Unrelated to the actual content, but in Russian is it normal to decline the last name of someone who is not Russian as they did at the beginning of the letter?
If it's not being declined, why is there a "у" at the end of Цукербергу?
It even matches the ending of господину, which -- without the у -- sure looks like the courtesy title "Gospodin". You're sure that's not a case marker?
Russian "У" sounds the same as english "oo". And here, it is placed at the ends of both words as dative preposition, to indicate that it is "*to* Mr. Zuckerberg".
If it was Putin instead of Zuckerberg, it would work just the same, "господину Путину". No difference at all, regardless of whether the last name is Russian or not.
It is declined. The point I was making is that it was declined not because it was a foreign last name. Swapping Zuckerberg for Putin in that sentence would decline Putin's last name in the exact same way.
I see, thank you. As an aside, you would not decline the transliteration of a foreign name in Greek. They used to "Greekify" the names a century ago and decline them, but now that sounds extremely dated and odd.
In Russian, the amount to which words were assimilated has also changed depending on which foreign language was in vogue at the time, and to what extent. In the past, pronunciations of English borrowed words became closer to Russian standards. But now that English is trendy for the past thirty years after the USSR collapse—all the way to using branding in English on signage and advertising—often English pronunciation is almost unchanged, as much as it's possible. Afaiu it was the same in the past with French borrowings and then German ones (or perhaps in the reverse order)—kinda similar to English flirtings with French and Latin, but thankfully without such a mess in spelling.
However, Цукерберг/Zuckerberg is quite natural for Russian due to being an obviously Jewish name. The first letter isn't even the voiced ‘z’ in Russian, but a ‘ts’, because that's how analogous Jewish names are pronounced here.
> But now that English is trendy for the past thirty years after the USSR collapse—all the way to using branding in English on signage and advertising—often English pronunciation is almost unchanged, as much as it's possible.
Now that you mention it, that's exactly what happened with Greek too. Branding used to be Greek, then sort-of-foreignified Greek (eg Greek words with a foreign suffix) and now just English.
> first letter isn't even the voiced ‘z’ in Russian, but a ‘ts’,
That's probably because of the German pronunciation, no?
Hmm, weird about the branding in Greece, since afaik you haven't had a sudden-ish disappearance of an Iron Curtain with a resulting influx of Western culture. But I guess that globalism-aka-Americanism is more widespread than just our case.
> That's probably because of the German pronunciation, no?
Well yeah. Wiktionary notes straight away that the surname is Ashkenazic—it was most probably naturalized in Russian through Ukraine's and specifically Odessa's Jewish population. The more familiar variation here is ‘Zuckerman’.
How much does modern Greek rely on its case marking? It seems like one especially common use of foreign names would be to report on something that happened outside Greece with all non-Greek participants. But that's pretty much the worst case for giving up on overt case-marking; none of the nouns would have an obvious case.
Not very much, you have the articles that help give context. For example, you'd say "του κυρίου Ζούκερμπεργκ" and "του κυρίου" (rather than "ο κύριος") makes it clear that it's the genitive case.
In Russian, it would depend on the last name in question specifically, as well as the gender of the person talked about. I am a native speaker, but I don't know which specific grammar rule governs it.
For example, Zuckerberg absolutely gets declined and gets that "oo" at the end. "To Mr. Dorsey" doesn't get changed (i.e., no added "oo" at the end) due to declining (but it still gets declined), while "to Mr. Smith" definitely gets that extra "oo" at the end due to declining. But "to Mrs. Smith" is unchanged after declining, so it doesn't get that same "oo" ending.
I misunderstood the question. I think the question is why both "господину" and "Цукербергу" are declined, given that "Цукербергу" has non-slavic origin. I think typically the rule is that only names of Slavic origin are declined along with generic name, such as "в город Минск", "в город Киев", "в город Москву". But the foreign names it is not, e.g. "в город Сан Франциско", "в город Сан Сиэтл". I think it definitely true for geographical names, and probably for last names as well. However, even for geographical names there many names that considered long assimilated, e.g. "в городе Санкт-Петербурге".
I think the same true for a last name such as Цукербергу. There are plenty of people with Germanic last names, especially ending with -berg, -man, -baum, etc, so maybe it is considered assimilated enough that it follows rules for Slavic based names.
Pretty sure you're asking whether the name shouldn't be in the nominative case instead. The answer is, basically any word is inflected in Russian, with some exceptions where the dative case can be identical to the nominative—and even such words can be quite naturally bent into the different cases, in casual speech. The ‘nationality’ of the name doesn't matter, though foreign names or words may initially not be assimilated in the language enough for the inflections to be established and accepted.
One example of a case when the dative form would be the same as the nominative, is if the recipient was a Mrs. Zuckerberg, since this specific kind of the last name isn't inflected when it's of the feminine grammatical gender.
There's also the dubious trend of avoiding inflection of brand names for any and all purposes—but that's just contrary to how Russian works, and is dictated instead by whims of marketing people who lack the sense for the language.
The grammar applies whether the name is Russian or not with some edge-case exceptions that can roughly be described as 'when it sounds weird and/or like something else' i.e. they tend to be almost 'phonetic'. A name ending in -berg or the like, though, is a perfectly regular (for Russian) name that could just as easily be a Russian last name. An example off the top of my head:
I think we're wasting time here, as much as I hate Jeff Bezos, during his "meeting" with Boris Johnson he said something that is I think relatable to the current situation, I quote: “that this is a job for governments. And tax isn’t something that he’s going to pay as an ex-gratia act of kindness. It’s up to governments to come up with the right framework.” (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/26/jeff-b...). We need to stop wasting time appealing to the human-side of billionaires, we need to stop talking to them and create regulations and punishments, to prevent them to exploit the population
Agreed- an "adversarial" system is what makes strong policy. People / corporations will always try and exploit loopholes or flaws in regulation. When this happens, the regulation can get adapted to align with its actual objectives. Having flawed laws on the books an expecting actors to behave differently than the laws are written doesnt make any sense
It looks like recently our politicians have forgot that it's their duty to create regulations for the wellbeing of the society, or like they're acting like regulators with common populations and youth ministers with the rich
It's probably always been this way to some extent, bit with the concentration of power in tech companies and few others, it's optimal for people who want to get elected to focus on influencing the powerful and ignoring the masses. I think this effect has just gotten stronger recently.
Well, at least in the US, Congress hasn't been legislating for a while now. They handed over that responsibility to the Executive and Judicial branch a long time ago so that they don't have to deal with unhappy voters because it's always someone else's fault.
How much do I agree with you, we can't afford as a society careers politicians, in Italy we've had for a while the five stars movement who said that politicians should be citizens temporarily lent to the common cause, who then go back to being citizens, but if you are a career politicians, then whoever you hit, is a lost vote, so you have no motivation to act, I think congressmen, deputies, 1-2 terms, then home, and I guess in that case, you are subject to the promise of a job from a big corp., I am not really sure how we can fix our society right now, but I think we have to as soon as possible
People ask billionaires to do something because they are the ones who visibly accomplish something. I think, subconsciously, they don't expect their governments to do something.
Not just competence, I think something like the bystander effect is in play as well. If you single out any single congressperson to appeal to, they'll shrug and point to their 534 other congressional colleagues not doing anything as their excuse to not do anything either.
That perspective is the result of decades of massively successful libertarian propaganda. Good efficient government is possible but only if we stop electing representatives that want to destroy government. I see some hope in Republican's new found hatred of tech billionaires.
I think that's a great point about visibly accomplishing something. I think a lot of the things that a government accomplishes happens more invisibly, in the background, whereas billionaires (especially the Bezos, Zuckerburg, and other B2C billionaires) do so with a much more direct relationship with people—and spend a lot of money promoting how well they've done things.
How much is the government doing well but we just don't see? Conversely, how much of business is doing things that harm people that we also don't see?
> And tax isn’t something that he’s going to pay as an ex-gratia act of kindness. It’s up to governments to come up with the right framework.”
"It's up to you to fight me and my billionaire buddies and hundreds of corporations lobbying for new tax loopholes every year."
Accounting firms send people to Washington to "advise" legislators on changes to the tax code. Said people are then rewarded very handsomely, because the accounting companies get to use the changes for their clients, and because they "advised" legislators to do it, they know ahead of all the other accounting firms what's going to happen...
Unfortunately Amazon pays little taxes not because of trickery with tax loopholes, but mostly because by design companies only owe taxes on profits and Amazon has made (on net) very little profit to date.
Governments tax corporate revenue too, it's just that's called a sales tax.
> We need to stop wasting time appealing to the human-side of billionaires, we need to stop talking to them and create regulations and punishments, to prevent them to exploit the population
Yep. If the past 10 years have shown us anything, it's that these billionaires are anticipating this pushback, so they'll add however many layers of fluff they need to prevent them from taking real action. Google didn't remotely care about privacy until they were relentlessly sued over it, and Europe implemented baseline privacy laws. Apple dragged their feet in the mud over App Store changes until the double-barrel end of the Supreme Court was staring them between the eyes. The only way we can make a change here is by exercising the powers we were given to keep these companies in check. The longer we hesitate and waffle over whether or not it's a good application, the more time we give them to exploit us.
"We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table?"-- Oscar Wilde
Oversight is never going to be perfect, but "independent" is still a positive step. Meta's profit motive will never, never be more important to them than the safety or happiness of their users.
Even if you personally don't use Facebook or don't want to, we still all have to be around people who use it all the time.
When I read "give us power over the platform" when that sentiment was in no way expressed in the text, my impression is “It’s important to express that I’m a contrarian because I’m so very smart”
Why they go to this one specific company? what about tiktok? what about omegele? what about many other social networks. They should ask governments to regulate the field for everyone, not some specific company.
I also got my doubt about this "science", social sciences are not really sciences, a lot of the research in those fields is not replicated or just based on asking people questions rather than actually observing behaviour. I don't understand how they claim as if there is some scientific truth that we have to follow when it comes to those issues, in most cases it is more assumptions, loose correlations mixed with ideologies and politics.
Meta most significantly has funding state agencies can only dream of, and no responsibility or mandate to run its human experiments past an institutional review board
Just put a university after your name means nothing. Do I need to search each of your name to know whether you are a scholar in the related field, or just simply a student studying in the university?
Absolutely, the point of listing a university is to show status and expertise. No one is going to listen to a bunch of people whose main accomplishment is getting accepted into Cornell and San Diego State. The prestige of those institutions come from the professors, doctors, scientists, researchers, who are pushing the state of the art, not the students doing homework.
Does it invalidate the content if they're one but not the other? Why does it matter if they're professors, researchers or students? It's not like they're making profound statements or putting forward some bold crazy theory, they're asking for FB's internal stats to be validated published so it can be used for research.
Is Facebook as a platform really extremely unique? Should there be a call on Steam or XBox or PS to act on mental health science because so many (like millions) young kids play video games on them? And how about YouTube or traditional TV networks?
Or is that because millions is not a sufficient number, and billions is the number to become what matters?
For the purpose of scientific research, it is not a good argument to ask for the platform to cooperate with you. Researcher should develop their research methods totally independent of the subject.
A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is".
Snap, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube, [...] execs scrambling to lock or destroy their mental health research programs.
I'm obviously not the only person saying this, and I don't want to brush Facebook and Instagram issues under the rug, but I fear the series of articles that arose from this whistle-blowing has created all sorts of twisted incentives for every player whose digital product can be abused. What's the upside of making such research looking into negative effects if, when leaked, (1) only the negatives is headlined and presented, (2) the positives are ignored and (3) no acknowledgment of the research existing in the first place is made? I'm conflicted myself writing this, especially #3 as it may (I'm not informed enough to have a strong opinion) be akin to historic examples of tobacco and petroleum industries ignoring their R&D, but #1 and #2 seem pretty clear.
Why are these researchers not addressing the industry at large, if only as a bullet point/segment? It seems like scapegoating while these issues are widespread and no company/executive will position itself to be the next scapegoat in line to be ousted. Research on FB-Insta could be useful to expand to the rest of the industry, but why would they be inclined to respond to this piece where they are made out to be as the nefarious actor when it comes children's health?
Literally nothing will change fir the better unless meta can profit off of positive mental health outcomes.
Right now they profit from engagement.
Engagement =/= good mental health
Metas definition of good mental health =/= my definition
If a depressed person who scrolls all day gets off and leads a better life how does that make meta money? Asking genuinely, as im sure some change oriented folks within meta are.
Makes me think about how other businesses have handled user addiction and whether they did so on their own volition—casinos, bars, lottery, etc.
Just spit-balling: I think bars will kick people out once they've had too much to drink, sometimes from a legality standpoint, but also from a place of sympathy or even fear (this person will disrupt the environment).
How would you say other businesses have handled this without government regulation?
> Just spit-balling: I think bars will kick people out once they've had too much to drink, sometimes from a legality standpoint, but also from a place of sympathy or even fear (this person will disrupt the environment).
There's heavy regulation, policing and liability here. Bars will cut people off and kick them out because if they let a person get tanked and they go hit someone with their car while drunk, that puts the business in jeopardy. Not only are there laws that make it a criminal offense, that's how a business loses its liquor license and gets held liable for potentially significant damages.
My state has negligent serving of alcohol laws, and it also holds businesses responsible for any injuries, damages or deaths a drunk driver causes.
It only has to make them more money than the alternative, which is losing the ability to operate within countries that protect the health of their citizens.
> Literally nothing will change fir the better unless meta can profit off of positive mental health outcomes.
There are a lot of businesses like this, with a profit incentive that is directly at odds with the health of their customers.
You can't solve that fundamental issue, so you regulate them or tax the harm. If you make the harm more expensive, the profit motive is (at least a bit) blunted.
Im not blaming anyone, I am identifying a root cause. Any durable changes in population behavior will individuals to take primary responsibility for their social media consumption.
Like obesity, no amount of health warnings, sugar taxes, ect on products will solve the obesity epidemic if more individuals don't assume agency for what they put in their body and the bodies of their children.
None of us have any real agency, and the sooner we admit that the sooner we can start truly analyzing cause and effect of behaviors. We need to stop lying to ourselves if we want to truly enact change
I fully agree that free will is an illusion, but I don't think this negates my position.
Even a fully deterministic computer takes input/instructions and completes actions.
Humans are complex logic engines with programing. They can be programed to need external input to take an action, or take actions without external input.
You can program a child to think they need permission to go to the bathroom, or to think they can get up and go without permission.
You can program an addict to think they helpless to resist a drug, or that they can resist the urge and stop.
In this sense, humans can be programed with logic that either helps them achieve their goals, or prevents them from doing so.
Human "agency", "willpower", and "control" is simply shifting a person's program to take actions less on environmental inputs based more on their core values (e.g happiness - also programed).
I think that telling humans that they are helpless to control their behavior and need outside input is bad programing which harms their outcomes.
People overestimate the helplessness and dependence on circumstance. It is better to program people to act with more self control.
Admitting we are powerless allows us to investigate and change the factors that truly lie behind the behavior
Take obesity for example, do we know why so many people have gained so much weight? If I were to judge what I think your opinion might be from your response so far, it would be purely that people are eating too much.
So what causes that behavior? Do people just eat as much as the person next to them? Eat as much as their parents? Do they eat what's available and that just happens to be highly reinforcing (salt, simple sugars, fats) and easily available? Are there hormonal signaling pathways that control feeding behavior? Maybe there are environmental factors, such as hormone disruptors that weren't there 100 years ago? Is there a high prevalence of genetic disorders relating to weight control and feeding behaviors?
There may be multiple causes, and some may overlap.
Also this puts far too much on the end consumer, when there are also emergent patterns that come from behaviors of businesses and markets such as locations of grocery stores and stock in those stores. All of this, all of us.
We are all part of the same system and we should not attempt to place blame on any certain part when there are many many contributing factors. We should attempt to figure out which parts need to be adjusted and how, and its never going to be only one thing such as the agency of the individual.
First off, I am not trying to assign blame, or condemnation, only causality
>Admitting we are powerless allows us to investigate and change the factors that truly lie behind the behavior
I couldn't disagree more. I am all for scientific investigations but think that behavior psychology is vastly under evaluated relative to environmental or biological priming.
>Take obesity for example, do we know why so many people have gained so much weight? If I were to judge what I think your opinion might be from your response so far, it would be purely that people are eating too much.
People are eating to many calories, this is irrefutable. We can discuss why they are eating too many calories, which is the more nuanced question
<We are all part of the same system and we should not attempt to place blame on any certain part when there are many many contributing factors. We should attempt to figure out which parts need to be adjusted and how, and its never going to be only one thing such as the agency of the individual.
This reads as self contradiction to me: "There are many contributing factors but we should not assign blame" vs "We should attempt to figure out which parts need to be adjusted"
Figuring out which part of the system is the cause is how one decides what needs to be adjusted. You can not ignore the psychological decision making process. Why one person has self control, and another does not.
To say that the perception of agency of the individual is out of scope is ridiculous to me. Actualizing one's own agency was crucial for every addict, obese person, or depressed person I have ever known.
Chiming in to say i appreciated both of your takes and i think we have a vital necessity for both approaches. The issue at hand seems rather bicameral.
I can have all the individual responsibility I want. It doesn't protect me or my loved ones from other people who aren't responsible.
As examples: if Facebook spreads misinformation, my government gets worse. I may even lose individual liberties, like women currently losing the right to medical privacy.
If Facebook gives children eating disorders, my health insurance premiums go up.
Even if I only care about myself and police myself, Facebook can still rip apart the society that I live in.
> Everyone forgets about this option.
No they don't. You seem to have forgotten about externalities.
If humans were a Pokémon type we would be weak against addiction.
Personal responsibility is not a policy that can’t be applied across a population. You might have a combination of will, mental health state, and life advantages that puts you in the the 80 or 90th percentile of being able to resist or avoid addictive activities but you are not common.
Willpower is finite and companies have thousands of lifetimes worth of resources.
I think you expertly articulated the position I am opposing.
I don't believe personal responsibility and willpower is a fixed quantity, even at the population level. In fact, I think they are negatively impacted by emphasizing the influence of external factors in personal behavior.
Telling an addict that they are powerless to regulate their consumption only erodes their ability to improve. External factors my have led them to their addiction, but they can't fix an additional without assuming agency taking control of their behavior. Yes, this is HARD, but no addict can recover without it.
The only durable solution that will help people is shifting the curve such that more people are able to resist or avoid addictive activities. Policy solutions are simply too ineffective and porous to have a durable effect.
You absolutely have a point- and yes it opposes the other.
The other point is valid from a scientific perspective though.
I highly recommend you read Norbert Weiners "Cybernetics the human use of human beings" to be able to grapple with the dualism at play. In particular he discusses the manichaean vs augustinian version of evil. He could not reconcile the two but reflecting on the general ways that information leads to effects, and the ontological conflict between "we have free will so its your fault you are oppressed" vs "its not your fault it was engineered to oppress you" - the problem is dual.
Social media platforms are giant algorithmic feedback engines creating the most reliable way for their regular users to fulfill their neuro-chemical and social needs. That these people cannot find better information in their mediasphere means that we need to encourage people and remind them of their agency - yes - but we cannot leave it at "words of encouragement" when the other end is "massive highly personalized feedback loop of all the people you miss seeing"
Thanks for the recommendation. It looks very interesting based on the summary. Weiners commentary on learning seems to echo my own opinions, which I go into this is a sibling thread with netizen-936824.
I think much of the problem with duality dissolves once you eliminate the concept of the soul or free will. People tend to ignore the fact that the individual still exists as an information processing agent that takes actions, even if you remove free will.
If a program fails to provide the desired output when given an input, it is neither the input or that code that is to blame, but an incompatibility between the input and code that is at fault. You it is possible to get the desired outcome by modifying either, or more likely both.
I'm sure I am overlooking some implications or counterpoints, so I look forward to reading your suggestion.
Isn't this the traditional corporate strategy for not taking responsibility? Have corps fund research and pretend to do something, while really just kicking up doubt about causality. Like the Tobacco, Energy and Food/Drink companies did...
And it's not just Meta, you should really look at IOS & Android's culpability. Smartphones changed the game.
I mean what else can you really do? Mental health outcomes are a second order effect of FB’s stuff. Their actual relevant products are a microblog and a photo sharing site.
And FB already has lots of content moderators trying to filter things like hate speech, bullying, and thinspo. What would you have them change? How do you know for sure your suggestion will work?
> I mean what else can you really do? Mental health outcomes are a second order effect of FB’s stuff.
I don't think Mr. Zuckerberg can do much, besides pivoting to a new-flagship product which is what he might be trying to do with "Meta".
With FB/IG they are just responding to demand in the market. Maybe there are low hanging ways to make it fundamentally better for mental health, but at a certain point that objective will clash with $ and who know's if it's what consumers want if given the option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_(cigarette)
The government should probably step-in to research and regulate but its more systemic than just FB. Apple/Google don't get their fair share of the blame, they are selling Skinner Boxes as a service to all these companies. It's ridiculous you can't have more control of notifications. If I want to get a notification for a New Message, Tagged in a post or an update from Delivery driver... I have to also let these apps poke me whenever they want to try to get me addicted to their platforms.
Do we really want for-profit companies more responsible for mental health on a day where one of the biggest stories is how a mental health company was cutting corners? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29480988
Do we really need someone as deranged, corrupt, and irresponsible to get involved on this?I mean seriously, just because he has money/influence/power doesn't mean jack shit.
If anything, Zuck would be stupid to response to this "open letter": he PROFITS from the fact that some people are mentally ill.What a joke.If you want people to be more stable mentally, you would tell them to f#ck off social media, socialize, eventually keep some traditions or norms within smaller groups which create stronger bonds, those are things that keep you sane.Oxford at this point repeatedly showed that they're a shit institution, and i have to wonder if there's any substance on this besides a PR move.
Two questions come to my mind, slightly unrelated:
1) If there is such a stigma with "mental health", why do people not use a different term for it, e.g., "emotional health"?
2) Why do they only focus on the impacts these platforms have on children (younger humans), do these platforms not have similar harms to us older humans?
Some of the contributors research child or adolescent psychology. Maybe all. And including adults would lose public support from people who think adults can look out for themselves. No one thinks children can and adults can't.
IMO this is a part of a more general process that many words shift meanings or are re-appropriated to describe emotional or political judgement. E.g. ‘autistic’ became trendy as an invective about ten years ago; and ‘awesome’ doesn't cut it anymore for clickbait, so different words are in vogue now—until they too become overused to death.
Anyway, science and healthcare can't and shouldn't change its vocabulary every time fourteen-year-olds on Reddit decide they are done with one pejorative term and start stigmatizing another one.
Ah, I wrote a paper on euphemisms in first and second languages when I was in college but hadn't heard about this before, I'm excited to check into it more, thank you!
> Anyway, science and healthcare can't and shouldn't change its vocabulary every time fourteen-year-olds on Reddit decide they are done with one pejorative term and start stigmatizing another one.
I agree that I don't want science to necessarily change its terms because a sub-cultural group decided it offended them; sometimes maybe, but not always, as having consistency of terms can make it easier to replicate research. I think the irony with the case "mental health" is that it used to be called "mental hygiene," so the term did change over time.
I also think one of the aspects of science is trying to come up with new linguistic ways to parse the world—recategorizing things as more research is conducted. Maybe it's less getting rid of the term "mental health" but creating a new category that distinguishes from it.
I think the challenge with the term "mental health" is less about a new stigma and more about the history of the term[0]:
> The mental hygiene movement, in its origins and reflecting Beers’ experience in mental hospitals, was primarily and basically concerned with the improvement of the care of people with mental disorders. In Beers’ own words: “When the National Committee was organized, in 1909, its chief concern was to humanize the care of the insane: to eradicate the abuses, brutalities and neglect from which the mentally sick have traditionally suffered.” 4.
> It was at a later stage that the Committee enlarged its program to include the “milder forms of mental disability” and a greater concern with preventive work. The rationale behind this shift was the belief that “mental disorders frequently have their beginnings in childhood and youth and that preventive measures are most effective in early life”, and that environmental conditions and modes of living produce mental ill health.
I think the term "mental health" can carry that cultural history, of being used to treat the more extreme versions of mental health, not the more common, less severe occurrences.
I also found this quote and wonder how much what the term covers has changed over time:
> The First International Congress of Mental Health was organized in London by the British National Association for Mental Hygiene from 16 to 21 August, 1948...Only one concept of mental health was put forward, by J.C. Flugel, Chairman of the Conference’s Programme Committee: “Mental health is regarded as a condition which permits the optimal development, physical, intellectual and emotional, of the individual, so far as this is compatible with that of other individuals.”
It almost seems as "mental health" was proposed to encompass physical, intellectual, and emotional development. Which may make sense if "mental" is defined as overarching, however, I imagine many today would see the "mental" as related to the brain.
So while I think yes, sometimes we change terms because they've gained new stigma over time, I think this may be a case where it started with stigma. Maybe not.
There's a stigma with 'mental health'? Jeez. Will we keep having to change the names of things because people get offended or upset at a descriptive (and accurate) word?
Mental health and emotional health seem like very different things. I think that's more of the problem than a stigma with the words 'mental health'. Truth is, being depressed is mental unhealthy the same way over-eating is physical unhealthy. (and mentally unhealthy too, hah!)
Oh, I'd say that in many places there definitely is a stigma around either the term "mental health" or the concept in general. I've focused on emotions for the last 10 years or so with work and I've heard innumerable times people talk about "mental health" and "getting rid of the stigma." I personally believe it has more to do with the phrase and the history of the phrase—i.e., coming from mental health institutions and how it has been used for extreme cases—than with the concept itself. I also think the phrase can evoke defensiveness in a lot of people. If someone says to me there's something wrong with my mental health, I may think they're saying there's something wrong with my brain and lash out. If someone says there's something wrong with my emotional health, I may go, "Yeah, I've been stressed, worried, frustrated, etc."
> Mental health and emotional health seem like very different things.
I would say that a mentally disabled person has physical properties of their brain that do not work. Emotional disability is... what?
I wouldn't call a person with down syndrome of having poor physical health, or emotional health. I'd say their mental health is permanently damaged. The same way someone with a life long disease might have permanently poor physical health.
This helps me a lot actually, in feeling more clear about how to proceed. I think I had been saying to myself that "emotional health" should replace the term "mental health" and in reading what you wrote, I think maybe the two terms can co-exist and appeal differently to different people. For example, I think I often hear "mental health" including everything from down syndrome to dyslexia to depression to stress.
It reminds me of being in a bookstore and I asked about books on empathy and the person led me to two sections: one on psychology and one psychics. I skimmed the psychology book and it talked about setting boundaries and paying attention to how one felt. I skimmed the psychics book and it talked about psychic walls and auras. I then realized they may be talking about very similar things but with different and slightly different approaches.
Regardless, thank you for helping me feel more clear on just using the language that resonates with me and seeing if and how it resonates with others.
Sure. I would put depression in the emotional health category.
If it can be cured/aided with empathy, it may be accurate to call it an emotional health issue. ADHD? Mental or emotional? Well it doesn't have to be either, it can be both! Taking a baseball bat to the brain will damage your physical and mental health, why can't taking a few distractions to the eyes do something similar?
No need to thank me. I am only giving you my justification. You are the one doing the work. :)
> Mental or emotional? Well it doesn't have to be either, it can be both!
haha, exactly! I think I can try to force my thinking into an either/or, when it can be both/and.
> No need to thank me. I am only giving you my justification. You are the one doing the work. :)
I thank people when I feel grateful and I felt grateful :) Kinda like how I apologize when I feel guilty, even if the other person doesn't feel angry at me. I think we're both doing "the work," however one defines it :)
Feels kinda weird to mentally put myself in the position of Zuck the billionaire robot, but the letter does read like a counter-example from Dale Carnegie's books. The words ‘profit’ or ‘revenue’ aren't mentioned once—instead it's just ‘why don't you do this thing we want you to do’.
Edit: I think it might even help to imagine a ‘comedy in characters’ of this situation:
Previously in FB.
— Zuck, they say FB is bad for the brain!
— Well, how bad, if this is gonna blow in our faces?
Several months later.
— This bad.
Zuck spins for some cycles, counting zeroes on the bank balance.
— I can live with that.
A bunch of researchers see that FB funds research.
— Yo, we also can tell you in detail how bad it is! Give us some funding.
There is an underlying argument that one shouldn't put a price tag on the mental health of the world's children therefore "profit" and "revenue" shouldn't even be introduced into the conversation. If the Meta counterargument is anything along the lines of "that is too expensive", then they already lost any ethical standing they could have had on the issue.
Why are those mutually exclusive? Ethical grandstanding can be a method to motivate change. To me it seems like a stronger argument than economics as those incentives are all currently pushing in the opposite direction.
Grandstanding is typically meant to reach the masses. Are the masses interested in this kind of letter?
Letters are not an ideal medium to change things via ethical grandstanding. Most people just aren't concerned with what random strangers write to large companies. Grandstanding may have a role in effecting change, especially political change, and letters may play a role in a larger grandstanding campaign led by someone with an influence and following — but in the era of the Internet and television, it is often an ancillary role.
The more successful campaigns of grandstanding via letters have often included strongly principled letters with sharp yet carefully restrained language. The contents of such a letter are published as a full-page ad in a major newspaper such as the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal. Ideally, they will be signed by credible authors, often many of them.
Take cigarettes. Known harmful, regulations around selling to youth expanded, again and again.
In Canada, first, as a store, you couldn't sell. Then fines for selling, 100s, then thousands of dollars. Then it became illegal to show cigarettes in the store, they had to be hidden behind counter.
Traditional media was outlawed from marketing, showing them too.
My point is, if industry doesn't change, then government will eventually step in, and no matter how powerful or rich, an industry will bow to the law.
Government moves slowly, often taking a decade to move, or more, but due to people like Zuck, and due to corps like Google and Twitter, government regulation is coming, because they aren't self regulating. Corps never seem to, history is full of such examples.
The problem is though, that these platforms are now conjoined with how we express ourselves, and thus, this new series of upcoming regulations are very, very wrought with landmines, and the potential to significantly impact free speech going forward.
Free expression is at the core of our modern democracies, and if government become too controlling here, or conversely if private corps too wary, we literally could end up wit truncated democracies.
The decisions being made right now, will impact the future dramatocally, for generations. This is a fulcrum, a focal point, a nexus of change.
That pleading to mighty Zuck is like traditional Russian pleading of plebs to tzar (these days to Putin). Why do we allow Zuck to affect child and the adolescent mental health in the first place? I mean it's your children, people. Do you ask tobacco companies CEOs or drug cartel leaders to spare your children?
And I suppose comfortable oversight board positions should go to the activists researchers who organized the open letter.
HOT TAKE: I think the parents are responsible for regulating the social media hours of their kids, not Mark Zuckerberg. Even If facebook changes, kids will find something else to hook onto, leading to more mental health problems.
My kids aren't getting a smart phone and no screens except within sight of other members of the household. The house router shuts down internet during the night.
That effectively deals with the problem of your kids accessing screens right now, but you have no idea what the impact of denying access to "social" tech will have on them in the long term. Maybe it'll work out and they'll develop a healthy relationship with tech, or maybe they'll be traumatized by that denial and be far more susceptible to screen addiction in later life because there's no one there to regulate it for them and they haven't had the opportunity to learn how to self-regulate. There's no way to know. This stuff hasn't been around long enough to study it properly.
last time my parents tried this to my brother. It backfired badly because my brother used mobile data wasting our money. He wasted like 20 usd in mobile data in 1 week and our monthly fiber internet costs was only 15 usd. And the sad thing is he wasted that money which was supposed to be his tiffin for school.
After that day we realized its not easy to control smart children.
I agree with this approach but there’s more to it. It’s a process. You coach them along the way over a period of years. You offer other outlets for boredom and opportunity for IRL socializing. I feel like this is the real root cause. Our society has largely 1) outsourced all parent responsibilities (too hard, over worked, etc. are just excuses for being lazy, my observation is most parents are glad to throw a iPad in little Jimmy’s face if he’ll leave them alone) and 2) kids are not playing enough outside with other kids in unstructured ways (when they do, they care not about what’s happening on TikTok).
I like to take my son fishing because it teaches him it’s ok to be bored, silence is ok too, also our talks and bonding is deeper in these moments, and it gets us out in nature.
No. No no no. Parents already have thousands of commercial and social interests trying to steal a child’s attention. You can’t possibly expect an overworked and criminally exhausted parent to come home from work and “fight the good fight” against a multi billion dollar company with huge teams of engineers and psychologists working day and night to capture your child’s head.
I say this every time this comment comes up and I always get downvoted but I just don’t care. I love my kids and I fight every day to keep them safe and healthy and I DO NOT NEED to fight a super villain with direct access to my child’s mind.
Social media is evil. It will be banned. Wait and see.
Network effects. As long as the other kids socialize on social media, not using social media becomes a drastic socialization penalty. The problem cannot be solved individually, only by collective action. Most parents must ban social media (and electronics in general) for their kids. Which indicates a need to pass laws to ban social media for minors. Bans and teens don't usually work as intended, we probably also need a wide campaign of stigmatization of said social media, akin to anti-smoking campaigns.
plus many schools etc are using facebook etc to disseminate news... and many kids friend prefers to communicate in facebook groups. Many teachers are also available in facebook.
It will not be banned. It will simply be accepted that this is the way the world is, and some day there won’t be a generation left that ever knew any other way. Some say millennials are the last generation that can truly fight. But never forget it was the millennials who created social media.
The problem is that the use of Meta’s applications are so pervasive between kids (and adults), this is effectively taking away their ability to communicate with their friends and they will be ‘left out’. Being the only person in your group of friends not in the group chat will make you feel excluded (and might even lead to you being excluded from things like events or meet-ups that are organised on the platform).
Now it’s a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”, and just giving your kids the keys is probably the lesser of the two evils.
Which is why we should be making sure that these platforms are healthy for everyone involved, as much as is practical and possible.
Every generation of parents has been convinced some insignificant thing has been ruining their kids. The one constant has been that they’ve all been wrong.
I don’t think it will be banned - the commercial incentives are just too strong, and states have bought into the idea that it is a security tool - rather than the security risk it actually is. It radicalises, it damages, it makes the remote and irrelevant seem imminent and proximal, the lone voices seem prevalent - but from a governance perspective, it allows surveillance of an increasingly disgruntled population, and relinquishing that control, that direct feed into the ids of millions, is not something any government is about to do.
No, I foresee a future in which social media is mandatory - if not in law, at least in practice. I use none, as I found it turned me into a performer rather than a person, and even now sometimes find myself at an impasse where I am not able to do x, y, z because I do not have a social media presence. For instance, I was refused entry to the US for refusing to divulge my social media handles - because I have none. I was last night refused entrance to a bar because I wouldn’t share my instagram handle - because I have none. I had to go for a physical interview last year for a residency permit where I live, because I would not share my Facebook handle - because I have none. I got residency, but I was presented with additional hurdles for not being a user.
If you want out, the only way is to forgo much of modern life - and this will only become more and more apparent.
I’ve taken to writing physical letters. If I can’t be bothered, what I had to say evidently wasn’t important in the first place.
Im astonished you weren’t admitted to a bar because you don’t have an instagram account. What was the reasoning there if you don’t mind sharing a bit more?
Band doing a gig - they only wanted people there who would film and share on social media. No great loss, as I hate being surrounded by present but absent people, watching something right in front of them on a tiny screen rather than with their own eyes.
I am guessing kids / child here means or include Teens? Because if they are not hooked to Facebook ( which I dont know any kids or teens are ) they will still be hooked to instagram. Which many kids and Teens do use. And increasingly they are going over to TikTok. Although instagram is fighting back.
And even if you ban them from using ALL meta product. They will still be hooked to something else. Forum ( That is a form of Social Media as well ), other media for celebrity news or whatever. Ban Whatsapp? There is iMessages on iOS and used mostly across teen age group in the US, Line in Japan, KakaoTalk in Korea. Did anyone remember SnapChat ?
Even if you DO ban all of them. They will still get spread in school talking about the trendiest topic. They will find a way to join the conversation no matter what so they dont get left out. And I have seen this first hand.
I am not against Facebook providing some sort of filter or mode for Kids or something. But it is ultimately the parents that is responsible. The world has changed. And I have always argued it is not the platform or social media. It is the internet itself, extremely affordable and accessible via Smartphone everywhere. And so far I didn't even mention Youtube.
Parenting in the 21st century is harder than ever.
On the other hand kids these days learn so so much more at their age on topics that you could never imagined over the internet. Things I could only dream of when all I had was books in library written by people not targeting my age. ( Which is actually another issues because those who are curious and willing to learn excel so much further than the bottom half of the class, it seems the information super highway has fastened inequality everywhere. )
I am actually surprised at the Hotcake being the most upvoted comments, for the past 6+ years Facebook has been the most hated company on HN and anything that goes against hating Facebook tends to get downvoted.
> And even if you ban them from using ALL meta product. They will still be hooked to something else.
I hope I'm not misrepresenting your argument with this analogy, but it seems like you're saying "Don't ban heroin. Kids will still get hooked on weed!"
It's okay to ban the worst offenders and carefully regulate the 'market'.
With a free and open market, billions of dollars of investment, and thousands of smart minds working over at Facebook, it's quite possible that things will get worse if there's no regulation.
The internet and social media aren’t the same. Heck, it’s not even an inherent principle of social media to be the manipulating, exploitative and addictive garbage that is Facebook. The bad things happening on Facebook aren’t a coincidence, but very much an expected outcome of a) deliberate and malicious design decisions and b) the centralised platform economy that social media companies rely on.
Hence, legislation shouldn’t target individual companies, but “features” that harm people or lead to bad outcomes for society at large. One such example is Europe’s GDPR, which imposes some fundamental limitations on what companies can and cannot do with their users’ personal data. And as negative consequences of poor social media design becomes more apparent, legislators must expand on that and ban more of the malicious practices that are at fault.
I fully agree. Its too easy for parents to be out of step with the latest fad that unscrupulous social media CEOs push on our kids. Not to mention that social media isn’t just bad for children and teens. It’s bad for everyone. Forget the benefits. Need reminding of your friends birthdays? Get a calendar.
It may take time for the US to deliberately damage national champions like Facebook and Google. Other countries will be less patient to act. I cannot imagine democratically elected governments idly standing by as Facebook drags their people into a dystopian Metaverse where there’s no more escaping the misinformation and manipulation that’s already rampant on current-generation social media platforms.
I know a teacher that tried this. Daughter is struggling to be included in social circles with her peers and can't include themselves because online happenings and lingo have become apart of conversation and language. It's funny watching parents be surprised by things like cursing, saying "don't hang out with those kids". Not realizing that's all of them.
Like it or not YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and the internet in general has taken up the place of parenting and social interaction because parents are worked to death for the 1% and social media is designed the same way as casinos. They're designed to prey upon your instincts and are demonstrated to be quite effective at it. I wouldn't mind if tomorrow Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit, etc, all disappeared overnight. Obviously government can't have the power to do that because they'll go after everything but that.
Hmm in many cases both parents goes to work so its tedious to police their children. And as you have mentioned bypassing parents is too easy because kids are smart these days and know how to use vpn.
And ppl like mark is obviously responsible because they are using dopamine tricks to make content more addicting. Like whats the point of showing me nonsense news because one of the people I added liked some nonsense? Why to show nonsense ads that says me "She looks beautiful and if you want try this cream"?
(mark because he is the own who has ultimate control over facebook and insta)
China tackled this by banning and making sure tiktok etc returns more science content for children instead of dopamine addicting content. (China because I don't know if other country has regulated social media like this)
Slightly lesser hot take: it's a bit too much of a systemic problem which would make it hard for parents to take care of. Methinks .. covid not helping for sure .. but local communities should revamp/revive group things. More sport, more craft, more culture (paint, play, music) .. to suck attention away from the web a bit.
Yes, right. It is parents' responsibility to ensure their kids don't smoke cigrettes and take opioid tablets. It's also their responsibility to ensure they themselves don't smoke or take opioid tablets. I suppose my "hot take" is that adults are responsible for their actions, including how they parent their children.
We should also prevent the supply of these things and regulate harmful corporate behavior, but that doesn't absolve parents of their responsibility.
Either you're conflating the two or your second sentence is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. In the spirit of charitable interpretation, I assumed you included a remark about opioids because you thought it relevant. I apologise for that assumption, and thank you for sharing your irrelevant thoughts about the opioid epidemic.
Parents can regulate the hours, but unless they regulate them down to zero, they cannot affect the adictiveness engineered into the product. Yes, the dose makes the poison, but I guarantee you Facebook has a team of psychologists making sure the dose needed to get kids hooked is as low as possible.
I disagree, corporations which manufacture damaging and offensive products against their users should be accountable. Yet obviously in this state of things, parents should try and do something.
Personal story: to situate, when i was teenager facebook was starting to be a thing and myspace started fading. My parents did something i find to be very sensible: they responsabilised me and introduced me to computers. I had restricted "freetime" computer hours and slightly less restricted "working" computer hours (doing school work etc), which eventually led me to programming since it somehow passed as working (my mom's a programmer so there's that). I wasn't allowed to have a facebook account and it was explained to me why that was so. Reasons where mostly not putting random private stuff online somewhere i wouldn't control it, addiction wasn't too important but i think it was implicitly said that these stuff eat you time and that now your time doing constructive things vanishes. OTOH my computer was clean of any spyware and i was trusted (had admin password and all). I surely was an outsider from this pov, but i quickly managed to own it and be proud of not having that account. For me this is the key: you cannot protect your kid against his will, you must (and surely can, kids are smart) convince them that they have more to loose than to gain. Maybe at that time it was simpler since it was the golden age of xmpp and gtalk was something i had access to (Adium for the win!).
If "online" socialization is here to stay, then learning to navigate them is an important social skill. Keeping young people off social media won't help them later in life.
One of the oft-touted figures was that “thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.”
My hot take is: "That's probably about right." Given the sorry state of physical education, fitness, and the fact that 60%+ of adults are obese or overweight, the fact that 1/3 of people on Instagram look at other people and feel their appearance needs improvement is probably about right -- if not a little low. There are probably another 1/3 that _should_ feel bad but don't. (And boys too!)
Not their first PR stunt: I remember when Oxford Internet Institute gave Max Schrems some kind of fluff award back when he was starting out as a professional FB agitator.
This whole letter reads as a somewhat patronising attempt to force FB into sharing their toys without offering anything in return. Once you go down the path of publicly shaming someone into working with you all hope for cordial collaboration must go out the window.
Frankly, if OII want a slice of the company, shares are trading at $300 a pop right now. Not that I condone it, but shareholder activism feels like a more viable (and morally defensible) route. Bullying via PR fluff does not.
Keep this up and the mob will be back to rattling pitchforks over Facebook harming kids by “refusing to add a Panic Button”. Perhaps that’s the goal — OII’s funding is proportional to the level of public anti FB sentiment?
top comments are like: yeah, we're poisoning kids, but where's the profit if we stop. Guys, you're the baddies. Try invoking Godwins' law on your words.
Lukewarm take: It's hard to isolate FB as a major determiner in kids well being when its rise (and controversy) coincides with declining economic opportunities and massive political instability. Was Facebook the reason I was depressed as a teenager, or was it that my single mom was visibly living paycheck to paycheck? Hard to say.
Related: Does anyone know of any studies that actually isolates social media as harmful to well being? Time spent on social media is a poor indicator given that it could be valuable escapism. Like any comparison of kids who have _no_ exposure to social media, but share otherwise identical socio-economic situations?
Do you mean besides Facebook’s own internal research that shows it’s harmful? It seems like their employees would know best, since they have access to the most data.
TBH, having worked in big companies, I don't really trust the quality of their research without really thinking through it myself -- is there a non-paywall version of that article that has specifics about what the data showed?
More direct to your question: Not necessarily anything more than their research, but something that details what specifically their research shows and what those research methods were?
FWIW: I did end up finding a nonpaywall version, and the research wasn't super reliable / great. They asked people specifically how instagram made them feel, which is subject to a lot of biases and not a solid objective indicator. I understand it may be the best we do, but that's not a great reason to trust it.
The data is based on asking people things. It’s not scientific. Repeatedly pointing out this as an easy gotcha against FB is not helping. It makes attacks on FB appear to lack real merit and authenticity.
> Was Facebook the reason I was depressed as a teenager, or was it that my single mom was visibly living paycheck to paycheck?
Probably, the collapse of nuclear family in western society and ultimately the sexual liberation. Personal circumstances aside, statistically speaking.
On the other hand, when I was a teenager, Facebook still had a chronological feed, and at one point didn't even have a feed. Friends posted photos of what they were doing. People didn't really post links, presumably because they didn't show pretty preview thumbnails and summaries.
For a kid growing up in a rural area with few opportunities to socialize without driving for miles, Facebook and texting were a genuinely great way for me to have a social life.
Of course, with algorithmic feeds, nobody posting original content any more, ads, and blogspam links radicalizing my relatives, Facebook is not longer a good place to socialize. Even when people do post original content, it's hard to see because it gets buried behind oceans of promoted content and ads. But I think I can safely say that an older incarnation of Facebook had a positive mental impact on me.
Did Facebook ask them to write this letter so investors still think kids are on facebook? With the kicker that the only reason a kid would go on facebook would be if it was banned, as bad for you as drugs or otherwise made to look sexy and dangerous.
Parents should be responsible for regulating the access they allow and time that their children spend on social media. There needs to be laws on how addictive social media can be intentionally made by companies.
Furthermore I don't see any reason why any children <16 should be on or have access to Facebook, Twitter, etc...
TLDR: Companies need to be prevented from making their applications excessivly addictive and parents need to parent their children more when it comes to social media.
I think this malady of social media is (kind of) temporary. It is becoming a conduit for surveillance quite speedily. Let's give it a push. We should support our local legislators so that anything we don't like be surveilled and prosecuted via our mobile devices. That is, we should pass laws so that any electronics with a radio emitter is legally obligated to report any wrongful behavior of their user. And same for social media companies (there we are already half of the way, so it's just a matter of keeping the momentum). Law-enforcement would love this. And in twenty years, we will be back to having pulp magazines and paper books, marketed as being "silicon-free".
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] thread"Открытое письмо господину Цукербергу"
It even matches the ending of господину, which -- without the у -- sure looks like the courtesy title "Gospodin". You're sure that's not a case marker?
If it was Putin instead of Zuckerberg, it would work just the same, "господину Путину". No difference at all, regardless of whether the last name is Russian or not.
However, Цукерберг/Zuckerberg is quite natural for Russian due to being an obviously Jewish name. The first letter isn't even the voiced ‘z’ in Russian, but a ‘ts’, because that's how analogous Jewish names are pronounced here.
Now that you mention it, that's exactly what happened with Greek too. Branding used to be Greek, then sort-of-foreignified Greek (eg Greek words with a foreign suffix) and now just English.
> first letter isn't even the voiced ‘z’ in Russian, but a ‘ts’,
That's probably because of the German pronunciation, no?
> That's probably because of the German pronunciation, no?
Well yeah. Wiktionary notes straight away that the surname is Ashkenazic—it was most probably naturalized in Russian through Ukraine's and specifically Odessa's Jewish population. The more familiar variation here is ‘Zuckerman’.
For example, Zuckerberg absolutely gets declined and gets that "oo" at the end. "To Mr. Dorsey" doesn't get changed (i.e., no added "oo" at the end) due to declining (but it still gets declined), while "to Mr. Smith" definitely gets that extra "oo" at the end due to declining. But "to Mrs. Smith" is unchanged after declining, so it doesn't get that same "oo" ending.
I think the same true for a last name such as Цукербергу. There are plenty of people with Germanic last names, especially ending with -berg, -man, -baum, etc, so maybe it is considered assimilated enough that it follows rules for Slavic based names.
One example of a case when the dative form would be the same as the nominative, is if the recipient was a Mrs. Zuckerberg, since this specific kind of the last name isn't inflected when it's of the feminine grammatical gender.
There's also the dubious trend of avoiding inflection of brand names for any and all purposes—but that's just contrary to how Russian works, and is dictated instead by whims of marketing people who lack the sense for the language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Ehrenburg
How much is the government doing well but we just don't see? Conversely, how much of business is doing things that harm people that we also don't see?
"It's up to you to fight me and my billionaire buddies and hundreds of corporations lobbying for new tax loopholes every year."
Accounting firms send people to Washington to "advise" legislators on changes to the tax code. Said people are then rewarded very handsomely, because the accounting companies get to use the changes for their clients, and because they "advised" legislators to do it, they know ahead of all the other accounting firms what's going to happen...
Governments tax corporate revenue too, it's just that's called a sales tax.
And also, yes, Amazon gets lots of tax loopholes and freebies. They wave "jobs!" around and get property tax breaks and whatnot.
Yep. If the past 10 years have shown us anything, it's that these billionaires are anticipating this pushback, so they'll add however many layers of fluff they need to prevent them from taking real action. Google didn't remotely care about privacy until they were relentlessly sued over it, and Europe implemented baseline privacy laws. Apple dragged their feet in the mud over App Store changes until the double-barrel end of the Supreme Court was staring them between the eyes. The only way we can make a change here is by exercising the powers we were given to keep these companies in check. The longer we hesitate and waffle over whether or not it's a good application, the more time we give them to exploit us.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29413173
"We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table?"-- Oscar Wilde
She's donating more than anyone else, yet people are complaining about it.
When I read that my impression is that what's actually being asked is :"give us power over the platform"
The "independent fact checking" on YouTube does not seem to be going well. I see no reason to think that this would
Even if you personally don't use Facebook or don't want to, we still all have to be around people who use it all the time.
I also got my doubt about this "science", social sciences are not really sciences, a lot of the research in those fields is not replicated or just based on asking people questions rather than actually observing behaviour. I don't understand how they claim as if there is some scientific truth that we have to follow when it comes to those issues, in most cases it is more assumptions, loose correlations mixed with ideologies and politics.
Just put a university after your name means nothing. Do I need to search each of your name to know whether you are a scholar in the related field, or just simply a student studying in the university?
Or is that because millions is not a sufficient number, and billions is the number to become what matters?
For the purpose of scientific research, it is not a good argument to ask for the platform to cooperate with you. Researcher should develop their research methods totally independent of the subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
I'm obviously not the only person saying this, and I don't want to brush Facebook and Instagram issues under the rug, but I fear the series of articles that arose from this whistle-blowing has created all sorts of twisted incentives for every player whose digital product can be abused. What's the upside of making such research looking into negative effects if, when leaked, (1) only the negatives is headlined and presented, (2) the positives are ignored and (3) no acknowledgment of the research existing in the first place is made? I'm conflicted myself writing this, especially #3 as it may (I'm not informed enough to have a strong opinion) be akin to historic examples of tobacco and petroleum industries ignoring their R&D, but #1 and #2 seem pretty clear.
Why are these researchers not addressing the industry at large, if only as a bullet point/segment? It seems like scapegoating while these issues are widespread and no company/executive will position itself to be the next scapegoat in line to be ousted. Research on FB-Insta could be useful to expand to the rest of the industry, but why would they be inclined to respond to this piece where they are made out to be as the nefarious actor when it comes children's health?
Right now they profit from engagement. Engagement =/= good mental health Metas definition of good mental health =/= my definition
If a depressed person who scrolls all day gets off and leads a better life how does that make meta money? Asking genuinely, as im sure some change oriented folks within meta are.
Just spit-balling: I think bars will kick people out once they've had too much to drink, sometimes from a legality standpoint, but also from a place of sympathy or even fear (this person will disrupt the environment).
How would you say other businesses have handled this without government regulation?
There's heavy regulation, policing and liability here. Bars will cut people off and kick them out because if they let a person get tanked and they go hit someone with their car while drunk, that puts the business in jeopardy. Not only are there laws that make it a criminal offense, that's how a business loses its liquor license and gets held liable for potentially significant damages.
My state has negligent serving of alcohol laws, and it also holds businesses responsible for any injuries, damages or deaths a drunk driver causes.
Do bars still cut off people for any non-legal reasons?
Trying to find if these establishments do anything to curb addiction even when not forced by outside regulators.
It only has to make them more money than the alternative, which is losing the ability to operate within countries that protect the health of their citizens.
There are a lot of businesses like this, with a profit incentive that is directly at odds with the health of their customers.
You can't solve that fundamental issue, so you regulate them or tax the harm. If you make the harm more expensive, the profit motive is (at least a bit) blunted.
Everyone forgets about this option.
Same deal with obesity.
Blaming individuals is how we’re wired, but it’s not functional when you’re concerned about population behaviours.
Like obesity, no amount of health warnings, sugar taxes, ect on products will solve the obesity epidemic if more individuals don't assume agency for what they put in their body and the bodies of their children.
Free will is an illusion
Even a fully deterministic computer takes input/instructions and completes actions.
Humans are complex logic engines with programing. They can be programed to need external input to take an action, or take actions without external input.
You can program a child to think they need permission to go to the bathroom, or to think they can get up and go without permission.
You can program an addict to think they helpless to resist a drug, or that they can resist the urge and stop.
In this sense, humans can be programed with logic that either helps them achieve their goals, or prevents them from doing so.
Human "agency", "willpower", and "control" is simply shifting a person's program to take actions less on environmental inputs based more on their core values (e.g happiness - also programed).
I think that telling humans that they are helpless to control their behavior and need outside input is bad programing which harms their outcomes.
People overestimate the helplessness and dependence on circumstance. It is better to program people to act with more self control.
Take obesity for example, do we know why so many people have gained so much weight? If I were to judge what I think your opinion might be from your response so far, it would be purely that people are eating too much.
So what causes that behavior? Do people just eat as much as the person next to them? Eat as much as their parents? Do they eat what's available and that just happens to be highly reinforcing (salt, simple sugars, fats) and easily available? Are there hormonal signaling pathways that control feeding behavior? Maybe there are environmental factors, such as hormone disruptors that weren't there 100 years ago? Is there a high prevalence of genetic disorders relating to weight control and feeding behaviors?
There may be multiple causes, and some may overlap.
Also this puts far too much on the end consumer, when there are also emergent patterns that come from behaviors of businesses and markets such as locations of grocery stores and stock in those stores. All of this, all of us.
We are all part of the same system and we should not attempt to place blame on any certain part when there are many many contributing factors. We should attempt to figure out which parts need to be adjusted and how, and its never going to be only one thing such as the agency of the individual.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert
>Admitting we are powerless allows us to investigate and change the factors that truly lie behind the behavior
I couldn't disagree more. I am all for scientific investigations but think that behavior psychology is vastly under evaluated relative to environmental or biological priming.
>Take obesity for example, do we know why so many people have gained so much weight? If I were to judge what I think your opinion might be from your response so far, it would be purely that people are eating too much.
People are eating to many calories, this is irrefutable. We can discuss why they are eating too many calories, which is the more nuanced question
<We are all part of the same system and we should not attempt to place blame on any certain part when there are many many contributing factors. We should attempt to figure out which parts need to be adjusted and how, and its never going to be only one thing such as the agency of the individual.
This reads as self contradiction to me: "There are many contributing factors but we should not assign blame" vs "We should attempt to figure out which parts need to be adjusted"
Figuring out which part of the system is the cause is how one decides what needs to be adjusted. You can not ignore the psychological decision making process. Why one person has self control, and another does not.
To say that the perception of agency of the individual is out of scope is ridiculous to me. Actualizing one's own agency was crucial for every addict, obese person, or depressed person I have ever known.
As examples: if Facebook spreads misinformation, my government gets worse. I may even lose individual liberties, like women currently losing the right to medical privacy.
If Facebook gives children eating disorders, my health insurance premiums go up.
Even if I only care about myself and police myself, Facebook can still rip apart the society that I live in.
> Everyone forgets about this option.
No they don't. You seem to have forgotten about externalities.
Personal responsibility is not a policy that can’t be applied across a population. You might have a combination of will, mental health state, and life advantages that puts you in the the 80 or 90th percentile of being able to resist or avoid addictive activities but you are not common.
Willpower is finite and companies have thousands of lifetimes worth of resources.
I don't believe personal responsibility and willpower is a fixed quantity, even at the population level. In fact, I think they are negatively impacted by emphasizing the influence of external factors in personal behavior.
Telling an addict that they are powerless to regulate their consumption only erodes their ability to improve. External factors my have led them to their addiction, but they can't fix an additional without assuming agency taking control of their behavior. Yes, this is HARD, but no addict can recover without it.
The only durable solution that will help people is shifting the curve such that more people are able to resist or avoid addictive activities. Policy solutions are simply too ineffective and porous to have a durable effect.
Social media platforms are giant algorithmic feedback engines creating the most reliable way for their regular users to fulfill their neuro-chemical and social needs. That these people cannot find better information in their mediasphere means that we need to encourage people and remind them of their agency - yes - but we cannot leave it at "words of encouragement" when the other end is "massive highly personalized feedback loop of all the people you miss seeing"
I think much of the problem with duality dissolves once you eliminate the concept of the soul or free will. People tend to ignore the fact that the individual still exists as an information processing agent that takes actions, even if you remove free will.
If a program fails to provide the desired output when given an input, it is neither the input or that code that is to blame, but an incompatibility between the input and code that is at fault. You it is possible to get the desired outcome by modifying either, or more likely both.
I'm sure I am overlooking some implications or counterpoints, so I look forward to reading your suggestion.
And it's not just Meta, you should really look at IOS & Android's culpability. Smartphones changed the game.
And FB already has lots of content moderators trying to filter things like hate speech, bullying, and thinspo. What would you have them change? How do you know for sure your suggestion will work?
I don't think Mr. Zuckerberg can do much, besides pivoting to a new-flagship product which is what he might be trying to do with "Meta".
With FB/IG they are just responding to demand in the market. Maybe there are low hanging ways to make it fundamentally better for mental health, but at a certain point that objective will clash with $ and who know's if it's what consumers want if given the option https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_(cigarette)
The government should probably step-in to research and regulate but its more systemic than just FB. Apple/Google don't get their fair share of the blame, they are selling Skinner Boxes as a service to all these companies. It's ridiculous you can't have more control of notifications. If I want to get a notification for a New Message, Tagged in a post or an update from Delivery driver... I have to also let these apps poke me whenever they want to try to get me addicted to their platforms.
Do we really need someone as deranged, corrupt, and irresponsible to get involved on this?I mean seriously, just because he has money/influence/power doesn't mean jack shit.
If anything, Zuck would be stupid to response to this "open letter": he PROFITS from the fact that some people are mentally ill.What a joke.If you want people to be more stable mentally, you would tell them to f#ck off social media, socialize, eventually keep some traditions or norms within smaller groups which create stronger bonds, those are things that keep you sane.Oxford at this point repeatedly showed that they're a shit institution, and i have to wonder if there's any substance on this besides a PR move.
1) If there is such a stigma with "mental health", why do people not use a different term for it, e.g., "emotional health"?
2) Why do they only focus on the impacts these platforms have on children (younger humans), do these platforms not have similar harms to us older humans?
Game. Set. Match.
Some of the contributors research child or adolescent psychology. Maybe all. And including adults would lose public support from people who think adults can look out for themselves. No one thinks children can and adults can't.
That's called ‘euphemism treadmill’: newly invented euphemisms will soon be hijacked for pejorative use. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euphemism#Euphemism_treadmill (and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysphemism#Context_and_drift)
IMO this is a part of a more general process that many words shift meanings or are re-appropriated to describe emotional or political judgement. E.g. ‘autistic’ became trendy as an invective about ten years ago; and ‘awesome’ doesn't cut it anymore for clickbait, so different words are in vogue now—until they too become overused to death.
Anyway, science and healthcare can't and shouldn't change its vocabulary every time fourteen-year-olds on Reddit decide they are done with one pejorative term and start stigmatizing another one.
Ah, I wrote a paper on euphemisms in first and second languages when I was in college but hadn't heard about this before, I'm excited to check into it more, thank you!
> Anyway, science and healthcare can't and shouldn't change its vocabulary every time fourteen-year-olds on Reddit decide they are done with one pejorative term and start stigmatizing another one.
I agree that I don't want science to necessarily change its terms because a sub-cultural group decided it offended them; sometimes maybe, but not always, as having consistency of terms can make it easier to replicate research. I think the irony with the case "mental health" is that it used to be called "mental hygiene," so the term did change over time.
I also think one of the aspects of science is trying to come up with new linguistic ways to parse the world—recategorizing things as more research is conducted. Maybe it's less getting rid of the term "mental health" but creating a new category that distinguishes from it.
I think the challenge with the term "mental health" is less about a new stigma and more about the history of the term[0]:
> The mental hygiene movement, in its origins and reflecting Beers’ experience in mental hospitals, was primarily and basically concerned with the improvement of the care of people with mental disorders. In Beers’ own words: “When the National Committee was organized, in 1909, its chief concern was to humanize the care of the insane: to eradicate the abuses, brutalities and neglect from which the mentally sick have traditionally suffered.” 4.
> It was at a later stage that the Committee enlarged its program to include the “milder forms of mental disability” and a greater concern with preventive work. The rationale behind this shift was the belief that “mental disorders frequently have their beginnings in childhood and youth and that preventive measures are most effective in early life”, and that environmental conditions and modes of living produce mental ill health.
I think the term "mental health" can carry that cultural history, of being used to treat the more extreme versions of mental health, not the more common, less severe occurrences.
I also found this quote and wonder how much what the term covers has changed over time:
> The First International Congress of Mental Health was organized in London by the British National Association for Mental Hygiene from 16 to 21 August, 1948...Only one concept of mental health was put forward, by J.C. Flugel, Chairman of the Conference’s Programme Committee: “Mental health is regarded as a condition which permits the optimal development, physical, intellectual and emotional, of the individual, so far as this is compatible with that of other individuals.”
It almost seems as "mental health" was proposed to encompass physical, intellectual, and emotional development. Which may make sense if "mental" is defined as overarching, however, I imagine many today would see the "mental" as related to the brain.
So while I think yes, sometimes we change terms because they've gained new stigma over time, I think this may be a case where it started with stigma. Maybe not.
--
[0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2408392/
Mental health and emotional health seem like very different things. I think that's more of the problem than a stigma with the words 'mental health'. Truth is, being depressed is mental unhealthy the same way over-eating is physical unhealthy. (and mentally unhealthy too, hah!)
> Mental health and emotional health seem like very different things.
How would you say they differ?
I wouldn't call a person with down syndrome of having poor physical health, or emotional health. I'd say their mental health is permanently damaged. The same way someone with a life long disease might have permanently poor physical health.
It reminds me of being in a bookstore and I asked about books on empathy and the person led me to two sections: one on psychology and one psychics. I skimmed the psychology book and it talked about setting boundaries and paying attention to how one felt. I skimmed the psychics book and it talked about psychic walls and auras. I then realized they may be talking about very similar things but with different and slightly different approaches.
Regardless, thank you for helping me feel more clear on just using the language that resonates with me and seeing if and how it resonates with others.
If it can be cured/aided with empathy, it may be accurate to call it an emotional health issue. ADHD? Mental or emotional? Well it doesn't have to be either, it can be both! Taking a baseball bat to the brain will damage your physical and mental health, why can't taking a few distractions to the eyes do something similar?
No need to thank me. I am only giving you my justification. You are the one doing the work. :)
haha, exactly! I think I can try to force my thinking into an either/or, when it can be both/and.
> No need to thank me. I am only giving you my justification. You are the one doing the work. :)
I thank people when I feel grateful and I felt grateful :) Kinda like how I apologize when I feel guilty, even if the other person doesn't feel angry at me. I think we're both doing "the work," however one defines it :)
Edit: I think it might even help to imagine a ‘comedy in characters’ of this situation:
Previously in FB.
— Zuck, they say FB is bad for the brain!
— Well, how bad, if this is gonna blow in our faces?
Several months later.
— This bad.
Zuck spins for some cycles, counting zeroes on the bank balance.
— I can live with that.
A bunch of researchers see that FB funds research.
— Yo, we also can tell you in detail how bad it is! Give us some funding.
Zuck: — ???
Letters are not an ideal medium to change things via ethical grandstanding. Most people just aren't concerned with what random strangers write to large companies. Grandstanding may have a role in effecting change, especially political change, and letters may play a role in a larger grandstanding campaign led by someone with an influence and following — but in the era of the Internet and television, it is often an ancillary role.
The more successful campaigns of grandstanding via letters have often included strongly principled letters with sharp yet carefully restrained language. The contents of such a letter are published as a full-page ad in a major newspaper such as the New York Times, Washington Post, or Wall Street Journal. Ideally, they will be signed by credible authors, often many of them.
Something like this: http://www.cato.org/special/stimulus09/cato_stimulus.pdf
Or this: https://www.reddit.com/r/chomsky/comments/oq9su1/let_cuba_li...
But even these have had limited direct impact. What hope does your letter have?
If your grandstanding target is more specific than the general public, the question still remains: will this letter reach and affect them?
Take cigarettes. Known harmful, regulations around selling to youth expanded, again and again.
In Canada, first, as a store, you couldn't sell. Then fines for selling, 100s, then thousands of dollars. Then it became illegal to show cigarettes in the store, they had to be hidden behind counter.
Traditional media was outlawed from marketing, showing them too.
My point is, if industry doesn't change, then government will eventually step in, and no matter how powerful or rich, an industry will bow to the law.
Government moves slowly, often taking a decade to move, or more, but due to people like Zuck, and due to corps like Google and Twitter, government regulation is coming, because they aren't self regulating. Corps never seem to, history is full of such examples.
The problem is though, that these platforms are now conjoined with how we express ourselves, and thus, this new series of upcoming regulations are very, very wrought with landmines, and the potential to significantly impact free speech going forward.
Free expression is at the core of our modern democracies, and if government become too controlling here, or conversely if private corps too wary, we literally could end up wit truncated democracies.
The decisions being made right now, will impact the future dramatocally, for generations. This is a fulcrum, a focal point, a nexus of change.
I am concerned.
It's this:
And I suppose comfortable oversight board positions should go to the activists researchers who organized the open letter.
Welcome to North Korea. I will win.
you have no idea what the impact of allowing access to "social" tech will have on them in the long term
Its all a massive guessing game.
After that day we realized its not easy to control smart children.
Is your example a smart child or a stupid child?
I like to take my son fishing because it teaches him it’s ok to be bored, silence is ok too, also our talks and bonding is deeper in these moments, and it gets us out in nature.
I say this every time this comment comes up and I always get downvoted but I just don’t care. I love my kids and I fight every day to keep them safe and healthy and I DO NOT NEED to fight a super villain with direct access to my child’s mind.
Social media is evil. It will be banned. Wait and see.
In short: Network effect.
Now it’s a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”, and just giving your kids the keys is probably the lesser of the two evils.
Which is why we should be making sure that these platforms are healthy for everyone involved, as much as is practical and possible.
If this was business as usual, that wouldn’t have happened.
No, I foresee a future in which social media is mandatory - if not in law, at least in practice. I use none, as I found it turned me into a performer rather than a person, and even now sometimes find myself at an impasse where I am not able to do x, y, z because I do not have a social media presence. For instance, I was refused entry to the US for refusing to divulge my social media handles - because I have none. I was last night refused entrance to a bar because I wouldn’t share my instagram handle - because I have none. I had to go for a physical interview last year for a residency permit where I live, because I would not share my Facebook handle - because I have none. I got residency, but I was presented with additional hurdles for not being a user.
If you want out, the only way is to forgo much of modern life - and this will only become more and more apparent.
I’ve taken to writing physical letters. If I can’t be bothered, what I had to say evidently wasn’t important in the first place.
And even if you ban them from using ALL meta product. They will still be hooked to something else. Forum ( That is a form of Social Media as well ), other media for celebrity news or whatever. Ban Whatsapp? There is iMessages on iOS and used mostly across teen age group in the US, Line in Japan, KakaoTalk in Korea. Did anyone remember SnapChat ?
Even if you DO ban all of them. They will still get spread in school talking about the trendiest topic. They will find a way to join the conversation no matter what so they dont get left out. And I have seen this first hand.
I am not against Facebook providing some sort of filter or mode for Kids or something. But it is ultimately the parents that is responsible. The world has changed. And I have always argued it is not the platform or social media. It is the internet itself, extremely affordable and accessible via Smartphone everywhere. And so far I didn't even mention Youtube.
Parenting in the 21st century is harder than ever.
On the other hand kids these days learn so so much more at their age on topics that you could never imagined over the internet. Things I could only dream of when all I had was books in library written by people not targeting my age. ( Which is actually another issues because those who are curious and willing to learn excel so much further than the bottom half of the class, it seems the information super highway has fastened inequality everywhere. )
I am actually surprised at the Hotcake being the most upvoted comments, for the past 6+ years Facebook has been the most hated company on HN and anything that goes against hating Facebook tends to get downvoted.
I hope I'm not misrepresenting your argument with this analogy, but it seems like you're saying "Don't ban heroin. Kids will still get hooked on weed!"
It's okay to ban the worst offenders and carefully regulate the 'market'.
With a free and open market, billions of dollars of investment, and thousands of smart minds working over at Facebook, it's quite possible that things will get worse if there's no regulation.
Except I can see zero good about heroin, while social Media ( inclusive of instant messengers ) have their own good. So it is not as clear cut.
For example I define Chat as a different category then Social Media.
How do you define Social Media and what is the value (or good) they add that is unique to these platforms?
Hence, legislation shouldn’t target individual companies, but “features” that harm people or lead to bad outcomes for society at large. One such example is Europe’s GDPR, which imposes some fundamental limitations on what companies can and cannot do with their users’ personal data. And as negative consequences of poor social media design becomes more apparent, legislators must expand on that and ban more of the malicious practices that are at fault.
It may take time for the US to deliberately damage national champions like Facebook and Google. Other countries will be less patient to act. I cannot imagine democratically elected governments idly standing by as Facebook drags their people into a dystopian Metaverse where there’s no more escaping the misinformation and manipulation that’s already rampant on current-generation social media platforms.
How, by getting rid of the first amendment? Seems doubtful.
That’s exactly the reason people without children have no children: they want to have free time.
Like it or not YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and the internet in general has taken up the place of parenting and social interaction because parents are worked to death for the 1% and social media is designed the same way as casinos. They're designed to prey upon your instincts and are demonstrated to be quite effective at it. I wouldn't mind if tomorrow Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Reddit, etc, all disappeared overnight. Obviously government can't have the power to do that because they'll go after everything but that.
It’s interesting to watch Australia navigate this. Murdoch is rather powerful there and has some leverage.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/mar/16/rupert-murdoch...
And ppl like mark is obviously responsible because they are using dopamine tricks to make content more addicting. Like whats the point of showing me nonsense news because one of the people I added liked some nonsense? Why to show nonsense ads that says me "She looks beautiful and if you want try this cream"? (mark because he is the own who has ultimate control over facebook and insta)
China tackled this by banning and making sure tiktok etc returns more science content for children instead of dopamine addicting content. (China because I don't know if other country has regulated social media like this)
The opioid crisis is also the fault of all those pesky addicts who chose to get themselves addicted and it’s not at all on Purdue.
Right?! /s
We should also prevent the supply of these things and regulate harmful corporate behavior, but that doesn't absolve parents of their responsibility.
1. You have no idea about teenagers.
2. You have no idea about the causes of the opioid crisis.
Also, I did not conflate the two which you appear to think I have done.
Parents can regulate the hours, but unless they regulate them down to zero, they cannot affect the adictiveness engineered into the product. Yes, the dose makes the poison, but I guarantee you Facebook has a team of psychologists making sure the dose needed to get kids hooked is as low as possible.
Personal story: to situate, when i was teenager facebook was starting to be a thing and myspace started fading. My parents did something i find to be very sensible: they responsabilised me and introduced me to computers. I had restricted "freetime" computer hours and slightly less restricted "working" computer hours (doing school work etc), which eventually led me to programming since it somehow passed as working (my mom's a programmer so there's that). I wasn't allowed to have a facebook account and it was explained to me why that was so. Reasons where mostly not putting random private stuff online somewhere i wouldn't control it, addiction wasn't too important but i think it was implicitly said that these stuff eat you time and that now your time doing constructive things vanishes. OTOH my computer was clean of any spyware and i was trusted (had admin password and all). I surely was an outsider from this pov, but i quickly managed to own it and be proud of not having that account. For me this is the key: you cannot protect your kid against his will, you must (and surely can, kids are smart) convince them that they have more to loose than to gain. Maybe at that time it was simpler since it was the golden age of xmpp and gtalk was something i had access to (Adium for the win!).
One of the oft-touted figures was that “thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.”
My hot take is: "That's probably about right." Given the sorry state of physical education, fitness, and the fact that 60%+ of adults are obese or overweight, the fact that 1/3 of people on Instagram look at other people and feel their appearance needs improvement is probably about right -- if not a little low. There are probably another 1/3 that _should_ feel bad but don't. (And boys too!)
This whole letter reads as a somewhat patronising attempt to force FB into sharing their toys without offering anything in return. Once you go down the path of publicly shaming someone into working with you all hope for cordial collaboration must go out the window.
Frankly, if OII want a slice of the company, shares are trading at $300 a pop right now. Not that I condone it, but shareholder activism feels like a more viable (and morally defensible) route. Bullying via PR fluff does not.
Keep this up and the mob will be back to rattling pitchforks over Facebook harming kids by “refusing to add a Panic Button”. Perhaps that’s the goal — OII’s funding is proportional to the level of public anti FB sentiment?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/uk/8616980.stm
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is...
More direct to your question: Not necessarily anything more than their research, but something that details what specifically their research shows and what those research methods were?
FWIW: I did end up finding a nonpaywall version, and the research wasn't super reliable / great. They asked people specifically how instagram made them feel, which is subject to a lot of biases and not a solid objective indicator. I understand it may be the best we do, but that's not a great reason to trust it.
Probably, the collapse of nuclear family in western society and ultimately the sexual liberation. Personal circumstances aside, statistically speaking.
If you mean the US (as per $DEFAULT_COUNTRY), it's kinda hilarious to see that you call this ‘massive political instability’.
For a kid growing up in a rural area with few opportunities to socialize without driving for miles, Facebook and texting were a genuinely great way for me to have a social life.
Of course, with algorithmic feeds, nobody posting original content any more, ads, and blogspam links radicalizing my relatives, Facebook is not longer a good place to socialize. Even when people do post original content, it's hard to see because it gets buried behind oceans of promoted content and ads. But I think I can safely say that an older incarnation of Facebook had a positive mental impact on me.
Furthermore I don't see any reason why any children <16 should be on or have access to Facebook, Twitter, etc...
TLDR: Companies need to be prevented from making their applications excessivly addictive and parents need to parent their children more when it comes to social media.