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Ya, strongly agree. For those that don’t read the article, here are some of the more concerning ones imo - Mark said “We don't allow sexually explicit content
by pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
Ya, strongly agree. For those that don’t read the article, here are some of the more concerning ones imo
- Mark said “We don't allow sexually explicit content on the service for people of any age.” But they had a 17-strike policy, and 79% of all child sex trafficking in 2020 occurred on Meta’s platforms. :(. Edit: the 79% claim is overstated. If you read the linked report[1], it is actually “65% of child sex trafficking victims recruited _on social media_ were recruited from Facebook, with 14% being recruited on Instagram” (emphasis mine). Thanks kstrauser for investigating
- Mark said “Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.” But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Meta halted the study and did not publicly disclose the results – citing harmful media coverage as the reason for canning the study. I suppose he might debate whether this is a “causal” link, but it’s fairly damning.
- Instagram head Adam Mosseri told reporters that research he had seen suggests the app’s effects on teen well-being is likely “quite small.” An internal 2019 study titled “Teen Mental Health: Creatures of Habit” found (1) “Teens can’t switch off Instagram even if they want to.” (2) “Teens talk of Instagram in terms of an ‘addicts narrative’ spending too much time indulging in compulsive behavior that they know is negative but feel powerless to resist.” (3) “The pressure ‘to be present and perfect’ is a defining characteristic of the anxiety teens face around Instagram. This restricts both their ability to be emotionally honest and also to create space for themselves to switch off.”
[1] https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/08-20230425-Meta-Fails-To-Keep-Kids-Safe.pdf?ref=dispatch.techoversight.org https://techoversight.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/08-2023...
- kwanbix 8mo agoI reported many times sexual profiles, and they allways came rejected.
- ryanmcbride 8mo agoIt's the line that facebook, and functionally every platform based on user content always tries to walk. They want sexual content because it drives engagement, positive and negative, more than almost anything. But they don't want to be held liable for the content, so they put weak policies in place so that they have the appearance of doing something to prevent it. This makes almost every current social media and content platform this weird middle ground of generally acceptable content, and porn if you look for it hard enough. I'm obviously ignoring the giant societal can of worms around "what is sexual content, what is art, what is porn". Because we can be pretty sure that Zuck doesn't care what's art and what's porn, and we know he doesn't care about protecting _anyone_ from _anything_. It's always about the bottom line and always will be.
- dostick 8mo agoOkay but what about scammers, they don’t drive engagement. Why leave them be untouched. I report scammer who pretends to be e.musk with name e.musk and sent me fake musk’s passport in chat, asking to invest- what more of impersonation scam could that be. Meta’s response - we reviewed and took appropriate steps. Yet scammer guy still untouched chatting with me weeks later.
- actionfromafar 8mo agoScammers drive a lot traffic, pay for ads, people check Facebook more often while being scammed, and search for support and help from peers on Facebook after being scammed, driving engagement in the form of support, ridicule and rage.
- SpicyLemonZest 8mo agoIf you're ignoring the giant societal can of worms, you're not getting a good understanding of the situation. In the 2010s the zeitgeist was that they were too prudish, and Instagram in particular faced a number of controversies for taking down topless photos that the subject of the photo felt should have been allowed. I guarantee that, for almost every piece of sexual content you've seen on Meta platforms, there's a large and passionate group of people who believe that it's perfectly acceptable and any reasonable social media platform should allow it.
- expedition32 8mo agoThe law in my country is quite simple- sex work is 21. It used to be at 18 but then you got the "she looked 18" defense. And yes there is a large and passionate group of pedos.
- ryanmcbride 8mo agoI'm actually one of those people. I don't think breasts are some great evil.
- kwanbix 8mo agoI mean rally sexual. Not sexy as in instagram girls. Showing the asshole or things like that.
- mgaunard 8mo agoI don't understand how those statements are contradictory.
- ceejayoz 8mo agoIf I said "we don't allow murder", but gave everyone 17 free murders, would you find that contradictory?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- mgaunard 8mo agoNo, I would call that being confused about the distinction between law making and law enforcement, which are traditionally very distinct things. It makes sense for there to be leeway due to the scale, automations and high rate of false positives with limited capabilities to correct them.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- sollewitt 8mo agoThey are both the legislature and the judiciary.
- ceejayoz 8mo ago> I would call that being confused about the distinction between law making and law enforcement… I think you're confused. Facebook does neither. Facebook makes and enforces their own policies, not laws. > It makes sense for there to be leeway due to the scale, automations and high rate of false positives with limited capabilities to correct them. They should staff a human review/appeals process again, then. They used COVID as the excuse to discard that cost center.
- lubujackson 8mo ago79% of ALL child sex trafficking. 4 out of 5 child sex slaves exist thanks to Facebook's policies. But sure, go on and talk about "leeway" and "limited capabilities" for a company worth nearly a trillion dollars. Do you honestly believe this is acceptable? What are your vested interests here?
- close04 8mo agoThe amount and severity of such concerning topics still lets you agree that these are just "statements that are subject to judgement" and "interpretations more than facts"? I encourage critical thinking and fairness but if a coin lands on one side 100 times in a row I don't need to flip it forever to see if eventually it reaches 50/50. That many lies about extremely serious issues removes any benefit of the doubt for the liar.
- dantillberg 8mo ago"sexually explicit content" and "child sex trafficking" are rather different things. Connected? Maybe? If you want to claim that Mark was lying, you've got to demonstrate the connection as part of the claim. Otherwise, it's a non sequitur.
- FlamingMoe 8mo agoHe needs to be in prison.
- joering2 8mo agoHe/FB was very against Trump/MAGA during his first tenure with the "fact check teams" verifying majority of popular opinions on FB, until before second election Trump posted that Zuckerberg should be in prison for meddling and giving Democrats their positive push. Nothing happened until Trump won second term, then the fact check teams were gone and Zuckerberg donated 1 million to Trump. Here Google AI will say it better than I can: Donation: Meta's $1 million donation to the inauguration fund was a departure from previous years, aimed at fostering goodwill with the new administration. Relationship Repair: Following years of tension and accusations of anti-conservative bias, Zuckerberg has taken steps to align with the MAGA movement, including dining with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Policy & Structural Changes: Meta has made several changes, including reducing professional fact-checking, appointing UFC CEO Dana White (a Trump ally) to its board, and hiring high-profile Republican policy staff. Motivations: The moves are seen as an attempt to avoid further regulation or antitrust action from the Trump administration, especially regarding artificial intelligence and business operations. Edit: in this instance, stay out of jail card costed $1 million.
- AnimalMuppet 8mo agoWell, not a "stay out of jail" card. It was a "quit having to worry that maybe 1) Trump actually means it, and 2) the courts will go along, and 3) my legal team can't save me. Under current circumstances, the odds that Trump could have had Zuckerberg jailed for anti-Trump fact checking are very close to zero.
- NickC25 8mo agoSeriously. Mark's got 250 billion dollars, founded a 2 trillion dollar company, and is quite possibly the wealthiest self-made person alive today. It is highly likely Mark also possesses some form of security clearance from the NSA related to issues adjacent to his company. It it also likely that Mark has some form of kompromat Donald Trump is a pedophile and a lying grandstander who has always talked tough and backed down when up against someone who knows what they are doing. Donald Trump could try to put Mark in jail. Mark has hundreds of billions of dollars to prevent the government from touching him. It wouldn't happen. The second Donald Trump tried shit, Mark would simply buy the top 100 law firms in the nation, and have them work together to stop Trump, and Trump would back down.
- noslenwerdna 8mo ago"But internal study found users who stopped using Facebook and Instagram for a week showed lower rates of anxiety, depression, and loneliness." This isn't causal though. The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment, and as part of that they stopped. Then the recovery could have been from the treatment or it could have been from stopping.
- malfist 8mo agoSo this argument you've made, you've just constructed a strawman. > The users who quit were not randomly selected. Maybe they were receiving some kind of mental health treatment You don't know that? You don't know anything about the selection process since facebook did not share their research. Your whole argument pins on the selection process you have no idea what happened. I'd find it very difficult to believe that researchers could not anticipate and control for situations like that. Researchers are after all, experts in research.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- noslenwerdna 8mo agoI don't know that, which is why I said "maybe." Facebook does not typically do academic level research - they do quick studies to verify product direction. From what I have seen, the actual academic studies on this are mixed. It is hard to say one way or the other, and it can affect different teens differently depending on how they use it.
- watwut 8mo agoInternal study does mot have access to people who left because of unknown mental health treatment. They would had no way to evaluate them. There is no reason to make imaginary issues of studies just to defend companies.
- noslenwerdna 8mo ago
- Natsu 8mo agoCausal has a specific meaning related to causal modeling, most studies can't show causality, a lot only show correlation[1]. And the third one seems to be about effect sizes. But a lot of this is still concerning, even if they appear to be trying to say technically true but misleading things. [1] Yes, newer methods can show causation, not just correlation. See The Book of Why, by Judea Pearl for an introduction to how that works.
- pinkmuffinere 8mo agoWow, the claim in your footnote is absolutely fascinating to me. I just bought the book, but in the meantime could you give a tl;dr? No worries if not
- Natsu 8mo agoCausation has a direction, but the equals sign doesn't, is probably an overly-pithy summary of the first section of the book. And it was hard to represent the simple observation that effects come after causes, not before. So they introduce do calculus to intentionally break that symmetry to test causal models, which themselves are basically directed graphs going from cause to effect. These also help you see what you need to test to try to falsify your model and to show you how to measure how much of the variance in an effect is explained by variance in the cause. And it helps keep track of interventions, like opening doors in the Monty Hall problem[1]. There's a more detailed summary here that looks pretty good which probably does a better job than my quick summary. I skimmed it and it matches what I recall from the book: https://www.tosummarise.com/book-summary-the-book-of-why-by-judea-pearl-and-dana-mckenzie/ https://www.tosummarise.com/book-summary-the-book-of-why-by-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
- tracker1 8mo agoThere have definitely been a lot of sexually explicit ads on the platform. If you're a straight, middle-aged male, I'm pretty sure many have seen them.