Evan_Hellmuth

Better business model (definitely for business owner, arguably for customers)

People only care when "bad guys" do it

Smartphones are to blame. The ubiquity of easy distraction causes these problems, not any one distraction in particular.

If kids (and adults) only had phone/tablet access for an hour a day this problem would cease to exist. But for some reason that has become unthinkable

Most people experience emotional body sensations - “butterflies in my stomach,” “a weight on my chest,” “steam coming out of my ears” etc.

Whoever downvoted doesn't understand that this is a god-tier joke

> To keep young kids behaving on a car road trip, have a bag of their favorite candy and throw a piece out the window each time they misbehave.

This guy is my hero

Just curious if you've used it. I haven't but people say it's way better than they had imagined!

Not sure I agree here. People love to blame social media for stoking hatred. Plenty of people use social media like... well, normal people. Life updates, baby pictures, levity.

Some people don't. Social media is a mirror.

People aren't zombies - you're not powerless before an omnipotent algorithm.

Wow I hadn't heard about this. What an awful event.

Given the consequences, Facebook should dedicate resources to prevent it from happening again.

> 2018, Cambridge Analytica

This is the big one, and it was a bona fide scandal.

That said it happened in 2016, the story broke in 2018. Cambridge Analytica was very clearly the bad actor here, they took advantage of a too-permissive FB API that was patched.

Facebook was rightly fined for negligence.

> 2020, Facebook announced it won't fact-check political ads

This is not a scandal lol.

Ad platforms are under no obligation to fact-check political ads. Quite the opposite - federal law prohibits television broadcasters from refusing to run an ad from from a qualified political candidate for any reason!

Google does not fact check any ads. Remember those insane Tai Lopez Youtube ads?

> 2020, ex-Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang revealed inner practices profiting from political disinformation and manipulation.

I hadn't heard of this one. From Wikipedia:

>>> Zhang reported that most of these subversive networks use Facebook's organization pages, configured with human names and photographs to mimic human accounts in order to successfully evade Facebook's emerging efforts to counter fake users.

She was on a team dedicated to stopping stuff like this, and she reported that people were figuring out ways around their automation? That's the point of the team! Staying ahead of bad actors!

> 2021, ex-Facebook employee Frances Haugen leaks documents revealing unethical business practices for profit.

Lots of allegations here, no legal consequences (unlike Cambridge Analytica which resulted in billions in fines). Similar to the Zhang story, the whole claim is "Facebook should be doing more than it already does to combat the bad actions of others" not "Facebook is actively doing bad stuff."

From Wikipedia:

>>> Haugen told The Guardian she was motivated to focus her work at Facebook on addressing misinformation because of her experience with losing a friend... after the friend visited online forums and became a proponent of conspiratorial beliefs that included white nationalism and the occult.

>>> In December 2021, Little, Brown & Company announced a book deal with Haugen for her memoir... After leaving Facebook, Haugen relocated to Puerto Rico, and has invested in a cryptocurrency company.

Do with that info what you will.

We probably don't agree on tracking being nefarious.

I'm personally just not concerned about being represented by a user ID in a database with info attached to it. Every service I've ever used has this on me and in general I trust US-run public companies with that level of data.

Tech businesses more than most! Equifax leaked my personal info lol, no Silicon Valley companies have.

Not sure I follow - isn't making more money than you put in a direct result of a high conversion rate?

But I'm curious to learn what you mean! I have no direct ad purchasing experience

I don't think Facebook or Instagram is a monopoly in any sense of the word. Lots of people happily don't use either and there's a boatload of competing social media platforms.

If your goal is to thwart software monopolies (a pretty low impact use of FTC time imo) Google search or Visa & Mastercard (duopoly) should be a much higher priority.

The social externalities piece gets into philosophical territory. We "protect" people from cigarettes by taxing them heavily. Yet lots of people still choose to use them. Some would argue we should do the same for social media, others would argue that individuals should be free to decide for themselves. Still others would argue that comparing the health impact of cigarettes to that of social media is ridiculous.

IMO disincentivizing carbon emissions is a much more clear-cut externality to fight against!

Link a scandal or data leak since 2016 - I may need to update my priors

Agreed on all counts! Except US FB user decline slowing (not instagram, just FB).

Add in WhatsApp’s under-monetization and some bullishness on VR and you’ve got my investment thesis.