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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: January 30th, 2021

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  • Everybody is so quick to blame the parents in these situations. Maybe there is some truth to that, but people also need to reckon with the fact that kids (and adults) are being constantly inundated by Skinner box apps, and “platforms” full of engagement bait designed to be addictive and attractive as possible. All run by corporations with functionally no regard for the safety of their users.

    Yeah, sure, if you’re giving advice to an individual parent, they should probably be keeping a closer eye on what their kids are doing.

    But there are systemic problems here that can’t be fixed with individual action. By laying the blame solely at the feet of the parents here, you are in effect putting parents up against dozens of huge corporations, each with armies of expert advertisers, designers, and psychologists working to build these products. It’s hardly a fair fight.





  • I didn’t see the testimony, but I did read her book.

    When most people think “targeted advertising”, I think they are thinking about something like: this user is a middle-class woman between 18 and 25 who enjoys bicycles, so we’ll show her ad X.

    According to Wynn-Williams, Facebook/Meta is doing things like detecting when a user uploads, then immediately removes a photo–detecting that as a moment of emotional vulnerability (that is, the user was feeling self-conscious about their appearance), then bombarding them with ads in that moment for beauty products.

    I think the former is ‘obvious’ to most people, but the latter probably isn’t–probably because Meta and other advertising companies have put a lot of effort in to keep this on the down low–which is why Wynn-Williams is speaking about it publically.

    (not accusing you of defending them BTW, just my 2¢ that this goes beyond what most people would consider obvious, imo)