3 ms·

Remember the pro-cigarette media campaigning of the 90s and 00s?

by rco8786 4y ago

SoftTalker 4y ago
No. Can you point to some history on this?
- hn_version_0023 4y ago
  https://apnews.com/article/ce9e3e9c7595bae5034193112a75bb7e https://apnews.com/article/ce9e3e9c7595bae5034193112a75bb7e
  - anoonmoose 4y ago
    That's about a '97 settlement of a '91 lawsuit...don't see how it is relevant to a discussion of "90s and 00s" media.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      Parent is drawing a parallel. We collectively agreed that the tobacco industry played a role in the consequences of tobacco addiction by marketing to minors. The parallel being drawn here is that social media platforms, being presented with the consequences of their products ie: teen mental health declines with use, are complicit in those consequences at some point in the value chain, either by marketing, product design, accessibility, etc. If the assumptions hold, then the conclusions are sound and valid. There's two ways to disagree with this. Either the assumptions are not valid, or the argument is not sound.
api 4y ago
I've been calling social media companies "the tobacco companies of the mind" for quite a while. The effects are most obvious with teens but I see this stuff as bad all around. Social media algorithms have really driven today's insane political polarization, and there's lots of examples of adults having their brains sucked out by social media rabbit holes. Here's one pile of examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that if you connect a bunch of people together and then artificially prioritize content to maximize engagement, the result is unbelievably toxic.
- anoonmoose 4y ago
  conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists existed long before social media did.
  - api 4y ago
    That's not the point. Social media algorithms amplify every form of madness and toxicity, because it draws people in and gets their attention. Crazy sorts of conspiracy theories, radical ideologies, cults, memetic mental illness, you name it... the more toxic it is the more it drives engagement. This phenomenon isn't fundamentally new. Media has understood "if it bleeds it leads" for hundreds of years. What I think is new is how tight the optimization loop is, how personalized it is, and the way crowdsourcing the inputs leads to a firehose of content that isn't even attempting to be accurate or sane. It's a machine that automatically curates randomly sourced content for maximum inflammatory response and maximum addictiveness. Here's another pile of examples unrelated to conspiracy theories: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/ This is what you get when you run the recommendation algorithm on random crowdsourced kids' content.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]

Remember the pro-cigarette media campaigning of the 90s and 00s?

SoftTalker 4y ago

No. Can you point to some history on this?

hn_version_0023 4y ago
https://apnews.com/article/ce9e3e9c7595bae5034193112a75bb7e https://apnews.com/article/ce9e3e9c7595bae5034193112a75bb7e
- anoonmoose 4y ago
  That's about a '97 settlement of a '91 lawsuit...don't see how it is relevant to a discussion of "90s and 00s" media.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    Parent is drawing a parallel. We collectively agreed that the tobacco industry played a role in the consequences of tobacco addiction by marketing to minors. The parallel being drawn here is that social media platforms, being presented with the consequences of their products ie: teen mental health declines with use, are complicit in those consequences at some point in the value chain, either by marketing, product design, accessibility, etc. If the assumptions hold, then the conclusions are sound and valid. There's two ways to disagree with this. Either the assumptions are not valid, or the argument is not sound.

api 4y ago

I've been calling social media companies "the tobacco companies of the mind" for quite a while. The effects are most obvious with teens but I see this stuff as bad all around. Social media algorithms have really driven today's insane political polarization, and there's lots of examples of adults having their brains sucked out by social media rabbit holes. Here's one pile of examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/ It seems pretty obvious to me at this point that if you connect a bunch of people together and then artificially prioritize content to maximize engagement, the result is unbelievably toxic.

anoonmoose 4y ago
conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists existed long before social media did.
- api 4y ago
  That's not the point. Social media algorithms amplify every form of madness and toxicity, because it draws people in and gets their attention. Crazy sorts of conspiracy theories, radical ideologies, cults, memetic mental illness, you name it... the more toxic it is the more it drives engagement. This phenomenon isn't fundamentally new. Media has understood "if it bleeds it leads" for hundreds of years. What I think is new is how tight the optimization loop is, how personalized it is, and the way crowdsourcing the inputs leads to a firehose of content that isn't even attempting to be accurate or sane. It's a machine that automatically curates randomly sourced content for maximum inflammatory response and maximum addictiveness. Here's another pile of examples unrelated to conspiracy theories: https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ElsaGate/ This is what you get when you run the recommendation algorithm on random crowdsourced kids' content.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]