Comment by strongpigeon
1 month ago
There is a fairly low amount of details about the case in the article. This NPR article [0] has a bit more, but it's still fairly sparse. Though it's interesting how Zuckerberg thought it was a good idea to say: "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?".
Given that this is a case about addiction, that feels like a shockingly bad thing to say in defense of your product. Can you imagine saying the same thing about oxycodone or cigarettes?
[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5746125/meta-youtube-so...
As someone who values a liberal society, I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine.
I also hope the reasons are obvious.
Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult. I don't think it's fair to ask children to resist social media through sheer willpower when there are legions of highly educated adults on the other side trying to increase engagement.
It should be no surprise that children can be manipulated by highly intelligent adults.
>[There are] legions of highly educated adults [at Meta] trying to increase [child] engagement
Why is this not only OK but the best way for Mark to spend every waking moment of his life?
Money thing? But often would he think about his bank account versus his products, maybe it’s pure drive?
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And not just a minor, AIUI it's important that at the start, she was under 16
> Keep in mind that this case is about about a minor, not an adult.
This obviously means that tech is going to have no choice but to do "age verification". And I don't think there's much of a way to do that that wouldn't be uncomfortable for a lot of us.
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We already have a distinction because it’s been known for decades already that some things are addictive purely through reinforcement psychology and some things lock people into a chemical dependence.
For example see the glossary in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dependence
And for some reason we only use "addiction" to describe things that are recreational in nature, not drugs that have no recreational use but can be quite dangerous to discontinue abruptly.
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> I also hope the reasons are obvious.
Based on the fact that many people here disagree about fundamental things, as well as the fact that “liberal” is a highly overloaded term, I think it should be obvious that it’s not obvious what you mean.
I don't think the reasons are obvious. Where do you put gambling on the spectrum?
If something compels behavior vs. behavior remaining a free choice, a liberal society can and should treat it like any other source of compulsion.
Personally, I am leery of any technical definition of “addictive” that operates outside the traditional chemical influences on physiology. So I would not describe gambling in that sense.
One might have a malady that causes gambling to take on the same physiological vibe for you, but that’s not what it means for gambling itself to be addictive.
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Where would you put 24x7 political content?
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Dark patterns are real. Deceptive advertising is real. So-called prediction markets amount to unregulated gambling on any proposition. Many online businesses are whale hunts and the whales are often addicts.
Specifically when it comes to children, we need to show more restraint in giving them the liberty to partake in potentially addictive substances.
It's one thing if an adult smokes and gambles, it's another thing if a child does. It seems to me that stuff you do in youth tends to stick around for life.
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I feel like people use the word “addiction” to refer to both chemical addiction and behavioral addiction, and that people understand that the latter is (usually) far less serious than the former.
I don't think you can put them into buckets like that. All addiction is driven in persuit of a reward. The magnitude of reward can be estimated with brain scans and stuff but to my understanding isn't universal in all humans.
Can we definitely say gambling addiction is less serious than alcohol addiction when there's individuals who find the former harder to quit than the latter?
> As someone who values a liberal society, I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine.
The problem is that this runs directly into the evidence that is mounting from GLP-1 agonists.
A lot more things are tied to the pathways we associate with "addiction" than we thought.
> I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive” in the same bucket as oxy or nicotine.
Not careful enough apparently: Nicotine isn't that addictive on its own, tobacco is.
Be aware, the vast majority of people who have ever smoked cigarettes occasionally never became addicted. They were not labeled as “smokers”. A non-trivial number of people today continue to smoke cigarettes on occasion. I like to have one on my birthday. Then again, I’m able to eat a chip and not consume the entire bag. I’m not convinced of these social science studies, and when digging into individual studies I’m sure the replication crisis comes into play.
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> Not careful enough apparently: Nicotine isn't that addictive on its own, tobacco is.
That is a very strong claim to make when the current scientific consensus strongly disagrees.
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Tobacco may be the most* addictive delivery method, but nicotine alone is also addictive. To say its not is misinformation. Consistent use of nicotine still leads to upregulation, which does cause irritability, brain fog, cravings when you stop.
* I'd even change this to say modern nicotine salts in vapes are likely to lead to dependency faster than tobacco. A 5% nicotine salt pod will contain as much nicotine as a full pack of cigarettes, and so vapers tend to consume far more nicotine in a single sitting than they ever could with a cigarette. That combined withe constant availability means users of nicotine vapes & pouches (aka, no tobacco) are likey to have a more difficult time quitting than cigarette smokers.
Bottom line, its still dangerous to dismiss nicotine's addictive potential with or without tobacco as a delivery method.
How does that work when nicotine products that are every bit as addictive as tobacco exist, maybe you're just not aware of them? Sitting here with non tobacco snus (Swedish nicotine pouch) under my top lip, something I have been utterly unable to quit. I believe "nicotine free" tobacco would be completely non addictive.
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What's obvious to me likely isn't obvious to you or anyone else, therefore nothing is obvious.
I wish we'd delete that word from the English language.
"I hope we’d be exceedingly careful in what we label “addictive”…"
To be sure. But still an obviously dumb thing for a CEO to say though.
As someone who values a conservative society, I hope we'd be exceedingly careful before releasing products to consumers before knowing whether they're addictive or not.
Prohibition? Despite your hopes I'm not sure I got your intent.
Social media is addictive the same way anorexia is. If you think Anorexia isn't a form of addiction, then sure, you got your 'safety'.
What wording would you use then if the definition fit? You can use minor addiction or severe addiction but it's still an one.
Why is it that these philosophical ideas about supposed personal freedom again and again make an appearance when it’s about the freedom of corporations? It’s always that. Either that or with the Free User pushed infront of them like a shield.
There’s a big distance between libertarian and liberal societies. The libertarian tendencies of corporations are what tend to cause more harm.
Mmhmm those are words. Words that are hand wavy pretexts for conservatism rather than liberalism; as a lover of liberal society you hope it acts conservatively!
This just comes off as poorly obfuscated self selection. You own a bunch of Meta, Alphabet and other media stocks?
> Can you imagine saying the same thing about oxycodone or cigarettes?
No, but unfortunately I can very easily imagine people saying it, just like the people who made loads of money from pushing those products did. Also just like the people who are profiting from the spread of gambling are saying now.
Why would someone choose to do a thing if it harms them? There are good arguments against laws that restrict personal freedoms, but this isn't one of them.
But what if we're talking about a product that you're giving away to children? I agree that for adults, cigarettes are fine. But in this case, you're actively designing to maximize tweens and teens engagement and the end result is them saying that they wan't to stop but can't.
Though to be fair, I was mostly pointing out the fact that this was a pretty dumb thing to say for a case like this, especially in a jury trial.
Yes, I agree with you, I think that regulation is needed here and that this was a dumb thing to say. I'm just saying that my reaction to Zuckerberg saying that people must love his product if they use it a lot is exactly what I'd expect him to say. It's also exactly why other parties must step in.
> "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?"
A statement that's been brought up even by HN commentators
Facebook is not a free market where you can choose. You're compelled to use it for several different reasons (and before some wiseass comments "you're not forced to. you can delete it" yes I know)
- They captured the early market. There was a small window of time in which to get users
- They ruthlessly bought up the competition
- They've deleted links to competitors
- They outright hijacked people's email addresses. It makes it hard to transfer users to another service or to email them outside the walled garden
- Even while they change privacy settings for users to make things more public, they wall off public pages. Your local neighborhood has a place where they post information? Even if everyone selects "Public" in the audience you can't see it without an account
Edit: Oh, and shadow profiles. And making it nigh-impossible to delete an account permanently
From what I understand the argument is, and to miss quote Marshall McLuhan it is “the medium, and not the content is the addiction”.
In other words is not the posts by the influencers, but techniques such as infinite schooling, and so on.
This is why meta and google could not relay on User-Generated Content Safe Harbor (Section 230) part of the law.
Yeah, Zuck is really being a bit of d** there. You can't spend decades hiring the best engineers in the world and give them millions of dollars worth of resources with the sole aim of creating products specifically designed to retain attention and then simply shrug and say "if you don't like it, leave it". That's just not a fair fight.
Is designing for retention bad then? God forbid you write a story that captivates readers; if they don't stop reading after a few chapters, why, that's illegal mate
Lol, so then cigarette makers weren't deliberately modifying drug levels in their product to addict smokers, they were "designing for retention".
More to the point, though, your comments here are all straw men. This was specifically a case about targeting children with addictive features of their products.
If people feel that smoking causes lung cancer why do they keep smoking?
Because they use smoking to fill a hole in their lives. If they are somehow forced to stop, they will just switch to another vice as long as the actual problem isn't solved.
A lot of smokers don't feel they are having a good time and want to quit but can't. I'm not sure the same applies to youtube.
I know lots of adults who talk about "curing their phone addiction". I don't think someone would find it necessary to write a book "How To Break Up With Your Phone" (using what's referred to as a "digital detox program") if there weren't a substantial number of people who wanted to stop infinite scrolling behavior on their phone but found it difficult.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nosurf/comments/k3vzaa/how_to_break... - used the reddit link because the existence of r/nosurf is another example of people who want to stop but find it difficult.
I knew someone who had exactly that feeling about YouTube. It was a genuine struggle for them to stop even though the amount of time they spent on it was negatively impacting their life and the content was making them more anxious.
Should YouTube be banned then? YouTube provides a lot of value to a lot of people. I've learned a lot of math, physics, history, DIY from it. But it's addictive (to some)
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it's especially galling because he (or at least his wife) also funds neuroscience research at Stanford and elsewhere, and should have been well informed of the science behind addition, dopamine, and the reward pathways in the brain
"If people didn't like destroying the environment, why would they let lobbiests run their government"
-- Billionaires
Why not make personal responsibility illegal whilst we are at it. It is egregious that an individual can be held accountable for their own behaviours.
How much personal responsibility should we expect children to have? Genuine question. Because there was a time where some people believed that it was ok for kids to drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
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> How much personal responsibility should we expect children to have?
This is what parents are for.
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The fact that you're comparing nicotine to Facebook really throws into sharp relief just how far from reality this whole "social media made me depressed" stuff has strayed.
There's a large body of evidence on the damage that social media can do to people, and on the engineered compulsion to use it.
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Yeah. The difference is that I have managed to quit nicotine.
Clearly those two things are not the same.
Do you use Facebook regularly?
I use Facebook marketplace and I'm part of a running group that's organized on Facebook.