Facebook used to have a team dedicated to analyzing their apps' risks to children's and teenagers' health. The team concluded that there are indeed many serious health risks for both children and teenagers, especially teenage girls. Shortly after, it got disbanded, and all its recommendations completely ignored.
this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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They took all that data and used it to exploit the kids.
But really, who wouldn’t? They’re not our kids! Well, nearly 100% of them aren’t. Little Johnny will forgive papa for it one day right?
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Ignored? Yeah I suppose so, but they sure as shit used the data for their own gain. That team really was the road of good intentions
When the news about that came out, around a decade ago now, I deleted my Facebook profile and tried to tell all my friends/family using FB that ... this is pure fucking evil and they should also get off FB.
They all gaslit me, pretended that news wasn't real, and acted like I was a paranoid delusional maniac.
Nowadays we have basically the same kind of conclusions regarding TikTok and other platforms that focus on short form video content... well, actually even worse conclusions... and they come from actual peer reviewed scientific journals...
But you'll still get people saying 'brainrot isn't real'... when uh, yes thats a clumsy term, but it is basically confirmed at this point that TikTok is as addictive as a drug, ruins your motivation and attention span, fills your with mis and disinformatiin, ruins and warps your self image and self esteem, promotes wildly irresponsible and often illegal financial mindsets/strategies... etc etc...
That's how targeted advertising works yes. Not much of a reveal there?
I guess people need the obvious pointed out, and yeah fair enough.
Before I get dogpiled: I'm not defending them. I'm saying it's sad people actually think or thought the bar was higher than this. You can tell me Google, Xhitter, whatever did the same and I'd say the same thing. You're the product. You. Are. The. Product.
It is absolutely baffling that people don't realize that people are the product. I've had some folks tell me that they understand and "don't care" because the service is "free" or whatever, but then they get angry and freaked out when the platform knows exactly what they're thinking, or at least seems to know.
There's definitely a deficit in understanding and education on what corporate social media really does.
a) yes
b) what I find really concerning is that they may have already figured out how to change people's behaviour: what they think is funny, what they think is appropriate to say/do, where they want to travel to (if at all), how they feel about certain celebrities they like or dislike, what is believable or not believable, how they feel about certain politicians, who to vote for. Some people are probably more easy to sway on certain topics than others are. It's not a stretch to guess that they probably already know various paths to make individuals into something they currently are not.
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People downvoting you don't realize how much of a science advertising is.
I think that's true in general, but not why I was downdooted.
My guess was the downvotes are people assuming I don't think it's worse to manipulate children vs adults and that I was somehow okay with it apathetically.
I'm also an asshole occasionally when I see frustrating and disturbing things like this, so my kneejerk response is maybe where I fucked up.
I really need to get into the habit of letting a post stew in preview for a hot second before I let loose my mental vomit lol because I sometimes get my ass kicked for not communicating what I'm actually trying to say effectively.
Edit: Lemmy has been pretty kind to me for my clarifying edits when I do this to myself though, so thanks guys. Like this one :)
I wonder how prevalent adblocking is among the younger generations. Even among my peer group I'd see people browsing the web with no adblock and a bunch of ads on websites when I'd glance at a sea of laptops. It was eye opening that outside of the social media I use that many people are just not tech literate. Is ad acceptance trending upward as people get younger and younger?
I wonder how prevalent adblocking is among the younger generations
Speaking of advertising being a science like another person commented, it means it's data driven.
https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users
https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2024-july-global-statshot
Lots and lots: https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=how+prevalent+is+adblocking+by+generation
But more to the point:
Women in every generation block less ads however, which I found interesting.
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The difference is this is tracking and targeting minors.
And just because it is the status quo does not mean the general public is aware of it or the actual extent. It needs to be spelled out to them how and why.
Honestly I find it hard to believe any teens are on Facebook now, maybe IG is still cool? Nothing like before. Idk I don't think teens are on those platforms really
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Wake me up when something gets done about it other than a fine that amounts to about half a day's profit for them.
They need to be jailed and their companied closed
/s Meanwhile, in some Signal group: “Should we suicide her or do you guys figure she might have some ICE-worthy tattoos?”
:punch: :americanflag: :fire:
There are no ethics in capitalism
Who are the 3 people downvoting? This is very true and I don't see it ever changing as long as humans are humans. Pretty much all religions say treat each other nicely and don't kill. But then why are there war profiteering companies around?
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And how would you fix it?
Stop de-regulating everything. Guardrails were put there for a reason.
I agree. That’s a good start at least.
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Don’t all social media and internet companies do that? It’s all a case of machine learning. I can’t open Insta these days without being blasted with reels of boobs, cleavage etc. My wife gets reels of cooking, dancing etc. It doesn’t have to do anything with our searches or viewing. They’re using our personal information to create a model and shoving targeted content based on that down our throats. This has the highest probability of increasing engagement on their platform.
No, it's not normal. Almost no internet companies around the world try to do anything similar to what Meta did and does. Even if you focus on social media companies, I believe that only a small minority try to do that kind of thing.
For example, here we are on social media. Do you see any targeted advertising? Is it being done by the Lemmy instance? And how many instances are there? Then we could look at Mastodon, or discussion forums, or comment boards, or you name it. Of course you would expect some targeted advertising, like you might find computer advertisements if you're on a computer tech forum, but that's different from targeting users who are in a weak state of mind, precisely because it's targeting their overtly expressed general interests and not their temporary vulnerabilities.
Finally, I think you should go back and read the article. You ranted about companies trying to shove things down your throats, but the article was about how to misuse targeted advertising.
Lemmy is far from normal, it is not profitable as a social media platform and is reliant on donations and generosity.
Google AdSense does similar things to meta, as does amazon. This is far from a misuse, of the technology as that implies that this isn't accomplishing the intended goal, which, aside from laws trying to differentiate children from adults, it does.
Neither google (at least for the first decade or so) or Amazon have such detailed data about you as facebook
Yeah, sorry, but while still going too far, these companies get dwarved by meta when it comes to these practices. I work with certain advertising platforms and know it inside out (don't judge me lol). No way can we target based on emotional state or anything even closely resmlembling that.
Meta purposely pits extreme sides of every issue you could think of, gender, race, class, religion, even vegan, against each other. Every hate comment is great news for Meta. Hate comments mean that person is engaging so they will feed them more of that content and further drag them into their hateful beliefs. And why do they do that? To show them shirt and knicknack advertisements while they're frothing at the mouth.
Fuck Mark Zuckerberg. He's one of the worst humans on the planet and deserves terrible things to happen to him.
Worth noting by the way that instagram is owned by Meta - the very company the post is calling out.
I'm convinced insta knows your a guy and will blast you with reels full of chicks no matter what you do.
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I pirated her book (because fuck her, she was a Facebook exec) and learned that she had a gnarly near-death experience as a child when she got attacked by a shark at the beach.
I didn't finish the book due to a combination of laziness and my general revulsion at anything Zuck adjacent, but if you have the stomach for it there's a cool shark attack story in it for you at least.
Were you rooting for the shark?
To the business world humans are ultimately just conduits to money. But somehow people think privatizing everything is the best way government can serve the public.
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