HN Reader

Social media is the 21st century’s tobacco company. The companies selling it know it’s terrible for people’s health, but they keep doing it because $$$.

If one wants to work in that industry is a personal ethical one, but 20 years from now we’ll probably look at folks working at these companies like we’d look at someone who worked as a tobacco executive. Made good money but maybe not leaving a legacy of an ethical career.

You don’t like it when they release research, you don’t like it when research leaks, you don’t like it when research is suppressed. Hard for Meta to do anything right on this topic.

I strongly encourage anyone who finds Meta's repeated crappy behaviour objectionable to delete their accounts on Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, etc. Or, at least, to delete as many as they can get away with, given their personal constraints and obligations, and otherwise minimise as much as possible the interactions with this company.

Personally I do somewhere between one and three strikes with companies. Of course I still must use certain things at certain times, but generally a lot of them can be avoided if you develop the habit of looking for other solutions. It's great fun, actually, once you accept the challenge.

It's only a small action, but it's good on a personal level to practice any kind of resisting.

Meta employees have raised serious issues about the company downplaying or even suppressing research on child safety risks, especially in virtual reality spaces. They said that the company suppressed research on child safety risks, especially in VR. Meta denies it, but it’s a serious concern

Not surprising if you’ve read the account in “Careless People”. Growth at all costs.

My favorite part: just-in-time ad delivery to your suicidal teen for products they might need

I've been served well by this rule of thumb: "Don't trust big corporations."

That's it. It hasn't let me down yet in my many long years of life.

How dumb do you have to be to commision this reasearch at Meta? Did they honestly think the result was going to be good for them?

Please, please, please don't entertain job offers from this company. Don't even talk with them. They don't deserve your talent

Meta delenda est.

I saw Rob Pike online asking about what to tell people that don’t understand why anyone would boycott Meta services.

For me it’s stuff like this.

I grew up on star trek TNG. However at a certain point in the past I was having kind of a hard time rewatching episodes. "We have the Internet and social media now, and they're obviously not going anywhere so why doesnt star trek have either? It is simply scifi of the past and now we need new scifi to incorporate new technological and social advancements."

These days though. Yeah, it's kind of obvious that you can't have a space faring civilization with the Internet and social media weighing you down. Honestly the Eugenics wars probably get kick started by social media.

Meta continues to prove that they have a company culture of trying to ignore their responsibilities to users.

This is a repeating pattern of someone raising the alarm to them, teams realizing it’s a possible concern and the company reacting by telling them to avoid looking into it lest it bite them later. And it always comes back when something horrific happens and it is always shown they knew and did nothing.

A truly innovative and responsible company would investigate and rejoice in trying to find solutions. But the top down culture from Mark is one to get all power at all costs.

Social Media is the new tobacco.

I am not surprised at all. I know no tech titan as creepy as Zuck

I’m so tired of social media rotting brains and ruining health and relationships. But also find it hard to completely quit Instagram/Linkedin/X as I get some value out of it. Sewer in the water line situation.

Built a screentime app to automatically block after chosen number of mins and it’s helping me. Completely free to try: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/nomo-reduce-screen-time/id6748...

zucks for the children

I am desperately waiting for someone to come along and disrupt social media. It's overdue. My Facebook feed is entirely low-effort slop and posts from acquaintances I added 15 years ago. Instagram and Snapchat aren't too different. Miserable experiences with infinite content, no quality, and no connections.

That Meta is an appalling company can't be a surprise to anyone by now.

> Within months, [Facebook] started an initiative code-named “Project Salsa.” Sattizahn and the youth researcher said that they didn’t know who chose that name or why, but employees working on the project widely understood it as a reference to the fact that the use of technology by children was a “spicy” topic.

How is it that nobody in this industry knows how codenames work? You're supposed to pick them randomly off a list, not choose veiled references to the actual subject.

> The project was code-named “Project Horton,” for the Dr. Seuss book “Horton Hears a Who!” in which a character tries to protect small people from others who attempt to harm them, according to the youth researcher.

No, Facebook, stop it.

(Occasionally of course this gets _coincidentally_ violated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock#Chicken-powered_n... - the proposed weapon was called Blue Peacock _before_ the chickens were proposed)

The frog has boiled. These companies actively profit when kids are engaged and unhappy.

> At her home in western Germany, a woman told a team of visiting researchers from Meta that she did not allow her sons to interact with strangers on the social media giant’s virtual reality headsets. Then her teenage son interjected, according to two of the researchers: He frequently encountered strangers, and adults had sexually propositioned his little brother, who was younger than 10, numerous times.

It seems to me possible solutions could be a mix of:

a) company monitors all conversations (privacy tradeoff)

b) validates age

c) product not available to kids

d) product available to kids, leave up to parents to monitor

Take ALL of Mark's toys away

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Mark Zuckerberg, 2004

[0] https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zucker...

I hate that Meta and Google - companies that are among the leaders in AI and invest billions in cutting-edge machine learning R&D - pretend they are unable to detect that children are accessing their platforms in violation of age restrictions (13 years in most cases).

The same company complicit in the genocide in Myanmar? The same company found to be stealing data about women's menstruation cycles? The same company that wants to hoover up your photos as training data?

Surely not! Surely they would never do something unethical!

I mean grok has an AI girlfriend that will undress for you. It's specifically instructed to be extremely jealous and to pretend to be madly in love with the user. Apparently no meaningful age restrictions of any kind. All this data of perhaps kids chatting explicitly with their AI partners land on company servers.

"Meta suppressed research on child safety" again ... why is anyone still using this company for anything ever?

We are feeding children to the wolves to boost quarterly Big Tech numbers.

Society is breaking down in part because of it.

America would be a nicer place if Mark Zuckerberg went to prison.

Zuckerberg is one of the most evil men in America.

This is the company that:

- Enabled genocide in Myanmar https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

- Literally pirated books to train their trash AI LLM: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-o...

- Violated human rights for Palestinians (even in 2021: https://theintercept.com/2022/09/21/facebook-censorship-pale...)

- Interfered in British politics with the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, one of the costliest and stupidest mistakes in UK's history (full of stupid and costly mistakes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

- The CEO of the company is famous for ass-kissing even dumber people than himself e.g: Trump https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

What else do you expect from the trashiest company in the world. Of course they don't care for child safety.