6 ms·

I think there's a little more nuance than that, but it seems roughly correct. Wouldn't it be better if apps/websites targeting kids didn't use A/B testing to b

I think there's a little more nuance than that, but it seems roughly correct. Wouldn't it be better if apps/websites targeting kids didn't use A/B testing to be more addictive?

steve-atx-7600 6mo ago
For context, facebook is so dystopian when I login once every few years that I’m not sure I’ll ever use it again. And, I hate wading through the YouTube cesspool to find some educational content I like. But, I don’t think it makes sense to ban a/b testing or optimization in general. Some company could use it, for example, to figure out how to teach math to kids in a way that’s as engaging as possible. This would be “more addictive” technically.
- sampullman 6mo ago
  That's a good point, I'm not 100% sure it's worth throwing away the potentially beneficial uses. There might not be a solution that's both feasible to implement and avoids banning useful things. In the end I usually come back to it being the parent's responsibility to monitor usage, limit screen time, etc., but it hasn't been working so well in practice.
ramon156 6mo ago
They'd find another method. Why are we allowing this in the first place? I don't have an answer to fix this whole mess, but it starts with our attitude towards addiction. We've built a system that rewards addiction in all sorts of places. Granted, every addiction is different, and I'm of the opinion that it's not (drug = bad), it's how you use it and react to it. We can control the latter, but we choose to ignore it because we're too busy with anything else. This is a tale as old as time...
- aaomidi 6mo ago
  In the span of how long it takes for law to catch up to what’s going on, YouTube and Facebook has been around for a tiny amount of time.
  - bluefirebrand 6mo ago
    They have been around long enough to have done unknowable damage to entire generations of humans
    - aaomidi 6mo ago
      As usual unfortunately laws are reactive.
- ToucanLoucan 6mo ago
  > Why are we allowing this in the first place? Exactly what I keep coming back to. For me, it feels like you could cut this problem down substantially by eliminating section 230 protection on any algorithmically elevated content. Everywhere. Full stop. If you write or have an algorithm created that pushes content to users, in ANY fashion, that is endorsement. You want that content to be seen, for whatever odd reason, and if it's harmful to your users, you should be held responsible for it. It's one thing if some random asshole messages me on Telegram trying to scam me; there's little Telegram can do (though a fucking "do not permit messages from people not in my contacts" setting would be nice) but there is nothing at all that "makes" Facebook shovel AI bullshit at people, apart from it juices engagement, either by genuine engagement or ironic/ragebaiting. And AI bullshit is just annoying, I've seen "Facebook help" groups that are clearly just trawling to get people's account info, I've seen scam pages and products, all kinds of shit, and either it pisses people off so Facebook passes it around, or they give Facebook money and Facebook shoves it into the feeds of everyone they can. It's fucking disgusting and there's no reason to permit it.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
    Eliminating section 230 protections would heavily disfavor any kind of intellectually stimulating content, because it's hard for a platform to scalably verify that nobody's making defamatory claims. But pointless clickbait, heavily filtered Instagram models, etc. don't really have liability concerns on a video-by-video level. To me it seems like this makes the problem worse.
    - roughly 6mo ago
      It’s not eliminating section 230 entirely, it’s eliminating it for algorithmically promoted content. If you have a site that has user content and you present that content in a neutral fashion, section 230 applies. If you pick and choose what content to present to users (manually or by algorithm), you’re no longer a neutral platform, and shouldn’t be getting the benefit of 230.
      - SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
- greenhearth 6mo ago
  "Free market" and "entrepreneur spirit" fetishism and fear of collective social action against individual drives.
schmidtleonard 6mo ago
> more nuance Not enough to diffuse liability. 15 years ago when recommender algorithms were the new hotness, I saw every single group of students introduced to the idea immediately grasp the implication that the endgame would involve pandering to base instincts. If someone didn't understand this, it's because > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair
KaiserPro 6mo ago
I think addiction is a redherring. Pokemon is addictive, computer games are addictive. Its whether they are knowingly causing harm, and or avoiding attempts to stop that harm.
- Zigurd 6mo ago
  Addictive patterns in games and other online activity is a bit less innocent than you are portraying it: knowingly causing harm is too low a standard. A lot of the profitability of online games, prediction markets, etc. comes from the whales. The whales are probably addicted. If your business is a whale hunt you are possibly causing harm at least to the extent that addiction is dangerous.

I think there's a little more nuance than that, but it seems roughly correct. Wouldn't it be better if apps/websites targeting kids didn't use A/B testing to be more addictive?

steve-atx-7600 6mo ago

For context, facebook is so dystopian when I login once every few years that I’m not sure I’ll ever use it again. And, I hate wading through the YouTube cesspool to find some educational content I like. But, I don’t think it makes sense to ban a/b testing or optimization in general. Some company could use it, for example, to figure out how to teach math to kids in a way that’s as engaging as possible. This would be “more addictive” technically.

sampullman 6mo ago
That's a good point, I'm not 100% sure it's worth throwing away the potentially beneficial uses. There might not be a solution that's both feasible to implement and avoids banning useful things. In the end I usually come back to it being the parent's responsibility to monitor usage, limit screen time, etc., but it hasn't been working so well in practice.

ramon156 6mo ago

They'd find another method. Why are we allowing this in the first place? I don't have an answer to fix this whole mess, but it starts with our attitude towards addiction. We've built a system that rewards addiction in all sorts of places. Granted, every addiction is different, and I'm of the opinion that it's not (drug = bad), it's how you use it and react to it. We can control the latter, but we choose to ignore it because we're too busy with anything else. This is a tale as old as time...

aaomidi 6mo ago
In the span of how long it takes for law to catch up to what’s going on, YouTube and Facebook has been around for a tiny amount of time.
- bluefirebrand 6mo ago
  They have been around long enough to have done unknowable damage to entire generations of humans
  - aaomidi 6mo ago
    As usual unfortunately laws are reactive.
ToucanLoucan 6mo ago
> Why are we allowing this in the first place? Exactly what I keep coming back to. For me, it feels like you could cut this problem down substantially by eliminating section 230 protection on any algorithmically elevated content. Everywhere. Full stop. If you write or have an algorithm created that pushes content to users, in ANY fashion, that is endorsement. You want that content to be seen, for whatever odd reason, and if it's harmful to your users, you should be held responsible for it. It's one thing if some random asshole messages me on Telegram trying to scam me; there's little Telegram can do (though a fucking "do not permit messages from people not in my contacts" setting would be nice) but there is nothing at all that "makes" Facebook shovel AI bullshit at people, apart from it juices engagement, either by genuine engagement or ironic/ragebaiting. And AI bullshit is just annoying, I've seen "Facebook help" groups that are clearly just trawling to get people's account info, I've seen scam pages and products, all kinds of shit, and either it pisses people off so Facebook passes it around, or they give Facebook money and Facebook shoves it into the feeds of everyone they can. It's fucking disgusting and there's no reason to permit it.
- SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
  Eliminating section 230 protections would heavily disfavor any kind of intellectually stimulating content, because it's hard for a platform to scalably verify that nobody's making defamatory claims. But pointless clickbait, heavily filtered Instagram models, etc. don't really have liability concerns on a video-by-video level. To me it seems like this makes the problem worse.
  - roughly 6mo ago
    It’s not eliminating section 230 entirely, it’s eliminating it for algorithmically promoted content. If you have a site that has user content and you present that content in a neutral fashion, section 230 applies. If you pick and choose what content to present to users (manually or by algorithm), you’re no longer a neutral platform, and shouldn’t be getting the benefit of 230.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6mo ago
greenhearth 6mo ago
"Free market" and "entrepreneur spirit" fetishism and fear of collective social action against individual drives.

schmidtleonard 6mo ago

> more nuance Not enough to diffuse liability. 15 years ago when recommender algorithms were the new hotness, I saw every single group of students introduced to the idea immediately grasp the implication that the endgame would involve pandering to base instincts. If someone didn't understand this, it's because > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. - Upton Sinclair

KaiserPro 6mo ago

I think addiction is a redherring. Pokemon is addictive, computer games are addictive. Its whether they are knowingly causing harm, and or avoiding attempts to stop that harm.

Zigurd 6mo ago
Addictive patterns in games and other online activity is a bit less innocent than you are portraying it: knowingly causing harm is too low a standard. A lot of the profitability of online games, prediction markets, etc. comes from the whales. The whales are probably addicted. If your business is a whale hunt you are possibly causing harm at least to the extent that addiction is dangerous.