Mark Zuckerberg personally rejected Meta’s proposals to improve teen mental health, court documents allege::Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally and repeatedly thwarted initiatives meant to improve the well-being of teens on Facebook and Instagram, at times directly overruling some of his most senior lieutenants, according to internal communications made public as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the company.

    • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The site was always built on “The Skinner Box” model, where you get those sweet sweet dopamine hits. Even back in 2010-2011 it was like that, my girlfriend was literally addicted to checking Facebook. She couldn’t go more than about 5-10 minutes without checking her wall/feed.

      I had an account back when I started to open up in 2005-2006 and it’s a completely different beast now. At least back then it was about social interaction with people at your university and not a virtual drug machine.

  • Uglyhead@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This dude started with an online ‘Hot or Ugly’ site at his college. Online toxicity is his bread and butter; always has been; always will be.

  • gregorum@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Ditched all Meta services years ago. My life instantly improved.

    Never looked back.

    • spiderman@ani.social
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      1 year ago

      Yep. The more I reduce using Instagram, the more I feel better mentally. Instagram has become a rat race for people to show who has a better life.

      • SaakoPaahtaa@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Haven’t been on social media for years now. I feel so much better now, focusing on enjoying my life instead of convincing everyone I’m enjoying my life. Small but big difference.

        • clif@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m also a big digital privacy nut and I can’t begin to fathom just broadcasting all my shit to the entire internet… Particularly through a company that is actively analyzing and monetizing it

      • Uglyhead@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        for people to show who has a better life

        And a large portion of that ‘good life’ is a complete fabrication. So it becomes a rat race to see who can fake it better.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      I don’t know much about Lex Friedman or how he became so popular but I watched a few parts with him gushing over Musk and it annoyed me to no end. It was hard for me to watch other parts with that in my mind.

  • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Seriously, fuck this guy.

    I haven’t shared anything on Facebook in over 5 years, but I definitely shared this.

  • Modva@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I wonder if any of these billionaires secretly harbours the desire to subjugate humanity.

  • IvanOverdrive@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    After I defacebooked my phone years ago, the desktop site wanted my phone number to affirm my identity. Noped out right then and there. Haven’t missed FB in the slightest.

  • Ab_intra@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Who is really supprised? He is an asshole and we’ve known yhis forever. If it weren’t for friends and family I would have left Facebook years ago. Unfortunately it’s a really good wsy to stay in touch with people and that’s the only reason I still ut it…

    • pete_the_cat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I only signed into Facebook again for the first time in years. I moved to a new city and couldn’t find any singles groups/social groups on MeetUp or the like. The one I found is on both Instagram and Facebook so I was forced back into the cesspool. My feed on Facebook is filled with “sponsored posts” and “people I might like”, GTFO of here with that bullshit. It was bad before, but I honestly don’t see how people in “first world nations” that don’t need it for commerce and general communication still use it.

      • Ab_intra@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        It’s become so much worse… I really hate it. Funny thing. It actually tried to make me watch republican bs. It showed me some really extreme far right shit and I was like… OK where do you think I am politically…? It sucks because people that are not aware might actually fall for that crap.

    • reliv3@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I think we really gotta stop lying to ourselves when we say “it’s a good way to stay in touch with people”. It’s a way to stay in touch, but most of the shit you see on Facebook these days have little to nothing to do with the people you actually care about.

      There are much better ways to stay in touch with others. For example, friend or family discord communities is a far superior way when compared to any Meta platform.

      • Ab_intra@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There are much better ways to stay in touch with others. For example, friend or family discord communities is a far superior way when compared to any Meta platform.

        I get your point but this one I’ve got to disagree on. You need to get your friends and family to use that, and that’s not going to happen lol

        • reliv3@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Not with that attitude.

          Remember when you had to get your friends and family to use Facebook? I do. Most (may be all) social media platforms are opt in. People are not born with a Facebook account.

          This is not a reason, but rather a means to absolve yourself from engaging with a platform you know is toxic.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            My brother has ASD. He has decided Facebook is how he wants to communicate. I don’t want to lose what little connection I have with my brother.

            When someone has ASD and is set on something, getting them to change is not a matter of your attitude.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally and repeatedly thwarted initiatives meant to improve the well-being of teens on Facebook and Instagram, at times directly overruling some of his most senior lieutenants, according to internal communications made public as part of an ongoing lawsuit against the company.

    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.

    Despite Zuckerberg’s conclusion, the proposal had enjoyed broad support, the lawsuit said, including from Mosseri; Instagram’s policy chief, Karina Newton; the head of Facebook, Fidji Simo, and Meta’s vice president of product design, Margaret Gould Stewart.

    A year after the beauty filter decision, in August 2021, Clegg pressed Zuckerberg to make “additional investment to strengthen our position on wellbeing across the company,” citing a staff recommendation to address issues of addiction, self-harm and bullying, according to the complaint.

    Zuckerberg’s rejection of opportunities to invest more heavily in well-being are reflective of his data-centric approach to management, said Arturo Bejar, the former Facebook engineering director and whistleblower who leveled his own allegations last week that Instagram has repeatedly ignored internal warnings about the app’s potential harms to teens.

    A 2020 internal presentation discussed in the complaint described how Instagram meets teenagers’ desire for “novelty seeking” with “a dopamine hit” through intermittent notifications about comments, follows and other bids for attention that can convey a sense of “approval and acceptance [that] are huge rewards for teens.”


    The original article contains 1,294 words, the summary contains 268 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • RunningInRVA@lemmy.world
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    Sad when you think about the fact that he himself has a daughter probably around 9 years old now.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Teen mental health does not earn him money. People who are glued to Facebook like crazy do.

  • Andrew Nitrogenesis@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    he only gives a fuck about profits. improving teenagers well-being is against his rules as this only wastes his money. it’s capitalism mates.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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    When I was a teenager (before smartphones were widespread although they were just arriving), I was the weird nerdy kid because I spent a lot of time online and many of my social contacts were online.

    Today, everyone, especially teenagers, uses the Internet a lot. I feel weird because I don’t use many of those things like Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat. I don’t even know anymore where to meet new people on the Internet; on forums people tended to gradually get to know the other people, but on reddit and lemmy people somehow don’t tend to recognize usernames.

    • Death_Equity@lemmy.world
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      I also was a teen as smartphones came into the mainstream.

      I think that Facebook groups have largely taken the place of forums for online community with familiar users. On Lemmy and Reddit I feel the smaller subs tend to have more of the user recognition factor. On forums there are also the signatures and fairly prominent user panels next to posts that make a user stand out and be remembered. On Lemmy and Reddit there is only the username and it is not meaningfully different that the rest of a post header. I like that the user is less notable than the content they provide; it always was silly how a forum user would have a giant sig with all sorts of colors and animations closing out a single sentence post.