Oh they absolutely know. Zuck’s Meta is on trial right now not only because Instagram creates an addiction for kids, but because it was made delibarately, on purpose. Kids addictron was the goal.
They’ve always known. They just don’t care for the rest of humanity.
Not to excuse that POS, but more on how we got here: You have a product that only makes money when people actively use it. How do you increase your ROI? Make people want to use it and want to use it longer. Do that by making it more interesting, more relevant, more stimulating and appear bottomless so people can use it as long as possible.
Addiction for EVERYONE is the only way FB continues to increase revenue. We just single out Children because they are most easily influenced and impacted.
Oh I’m perfectly aware this is most likely a chain of pressure and responsibility dodging:
Many years ago a grocery store chain, which was rapidly becoming national, had its progress halted by a meat bleaching scandal. They set impossible goals for their meat department, knowing there was zero way to sell the meat at the volume they demanded, so the local stores were left to do illegal things to meet the impossible quotas. The higher ups claimed plausible deniability, while knowing there was but one answer.
What’s even crazier, is the grocery store (Food Lion) sued the journalists who went undercover to expose it, and won. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-23-mn-21242-story.html
Fortunately, the damage to their reputation did far greater damage than they won in the lawsuit, but as far as I could find, no legal actions were taken against Food Lion.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 14 hours ago
Look to the masters, the tobacco industry with additives to make it more addictive (been a while since I researched it and that’s the one that popped up, but they spent 60+ years making it more addictive).
Social media speedran it with something apparently innocuous (‘they trust me, stupid fucks’), and a bunch of corrupt psychologists (and marketers/advertisers also known as corrupt psychologists). Do no harm my ass, wait, that doesn’t apply to psychologists, wait again, that’s more like guidelines for doctors (not an actual vow in most places).
Next bill of rights / constitution needs to address this specifically, there’s a reason why quacks have a special hatred (and if there were one, a special hell)…