[jrochkind1]

Yeah, 1% actually seems shockingly high to me. Are there other products or entertainments in which 1 in 100 users have suicidal thoughts they attribute to the product? I was surprised to see Facebook bragging that "only" 1%.

[bostonsre]

At least drug companies give you a heads up that some products may give you suicidal thoughts. Seems shitty that Facebook hid this until they were caught.

[kevinmchugh]

The drug companies have legal requirements to publicize side effects

[bostonsre]

Yea, definitely feels like there needs to be regulation around social media. Fb almost feels like the new Philip Morris. They may not give you cancer, but they have a product that affects the mental health of millions.

[DoingIsLearning]

Not just mental health.

- Multi-level marketing ponzi schemes

- Anti-vaccination

- Far-right extremism

- Islamic extremism

- Totalitarian government political propaganda

- Censorship of anti-totalitarian movements leading to incarceration and torture.

All of these had an exponential growth amplification platform, all of these would have otherwise had an organic growth at best.

Teen suicide is just one negative aspect that happened to be studied in more detail probably due to CYA liability more than anything else.

[mavhc]

Stop following idiots, I don't see any of that.

[harry8]

As long as /you/ are all right there's no problem them. Done. Thanks.

edit: I'm sorry the tone of that obviously rubbed me the wrong way. Let me try again.

If you have personally been able to fully avoid direct contact all the suggested problems listed that actually doesn't make those problems cease to exist for others. Such problems also may affect you quite profoundly in an indirect fashion via people you love or society at large or a number of other vectors.

I'd suggest that these problems are extremely likely to exist and more research needed on their full effect and indeed the trade offs involved in any suggested solutions to it. Your proffered solution of "don't follow idiots" probably isn't particularly useful to anyone. The majority of people would believe, just like you do, that they don't follow idiots.

[nowherebeen]

It’s disgusting how they are reducing human life to relative percentage of 1%. In absolute terms, there are 1 billion users meaning 10 million users have suicidal thoughts because of the app. That’s a large city population. NYC has 8.5 million population, imagine every single person in NYC is suicidal. That’s a frightening thought.

[mavhc]

Not because of the app though, while using the app. The app isn't making causing those thoughts, society is.

Society is promoting being attractive/thin/wealthy/always happy/being envious

[nowherebeen]

> The app isn't making causing those thoughts, society is.

You are right in that the app isn't making it, but it is promoting it with their algorithm to maximize engagement.

[mavhc]

Their algorithm to maximize engagement automatically promotes what's popular. What's popular is a side effect of society and how human brains work.

Every supermarket magazine is doing the same thing, just they're not as good at it.

[nowherebeen]

> Their algorithm to maximize engagement automatically promotes what's popular.

No, their algorithm is maximizing conflict. There's no algorithm needed for what's popular. A 5 year old can write that algorithm. Go read up on research on what drives engagement on social media. Popular != maximum engagement.

[mavhc]

Conflict is popular, there's more comments when people disagree. It's a very unintelligent way to measure popularity, number of comments, number of views.

That's why the rest of the Facebook posts you see are "what was your favourite meal as a child?" etc with thousands of comments. The ones people think are phishing scams.

[ta988]

Ask them the same thing about school, or living with their family members. Unfortunately environment can be extremely stressful to teens and it usually gets dismissed by adults because "they have been through it, it was not that bad" except that it was and still is a source of trauma for many people.

[mgraczyk]

It doesn't seem high to me. Almost 30% of people 18-24 claim to have seriously considered suicide as a result of the pandemic, for example

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6932a1.htm

[Sebb767]

If your bar for a consumer product (intended for leisure!) is to be better than an actual global catastrophe, there's nothing I could add to make it clearer that something is seriously wrong.

[dataflow]

>> Are there other products or entertainments

> the pandemic

You might be the first person on the planet who's found the pandemic to be entertaining (or a product...)