• @ebolapie@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        I 100% believe that Facebook and friends are contributing to this trend but it’s important to note that the linked study does not conclude that causation is present:

        There is an independent association between problematic use of social media/internet and suicide attempts in young people. However, the direction of causality, if any, remains unclear. Further evaluation through longitudinal studies is needed.

  • @flop_leash_973@lemmy.world
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    04 months ago

    lol, Jesus. It is like what a screen writer would come up with for a movie that contained a terrible company run by terrible people doing stuff so outlandishly terrible everyone watching would think “the absurdity of the terrible is how you know it is made up”.

  • @adm@lemm.ee
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    04 months ago

    Let’s not pretend that we don’t have this type of thing happen to us. Maybe not beauty products but any time I slip outside of my ad blockers I’m made accurately aware that they’re always listening. It’s not a coincidence the ads you see, the TikToks, and the Facebook ads. It’s just used for adds right now but it should scare the shit out of people.

  • @MTK@lemmy.world
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    04 months ago

    If any of the big companies were turned into a human, they would all be Epstein

      • @Zink@programming.dev
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        04 months ago

        And I genuinely loved all that stuff as a kid, usually liking the ad (e.g., TMNT cartoon) more than the toys (e.g., TMNT action figures).

        As your typical Lemmy user who loves Linux and hates advertisements, I sometimes have to remind myself about that when my son is watching today’s dumb kid shows. Teaching him about the systems in play rather than isolating him from it has been working well IMO.

        The bonus is that he doesn’t watch full-on advertisements and commercial breaks like we were forced to in the 80s when it was live TV or no TV.

        • @andros_rex@lemmy.world
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          04 months ago

          The bonus is that he doesn’t watch full-on advertisements and commercial breaks like we were forced to in the 80s when it was live TV or no TV.

          I think the problem for modern youth is that there’s no way to tell what’s an ad anymore. Scrolling through TikTok or any social media will show you tons of advertisements which are not marked as advertisements.

          The mainstream internet is driven by advertising. At least when I was a kid we could step out during the commercial breaks.

          • @Zink@programming.dev
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            04 months ago

            I think the problem for modern youth is that there’s no way to tell what’s an ad anymore.

            Too true. Fortunately my kid is too young for full blown social media, so I have a few more years to keep teaching him.

        • @psivchaz@reddthat.com
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          04 months ago

          It’s the state of advertising tbh. If ads were still of the “Look, here’s a cool product” variety, or even the “Look, here’s people happily using a cool product” kind then the world would probably be a better place. Even targeting isn’t so bad, when it’s broad like “We want businesses to know about our B2B product.”

          The evil in modern advertising is the overly specific targeting, the lying, the psychological tricks, and the way they seem to invade every possible space.

          • @MrSelatcia@lemmy.world
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            04 months ago

            Don’t forget about planned obsolescence, and enshittification. Two built in ways to lie to the person being advertised at.

          • Maeve
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            04 months ago

            Psych tricks were there since Bernays “torches of freedom” to sucker women into nicotine addiction like the men.

          • @Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            04 months ago

            Some level of advertising is a necessary evil when you’re in a capitalist system because otherwise people have no way to get their products out ti the market. There’s a balance to be struck.

            Hell even in other systems advertising is still important for finding out about cool new things even if money no longer exists

          • @mcv@lemm.ee
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            04 months ago

            I know one example of advertising that I liked: the creators of Penny Arcade had only advertisements for computer games that they liked. And they made those ads in the same art style as their own comic.

            Advertisements are good when they’re an honest endorsement. Any others are inherently deceptive and often invasive.

        • @markovs_gun@lemmy.world
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          04 months ago

          This is one of those bizarre Lemmy echo chamber things. I’ve never seen this sentiment that advertising is evil and should be stopped at all costs anywhere else but on Lemmy it’s super common. Idk where it comes from. I get that advertising kind of sucks but it just seems like a weird thing to get so passionate about especially considering how many other things are wrong with the world. Sorry you’re getting downvoted to hell, you’re not crazy, Lemmy is.

    • @HeyJoe@lemmy.world
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      04 months ago

      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.

  • Guy Ingonito
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    04 months ago

    The book os very good. Reading it now. The writer starts off with a great stoty about a shark attack.

    • @LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      04 months ago

      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.

    • Headofthebored
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      4 months ago

      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.

      • dragon-donkey3374
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        04 months ago

        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.

      • @ysjet@lemmy.world
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        04 months ago

        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.

    • Captain Janeway
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      04 months ago

      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.

    • @RecallMadness@lemmy.nz
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      04 months ago

      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”.

      • @Zak@lemmy.world
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        04 months ago

        I’d bet on it being algorithmic from Facebook because leaning into algorithms is part of that company’s culture. A bunch of manual tweaks require maintenance, though it wouldn’t surprise me if someone was thinking about this when deciding that deleted selfie should be a different signal to the algorithm than deleted picture of cat.