alt Hacker NewsAs part of the ongoing enshittification of the internet, tragedy of the commons etc., these big centralized internet platforms decided that instead of being responsible and making their products *slightly* less terrible it was better to maximize short term engagement metrics, and that, egotistically, the chance of there being real consequences for their actions was near zero. (Or, even more cynically, that their yearly performance review was more important).
Now I'm afraid they've screwed everyone over and the idea of an anonymous open internet is now dead- we're gonna see age (read, real ID) verification gating on every site and app soon....
The dumb thing is to look back and see how umimportant it is that Facebook feed algorithm be this addictive. They already had the network effects and no real competitors. They could have just left it alone.
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Watching Mark testify before the senate it honestly appears like it may have never occurred to him that it is an option to have not offered a feature. He treats the product as if it is some kind of inevitable outcome that was destined to exist.
Management comp is tied to numbers go up
You start slow, then push it the limits
Netflix, never ads to some ads, then eventually its just Adflix, after 20 years.
Each new manager wants that comp up. So ads up by 5% every year.
>They already had the network effects and no real competitors.
Meta's biggest competitor was users' personal lives, not any other web service. They have been ruthless in crushing that competition.
Mass surveillance 'for your own good' instead of regulating social media in any way.
You can purchase a scam ad it'll be up in 10 minutes. Lie to every anxious child they have ADHD and need meth, lie to every dejected boy that they just need to manosphere up and buy supplements.
They think the public is stupid. They might be right.
What's horribly frustrating with the age ID stuff is that the issue at question with Meta wasn't that they didn't know what they were doing and that they were doing it to children. They did. This wasn't an issue of "If only they had the the age, then they could have done the right thing".
The laws being passed target exactly the wrong thing that wasn't a problem. They should have been passing "duty to care" laws aimed at social media companies not "give me your age" laws.
I may have missed it, but almost all these laws being passed for this issue have been pretty much solely around data collection rather than modifying the behavior of the worst businesses in the game.
It would be like seeing a car wreck kill a bunch of pedestrians and then passing a law that pedestrians need to carry IDs on them.