extended period of time.
That's why we are arguing that only explicit individual actions should be allowed into these systems. You can maybe argue what would count as an explicit action. You mention adding friends, I don't think that should count as an explicit action for changing your content feed, but I can see that being debated.
Maybe the ultimate solution could be legislation requiring that any action that influences recommendation engines to be explicitly labeled as such (similar to how advertising needs to be labeled), and maybe require at least a confirmation prompt, instead of working with a single click. Then platforms would be incentivized to ask as little as possible, as otherwise confirming every single action would become a bit vexing.
People also slow down to look at the flipped car on the side of the road. Doesn't mean you want to see more flipped cars down the road.
Either way. Do you have any points other than that you think any and every action, no matter how small, is explicit, and therefore it's ok that for it to be fed into the recommendation engine? Cause that's an ok position to have, even if one I disagree with. But if that's all, I think that's as long as this conversation needs to go. But if there's any nuance I'm failing to get, or you have comments on other points I raised such as labeling of recommendation altering actions, I'm happy to hear it.
I'm mostly interested in getting concrete answers as to what people are referring to when they talk about "algorithmically served" content. This kind of phrasing is thrown around a lot, and I'm still unsure by what people are referring to by this phrase and I've rarely found people proposing fleshed out ideas as to how to define "algorithmically served content".
Some people take the stance that even using view counts as part of ranking should result in a company listing section 230 protections, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027529
You proposed an interesting framing around reproducibility of content ranking, as in two users who have the exact same watch history, liked posts, group memberships, etc. should have the same content served to them. But in subsequent responses it sounds like reproducibility isn't enough, certain actions shouldn't be used for recommendation even if it is entirely reproducible. My reading is that in your model, there are "small" actions that user take that shouldn't be used for recommendations, and presumably there are also "big" actions that are okay to use for recommendation. If that's the case, then what user actions would you permit to be used for recommendations and which ones would not be permitted to use? What are the delineation between "small" and "big" actions?
As I pointed out, I agree that defining what should be deemed acceptable and what shouldn't is a bit subjective, and can definitely be debated. Reasonable people can disagree here, for sure.
That's why I proposed that maybe the solution is:
1. only explicit actions are considered. A click, a tap, an interaction, but not just viewing, hovering, or scrolling past. That's an objective distinction that we already have legal framework for. You always have to explicitly mark the "I accept the terms and conditions" box, for example. It can't be the default, and you can't have a system where just by entering the website it is considered that you accepted the terms.
2. explicitly labeling and confirming of what is an suggestion algorithm altering action and what isn't. And I mean, in band, visible labeling right there in the UI, not a separate page like that Meta link. Click the "Subscribe" button, you get a confirmation popup "Subscribing will make it so that this content appears in your feed. Confirm/Cancel". Any personalized input into the suggestion algorithm should be labelled as such. So companies can use any inputs they see fit, but the user must explicitly give them these inputs, and the platforms will be incentivized to keep this number as low as possible, as, in the limit, having to confirm every single interaction would be annoying and drive users away. Imagine if every time you clicked on a video, YouTube prompted you to confirm that viewing that video would alter future suggestions.
I'm ok with global state being fed into the algorithm by default. Total watch time/votes/comments/whatever. My main problem is with hyper personalized, targeted, self reinforcing feeds.
Watching the content that is being served to you is a passive decision. It's totally different from clicking a button that says you want to see specific content in the future. You show me something that enrages me, I might watch it, but I'll never click a button saying "show me more stuff that enrages me". It's the platform taking advantage of human psychology and that is a huge part of what I want to stop.
>it remains unclear how you're constructing a set of criteria that does Hacker News, and plenty of other sites but not Meta.
I already said "This will still impact HN because of stuff like the flame war downranker...". I don't know this and your reply to my other comment seem to be implying that I think HN is perfect and untouchable. My proposal would force HN to make a choice on whether to change or lose 230 protections. I'm fine with that.
It's still unclear what choice Hacker News and other sites will have to make to retain section 230 protection in your proposed solution.
Again, something like counting the number of views in a video is, in your framing, not an active choice on the part of user. So simply counting views and and floating popular content to the top of a page sounds like it'd trigger loss section 230 protections.
You're making me repeat myself multiple times now. I don't know what else I can say. HN would need to rank posts by a combination of upvotes and chronology. That is how they "float popular content to the top". You don't need passive metrics like views to do that.
Another possibility would be to somehow incorporate the possibility of publishing the algorithm and providing some kind of "under the hood" view that reveals to people what determined what they're seeing. Part of the issue currently is that everything is opaque. If Facebook could not change their algorithm without some of kind of public registration process, well, it might not make things better but it might make it get worse a bit slower.
So a simple "most viewed in last month" page would trigger a loss of protection? Because that ranking is determined by number of views, rather than a proactive user decision like upvoting.
>So a simple "most viewed in last month" page would trigger a loss of protection?
The key word there is "page". I have no problem with news.ycombinator.com/active, but that is a page that a user must proactively seek out. It's not the default or even possible to make it the default. Every time a user visits it, it is because they decided to visit it. The page is also the same for everyone who visits it.
To be clear, even the front page of Hacker News is not just a simple question of upvotes. Views, comments, time since posting, political content down ranking, etc. all at a factor in the ordering of posts.
Can’t you just limit scope for section 230 by revenue or users?
E.g. it only applies to companies with revenue <$10m. Or services with <10,000 active users. This allows blogs and small forums to continue as is, but once you’re making meaningful money or have a meaningful user base you become responsible for what you’re publishing.
This is an unpopular opinion here, but I think in general the whole "immunity for third-party content" thing in 230 was a big mistake overall. If you're a web site that exercises editorial control over the content you publish (such as moderating, manually curating, algorithmically curating, demoting or promoting individual contents, and so on), then you have already shown that you are the ones controlling the content that gets published, not end users. So you should take responsibility for what you publish. You shouldn't be able to hide behind "But it was a third party end user who gave it to me!" You've shown (by your moderation practices) that you are the final say in what gets posted, not your users. So you should stand behind the content that you are specifically allowing.
If a web site makes a good faith effort to moderate things away that could get them in trouble, then they shouldn't get in trouble. And if they have a policy of not moderating or curating, then they should be treated like a dumb pipe, like an ISP. They shouldn't be able to have their cake (exercise editorial control) and eat it too (enjoy liability protection over what they publish).
Moderating and ranking content is distinct from editorial control. Editorial control refers to editing the actual contents of posts. Sites that exercise editorial control are liable for their edits. For instance if a user posts "Joe Smith is not a criminal" and the website operators delete the word "not", then the company can be held liable for defaming Joe Smith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Application_and_li...
The thing that's missing is the difference between a unsolicited external content (ie. pay-for-play stuff) and directly user-supplied content.
If you're doing editorial decisions, you should be treated like a syndicator. Yep, that means vetting the ads you show, paid propaganda that you accept to publish, and generally having legal and financial liability for the outcomes.
User-supplied content needs moderation too, but with them you have to apply different standards. Prefiltering what someone else can post on your platform makes you a censor. You have to do some to prevent your system from becoming a Nazi bar or an abuse demo reel, but beyond that the users themselves should be allowed to say what they want to see and in what order of preference. Section 230 needs to protect the latter.
The thing I would have liked to see long time ago is for the platforms / syndicators to have obligation to notify their users who have been subjected to any kind of influence operations. Whether that's political pestering, black propaganda or even out-and-out "classic" advertising campaign, should make no difference.
I think the biggest problem is when we're all served a uniquely personalized feed. Everyone on Hacker News gets the same front page, but on Facebook users get one specifically tailored to them.
If Hacker News filled their front page with hate speech and self-harm tutorials there would be public outcry. But Facebook can serve that to people on their timeline and no one bats an eye, because Facebook can algorithmically serve that content only to people who engage with it.
Most sites that accept user-generated-content are forced to do some level of moderation, lest they become a cesspit of one form or another (CSAM, threats, hate speech, exposing porn to underage users, stolen credit card sales, etc...)
That’s the first reasonable take I’ve seen on this. Thanks for explaining it, I will use it for offline discussions on the subject. It’s been hard to explain.
Yeah, I wonder if the rules should basically state something like everything must be topical and you must opt in to certain topics (adult, politics, etc)People can request recommendations but they must be requested; no accidental pro-Ana content. If you want to allow hate speech fine, but people have to opt in to every offensive category/slur explicitly. (We can call it “potentially divisive” for all the “one persons hate speech is another persons love rap” folks or whatever.
If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook. It should be no different with companies.
We have to create incentives to not invest in troublesome companies. Fines are inadequate, they incentivize buying shares in troublesome companies and then selling them before the harm comes to light.
You just go after the top four or five. It's not about proportional punishment, but about ensuring that those with enough power to actually affect outcomes feel a sense of responsibility over those outcomes whether or not they later divest.
Blindly letting a CEO commit crimes should itself be a crime, but only if there's something you could've done to prevent it--that's not most shareholders.
I don't really get why corporate death penalty and Zuck in jail is not a good idea. It might not be the best idea, but I think it would absolutely be better than what we have now. Even a random-chainsaw-esque destruction of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple would be better than what we have now.
Larger fines, more robust methods for Meta to keep children off their platforms, more robust methods to stop the spread of propaganda and spam on their platforms, for Meta to start prioritizing connection between others instead of attention.
If you want a company to do something, you do need to ensure that the fine is bigger than the amount of money they made or will make by doing the thing you are trying to discourage. You need there to be a real downside. I don't think any of the fines that have been discussed are anywhere close to the levels that I am talking about.
Don’t corporate fines often come with requirements that the company also discontinue certain activities, start certain other ones, and be able to prove this or that to a regulator?
This is what I meant by angry mob pitchfork ideas. This isn’t a real idea, it’s just rage venting.
It’s also wrong, as anyone familiar with the problems in pay-to-play social video games for kids, which are not ad supported, can tell you. These platforms have just as many problems if not more, yet advertising has nothing to do with it. I bet you could charge $10/month for Instagram and the same social problems would exist. It’s a silly suggestion.
literally the opposite of a pitchfork idea; quite simple, relatively easy to implement, and immediately effective. incentives from advertising is the underlying issue with the addictive nature of these platforms (and much more)
The mere fact that commenters think banning advertising is a simple and realistic idea, without any constitutional road blocks or practical objections, is what I mean when I say these comment sections are just angry bloviating with unrealistic expectations.
If you think banning all advertising is “simple” then I don’t know what to say, but there isn’t a real conversation here.
so is it a pitchfork idea? I want Mark’s head? or it’s impractical? you’ve changed your apprehension to my idea twice in two comments
constitutional roadblock…to banning digital advertisement? please do explain!
I didn’t claim it’s easy to get it done in the real world, but it’s not a reactive/vindictive pitchfork idea. it’s really not that hard, if people wanted it we’ve banned plenty of things at the federal level in this country over the years (the hard part is of course people realizing how detrimental digital advertising is)
it’s a simple solution that’s very effective. obviously any large-scale change, to fix a large-scale problem, is not “simple” to implement, but it’s also not fucking rocket science on this one mate
you’re clearly not having a conversation in good faith. you asked, I answered, I’m done with this
What constitutes an advertisement is not a simple proposition. eg Is a paragraph describing some facts (phrased carefully) about a product or company an advertisement?
To what effect speech would have to be controlled to enforce this, is unthinkable. While some handwaving is necessary, as anyone can agree (since even the simplest legislation would be corrupted by the US political class), "banning advertising" is not a practical goal.
you’re just doing ad hominems and strawmans. I’m not suggesting banning anything other than digital advertisement. you’re not open to having a productive discussion about it, just misdirection and whataboutism
please stop ascribing intent I do not have and words I did not say in your juvenile attempt to win an argument
p.s. still would love to hear your constitutional argument against it! banning digital advertisement at the federal level is not unrealistic and if you've actually given it the thought you’re pretending to and still reach that conclusion, I do have an ad hominem to throw back at you
> p.s. still would love to hear your constitutional argument against it!
You don’t need to hear my argument against it. The fact that advertising your services is free speech is well established. It’s a major challenge for movements like those trying to tackle pharmaceutical advertising.
Also, if you can’t see how I’ve been addressing your arguments and you think it’s all ad hominem then I don’t think there’s any real conversation to be had here. Between all the downvotes you’re collecting and the weird attempts to ignore everything I say and pretend it’s ad hominem as a defensive tactic, this is pure trolling at this point.
1) downvotes: you’re the one insinuating HN commenters (and presumably voters) are idiots; I’m not sure that I should care if I’m downvoted while correct. and regardless, doesn’t seem like I’m very downvoted (rather the opposite) so not sure what your point is. try making one next time!
2) freedom of speech: lol! I just want to point out I had no fucking clue that’s what you were angling for before. rather than launch into attacks as you do, I actually try to understand things. this argument doesn’t concern me at all, I was worried I wasn’t aware of something in the constitution you’d brilliantly raise
we are beyond having a conversation at this point, but if you actually raised your arguments against banning digital advertisement (freedom of speech and ??? solving real-world problems is hard?) I would have debated them on their merits, you troll
Just FYI. For a very long time, strong alcohol ads were banned on TV, and the same with tobacco.
I don't watch regular TV, anymore, so I don't know if it still is in place.
Mentioning "banning advertising" on HN is bound to draw downvotes. A significant number of HN members make money directly, or indirectly, from digital advertising.
It's like walking into a mosque, and demanding they allow drinking.
In this case, the suggestion of banning advertising is drawing downvotes from me because I see it as politically unrealistic.
At least in my state, there isn’t even a ban on advertising online gambling!! It is quite a stretch to think we could move from there to banning any kind of advertising.
It has nothing to do with the fact that a bunch of HN readers make money from ads. I don’t.
Somewhat meta question, do you believe that down voting opinions we don't like is a good way of engaging with one another on HN?
I wish we could discuss the issue here, and instead would have liked to hear from you why you think it is a pitically unrealistic proposal, and what your criteria is for seeming something politically unrealistic.
There's a large difference between banning strong alcohol ads, and instantly collapsing a whole huge advertisement economy (that indirectly funds most of the free things people take for granted).
Either I misunderstand something or I'm baffled how anyone can consider that easy.
The parent comment called for banning all advertising, not for banning ads promoting social media platforms.
They don’t want anyone to be able to advertise anything. Not even your local contractors trying to advertise their businesses that you want to find, because that’s advertising.
The tobacco ad ban isn’t relevant to what was claimed.
> The parent comment called for banning all advertising, not for banning ads promoting social media platforms.
This wasn't my reading of it, but it does appear that's what GP meant. I don't agree with that. Even so, if you were interested in having a good faith discussion about solutions here, you might have responded to both interpretations.
You may consider this me putting forth the suggestion as an answer to your question, if you must.
“Just ban everything I don’t like as long as it won’t impact anything I do like” is a frequent take on HN these days.
Then when states start doing things like adding ID requirements for websites it’s shock and rage as the consequences of banning things (even for under 18s) encounter the realities of what happens when you “just ban” things.
I think we can separate the banning of things which affect personal freedom from the rest. Like if oil were "banned", I'm imagining it's not illegal to possess oil, but rather oil companies wouldn't be able to drill it up and sell it anymore. A bit like fazing out asbestos. The ordinary people with asbestos tiles in their basement don't get into trouble, but new house builds can't/won't use that tile anymore.
ID requirements seem like the main burden is being put on ordinary people instead of corporations, and by extension seems clearly bad.
> Like if oil were "banned", I'm imagining it's not illegal to possess oil, but rather oil companies wouldn't be able to drill it up and sell it anymore.
What does that have to do with anything?
It doesn’t matter where you ban it, if you turn off oil overnight a lot of people are left stranded from their jobs, sectors of the economy collapse, unemployment becomes out of control.
Banning things like this is just fantasy talk that only makes sense to people who can’t imagine consequences or think they don’t care. I guarantee you would change your mind very quickly about banning oil overnight as soon as the consequence became obvious.
I'm curious: Where do you put the line? For example, leaded gas improved car performance and arguably key to economic performance. But it was also incredibly neurotoxic and damaging to society. Do you believe banning it was a bad idea because it resulted in a lot of people losing their jobs?
Who suggested "turning oil off overnight"? What does that even mean?
GP (and I) have given you several examples of stuff society learned was harmful and then phased out with regulations/legislation. No, it didn't and does not happen overnight.
Why are you acting in such bad faith, trying to disregard people you don't agree with as "not being able to imagine consequences"?
I was on board until the end. If we don't have kids, we're wiping ourselves out even faster than with climate change. I also wonder with oil if we'd need it for some things still, though maybe it's fine if it's made from something else. Gasoline has some obvious alternatives in most areas, but oil seems to be more than fuel. It's also a lubricant.
yep! it’d be hard, but we’re already at most people nodding their head when you say “social media is addictive, detrimental to individual mental health, and overall negative for society”
you just got to get enough people to nod at “…and this is caused by the underlying incentives from digital advertisement” then to “and the most effective course of action is to ban digital advertisement”
I truly don’t believe it’s a big leap, especially after a few more years of all this
I think with the harm that these companies are doing, the angry pitchfork mobs are a serious suggestion and not just hyperbole anymore
Keep in mind that not very long ago some random person assassinated an insurance CEO and many people's reaction was along the lines of "awesome, that fat cat got what he deserved"
Don't underestimate how much of society absolutely loathes the upper class right now.
I would bet that many people are one layoff away from calling for execs to get much worse than jail
For one, I'd like the EU to use this as evidence to straight up ban Meta apps. If countries can ban TikTok, why not extend the same privilege to Meta?
But then again, the EU are a bunch of vacuous chicken shits incapable of pulling their heads out of their arses, never mind safeguarding their own children.
Are there any serious attempts to enact a "corporate death penalty" in the US? Is there even a viable route to getting something like that in the current regime?
Charter revocation is, I think, technically on the books in every state, but its not used for variety of reasons, one of which is because while it destroys the corporate entity, it mostly punishes the people least responsible for any wrongdoing (it can sometimes be accompanied by real punishment for the responsible actors, but those are separate processes that doesn’t require charter revocation, such as individual criminal prosecution or civil process that ends with fines, being barred from serving as a corporate officer, etc.)
My opinion is that if corporate personhood is OK, then the corporation should face the same consequences as people do when they break the law. So facilitation of human trafficking should go to criminal court.
Corporate crimes can and sometimes do go to criminal court (PG&E, for instance, has convicted of 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the 2018 Camp Fire, obstruction and various criminal pipeline safety violations in the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, and various other crimes at other times), but aside from fines most criminal punishments don’t apply to corporations. You can’t imprison a corporation as such, nor can you execute it except metaphorically. So, ultimately, that’s largely just a higher standard of proof route to fines than civil court (though probation restrictions are also a thing.)
You can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board. A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil.
I imagine that prosecutors don’t pierce the corporate veil for public companies often because “DA charges 87 year old grandmother with stake in Evil Corp in her pension fund with manslaughter, local union members brace for additional charges against members” doesn’t make for good headlines or good justice either.
The officers and board of the company aren’t protected by the corporate veil concerning their actions. They retain some degree of protection from actions of others within the corporation provided they did not have (or did not have a reason to suspect) knowledge of those activities. But to my knowledge that’s not special to officers, it applies to any employee which is why the rank and file Enron employees didn’t get prosecuted.
> You can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board.
Right, that's just normal individual criminal prosecution; it doesn't require prosecuting the corporation.
Of course, it's possible for the corporation to be guilty of a crime without any individual officer or board member being guilty.
> A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil.
Piercing the corporate veil is holding shareholders liable for certain debts (including criminal or civil judgements) of the corporation. It has nothing directly to do with criminal prosecution of corporate officers or board members for crimes committed in the context of the corporation (though there are certainly cases where both things are relevant to the same circumstances.)
> So facilitation of human trafficking should go to criminal court.
Be careful what you wish for.
Who else should go to criminal court for facilitating human trafficking? The airlines because they sold flights to these people, statistically speaking? What if they used a messaging app you use, like Signal? Should the government shut that down or ban it too? I have a feeling these calls to regulate platforms don’t extend to platforms actually used by commenters, they just want certain platforms they don’t use shut down and don’t care how much the law is bent to make it happen, as long as the law isn’t stretched for things they do like.
This is solved with humans. Mens Rea is usually required for successful prosecution. A taxi driver who takes a fare to a bank, who then robs the bank, is not prosecuted. A getaway driver is.
To avoid nitpicking, op probably should have said knowingly facilitates, but this is conversation not legislation and 99% of readers probably understood that.
Nah I'd feel pretty okay with more regulation. In your two examples predictable crimes happened in these platforms. An airline should most definitely be liable to enable that, just like they are liable for letting people without visas boarding a flight. Signal should also be liable for enabling a crime, but realistically all they could do in an investigation is give e2e encryption logs with some timestamps.
Exactly. And same for games for children that somehow don't detect pedophiles spending $100s and $1000s to lure children. And same for the platforms taking immense fees from Meta and such games that are suspiciously unaware of what's going on.
Has that ever really worked? And considering meta has billions of users on not just Facebook, but also WhatsApp and instagram, I’m skeptical. I know people who hate meta, but can’t shake instagram.
It does not. Social media platforms have had massive societal impact. From language, to social movements, to election results, social media has had effects, positive or negative, that impact the lives of even those who do not use them.
When my kids were born I told my family I wouldn't be posting their pictures on any Meta owned platform. That was all I needed to move the family group, photos etc. to another app.
Specifically when it comes to children, lots of jurisdictions are enacting actual non-bullshit age verification to ensure children aren't on social media. In my opinion this is real, substantive change.
Its basically like the history of money before banks got regulated and central banks emerged to regulate money printing. In this case its all about Attention which is functioning exactly like currency.
For them these fines are just cost of doing business. Apparently politicians don't care too, for them imposing fines is all about bringing extra money from time to time.
They aren't going to stop because LifeLog was as Darpa project before they found a private stoog to build it for the military. Remember it's only dystopian to spy on every aspect of a persons life, if YOUR THE GOVERNMENT. Private entities in the U.S. basically can do anything they want, especially now when they can rent a President too pardon it away.
So much of this audience already knows the job
is to collect comprehensive analytics and never run the analyses on your product’s externalities.
to be obvious enough to downplay, it must be impossible to miss while looking the other way. To be impossible to miss, it must be inextricably linked to the profits.
It's even more egregious in this case because Meta's employees were turning a blind eye to child sexual exploitation that they knew fine well their work was enabling.
Maybe those fat bonuses and generous stock options wiped away the feelings of guilt, if these Silicon Valley sociopaths even felt any in the first place.
I mean, duh. They’re this generation’s cigarettes. Employees of Meta should be ashamed of themselves.
Edit: Meta employees, downvoting this comment won’t absolve you of your involvement in the largest child abuse organization we’ve seen yet. Look what your own company said about what it’s doing to teenage girls.
Social media is going to be seen to future generations the way we currently see tobacco and alcohol. Look at what social media has done to the wellbeing of teen girls. There's been a dramatic decline in the mental health of teen girls. All those filters, OF fans, stars with eating disorders (just look at the Wicked cast), is literally killing teen girls with social anxiety.
Another report. Sadly nothing will come out of it. 5 years down the line there will be another smoking gun, accusing Meta of selling DNA data to advertisers illegally. Nada. Nothing will happen.
we'll milk teens like cows and we can't wait to stuff them into tiny little boxes, hooked up to and logged into our VR worlds where we serve all their needs while they serve ours. nothing sexual, there's places for that and we're not the types. we monitor our employees closely and can say that with certainty.
the current phase of social media is basically the scraping of minds. we throw hundreds of thousands of narrowly defined contexts at them, in different states and in between them. our systems learn, assimilate, adapt.
the world is going up in flames. we didn't do that. and we'd try to change it but we have a lot of data. it can't be done.
we've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. and we don't drink cheap milk. the food of the cows we get our milk from costs more than the compounded wealth of all graduates of an average European university at the end of their 30s and the health of the cows we get our milk from is better monitored, too. all for one glass of milk.
my first sentence was a provocation.
your teens will be fine. worry about their environment, not us. we know we lie in court. and you know why. because they kindly ask us to. they have friends and friends of friends who have been up our asses from day one. you think we know a lot? your intelligence services know a lot more. your local administrations and teachers conspire against your teens more often than you would like to know. some guys in your police likely know, too. as do your journalists and TV channels. it's more or less on a need to know, serve to know basis.
you think big tech is the threat? think again.
A/N: mostly gibberish, since I have no idea what I'm talking about but you're all wielding advanced tools and you're networked. you get it. I could kindly ask you to stop babbling. but without leverage nobody benefits.
All governments need to classify recommendation based algo driven media content delivery injected within subscriptions as gambling.
> a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to TIME. "The full record will show that for over a decade, we have listened to parents, researched issues that matter most, and made real changes to protect teens
Omegalol. Cigarette maker introduces filter, cares about your health.
Every cig exec lied under oath and only received monetary fines.
The comparison was not accidental. I expect a similar, meaningless outcome for poisoning children.
Cigarette makers were a dying cry of the old aristocracy. Silicon Valley is the rallying cry of the new aristocracy.
While I don’t quite believe they’ll achieve their Feudal dreams in the near-medium future. I do expect the US to transition to a much more explicitly an oligarchic republic as a large, with the pretense of “Government of the people, by the people, for the people” is largely pushed to the side.
Only solution seems to be to drop out of society to whatever degree possible.
The government and massive corporations being in bed with each other is nothing new. Different breed same species. Except tech execs think they're a lot smarter than they are.
Pretty much all execs throughout time have thought that.
Cashless payments, always connected software and devices, and required app use for basic services like power, water, and heat as well as extreme data collection as it exists today makes dropping out of society more difficult than ever.
While his crimes were atrocious, Ted Kaczynski might be right in some ways. The industrial and technological revolutios have improved life dramatically for n many humans and we live in a tube of astonishing abundance, but at what cost?
aaaaannndd now I'm on a list somewhere.
Look, most of us here know that meta is a terrible company that has done terrible things. But what is actually being done about it? So far just some token fines and petty wrist slaps. What’s really the plan here? Because they’re not going to stop.
At the surface, it's an antitrust issue (the scale of Meta doesn't have the capacity to behave better, so it doesn't). This, like so many other things, can be traced back to a broken system of governance on a root level.
Our system of incentives, operating within a system of governmental authority baked in an age where gunpowder was the new hotness, leads to a place where the movement of individual bits of law or policy don't matter. The forces at work will roll back whatever you do to make the social situation better, if they are antithetical to the interests of capital. Fix healthcare, and the insurance companies will find ways to twist it to their profit. Fix housing, and the banks and real estate developers will find ways to charge rent anyway.
The coupling between decision making and the vox populi is weak and must be strengthened. The coupling between decision making and capital is strong and must be broken. Unless we can accomplish either, any change we make is cosmetic.
I think what we need is a dissolution of representatives in favor of a more direct form of democracy, but most dismiss this as looney/impossible. I'm inclined to agree about the impossibility but that just kind of lands us back at 'what the hell do we do about it'.
Ranked choice is a good start, perhaps. Might not 'fix it' but maybe it's a foot in the door.
For a while I worked for a company that was doing some shady and unethical things, but just within the law.
I took em a while to understand how things worked and when I did I found a different job.
Now this enterprise I left, could never have done what they did it was not for the developers that made it possible.
When we talk about the giants on social media, it it us, the developers who make it possible for them to do what they do.
If you are frustrated about how they are not being stopped from doing what they do, encourage people to leave. They money is great, but doe sit make it worth it?
From the other side, let us say that the US shut down Meta and the rest of the social media beasts, how many developers would be out on the street?
> But what is actually being done about it?
Serious question: What exactly do you want to see done? I mean real specifics, not just the angry mob pitchfork calls for corporate death penalty or throwing Mark Zuckerberg in jail.
Amend Section 230 so that it does not apply to content that is served algorithmically. Social media companies can either allow us to select what content we want to see by giving us a chronological feed of the people/topics we follow or they can serve us content according to some algorithm designed to keep us on their platform longer. The former is neutral and deserves protection, but the latter is editorial. Once they take on that editorial role of deciding what content we see, they should become liable for the content they put in front of us.
So Hacker News should lose section 230 protection?
Because the content served here isn't served in chronological order. The front page takes votes into account and displays hotter posts higher in the feed.
Technically sorting by timestamp is an "algorithm" too, so I was just speaking informally rather than drafting the exact language of a piece of legislation. I would define the categories as something like algorithms determined by direct proactive user decisions (following, upvoting, etc) versus algorithms that are determined by other factors (views, watch time, behavior by similar users, etc). Basically it should always be clear why you're being served what you're being served, either because the user chose to see it or because everyone is seeing it. No more nebulous black box algorithms that give every user an experience individually designed to keep them on the platform.
This will still impact HN because of stuff like the flame war downranker they use here. However, that doesn't automatically mean HN loses Section 230 protection. HN could respond by simplifying its ranking algorithm to maintain 230 protections.
I think the best way to put it is, users with the same user picked settings should see the same things, in the same order.
That's a given on HackerNews, as there's only one frontpage. On Reddit that would be, users subscribed to the same subreddits would always see the same things on their frontpages. Same as users on YouTube subscribed to the same channels, users on Facebook who liked the same pages, and so on.
The real problem starts when the algorithm takes into account implicit user actions. E.g., two users are subscribed to the same channels, and both click on the same video. User A watches the whole video, user B leaves halfway through. If the algorithm takes that into account, now user A will see different suggestions than user B.
That's what gets the ball rolling into hyper specialized endless feeds which tend to push you into extremes, as small signals will end up being amplified without the user ever taking an explicit action other than clicking or not suggestions in the feed.
As long as every signal the algorithm takes into account is either a global state (user votes, total watch time, etc), or something the user explicitly and proactively has stated is their preference, I think that would be enough to curb most of the problems with algorithmic feeds.
Users could still manually configure feeds that provide hyper personalized, hyper specific, and hyper addictive content. But I bet the vast majority of users would never go beyond picking 1 specific sport, 2 personal hobbies and 3 genres of music they're interested in and calling it a day. Really, most would probably never even go that far. That's the reason platforms all converged on using those implicit signals, after all: they work much better than the user's explicit signals (if your ultimate goal is maximizing user retention/addiction, and you don't care at all about the collateral damage resulting from that).
Yes, you said it better than me. Fundamentally if you know a user's choices, you should be able to reproduce what that user sees.
But Meta's content ranking would conform to this too: in theory a user that had the exact same friends, is a member of the exact same groups, had the exact same watch history, etc. would be served the same content. Although I'm pretty sure there's at least some degree of randomization, but putting that aside it remains unclear how you're constructing a set of criteria that does Hacker News, and plenty of other sites but not Meta.
Even that, I don't think is entirely true. I'm pretty sure they use signals as implicit as how long you took to scroll past an autoplaying video, or if you even hovered your mouse pointer over the video but ultimately didn't click on it.
Same with friends, even if you have the exact same friends, if you message friend A more than friend B, and this otherwise identical account does the opposite, than the recommendation engine will give you different friend-related suggestions.
Then there's geolocation data, connection type/speeds, OS and browser type, account name (which, if they are real names such as on Facebook, can be used to infer age, race, etc), and many others, which can also be taken into account for further tailoring suggestions.
You can say that, oh, but some automated system that sent the exact same signals on all these fronts would end up with the same recommendations, which I guess is probably true, but it's definitely not reasonable. No two (human) users would ever be able to achieve such state for any extended period of time.
That's why we are arguing that only explicit individual actions should be allowed into these systems. You can maybe argue what would count as an explicit action. You mention adding friends, I don't think that should count as an explicit action for changing your content feed, but I can see that being debated.
Maybe the ultimate solution could be legislation requiring that any action that influences recommendation engines to be explicitly labeled as such (similar to how advertising needs to be labeled), and maybe require at least a confirmation prompt, instead of working with a single click. Then platforms would be incentivized to ask as little as possible, as otherwise confirming every single action would become a bit vexing.
> Even that, I don't think is entirely true. I'm pretty sure they use signals as implicit as how long you took to scroll past an autoplaying video,
And? These are still user's choices. They choose how long to view videos or scroll past them.
People also slow down to look at the flipped car on the side of the road. Doesn't mean you want to see more flipped cars down the road.
Either way. Do you have any points other than that you think any and every action, no matter how small, is explicit, and therefore it's ok that for it to be fed into the recommendation engine? Cause that's an ok position to have, even if one I disagree with. But if that's all, I think that's as long as this conversation needs to go. But if there's any nuance I'm failing to get, or you have comments on other points I raised such as labeling of recommendation altering actions, I'm happy to hear it.
I'm mostly interested in getting concrete answers as to what people are referring to when they talk about "algorithmically served" content. This kind of phrasing is thrown around a lot, and I'm still unsure by what people are referring to by this phrase and I've rarely found people proposing fleshed out ideas as to how to define "algorithmically served content".
Some people take the stance that even using view counts as part of ranking should result in a company listing section 230 protections, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027529
You proposed an interesting framing around reproducibility of content ranking, as in two users who have the exact same watch history, liked posts, group memberships, etc. should have the same content served to them. But in subsequent responses it sounds like reproducibility isn't enough, certain actions shouldn't be used for recommendation even if it is entirely reproducible. My reading is that in your model, there are "small" actions that user take that shouldn't be used for recommendations, and presumably there are also "big" actions that are okay to use for recommendation. If that's the case, then what user actions would you permit to be used for recommendations and which ones would not be permitted to use? What are the delineation between "small" and "big" actions?
Labeling is another idea but Meta does, in fact, disclaim which user actions are used for content recommendations: https://transparency.meta.com/features/ranking-and-content/
Basically, I still don't have a clear picture of what does and doesn't qualify as "algorithmically served" content in your model.
As I pointed out, I agree that defining what should be deemed acceptable and what shouldn't is a bit subjective, and can definitely be debated. Reasonable people can disagree here, for sure.
That's why I proposed that maybe the solution is:
1. only explicit actions are considered. A click, a tap, an interaction, but not just viewing, hovering, or scrolling past. That's an objective distinction that we already have legal framework for. You always have to explicitly mark the "I accept the terms and conditions" box, for example. It can't be the default, and you can't have a system where just by entering the website it is considered that you accepted the terms.
2. explicitly labeling and confirming of what is an suggestion algorithm altering action and what isn't. And I mean, in band, visible labeling right there in the UI, not a separate page like that Meta link. Click the "Subscribe" button, you get a confirmation popup "Subscribing will make it so that this content appears in your feed. Confirm/Cancel". Any personalized input into the suggestion algorithm should be labelled as such. So companies can use any inputs they see fit, but the user must explicitly give them these inputs, and the platforms will be incentivized to keep this number as low as possible, as, in the limit, having to confirm every single interaction would be annoying and drive users away. Imagine if every time you clicked on a video, YouTube prompted you to confirm that viewing that video would alter future suggestions.
I'm ok with global state being fed into the algorithm by default. Total watch time/votes/comments/whatever. My main problem is with hyper personalized, targeted, self reinforcing feeds.
>had the exact same watch history
Watching the content that is being served to you is a passive decision. It's totally different from clicking a button that says you want to see specific content in the future. You show me something that enrages me, I might watch it, but I'll never click a button saying "show me more stuff that enrages me". It's the platform taking advantage of human psychology and that is a huge part of what I want to stop.
>it remains unclear how you're constructing a set of criteria that does Hacker News, and plenty of other sites but not Meta.
I already said "This will still impact HN because of stuff like the flame war downranker...". I don't know this and your reply to my other comment seem to be implying that I think HN is perfect and untouchable. My proposal would force HN to make a choice on whether to change or lose 230 protections. I'm fine with that.
It's still unclear what choice Hacker News and other sites will have to make to retain section 230 protection in your proposed solution.
Again, something like counting the number of views in a video is, in your framing, not an active choice on the part of user. So simply counting views and and floating popular content to the top of a page sounds like it'd trigger loss section 230 protections.
You're making me repeat myself multiple times now. I don't know what else I can say. HN would need to rank posts by a combination of upvotes and chronology. That is how they "float popular content to the top". You don't need passive metrics like views to do that.
Another possibility would be to somehow incorporate the possibility of publishing the algorithm and providing some kind of "under the hood" view that reveals to people what determined what they're seeing. Part of the issue currently is that everything is opaque. If Facebook could not change their algorithm without some of kind of public registration process, well, it might not make things better but it might make it get worse a bit slower.
So a simple "most viewed in last month" page would trigger a loss of protection? Because that ranking is determined by number of views, rather than a proactive user decision like upvoting.
>So a simple "most viewed in last month" page would trigger a loss of protection?
The key word there is "page". I have no problem with news.ycombinator.com/active, but that is a page that a user must proactively seek out. It's not the default or even possible to make it the default. Every time a user visits it, it is because they decided to visit it. The page is also the same for everyone who visits it.
To be clear, even the front page of Hacker News is not just a simple question of upvotes. Views, comments, time since posting, political content down ranking, etc. all at a factor in the ordering of posts.
Can’t you just limit scope for section 230 by revenue or users?
E.g. it only applies to companies with revenue <$10m. Or services with <10,000 active users. This allows blogs and small forums to continue as is, but once you’re making meaningful money or have a meaningful user base you become responsible for what you’re publishing.
This is an unpopular opinion here, but I think in general the whole "immunity for third-party content" thing in 230 was a big mistake overall. If you're a web site that exercises editorial control over the content you publish (such as moderating, manually curating, algorithmically curating, demoting or promoting individual contents, and so on), then you have already shown that you are the ones controlling the content that gets published, not end users. So you should take responsibility for what you publish. You shouldn't be able to hide behind "But it was a third party end user who gave it to me!" You've shown (by your moderation practices) that you are the final say in what gets posted, not your users. So you should stand behind the content that you are specifically allowing.
If a web site makes a good faith effort to moderate things away that could get them in trouble, then they shouldn't get in trouble. And if they have a policy of not moderating or curating, then they should be treated like a dumb pipe, like an ISP. They shouldn't be able to have their cake (exercise editorial control) and eat it too (enjoy liability protection over what they publish).
Moderating and ranking content is distinct from editorial control. Editorial control refers to editing the actual contents of posts. Sites that exercise editorial control are liable for their edits. For instance if a user posts "Joe Smith is not a criminal" and the website operators delete the word "not", then the company can be held liable for defaming Joe Smith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230#Application_and_li...
The thing that's missing is the difference between a unsolicited external content (ie. pay-for-play stuff) and directly user-supplied content.
If you're doing editorial decisions, you should be treated like a syndicator. Yep, that means vetting the ads you show, paid propaganda that you accept to publish, and generally having legal and financial liability for the outcomes.
User-supplied content needs moderation too, but with them you have to apply different standards. Prefiltering what someone else can post on your platform makes you a censor. You have to do some to prevent your system from becoming a Nazi bar or an abuse demo reel, but beyond that the users themselves should be allowed to say what they want to see and in what order of preference. Section 230 needs to protect the latter.
The thing I would have liked to see long time ago is for the platforms / syndicators to have obligation to notify their users who have been subjected to any kind of influence operations. Whether that's political pestering, black propaganda or even out-and-out "classic" advertising campaign, should make no difference.
I think the biggest problem is when we're all served a uniquely personalized feed. Everyone on Hacker News gets the same front page, but on Facebook users get one specifically tailored to them.
If Hacker News filled their front page with hate speech and self-harm tutorials there would be public outcry. But Facebook can serve that to people on their timeline and no one bats an eye, because Facebook can algorithmically serve that content only to people who engage with it.
And there's also moderator control?
Yup. Accountable.
So to be clear, anything other than a 4chan-like unmoderated chronological feed results in loss of section 230 protection?
Heck, even 4chan wouldn't qualify, because despite considerably looser content rules they still actually do perform moderation.
Most sites that accept user-generated-content are forced to do some level of moderation, lest they become a cesspit of one form or another (CSAM, threats, hate speech, exposing porn to underage users, stolen credit card sales, etc...)
That’s the first reasonable take I’ve seen on this. Thanks for explaining it, I will use it for offline discussions on the subject. It’s been hard to explain.
Yeah, I wonder if the rules should basically state something like everything must be topical and you must opt in to certain topics (adult, politics, etc)People can request recommendations but they must be requested; no accidental pro-Ana content. If you want to allow hate speech fine, but people have to opt in to every offensive category/slur explicitly. (We can call it “potentially divisive” for all the “one persons hate speech is another persons love rap” folks or whatever.
This would be a huge step in the right direction.
They could use transparent adjustable algorithms
I would like to tweak my own feed
Chronological is an algorithm
Other shareholders in jail also.
If my dog bites somebody, I'm on the hook. It should be no different with companies.
We have to create incentives to not invest in troublesome companies. Fines are inadequate, they incentivize buying shares in troublesome companies and then selling them before the harm comes to light.
Where will you find a jail big enough to simultaneously imprison everyone who invested in S&P 500?
You just go after the top four or five. It's not about proportional punishment, but about ensuring that those with enough power to actually affect outcomes feel a sense of responsibility over those outcomes whether or not they later divest.
Blindly letting a CEO commit crimes should itself be a crime, but only if there's something you could've done to prevent it--that's not most shareholders.
just 500?
Thanks, I have the same question.
I don't really get why corporate death penalty and Zuck in jail is not a good idea. It might not be the best idea, but I think it would absolutely be better than what we have now. Even a random-chainsaw-esque destruction of Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple would be better than what we have now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020%E2%80%932021_Xi_Jinping_A...
> angry mob pitchfork calls
> corporate death penalty
I don't know man these don't seem very specific. From your whole comment I do agree Mark should be in jail
Larger fines, more robust methods for Meta to keep children off their platforms, more robust methods to stop the spread of propaganda and spam on their platforms, for Meta to start prioritizing connection between others instead of attention.
If you want a company to do something, you do need to ensure that the fine is bigger than the amount of money they made or will make by doing the thing you are trying to discourage. You need there to be a real downside. I don't think any of the fines that have been discussed are anywhere close to the levels that I am talking about.
Don’t corporate fines often come with requirements that the company also discontinue certain activities, start certain other ones, and be able to prove this or that to a regulator?
ban digital advertisement at a federal level and 95% of the underlying problems are solved at the incentive level
> ban digital advertisement at a federal level
This is what I meant by angry mob pitchfork ideas. This isn’t a real idea, it’s just rage venting.
It’s also wrong, as anyone familiar with the problems in pay-to-play social video games for kids, which are not ad supported, can tell you. These platforms have just as many problems if not more, yet advertising has nothing to do with it. I bet you could charge $10/month for Instagram and the same social problems would exist. It’s a silly suggestion.
literally the opposite of a pitchfork idea; quite simple, relatively easy to implement, and immediately effective. incentives from advertising is the underlying issue with the addictive nature of these platforms (and much more)
> literally the opposite of a pitchfork idea
The mere fact that commenters think banning advertising is a simple and realistic idea, without any constitutional road blocks or practical objections, is what I mean when I say these comment sections are just angry bloviating with unrealistic expectations.
If you think banning all advertising is “simple” then I don’t know what to say, but there isn’t a real conversation here.
so is it a pitchfork idea? I want Mark’s head? or it’s impractical? you’ve changed your apprehension to my idea twice in two comments
constitutional roadblock…to banning digital advertisement? please do explain!
I didn’t claim it’s easy to get it done in the real world, but it’s not a reactive/vindictive pitchfork idea. it’s really not that hard, if people wanted it we’ve banned plenty of things at the federal level in this country over the years (the hard part is of course people realizing how detrimental digital advertising is)
it’s a simple solution that’s very effective. obviously any large-scale change, to fix a large-scale problem, is not “simple” to implement, but it’s also not fucking rocket science on this one mate
you’re clearly not having a conversation in good faith. you asked, I answered, I’m done with this
> so is it a pitchfork idea?
What constitutes an advertisement is not a simple proposition. eg Is a paragraph describing some facts (phrased carefully) about a product or company an advertisement?
To what effect speech would have to be controlled to enforce this, is unthinkable. While some handwaving is necessary, as anyone can agree (since even the simplest legislation would be corrupted by the US political class), "banning advertising" is not a practical goal.
I’ve not changed anything, I was asking for realistic suggestions. You’re throwing out unrealistic suggestions.
Why stop there? Why not just shut down the whole internet? Simple and effective. Ban cell phones. Simple and effective.
These are just silly ways of thinking about the world.
you’re just doing ad hominems and strawmans. I’m not suggesting banning anything other than digital advertisement. you’re not open to having a productive discussion about it, just misdirection and whataboutism
please stop ascribing intent I do not have and words I did not say in your juvenile attempt to win an argument
p.s. still would love to hear your constitutional argument against it! banning digital advertisement at the federal level is not unrealistic and if you've actually given it the thought you’re pretending to and still reach that conclusion, I do have an ad hominem to throw back at you
> p.s. still would love to hear your constitutional argument against it!
You don’t need to hear my argument against it. The fact that advertising your services is free speech is well established. It’s a major challenge for movements like those trying to tackle pharmaceutical advertising.
Also, if you can’t see how I’ve been addressing your arguments and you think it’s all ad hominem then I don’t think there’s any real conversation to be had here. Between all the downvotes you’re collecting and the weird attempts to ignore everything I say and pretend it’s ad hominem as a defensive tactic, this is pure trolling at this point.
2 points:
1) downvotes: you’re the one insinuating HN commenters (and presumably voters) are idiots; I’m not sure that I should care if I’m downvoted while correct. and regardless, doesn’t seem like I’m very downvoted (rather the opposite) so not sure what your point is. try making one next time!
2) freedom of speech: lol! I just want to point out I had no fucking clue that’s what you were angling for before. rather than launch into attacks as you do, I actually try to understand things. this argument doesn’t concern me at all, I was worried I wasn’t aware of something in the constitution you’d brilliantly raise
we are beyond having a conversation at this point, but if you actually raised your arguments against banning digital advertisement (freedom of speech and ??? solving real-world problems is hard?) I would have debated them on their merits, you troll
Just FYI. For a very long time, strong alcohol ads were banned on TV, and the same with tobacco.
I don't watch regular TV, anymore, so I don't know if it still is in place.
Mentioning "banning advertising" on HN is bound to draw downvotes. A significant number of HN members make money directly, or indirectly, from digital advertising.
It's like walking into a mosque, and demanding they allow drinking.
Won't end well.
In this case, the suggestion of banning advertising is drawing downvotes from me because I see it as politically unrealistic.
At least in my state, there isn’t even a ban on advertising online gambling!! It is quite a stretch to think we could move from there to banning any kind of advertising.
It has nothing to do with the fact that a bunch of HN readers make money from ads. I don’t.
Somewhat meta question, do you believe that down voting opinions we don't like is a good way of engaging with one another on HN?
I wish we could discuss the issue here, and instead would have liked to hear from you why you think it is a pitically unrealistic proposal, and what your criteria is for seeming something politically unrealistic.
There's a large difference between banning strong alcohol ads, and instantly collapsing a whole huge advertisement economy (that indirectly funds most of the free things people take for granted).
Either I misunderstand something or I'm baffled how anyone can consider that easy.
> The mere fact that commenters think banning advertising is a simple and realistic idea, without any constitutional road blocks
Of course not, clearly you just need a captured congress and an EO. Can’t be too hard to find a reason to turn Trump against Zuckerberg.
Banning advertisement seemed to work for smoking.
https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/early/2025/01/22/tc-2...
Why do you think it would be ineffective here?
I'm also curious on how you think we might tackle these issues.
The parent comment called for banning all advertising, not for banning ads promoting social media platforms.
They don’t want anyone to be able to advertise anything. Not even your local contractors trying to advertise their businesses that you want to find, because that’s advertising.
The tobacco ad ban isn’t relevant to what was claimed.
> The parent comment called for banning all advertising, not for banning ads promoting social media platforms.
This wasn't my reading of it, but it does appear that's what GP meant. I don't agree with that. Even so, if you were interested in having a good faith discussion about solutions here, you might have responded to both interpretations.
You may consider this me putting forth the suggestion as an answer to your question, if you must.
We can also solve global warming problems by banning oil, coal and cows, and solve hunger by banning having kids.
“Just ban everything I don’t like as long as it won’t impact anything I do like” is a frequent take on HN these days.
Then when states start doing things like adding ID requirements for websites it’s shock and rage as the consequences of banning things (even for under 18s) encounter the realities of what happens when you “just ban” things.
I think we can separate the banning of things which affect personal freedom from the rest. Like if oil were "banned", I'm imagining it's not illegal to possess oil, but rather oil companies wouldn't be able to drill it up and sell it anymore. A bit like fazing out asbestos. The ordinary people with asbestos tiles in their basement don't get into trouble, but new house builds can't/won't use that tile anymore.
ID requirements seem like the main burden is being put on ordinary people instead of corporations, and by extension seems clearly bad.
> Like if oil were "banned", I'm imagining it's not illegal to possess oil, but rather oil companies wouldn't be able to drill it up and sell it anymore.
What does that have to do with anything?
It doesn’t matter where you ban it, if you turn off oil overnight a lot of people are left stranded from their jobs, sectors of the economy collapse, unemployment becomes out of control.
Banning things like this is just fantasy talk that only makes sense to people who can’t imagine consequences or think they don’t care. I guarantee you would change your mind very quickly about banning oil overnight as soon as the consequence became obvious.
I'm curious: Where do you put the line? For example, leaded gas improved car performance and arguably key to economic performance. But it was also incredibly neurotoxic and damaging to society. Do you believe banning it was a bad idea because it resulted in a lot of people losing their jobs?
Who suggested "turning oil off overnight"? What does that even mean?
GP (and I) have given you several examples of stuff society learned was harmful and then phased out with regulations/legislation. No, it didn't and does not happen overnight.
Why are you acting in such bad faith, trying to disregard people you don't agree with as "not being able to imagine consequences"?
It really has turned into a bitter losers bitch fest in here.
I was on board until the end. If we don't have kids, we're wiping ourselves out even faster than with climate change. I also wonder with oil if we'd need it for some things still, though maybe it's fine if it's made from something else. Gasoline has some obvious alternatives in most areas, but oil seems to be more than fuel. It's also a lubricant.
There is a substantial opposing force to that "US$790 billion ad market for 2024"
yep! it’d be hard, but we’re already at most people nodding their head when you say “social media is addictive, detrimental to individual mental health, and overall negative for society”
you just got to get enough people to nod at “…and this is caused by the underlying incentives from digital advertisement” then to “and the most effective course of action is to ban digital advertisement”
I truly don’t believe it’s a big leap, especially after a few more years of all this
I think with the harm that these companies are doing, the angry pitchfork mobs are a serious suggestion and not just hyperbole anymore
Keep in mind that not very long ago some random person assassinated an insurance CEO and many people's reaction was along the lines of "awesome, that fat cat got what he deserved"
Don't underestimate how much of society absolutely loathes the upper class right now.
I would bet that many people are one layoff away from calling for execs to get much worse than jail
> throwing Mark Zuckerberg in jail.
…why not?
Isn’t this what we have RICO for?
> she was shocked to learn that the company had a “17x” strike policy for accounts that reportedly engaged in the “trafficking of humans for sex.”
There’s no way in hell this isn’t just tacitly incentivized the facilitation of trafficking activities through the site.
For one, I'd like the EU to use this as evidence to straight up ban Meta apps. If countries can ban TikTok, why not extend the same privilege to Meta?
But then again, the EU are a bunch of vacuous chicken shits incapable of pulling their heads out of their arses, never mind safeguarding their own children.
Why not? Those are effective ideas, it’s just impractical because our political system is so insulated from public input.
> Serious question: What exactly do you want to see done?
Confiscate their wealth
Are there any serious attempts to enact a "corporate death penalty" in the US? Is there even a viable route to getting something like that in the current regime?
Charter revocation is, I think, technically on the books in every state, but its not used for variety of reasons, one of which is because while it destroys the corporate entity, it mostly punishes the people least responsible for any wrongdoing (it can sometimes be accompanied by real punishment for the responsible actors, but those are separate processes that doesn’t require charter revocation, such as individual criminal prosecution or civil process that ends with fines, being barred from serving as a corporate officer, etc.)
My opinion is that if corporate personhood is OK, then the corporation should face the same consequences as people do when they break the law. So facilitation of human trafficking should go to criminal court.
Corporate crimes can and sometimes do go to criminal court (PG&E, for instance, has convicted of 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter for the 2018 Camp Fire, obstruction and various criminal pipeline safety violations in the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, and various other crimes at other times), but aside from fines most criminal punishments don’t apply to corporations. You can’t imprison a corporation as such, nor can you execute it except metaphorically. So, ultimately, that’s largely just a higher standard of proof route to fines than civil court (though probation restrictions are also a thing.)
You can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board. A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil.
I imagine that prosecutors don’t pierce the corporate veil for public companies often because “DA charges 87 year old grandmother with stake in Evil Corp in her pension fund with manslaughter, local union members brace for additional charges against members” doesn’t make for good headlines or good justice either.
The officers and board of the company aren’t protected by the corporate veil concerning their actions. They retain some degree of protection from actions of others within the corporation provided they did not have (or did not have a reason to suspect) knowledge of those activities. But to my knowledge that’s not special to officers, it applies to any employee which is why the rank and file Enron employees didn’t get prosecuted.
> You can prosecute and imprison officers and/or the board.
Right, that's just normal individual criminal prosecution; it doesn't require prosecuting the corporation.
Of course, it's possible for the corporation to be guilty of a crime without any individual officer or board member being guilty.
> A corporation isn’t a magical immunity shield for them - for some reason prosecutors have shied away from piercing the corporate veil.
Piercing the corporate veil is holding shareholders liable for certain debts (including criminal or civil judgements) of the corporation. It has nothing directly to do with criminal prosecution of corporate officers or board members for crimes committed in the context of the corporation (though there are certainly cases where both things are relevant to the same circumstances.)
> So facilitation of human trafficking should go to criminal court.
Be careful what you wish for.
Who else should go to criminal court for facilitating human trafficking? The airlines because they sold flights to these people, statistically speaking? What if they used a messaging app you use, like Signal? Should the government shut that down or ban it too? I have a feeling these calls to regulate platforms don’t extend to platforms actually used by commenters, they just want certain platforms they don’t use shut down and don’t care how much the law is bent to make it happen, as long as the law isn’t stretched for things they do like.
Knowing facilitation. Facebook knows about specific users, it's not a case of statistics.
This. I've reported scammers so many times in Facebook, it's so obvious but obviously it's not a priority for them.
This is solved with humans. Mens Rea is usually required for successful prosecution. A taxi driver who takes a fare to a bank, who then robs the bank, is not prosecuted. A getaway driver is.
To avoid nitpicking, op probably should have said knowingly facilitates, but this is conversation not legislation and 99% of readers probably understood that.
Nah I'd feel pretty okay with more regulation. In your two examples predictable crimes happened in these platforms. An airline should most definitely be liable to enable that, just like they are liable for letting people without visas boarding a flight. Signal should also be liable for enabling a crime, but realistically all they could do in an investigation is give e2e encryption logs with some timestamps.
Exactly. And same for games for children that somehow don't detect pedophiles spending $100s and $1000s to lure children. And same for the platforms taking immense fees from Meta and such games that are suspiciously unaware of what's going on.
The entire point of corporate personhood is to be able to hold corporations liable for their actions.
Only among the terminally unserious
Capital is orders of magnitude more powerful than labor. Until that changes, this story will be repeated.
We have vote with our dollars/attention and stop using their products. Including pressuring our friends and family to stop using them.
Has that ever really worked? And considering meta has billions of users on not just Facebook, but also WhatsApp and instagram, I’m skeptical. I know people who hate meta, but can’t shake instagram.
Then we are well and truly cooked, if we are so addicted to a specific photo-sharing platform that we will let this abuse continue
It protects you and your friends+family from the negative effects of using Meta platforms.
It does not. Social media platforms have had massive societal impact. From language, to social movements, to election results, social media has had effects, positive or negative, that impact the lives of even those who do not use them.
When my kids were born I told my family I wouldn't be posting their pictures on any Meta owned platform. That was all I needed to move the family group, photos etc. to another app.
Which app did you move to?
Specifically when it comes to children, lots of jurisdictions are enacting actual non-bullshit age verification to ensure children aren't on social media. In my opinion this is real, substantive change.
Its basically like the history of money before banks got regulated and central banks emerged to regulate money printing. In this case its all about Attention which is functioning exactly like currency.
For them these fines are just cost of doing business. Apparently politicians don't care too, for them imposing fines is all about bringing extra money from time to time.
They aren't going to stop because LifeLog was as Darpa project before they found a private stoog to build it for the military. Remember it's only dystopian to spy on every aspect of a persons life, if YOUR THE GOVERNMENT. Private entities in the U.S. basically can do anything they want, especially now when they can rent a President too pardon it away.
They're monopolies. Break them up, heavily regulate, or tax their economic rent privileges.
Georgism gave a good lenses on these kind of issue. All the sudden, late stage capitalism starts looking like monopolies.
So much of this audience already knows the job is to collect comprehensive analytics and never run the analyses on your product’s externalities.
to be obvious enough to downplay, it must be impossible to miss while looking the other way. To be impossible to miss, it must be inextricably linked to the profits.
It's even more egregious in this case because Meta's employees were turning a blind eye to child sexual exploitation that they knew fine well their work was enabling.
Maybe those fat bonuses and generous stock options wiped away the feelings of guilt, if these Silicon Valley sociopaths even felt any in the first place.
> You could incur 16 violations for prostitution and sexual solicitation
So although this is being spun as “trafficking”, that doesn’t seem accurate.
This classification sounds like it includes selling “your own services”.
Similar to roblox debate raging now no?
We’re all just trying to get our nut.
The business model is misaligned with human's wellbeing. Everything can be traced back to this very problem.
This is true but it’s important to still blame the humans making specific harmful decisions as well.
Is it the same as this basically? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019817
Yes. I've flagged this post, hopefully it'll be merged.
> 17x strike policy for accounts that reportedly engaged in the “trafficking of humans for sex.”
Yep. You can engage in sexually trafficking people 16 times with a warning. 17th is just too much dude.
What sort of a deranged psychopath comes up with these rules?
I can see from voting that this comment is highly controversial. It's actively being downvoted. Make of that what you like.
I mean, duh. They’re this generation’s cigarettes. Employees of Meta should be ashamed of themselves.
Edit: Meta employees, downvoting this comment won’t absolve you of your involvement in the largest child abuse organization we’ve seen yet. Look what your own company said about what it’s doing to teenage girls.
They don't care. Grifters need to grift.
Check the front page before splitting an existing front-page discussion.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019817
Social media is going to be seen to future generations the way we currently see tobacco and alcohol. Look at what social media has done to the wellbeing of teen girls. There's been a dramatic decline in the mental health of teen girls. All those filters, OF fans, stars with eating disorders (just look at the Wicked cast), is literally killing teen girls with social anxiety.
Another report. Sadly nothing will come out of it. 5 years down the line there will be another smoking gun, accusing Meta of selling DNA data to advertisers illegally. Nada. Nothing will happen.
Corporation prioritizes profits over social harm, news at 11.
You won't want to miss this breaking story - water is wet.
Focusing on meta doing this is fine, but misses the mark.
Every tech company is harming the public for profits.
Meta misled the public?!?!? You don't say!
At this point nothing surprises me from Meta.
we'll milk teens like cows and we can't wait to stuff them into tiny little boxes, hooked up to and logged into our VR worlds where we serve all their needs while they serve ours. nothing sexual, there's places for that and we're not the types. we monitor our employees closely and can say that with certainty.
the current phase of social media is basically the scraping of minds. we throw hundreds of thousands of narrowly defined contexts at them, in different states and in between them. our systems learn, assimilate, adapt.
the world is going up in flames. we didn't do that. and we'd try to change it but we have a lot of data. it can't be done.
we've seen the good, the bad and the ugly. and we don't drink cheap milk. the food of the cows we get our milk from costs more than the compounded wealth of all graduates of an average European university at the end of their 30s and the health of the cows we get our milk from is better monitored, too. all for one glass of milk.
my first sentence was a provocation.
your teens will be fine. worry about their environment, not us. we know we lie in court. and you know why. because they kindly ask us to. they have friends and friends of friends who have been up our asses from day one. you think we know a lot? your intelligence services know a lot more. your local administrations and teachers conspire against your teens more often than you would like to know. some guys in your police likely know, too. as do your journalists and TV channels. it's more or less on a need to know, serve to know basis.
you think big tech is the threat? think again.
A/N: mostly gibberish, since I have no idea what I'm talking about but you're all wielding advanced tools and you're networked. you get it. I could kindly ask you to stop babbling. but without leverage nobody benefits.