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There is a fairly low amount of details about the case in the article. This NPR article [0] has a bit more, but it's still fairly sparse. Though it's interestin
by strongpigeon 7mo ago
There is a fairly low amount of details about the case in the article. This NPR article [0] has a bit more, but it's still fairly sparse. Though it's interesting how Zuckerberg thought it was a good idea to say: "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?".
Given that this is a case about addiction, that feels like a shockingly bad thing to say in defense of your product. Can you imagine saying the same thing about oxycodone or cigarettes?
[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5746125/meta-youtube-social-media-trial-verdict https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5746125/meta-youtube-so...
- easytiger 7mo agoWhy not make personal responsibility illegal whilst we are at it. It is egregious that an individual can be held accountable for their own behaviours.
- janalsncm 7mo agoHow much personal responsibility should we expect children to have? Genuine question. Because there was a time where some people believed that it was ok for kids to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
- bryan_w 7mo ago> How much personal responsibility should we expect children to have? This is what parents are for.
- janalsncm 7mo agoIn that case, maybe we don’t need to card people anymore at the liquor store. If underage kids happen to buy, that’s the parents’ fault.
- Ferret7446 7mo agoThat's probably a good idea. That law never really did anything anyway, kids have never had problems getting their hands on alcohol
- rixed 7mo agoThis is what the whole society is for, why singling out this aspect of behavior? Education? Safety? Environment? Justice? Is this not also, then, what parents are for?
- easytiger 7mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
- janalsncm 7mo agoThat doesn’t answer the question.
- twoodfin 7mo agoAs someone who values a liberal society, I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine. I also hope the reasons are obvious.
- anon84873628 7mo agoI don't think the reasons are obvious. Where do you put gambling on the spectrum?
- tqi 7mo agoWhere would you put 24x7 political content?
- toyg 7mo agoThat's more like perversion...
- anon84873628 7mo agoA little further down then social media apps, but mostly the same. After all, it's the main source of outrage bait for those apps. If we're talking about Fox News or CNN there's less specific user targeting and the delivery mechanism is more constrained.
- twoodfin 7mo agoIf something compels behavior vs. behavior remaining a free choice, a liberal society can and should treat it like any other source of compulsion. Personally, I am leery of any technical definition of “addictive” that operates outside the traditional chemical influences on physiology. So I would not describe gambling in that sense. One might have a malady that causes gambling to take on the same physiological vibe for you, but that’s not what it means for gambling itself to be addictive.
- SoftTalker 7mo agoYou seem to be differentiating between physical and psychological addiction, and saying that only physical addiction meets the technical definition of addiction?
- Vegenoid 7mo ago> Can you imagine saying the same thing about oxycodone or cigarettes? No, but unfortunately I can very easily imagine people saying it, just like the people who made loads of money from pushing those products did. Also just like the people who are profiting from the spread of gambling are saying now. Why would someone choose to do a thing if it harms them? There are good arguments against laws that restrict personal freedoms, but this isn't one of them.
- strongpigeon 7mo agoBut what if we're talking about a product that you're giving away to children? I agree that for adults, cigarettes are fine. But in this case, you're actively designing to maximize tweens and teens engagement and the end result is them saying that they wan't to stop but can't. Though to be fair, I was mostly pointing out the fact that this was a pretty dumb thing to say for a case like this, especially in a jury trial.
- Vegenoid 7mo agoYes, I agree with you, I think that regulation is needed here and that this was a dumb thing to say. I'm just saying that my reaction to Zuckerberg saying that people must love his product if they use it a lot is exactly what I'd expect him to say. It's also exactly why other parties must step in.
- cyanydeez 7mo ago"If people didn't like destroying the environment, why would they let lobbiests run their government" -- Billionaires
- petre 7mo agoIf people feel that smoking causes lung cancer why do they keep smoking?
- Ferret7446 7mo agoBecause they use smoking to fill a hole in their lives. If they are somehow forced to stop, they will just switch to another vice as long as the actual problem isn't solved.
- caycep 7mo agoit's especially galling because he (or at least his wife) also funds neuroscience research at Stanford and elsewhere, and should have been well informed of the science behind addition, dopamine, and the reward pathways in the brain
- slibhb 7mo agoThe fact that you're comparing nicotine to Facebook really throws into sharp relief just how far from reality this whole "social media made me depressed" stuff has strayed.
- _moof 7mo agoThere's a large body of evidence on the damage that social media can do to people, and on the engineered compulsion to use it.
- rf15 7mo agoDo you use Facebook regularly?
- slibhb 7mo agoI use Facebook marketplace and I'm part of a running group that's organized on Facebook.
- keybored 7mo agoYeah. The difference is that I have managed to quit nicotine. Clearly those two things are not the same.
- uxhacker 7mo agoFrom what I understand the argument is, and to miss quote Marshall McLuhan it is “the medium, and not the content is the addiction”. In other words is not the posts by the influencers, but techniques such as infinite schooling, and so on. This is why meta and google could not relay on User-Generated Content Safe Harbor (Section 230) part of the law.
- youknownothing 7mo agoYeah, Zuck is really being a bit of d** there. You can't spend decades hiring the best engineers in the world and give them millions of dollars worth of resources with the sole aim of creating products specifically designed to retain attention and then simply shrug and say "if you don't like it, leave it". That's just not a fair fight.
- Ferret7446 7mo agoIs designing for retention bad then? God forbid you write a story that captivates readers; if they don't stop reading after a few chapters, why, that's illegal mate
- hn_throwaway_99 7mo agoLol, so then cigarette makers weren't deliberately modifying drug levels in their product to addict smokers, they were "designing for retention". More to the point, though, your comments here are all straw men. This was specifically a case about targeting children with addictive features of their products.
- alex1138 7mo ago> "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?" A statement that's been brought up even by HN commentators Facebook is not a free market where you can choose. You're compelled to use it for several different reasons (and before some wiseass comments "you're not forced to. you can delete it" yes I know) - They captured the early market. There was a small window of time in which to get users - They ruthlessly bought up the competition - They've deleted links to competitors - They outright hijacked people's email addresses. It makes it hard to transfer users to another service or to email them outside the walled garden - Even while they change privacy settings for users to make things more public, they wall off public pages. Your local neighborhood has a place where they post information? Even if everyone selects "Public" in the audience you can't see it without an account Edit: Oh, and shadow profiles. And making it nigh-impossible to delete an account permanently
- tim333 7mo agoA lot of smokers don't feel they are having a good time and want to quit but can't. I'm not sure the same applies to youtube.
- rimunroe 7mo agoI knew someone who had exactly that feeling about YouTube. It was a genuine struggle for them to stop even though the amount of time they spent on it was negatively impacting their life and the content was making them more anxious.
- Ferret7446 7mo agoShould YouTube be banned then? YouTube provides a lot of value to a lot of people. I've learned a lot of math, physics, history, DIY from it. But it's addictive (to some)
- hn_throwaway_99 7mo agoNobody is arguing for "banning YouTube". But "the algorithm", and many user interface features explicitly designed to keep you going to the next video or down "YouTube rabbit holes", is what this case is about.
- rimunroe 7mo agoNo idea. I was just chiming in to say that is indeed the case with YouTube for some people.
- hn_throwaway_99 7mo agoI know lots of adults who talk about "curing their phone addiction". I don't think someone would find it necessary to write a book "How To Break Up With Your Phone" (using what's referred to as a "digital detox program") if there weren't a substantial number of people who wanted to stop infinite scrolling behavior on their phone but found it difficult. https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/k3vzaa/how_to_break_up_with_your_phone_by_catherine/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/k3vzaa/how_to_break... - used the reddit link because the existence of r/nosurf is another example of people who want to stop but find it difficult.