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Uhm a cigarette you cannot change the base ingredient of, it's tobacco. A cig by definition burns the carcinogen tobacco. A site you can specify certain requir

Uhm a cigarette you cannot change the base ingredient of, it's tobacco. A cig by definition burns the carcinogen tobacco. A site you can specify certain requirements like no doom scrolling or requirements like PUBLISH YOUR ALGORITHMS. Why go full California with another banner? People will ignore it and you will have done nothing of substance.

VikingCoder 5y ago
Sorry for being pedantic, but you can absolutely change the ingredients of a cigarette. There's a ton besides the tobacco. And you can breed different strains of tobacco to have more or less of some chemical.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  My point was a cig always causes cancer because it burns tobacco, so you need a banner to warn users. A social media behemoth does not need to use doom scrolling or private algorithms to be a social media site.
  - asdff 5y ago
    My nintendo DS from 15 years ago gave me an eye strain warning every time i started it up and it doesn't always cause eye strain, only misuse does and I know that thanks to the informative banner.
    - jmcgough 5y ago
      I love that Nintendo is very aware of the potential negative effects of their products and games and tries to inform users / mitigate. Even when it comes to encouraging positive play between users - in the new Pokemon MOBA (games known for their toxicity) there's no text chat, only communication with a few emotes you can show. Some of their decisions make for arguably worse games for "hardcore" gamers (like the way they rank users in smash, or how they focus on more casual-style in-game tournaments or make matchmaking harder) but they sacrifice that in favor of a more positive general experience, especially important since children play their games.
      - asdff 5y ago
        I thought pictochat was great too and a lot of fun. They could have opened it up and made it into a global network, but the beauty is that it operates on local networks so it was more of an in person social network, plus no way for advertisers and commercial companies to break in.
        hunterb123 5y ago
        I remember pictochat, so many dicks and graphic drawings sent to each other in JR high. The sensitive world today would have had a field day with that. This part of the thread went pretty off topic but I like it! Pictochat was certainly ahead of its time, wish we stuck to things like that.
  - mpalczewski 5y ago
    Smoking was happening in the 1800's. Lung Cancer rates didn't shoot up until the 1900's, it was rather rare. This is around the same time that tobacco companies figured out they could soak tobacco in ammonia. This allowed for inhalation into the lungs (e.g. it sucks to inflate a cigar deep into your lungs). It also made the cigarettes much more addicting, so people smoked way more and inhaled into the lungs. That's about when lung cancer stopped being so rare. Yes, cig's cause cancer, but to say that it's because it burns tobacco is missing a big part of the story.
    - sumedh 5y ago
      > Smoking was happening in the 1800's. Lung Cancer rates didn't shoot up until the 1900's, Were they even looking for lung cancers when people died back in 1800's?
    - asdff 5y ago
      That was probably because smoking was not common outside of wealthy men during the 1800s. It was not widespread at all among most of the public until after the world wars thanks to mass produced cigarettes (which weren't around until the late 1800s) now being added to rations. Smoking rate after WWI increased 350% and was high ever since. US government didn't stop issuing cigarette rations to soldiers until 1975. Lung cancer rates have followed lock step with smoking rates, its not really that smoking suddenly became harmful. It always was, it just wasn't common to smoke and even among those who did back in those days, it wasn't common to smoke very much at all and certainly not around the clock (kinda like hookah users today).
RajT88 5y ago
> Uhm a cigarette you cannot change the ingredients of, it's tobacco. You can soak the tobacco in solution which contains additives, such as more nicotine. Which is exactly what cigarette companies have done in the past (and not just the tobacco, the filters, and the paper as well). The parallel here is filling people's feeds with divisive political news and posts, even when they have tried to opt out.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  The point is tobacco itself is a carcinogen, you cannot make a cig not cause cancer because it needs to burn tobacco at least. A social media website does not need doom scrolling or private algorithms for the feed, you can change how it works instead of adding a useless banner.
  - prancer_or_vix 5y ago
    2 questions: 1) What would you expect be implemented to reduce/eradicate doom scrolling? 2) What would making the algorithm public do for us? I'm not an ML engineer, but presumably their algorithm isn't just an algebraic equation where x is how toxic the post is and y is how inflammatory it is and y is the number of kids who will think harder about suicide because of the post. Maybe I'm just super naive and that _is_ how Facebook made their algorithm, but my understanding is that the algorithm is a little more of a black-box and is a little abstract. How is a lay-person supposed to evaluate something like that?
    - hunterb123 5y ago
      I don't want them to do anything regarding doom scrolling, it was just an example and came from another user. I do want them to publish their algorithms and moderation logs so we have insight on how they are serving and moderating content. I don't care about organic user content, I do care if FB is pulling the strings to make it either more salacious or being biased in one way or another. I also care if they are banning certain users or content but not others.
    - iamstupidsimple 5y ago
naravara 5y ago
Moreover, warnings are useless if people can't vote with their feet. So if you want to actually affect change in the dynamics of the market you need to make services compete on quality and value to the customer rather than engaging in a scramble to accrue insurmountable network effects and lock-in. That means mandates for data interoperability. Sadly, I have no idea how to implement that in a way that doesn't utterly stifle innovation by ossifying what sorts of data models social media is allowed to have. But at the very least we could create a sort of interoperability minimum that prevents you from locking up things like photo albums or peoples' "social graphs." Over the longer term I'd like to see some kind of disentanglement of the protocols, standards, and data models from the front-end clients. It's obviously a lot more complicated now, but in the same way that you could access AIM, ICQ, GChat, and a bunch of other stuff from a variety of chat clients it would be good to be able to do this with everything social. Hell, ActivityPub basically tries to do this now so it's not impossible.
erosenbe0 5y ago
What is the appropriate middle though? Think about alcohol culture. Should we ban beer commercials on TV? Only allow beer commercials with talking frogs rather than attractive young people having fun?
- munk-a 5y ago
  I'm honestly baffled over why beer commercials are considered socially acceptable - but then again I think that advertising (in our modern interconnected world) only ever serves to drive overconsumption. If you want a beer - you go to the bevy and pick out a beer you'd enjoy... if I'm watching TV and the TV tries to make me want a beer - that's not a good thing. Good advertising[1] is limited to making sure your product is visible in comparison to competitors - having shiny cereal boxes is something I find pretty meh, but in the cereal aisle you're dealing with someone who wants to buy some kind of cereal and you're trying to convince them to buy yours. TV Advertising drives up demand for products which, by definition, means we're consuming more of that product than we otherwise would... that's great for business... and it's also great for the obesity epidemic. 1. What I'd consider to be ethical advertising, but that's like my opinion man.
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    It's fine, only piss water beers advertise anyway.
  - erosenbe0 5y ago
    I agree but I'd imagine the beer companies would argue with your substitution standard for advertising that any drink or even consumable product you can put in your mouth is a competing product. So then no drink commercials, and you've reduced the capital available to fund TV, and you have a domino elimination of economic activity. I mean, ideally we could allocate all the capital we put into manufacturing, selling, and consuming beer into fitness or math education or something more harmonious with wellness and human achievement; but hey, plenty of great scientists and inventors love beer.

VikingCoder 5y ago

Sorry for being pedantic, but you can absolutely change the ingredients of a cigarette. There's a ton besides the tobacco. And you can breed different strains of tobacco to have more or less of some chemical.

hunterb123 5y ago
My point was a cig always causes cancer because it burns tobacco, so you need a banner to warn users. A social media behemoth does not need to use doom scrolling or private algorithms to be a social media site.
- asdff 5y ago
  My nintendo DS from 15 years ago gave me an eye strain warning every time i started it up and it doesn't always cause eye strain, only misuse does and I know that thanks to the informative banner.
  - jmcgough 5y ago
    I love that Nintendo is very aware of the potential negative effects of their products and games and tries to inform users / mitigate. Even when it comes to encouraging positive play between users - in the new Pokemon MOBA (games known for their toxicity) there's no text chat, only communication with a few emotes you can show. Some of their decisions make for arguably worse games for "hardcore" gamers (like the way they rank users in smash, or how they focus on more casual-style in-game tournaments or make matchmaking harder) but they sacrifice that in favor of a more positive general experience, especially important since children play their games.
    - asdff 5y ago
      I thought pictochat was great too and a lot of fun. They could have opened it up and made it into a global network, but the beauty is that it operates on local networks so it was more of an in person social network, plus no way for advertisers and commercial companies to break in.
      - hunterb123 5y ago
        I remember pictochat, so many dicks and graphic drawings sent to each other in JR high. The sensitive world today would have had a field day with that. This part of the thread went pretty off topic but I like it! Pictochat was certainly ahead of its time, wish we stuck to things like that.
- mpalczewski 5y ago
  Smoking was happening in the 1800's. Lung Cancer rates didn't shoot up until the 1900's, it was rather rare. This is around the same time that tobacco companies figured out they could soak tobacco in ammonia. This allowed for inhalation into the lungs (e.g. it sucks to inflate a cigar deep into your lungs). It also made the cigarettes much more addicting, so people smoked way more and inhaled into the lungs. That's about when lung cancer stopped being so rare. Yes, cig's cause cancer, but to say that it's because it burns tobacco is missing a big part of the story.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > Smoking was happening in the 1800's. Lung Cancer rates didn't shoot up until the 1900's, Were they even looking for lung cancers when people died back in 1800's?
  - asdff 5y ago
    That was probably because smoking was not common outside of wealthy men during the 1800s. It was not widespread at all among most of the public until after the world wars thanks to mass produced cigarettes (which weren't around until the late 1800s) now being added to rations. Smoking rate after WWI increased 350% and was high ever since. US government didn't stop issuing cigarette rations to soldiers until 1975. Lung cancer rates have followed lock step with smoking rates, its not really that smoking suddenly became harmful. It always was, it just wasn't common to smoke and even among those who did back in those days, it wasn't common to smoke very much at all and certainly not around the clock (kinda like hookah users today).

RajT88 5y ago

> Uhm a cigarette you cannot change the ingredients of, it's tobacco. You can soak the tobacco in solution which contains additives, such as more nicotine. Which is exactly what cigarette companies have done in the past (and not just the tobacco, the filters, and the paper as well). The parallel here is filling people's feeds with divisive political news and posts, even when they have tried to opt out.

hunterb123 5y ago
The point is tobacco itself is a carcinogen, you cannot make a cig not cause cancer because it needs to burn tobacco at least. A social media website does not need doom scrolling or private algorithms for the feed, you can change how it works instead of adding a useless banner.
- prancer_or_vix 5y ago
  2 questions: 1) What would you expect be implemented to reduce/eradicate doom scrolling? 2) What would making the algorithm public do for us? I'm not an ML engineer, but presumably their algorithm isn't just an algebraic equation where x is how toxic the post is and y is how inflammatory it is and y is the number of kids who will think harder about suicide because of the post. Maybe I'm just super naive and that _is_ how Facebook made their algorithm, but my understanding is that the algorithm is a little more of a black-box and is a little abstract. How is a lay-person supposed to evaluate something like that?
  - hunterb123 5y ago
    I don't want them to do anything regarding doom scrolling, it was just an example and came from another user. I do want them to publish their algorithms and moderation logs so we have insight on how they are serving and moderating content. I don't care about organic user content, I do care if FB is pulling the strings to make it either more salacious or being biased in one way or another. I also care if they are banning certain users or content but not others.
  - iamstupidsimple 5y ago

naravara 5y ago

Moreover, warnings are useless if people can't vote with their feet. So if you want to actually affect change in the dynamics of the market you need to make services compete on quality and value to the customer rather than engaging in a scramble to accrue insurmountable network effects and lock-in. That means mandates for data interoperability. Sadly, I have no idea how to implement that in a way that doesn't utterly stifle innovation by ossifying what sorts of data models social media is allowed to have. But at the very least we could create a sort of interoperability minimum that prevents you from locking up things like photo albums or peoples' "social graphs." Over the longer term I'd like to see some kind of disentanglement of the protocols, standards, and data models from the front-end clients. It's obviously a lot more complicated now, but in the same way that you could access AIM, ICQ, GChat, and a bunch of other stuff from a variety of chat clients it would be good to be able to do this with everything social. Hell, ActivityPub basically tries to do this now so it's not impossible.

erosenbe0 5y ago

What is the appropriate middle though? Think about alcohol culture. Should we ban beer commercials on TV? Only allow beer commercials with talking frogs rather than attractive young people having fun?

munk-a 5y ago
I'm honestly baffled over why beer commercials are considered socially acceptable - but then again I think that advertising (in our modern interconnected world) only ever serves to drive overconsumption. If you want a beer - you go to the bevy and pick out a beer you'd enjoy... if I'm watching TV and the TV tries to make me want a beer - that's not a good thing. Good advertising[1] is limited to making sure your product is visible in comparison to competitors - having shiny cereal boxes is something I find pretty meh, but in the cereal aisle you're dealing with someone who wants to buy some kind of cereal and you're trying to convince them to buy yours. TV Advertising drives up demand for products which, by definition, means we're consuming more of that product than we otherwise would... that's great for business... and it's also great for the obesity epidemic. 1. What I'd consider to be ethical advertising, but that's like my opinion man.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  It's fine, only piss water beers advertise anyway.
- erosenbe0 5y ago
  I agree but I'd imagine the beer companies would argue with your substitution standard for advertising that any drink or even consumable product you can put in your mouth is a competing product. So then no drink commercials, and you've reduced the capital available to fund TV, and you have a domino elimination of economic activity. I mean, ideally we could allocate all the capital we put into manufacturing, selling, and consuming beer into fitness or math education or something more harmonious with wellness and human achievement; but hey, plenty of great scientists and inventors love beer.