These discussions never discuss the priors, is this harm on a different scale then what preceded it? Like is social media worse than MTV or teen magazines?
I loved MTV as a kid but it was as different to social media as can be.
Half the time you would turn it on and not like the video playing then switch the channel. Even if you liked the video that was playing, half the time the next video was something you didn't like so you would switch the channel.
Now imagine if MTV had used machine learning to predict the next video to show me personally that would best cause me to not change the channel.
That is not even really a different scale but a different category.
Why does it matter? We can’t go back and retroactively punish MTV for its behavior decades ago. Not to mention we likely have a much better understand of the impact of media on mental health now than we did then.
The best time to start doing the right thing is now. Unless the argument here is “since people got away with it before it’s not fair to punish people now.”
It matters because it points towards a common failure mode which we've seen repeatedly in the past. In the 1990s, people routinely published news articles like the OP (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/26/business/technology-digit...) about how researchers "knew" that violent video games were causing harm and the dastardly companies producing them ignored the evidence. In the 1980s, those same articles (https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/31/arts/tv-view-the-networks...) were published about television: why won't the networks acknowledge the plain, obvious fact that showing violence on TV makes violence more acceptable in real life?
Is the evidence better this time, and the argument for corporate misconduct more ironclad? Maybe, I guess, but I'm skeptical.
What policy proposals would you have made with respect to MTV decades ago, and how would people at the time have reacted to them? MTV peaked (I think) before I was alive or at least old enough to have formative memories involving it, but people have been complaining about television being brain-rotting for many decades and I'm sure there was political pressure against MTV's programming on some grounds or another, by stodgy cultural conservatives who hated freedom of expression or challenges to their dogma. Were they correct? Would it have been good for the US federal government in the 80s and 90s to have actually imposed meaningful legal censorship on MTV for the benefit of the mental health of its youth audience?
Libidinalecon|3 months ago
I loved MTV as a kid but it was as different to social media as can be.
Half the time you would turn it on and not like the video playing then switch the channel. Even if you liked the video that was playing, half the time the next video was something you didn't like so you would switch the channel.
Now imagine if MTV had used machine learning to predict the next video to show me personally that would best cause me to not change the channel.
That is not even really a different scale but a different category.
Forgeties79|3 months ago
The best time to start doing the right thing is now. Unless the argument here is “since people got away with it before it’s not fair to punish people now.”
SpicyLemonZest|3 months ago
Is the evidence better this time, and the argument for corporate misconduct more ironclad? Maybe, I guess, but I'm skeptical.
JuniperMesos|3 months ago
ares623|3 months ago