3 ms·

I think the fundamental difference is that smoking actually shortens lives by years. On the other hand, Facebook's privacy violations have . . . made people fee

I think the fundamental difference is that smoking actually shortens lives by years. On the other hand, Facebook's privacy violations have . . . made people feel a little squicky? What concrete harm has been done? Nothing to rival even a hundredth of tobacco's death toll. That's not to say we shouldn't have laws and regulations around privacy, but personally I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare Facebook and Phillip Morris.

elefanten 7y ago
1. You're only addressing the privacy component and leaving out the psychological / sociological / political components of the criticism. 2. The harms of privacy violations are hard to quantify the same way as deaths or dollars. But collapsing them down to "feeling a little squicky" vastly undershoots. There's a category of very large potential harms that come from privacy violations and littany of smaller more direct / likely harms. There is a lot of literature on this. 3. The comparison between Facebook and Phillip Morris to which you're responding was not framed in terms of deathcount or health harm. So your reading of the comparison along those lines was bound to be troubled.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  > 2. The harms of privacy violations are hard to quantify the same way as deaths or dollars. I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying that no matter how you want to frame it, there's no chance it's even in the same ballpark, even with the psychosocial aspects that you rightly corrected me for ignoring. > 3. The comparison between Facebook and Phillip Morris to which you're responding was not framed in terms of deathcount or health harm. So your reading of the comparison along those lines was bound to be troubled. I think suggesting a similar policy treatment implies a certain equivalency of harm done. Whether the fine article explicitly makes that claim is beside the point, IMO.
- skinnymuch 7y ago
  Is it vastly undershooting compared to death? It seems like it is perfectly appropriate to say death from smoking is far far worse.
throw20102010 7y ago
While we can't point to any direct causation right now, it also took a long time for us to have proof that smoking was harmful. In the following hypothetical scenario, think about how much blame you would be willing to assign Facebook. It may be none, but they may not be blameless: Facebook's poor privacy practices allow a malicious actor to influence the outcome of an election- they may have only swung a few thousand votes, but they focused on swing states and contributed to the outcome that occurred. This elected official acts in a particular manner, installs a war-monger as national security advisor, who encourages us into a conflict with Iran. Now hundreds or thousands of soldiers end up dying on each side because some malicious actor wanted to make a profit by electing a business-favorable person. Did Facebook cause a war? No. Did they contribute to a war in some way and cause lives to be shortened? That depends on your interpretation. But I think there should be some regulation, and not the kind of buddy-buddy regulation we're seeing with the telecoms and the FCC right now. If it were just people trying to sell me things, then the privacy issues and poor control of their data wouldn't be an issue. I've got people trying to sell me things on TV all the time. The risk is the other things that an untrustworthy person can do with this data, that's what I want the regulation and protection for.
- troyvit 7y ago
  Smoking a cigarette triggers a physical addiction akin to that of heroin. It destroys free will. Social media? I dunno man if people can't look away from insta or FB long enough to watch their kids play on the floor then maybe that's their problem and not their app's. At some point we have to assign personal responsibility to ourselves and admit that the reason FB can take advantage of weak wills is because we let our wills get weak. Those malicious actors who helped affect an election only got away with it because we began to thoughtlessly slurp the spoon-fed pap that the media (MSM, fake news sites, social networks, all of it) gives us. Facebook isn't a bad actor: it's a symptom of a society that gave up critical thought. If we regulate FB it will just be something else that comes along and manipulates us. If we work together to elevate critical thinking and skepticism then we stand a chance of owning our consumption again.
  - harimau777 7y ago
Barrin92 7y ago
the suicide rate, especially among adolescent women has increased by almost 70% from 2001 to now, self-harm has increased, rate of depression, anxiety and related illnesses has increased in that demographic. Among young men as well, albeit to a lesser extent. While it will take more time to figure out precisely how social media impacts the development of teenagers and young adults, the relationship is pretty unambiguous. I recommend Jonathan Haidt's latest book for anyone who still thinks that there is no very real physical and mental health threat associated with social media. https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016 https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016
- i_am_proteus 7y ago
  Since the base rate of adolescent male suicide was higher to begin with, it would be technically and morbidly correct to say that social media has contributed to increased gender equality in this area.
- Circuits 7y ago
  This is a classic example of: "Who is responsible for the death, the gun or the man pulling the trigger?" and from what I have seen, most people want to blame the gun or in this case, FB. If someone is unstable you can't blame FB for that, FB didn't make them unstable.. perhaps their excessive use of FB resulted in social problems that lead to an instability but you can hardly blame FB for that. I don't know about you guys but I am seriously getting tired of people blaming everything and everyone else but themselves for their problems in life.
  - jvagner 7y ago
    But that's not really how societies work.
  - harimau777 7y ago
    I don't think "people are to blame for the problems in their life" explains significant changes in the rates of those problems occurring. It doesn't make sense that people as a group would become less moral/resolute/intelligent without any cause.
toss1 7y ago
FB was the primary tool of RUS Intel Agencies' Active Measures attack against the US 2016 elections, against the Brexit vote, and against multiple EU elections. They utilized Cambridge Analytica, Russian 'Internet Research Agency', and thousands of paid & unpaid trolls to micro-targeting voters for their specific psychologically tested anger trigger points, with billions of impressions of the same in the US alone, FB at best ignored/minimized the entire episode, dismissing it for many months afterwards. These attacks are in no small part responsible for the current administration, and at the very least for their inhumane anti-immigrant policies that have resulted in multiple deaths. The administration, along with the Russians, is actively working to undermine every independent democratic and law enforcement institution that will not act as a support of the rule of them as an autocrat, vs the rule of law. FB may well go down in history as the key element in the destruction of democracy itself. That alone is a far larger consequence to the smoking epidemic (& I lost my grandfather to that).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

elefanten 7y ago

1. You're only addressing the privacy component and leaving out the psychological / sociological / political components of the criticism. 2. The harms of privacy violations are hard to quantify the same way as deaths or dollars. But collapsing them down to "feeling a little squicky" vastly undershoots. There's a category of very large potential harms that come from privacy violations and littany of smaller more direct / likely harms. There is a lot of literature on this. 3. The comparison between Facebook and Phillip Morris to which you're responding was not framed in terms of deathcount or health harm. So your reading of the comparison along those lines was bound to be troubled.

asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
> 2. The harms of privacy violations are hard to quantify the same way as deaths or dollars. I'm not saying it's easy, but I am saying that no matter how you want to frame it, there's no chance it's even in the same ballpark, even with the psychosocial aspects that you rightly corrected me for ignoring. > 3. The comparison between Facebook and Phillip Morris to which you're responding was not framed in terms of deathcount or health harm. So your reading of the comparison along those lines was bound to be troubled. I think suggesting a similar policy treatment implies a certain equivalency of harm done. Whether the fine article explicitly makes that claim is beside the point, IMO.
skinnymuch 7y ago
Is it vastly undershooting compared to death? It seems like it is perfectly appropriate to say death from smoking is far far worse.

throw20102010 7y ago

While we can't point to any direct causation right now, it also took a long time for us to have proof that smoking was harmful. In the following hypothetical scenario, think about how much blame you would be willing to assign Facebook. It may be none, but they may not be blameless: Facebook's poor privacy practices allow a malicious actor to influence the outcome of an election- they may have only swung a few thousand votes, but they focused on swing states and contributed to the outcome that occurred. This elected official acts in a particular manner, installs a war-monger as national security advisor, who encourages us into a conflict with Iran. Now hundreds or thousands of soldiers end up dying on each side because some malicious actor wanted to make a profit by electing a business-favorable person. Did Facebook cause a war? No. Did they contribute to a war in some way and cause lives to be shortened? That depends on your interpretation. But I think there should be some regulation, and not the kind of buddy-buddy regulation we're seeing with the telecoms and the FCC right now. If it were just people trying to sell me things, then the privacy issues and poor control of their data wouldn't be an issue. I've got people trying to sell me things on TV all the time. The risk is the other things that an untrustworthy person can do with this data, that's what I want the regulation and protection for.

troyvit 7y ago
Smoking a cigarette triggers a physical addiction akin to that of heroin. It destroys free will. Social media? I dunno man if people can't look away from insta or FB long enough to watch their kids play on the floor then maybe that's their problem and not their app's. At some point we have to assign personal responsibility to ourselves and admit that the reason FB can take advantage of weak wills is because we let our wills get weak. Those malicious actors who helped affect an election only got away with it because we began to thoughtlessly slurp the spoon-fed pap that the media (MSM, fake news sites, social networks, all of it) gives us. Facebook isn't a bad actor: it's a symptom of a society that gave up critical thought. If we regulate FB it will just be something else that comes along and manipulates us. If we work together to elevate critical thinking and skepticism then we stand a chance of owning our consumption again.
- harimau777 7y ago

Barrin92 7y ago

the suicide rate, especially among adolescent women has increased by almost 70% from 2001 to now, self-harm has increased, rate of depression, anxiety and related illnesses has increased in that demographic. Among young men as well, albeit to a lesser extent. While it will take more time to figure out precisely how social media impacts the development of teenagers and young adults, the relationship is pretty unambiguous. I recommend Jonathan Haidt's latest book for anyone who still thinks that there is no very real physical and mental health threat associated with social media. https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016 https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016

i_am_proteus 7y ago
Since the base rate of adolescent male suicide was higher to begin with, it would be technically and morbidly correct to say that social media has contributed to increased gender equality in this area.
Circuits 7y ago
This is a classic example of: "Who is responsible for the death, the gun or the man pulling the trigger?" and from what I have seen, most people want to blame the gun or in this case, FB. If someone is unstable you can't blame FB for that, FB didn't make them unstable.. perhaps their excessive use of FB resulted in social problems that lead to an instability but you can hardly blame FB for that. I don't know about you guys but I am seriously getting tired of people blaming everything and everyone else but themselves for their problems in life.
- jvagner 7y ago
  But that's not really how societies work.
- harimau777 7y ago
  I don't think "people are to blame for the problems in their life" explains significant changes in the rates of those problems occurring. It doesn't make sense that people as a group would become less moral/resolute/intelligent without any cause.

toss1 7y ago

FB was the primary tool of RUS Intel Agencies' Active Measures attack against the US 2016 elections, against the Brexit vote, and against multiple EU elections. They utilized Cambridge Analytica, Russian 'Internet Research Agency', and thousands of paid & unpaid trolls to micro-targeting voters for their specific psychologically tested anger trigger points, with billions of impressions of the same in the US alone, FB at best ignored/minimized the entire episode, dismissing it for many months afterwards. These attacks are in no small part responsible for the current administration, and at the very least for their inhumane anti-immigrant policies that have resulted in multiple deaths. The administration, along with the Russians, is actively working to undermine every independent democratic and law enforcement institution that will not act as a support of the rule of them as an autocrat, vs the rule of law. FB may well go down in history as the key element in the destruction of democracy itself. That alone is a far larger consequence to the smoking epidemic (& I lost my grandfather to that).

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]