Social media is NOT sharing user created content. They are pushing for "engaging content", they have editorial styles, etc.
And it makes sense, nobody wants nor can read all posts if they were not curated.
But that means that social media companies are just content companies like news papers or TV. And they are responsible of what they publish.
Even more important, social media companies should be responsible for the Ads that they show. Scams are too prevalent in social media. Big social media sites profits from the ads, and the users are the ones that pay for it.
I will be interested in how this plays out. I believe it's Section 230 [0] that allows US platforms to not be held liable. I'd be keen to understand whether this effectively bans social media (and comment sections?) from Brazil, or whether people need to click an I-promise-I'm-not-Brazilian button to access them.
Brazilian here. We still don't know if small things like comment sections and personal blogs will be under the new rules as our supreme court hasn't made any explicit exemption but their debates on the topic focused only on big techs. There is a chance an appeal will be filed to seek this kind of clarification.
As for buttons "I promisse I'm not Brazilian", that wouldn't really fly if the company in question has a lot of users in Brazil.
I suspect that we will see government enforcement only against big techs (especially Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube).
I genuinely doubt there will be many lawsuits targeting small websites because there isn't money to be made off them. So any litigation here will probably be restricted to personal revenge cases or something like it.
I really wish this had been settled in Congress with more cleat rules and language instead of decided by the courts.
Banning algorithmic recommendations would need to ban search engines.
Social media is ultimately just a website. Anything I can think of quickly gets down the road of banning the web browser and/or banning email.
The only solution is people have to have the freedom to use these stupid platforms or not. People have to have the freedom to be stupid on stupid platforms.
My take would be something like this:
Any public or public-ish website, or website with more than x user which presents algorithmically sorted or curated content must make readily available the source feed for their algorithms as well as any other information they use.
On any page where algorithmically sorted or curated content is presented, they must fully describe the algorithm used. Ditto anywhere you select an algorithm or navigate to an algorithmically curated or sorted page - it must be described fully in the button or selector, or adjacent to it. If that is impractical for space reasons, it should be described as best as possible with footnotes expanding on the explanation.
Furthermore, the explanation, source feed, and additional information should be complete and clear such that someone could reasonably recreate a page or sorting given the algorithm, source feed, and additional info. This would be the test used in court if someone alleged infringement.
My hope is that such a law would heavily bias sites towards simple, less manipulative algorithms.
TBH, I think that wouldn't solve the core problem.
If you forced, for example, TikTok to do this right now, they would presumably add a page to their app with their recommender algorithm. Then what? Meta or other competitors might be interested in copying aspects of it, but normal users would likely ignore it and continue being addicted to TikTok.
I think this is a reasonable take; a good start would be banning all forms of algorithmic "discovery" recommendations, and things like "for you" feeds.
If you go to the root cause, the reason they want to maximise user-minutes is because it is in turn proportional to ad minutes.
Banning targeted ads will greatly reduce the benefit of ads (to the social media company) since they are rendered less effective. This will tip the scales of the cost-benefit tradeoff that the company makes. In this case, the cost of the ad is that it's annoying to the user. Every ad company chooses a tradeoff. If you made the benefit smaller, then they would have to reduce the cost too, which would lead to lower ad volume, which would reduce the incentive for engagement.
Any other way to reduce the effectiveness of ads also works. I'm sure the method I suggested(banning targeting) is not bulletproof, but they key thing that needs to be done is artificially reducing the effectiveness/relevance/quality of ads.
Surely if you ban targeting ads they'd have to catch up the revenue, and that would mean serving you more ads, worse ads and using stronger algorithms to ensure you stay longer. I don't think it makes any difference.
I suspect social media's biggest problems (engagement bait, brainrot, echo chambers, etc), would generally not be fixed even with a ban on sale of personal data.
> Things like banning the sale of personal information would be a step in the right direction.
it really seems like its the business model that is the real issue. especially with regards to algorithms favoring "engagement" which leads to promotion of rage-baiting and concern-trolling among many other pathological contents.
Social media is NOT sharing user created content. They are pushing for "engaging content", they have editorial styles, etc.
And it makes sense, nobody wants nor can read all posts if they were not curated.
But that means that social media companies are just content companies like news papers or TV. And they are responsible of what they publish.
Even more important, social media companies should be responsible for the Ads that they show. Scams are too prevalent in social media. Big social media sites profits from the ads, and the users are the ones that pay for it.
I will be interested in how this plays out. I believe it's Section 230 [0] that allows US platforms to not be held liable. I'd be keen to understand whether this effectively bans social media (and comment sections?) from Brazil, or whether people need to click an I-promise-I'm-not-Brazilian button to access them.
[0] Not a lawyer so wikipedia is the best I have - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
Brazilian here. We still don't know if small things like comment sections and personal blogs will be under the new rules as our supreme court hasn't made any explicit exemption but their debates on the topic focused only on big techs. There is a chance an appeal will be filed to seek this kind of clarification.
As for buttons "I promisse I'm not Brazilian", that wouldn't really fly if the company in question has a lot of users in Brazil.
I suspect that we will see government enforcement only against big techs (especially Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube).
I genuinely doubt there will be many lawsuits targeting small websites because there isn't money to be made off them. So any litigation here will probably be restricted to personal revenge cases or something like it.
I really wish this had been settled in Congress with more cleat rules and language instead of decided by the courts.
US Social Media should just cancel service to that territory.
You say as if that's a bad thing?
Don't threaten them with a good time
It would help Brazil a lot.
What is the difference in cost to provide the service?
Previously:
Brazil's Supreme Court makes social media liable for user content
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44256169
“Brazilian Supreme Court suddenly deems 11-year-old law unconstitutional after their own corruption is exposed on social media”
I'd rather just a full blanket ban on social media, but I guess it's something.
Social media is basically what cigarettes were in the 50s: everyone uses it, and seemingly no one is aware of how it is almost entirely bad.
Ironic that you're effectively dragging on a cig as you type that. Metaphorically speaking.
A big issue here would be defining social media.
Are forums social media? What about reddit? What about YouTube?
I think what we really need is a ban on algorithmic recommendations that seek to encourage engagement or total time spent on the app.
I don't see how this would work either.
Banning algorithmic recommendations would need to ban search engines.
Social media is ultimately just a website. Anything I can think of quickly gets down the road of banning the web browser and/or banning email.
The only solution is people have to have the freedom to use these stupid platforms or not. People have to have the freedom to be stupid on stupid platforms.
Brazil is going in a much different direction.
My take would be something like this: Any public or public-ish website, or website with more than x user which presents algorithmically sorted or curated content must make readily available the source feed for their algorithms as well as any other information they use. On any page where algorithmically sorted or curated content is presented, they must fully describe the algorithm used. Ditto anywhere you select an algorithm or navigate to an algorithmically curated or sorted page - it must be described fully in the button or selector, or adjacent to it. If that is impractical for space reasons, it should be described as best as possible with footnotes expanding on the explanation. Furthermore, the explanation, source feed, and additional information should be complete and clear such that someone could reasonably recreate a page or sorting given the algorithm, source feed, and additional info. This would be the test used in court if someone alleged infringement.
My hope is that such a law would heavily bias sites towards simple, less manipulative algorithms.
TBH, I think that wouldn't solve the core problem.
If you forced, for example, TikTok to do this right now, they would presumably add a page to their app with their recommender algorithm. Then what? Meta or other competitors might be interested in copying aspects of it, but normal users would likely ignore it and continue being addicted to TikTok.
A page on the app wouldn't cut it. Has to be on the same page. I'm tempted to say "has to fit in the button".
I think this is a reasonable take; a good start would be banning all forms of algorithmic "discovery" recommendations, and things like "for you" feeds.
If you go to the root cause, the reason they want to maximise user-minutes is because it is in turn proportional to ad minutes.
Banning targeted ads will greatly reduce the benefit of ads (to the social media company) since they are rendered less effective. This will tip the scales of the cost-benefit tradeoff that the company makes. In this case, the cost of the ad is that it's annoying to the user. Every ad company chooses a tradeoff. If you made the benefit smaller, then they would have to reduce the cost too, which would lead to lower ad volume, which would reduce the incentive for engagement.
Any other way to reduce the effectiveness of ads also works. I'm sure the method I suggested(banning targeting) is not bulletproof, but they key thing that needs to be done is artificially reducing the effectiveness/relevance/quality of ads.
Surely if you ban targeting ads they'd have to catch up the revenue, and that would mean serving you more ads, worse ads and using stronger algorithms to ensure you stay longer. I don't think it makes any difference.
Yes, yes, and yes. You picked basically the three most obvious examples of social media.
Is it a site that hosts user generated content and makes that content available to others in any 1-n fashion? Great, you have social media.
Is a group chat? Is Discord? What if the Discord invite link is public?
you're on a social medium right now.
Madge: "You're soaking in it."
All this does if make things worse. Things like banning the sale of personal information would be a step in the right direction.
I suspect social media's biggest problems (engagement bait, brainrot, echo chambers, etc), would generally not be fixed even with a ban on sale of personal data.
It's based on the European one