[Sideloader]

Convoluted piece that uses a lot of words to say very little and ends up being (yet another) defense of “social” media and its billionaire owners.

It matters little if Facebook users, their attention-span or their data trail and the content they churn out are the “product”....Facebook’s business model (data, data and more data) requires the company to maximize the time users spend browsing, reading and clicking through its network.

As we have seen, the company has no problem with using people’s psychology against them to achieve this. And the company’s devious and underhanded tricks (like its data mining “security app”) designed to Hoover up as much information as possible are legendary.

Multiple studies show “social” media use is detrimental to people’s psychological wellbeing and these companies not only own the channels billions use to communicate daily, they own the CONTENT of those communications. With FB and Google/Alphabet cozying up to the DoS, DoD and intelligence services...and deploying algorithms to limit “fake news” (i.e. any and all information that challenges the status quo) these companies have way too much power.

They are a menace to our societies and need to be busted up and regulated.

[yodsanklai]

> the company has no problem with using people’s psychology against them to achieve this

I'm playing devil's advocate, but the same could be said of most companies. It's the basis of marketing. Using people's psychology to sell them products or ads, which most of the time aren't really good (or even harmful, like sodas, tobacco, junk food) for them.

[closeparen]

The same research findings exist for television. Shall the studios be busted and up and regulated into the ground, or are you just an apologist for Big Media and its billionaire owners? (What an awful rhetorical tactic...)

[ThomPete]

This is just not correct and at best a very simplistic view of reality.

Instagram which uses no smart algorithms to speak of is the social network that is responsible for most depressions not FB.

You need to be able to answer why that is before you can start making FB responsible for things that they aren't really.

The real danger is our own vanity not clever algorithms from FB.

https://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=https://www.for...

[9935c101ab17a66]

.... what? This is patently false. The instagram feed is no longer sorted chronologically, and hasn't been for some time. The ads they show you also definitely depend on "smart algorithms". The follow suggestions they give you, the content that populates the explore feed... all definitely derived by "smart algorithms".

[ThomPete]

Compared to FB the algorithms are not even close to being smart and thats the point. Even when it was sorted chronologically Instagram was known for being a kind of depression factory and if you look at all the studies done about social media and it's effect it's not which item the algorithms show but the fact that everyone is posting "perfect lives" and have been known for some time now.