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I met a lady once, we were in a line at DefCon. She worked on these and was quite concerned that they'd end up on the heads of children, feeding content-reacti
by __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
I met a lady once, we were in a line at DefCon. She worked on these and was quite concerned that they'd end up on the heads of children, feeding content-reaction biometrics about those children to people who would then use that data to manipulate those children in harmful ways.
I'm curious if people think that that's worth worrying about, or if the idea of optimizing ad placement based on whether it makes your pupils respond in the desired way is the kind of thing that's only effective in sci-fi.
- snackjack_38294 2y agowe need protections for children. An argument can be made that adults are responsible for their data, perhaps protections here are also needed, but children can't be held responsible. I would not want my children's data being harvested for some multimodal model; these days even toothbrushes are iot devices. Where will the data harvesting begin to end?
- cooper_ganglia 2y agoWe already put a phone in their hands by kindergarten... I think any kind of flashy tech in front of kid's eyes is almost always bad.
- afh1 2y agoSpeak for yourself.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoI, for one, agree strongly with the OP.
- salemh 2y ago[dead]
- aniviacat 2y agoI think that's a realistic scenario. They will certainly attempt to use the data accessible by XR devices to make ads more effective. Actually succeeding at doing so seems realistic to me, too. Whether the legislature has notably limited data collection for ad purposes by then - probably not.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- twoodfin 2y agoI don’t think ad placement for children should be the primary concern. Unless I’m misunderstanding the current state of the technology, it’s possible today with a little effort to put my biometrics in a feedback loop with (say) GPT-4o, and use those measurements to rapidly produce and refine an increasingly horrifying series of images, personalized to my lizard brain reactions. That’s gross, but the same technique could be applied more subtly. Imagine the worst things people suspect about TikTok’s algorithm, but with biometric feedback on its individual effectiveness.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoBut to what end, if not to sell influence over the user to someone who would manipulate them?
- insane_dreamer 2y ago> I don’t think ad placement for children should be the primary concern. But eventually it all devolves to this (and I include teens < 18 as children here). Remember that FB started out as a way to connect with your college buddies.
- getwiththeprog 2y agoFB started out as a way to rate hot college girls! https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/before-facebook-zuckerberg-created-a-girl-rating-site-facemash https://www.eviemagazine.com/post/before-facebook-zuckerberg...
- autoexec 2y agoPushing ads at children is a major concern because children have zero defenses against the kind of sophisticated manipulation advertisers use against them. More than just ads though, collecting data on children is dangerous as well. We really don't need corporations starting a dossier on children and placing them into buckets at such an early age. It's bad enough we hand school children chromebooks so that Google can track their test scores, growth, and intelligence
- cedws 2y agoIt's far too late to be worrying about that, Meta has been hoovering up information about children for more than a decade now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onavo
- brikym 2y agoCocomelon are already focus group testing their addictive hypnotic kids videos. They don't need millions of kids to develop this crack for kids, just a dozen or so.
- jiggawatts 2y agoSpeaking of which, I just recently blocked Cocomelon on my kid’s iPad. How insane is it that a company is purposefully putting out crack in video form targeted explicitly at toddlers!? Brought to you by the same people that thought cigarette candy was a brilliant idea.
- lapphi 2y agoI mean from the point of view of McDonald’s I mean Disney no no the tobacco companies, it was probably idea of the year.
- blackoil 2y ago> my kid’s iPad That is a more fundamental problem.
- jiggawatts 2y agoPeople said the same thing about kids reading books.
- Invictus0 2y agoIs your position that, since people said the same thing about kids reading books, then there is nothing we can give kids that will have a negative outcome on their development? A book can only be read, which requires cognitive effort. iPads can be watched and listened to, which requires no cognitive effort. It's obvious which one kids will choose to do.
- falcor84 2y agoYou intrigued me - what was the opposition to kids reading books?
- cm2012 2y agoMeta spends a lot more money trying not to read children's data than actually read it. You can't even bid to serve ads to people under 18 on Meta.
- strunz 2y agoYou sure about that? https://nypost.com/2024/08/08/business/google-meta-reportedly-hatched-secret-deal-to-target-teens-on-youtube-with-instagram-ads/ https://nypost.com/2024/08/08/business/google-meta-reportedl...
- lovecg 2y ago1) This is Google ads, not Meta 2) Google is definitely being sneaky here with targeting to the “unknown” category, but technically speaking they’re not targeting kids - just everyone who they don’t explicitly know is an adult. It’s an interesting legal question, it does seem to violate the spirit of the law somehow.
- thehappypm 2y ago*people who say they’re under 18
- sharkweek 2y agoNick Clegg (public affairs guy at FB) is currently lobbying to get VR headsets on schoolchildren. I can't think of anything I want less than my kids wearing those things while in class all day. https://nickclegg.medium.com/how-the-metaverse-can-transform-education-20ed9d355b5f https://nickclegg.medium.com/how-the-metaverse-can-transform...
- tremarley 2y agoNick Clegg, the former Prime Minister of the UK?
- marcolussetti 2y agoFormer Deputy Prime Minister of the UK, but yes, that's the one.
- stevage 2y agoYes, that guy. Was he actually pm? Or just opposition leader? Either way, him.
- andy81 2y agoAssistant PM. He gave the largest party a majority in exchange for a referendum on first-past-the-post.
- n4r9 2y agoIMO this was one of the worst political catastrophes in 21st Century UK politics. Young, educated people formed a core part of their voter base at the time. This demographic felt betrayed by the Lib Dems propping up a Conservative government and a tripling of university tuition fees, increase in VAT, and introduction of austerity. Clegg also failed to lead an effective campaign in the "Alternative Vote" referendum, resulting in an overwhelming defeat and decades-long setback for voting reform. (N.B. there are interesting parallels between this and the Brexit referendum. In both cases, the opposition was allowed to spin it as personality politics.) A pretty good article about it here: https://academic.oup.com/pa/article/68/suppl_1/70/1403259 https://academic.oup.com/pa/article/68/suppl_1/70/1403259 Only now has the Lib Dem vote share recovered, largely due to an implosion in the Conservative party and a relatively regressive Labour electoral campaign.
- qbxk 2y agowell its gonna have to exist and do damage before we can regulate it. c'est la capitalisme
- devjab 2y agoAs cool as these are I’m not sure a lot of adults (at least in Denmark) is going to put these things on children. Facebook isn’t exactly a popular brand these days, and even though Instagram made it rather big with kids from the previous ages I think the next generations will be less likely to get on the Meta platforms. In part because what you’re asking about here has been revealed as something Facebook does. It’s all based on anecdotal knowledge, but at least in my little bubble of the world nobody wants their children on Meta if they can help it. Which is a little bit hypocritical considering a lot of the same people don’t mind using Google, OpenAI, Microsoft products and so on. For some reason Facebook has taken the brunt of the dislike and I think a lot of my colleagues might actually feel better about their children being on TikTok than any sort of Meta product. Not that you can really avoid being included on the Meta platform if these things start filming you in public.
- dmos62 2y ago> my colleagues might actually feel better about their children being on TikTok than any sort of Meta product As a former scrolling addict, I can attest that Instagram is by far worse for mental health than Tik Tok. It's about the algorithms. If you show Tik Tok that you like certain niche content it will learn that and only show you it, when it tries to show you something else that you don't prefer (once every 100 videos in my case) if you show disinterest it won't show more of it. With Instagram, what you prefer (e.g. mindful content) is secondary to bombarding you with content that triggers endless scroll behaviour. I've tried training it to not do that by clicking the explicit "not interested" button, on dozens of videos at a time, multiple sessions, but it just wouldn't work. At times it seemed like it is finally learning what i prefer, and then next day mindless memes are again 90% of the feed. In contrast, Tik Tok required a tiny fraction of explicit training that I prrformed on Insta, and on Tik Tok it was very effective. I can say with absolute certainty that Instagram is very detrimental to my health (hence I don't use it), and suprisingly Tik Tok is actually pretty great. My usual Tik Tok session now looks like this: I launch it, get a video that's really relevant to me, and for every video that I watch there's about 30% chance that I'll close the app because I'm either thinking about what I learned or researching it. My endless scroll behaviour is never triggered. And I don't usually use Tik Tok more than 2 times a week. This isn't because of willpower, it's because I genuinely value the content it's providing me and I need time to digest it. Watching more often would be like wasting it. This has been going on for about 6 months now. Disclaimer: I wouldn't be suprised if I'm in some a/b testing program within Tik Tok, and it might be using a variant algorithm. I don't have evidence, but I know that for a time my UI was a little different than others' (e.g. no favorite functionality).
- grahamj 2y agoI definitely think that's worth worrying about. Eye tracking too; it's shocking how much can be learned about a person from it. The chart here is... well, eye opening: https://newatlas.com/science/science/eye-tracking-privacy/ https://newatlas.com/science/science/eye-tracking-privacy/
- BriggyDwiggs42 2y agoIt’s really interesting how much eye tracking can glean. I’d be curious to test some of those algorithms on myself and see what it said; do you know if there’s any open source stuff that lets you play with it?
- grahamj 2y agoNot that I’m aware of. I agree that would be interesting though
- al_borland 2y ago> optimizing ad placement I don't know about anyone else, but I will never buy AR glasses with ads. That's a deal breaker for me.
- falcor84 2y agoMaybe it could actually be used for the inverse - automatically overlay any ads in your field of view with pictures of kittens, or something like that.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y agoWhy do you suppose meta would be working on them if not to help sell ad placement somehow?
- al_borland 2y agoI realize ads are Facebook’s primary revenue source, but ad support isn’t the only business model, especially when selling hardware.
- blackoil 2y agoProblem is not children having access to it. It is more parents outsourcing parenting to YouTube/TikTok or Meta. If parents still take responsibility on how much and where the child spends their time, it is no different than any other tech gadget. People are concerned about new tech since the time of Guttenberg.
- getwiththeprog 2y agoAm I worried about a a mega-corp programming all the nations children? Yes! But lets not forget that programming of children already exists. TV, social media and ... parents and grandparents and teachers. The raw technology adds nothing. The software implanted we certainly need to think about.
- hinkley 2y agoIf it’s Facebook for sure. I’m still waiting to see if Microsoft has actually changed or is just doing a very long PR stunt. A lot of Balmer execs are still there. Putting a new head on the fish doesn’t necessarily prevent the rot.