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I found this article insightful: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/children-nicotine-zyn-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/c
by 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
I found this article insightful: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/children-nicotine-zyn-social-media.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/12/opinion/children-nicotine...
tl;dr: marketing via social media influencers bypasses advertising regulation allowing these to be advertised to children.
> So how are kids learning about these little pouches? Greyson Imm, an 18-year-old high school student in Prairie Village, Kan., said he was 17 when Zyn videos started appearing on his TikTok feed. The videos multiplied through the spring, when they were appearing almost daily. “Nobody had heard about Zyn until very early 2023,” he said. Now, a “lot of high schoolers have been using Zyn. It’s really taken off, at least in our community.”
> It’s a world that’s invisible to us, because when we log on to our social media, we don’t see what they see. Thanks to algorithms and ad targeting, I see videos about the best lawn fertilizer and wrinkle laser masks, while Ian is being fed reviews of flavored vape pens and beautiful women livestreaming themselves gambling crypto and urging him to gamble, too.
- hammock 3y agoWhat evidence do you/NY Times have that Zyn was paying 17 year olds to market on social media? Call me skeptical
- conradev 3y agoThere doesn’t need to be any link between Zyn and the viral social marketing for it to be a serious problem in need of fixing It’s actually harder to solve the more decentralized it is: if any creator can make money off of a viral video and nicotine vapes go viral, that’s just tough At the end of the day, teenagers shouldn’t see videos promoting Zyn every day, but there is money to be made in doing it, even from the engagement alone.
- hammock 3y agoThat’s an interesting argument. Took me two reads to get it but you might have won me over
- conradev 3y agoI’m happy to hear it! I only reframed the problem, though, and didn’t really propose a solution, which is often the part that people disagree with The centralized player with the most control over this is the viral platforms themselves. If they’re smart, they’re working on a self-regulating solution to this problem before lawmakers get around to it. Things like tagging videos about nicotine and demonetizing them or tweaking the algorithm to make sure only those of legal age can see them. Alcohol and nicotine advertising is already heavily regulated on TV, where targeting is impossible and minors watch it
- theptip 3y agoJuul was found do be doing exactly this, so your priors should now be that a spike in child usage of nicotine products is plausibly due to targeted advertising.
- hammock 3y agoMy next door neighbor murdered his wife and went to jail. Should my wife be worried about me?
- theptip 3y agoMore worried than the counterfactual world where there is no evidence of husbands murdering wives at elevated rates vs. the base population risk? Of course. But the differences in base rates make this a spurious analogy. A substantial portion of vape companies (by market cap) engaged in direct marketing to minors, we are not talking about unlikely scenarios such as murder.