Submitted 1 month ago by ForgottenFlux@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams says company targeted ads at teens based on their ‘emotional state’
[…] She said the company was letting advertisers know when the teens were depressed so they could be served an ad at the best time.
[…]
Have we collectively forgotten that Facebook tested manipulating users emotional states all the way back in 2014.
Where they tested to see if people with depression can be even more depressed if their social media feeds are manipulated to take away positive interaction.
That’s back when I attempted suicide
They are the asbestos of the internet.
asbestos at least was the best option until a couple years ago for numerous applications.
It probably still is. It’s a miracle material. It’s a real shame that it’s so toxic.
Getting a dumbphone was one of the best decisions I took in my life. It helps me focus and read books. I don’t actually need the internet with me 24/7. If you really need me, you can call.
I got an e-ink e-reader in the pocketable form factor of a phone (Bigme Hibreak Color). Instead of doomscrolling social media, I read a couple paragraphs of the Oppenheimer biography. Next I’ll reread Neuromancer. It’s life-changing. 10/10 highly recommended.
Cool! What made you chose that over something like the boox that is the same form factor but without phone functionality?
ok but like if I don’t have music and noise cancelling earbuds I will explode
People tend to interact with technology on a default permit basis, whicih is why they have weather-vane attention spans and obliterated focusing capacity. They’re like Pavlov’s dog, responsing to every notification and every ping; and social media is treated as the default use state until something else yells for their attention.
I have notifications denied by default. Notifications are lame and a known privacy threat. No one needs to be bothered because someone responded in a group chat or a new post surfaced on a Lemmy comm or a ‘deal alert’ got pushed by some marketing dipshit on the other side of the planet. That they exist at all for email is ludicrous. Email is an asychronous protocol - delayed responses are a feature.
Stop giving this stuff attention on demand and start allocating attention windows where it will get seen to. Email that gets in front of your eyes is 99 per cent transaction stubs if you’re doing it right; there is no more reason to pay it any attention outside 7pm for 10 or 15 minutes (say). Similar treatment should apply to most messaging to be honest.
i’m curious, what exactly is the advantage of getting a dumbphone vs just uninstalling social media apps from your existing phone, or just disabling internet access all together? doesn’t that achieve pretty much the same thing while still being able to keep things like navigation and being able to see when public transport is delayed
It’s like quitting cold turkey - removes the temptation to use these apps.
I’ve been telling this to family and friends, apparently they didn’t want to agree. At least there is article now. I do think current social media will be looked at in future like tobacco/smoking is currently looked at.
Thank You for Posting (2025)
Great callback. I haven’t thought of Thank You For Smoking in ages.
That is a prescient little from my teenage years.l back in earlly 00’s. The film was a nice stab at the culture of “spin” and how lobbying was gonna dig us into the hell we are now.
Hmmm, Thank You For Posting would be an actual relevant sequel in the time of endless sequels. Backdropping it with the lobbying for the Turd Reich and the ascension of Fascism and you got something there…
Thank you for reminding me of Thank You For Smoking.
20 years ago, as well
Even though I knew about most of this, I never realized how striking the parallels are.
Wait till you find out we still have tobacco companies, and they’ve been getting into the vape and weed game this whole time
Y’all, one of the far-reaching Broligarchy ideas they’re hoping emerges from the ashes of the United States is the DAO, decentralized autonomous organization.
Every action in the block chain. They facilitate, and are predicated on, the idea of treating every aspect of life as a social network. Everything you do is recorded. So daily life ends up incentived toward constant, persistent, corralled engagement.
The difference is that you can’t build a society on the mechanics of the tobacco industry. But you can on a human reaction industry.
And this yet another reason why we should be using cryptocurencies that provide actual privacy, like anyone could go right now and see every drug transaction on silk road, or any hacker getting their Bitcoin confiscated, or any transaction ever, except for those done through monero and some with zcash.
Btw where’d you hear abt this? or did you just come up with it?
It’s been a topic of conferences, books, podcasts, and new laws for almost a decade. They have it all in plain sight. Lol, made it up.
Curtis Yarvin has his Butterfly Revolution, which Thiel is all in about. Therefore Musk as well. Of the five pillars, the EO about forcing university accreditation to heel is the last one needed to not them all. Well documented, and the Nerd Reich had a post recently about how Yarvin is mad at how incompetent Trump and Musk are because they’re literally not gasing people to death by now.
A guy named Balaji wrote a book called the Network State that outlines the government that should replace democraticly electing people. Also a podcast, also conferences with folks like the creator of Etherium backing it. He’s been pushing countries to recognize DAOs as legal entities. Wyoming is on board, and Palau and the Marshall Islands have also been receptive as nation level test cases. Network city-states are in the mix as well.
This is the stuff that makes Project 2025 look like quaint kids’ games. However, where they both agree is the idea of repealing the social gains of the 20th century. Civil rights, women’s rights, gone. The goal is techno-fascist fifedoms built around crypto and AI, like Thiel’s investment in Praxis, where broligarchs don’t just have money, they control the force and violence of the state, which is something that money can’t just buy.
considering that tob
Wow. I don’t know why I’ve never made the parallel before, but yes, this is a good way to explain to people the woes of these companies that can be overlooked in the moment but are painfully clear in hindsight.
I think that, in 10-20 years, the research around social media addiction will bear out this way, yes. It’s wild to me how every time the discussion around regulating social media comes up, most people just kind of ignore its effects on kids’ mental health.
It’s not very wild when you realize you’re talking to addicts. The whole world is addicted.
Mandatory physical exercise too, an hour minimum a day, no contact sports, punishable by jail time. Also diet, we should all be eating healthy, no more sugar being sold.
The evil tobacco company is an outdated narrative, they were already regulated to hell 22 years ago when I started smoking and since then I’ve only ever seen the regulations increase now with the new apparent goal of outlawing nicotine, because I can only speculate that people think this time we’re going to get prohibition right.
btw I quit smoking 7 years ago, and nicotine altogether 5 years ago.
It’s called “history”, not “outdated”. Op is comparing a historical behavior with a current behavior.
The current tobacco companies are no longer any more evil than any other business is my point. It’s a bad comparison for a modern day Social Media company, especially since so little of the population today was around for when Tobacco companies were at there worst.
If anything the oil companies are the most evil. They knew climate change was going to happen 50+ years ago.
I hate to alarm you but the entire planet knew climate change was going to happen 50 years ago because that was the 70s when this became well known.
Oil companies were noticing several decades before.
It’s illegal to grow your own tobacco in more states now than it is to grow you own cannabis
Well, done quitting. Respect
The US thrives on negativity 24/7. Its tiresome.
The news thrives on things that get the readers attention, and right now people are paying attention to bad things.
i wouldnt go as far calling them that, more like big box stores like walmart,etc.
Wait. If tobacco companies do not exist anymore, then who are making cigarettes?
Or do they mean that Meta, X and Google are producing cigarettes like tobacco companies are doing right now, like with filters or that they are putting warning labels on their products? Because I haven’t seen any warning labels or Google cigarettes.
The title is very confusing.
Although I do think Google, X and Meta should have at least 75% of their banner state their platforms are brainrot and spreads misinformation. You know, like modern day tobacco companies have to warn for the risks of using their junk.
My problem with theses giants is they don’t provide/publish stats of the current situation of their platform. I can’t think of a stat top of mind, but Metadata about posts, users and many more
Linktank@lemmy.today 1 month ago
Except, you know, tobacco companies are modern day tobacco companies. They were never defeated.
acosmichippo@lemmy.world 1 month ago
it’s just an analogy.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 1 month ago
Yeah, it’s crazy how many commenters here are completely missing the point. I should really stop assuming people have any sort of intelligence.
taladar@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
The flaw in the analogy is that it assumes that those effects are limited to some companies when in reality every single company that existed in history has behaved this way if they weren’t stopped by regulation.
Sixtyforce@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I argue junk food commercials draw a lot of parallels with cigarette commercials of the past.
Especially soft drinks.Coca Cola especially really loves to tie emotions and sports/holidays to sugar water.
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 month ago
I don’t know think you’ve been to Europe much… Just a guess
Broken@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Well, considering all the tobacco companies entrenched themselves in food companies you’re basically right.
It’s why foods are addictive, and have very little nutritional value. It’s beyond “oh no its full of sugar” it the fact that everything is processed and is full of fake sugar (as an example).
TacticalCheddar@lemm.ee 1 month ago
When you say “defeated”, what exactly do you mean? You mean that they should cease to exist to be considered as such? If that’s the case then I would say it’s an unrealistic expectation.
I would say that they’ve been largely contained. If I remember correctly, back in the '50s almost half of the American population used to smoke. The percentage of people smoking has been consistently decreasing over the years thanks to regulation and increased taxation. Tobacco companies are definetly not as influential as they once were.
Dindonmasker@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
You made me notice that a lot of companies learned from tobacco companies not just those XD