How did they come up with this idea? Did the algorithm suggest this pattern, or did someone in marketing come up with it?
This kind of shit should not be tolerated.
Facebook… now even more toxic than previously known!
Just evil but you’ll never see anyone punished for it.
Remember: someone went out of their way and put effort into programming this.
An entire team.
A study published in a medical journal showed that Facebook (primarily) along with other social media was responsible for the rise in teenage suicide in girls. Let that sink in.
I 100% believe that Facebook and friends are contributing to this trend but it’s important to note that the linked study does not conclude that causation is present:
There is an independent association between problematic use of social media/internet and suicide attempts in young people. However, the direction of causality, if any, remains unclear. Further evaluation through longitudinal studies is needed.
Wonder how much of a bonus the sick fuck who pitched that got for the idea?
Probably nothing. Most likely, a paid consultant to give ideas. And if it was a worker, they were just doing their job and at most got a “great job, keep up the good work,” praise email.
Why do we as a species hate teenage girls so much?
We don’t. You’re just more squeamish about seeing them run over with the cold unfeeling tires of capitalism than other groups.
Capitalism can feed by double the negative emotions on them easily.
It’s mot that we hate teenage girls (and women) so much. It’s just money. Soulless, apathetic money making.
A teenager is in a vulnerable state. Some more than others. But self esteem, self worth, and existentialism are things that a teenager as, at the very least, a brush with.
An emotionally vulnerable person is more open to suggestion. Religion does this a lot. Advertising is no different.
We don’t hate them, it’s just that capitalism has found them to be an easy and vulnerable target for manipulation.
I agree.
I feel like the powers that b have people working overtime to ensure that most Western women feel like they need to consume to be accepted by their peers.
What’s particularly sad is it’s the exact opposite. That culture of consumption also comes with an aura of exclusivity. Most of these girls are miserable because they’ve been conditioned to consume as much as possible while thinking anyone who consumes less isn’t good enough for them.
It’s really good for putting them to work, not so good for making them or the people around them happy.
That’s some cartoon villain level shit jfc
If any of the big companies were turned into a human, they would all be Epstein
Happy I got AdNauseam after uBlock Origin. Deleted my facebook a year ago, shit is an AI slopfest built upon the greed and manipulation of every part of the chain. Defcon 31 has a good talk that brings this up. “Disenshittify or die” by Cory Doctrow, cann recommend to watch.
I support the use of AdNauseam. Not sure if there are any more extreme alternatives, I now choose to be actively hostile towards advertising/tracking rather than just passively blocking it.
My dad has been talking about wanting something like AdNauseam for years, i was very happy when i found it. The extra mile would probably be to expand it with a VPN and constantly spam clicks, clear cache, switch IP and obfuscate data. Now we just wait for someone with enough time to build it…
I stopped using mainstream social media in 2019 but my accounts are still active so I can snoop on random people I went to college with and holy shit every time I get on Facebook it’s so much worse on ways I don’t even understand. Most recently I got on to look at something and my feed was completely unrecognizable because it was all AI generated slop from pages I have never heard of and not any updates from people I know. It’s crazy what people will accept if it’s done slowly enough I guess. I legitimately don’t understand why anyone would use Facebook as it exists today. At least when I quit I could at least understand why people used it.
The more time you spend glued to your screen the less you notice slow changes. I assume this is part of why user retention is so important…
What’s AdNauseam?
An extension of uBlock Origin. It does the same thing but also clicks on every ad before it removes it.
Who the fuck comes up with this stuff?
The most generous assumption is that they use statistics to determine correlations like this (e.g., deleted selfies resulted in a high CTR for beauty ads so they made that a part of their algo). The least generous interpretation is exactly what you’re thinking: an asshole came up with it because it’s logical and effective.
Either way, ethics needs to be a bigger part of the programmers education. And we, as a society, need to make algorithms more transparent (at least social media algorithms). Reddit’s trending algorithm used to be open source during the good ole days.
Can you make the algorithm open source that determined it was ok for you to murder Tuvix tho
if (ugly) { kill_child(child_name); } else { ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) }Are you sure that you don’t already know it by heart?
JANEWAY DID WHAT SHE HAD TO DO
This is the sort of thing machine learning algorithms are pretty good at at.
Coupled with however many millions of interactions a day, you would have no problem correlating changes to your algorithm against increases in revenue.
But. It’s often not that impressive. Humans are equally good at noticing patterns.
All it takes is for one person at FB to see their wife or daughter delete a post, ask them “why did you delete that post” and take away from the response of “It made me look fat” to go “there’s a new targeted ad that’ll get me a bonus”.
In a similar vein, 80% of your banks anti-fraud systems isn’t deep learning models that detect fraudulent behaviour. Instead it’s “if the user is based in Russia, add 80 points, and if the account is at a branch in 10km of Heinersdorf Berlin, add another 50…. We’re pretty sure a Russian scammer goes on holiday every 6 months and opens a bunch of accounts there, we just don’t know which ones”.
I’d bet on it being algorithmic from Facebook because leaning into algorithms is part of that company’s culture. A bunch of manual tweaks require maintenance, though it wouldn’t surprise me if someone was thinking about this when deciding that deleted selfie should be a different signal to the algorithm than deleted picture of cat.
People who traded morals for money.
Per Careless People, the recent memoir that this article pulls from & facebook has been trying to kill, this was one of the many unethical advertising schemes that ultimately traces back to Sheryl Sandberg. A woman who didn’t allow her own children to use fb because she knew she was making it a toxic capitalist hellscape.
The kind of person whose past probably includes more than a few vivisected animals.
Zuckerberg’s $330 million mega yacht may be tracked here: https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9857511
My thoughts exactly.
Ah right, still in the north sea outside of Norway. Recently there was news of Sami villages being bribed to not put up a fuss when a “prominent person” wanted to go heliskiing, then his yacht arrived on site:
Can’t go skiing with the plebs, no.
“Plebs” go skiing 👀
Well, i’m Swiss and here it’s something most people do once or twice per season. But yeah, plebs from Zucks view: anything than the richest or most powerful people.
Translation of article from behind paywall:
"The Facebook CEO’s enormous yacht has been anchored in a Norwegian fjord near the Swedish border.
Now DN can reveal that several Sami villages have been offered compensation for not saying no to a “prominent person” going on a luxury helicopter skiing trip in the mountains.
- They wanted to buy our silence, says a representative of a Sami village.
At least three villages were contacted in March by a company that arranges helicopter skiing trips. The Sami villages have been offered compensation, ahead of a very secret group of tourists arriving to ski in the Swedish mountains in April. A Norwegian village team has also received a similar offer.
- We understood that it was something special. The organizers were very keen for us to say yes, even though this is before the calving season when the ewes are pregnant and all the reindeer are very fragile after a tough winter, says a representative of a Sami village.
Helicopter skiing in untouched lands, known as heliskiing, has been criticized by reindeer owners for destroying nature and disturbing the reindeer – and the issue has been raised by the Norrbotten County Administrative Board to the government.
According to sources from several Sami villages, the plans for this particular April visit were somewhat out of the ordinary.
The Sami villages, which use helicopters in their reindeer husbandry, were offered six hours of helicopter use by the organizer – which corresponds to around 50,000 kronor.
On April 1, one of the largest private luxury yachts in existence arrived in Bodö, Norway – something that caused a stir in the Norwegian media.
It is owned by Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the Facebook company Meta, who is one of the richest people in the world. He is one of the billionaires who has tried to approach US President Donald Trump by, among other things, donating money.
Zuckerberg’s luxury yacht is called Launchpad, and he bought it last year for $330 million. The boat is almost 120 meters long. There is room on board for 26 guests and 42 crew members.
“Among the distinctive features are a private outdoor owner’s deck with a jacuzzi, two certified helipads, a swimming pool with a moving floor and a spacious beach club,” the manufacturer writes on its website.
Zuckerberg’s smaller “supply ship” Wingman, which was included in the purchase of Launchpad, was also seen in Bodö. Wingman is also equipped with a helipad and helicopter.
Both ships then headed north and last week they arrived in a small coastal village, Drag, in northern Norway, where, according to information to DN, a house has been rented in order to, among other things, be able to cook for the guests from the boat.
- There were several helicopters on site and a hell of a lot of people. A big operation, says a source to DN.
It is from there that the controversial extreme sports event is said to have taken place. Helicopters are said to have traveled across the border to Sweden to drop off guests in the Swedish mountains for skiing on the pristine top snow. According to several sources to DN, the yachts’ own helicopters were used. In addition, at least one more from a local entrepreneur.
- We see them flying from here every day, a source in the Norwegian Drag told DN this weekend.
A businessman in the area who was asked early on to contribute to the event, tells DN that the plan was for the group to come with a large yacht with its own helicopters and that they hired a Swiss organizer as an intermediary:
- It was the crème de la crème, no ordinary millionaires. They wanted a three-star chef up in the mountains and they would fly their own helicopters and bring their own guides. It felt so unnecessary. It didn’t make sense. We said no.
DN has not been able to confirm that Mark Zuckerberg himself was on board any of the ships.
A representative for a company that accepted said to DN before the visit:
– We have a duty of confidentiality when it comes to the customer. But honestly, I don’t know who is going to ski. That it is some prominent person possibly, if they can afford to pay for all that. But I have no idea who or what they are. We sell a flight service. We fly a helicopter – it is a logistical solution for this event.
There has been reluctance from Sami villages that you have been in contact with. What do you say about that?
– The Sami villages are very important customers for us too and we have constant contact with them. It is an ongoing dialogue that takes place continuously all the time.
The company does not want to comment on the fact that the event takes place in connection with the calving period.
One of the villages that has been offered compensation is Unna tjerusj Sami village. They have – like the other respondents that DN has spoken to – declined the compensation. Chairwoman Helena Omma:
– My position is no. There is a word in Sami called joavdelaš. It means something like “useless”, things that you do completely unnecessarily. And heliskiing is the definition of joavdelaš, there is no benefit in this, she says.
– It is harmful to the climate, it disturbs reindeer as well as wildlife and nature in the area and I am completely against using nature as a playhouse. Nature has its own value and its own rights. In this case, it is not even the public’s interest in outdoor recreation that is being taken into account – only the richest people have the opportunity to do something like this.
How do you feel about the fact that the arrangement seems to have been carried out despite you and the other Sami villages having said no?
– Then they have asked so that – if we are lucky and we say yes – they can say that they are doing it in cooperation with the Sami villages. So it is only worth something if we are positive, otherwise they ignore what we say.
Both Launchpad and Wingman have crossed the Atlantic to get to the Norwegian ports, with very large climate emissions as a result. When the lifestyle website Luxury Launches in December calculated the emissions of the two ships during the 10 months that Zuckerberg had owned them until then, they concluded that the emissions amounted to over three million liters, equivalent to 52,000 full tanks in a normal-sized car.
– My advice is to respect the sensitive environment you have the privilege of visiting and understand that you have arrived at the planet’s “ground zero” when it comes to climate change. The temperature is increasing two to three times faster in the Arctic Circle, which has caused sharp shifts in snow and ice conditions that are blocking reindeer pastures, changing vegetation and causing accelerated melting of all glaciers, Johan Rockström tells DN.
A reindeer herder who wishes to remain anonymous tells DN that it feels ironic that a group of people using private jets, luxury yachts and helicopters are traveling around the world to find the last snow-covered mountains.
– Climate change is clearly visible – it is an extremely snow-poor year and this may lead to having to move the reindeer to the northwest earlier than usual.
After the adventure in the Swedish mountains, Zuckerberg’s luxury yachts continue towards Svalbard according to the port’s arrival lists.
On Monday, he was in court in Washington DC to defend Meta’s purchase of Instagram and Whatsapp, which according to the US Competition and Consumer Protection Authority has created a monopoly.
DN has sought Mark Zuckerberg through Meta’s press service.
Criticism of heliskiing for several reasons
At the end of March, Professor Johan Rockström, among others, called for a ban on heliskiing in an opinion article in Expressen, due to high emissions, destruction of sensitive nature and the fact that the activity itself is dangerous.
In March, two men died in an avalanche accident in Abisko during a heliskiing excursion. The organizer is now suspected of causing death to another person, among other things.
Many Sami villages elsewhere are experiencing major problems with heliskiing on their land.
In the areas currently in question, several people DN spoke to say that heliskiing must be said no – regardless of whether there are reindeer in the area at the time or not. The risk, they say, of allowing one operator in is that more will gradually join, who will later run tours where reindeer are present."
I’m so glad I quit Facebook long ago and also started using uBlock Origin.
Advertising targeted towards minors needs to be banned.
Advertising
targeted towards minorsneeds to be banned.Advertising itself isn’t a bad thing.
They can put up signs inside their business windows. That’s plenty. Everything else is a blight.
It’s not 1950 anymore.
Oh they had roadside billboards in 1950. And they were a blight back then. Advertising is a cancer.
Extremism is cancer.
Haha what? I’m not burning billboards and slaughtering CEOs. I’m just sick to death of all these ads. Advertising is a distributed global brainwashing campaign, by the wealthy, against the working class. They don’t hire psychologists to exploit our lizard brains for no reason, and that’s why it needs to be outlawed.
They are making billboards illegal in most places. And it’s a pretty awesome improvement I must say.
No, it’s… it’s pretty bad.
Some level of advertising is a necessary evil when you’re in a capitalist system because otherwise people have no way to get their products out ti the market. There’s a balance to be struck.
Hell even in other systems advertising is still important for finding out about cool new things even if money no longer exists
If money doesn’t exist how do you pay for the ads?
With poetry, or perhaps a little dance. Dance 🕺
Word of mouth is the most powerful type of advertisement that no one is against.
We all know if every other way of advertising was banned, they’d start paying (or “incentivizing”) millions of people to “do word of mouth” for them.
And then we’ll have those people polluting every online space with unlabeled ads. No thank you.
Like they are already? Iol
I know one example of advertising that I liked: the creators of Penny Arcade had only advertisements for computer games that they liked. And they made those ads in the same art style as their own comic.
Advertisements are good when they’re an honest endorsement. Any others are inherently deceptive and often invasive.
It’s the state of advertising tbh. If ads were still of the “Look, here’s a cool product” variety, or even the “Look, here’s people happily using a cool product” kind then the world would probably be a better place. Even targeting isn’t so bad, when it’s broad like “We want businesses to know about our B2B product.”
The evil in modern advertising is the overly specific targeting, the lying, the psychological tricks, and the way they seem to invade every possible space.
This I agree with
Psych tricks were there since Bernays “torches of freedom” to sucker women into nicotine addiction like the men.
Don’t forget about planned obsolescence, and enshittification. Two built in ways to lie to the person being advertised at.
For anyone that is downvoting this. Go ahead and try to run a business without advertising, let me know how that works out for you.
extremely incorrect buzzer sound
This is one of those bizarre Lemmy echo chamber things. I’ve never seen this sentiment that advertising is evil and should be stopped at all costs anywhere else but on Lemmy it’s super common. Idk where it comes from. I get that advertising kind of sucks but it just seems like a weird thing to get so passionate about especially considering how many other things are wrong with the world. Sorry you’re getting downvoted to hell, you’re not crazy, Lemmy is.
This has been a huge public viewpoint for decades. I think it was Banksy who had the quote about if you force me to view your ad by putting it in a public space then it is mine to do with a I please.
Businesses have to survive, but advertising is insidious and invasive. Could it be regulated? Sure.
@markovs_gun @RedditIsDeddit what’s lemmy?
That famous Bansky quote is older than Lemmy and is posted all over the Internet. There are cities around that ban all advertisements. There are movements for a ban on ads in public spaces in many cities all around the world. That really has nothing to do with Lemmy
fake Internet points don’t matter to me my words stand by themselves
I dont think Bill Hicks is on Lemmy.
All ads suck, but ads based on user rather than content go too far.
As with basically everything bad in the US, it’s another reminder that Reagan was a human shitstain.
Your classic 80s cartoons were toy commercials. Candy, toys, cereals started being marketed directly to children.
And I genuinely loved all that stuff as a kid, usually liking the ad (e.g., TMNT cartoon) more than the toys (e.g., TMNT action figures).
As your typical Lemmy user who loves Linux and hates advertisements, I sometimes have to remind myself about that when my son is watching today’s dumb kid shows. Teaching him about the systems in play rather than isolating him from it has been working well IMO.
The bonus is that he doesn’t watch full-on advertisements and commercial breaks like we were forced to in the 80s when it was live TV or no TV.
The bonus is that he doesn’t watch full-on advertisements and commercial breaks like we were forced to in the 80s when it was live TV or no TV.
I think the problem for modern youth is that there’s no way to tell what’s an ad anymore. Scrolling through TikTok or any social media will show you tons of advertisements which are not marked as advertisements.
The mainstream internet is driven by advertising. At least when I was a kid we could step out during the commercial breaks.
I think the problem for modern youth is that there’s no way to tell what’s an ad anymore.
Too true. Fortunately my kid is too young for full blown social media, so I have a few more years to keep teaching him.
Advertising should be illegal.
