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Meta suppressed research on child safety, employees say
- pkphilip 1y agoI am not surprised at all. I know no tech titan as creepy as Zuck
- ITB 1y agoYou don’t like it when they release research, you don’t like it when research leaks, you don’t like it when research is suppressed. Hard for Meta to do anything right on this topic.
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoYou're so close to getting it. Maybe there's one more option...
- realz 1y agoHave you considered that maybe the outrage is about what the research results contain?
- ITB 1y agoI’m not saying social media is good for children. I’m just saying that some companies might release more information if the reaction wasn’t always adversarial. It’s not just meta. There’s a constant demand for outrage against big companies.
- freejazz 1y agoIs the issue that meta didn't "release" the research or that they didn't do anything about the findings and told workers to ignore it?
- jermberj 1y agoI don't want to beat a dead horse, since sibling commenters have covered this, but I'd implore you to imagine the spectrum of reactions which Meta _could_ have had when discovering their research indicated they were having a negative impact on people. Some of those reactions on that spectrum would lead to greater human flourishing and well-being, others of those reactions would lead to the opposite. Now think about the reaction they actually _did_ have. Where on the aforementioned spectrum would their actual reaction fall? Zooming out, how have they reacted to similar circumstances in the past when their own internal research or data indicated a negative impact on people? The continued "outrage" is that they've exhibited a recurrent pattern across myriad occurrences.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago> You don’t like it when they release research, you don’t like it when research leaks Who doesn't like these?
- nova22033 1y agoWe also don't like it when this happens: "their boss ordered the recording of the teen’s claims deleted, along with all written records of his comments."
- tuckerman 1y agoI think if it weren't suppressed and released alongside some real, substantive changes for improving child safety it might be seen as Meta finally deciding to do something about it. It's also worth pointing out this comes hot on the heels of the internal ai chatbot <> children memo leak [1] so people might not be likely to give them the benefit of the doubt atm... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44899674 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44899674
- barbazoo 1y agoWho is "you" here?
- andsoitis 1y ago> At her home in western Germany, a woman told a team of visiting researchers from Meta that she did not allow her sons to interact with strangers on the social media giant’s virtual reality headsets. Then her teenage son interjected, according to two of the researchers: He frequently encountered strangers, and adults had sexually propositioned his little brother, who was younger than 10, numerous times. It seems to me possible solutions could be a mix of: a) company monitors all conversations (privacy tradeoff) b) validates age c) product not available to kids d) product available to kids, leave up to parents to monitor
- gjsman-1000 1y ago> validates age This is what legislators are generally going for; but it turns out there’s plenty of other stuff on the Internet deserving age restrictions by the same logic. I’m at the point where I know we’re not going back; that battle is already lost. The question is how to implement it in the most privacy preserving manner. I’m also at the point where I believe the harm to children exceeds, and is exceeding, the harm of losing a more open internet. Kids are online now, parental controls are little used and don’t work, that’s our new reality. For anyone who responds this is a “think of the children,” that ignores we have tons of laws thinking about the children, because sometimes you do need to think of the children. One glance at teen’s mental health right now proves that this is one of those times. Telling parents to do better after a decade of trying is not a realistic solution.
- mxkopy 1y agoI guarantee that a 20 hour workweek would fix this problem without having to invade anyone’s privacy, but we can’t have that for obvious reasons. My friends with healthy attachments to social media had healthy and present parents. You have to make sure your kid doesn’t want to drop out of society by being too overbearing, and obviously you need to be there to tell them the pitfalls of addiction and superficiality that only experience can reveal. Walking this line every day while your kid is kicking and screaming at you is way harder if you’ve already been kicked and screamed at work for 8 hours, so you just put them on the iPad and hope for the best -> and that’s how we get here. It begins and ends with capitalism’s productivity fetish
- dlivingston 1y agoI am desperately waiting for someone to come along and disrupt social media. It's overdue. My Facebook feed is entirely low-effort slop and posts from acquaintances I added 15 years ago. Instagram and Snapchat aren't too different. Miserable experiences with infinite content, no quality, and no connections.
- andy99 1y agoI'm curious what properties a "good" social network would have?
- otterley 1y agoFacebook in the mid 2000s was pretty good. It was a chronological timeline of your friends’ posts along with a photo album. It was like LiveJournal but with a much better UI.
- ratelimitsteve 1y agono algorithmic content driving the variable reward schedule in order to induce compulsive behavior, just content I've explicitly selected and a willingness to say "we've run out of content" instead of just filling the infinite feed with whatever
- fsflover 1y agoSo you're searching for Mastodon.
- jjani 1y agoAnything without a feed backed by a recommender system. Front Porch Forum is one example of a relatively good social network. It's made possible by the founders not aiming to become billionaires. This is another necessary property of basically anything good.
- jimt1234 1y agoIMHO, having effective parental controls would be good enough.
- dagmx 1y agohttps://archive.is/AVCuH https://archive.is/AVCuH
- Lio 1y agoI saw Rob Pike online asking about what to tell people that don’t understand why anyone would boycott Meta services. For me it’s stuff like this.
- iphone_elegance 1y agozucks for the children
- blitzar 1y agoHow dumb do you have to be to commision this reasearch at Meta? Did they honestly think the result was going to be good for them?
- Frost1x 1y agoThis just in, private corporation with profit motive doesn’t voluntarily provide negative information that hurts their profit motive. News at 11. Self-regulation is a complete and utter joke.
- blitzar 1y agoThe original sin was writing a signed confession of their crimes and packaging it up with a video of them commiting said crimes. You dont have to bury the report if it is never written. The only reason you would write it is if you think you are actually doing gods work, think you can whitewash it and manipulate the outcome to say you are or you are grossly incompetent.
- moolcool 1y agoThere's cynical reasons to commission this research, since "user misery" is clearly one of the levers they pull to increase engagement. It's pretty obvious that they surface rage-bait content on purpose, for example.
- dagmx 1y agoMeta continues to prove that they have a company culture of trying to ignore their responsibilities to users. This is a repeating pattern of someone raising the alarm to them, teams realizing it’s a possible concern and the company reacting by telling them to avoid looking into it lest it bite them later. And it always comes back when something horrific happens and it is always shown they knew and did nothing. A truly innovative and responsible company would investigate and rejoice in trying to find solutions. But the top down culture from Mark is one to get all power at all costs.
- ModernMech 1y agoHow it started: "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb fucks." How it's going: "Meta suppressed research on child safety" I'm sorry but at this point, Meta is just the lawnmower, you can't even be mad at it. We know what it is, and we always should have known based on what it told us about itself. That we continue to allow it to operate this way is an indictment of our culture, not Meta.
- cess11 1y agoDon't get mad, organise.
- ModernMech 1y agoGet mad -- organize.
- utyop22 1y agoYeah and frankly its employees are the biggest joke (this is more pointed at the directors who do virtue signalling that I see). You don't have to go work there - there are other jobs. They choose to work there.
- binary132 1y agoWhy are you displacing blame from meta?
- christophilus 1y agoI've been served well by this rule of thumb: "Don't trust big corporations." That's it. It hasn't let me down yet in my many long years of life.
- abeppu 1y agoIn practice, what does that look like? B/c large corporations are constantly doing shady stuff, but in day-to-day life, how does one avoid being in situations where you're dependent on them, without that avoidance becoming its own large source of problems? - who provides your utilities? - who provides your food, medications, other stuff that goes in your body? - where do you get financial services, insurance, etc? - do you drive? who made your car? do you ever fly? For many of these categories there are likely a few examples of local governments, co-ops, or mid-size/small companies offering in some of these categories, but not in a comprehensive way -- i.e. you can get some of your food from a local CSA but likely not your whole diet, you might get much of your medical care from a Direct Primary Care model until you need something that's outside of their capacities, etc.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- deberon 1y agoAren’t those all industries that are now highly regulated because they proved themselves to be untrustworthy?
- gjsman-1000 1y agoYes. Why do you think Google is requiring identity verification on Android now? It couldn't possibly be because developers in general have proved themselves untrustworthy as well... right? It couldn't possibly be because users have proven education and countless warnings are ineffective... right? Common sense outside of our HN bubble says that if merely serving me food is regulated, if merely giving me a haircut requires registration and licensing, why is building apps that can steal my data, my money, and my reputation... not regulated? Surely, it's easier for most people to discern the quality of their food, or the quality of a barber, than an app! Yet even for food, and freaking haircuts, we societally don't trust people to understand warnings and use common sense. Either fix tech (even with laws that make HN furious)... or say those laws regarding haircuts are stupid too.
- s5300 1y ago[dead]
- micromacrofoot 1y ago"Meta suppressed research on child safety" again ... why is anyone still using this company for anything ever?
- RianAtheer 1y agoMeta employees have raised serious issues about the company downplaying or even suppressing research on child safety risks, especially in virtual reality spaces. They said that the company suppressed research on child safety risks, especially in VR. Meta denies it, but it’s a serious concern
- utyop22 1y agoWould those same employees (assuming they get stock based compensation) be happy to forgo capital gains that have/would be achieved by said firm that has increased its wealth by not investing in child safety projects? Thats what would happen if reinvestment was increased.
- philjohn 1y agoI worked on Integrity at Meta for 4 years, including a stint on the child safety team. Absolutely, I would have been fine with the stock not growing as fast (it would still have grown, Meta has billions of users), as would every single one of the IC's I regularly worked with.
- sniffers 1y agoThe same company complicit in the genocide in Myanmar? The same company found to be stealing data about women's menstruation cycles? The same company that wants to hoover up your photos as training data? Surely not! Surely they would never do something unethical!
- kevmo 1y agoWe are feeding children to the wolves to boost quarterly Big Tech numbers. Society is breaking down in part because of it. America would be a nicer place if Mark Zuckerberg went to prison.
- gjsman-1000 1y agoIf it wasn't Big Tech, the people here would have us feeding them to Mastodon. I do not believe that's much of an improvement. Edit: For the reply, about "Mastodon is not a company but many independent actors"... Who on earth is making sure those independent actors don't do... any of that? If Mastodon gets large enough, don't be surprised when the largest instances start doing exactly that.
- fsflover 1y agoMastodon is not a company but many independent actors; it doesn't track you, doesn't show you ads or tries to earn money from you. It's like email.
- barbazoo 1y agoTrue, plus Meta's harmful impact goes way beyond the US of A so it would benefit probably everybody.
- jjani 1y agoGoing to prison would not be enough, he'd be pardoned very quickly and there'd be very little of a discouraging effect on other megacorps with similar ethics.
- mixedbit 1y agoI hate that Meta and Google - companies that are among the leaders in AI and invest billions in cutting-edge machine learning R&D - pretend they are unable to detect that children are accessing their platforms in violation of age restrictions (13 years in most cases).
- djrj477dhsnv 1y agoThe responsibility to protect children should be put on their parents. If they want to give their children devices to use unsupervised, then they should block access to whatever they deem harmful.
- mixedbit 1y agoIf social media is harmful to children, each child deserves to be protected, no matter what is their parents' opinion. This is obvious for other harmful things, we don't argue that it is up to parents to decide if their child should be allowed to use alcohol or cigarettes.
- djrj477dhsnv 1y agoHarm is subjective and I'd much rather parents make that call than the government. And there absolutely isn't consensus on when it's harmful to give children alcohol. Many would say it's good to give a child a glass of wine at a family dinner so that they learn to drink responsibly. Msot agree that cigarettes are harmful at all ages, so that's not really relevant.
- mixedbit 1y agoThe government already made the call, that's why due to child privacy or other protection laws, terms of service of social media platforms require age 13 or up. My complain is that companies pretend they are unable to enforce it.
- zasz 1y agoAhaha, by this logic we should just ban vaccines if that's popular.
- avgDev 1y agoSocial Media is the new tobacco.
- teamonkey 1y agoThe new leaded gas.
- foobar_______ 1y agoI don't know how everyone doesn't see this. I pray. I hope. One day people look at you in complete repulsion and dumbfounded that we gave anyone, let kids unfettered access to social media. Absurdity.
- ergocoder 1y agoBecause it's very far from being Tobacco. Tobacco has zero utilities, meanwhile Facebook is heavily used for connecting families and sharing small life events. Saying it is the same as Tobacco isn't useful. It's an exaggeration, which makes it hard to take the argument seriously.
- olyjohn 1y agoMillions of people find Tobacco a very pleasurable experience. Not just addicted cigarette smokers. It increases social lubricity, brings people together at parties... It helps connect new friends together and can strengthen existing bonds. It's not uncommon to celebrate events with a cigar anywhere in the world. I don't see social media being a whole lot more useful. Cool you can share some photos, and organize some events, but you can do that without Facebook and all the unnecessary shit that goes along with it.
- ergocoder 1y agoWith that kind of thinking, meditation is like a cigarette. Running is like a cigarette. Drinking water is like a cigarette. Cue the original point of how unhelpful the analogy is.
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- Verdex 1y agoI grew up on star trek TNG. However at a certain point in the past I was having kind of a hard time rewatching episodes. "We have the Internet and social media now, and they're obviously not going anywhere so why doesnt star trek have either? It is simply scifi of the past and now we need new scifi to incorporate new technological and social advancements." These days though. Yeah, it's kind of obvious that you can't have a space faring civilization with the Internet and social media weighing you down. Honestly the Eugenics wars probably get kick started by social media.
- noitpmeder 1y agoI've noticed my mind thinking along similar lines when watching most recent movies. Many of the story points are driven by plots that would be upended if any one of the protagonists (or antagonists) had access to even the most basic of internet and/or portable communication devices.
- dijit 1y agoDon’t they have communicators? Don’t they also have ways of sending messages wirelessly in real time, just bounded by speed of light? That’s a down-sight lot better than what we have now as we basically just blast radio signals in all directions at roughly the speed of light- which degrades very rapidly over distance. I’m coloured largely by Voyager, but I don’t see any technology that we have now that they don’t have, not at the distances it would need to work at and without the infrastructure to make it work.
- marcosdumay 1y agoStar Trek has messages faster than the speed of light. And TNG and later have universal P2P communication with or without a reliable computer time-delaying it. Honestly, I don't know what the conversation is about either.
- noitpmeder 1y agoSorry, my musings were more general, not restricted to Star-Trek/... content. I mean more generally any movie in a setting within the last ~5-10 years~ to any time in the future. The fact that half the main characters / background extras / don't have their heads buried in mobile phones is by itself noticeable to me :)
- DalasNoin 1y agoI mean grok has an AI girlfriend that will undress for you. It's specifically instructed to be extremely jealous and to pretend to be madly in love with the user. Apparently no meaningful age restrictions of any kind. All this data of perhaps kids chatting explicitly with their AI partners land on company servers.
- aubanel 1y agohttps://archive.ph/AVCuH https://archive.ph/AVCuH
- footlose_3815 1y agoThe frog has boiled. These companies actively profit when kids are engaged and unhappy.
- Quitschquat 1y agoNot surprising if you’ve read the account in “Careless People”. Growth at all costs. My favorite part: just-in-time ad delivery to your suicidal teen for products they might need
- gazpachotron 1y ago[dead]
- mrguyorama 1y agoA reminder that happy people buy less stuff. Facebook will not try to show your suicidal teen stuff that could help them. Facebook will only show your suicidal teen things that keep your suicidal teen doomscrolling. Facebook WILL put a small textbox of "Here's the suicide hotline" and then overshadow it with a huge ad for "You aren't pretty enough, buy this body deodorant" that autoplays and includes sound and can take over part of your screen. Facebook WILL show your suicidal teen stuff that makes them really angry. They do this on purpose. They do this knowingly. That's what "optimizing for engagement" means
- JCM9 1y agoSocial media is the 21st century’s tobacco company. The companies selling it know it’s terrible for people’s health, but they keep doing it because $$$. If one wants to work in that industry is a personal ethical one, but 20 years from now we’ll probably look at folks working at these companies like we’d look at someone who worked as a tobacco executive. Made good money but maybe not leaving a legacy of an ethical career.
- AfterHIA 1y agoIn other words there will be no/positive economic and social downsides for those engaged in, "world levels" of unethical conduct. This is the world that software developers create. Any society which rewards less laborious work for significantly greater pay will eventually find reasons to reward, "profits over people." Whether they're Neokantian or free-market liberal justifications it doesn't matter. Thankfully you people have to put up with Forever Trump which almost makes the thing bearable. -Silicon Valley before the 80's
- MengerSponge 1y agoMeta delenda est.
- ath3nd 1y agoThis is the company that: - Enabled genocide in Myanmar https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb... - Literally pirated books to train their trash AI LLM: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o... - Violated human rights for Palestinians (even in 2021: https://theintercept.com/2022/09/21/facebook-censorship-palestine-israel-algorithm/ https://theintercept.com/2022/09/21/facebook-censorship-pale...) - Interfered in British politics with the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, one of the costliest and stupidest mistakes in UK's history (full of stupid and costly mistakes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana... - The CEO of the company is famous for ass-kissing even dumber people than himself e.g: Trump https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-mark-zuckerberg-weirdo-b2159532.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... What else do you expect from the trashiest company in the world. Of course they don't care for child safety.
- miohtama 1y agohttps://archive.ph/wpyec https://archive.ph/wpyec
- Rafuino 1y agoPlease, please, please don't entertain job offers from this company. Don't even talk with them. They don't deserve your talent
- gazpachotron 1y ago[dead]
- Jimmc414 1y agoZuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard Zuck: Just ask. Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb fucks. Mark Zuckerberg, 2004 [0] https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zuckerberg-called-people-who-handed-over-their-data-dumb-f/ https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zucker...
- jay-barronville 1y ago> Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard > Zuck: Just ask. > Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS > [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? > Zuck: People just submitted it. > Zuck: I don't know why. > Zuck: They "trust me" > Zuck: Dumb fucks. > Mark Zuckerberg, 2004 The sad thing is, he was totally right. The Zuck gets none of my data.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- animitronix 1y agoTake ALL of Mark's toys away
- lordhumphrey 1y agoI strongly encourage anyone who finds Meta's repeated crappy behaviour objectionable to delete their accounts on Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Or, at least, to delete as many as they can get away with, given their personal constraints and obligations, and otherwise minimise as much as possible the interactions with this company. Personally I do somewhere between one and three strikes with companies. Of course I still must use certain things at certain times, but generally a lot of them can be avoided if you develop the habit of looking for other solutions. It's great fun, actually, once you accept the challenge. It's only a small action, but it's good on a personal level to practice any kind of resisting.
- cedws 1y agoMeta has a monopoly on socialisation, if you delete these apps it does have a detrimental effect on your social network. I refused to use any Meta apps for the longest time but eventually caved on using Instagram and it has given me the ability to connect with people more, even though I hate it.
- Ianjit 1y ago"Meta has a monopoly on socialisation". Step out into the world, there is so much to discover.
- dtagames 1y agohttps://archive.ph/S8254 https://archive.ph/S8254
- hermitcrab 1y agoThat Meta is an appalling company can't be a surprise to anyone by now.
- alchemical_piss 1y agoZuckerberg is one of the most evil men in America.
- halico_chops 1y ago[dead]
- madrasman 1y agoI’m so tired of social media rotting brains and ruining health and relationships. But also find it hard to completely quit Instagram/Linkedin/X as I get some value out of it. Sewer in the water line situation. Built a screentime app to automatically block after chosen number of mins and it’s helping me. Completely free to try: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nomo-reduce-screen-time/id6748623068 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nomo-reduce-screen-time/id6748...
- rsynnott 1y ago> Within months, [Facebook] started an initiative code-named “Project Salsa.” Sattizahn and the youth researcher said that they didn’t know who chose that name or why, but employees working on the project widely understood it as a reference to the fact that the use of technology by children was a “spicy” topic. How is it that nobody in this industry knows how codenames work? You're supposed to pick them randomly off a list, not choose veiled references to the actual subject. > The project was code-named “Project Horton,” for the Dr. Seuss book “Horton Hears a Who!” in which a character tries to protect small people from others who attempt to harm them, according to the youth researcher. No, Facebook, stop it. (Occasionally of course this gets _coincidentally_ violated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock#Chicken-powered_nuclear_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock#Chicken-powered_n... - the proposed weapon was called Blue Peacock _before_ the chickens were proposed)
- haileyLlyod3 1y ago[dead]