Of course they did - they “voted” for them every time they signed on to Facebook or Instagram or used WhatsApp, and they doubled down every time they let their children use them. They vote for them every time they elect grifters and spineless toadies to office.
These companies don’t have users by default. They have users because shitty people use shitty services made by even shittier people because they need their little hits of dopamine.
None of that, at all, has a fucking thing to do with being a “hermit living in the woods” unless you’re determined to make the contrived, obviously bullshit argument that “everything, everywhere is terrible so it’s all pointless so just keep scrolling”.
But that would be trivially asinine.
YC were best buds with Peter Thiel... And literally had Sam "scan everyone's eyeballs" Altman as Pres for 5 years. They are actively seeking out "defense" tech to invest in; even during a US sponsored genocide, and now-daily war crimes.
The users here aren't tech-clueless like a lot of Facebookers would be. In theory we're better educated, better informed, more tech savvy, and higher paid. As a group, we're far more deeply connected and complicit with the tech bros than Whatsappers and Instagrammers.
So, we have that much less of an excuse to be "shitty people [who] use shitty services made by even shittier people because they need their little hits of dopamine."
I despise Meta. I also use their services sometimes. Maybe it's not simply a matter of voting for Zuckerberg, but there are network effects and captured systems and manipulation of addictive behaviors. Maybe things aren't as vanta-black and ultra-white as you're insisting.
I'll put it like this - what you're doing with that comment above is a lot like blaming smokers for feeding the tobacco companies. Despite all the lies and ads and manipulation, despite all the dirty tricks, despite the hard-core science used to get people hooked from every possible angle. Despite the cancer, the lung disease, the heart problems suffered by the victims.
Punch up dude.
I have never used Facebook and I never will. What they have done is immoral and unethical and deserves regulation.
What I fear is that regulation will be informed from the false and dangerous equivalence you've made there comparing addictive drugs to looking at an audio-visual screen. Drugs literally can make you want without there being any enjoyment. Screens are just a medium, like, a radio (which can also be used for random internal operant conditioning), the screens and the radio are not the problem and they are NOT LIKE DRUGS. You actually have to enjoy the experience and repeat it. And that's just normal learning. That drug comparison will lead to government's treating computers' like drugs which means heavy regulation of end users and violence against them. A far more dangerous scenario than the issues were facing from the corporations now.
We need regulation of the corporations intentionally doing random interval operant conditioning. Not regulation of the medium they do it over and the people enjoying using that medium.
Let's be extremely clear - I'm not the one who first made that comparison. That would be the tech bros, who hire all manner of addiction and gambling specialists and scientists in order to make their products as addictive as possible.
> the screens and the radio are not the problem and they are NOT LIKE DRUGS
For a fully competent adult, you can make that argument. Kinda.
To an unsupervised 9yo? An 89 yo? Facebook is a lot like drugs, only with the mind-altering effects much easier to direct. No, that's not the screens fault (or the radio), and no one said it was.
> That drug comparison will lead to government's treating computers' like drugs which means heavy regulation of end users and violence against them.
If I really believed that avoiding such a comparison would prevent government from over-regulation and violence toward social media users, then I'd avoid it. But I don't.
Also, using the insanity and violence of the drug war to self-censor obvious comparisons is certainly a choice.
> We need regulation of the corporations intentionally doing random interval operant conditioning. Not regulation of the medium they do it over and the people enjoying using that medium.
No one anywhere was arguing for regulating your screen or the internet - except maybe the government which you insist on doing the regulation, and the corporations who are large enough to own politicians. If you got that impression purely from the tobacco analogy (which you then morphed into the drug war somehow) I'd encourage you to try and reinterpret the point.
No, thanks, though. Mark Zuckerberg doesn't care if everyone on the planet thinks he's a dick. But as long as folks like you will go to the ends of the earth to make excuses for anyone who's complicit in the use of these tools, you're also to blame for the consequences of their use.
> Maybe things aren't as vanta-black and ultra-white as you're insisting.
Of course they're black and white, in exactly the same way, to use your example, that smoking cigarettes is bad.
There is no need whatsoever to use any of these products. It is completely possible to live your life without them. You just don't want to, because you'd rather things be a bit easier and you're willing to ignore the negative externalities.
Do you, dude. Just own it.
Settle down would ye.
> in exactly the same way, to use your example, that smoking cigarettes is bad.
No one said Facebook isn't bad. But "in exactly the same way" - calling cancer victims (who were lied to by tobacco executives and victims of disinformation campaigns and media blitzes) "complicit" in all the tobacco companies various crimes is unhinged. As in, not tethered to reality. And deeply uncool.
> There is no need whatsoever to use any of these products.
Correct.
> You just don't want to, because you'd rather things be a bit easier and you're willing to ignore the negative externalities.
I do want to. Yet I don't, mostly for the reasons I described above ("network effects, captured systems"). I acknowledge the negative externalities, much as I acknowledge them when I use my phone despite the fact that makes me complicit in slavery; or when I acknowledge that it's easier to pay taxes to the US, despite their complicity in genocide, than it is to go to jail.
There's absolutely no need to invoke some sort of divine power to know my true motivations - unless you're just arguing this dead thread to feel superior or something. You know that meme with the guy popping out of the little hole, saying "You condemn society, yet you partake in it! Curious!"? ... Join the dots mate.
Facebook was the thing that came along post Myspace and unfortunately is the product of someone with lacking ethical imagination. People feel forced to use it or else they don't know why it's bad. And I don't think people who use these things are automatically addicts. It's not their fault the company and leadership lies to them (about various things. Privacy and whatever else)
Of course people "can just stop". But that's hard. We shouldn't be punished for involving ourselves in the game of network effects, of wanting to have friends
When Mark Zuckerberg makes a policy like "it's ok to call certain groups mentally ill" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178) it's rug pulling. Even if you didn't know about Dumb Fucks (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122) you use these services both out of necessity and because you think it's a way to keep in touch. People don't "willingly choose" this. They had the rug pulled out repeatedly, whether it's censoring links to competitors, shadow profiles, impossible to delete an account, or whatever. It doesn't have to be like this but that doesn't mean people using their products are bad people for using their products
You've chosen to make these products your sole means and way of "connecting" with people because you, they or both are utterly and completely unwilling to even vaguely consider doing anything else. You want to doomscroll Instagram (we can swap "want" for "are addicted to" if you'd prefer - the broader point is the same). If you didn't, you'd stop.
Anyone using Meta products is a bad person, full stop. Are they Zuckerberg/Sandberg/Thiel/Musk bad? Of course not. But you don't get to absolve yourself of the clear and obvious consequences of your own choices just because they make you feel bad about yourself.
