> Zuckerberg vetoed a 2019 proposal that would have disabled Instagram’s so-called “beauty filters,” a technology that digitally alters a user’s on-screen appearance and allegedly harms teens’ mental health by promoting unrealistic body image expectations, according to the unredacted version of the complaint filed this week by Massachusetts officials.
> After sitting on the proposal for months, Zuckerberg wrote to his deputies in April 2020 asserting that there was “demand” for the filters and that he had seen “no data” suggesting the filters were harmful, according to the complaint.
So, why didn't instagram ceo provide that data? Seems a huge oversight for someone in that position.
You’re going to use company resources to create a test for your position or pull the data to support it (using resources that could be pushing forward on the business) when the CEO hates your position? That’s not generally a wise strategy for corporate executives.
Even if you have the data, this is likely all about the CEO not really wanting to hear the argument or go in this direction and not his officer’s inability to provide supporting data.
I'm seeing a lot of responses about the morality or PR implications of trying to A/B test this, but this seems fundamentally impossible to A/B test to me and points at a bigger problem with what companies and their marketing departments believe they can know and the limits of what science can actually do.
The hypothesis here is that usage of professional but automated editing tools to make people look more beautiful than they really are promotes unrealistic competition standards and makes people feel worse about how they look in a regular mirror that is showing them the truth.
How do you A/B test this? Giving the feature to some people and not others isn't good enough. The impact is because of seeing other people look more beautiful on the Internet than they actually look in person. How are you going to prevent a user from seeing the photos of other users who use filters? Even if the global social graph had strict partitions, which I imagine isn't the case, these photos leak into web search, news articles, and the same technology gets adopted by other platforms. You can't A/B test something that impacts the entire broad culture. The world is too connected.
> “All the people that I’ve talked to internally about this were like… Mark’s level of proof, in order to be able to take the work seriously and act on it, is too high,” Bejar added. “I think it’s an impossible standard to meet.”
"Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly halted proposals aimed at improving Facebook and Instagram’s impact on teen mental health, according to internal communications revealed as part of unsealed court documents.
Zuckerberg allegedly vetoed plans to ban filters that simulate plastic surgery on Meta-owned platforms, according to the unredacted lawsuit filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell (D), and ignored requests from top executives to boost investments in teens’ well-being."
> “I respect your call on this and I’ll support it,” Stewart wrote, according to a message cited in the complaint, “but want to just say for the record that I don’t think it’s the right call given the risks…. I just hope that years from now we will look back and feel good about the decision we made here.”
Were they saying "for the record" just as an idiom, or did they have a particular paper trail purpose in mind when putting something in writing to the CEO?
Is there actually strong evidence that social media harms teens' mental health?
From what I can find, the correlation between social media use and mental health problems is small [1] or nonexistent [2]. There are few causal studies, and their results are even smaller, eg: halting Facebook usage for a month decreased depression by 0.09 stdev [3].
[1] "We found a small but significant positive correlation (k=12 studies, r=.11, p<.01) between adolescent social media use and depressive symptoms."
[2] "There was no association between frequency of social media use and SITBs [self-injurious thoughts and behaviors] however, studies on this topic were limited."
[3] "A study using an experimental design measured the effects of abstaining from
Facebook for four weeks in an adult population and found that there
was a slight decrease (SD=0.09) in depression."
My first criticism would be that intervening only to restrict Facebook would likely just result in a substitution effect, with instagram, snapchat, youtube, reddit, etc filling the void. Likewise, if I remove cake from my diet for 4 weeks but make no restrictions on all other forms of sugary baked goods, I'm not likely to see the same magnitude of effect as I would've otherwise.
Here's an associational study that found almost 3x odds of having depression between the most and least frequent users of social media sites. This was among US adults aged 19-32 and adjusted for age, sex, race, relationship status, living situation, household income, and education level
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4853817/
> Zuckerberg vetoed a 2019 proposal that would have disabled Instagram’s so-called “beauty filters,” a technology that digitally alters a user’s on-screen appearance and allegedly harms teens’ mental health by promoting unrealistic body image expectations, according to the unredacted version of the complaint filed this week by Massachusetts officials.
Focusing on beauty filters really undermines the narrative. If you are talking about ways that Meta harms children and the first thing you list is that they didn’t ban beauty filters, it actually makes Zuckerberg seem reasonable.
We don't know what wasn't proposed or investigated to lessen issues if the initiatives were all shut down. If cursory work admits there's a problem and your profit is in the billions, where you pay engineers to mostly sit on their ass - the onus is on you to reduce harm.
Rejecting all proposals indicates any harms of the platform are inbuilt fundamentally.
It is amazing how much internet bandwidth is wasted by stories like this... Expecting anything less that big tech favoring profits over EVERYTHING else is like expecting Sun not to rise tomorrow.
Yet somehow each of these stories always goes viral and everyone seems "stunned" like "how can this amazing human Zuck (the worst scum of the Earth as most other big tech CEOs are) do this!?? So surprising given his impeccable record as a decent human being who cares about the well-being of our children..."!!
It is amazing how you jumped to "favoring profits" conclusion from this article, which doesn't even mention that the plans were rejected because there was no data supporting their effectiveness to any degree.
There was a post on HN months back about testimony to Congress. I forget the details except for one graph. Clear and direct correlation between the rise in social media and teen mental health issues.
The number of teen girls that I’ve seen with cut marks is terrifying. The dramatic increase in mental health issues is shocking.
I know with my kids social media has made every one of their challenging teenage moments more difficult.
Before social media we had rap music glorifying criminal activity, 16 and pregnant and other assorted reality TV, before that we had old MTV and metal music that glorified hedonism, before that we had girl magazines with "impossible beauty standards", the pressure to wear make up, before that we had the sexual revolution... It seems that for every generation there has been something corrupting it. The older people get their panties in a wad and the younger people become more self destructive.
America just has a culture of pushing limits and often those limits were there for a reason. Chesterton's fence and all that. All this social upheaval and people aren't happy. So much progress and everyone seems to be more and more miserable. So what is the solution? Ban Instagram filters? Make self esteem our golden bull? Begin goose stepping? I don't think anyone knows, and we are all just looking for someone to blame.
The social sciences are not advanced enough to measure the harm caused by advances in technology. Social science is in its infancy and lacks systemic tools and viewpoints.
The legal use of dark patterns needs to be eliminated. This is the core issue.
This is a disgustingly bad look for Meta. I can't even begin to figure out how they are (read: Zuckerberg is) able to draw even the most tenuous of connections between _plastic surgery filters_ and profit. Nobody is going to stop using Meta products or looking at ads because they can't post selfies with artificially beautified versions of themselves.
(For non-Italian people, it literally means "this piece of sh*". It's a rude yell at a person who is not behaving morally or ethically well proved of doing harm to other people, and is thus indicted of being a literal ... you know).
I have some hope, my neice referred to FB as 'legacy' and from talking to her these kids are getting smart a lot quicker about the tactics used on these platforms and by platforms themselves, they also seem very fluid and less prone to lock-in unlike their parents and grandparents.
Sample size of my neice and her social circle isn't representitive but perhaps it represents a shift.
Where are these dreaded "beauty filters" in Instagram app? I don't remember any from back in the day when I still used it. Just checked again and it seems there are still bunch of typical "hipster colors" old-school Instagram filters, then some basic editing options.
You are missing 90% of the app. These are LIVE filters they are talking about. Not a post-processing photo effect.
Don't select a photo from your phone - that brings up the boring old-school photo editor mode.
You want to start a new post by clicking the "+" at the bottom and then swipe to the left or click on "Story" or "Live".
This gives you the advanced AI filters with live preview. They are created and distributed by third parties through a gallery/store like interface.
These are the type that say add dog ears to your head. Or detect when your mouth is open and makes a scary effect. Or can give you perfect skin and AI-upgrade you or turn you into an anime character.
These are what people are talking about. Not some laughable "color filter"
The genie is already out of the bottle, you simply cannot take away a feature like this that people have already gotten used to and not expect a backlash.
Honestly, who cares? We have recently seen much more damning information come about Facebook's role in facilitating in the Rohingya genocide. This mental health shit pales in comparison.
The first Internet tycoon born of the Internet age. It's going to be ironic how his oil and railroad predecessors escaped scrutiny by buying newspapers and donating money. Bezos is trying that playbook. But my bet is that we will see Zucks true legacy unfold right now and he won't be lionized in at all the same way. He doesn't seem so different from SBF in that he justified any action to get his way, from the beginning when he started Facebook to rank and spy on women.
There is no evidence that anyone actually needs FB/IG/Threads.
If tommorow Meta shuts down and the entirety of its assets, all the money, all the infrastructure and the people get repurposed to do science instead of reels, commercials, cat videos, selfies and trending videos, that would be great.
I disagree with this. Even though I'm unhappy with Facebook/Meta and I believe the world would have been better off without the current iteration of their products, lots of small businesses depend on their platforms for their marketing/advertising needs and success in general. Their instant messaging platforms like Messenger/WhatsApp are essential communication tools used by literally millions of users. There is also an argument to be made that Facebook has allowed relationships/connections to be preserved that would've eventually ceased. Facebook/Instagram are terrible tools for creating new relationships or social networks though
Is this based on any sort of understanding of the economy behind FB/IG/Threads, or do you just not like them? Because like it or not, people's livelihoods are being run off those things these days, which amounts to people needing FB/IG/Threads.
Science can be a money pit, waste of time and threat to health if not directed properly. All that money based on what is funded now would go to studying the effects of coffee or if red wine is good or bad for health with some minor studies that time change sleeping habits and screentime vs teens vaping.
What's the point of doing the science if we're not going to use the resulting output for things that aren't needs? Why have the needs at all if we dont get to have wants?
No offence but you live in an out of touch worldview. A majority of the world uses instagram/fb. Every single non techy adult I know uses instagram regularly to stay in touch with their social circle. Older generations use FB. Most people value social connection over “doing science”, believe it or not.
I wouldn't be surprised at all. I have several friends who were extremely early FB employees and the horror stories I've heard about his behavior, 2nd hand, if even 10% true are pretty damn horrible.
I’m actually not surprised. Meta has had a history of this because their core business is unlocking that psychology in our social graphs from young to old and keeping us hooked to it. Improving mental health would be an opposite direction to their goals since they’d have to reduce usage and inform them of taking breaks and better mental health.
[+] [-] HumblyTossed|2 years ago|reply
> After sitting on the proposal for months, Zuckerberg wrote to his deputies in April 2020 asserting that there was “demand” for the filters and that he had seen “no data” suggesting the filters were harmful, according to the complaint.
So, why didn't instagram ceo provide that data? Seems a huge oversight for someone in that position.
[+] [-] andsoitis|2 years ago|reply
Because there is no data that show causation?
[+] [-] nradov|2 years ago|reply
-Jim Barksdale
[+] [-] happytiger|2 years ago|reply
Even if you have the data, this is likely all about the CEO not really wanting to hear the argument or go in this direction and not his officer’s inability to provide supporting data.
[+] [-] nonameiguess|2 years ago|reply
The hypothesis here is that usage of professional but automated editing tools to make people look more beautiful than they really are promotes unrealistic competition standards and makes people feel worse about how they look in a regular mirror that is showing them the truth.
How do you A/B test this? Giving the feature to some people and not others isn't good enough. The impact is because of seeing other people look more beautiful on the Internet than they actually look in person. How are you going to prevent a user from seeing the photos of other users who use filters? Even if the global social graph had strict partitions, which I imagine isn't the case, these photos leak into web search, news articles, and the same technology gets adopted by other platforms. You can't A/B test something that impacts the entire broad culture. The world is too connected.
[+] [-] 6gvONxR4sf7o|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antiviral|2 years ago|reply
Zuckerberg allegedly vetoed plans to ban filters that simulate plastic surgery on Meta-owned platforms, according to the unredacted lawsuit filed by Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell (D), and ignored requests from top executives to boost investments in teens’ well-being."
[+] [-] neilv|2 years ago|reply
Were they saying "for the record" just as an idiom, or did they have a particular paper trail purpose in mind when putting something in writing to the CEO?
[+] [-] verteu|2 years ago|reply
From what I can find, the correlation between social media use and mental health problems is small [1] or nonexistent [2]. There are few causal studies, and their results are even smaller, eg: halting Facebook usage for a month decreased depression by 0.09 stdev [3].
[1] "We found a small but significant positive correlation (k=12 studies, r=.11, p<.01) between adolescent social media use and depressive symptoms."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...
[2] "There was no association between frequency of social media use and SITBs [self-injurious thoughts and behaviors] however, studies on this topic were limited."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...
[3] "A study using an experimental design measured the effects of abstaining from Facebook for four weeks in an adult population and found that there was a slight decrease (SD=0.09) in depression."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01650...
[+] [-] broptimist|2 years ago|reply
My first criticism would be that intervening only to restrict Facebook would likely just result in a substitution effect, with instagram, snapchat, youtube, reddit, etc filling the void. Likewise, if I remove cake from my diet for 4 weeks but make no restrictions on all other forms of sugary baked goods, I'm not likely to see the same magnitude of effect as I would've otherwise.
Here's an associational study that found almost 3x odds of having depression between the most and least frequent users of social media sites. This was among US adults aged 19-32 and adjusted for age, sex, race, relationship status, living situation, household income, and education level https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4853817/
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|2 years ago|reply
Focusing on beauty filters really undermines the narrative. If you are talking about ways that Meta harms children and the first thing you list is that they didn’t ban beauty filters, it actually makes Zuckerberg seem reasonable.
[+] [-] whatyesaid|2 years ago|reply
Rejecting all proposals indicates any harms of the platform are inbuilt fundamentally.
[+] [-] 23B1|2 years ago|reply
This article's a nothingburger (unfortunately).
[+] [-] bdangubic|2 years ago|reply
Yet somehow each of these stories always goes viral and everyone seems "stunned" like "how can this amazing human Zuck (the worst scum of the Earth as most other big tech CEOs are) do this!?? So surprising given his impeccable record as a decent human being who cares about the well-being of our children..."!!
[+] [-] lostmsu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] francisofascii|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] josho|2 years ago|reply
The number of teen girls that I’ve seen with cut marks is terrifying. The dramatic increase in mental health issues is shocking.
I know with my kids social media has made every one of their challenging teenage moments more difficult.
[+] [-] stickfigure|2 years ago|reply
https://pastafarians.org.au/pastafarianism/pirates-and-globa...
The number of women I know with cut marks is terrifying - but they grew up before Instagram and Facebook.
[+] [-] friend_and_foe|2 years ago|reply
America just has a culture of pushing limits and often those limits were there for a reason. Chesterton's fence and all that. All this social upheaval and people aren't happy. So much progress and everyone seems to be more and more miserable. So what is the solution? Ban Instagram filters? Make self esteem our golden bull? Begin goose stepping? I don't think anyone knows, and we are all just looking for someone to blame.
[+] [-] eru|2 years ago|reply
Correlation does not prove causation.
[+] [-] growingkittens|2 years ago|reply
The legal use of dark patterns needs to be eliminated. This is the core issue.
[+] [-] bastawhiz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_kLeZ|2 years ago|reply
(For non-Italian people, it literally means "this piece of sh*". It's a rude yell at a person who is not behaving morally or ethically well proved of doing harm to other people, and is thus indicted of being a literal ... you know).
[+] [-] scrps|2 years ago|reply
Sample size of my neice and her social circle isn't representitive but perhaps it represents a shift.
[+] [-] caskstrength|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pests|2 years ago|reply
Don't select a photo from your phone - that brings up the boring old-school photo editor mode.
You want to start a new post by clicking the "+" at the bottom and then swipe to the left or click on "Story" or "Live".
This gives you the advanced AI filters with live preview. They are created and distributed by third parties through a gallery/store like interface.
These are the type that say add dog ears to your head. Or detect when your mouth is open and makes a scary effect. Or can give you perfect skin and AI-upgrade you or turn you into an anime character.
These are what people are talking about. Not some laughable "color filter"
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] xwdv|2 years ago|reply
There’s no good decision to make here.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] catlover76|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xrd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NOWHERE_|2 years ago|reply
- there isn’t any data which suggests that beauty filters on insta hurt mental health
- if insta disabled such filters, people will simply move to snap or tiktok to use such filters
From the business perspective his veto makes absolute sense. But it’s was to point fingers at him as if he is the boogeyman.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] wsdookadr|2 years ago|reply
If tommorow Meta shuts down and the entirety of its assets, all the money, all the infrastructure and the people get repurposed to do science instead of reels, commercials, cat videos, selfies and trending videos, that would be great.
[+] [-] relyks|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fragmede|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ipaddr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] austhrow743|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nvarsj|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] eru|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andsoitis|2 years ago|reply
Desire is a stronger force in this universe than need.
[+] [-] khazhoux|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dangrealaccount|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] AustinDev|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Mrirazak1|2 years ago|reply