> If agents/AI/bots inadvertently destroy the current incarnation of social media through noise, I think we'll be better for it.
They are going to be (and AI slop already is) so much worse. Once they get ads to work well / seem natural the dark patterns will pop right back up and the money spigot will keep flowing upwards
Also at least partially explained by being priced in. The trial was known about and given the conditions described in GP it's not surprising that the verdict went this way.
Realistically they will hire expensive lawyers, pay out hundreds of millions to billions in settlements, fire lots of people (workforce is predominantly American), etc.
Even if they do what you're saying, lots of people who've used any Meta property in the last 15 years has a potentially viable case, and no future work can swat those away
I can't help but feel these are "revenge" verdicts. Public perception of these companies is dirt low, and there are so few levers the average person has to change what they feel is an increase in atomization, loneliness, breakdown of civic discourse, Cambridge Analytica level political targeting, misinformation, etc.
Maybe the social media companies could do more to combat all these. They certainly have a level of profit compared to what they provide to the average person that makes people squirm.
But does anyone believe for a second that YouTube is responsible for a person's internet / video watching addiction? It's like saying cable television is responsible for people who binge watch TV.
It's hard to square this circle while sports gambling apps and Polymarket / Kalshi are tearing through the landscape right now with no real pushback
By this logic your Grocery store can be sued for you gaining weight because they use an algorithm to time notifications to advertise to you on your phone if you install the app
Yes, and they should be if they promote products that are known to cause harm, this is why we have labels (or at least they try) to inform users that what they are buying is bad for their body and will harm their health, there is no such thing right now on Tiktok despite knowing it's likely to harm you. The fact that teenagers think it's normal to take a hundred selfie a day is a direct sign of psychological distress imo, for a young teen.
We don't promote cigarettes (or at least in countries that have decent consumer laws) because it harms users, candies should be in the same category, it should probably exist but it shouldn't be promoted. When social media actively promote things that cause psychological harm while being aware (as we do have countless studies that proves it) of it to CHILDREN, then yes, screw them, we must force a change.
We should also more forward, imagine now if instead of having a thousand of engineers & businessmen VS teenagers, we could leverage their intellect to actually help the world (and still make money out of them), it is possible, we must force innovation if corporations aren't complying.
They should have labels or something is totally fine. Common sense regulation exists for this reason. But suing and winning multimillion dollar lawsuits because in the past there weren't any such labels when law didn't require it.
Do more? They have not done anything. These trials have shown they have long had extremely detailed understanding of what is going on with their product, and instead of trying to mitigate the problems, they have intentionally made the problems worse in order to profit more.
> why should a government supplier and private company (Anthropic) and 1 man there - get to decide what an organization with elected officials can and can’t do?
Misunderstanding of what is happening. They have terms and conditions with their private property that anyone can choose to accept or decline. The DoD wants to them turn around and say these terms for a private company's contract around licensing of their private property are so egregious that the government and all government contract holders should be forced out of using any products by that company
These are because of post-training. You have to give it such directives in post-training to correct the biases they bring in from scraping the whole internet (and other datasets like books, etc.) for data
Everyone says this as if the previous cycles of labor displacement could not compound and this be the last straw. Same with how phones cause shorter attention span and less thought and more social isolation. People will say "oh they said the same thing about books and TV and video games"
We could be at the end of the rope with how much we can displace unevenly and how much people will put up with another cycle of wealth concentration. Just like we might be at the end of the rope with how much our minds can be stunted and distracted before serious negative consequences occur
I think they are compounding. Prior to the internet we had more third spaces, less attention economy, fewer self-esteem problems comparing our lives against influencers', warehouse and delivery jobs without pissing in a bottle to stay employed, people were employed instead of doing gigs. We used to have privacy somewhat, that's gone.
It's been this overpowered tool for the wealthy to gather more wealth by erasing jobs and the data brokers to perform intense surveillance.
They are going to be (and AI slop already is) so much worse. Once they get ads to work well / seem natural the dark patterns will pop right back up and the money spigot will keep flowing upwards