I hate when people say things like “Google did this” or “Meta did that.” There are actual named humans making these decisions. I want them found and held accountable. As of late these people have more power than ever. A single contributor at a company like Meta can make a change that impacts 0.025% of users (potentially hundreds of thousands of people) with zero notice or oversight, for their own individual gain. Not even to mention the systemic decisions this article describes.

▲

gruez 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As someone else noted "Hook, hold, harvest and hide" is the framing from the plaintiffs. There likely wasn't some twirly mustached executive giving a presentation with those words on the slide deck. Instead the "decisions" made are far more banal. Shareholders wants growing revenues and users, executives tell their subordinates to implement those objectives, and it eventually hits the ICs where they're tweaking the color of the buttons to be maximally engaging. All these tweaks cumulatively makes the product addicting, but it's not like making meth or cigarettes where it's addicting from day 1.

▲

andersonpico an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> There likely wasn't some twirly mustached executive giving a presentation with those words on the slide deck.

why oh why are giving them the benefit of the doubt? There was in fact a twirled moustache executive.

> Internal chats within the company stated, “Oh good, we’re going after <13 year olds now? Zuck has been talking about that for a while…targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple decades ago (and today). Like we’re seriously saying ‘we have to hook them young’ here.”

> Even after determining internally that teen safety was a massive problem on its platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “teen time spent be our top goal of 2017.”

> One internal email from September 2018 indicates that, according to Meta, “The lifetime value of a 13 [year old] teen is roughly $270 per teen.”

▲

gruez an hour ago | parent [-]

>> Internal chats within the company stated, “Oh good, we’re going after <13 year olds now? Zuck has been talking about that for a while…targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple decades ago (and today). Like we’re seriously saying ‘we have to hook them young’ here.”

This might seem like the most damning quote, but if you read it again it's pretty clear it's someone who's objecting. In other words, not a twirly mustached executive saying "we're going after <13 year olds" as an actual objective, or "we have to hook them young".

>> Even after determining internally that teen safety was a massive problem on its platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “teen time spent be our top goal of 2017.”

>> One internal email from September 2018 indicates that, according to Meta, “The lifetime value of a 13 [year old] teen is roughly $270 per teen.”

So... exactly what I said earlier about "Shareholders wants growing revenues and users"?

	▲	miltonlost 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You misread that first quote in your defense of Meta. The twirly mustached exec is Zuck himself who wants to target 11 year olds. By having a person object to him, he's no longer evil???

▲

TheOtherHobbes an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

It is exactly like that, and future generations will see it like that.

▲

vjulian 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s lazy shorthand and also serves the obscurity that these individuals seek.

Similarly, I get irritated when people frequently almost continuously attribute actions and results to ‘the President’ or such state heads.

▲

SpicyLemonZest 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The actual named humans making these decisions are very frequently not people who you would consider accountable. If Meta announced that they're firing hundreds of engineers and PMs for optimizing addiction-correlated metrics, even if there was a clear memo instructing them not to do that, nobody would be satisfied and everyone would see it as a deflection of responsibility by the executives. I know this because it's exactly what happened with the Wells Fargo fake account scandal.

▲

anal_reactor 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

On one hand I totally see your point. It's just disgusting that someone on high position is fully aware that Facebook is about making people addicted to slop and serve them exploitative ads. On the other hand, it is an organizational failure, because in a correctly working organization a single person wouldn't be able to throw shit with such a blast radius.

	▲	SaltyBackendGuy 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> because in a correctly working organization a single person wouldn't be able to throw shit with such a blast radius. I generally agree with you, however this makes an assumption about what "correctly" means. In this case, Meta could be working correctly and take it's orders directly from the Zuck commander's intent. In which case he would be a single person that would have a massive impact on the outcome. Therefore, should be appropriately accountable.