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I agree that content consumed by facebook/instagram can be addictive. But I don't think this is unique to them, I think youtube (my personal weakness), netflix,

I agree that content consumed by facebook/instagram can be addictive. But I don't think this is unique to them, I think youtube (my personal weakness), netflix, television, video-games and movies all fall into this category. The particular problem with instagram is that it encourages people to post the "highlights" of their life. Therefore people end up consuming a super un-real version of what life is and end up depressed when they compare it to their own. This issue is not a problem of an algorithm or moderation but of one's personal expectations. There are tons of great examples where algorithmic feed is useful, particularly when your feed is related to activities such as cooking, music and exercise. In theory I think the concept of forcing the companies to behave a certain way is ideal but I'm still unsure of what type of legislation could be put in place to address the problem in the article.

acdha 5y ago
Yes, I don't think anyone is saying that this is unique to Facebook — they just get the most attention by virtue of popularity and profitability, and having lied about what they knew and when in various related areas. Ignoring the question of the exact effects of all of the political use of social media in the previous decade, that simply happening to the degree it did guaranteed that they'd get a lot more scrutiny. I definitely agree that there isn't a proven solution for this problem — that's normal for major technological changes. We saw the same thing with printed books, magazines, and newspapers; radio; TV; the internet; etc. — not to mention things like cars which weren't communications technologies but definitely had major impacts on society. I think the best thing we can get right now is more of the data companies like Facebook and Google tend to avoid sharing, especially after various governments experiment with rules and it becomes possible to see what does and doesn't work.

acdha 5y ago

Yes, I don't think anyone is saying that this is unique to Facebook — they just get the most attention by virtue of popularity and profitability, and having lied about what they knew and when in various related areas. Ignoring the question of the exact effects of all of the political use of social media in the previous decade, that simply happening to the degree it did guaranteed that they'd get a lot more scrutiny. I definitely agree that there isn't a proven solution for this problem — that's normal for major technological changes. We saw the same thing with printed books, magazines, and newspapers; radio; TV; the internet; etc. — not to mention things like cars which weren't communications technologies but definitely had major impacts on society. I think the best thing we can get right now is more of the data companies like Facebook and Google tend to avoid sharing, especially after various governments experiment with rules and it becomes possible to see what does and doesn't work.