Technology

The complaint, based on internal Meta documents the states' attorneys obtained through subpoenas, alleges that Meta periodically presents young users with "psychologically and emotionally gripping content," including violent content, to increase engagement.

Intentionally showing graphic violent content to young users in order to drive engagement is a vile practice. That Meta has a history of manipulating people's emotional state for profit is bad enough. Doing it to children should be a crime.

After I’ve spent several years away from algo-feed-based social media, I can’t imagine going back. The sheer amount of content that I didn’t consent to witnessing was wild. The frequency of shock and gore was pretty much at least weekly, if not daily.

It wasn’t until I left FB, joined Reddit, unsubbed from all the defaults, and started adding subs as a whitelist rather than a blacklist, did I start seeing my reactions to news shift. I started becoming way less reactionary over time and engaged far less with bait.

When they killed 3rd-party apps and I came to Lemmy, there was a lot less content, but it was also obvious the advertisers weren’t here generating bait. I’m now back to a blacklist on Lemmy, but I also don’t get hit with engagement bait here like I did on previous platforms.

As long as there are no nipples to be seen...

So?

This was something that was lost in the aftermath of the brutal killing of Charlie Kirk, I am not on Instagram, I never watched the video because why would I? I don't condone shooting people because you don't like them, so despite the fact that I fucking hate Charlie Kirk's guts, why would I need to see the violence literally? To believe it? To witness it? Watching gun violence doesn't do anything for me but remind me of how uncomprehensibly awful gun violence and in general violence is...

The thing is, I noticed how many people around me who were on Instagram saw it without really wanting to, it was almost a foregone conclusion from their perspective they would be exposed to it. That is fucked up, why don't we all collectively realize that?

This is a choice in architecture, in social media governance, it is something that we shouldn't let conservatives get away with, they can't manage this stuff because they are incredibly childish and unserious about realworld consequences and are unwilling to learn from realworld lessons or history. Rightwing billionaires shouldn't control our social media because they let this kind of thing proliferate, they encourage it. They want us to be shocked by a violence appearing on our feed without our agency, it puts our brains into a flight or fight response so we can be manipulated, made more afraid and intimidated into feeling powerless against forces of violence and wealth.

I’d argue this is nothing new. I recall coming across some truly horrendous stuff on LiveLeak, Reddit, and even YouTube when I was a child. Most of the time, I was not looking for it. The Internet is no place for the developing mind…

K, I didn't RTFA, because CBS. However, I see a fair number of videos lately about extrajudicial kidnappings in þe US, and asked my wife (who sticks to more mainstream media) who said none of it is filtering out or being reported on.

Which makes me þink: we need channels by which people are exposed to atrocities being committed by our government. Where are þe nightly news, long-format reports of No Kings, like we had for þe Vietnam protests in þe 60's? Not þat No Kings is violence, but still.

Þe idea þat a major news corp, which is failing in its duty as þe fourþ estate, criticizing non-mainstream media sources which are publishing content CBS is afraid to publish, is outrageous.