YHK - yet another hacker news clone

It's now official, tech is the new tobacco

44 points aanet 2 hours ago 17 comments

aanet 2 hours ago | parent

> New court documents make clearer than ever that Meta has been working hard to control the scientific narrative on their products

...

> The resulting documents reveal:

    > Explicit plans by Meta to discredit psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who has been raising alarms about social media and youth mental health. 

    > Frustration by internal researchers because Meta lawyers were stopping them from researching youth mental health and their platforms. (Why would lawyers stop these studies? Because they risk finding something. The researchers respond by asking "“if the study only included questions about social support/positive outcomes would legal approve?”)

    > Explicit plans to work with the National Academies of Sciences on social media and youth mental health with goals to “get credit” for proposing the assessment and “greatly shape the nature of the questions they will explore.”

    > Alternative plans to work with another group if they cannot adequately influence NAS research, and “ensure product feature evaluations are excluded” (i.e., their product features that might be causing harm)

    > Discussions of which study questions are most likely to yield benefits for the company

spottedmarley 2 hours ago | parent

Tech = Social media? Maybe to a 5th grader.

jacquesm 44 minutes ago | parent

Social media is a subset of tech though.

ForHackernews 6 minutes ago | parent

Adtech is the part that makes the money. Even OpenAI's best idea to monetize is "put ads in it"

ninininino 2 hours ago | parent

Big Chemical is the new tobacco and always has been.

What has Meta or Google done in comparison to Dow, Bayer, and DuPont?

Isamu 1 hour ago | parent

You are comparing the sins of corporations that have been around for over 100 years and world wars to one that has been around a couple decades? Give Meta some time, they seem to have aspirations.

laimewhisps 1 hour ago | parent

Meta helped commit genocide: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

Both are also hyper Zionist and complicit in the genocide of Palestinians.

jmclnx 53 minutes ago | parent

I doubt tech right now can be equated with tobacco, its use does not kill.

Now AI ? The day will probably come when AI will kill on purpose without a real person's involvement. I know about the Iran School, but at that time I thought I heard the final decision was made by a person as opposed to AI.

So we really need to learn to push back should AI starts heading down that path, even if it costs you your job.

jacquesm 45 minutes ago | parent

> I doubt tech right now can be equated with tobacco, its use does not kill.

I don't think that's true. Tech kills plenty of people.

cdrnsf 35 minutes ago | parent

It helped kill a bunch of school children in Iran. AI use has lead to other deaths as well.

butlike 28 minutes ago | parent

It helped that guy commit suicide which OpenAI got sued for

tines 23 minutes ago | parent

Things like e.g. social media don't kill, you're right. They merely eat your soul and leave your body a shambling husk. Much better.

superxpro12 20 minutes ago | parent

ehh... social media is a net negative on suicide rates (meaning more suicides). It would not be hard to argue social media enables deaths.

pixl97 40 minutes ago | parent

Everything is the new tobacco when it comes to hiding their dangers. Tobacco showed that you could spend a relatively small amount of money and make billions for decades while kicking the can down the road.

hypfer 13 minutes ago | parent

Does that mean that the cool kids on the schoolyard now use tech while wearing leather jackets to signal rebellion?

Is it finally the time for the nerds to shine?