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Ex-Meta employee says his warnings of Instagram's harm to teens were ignored
- CSMastermind 3y agoRecently I've been getting shown lots of deepfake ads on Facebook. I report them but then I get back a message saying that they don't violate the advertising guidelines. There's no option to report it specifically for being a deepfake. I imagine this is a similar problem that Meta won't address until they're forced to.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lozenge 3y agoIs it a fake of a recognisable person? What are they endorsing/promoting? I don't see the issue with using AI to generate video ads. Sure, it makes it unreasonably cheap to produce video. But the cost of displaying the ad is the main cost anyway.
- greenthrow 3y agoThe use of the term deepfake implies it was of a recognizable person. That's illegal.
- generic92034 3y agoAnd if that person has agreed, getting paid for the permission? It would be way more expensive to get $celebrity to have a shooting in a remote location compared to calling them/their agent for a permission. And the result could be comparable.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CSMastermind 3y agoYes: Joe Rogan, Donald Trump, and Mr. Beast are the ones I've reported so far. One of them was a pill that supposedly grew your penis, another was for some conspiracy theory site, and one was just a straight up phishing/scam attempt. Here's one of the products: https://thepatriotsdigest.co/code-red-blackout https://thepatriotsdigest.co/code-red-blackout Here's one of the ads: https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=political_and_issue_ads&country=US&id=120201172860990661&view_all_page_id=111727898680493&search_type=page&media_type=all https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t... Apparently all of these were somehow reviewed by a human and determined to be within Facebooks guidelines.
- willsmith72 3y agoYeah don't these all supposedly go through a review process? How does that go through? A team of facebook engineers could write an AI to at least flag that stuff for manual review in under a day.
- hanniabu 3y agoThe review process is just checking whether they're a paying customer
- technion 3y agoAt one point I tested that theory by literally creating a paid Facebook ad for getcryptolocker.com, advertising that getting your data held to ransom was just one click away. I had no problems getting the ad published and Facebook alleges I had a reasonable amount of clicks.
- ToucanLoucan 3y agoI commented a few weeks ago on something saying this was exactly what generated video was going to really take off in. Now you don't even need to pay the minimum wage for a struggling actor to endorse whatever thing you're trying to make: now you can just generate someone doing it. Or you know, a famous person. Personally, going forward, this is going to be an automatic disqualification for me for any product or service. If you can't even be fucked to hire an actor, I'd imagine you can't be fucked to build whatever it is correctly either. No sale. I don't assume this will be a tectonic shift in my consumption habits anyway. I don't buy shit from instagram ads and the like and I have a feeling that's where this is going to really take off, but still.
- mewpmewp2 3y agoOn the other hand, maybe if they are efficient with their ads, perhaps they have more budget to put into the product instead of the marketing. I would rather buy a product that put 90% of the budget into the product and 10% to ads as opposed to 50%/50%. But I'm sure, they will first A/B test this with real actors to see what the results are before they decide on the course.
- ToucanLoucan 3y agoThe problem is there's no way to differentiate on the consumer's end from well-prioritized internal spend while responsibly assuring quality where required, and just being a cheap ass business operator who's nickel and dimeing his own products into shit. It feels like everywhere you look online is nothing but scams and grift now. Everyone out to fleece everyone else with minimum viable products. Nonsense letter combinations masquerading as brands all over Amazon hocking aliexpress garbage with poorly photoshopped product images comes to mind immediately.
- lawlessone 3y agoI found an entire company of 50 or so fake people called "AI FIRE" All the same bio. All generated images. Reported multiple profiles as fake LinkedIn as fake. I only got halfway before it stopped letting me report. Now LinkedIn doesn't let me report things anymore. It just gives me an "unknown error" message. *AI FIRE, i got it backwards. All the fake accounts remain. Because it's not in LinkedIns interest to reduce their usercount.
- jfim 3y agoDo you have a link to the company? I'll see if I can report it as a LNKD alumni.
- lawlessone 3y agoSure, check the people images and bios https://www.linkedin.com/company/aifireco/people/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/aifireco/people/
- lawlessone 3y agoI am not 100% certain, but I think your report worked.
- jfim 3y agoSomeone looked into it, yes. Thanks for reporting this!
- gravitate 3y ago> There's no option to report it specifically for being a deepfake FB/Instagram is fueled by AI. It makes them money. They're not going to see this kind of 'pink slime' content as being a hindrance.
- k12sosse 3y agoBACK IN MY DAY.. the flip phone, t9 input, 320x200 screens were pinnacle of mobile tech, and I longed for a future which started in 2006 with the release of the iPhone. Now, as a dad of a 15 year old girl, I am crushed that the ecosystem our generations helped build - with good intentions - rules her and her friends life from waking hour to doomscrolling pre-bed ritual. It doesn't help being in a shared custody situation. Where my voice was ignored when it came to introducing the device to her in the first place (aware of some of the dangers that lurked at that time). My ex (her mom) are in a very amicable post-relationship, but we just couldn't agree on the "own phone" thing. Too early. After she's driving age. If she can't legally enlist she shouldn't be connected to the hyperverse. She can't decide what's right and smart, just what she thinks is right and smart. One very important thought is to remember that these low life-experience minors just don't have the experience and mental faculty to deal with low quality bait the same way as those who have come before her and grew up seeing the dastardly intentions of people. They are still very naive, and the power imbalance of bullshit detection. Anyway, I don't think I have a point here except to say I am ashamed for my role in bringing the pervasive mobile device reality to fruition, no matter how small a role I may have played in it. At least how it stands, now. At this point I wish there were alternatives to "the internet" that work alongside and identically to it, but with more controls and regulation to protect minors. That's not to say there shouldn't be a regular internet coexisting, but one where our devices can choose what network to operate near identically on, but has more accountability. More than one kid in our large district has been catfished and had their nudes leak and criminal investigations that lead nowhere. One kid has tried to start a fight online and wound up paralyzed. These are sub-16 aged minors playing hardball with the pros.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoMeta seem to especially profit off the mental exploitation of our elderly parents, and our young teens. Evil sandwich with a pissed-off GenX inbetween.
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- phyrex 3y agoI don’t know why you’re being downvoted. This is literally the core complaint in the article.
- Eumenes 3y ago[flagged]
- jvanderbot 3y agoIt's probably the caps and sarcasm. Good top level comments usually have better discussions. Just to address the comments directly, I think the issue isn't that someone was mean online. The issue is that the platform is designed to keep impressionable minds engaged at any cost, including their mental health. It's effectively Las Vegas in their pocket, and we wouldn't let 14 year olds loose in Vegas. We have rules for that which we all agreed to pass as laws. The discussion is at what level and what kind of rules we might need.
- phyrex 3y agoThat’s a separate discussion, and one worth having, but the juxtaposition between the dramatic title and what actually happened is ridiculous
- sampli 3y agoYeah, maybe the parents should actually parent instead of asking the government to. If you don’t like what the internet says, don’t let your kid use it?
- maxerickson 3y agoThe proposal in the article is to require the companies to track and publish what sort of platform they run. That sounds like a pretty valuable tool for parents. There has to be some way to work towards a society where that guy keeps his mouth shut instead of being a dick to a teenager that was just having fun.
- purpleblue 3y agoCan't all the social media companies put comments through a sentiment analyzer before they post, and determine if the poster is writing something anti-social? "Get back in the kitchen" should easily be analyzable through sentiment analysis, and the poster should just get banned. Stuff like this should be low-hanging fruit in my opinion, given what AI can do these days.
- ValleZ 3y agoNext step is to ban your google account when you send something that can be classified as not positive, right?
- dudul 3y agoCan't tell if the suggestion is serious but I'll bite: how do you distinguish from jokes/sarcasm? Not everybody knows how to use /s or jk.
- alwaysrunning 3y agoOr bothers too. This sounds like something I would say to my wife, who doesn't cook and I usually put the dishes away, but bc it's an inside joke between us and close family/friends I would get banned for it.
- tetromino_ 3y agoYour post contains the substring "get back in the kitchen". Would you expect to be banned for it? If your immediate reaction is along the lines of "surely sentiment analysis will analyze all the other words in my post" - consider what happens if your post is split into multiple posts. Some of which, perhaps, are images or gifs rather than words. And some of which refer to pre-existing context between the two people communicating and of which the sentiment analysis cannot possibly be aware.
- pydry 3y agoHonestly I dont even think humans are that good at it sometimes. Anyway, I should get back in the kitchen. I have vegetables to chop.
- Aerbil313 3y agoEveryone, read the articles in Jonathan Haidt’s substack. He has done an enormous amount of amazing work on the topic. Results speak for themselves: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/13-explanations-mental-health-crisis https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/13-explanations-mental-...
- enterprise_cog 3y agoI’ve seen this linked a few times now. It seems to be overly reductive and blames a large societal issue on a singular thing. Which is an immediate red flag as far as ideas go. They also commit errors by confusing correlation and causation. No mention of the continued decline of material conditions in the west or the growing wealth disparity, for instance. They bring up unemployment rates but then say it can’t be the economy cause unemployment went down, ignoring how unemployment classification changed after 08, and they don’t even mention what unemployment stat they used. Not to mention I can easily say they got work but it was trash and didn’t pay well. Or their parents struggled to make ends meet, were not there for the kids, and they lacked proper parenting. So many other possible explanations. But, nope, it’s all social media and phones.
- johnwheeler 3y agoTeens are a big deal. I don’t have any input. But for adults, as status seeking individuals we’ve been given a platform that allows us to efficiently vie for status against one another. The innuendos, humble bragging, etc. how is that any different than driving a Porsche down the freeway? Is social media more pervasive, gamified, and convenient? Is that why it’s bad? I subscribe to the idea that social media is society holding a mirror up to itself. It is certainly divisive, but if all that had ever prevented that division is this rapid dissemination we have now, is that really the platforms’ faults? It’s just more raw, real, fake, and everything people are anyway.
- prepend 3y ago1,000 people won’t see you driving your Porsche. Forever on your profile. It takes the normal signaling and amplifies it. I mean, some news is good. News all the time makes people sick. Seeing your neighbors car every once in a while is ok. Seeing it every day and the cars of everyone you know stresses people out. There’s data showing that this stuff makes people have poorer mental health. Especially teens. And especially teen girls. It’s similar, but just worse.
- tester756 3y ago>And especially teen girls. Are boys less affected by this?
- escapedmoose 3y agoFrom what I’ve read, quite a few studies have shown a correlation between social media use and mental disorders in teen girls that isn’t nearly as pronounced for boys.
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- musicale 3y agoSinclair's law probably applies.
- preciousoo 3y agoA few days I was thinking about the implications of the fact that Zuckerberg doesn’t allow his children to use social media. When I hear that a franchise owner doesn’t allow their kids to eat at said franchise it raises alarms. And yet…
- phyrex 3y agoHave you seen what people say about Zuckerberg on social media?
- pfannkuchen 3y agoLooks like his kids are under 10. Do any meta products target that age group? YouTube seems much worse in that regard, wonder what Sundar and Susan (or whoever the new guy is) let their kids do.
- Uptrenda 3y agoConcerned parent absolutely flabbergasted that non-restricted Internet use lead to his children experiencing bad actors online; Responds by yelling at the company 'der derka DER!!! derka derka DER muh CHILDREN!!!' But Ned, what about the children? Now the parent is angry and it doesn't know why! Should they be a better parent? No, it's someone's fault.