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Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power...Facebook seems to be just a platform where our natural desi

• sasaf5 5y ago
  Once there are algorithms ranking the posts, they are meddling with the culture.
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    I kinda agree maybe this can be better regulated but if someone decides to follow Beyonce or Lady Gaga (sorry I'm not really up to date with pop stars) or some supermodel, how are you gonna prevent that? As for algorithm ranking, I suppose 40 years ago it was a "human algorithm" reaching the conclusion that you better have hot chicks drinking coke on commercials, how is that different?
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • mnsc 5y ago
      I'm just going to assume you are not a teen girl. And I'm certainly not one so we can just pull things out of our asses. But I don't think that the issue is the pop star or super model any more. It's the influencers and the idea that "anyone" can be top dog now. This means that you have young regular girls following other young "regular" girls. And if you do what they do, use the same products, be as charismatic then you too can be an influencer. Maybe not a global one but at your school. So suddenly you have young girls that "expose" themselves publically for their 62 followers and pretending to be a influencer. Which makes you a very large target for bullying and "harsh truths" that will end your "influencer career" and at the same time that sliver of self esteem that a teenager normally has. And this is 100% caused by having a platform that is "democratic" and allows everyone to "compete for likes on equal terms".
    • yunohn 5y ago
      The difference is that Instagram/etc inundate you with nonstop algorithmically “related” posts from every supermodel, not just the ones you chose to follow.
    • sasaf5 5y ago
      Following a or b is not the problem. Ranking is. As you mentioned, it was already a problem in the times of simple broadcasting, it became an even bigger problem now. Our massive servers will go brrrrr serving algorithms all over the world much faster than we can dream about interveening. The Rohingya crisis stands as a terrifying example.
  • contravariant 5y ago
    Though it's an interesting question whether the same culture would develop if the same thing happened again. Not that it really matters, I don't think either would help you find a fix that doesn't involve destroying the whole thing.
• jhrmnn 5y ago
  Facebook and social platforms in general are just very efficient in amplifying all these toxic elements of our culture
  • disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    > Facebook and social platforms in general are just very efficient in amplifying all these <insert adjective here> elements of our culture
    • DiggyJohnson 5y ago
      Is it as good at amplifying goodwill towards friends and neighbors as it is at amplifying negative sentiments? I don't think the former scales, whereas the latter lends itself to amplification. Authenticity and community require much more complexity to uphold than anger, anxiety, and resentment. I do take your point, and think that un-nuanced conversations about the evils of Social Media are unhelpful, but I think the scaling problem is the real danger. Negativity scales globally, positive sentiment and experience is limited to the individual or local level. What do you think of any of this?
      • disgruntledphd2 5y ago
        > Is it as good at amplifying goodwill towards friends and neighbors as it is at amplifying negative sentiments? Probably, but because of salience asymmetry, we don't realise it. Like the good stuff is often more local as you say, and more distributed, while the bad stuff makes the news.
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    Yes with that I agree. But we are already toxic, let's not blame Facebook for all our problems. And I just don't see how Twitter, TikTok or anything similar is better; maybe we should just say teens can't be on social media ? Unlikely to pass.
    • meltedcapacitor 5y ago
• tw04 5y ago
  It's their fault. An individual girl in 1995 who was concerned with her looks had at most a couple dozen people in her life to judge her. In 2021 it's hundreds of millions, and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life. Does society value beauty? Sure. Do models set "unrealistic expectations"? Sure. Are some high school girls assholes to other girls? Absolutely. But once upon a time kids would go home and those people would be gone. Now it's a 24/7 feedback loop and it's completely unhealthy.
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    > and a large portion are more than happy to spout things they would NEVER say in real life This is pretty much an internet problem, not a Facebook problem. The things people say to each other on forums or Twitter or Facebook, especially when anonymous (but not always), are quite often horrendous.
    • ccn0p 5y ago
      True, and the cat can't be put back in the bag, so it's up to the collective "us", who build the Internet, to rediscover our moral imperative to fix what's broken... and Facebook is a huge chunk of this brokenness.
      • joelbluminator 5y ago
        I personally deleted my account but what is it about Facebook that is worse than say Twitter (also deleted) ? Twitter was a big bag of toxicity. Not saying it wasn't interested, tons of interesting people to follow; but the discussions were often rude, racist and hateful. And it poses the same problem of teens following supermodels and what not. What I'm saying is this is about social media in general, not about Facebook which just happens to be the (currently) number 1 platform.
        • yunohn 5y ago
          Twitter is not algorithmically pushing supermodel photos to teenage girls. The target demographics are completely different from Instagram. You are correct however, that Twitter is also toxic; like all social media.
• Veen 5y ago
  > it was created long long ago by Hollywood and the fashion industry. It was created much longer ago than that. We've had beauty standards for as long as humans have created art, and probably for as long as humans have existed. It's probably biological to a large degree, although the manifestation has changed over time. As with many of social media's deleterious effects, they hijack, amplify, and distort our natural inclinations for their own purposes.
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    > they hijack, amplify, and distort our natural inclinations for their own purposes Ironically it seems a totalitarian country like China is better equipped to deal with these things (see how they simply banned teens from gaming lately). The liberal democracies number one value is individual freedom; well it works out great most of the time but other times we are not that great ourselves in handling our lives and using our time constructively. Some of us get bored, addicted and obsessed under certain circumstances and I don't actually see an easy solution for that. Maybe social media should be age restricted like porn?
• andrew_ 5y ago
  Why not both?
• sebastianconcpt 5y ago
  If you are the designer of an environment that induces pathologic behavior in people is your fault or theirs? PS: Where is the people that use to proudly say "with great power comes great responsibility"?
  • falcolas 5y ago
    Where are they? Making salaries beyond most people’s imaginations. And many honestly believe that “just” enabling communication and engagement can’t be a bad thing.
• yunohn 5y ago
  > If it's not Facebook it's gonna be TikTok or something other platform. You are right that there will always be a different “drug” that exposes the same underlying societal issues. But given that FB+Insta are /algorithmically/ pushing these posts to users to increase engagement, it is their problem too.
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    Every company will push whatever it needs to maximize user attention.They are all out there selling ads to make money, I don't think the other players are different than Facebook.
    • yunohn 5y ago
      Please stop with the incessant whataboutism. Nobody is saying that this is not a general social media problem, just that this article is reporting on FB hiding crucial information.
      • joelbluminator 5y ago
        Quite a few people here argued that Facebook is somehow doing a special evil, so yes people are kinda saying that.
        • yunohn 5y ago
          You’re probably confused because you’re speaking quite generally, while most of us here are commenting after reading the article: > “They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others." "'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle."
• micromacrofoot 5y ago
  If you come home from work and your neighbor tells you that you accidentally ran over a stray cat as you left in the morning... do you just move on with your day and blame the cat... or do you start paying a little more attention so it doesn't happen again? The "fault" or "original sin" if you will, may lie with society, but Instagram and Facebook are capable of recognizing how their impact plays into that. At this point we know that they know. To be aware and not attempt to change their behavior is squarely unethical.
• supercanuck 5y ago
  Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? Yes.
• GeekyBear 5y ago
  Extremist conduct keeps people engaged longer, so they see more ads. Facebook/YouTube/Twitter all exploit the dark side of human nature. They've been doing it for so many years, that it's difficult to imagine that it's unintentional. >in Google’s effort to keep people on its video platform as long as possible, “its algorithm seems to have concluded that people are drawn to content that is more extreme than what they started with—or to incendiary content in general,” and adds, “It is also possible that YouTube’s recommender algorithm has a bias toward inflammatory content.” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/youtube-extremism-and-the-long-tail/555350/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/youtube...
  • raman162 5y ago
    These companies are always going to want to hold our attention but it's us at the end of the day who decide to give them our attention. I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control. In corporate america, it's hard for me to see any private owned corporation doing what's in best interest for the public versus their own pockets.
    • acdha 5y ago
      > I think as a society we need to prove that we are smarter than these companies and are capable of discipline and self-control. Kind of like how we said that the answer to alcohol & tobacco was to show self-control, not restrict sales and advertising? Expecting people to go one on one against enormous companies’ profit motives is a recipe for failures.
      • raman162 5y ago
        Except that this is not alcohol or tobacco, this is a digitized version of a free attention grabbing tabloid customized to the person's "interests" is always available to view at their desire. To me this makes it difficult to regulate as it's not purely based on the amount of consumption, it's based on the content you consume.
• Voloskaya 5y ago
  > Facebook just makes it super easy for people to become obsessed with something by "connecting" with it. “Just”? I would say this is plenty enough. And this is done willingly. So is it their fault ? Yes (not exclusively though)
• tgv 5y ago
  I've never really believed it was Hollywood or the fashion industry that created it. People know who's attractive in their circle. You compete with them. The magazines and ads have upped the ante, and facebook turned it into an addiction, but the mechanism was there all along, I think.
  • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    The mechanism are also there to prefer sugar and fat to healthier food, to become addicted to nicotine and opiates, and to do many other self-harming things. That doesn't mean giant corporations should allowed to exploit these mechanisms for profit.
    • tgv 5y ago
      Of course. If anything, it gives them a greater responsibility (and accountability), because it's such an easy trap.
    • rhines 5y ago
      Perhaps, but what would you propose? Do we take the approach we take with opiates, and ban companies from allowing users to upload images? Or do we take the approach we take with nicotine, and force companies to disclose the possible harms that can come from social interactions online? Or is there another approach you'd propose? Hopefully this doesn't come across too confrontational - I genuinely am curious as to what solutions are viable, and I do recognize the harm social media can cause. But it seems to me that as long as there exists any platform where we can freely post photos, we'll have toxic comparisons, and I don't see more education changing this - I don't think it's a rational choice that we make, to choose to compare ourselves to others.
• francisofascii 5y ago
  > As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power To be fair, humanity has adored these three traits throughout history. This adoration is somewhat built into us naturally. Our current culture certainly amplifies and capitalizes on it. Facebook is a big player within the current culture.
• raman162 5y ago
  I agree that we need to hold ourselves responsible for our actions. If it's not going to be facebook capitalizing on our behavior, it will be some other company. From the article it seems that most teens are aware that they have an unhealthy relationship with instagram. Tackling this issue in a sustainable way is something I believe most teens are capable of this with the right guidance.
  • TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    If we should hold ourselves responsible, so should companies. Tackling this issue in a sustainable way is something I believe most companies are capable of with the right guidance.
    • raman162 5y ago
      Morally I agree with you but the pessimist in me thinks that is unrealistic. I believe facebook is primarily motivated by their earnings. If an unhealthy behavior with instagram leads to more engagement, which means more ad sales, why would facebook interfere dramatically with that recipe? I won't be surprsied if they already A/B tested more "healthy" types of content with their feed and recognized it lead to a dip in engagement.
    • foolinaround 5y ago
      > If we should hold ourselves responsible, so should companies. Why "should" FB do so? It is doing the "right thing" for its stake holders. Of course, Ideally they should, but realistically not going to happen. It is us who need to protect our families because we are incentivized to do so. We have failed in protecting our own interests. It is no different from the drug dealers in our town, we warn our children of the dangers, take steps within our means to reduce our children's interactions, etc.
• wavefunction 5y ago
  Facebook was created to rate young women on their looks so... yes?
• altacc 5y ago
  I think it's equivalent to the tobacco industry. They didn't invent smoking tobacco but they built it into an industry. Once they were aware of the health effects of smoking was it their fault that they suppressed this information and continued to market their products to more people, including children?
  • wussboy 5y ago
    I think this is exactly what should and will happen to social media. We, as a culture, did very well without social media for millenia. The internet was fine without it too.
• bostonsre 5y ago
  Humans are easily addicted. It seems tantamount to selling drugs that are harmful to the minds of children. It is debatable about whether or not selling those drugs to adults is ok, but I'm not sure many people would be OK with selling them to children.
• jerf 5y ago
  "As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power.." Species, not culture. The evolutionary explanations for such are not hard to come up with just with a bit of thought, and not hard to confirm in the literature either. Which also means the species isn't about to stop admiring those things any time soon. Which means, rather than the "boil the ocean, then boil it a few more times again" plan of trying to somehow "fix" the species not to admire those things, one needs to pursue a plan of figuring out how to live within the existing constraints. Which takes you right back to old idea of one's rationality being a small human trying to corral the crazy elephant that it is riding to go where we want it to go. The trick is to learn how to prevent the crazy elephant from even seeing the undesirable stimuli, rather than trying to deal with what happens if it does after the fact. Unfortunately, explaining that to teenagers is a tough sell, especially when the alternative is tuning you out and going back to the highly-addictive social media.... even explaining it to adults can be a tough sell.
  • cellularmitosis 5y ago
    this is a much more compelling and eloquent way of saying "go touch grass"
• peakaboo 5y ago
  To me, it's obvious that "social" media is extreamly bad for people, and specially extra bad for young people who compare themselves with others a lot. If we figured too much TV was bad for people, "social" media is 100 times worse. How is it even possible to still feel good about yourself after spending time there? I don't use any of these services because I see them as obviously bad for our mental health.
  • joelbluminator 5y ago
    It might indeed be harmful for teens, or lets say overall unhelpful to them.but there are many examples where Facebook provides useful information, helps people stay in touch with family and friends or even date.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  In the 80's people insisted that fashion magazines and beauty pageants were "toxic" for teen girls, for the exact same reasons. Apparently acknowledging that beauty exists is harmful to some people's mental health. Since it's unlikely that we're ever going to convince everybody that there's no such thing as physical beauty, maybe we'd be better off working out ways to help people come to terms with not being at the pinnacle of it while still accepting that there can be and is such a pinnacle.
• handrous 5y ago
  The medium is the message. The message of the Web isn't looking so great, all around, I'd say.
• mandevil 5y ago
  If you read the original article, Facebook employees felt, based on their research, that Instagram was worse for teenage girls than Snapchat or Tik-Tok. "They came to the conclusion that some of the problems were specific to Instagram, and not social media more broadly. That is especially true concerning so-called social comparison, which is when people assess their own value in relation to the attractiveness, wealth and success of others." "'Social comparison is worse on Instagram,' states Facebook's deep dive into teen girl body-image issues in 2020, noting that TikTok, a short-video app, is grounded in performance, while users on Snapchat, a rival photo and video-sharing app, are sheltered by jokey filters that 'keep the focus on the face.' In contrast, Instagram focuses heavily on the body and lifestyle." So maybe they understand the dangers of Instagram better than you do?
• ggggtez 5y ago
  Implying that Facebook/Instagram isn't our culture. It's one and the same.
• smithza 5y ago
  It would be VERY different if Facebook was not a free, ad-driven service where their sole optimization is engagement. If Facebook was a subscription service where users had 'timelines' (remember that Facebook era?), we would not be seeing the psychological phenomenon we see to this magnitude. Same for Twitter, Insta, TikTok, etc.
• zubspace 5y ago
  Social media is neither good nor bad. It is a tool for communication. Most users benefit from social media and you can't condemn them for not questioning other aspects. Nevertheless, it is essential to question the intentions and procedures of the company behind it. I believe that external observers and institutions are required for this to happen and to spread awareness of things running afoul. However, like so many things, software can be used for good, as well as for evil purposes. The difficult task is to define that boundary without compromising the utility for most users. Related topics: Games, app stores, default browsers, etc.... How far does the state have to intervene? How much responsible behaviour can be expected from the user themselves?
  • freewilly1040 5y ago
    > Most users benefit from social media What evidence supports this? The story is about evidence that this is in fact not true. The software we are talking about is not dropped from the heavens. It is created by extremely large, powerful companies in pursuit of profit. If this software harms people, these companies are not neutral actors merely swept along with the tide of technology. > How far does the state have to intervene? How much responsible behaviour can be expected from the user themselves? Surely the most relevant question is how much responsible behavior can be expected from the companies themselves? They are the ones armed with research departments actually studying the effects of how their software affects people.
• Bishizel 5y ago
  I think it’s obviously a mix, however, an algorithm that maximizes purely for attention or time on site causes a lot of issues. Sometimes people are seeking something that is beneficial, and maximizing that is fine. Lots more times, people are mostly responding to angry posts, or falling down a conspiracy rabbit hole that they cannot critically think their way out of. Maximizing the attention of those people is clearly negative. So does society share some blame? Sure. Does an algorithm that maximizes some people into very bad places share some blame? Absolutely.
• ssdspoimdsjvv 5y ago
  Going back to the similarity between Facebook and the tobacco industry that the article points out, you could make the case that Phillip Morris is not to blame because people are naturally prone to nicotine addiction. I hope that at some point we as a society figure out that unregulated social media has the same damaging potential as tobacco, alcohol or gambling, especially for kids.
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago
  There are quotes from internal research in the article that Instagram is worse than the alternatives like tiktok. And internal researchers are quoted as saying that this research gets internal pushback because it’s standing between people and their bonuses. Those bonuses aren’t for letting culture play out; they’re for things that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. It seems super clear that it’s an Instagram problem. A great example is the girl who searched for exercise tips once and then her feed was algorithmically focused on weight loss tips and the like afterwards, which is not a cultural issue.
• chmod600 5y ago
  "As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power." Don't you mean "as a species"? Culture is one of the few tools we have to overcome these natural inclinations. Religion, too.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  As humans we adore beauty and power* FTFY Most issues are human issues. Just because it is a human issue does not make it alright to exploit it at scale with such invasiveness. Especially since they know that is it harmful. Sounds like cigarettes marketed to children. It's not a cigarette company issue it's a human issue after all! We are not liable.
• Barrin92 5y ago
  >Is it Facebook / Instagram's fault or us as a culture? As a culture we adore beauty, wealth, power...Facebook seems to be just a platform where our natural desires can have a play Yes it is Facebook's or Instagram's fault. We are endowed with our natural desires (which are even more fundamentally biological than cultural in this case), that we have no choice over, but we have the choice to remove bad technologies from our societies. This is in fact the only choice we have. You can't cure people of their desire for power or beauty, but you can destroy the tools that amplify the worst instincts we have.