TIL teen girls still used Facebook.
Instagram too according to the article.
Goddam I had to read that headline 3 times before I understood the implication!
That is outright disgusting, and such practices ought to be outlawed.
Or as Trump would say, very cool and very legal way to make money.Happy I got AdNauseam after uBlock Origin. Deleted my facebook a year ago, shit is an AI slopfest built upon the greed and manipulation of every part of the chain. Defcon 31 has a good talk that brings this up. “Disenshittify or die” by Cory Doctrow, cann recommend to watch.
I support the use of AdNauseam. Not sure if there are any more extreme alternatives, I now choose to be actively hostile towards advertising/tracking rather than just passively blocking it.
Teenagers should not be on social media. I rest my case.
That’s sounds like blaming teens for the actions of the adults behind Facebook.
Not just teenagers. Facebook and quite a few others should outright be banned. Not only they are scientifically proven to be a mental health catastrophe and a political threat to democracy, it’s also pretty clear now that both these things are part of their design, not bugs or unintended emerging properties.
Ok, but the genie is already out of the bottle. Arguing like this is kinda pointless.
I don’t think it will be possible to get them off social media (or the internet in general), so you need to find ways to make it work.
E.g. minors can not be advertised to, no algorithmic content, no doom-scrolling, and heightened data protection. I think teenager should get access to as much as possible to reduce the “risk” of them trying to go around it. “Their” version of social media might even be the superior one in the end.
If the world wasn’t on fire at the moment, people could calmly discuss possible solutions and propose laws in every country to actually protect their children from e.g. the stuff mentioned in the linked article. Sadly, this isn’t going to happen …
The thing is that social media have an oversized influence that makes a calm discussion of possible solutions very hard to have. When the US recognized the implications of letting a foreign power exert so much control over their people, they tried banning TikTok, or breaking it up so their US operation would be under US control.
Facebook should also be split and its EU operation purchased by a European company, that could then spend more time implementing the other changes you mention (doom-scrolling, data protection) and less time lobbying to get all these pesky EU regulations removed.
And yes, it does feel heartbreaking to count the US as a threat to national security, but China has never threatened to annex Greenland with military force, so what would have been paranoia and extreme anti-americanism last year is now the sensible, level-headed thing to do.
No one should
That’s some cartoon villain level shit jfc
This type of advertising isn’t new. There is that famous (although the claims from the father have been questioned) New York Times article written by Charles Duhigg in 2012. A father of a teenage girl in Minnesota got upset for receiving coupons from Target for infant care related products. As the story goes, he later learned his daughter was in fact pregnant. It turns out Target was using some predictive algorithm to identify would-be mothers and straight up sending them coupons for infant care products. It seems ever since this article was published that they stopped doing this in such a direct manner. Again, there have people who questioned the validity of the claims for this specific story, but Target did confirm they were doing this.
My doctor’s office (allegedly) handed my info to a plastic surgery clinic so they could send me a “happy 40th birthday, now fix your sagging bullshit!”-email the literal day I turned 40.
Needless to say that put a damper on things.
People have been doing evil shit for money since the invention of money. These days it’s just automated.
Don’t normalize this
I think I read somewhere that that was apocryphal, but it strikes me as 100% plausible. It doesn’t even have to be a matter of “write a system that detects pregnant women via their purchase history and send them coupons for maternity stuff” I think Amazon’s Frequently Bought Together feature could get it done. The same algorithm that suggests a tacklebox and some lures when you have a fishing pole in your shopping cart might recommend diapers and formula to those who buy maternity pants.
Be aware that the companies would have paid Facebook handsomely to identify users in this way. The world we live in has a sickness with greed for money at its heart.
I’m so glad I quit Facebook long ago and also started using uBlock Origin.
Saint Luigi deliver us from villains like Facebook
As if there would be no social networking without Zuckerberg.
Like any sin, the change starts with us. If we want a healthy social network, we can build a healthy social network.
Tom from Myspace never treated us like this.
Praise the king!
At some point we need to start criminalizing shit like this and actually holding people accountable.
It’s so much bigger than this. It starts young. iPad kids. Strict gender roles. Sexualization of children. Learning from parents who have been conditioned by capitalism, sexism and more. We got little girls that want skincare products and teens talking about plastic surgery. It’s bad.
Agreed though. Punish people for ruining society. I think I read a while ago that France had required social media posts to flag when images have been altered. We need more laws like this too.
As little kids we got like no genderbased education from our parents. When we moved our grandmother got a lot more control and dumped blue boyish stuff on my brother and forbid the girly things. Has never worn a dress since and now is still not willing to wear one
(it could be that us older sisters influenced that he wants to wear dresses too)
Bummer. Happens to almost all men in the US. Maybe less now, but this new red pill generation is wild.
I need context to understand your story. How old was your brother when you moved? How often was he wearing dresses before the move? How quickly did it stop? And how old is he now?
And mass sharing of images/videos which has made it so much easier to connect people, specifically in one case I saw today of someone on Telegram sharing child porn. How do you even put the cat back in the box?
People don’t want to hear it, but AI. Used intelligently and responsibly.
How did you see it
deleted by creator
It has always been this way. When you get old, 15 year olds and 19 year olds start to all look the same.
Similarly, to teenagers a 40 year old and a 60 year old look the same. Old.
It’s hard to say if it’s one of those things that older gens say is different with newer gens even though it the same. I will say though, the convergence of sexualization of children and infantilization of adults have been narrowing the gap and maybe one is winning over the other.
💯 Big tech companies think they’re above the law.
Thus far, they’d basically be right. Any fines are simply chocked up to “cost of doing business” expenses and since no one wants to either make solid laws against this stuff OR hold them accountable for current ones, they’ll just keep at it.
If a law has a fine, it was created to deter poor people.
That depends on if it is a dayfine or not.
A fine of €500 for speeding will only really affect poor people, 30 dayfines which value is dictated by the wealth of the individual is a better system.
they ARE above the law, at least it would seem so.
History has shown that they are.
Oh you mean fines? Sure here’s some money $$.
Meanwhile AD rev is $$$$$. Just the cost of doing business!
Hahahaa
Zuckerberg’s $300 million mega yacht may be tracked here: https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9857511
Ah right, still in the north sea outside of Norway. Recently there was news of Sami villages being bribed to not put up a fuss when a “prominent person” wanted to go heliskiing, then his yacht arrived on site:
Can’t go skiing with the plebs, no.
Translation of article from behind paywall:
"The Facebook CEO’s enormous yacht has been anchored in a Norwegian fjord near the Swedish border.
Now DN can reveal that several Sami villages have been offered compensation for not saying no to a “prominent person” going on a luxury helicopter skiing trip in the mountains.
- They wanted to buy our silence, says a representative of a Sami village.
At least three villages were contacted in March by a company that arranges helicopter skiing trips. The Sami villages have been offered compensation, ahead of a very secret group of tourists arriving to ski in the Swedish mountains in April. A Norwegian village team has also received a similar offer.
- We understood that it was something special. The organizers were very keen for us to say yes, even though this is before the calving season when the ewes are pregnant and all the reindeer are very fragile after a tough winter, says a representative of a Sami village.
Helicopter skiing in untouched lands, known as heliskiing, has been criticized by reindeer owners for destroying nature and disturbing the reindeer – and the issue has been raised by the Norrbotten County Administrative Board to the government.
According to sources from several Sami villages, the plans for this particular April visit were somewhat out of the ordinary.
The Sami villages, which use helicopters in their reindeer husbandry, were offered six hours of helicopter use by the organizer – which corresponds to around 50,000 kronor.
On April 1, one of the largest private luxury yachts in existence arrived in Bodö, Norway – something that caused a stir in the Norwegian media.
It is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the Facebook company Meta, who is one of the richest people in the world. He is one of the billionaires who has tried to approach US President Donald Trump by, among other things, donating money.
Zuckerberg’s luxury yacht is called Launchpad, and he bought it last year for $330 million. The boat is almost 120 meters long. There is room on board for 26 guests and 42 crew members.
“Among the distinctive features are a private outdoor owner’s deck with a jacuzzi, two certified helipads, a swimming pool with a moving floor and a spacious beach club,” the manufacturer writes on its website.
Zuckerberg’s smaller “supply ship” Wingman, which was included in the purchase of Launchpad, was also seen in Bodö. Wingman is also equipped with a helipad and helicopter.
Both ships then headed north and last week they arrived in a small coastal village, Drag, in northern Norway, where, according to information to DN, a house has been rented in order to, among other things, be able to cook for the guests from the boat.
- There were several helicopters on site and a hell of a lot of people. A big operation, says a source to DN.
It is from there that the controversial extreme sports event is said to have taken place. Helicopters are said to have traveled across the border to Sweden to drop off guests in the Swedish mountains for skiing on the pristine top snow. According to several sources to DN, the yachts’ own helicopters were used. In addition, at least one more from a local entrepreneur.
- We see them flying from here every day, a source in the Norwegian Drag told DN this weekend.
A businessman in the area who was asked early on to contribute to the event, tells DN that the plan was for the group to come with a large yacht with its own helicopters and that they hired a Swiss organizer as an intermediary:
- It was the crème de la crème, no ordinary millionaires. They wanted a three-star chef up in the mountains and they would fly their own helicopters and bring their own guides. It felt so unnecessary. It didn’t make sense. We said no.
DN has not been able to confirm that Mark Zuckerberg himself was on board any of the ships.
A representative for a company that accepted said to DN before the visit:
– We have a duty of confidentiality when it comes to the customer. But honestly, I don’t know who is going to ski. That it is some prominent person possibly, if they can afford to pay for all that. But I have no idea who or what they are. We sell a flight service. We fly a helicopter – it is a logistical solution for this event.
There has been reluctance from Sami villages that you have been in contact with. What do you say about that?
– The Sami villages are very important customers for us too and we have constant contact with them. It is an ongoing dialogue that takes place continuously all the time.
The company does not want to comment on the fact that the event takes place in connection with the calving period.
One of the villages that has been offered compensation is Unna tjerusj Sami village. They have – like the other respondents that DN has spoken to – declined the compensation. Chairwoman Helena Omma:
– My position is no. There is a word in Sami called joavdelaš. It means something like “useless”, things that you do completely unnecessarily. And heliskiing is the definition of joavdelaš, there is no benefit in this, she says.
– It is harmful to the climate, it disturbs reindeer as well as wildlife and nature in the area and I am completely against using nature as a playhouse. Nature has its own value and its own rights. In this case, it is not even the public’s interest in outdoor recreation that is being taken into account – only the richest people have the opportunity to do something like this.
How do you feel about the fact that the arrangement seems to have been carried out despite you and the other Sami villages having said no?
– Then they have asked so that – if we are lucky and we say yes – they can say that they are doing it in cooperation with the Sami villages. So it is only worth something if we are positive, otherwise they ignore what we say.
Both Launchpad and Wingman have crossed the Atlantic to get to the Norwegian ports, with very large climate emissions as a result. When the lifestyle website Luxury Launches in December calculated the emissions of the two ships during the 10 months that Zuckerberg had owned them until then, they concluded that the emissions amounted to over three million liters, equivalent to 52,000 full tanks in a normal-sized car.
– My advice is to respect the sensitive environment you have the privilege of visiting and understand that you have arrived at the planet’s “ground zero” when it comes to climate change. The temperature is increasing two to three times faster in the Arctic Circle, which has caused sharp shifts in snow and ice conditions that are blocking reindeer pastures, changing vegetation and causing accelerated melting of all glaciers, Johan Rockström tells DN.
A reindeer herder who wishes to remain anonymous tells DN that it feels ironic that a group of people using private jets, luxury yachts and helicopters are traveling around the world to find the last snow-covered mountains.
– Climate change is clearly visible – it is an extremely snow-poor year and this may lead to having to move the reindeer to the northwest earlier than usual.
After the adventure in the Swedish mountains, Zuckerberg’s luxury yachts continue towards Svalbard according to the port’s arrival lists.
On Monday, he was in court in Washington DC to defend Meta’s purchase of Instagram and Whatsapp, which according to the US Competition and Consumer Protection Authority has created a monopoly.
DN has sought Mark Zuckerberg through Meta’s press service.
Criticism of heliskiing for several reasons
At the end of March, Professor Johan Rockström, among others, called for a ban on heliskiing in an opinion article in Expressen, due to high emissions, destruction of sensitive nature and the fact that the activity itself is dangerous.
In March, two men died in an avalanche accident in Abisko during a heliskiing excursion. The organizer is now suspected of causing death to another person, among other things.
Many Sami villages elsewhere are experiencing major problems with heliskiing on their land.
In the areas currently in question, several people DN spoke to say that heliskiing must be said no – regardless of whether there are reindeer in the area at the time or not. The risk, they say, of allowing one operator in is that more will gradually join, who will later run tours where reindeer are present."
My thoughts exactly.
Who the fuck comes up with this stuff?
This is the sort of thing machine learning algorithms are pretty good at at.
Coupled with however many millions of interactions a day, you would have no problem correlating changes to your algorithm against increases in revenue.
But. It’s often not that impressive. Humans are equally good at noticing patterns.
All it takes is for one person at FB to see their wife or daughter delete a post, ask them “why did you delete that post” and take away from the response of “It made me look fat” to go “there’s a new targeted ad that’ll get me a bonus”.
In a similar vein, 80% of your banks anti-fraud systems isn’t deep learning models that detect fraudulent behaviour. Instead it’s “if the user is based in Russia, add 80 points, and if the account is at a branch in 10km of Heinersdorf Berlin, add another 50…. We’re pretty sure a Russian scammer goes on holiday every 6 months and opens a bunch of accounts there, we just don’t know which ones”.
People who traded morals for money.
The most generous assumption is that they use statistics to determine correlations like this (e.g., deleted selfies resulted in a high CTR for beauty ads so they made that a part of their algo). The least generous interpretation is exactly what you’re thinking: an asshole came up with it because it’s logical and effective.
Either way, ethics needs to be a bigger part of the programmers education. And we, as a society, need to make algorithms more transparent (at least social media algorithms). Reddit’s trending algorithm used to be open source during the good ole days.
Can you make the algorithm open source that determined it was ok for you to murder Tuvix tho
if (ugly) { kill_child(child_name); } else { ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) }JANEWAY DID WHAT SHE HAD TO DO
The kind of person whose past probably includes more than a few vivisected animals.
Wonder how much of a bonus the sick fuck who pitched that got for the idea?
Probably nothing. Most likely, a paid consultant to give ideas. And if it was a worker, they were just doing their job and at most got a “great job, keep up the good work,” praise email.
And tiktok is supposed to be our enemy?
Big tech is our enemy. It doesn’t matter if it’s facebook or tiktok.
I agree!
Both can be enemies.
both ARE enemies.
I agree. I’m addressing the obvious hypocrisy of big tech
TikTok absolutely does the same kind of thing and worse. Engagement is all that matters. Doesn’t matter what kind, what about, or how that engagement is generated.
Por que no los dos?
I’m very skeptical that the Chinese government having your data as an American is worse than the American government and corporations (you know, the people with applicable jurisdiction) having it. Seems more likely to me that American interests just weren’t happy about a huge platform of Americans not being under their umbrella of control and censorship. Sure, you could argue that China of course has their own, but the two wouldn’t completely overlap, so there were windows where things could be freely and organically discussed and organized by Americans, without American government and corporate interference. Obviously that couldn’t be allowed to stand.
That’s very nice and cute that you’re skeptical, but they’re literally doing the same thing, except with a goal of weakening America instead generating more money.
Your skepticism doesn’t matter- it’s an attack on you, stop excusing it.
Yes there definitely would be an alterior agenda to the reasons for the push to hate on tiktok data fears. But that’s not to say that people are any safer (data wise) with US big tech.
How did they come up with this idea? Did the algorithm suggest this pattern, or did someone in marketing come up with it?
