My kids go to a school where they use an iPad from age 7 up.
Messenger for Kids is a well thought out app that lets parents have a lot of control over who their kids talk to. It also allows you to monitor their conversations way that respects the kids' privacy.
Contrast this with iMessage, where literally anyone can randomly message a child using their Apple ID, and there are zero controls available to parents for monitoring or approving contacts.
Look beyond messaging, and the Apple store targets kids with crappy apps filled to the brim with creepy ads. YouTube recommends creepy, addictive, unmoderated, content.
Facebook, and maybe Microsoft, are literally the only companies making products that are actually designed for kids.
HN is so crazy sometimes. Literally the only two comments mentioning the actual product in question are positive and discuss the features and why they are useful for kids. Everyone else just uses the headline as an opportunity to sound off on why FB engineers should be taken behind the chemical sheds and beaten with electrical cords.
I think your take is the crazy one. I’m not sure if you remember how this whole thing works with Zuckerberg, but it sounds like they’re in the “let’s gather a lot of 6 year old users” stage. The “let’s make billions of dollars off them now that they’re all on here” stage comes later. Most of the people on here (not you) aren’t falling for the same crap.
Do you really think toys or food or comparable to Facebook? You go into a store, you see the product your child wants, and 99.9% of the time you know exactly what it does. You cannot walk away from a child eating a happy meal for 5 minutes and come back and see them watching a porn video hidden in the hamburger.
Many skills they develop with digital products will be bound to a very small amount of companies. That certainly can be a problem.
This is of course to set up a pipeline for new Facebook users. Doesn't have to be bad, but it is what it is and there shouldn't be naive illusions about it.
I agree with this sentiment. HN lately has often seemed a reactionary cesspool where anything and everything is scrutinized based on the headline alone. The vast majority of highly upvoted comments are always negative critiques in this regard, with few comments coming from people who may have actually clicked the link. This holds true of Show HN's, Launch HN's, or anything else about anything.
HN was also this. I think you, and a lot of people, probably hold HN in some weird kind of high regard. HN is just another anonymous forum frequented mostly by techies.
Also being a constant contrarian is a special flavour here.
Yeah this is true. Probably the level of discourse was never really that good, especially for non-technical threads. I suppose it’s just become more apparent to me.
It's still better here than most other pseudonymous public forums, with the exception of carefully curated feeds (and such curation has a fairly high opportunity cost and difficulty)
Some of us aren't as enthusiastic about the idea of giving these amoral companies access to our children, regardless of how polished the product is or how many times I reread the article. I hope I am qualified to dislike this service.
> the Apple store targets kids with crappy apps filled to the brim with creepy ads.
On several occasions I've searched for apps by name, and not only are they not in the top few results, the App Store shows me borderline adult content within just a few screens of the top. I have no idea why it is so hard to find apps searching by name, but it is one of the main reasons I don't let my kids use the App Store app.
If we're comparing with Youtube, I can't help but think people aren't looking very hard. My kids' school can recommend dozens of places to get computer activities for kids. None of them are from big tech companies. There's a ton of small players in edtech, many with high quality content (I bring up prodigygame.com here from time to time, but there are others)
If you want to look specifically into communication tools for kids, the thing to be aware of is COPPA: it's an extremely restrictive regulation that governs what is allowable in apps/websites targeted at kids (e.g. something as basic as avatars are a no go, because they can expose the kid's appearance to strangers). Considering the horror stories you hear about teens and instagram, it's actually fairly understandable that the regulatory position is that kids have no business exposing themselves to online threats. Doctors also often suggest limiting screen time to no more than an hour a day. Parents letting screens babysit their kids do so against all sorts of expert advice.
People also bring up covid quarantines as a justification for more online engagement, but IMHO, this is an abnormal situation in the first place, and even then, there are various ways for kids to socialize, be it via zoom at school or just going to the nearby playground. And FWIW, I didn't have any of this fancy pants online social stuff growing up and I turned out just fine, even without a whole lot of in-person socialization either.
> My kids go to a school where they use an iPad from age 7 up.
> Messenger ...
> .. IMessage ..
Not sure what kids using iPad has to do with them having access to Messenger and iMessage? Or, even YouTube app access.
Speaking as a parent ... It is a parent's job to make sure the software and the content children are using is appropriate for them and is in their interest. If one is relying on for profit companies, then .... I'd rather not say.
A fair question. The school is using a BYOD model and mandating a latest device. As a result kids have a dedicated iPad that comes home with them every evening. Not only that but their entire peer group had the same device. So friendship groups are naturally moving to span school and online life.
As a parent I'm now faced with the situation where I either need to block my kids from 50% of the interactions their friendship groups have and miss out on the media that their friends consume, of find a way that they can do that safely. Which is the crux of my complaint.
If kids are using iMessage I can't say it's OK for my child to communicate with an allowed list of contacts, or it is OK at certain times, or ensure they don't take selfies or send photos they shouldn't.
As it is we have set screen time each weekend, and do our best to educate them on responsible use of messaging but in my opinion apps should have far more fine grained control, especially when targetted at children.
It's just another way of saying "kids grow by themselves and school educates them" instead of actually becoming involved with the process and shielding the child from big tech which feels like a rather big threat to underage humans.
I have so many friends who leave their tablet babysit the baby and feeding them so much multimedia content it's making me physically sick. And it's a lot more widespread, kid sees shiny and soundy and quiets down, then won't eat without a tablet shoved to their face.
Yes that's right. That's why the above parent comment looked for an app that enables parents to make sure the content and software is safe for their kids. It's also why the app store is problematic since it makes it more difficult for adults to choose software and content appropriate for their children. You two have a lot in common.
All fair points but let's not pretend that this is altruism. They are providing this for a reason and their business is creating outrage to sell ads. iMessage and others could do better but Apple's business is selling expensive phones and apps from an app store.
Because Apple has always been in education. It’s how they hook you on their products so you’ll buy them later when you’re an adult. The same reason Facebook is doing it as well as MS and a whole slew of companies you’ve never heard of. I know of one company that partnered with Sony for educational games to get PlayStations in classrooms for the same reason (from Sony’s perspective)
You can control iMessage via Screen Time for kids via an allow list. My kids iPad only allows FaceTime and messages from grandparents, aunts, and uncles.
YTKids is full of trash and ads with no way to moderate. I’m thinking about starting a video library app for $4.99/mo that has curated age appropriate educational video content for kids. How many HN parents would be interested in something like that?
I am currently building a social scrapbook for youth organizations and tribal communities. Memory preservation meets social without the datamining. It might very easily work for what you are describing.
This is the first time I've read something positive about FB that too on a post involving kids, Thanks for sharing.
But what do you think is the endgame for Facebook in providing a service for kids which are approved by the parents? None other than improving their prospects of LTV i.e. getting the 6 year old invested in the platform so they could yield conversions when 13(or what ever the age in which they get access to broader content i.e. Ads).
So the real question here to a parent is, Do you want your child to get invested in a platform which has consistently proven to be unethical, immoral, indulge in outright illegal activities or has been attributed with degrading democracies around the world?
May be Facebook wouldn't sell the data of kids until they're 13 or 18 but If I'm a parent I wouldn't want even my 18 year old to do anything with a platform like Facebook.
> So the real question here to a parent is, Do you want your child to get invested in a platform which has consistently proven to be unethical, immoral, indulge in outright illegal activities or has been attributed with degrading democracies around the world?
Without commenting on any of the wider topics.
Let he who is without a misspent youth on 4chan cast the first stone.
Castigating parents for making bad choices around their children's online behavior seems a bit unfair.
I'd say it's safe to say the kids are off on their own after a certain age, and making their own choices on the world wide web. The vast majority of parents are not IT professionals and not up for the task of closely filtering access to the entire internet.
Not one bit of this can be solved by pushing the responsibility on individual parents.
I agree with your on the broader context of a parent being unable to control what a kid does online (or) on the question on whether a parent should really do that; But the parent(thread parent) specifically states that they allow the Messenger of Kids because that allows greater control over their kid's messaging activities and so my question simply is regarding the trust they place on the platform which provides that.
You're wrong. This existed for ages in Windows via Family Safety. Unfortunately, after Microsoft milled Windows Messenger, the feature died, and it wasn't added to Skype. I could control my kids contacts in Windows Messenger and in addition to just Facebook Messenger limitations, Family Safety gave me 360-degree control including restrictions for sites, apps, etc.
I'm just as distrustful as everyone else regarding FB, but the messenger kids app is, so far, the only one I'm ok with letting my kids use regularly. Nothing else has enough parental controls where I can be certain some rando creep isn't messaging my kid.
The net will never be safe for kids, so specialized apps are necessary if children have to use iPads (I think the educational value is questionable anyway).
Also be aware that kids will break from the prison their parents set up sooner than they might want.
Why are you so concerned with who your kids are talking to? You have to teach them trust else they’ll continue on passing on this mistrust you clearly take as normal. How did the kids exist prior to Facebook messenger?
Don't know if you have any children. I will quote a line from chef in South Park: there's a time and a place for everything. It's ok to have a line drawn somewhere and have a hybrid approach, relax the rules gradually. And I'd rather like to be so when I was a kid.
So then how do you shelter them from the world? It has no parental controls. Is the hope this time doesn’t come until their of proper age? Life has its ways
Do it gradually just like how you learn materials in schools? All I am saying is that it's not black and white. Make different choices at different age groups.
You as well, how do you protect them from the real world threats?
Interestingly I’m married to the product of this sheltering. When anything bad happens at all, she panics. Like panic attack panics. Things happen when they happen, and you’re attempting to control that instead of teaching.
There will never be a proper age to ween them into the real world.
I hate Facebook but you've got a solid point. Youtube still hasn't fixed Elsa-gate. And Apple is hostile to any serious parental control apps that would fix their issues.
I'm no fan of Facebook's assault on privacy and exploitation of user data; I'd rather pay for a service than be the product.
That said, Messenger Kids is a crazy good product that took off like fire among my children's classmates. Parents get to authorize all contacts and review all communication; kids get fun photo and video chat tools, with all sorts of kid-friendly filters and such, along with loads of minigames. The UI is so dead-simple that illiterate youngsters have no problem using it.
So, yah, I'm not at all surprised to learn that they target 6 year olds. _They have a product clearly intended for them_.
In terms of usability and giving parents moderation control, I think they've done a good job. I hate Facebook, but I'll recommend messenger kids because it actually makes some effort to give parents control over what their child is doing.
I think the real conversation should be about data collection and what kind of profiles they are / aren't building. I don't think kids should be trained from age 6 onwards to think the privacy invasions being foisted on us by our current social media companies are ok. I don't mind if Facebook is using it as a "hook them early" kind of product since there's some reciprocal value, but they shouldn't be allowed to collect any data or build any profiles on kids.
> Facebook believes its app complies with COPPA.
Believes? Lol.
I'm also not really sure what everyone thinks Facebook should do about online bullying. That's not a Facebook problem. It's a society problem. If Facebook starts to monitor and analyze every interaction teens will simply find another platform because they don't want their privacy violated like that. I don't blame them.
So Facebook messenger is great because it monitors everything you say to anyone for moderation, but it’s bad because it conditions its users about how it monitors everything you say to anyone.
The article wasn’t about Messenger Kids though. If you click through to the actual slide deck that was leaked it shows that the current status quo is that Messenger Kids is the only product in the portfolio that is available for kids. The future state they envision is one in which all their products are available to kids, but tailored for those users. So that means IG and FB.
I’m a parent of a 9 year old and 7 year old. My 9 yo has Messenger Kids. I agree it’s a pretty well designed app. But it’s just messaging (and some games). It’s like the telephone. I don’t mind that. But IG and FB are different things entirely. My concern isn’t that my kid can chat with his friends. It’s in the compare and despair, the constant posting of fake versions of your perfect life to make others feel jealous, and the algorithmic promotion of outrage (sorry, I mean high engagement) content.
Because we overprotect. Kids cannot be kids. Kids must live in their own safe bubble these days. It is actually unhealthy for the children and their development.
When I was a kid, I spent most of my time with my grandparents and I was either in their garden or outside in the street with other kids.
I am honestly tired of the "think about the children" motto, or the selling of things in the name of protecting children (which it really does not do and solves nothing, or "solves" a non-issue).
Mobile phones aren't just another time waster, they have actively replaced things like television and SMS. There is immense social pressure to be on these platforms, so I'd rather it was done in a safe way than forcing everyone onto some shadier platform (likely full of adults and without the barriers that Messenger Kids has).
> There is immense social pressure to be on these platforms
And the way to fix that is to give in to said pressure, which are just network effects, until everybody and all their kids are on FB or one of their platforms?
> I'd rather it was done in a safe way than forcing everyone onto some shadier platform
I wonder how most of us here managed to grow up for decades on a "not safe for children" web before we had companies like Facebook "tackle" a problem they created themselves?
As hyperbolic as that might sound, this is a discussion that needs to be had properly and doesn't just stop at the emotional appeal of "Think about the children!" but also involves what role Social Media is actually supposed to hold in society and if children should have access to it at all.
Yes, that sounds radical, but we are also living in times that present a radical shift to how societies used to function, maybe radical shifts need radical solutions.
> And the way to fix that is to give in to said pressure, which are just network effects, until everybody and all their kids are on FB or one of their platforms?
The solution is to balance your kid being ostracized while also educating them on how to be safe online. That can only come from exposure. Unless you seriously expect other kids and teenagers to not latch onto their lack of social media/phone/anything trendy and turn it into a bullying vector?
> ...
Every time a "think of the children" argument comes up, the default opinion of government is to usher in sweeping, authoritarian changes to the whole internet, e.g. ID cards required, criminalising misinformation, etc...
Messenger Kids is literally a free market solution to give parents another choice and avoid authoritarian overreach in the process. The standard NSFW web is still available for those parents who trust their kids are able to handle it. And others can totally pull their kid off if that's also preferred.
None of these options are perfect, but it's important there is the space to choose. And at least with Messenger Kids you're giving the kid balanced privacy from their parents and safety from strangers.
Because a global pandemic made it so that in many regions of the world it was _impossible_ for children to play with each other in person.
My kids, for instance, went around eight months where Covid restrictions meant that indoor gatherings with other children were verboten. Even playgrounds were closed to them for some time.
In some parts of the world children were locked out of school and in-person socializing for two school years. Even playgrounds were shutdown with mixing between households prohibited. Allowing children to safely engage in digital socialization is probably better than nothing.
> Allowing children to safely engage in digital socialization is probably better than nothing.
This is debatable. It could actually be worse, but I am not too well-informed on this. Of course socialization is good, and one would think that it is better to have it digitally than to not have it at all; I would think so, too, but this may not be true, or at least not in a longer-term. I think we should allow kids to be kids and do the socializing in real life, ideally without masks so they could learn to pick up emotional cues from facial expressions and so forth. This plays a pretty important role in the children's development. I wonder what kind of effects those restrictions have had on "some" of these children. For what it is worth, I am not speaking out against the restrictions, but its effects on both children and adults make me curious.
When it comes to putting things in their body, it's ok (eating cereal from Kellog).
When it comes to socialization media, it's ok. (dressing up as Disney characters)
When it's FB, hold the bar door.
FB is garbage for known reasons.
This story feels like some witch hunt material stretched thin - "Zuck is bad and we have to keep the eyeballs on the demonization of FB!"
The UK also banned ads that targeted children for cereal above a certain sugar content. The cereal makers protested, but in the end, they simply reduced the amount of sugar in their products to just below the allowed threshold, continued to advertise as before and sales were unaffected.
That sounds like a great success! It should be easier, politically, to gradually lower the specified amount of sugar in the regulation, now the regulation already exists.
I assume its suicidal for one company to make their product less sugary when kids want the calorie bomb tastier ones. This decision made the playground equal.
Anecdote my childhood… my mom always did the shopping. One day my dad takes me and when it comes time to get a cereal I pick Cookie Crisp, because YOLO I’m not going to get this opportunity again!
We get home. My mom sees I selected the cookie cereal and yells at us. We should both know better!
She wanted to see Fruit Loops, our commonly purchased cereal.
I was only like, eight, but read all the little words in the white box and their amounts. They were practically the same.
Didn’t matter. Into the trash the box went.
In her head it was no better than Chips A’hoy crushed up in a bowl. Cookies! For breakfast!
The Fruit Loops however, we’re clearly some healthy option, because, you know, FRUIT.
My mom is not dumb at all, but seemingly never put an ounce of thought into this.
So I’m torn that everyone should know they’re all sugar, and I have a clear example of people just not ever really considering it.
It Britain it's common for there to be "traffic light labelling" on processed food. It makes the nutritional value of these products very obvious, as it's facing you on the shelf.
Although this article says it's less useful than I thought, and might be replaced with something else. (Though it's a food industry publication.)
It's easy to understand why the kids like them: they are full of sugar. Hard to damn a kid for that. What is easy to damn are the parents that relent to the tantrums that do the providing/enabling. It's also easy for young kids to make a bowl for themselves without needing any parental assistance. The kid loves that, and frankly, so do the parents that are buying it if it allows them to sleep in or pay attention that much longer to their social feeds.
> so do the parents that are buying it if it allows them to sleep in or pay attention that much longer to their social feeds.
Man, what an uncharitable take. I bet they also like that the kid is learning how to prepare food for themselves independently. Or that they have time to do something like make themselves breakfast before dropping off at school and going to work. Further, I bet a lot of these parents also aren't as nutritionally educated as the people in this thread seem to be (for a lot of consumers "healthy" and "fat free" are interchangeable).
The "adult" cereals have the same advantages, with a lot less sugar.
My parents would only buy the relatively plain ones -- Weetabix, Shredded Wheat and so on.
The first time we went to the USA I was 12. We bought colourful cereal for the novelty of it, but the next morning I could barely eat it. It was insanely sweet! (Presumably with HFCS, which I wouldn't have experienced before.) Unsurprisingly, there was no pressure from my parents to finish the bowl, or the rest of the box.
Meh. I didn't say that all parents do this because of that reasoning. I also didn't attempt to say that some do it for that reason. You can't deny that it is true for some while I will stipulate it's not all nor the sole reason.
> I bet they also like that the kid is learning how to prepare food for themselves independently.
Around the world, from what I've noticed, you can also find the plain old' actual cereals. You know, wheat, corn, etc. based stuff that's not full of sugar.
A kid can definitely learn how to prepare their own food using that :-)
I wasn’t allowed sugary cereals as a kid, so let me weigh in as an adult: sweet cereals just taste good to most people. We’re hard-wired to enjoy sugary food.
People have various intelligence and various education. Some do not understand nutrition, and assume naively that garbage would not be sold as food, especially for kids.
> When it comes to putting things in their body, it's ok (eating cereal from Kellog)
Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's okay. There aren't many people out there celebrating the fact that nutritional equivalent of sugar and sawdust is marketed and sold to children who don't understand the impact of nutrition on their health and well-being. There are plenty of people and groups that are against advertising to children, and who are against the proliferation of junk food.
Would you apply the same language to any other company that markets to kids? Do Fisher Price and Disney “lure” children or do they just make products that are intended to be used by children?
> Do Fisher Price and Disney “lure” children or do they just make products that are intended to be used by children?
If we change `lure` to `manipulate into wanting`, then yes I would say that. I would also expand this to _any_ marketing. I am currently wrestling with if I would go as far to say that _all communication_ is _manipulation_ but I feel that's a step too far for some reason while I definitely feel that _marketing_ is _manipulation_.
To me lure specifically implies that you are just offering something desirable as bait in order to trap someone and do harm to them. Evil witches in the forest use gingerbread houses to lure children in and eat them. Pedophiles lure children into vans with candy. You use a fishing lure to catch fish.
Now, there’s certainly a case that Facebook’s products are harmful, but is it Facebook’s intent to harm people? I don’t personally think so, but others may disagree. “Lure” is the type of language you use if you want to equate Facebook with pedophiles and fairytale villains in your readers’ minds.
> you are just offering something desirable as bait in order to trap someone and do harm to them
Offering something desirable (a product that people want to use) - check
To trap someone (can't move to another platform, all your friends and data are in a walled garden) - check
And do harm to them (use data to target further manipulation/advertising) - check
(And that's not even considering the more psychological harms of Facebook, which they may not intend but they certainly know about, have enflamed, and have done nothing to combat)
For the purposes of this discussion, is it really different from knowing that their products are harmful and still making sure as many people as possible use them?
> Now, there’s certainly a case that Facebook’s products are harmful, but is it Facebook’s intent to harm people?
Facebook aims to maximize engagement. Engagement is maximized by showing content that makes people angry and scared. [0] Is it harmful to make people scared and angry to maximize the amount of ads that pass their eyeballs? I know Facebook has internal research that shows them how Facebook affects people mentally (not great!), so ignorance isn’t a defense for them here.
All communication is manipulation, to an extent – by telling people things, you are affecting their minds. I think we should distinguish based on whether it is in the interests of the recipient for them to be provided with certain input.
Telling you about a new song you'd want to hear? Good. Telling you that I've got a can of beer for you, just after you've left an AA meeting? Bad.
If you care to make a distinction between the results of a six-year-old using Facebook's products vs. using Fisher Price's products, then, yes, "lure" might be appropriate for one context and not the other.
“Luring” implies that you’re tempting someone with intent to trap and ultimately harm them.
“Targeting” is more neutral. You might target someone with an ad because you believe in your product and expect it will improve their life. But it would be a bit weird to say you’re luring someone to use your beneficial product.
In Facebook’s case, they apparently know of harmful effects on youth, so “lure” seems appropriate.
I think the difference is there are documents showing Facebook is aware their platform harms teenage children. If Disney did studies that showed their products were psychologically damaging their consumers I think we would be right in 'witch hunting' them too. Honestly I think marketing to children is predatory in general and it's kind of crazy that we don't have more checks on this.
I don't know whether this is whataboutism or just plain defeatism.
Just because our social institutions have failed to protect us from various other bad actors doesn't mean we should abandon hope on trying to do something about the one in front of us today.
I never like the arguments that state we should not care about `a` because `b` and `c` are equally bad or worse and we have done nothing about them.
Can we just talk about an issue as its own issue? Maybe `b` and `c` are really hard to solve, but `a` is easy to solve.
Many arguments against action are usually framed in this comparison structure - I think it is a weak argument unless you explain why `b` and `c` out prioritize `a` for shared resources.
It comes off as agenda rather than sincere concern and that should be highlighted.
Surely not defeatism, when I think it's a reasonable thing for companies to plan around demographics. I don't think it's a good idea to empower social institutions to decide that you can't be considered a consumer until your 18th birthday.
It's whataboutism for sure, but in the sense that FB is literally less impactful than existing brands so the question comes to the forefront. Why? Well because Zuckman bad.
I get the FB hate in general, esp bc of data privacy and impact on democracy.
That said, not sure I understand the critique of the products for kids. Is it that _facebook_ shouldn’t build tech products for kids? Is it that big tech in general shouldn’t build tech products for kids (eg, YouTube for Kids)? Or am I missing something else?
I'd say: no, they shouldn't be allowed to do that.
In the same way kids aren't allowed to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes or gamble. That shit's addictive, and we as a society don't expect children to be able to properly consider the long term consequences when making the decision to use it. (Of course one could make the same argument about adults, but I digress.)
Being able to talk to classmates or relatives is not any kind of addiction I’m concerned about.
To me, the main question is about introducing kids to a branded product in order to build affinity for the main product. Building that affinity is going to be a significant reason these kinds of products are made.
I imagine we wouldn’t feel great about feeding our kids food that was branded with Johnny Walker or Smirnoff. Curiously, I think most parents would have little problem with a kids board/card game that was co-branded with a Las Vegas casino.
> Being able to talk to classmates or relatives is not any kind of addiction I’m concerned about.
I'm not worried about plain chat either.
Platforms like Snap, Instagram and TikTok however are optimized towards obsessive behavior. They're relying on concepts like instant gratification, frequent rewards, social pressure, FOMO, etc. That's what I was talking about.
So who is supposed to make them? I don't disagree that big tech shouldn't make them, but this is different from big tobacco. Tobacco/alcohol is completely banned for kids under 18. Kids will be using the internet.
I've been learning in my law course about how laws are built from precedent and often need to be based on real things that have happened, rather than in anticipation of something bad maybe happening in the future.
So when it comes to facebook and other big tech companies, I feel like they should be regulated similar to how toy companies can't advertise violence to children, and tobacco companies can't advertise to children at all. Those laws are incredibly strict and written with the understanding that kids are vulnerable and naive, and can't really think for themselves. But that vulnerability still has to be demonstrated, and tangible harm has to be shown before a robust law can be written (meaning, one that won't be struck down as unconstitutional or unreasonable or whatever), and such laws are still in the process of being written for the tech companies.
So you could argue that they should back off of marketing to kids as a moral thing, but equally you could argue that they need to stake out their territory before laws are written that block off entire lines of business. The tech companies are behaving rationally, but the results can be awful. Society needs to fight back and protect ourselves with strong laws.
As an aside: You’ll enjoy learning law and being in IT. You’ll see a lot of parallels between the jurisprudence of centuries ago and the current state of tech. A lot of the same type of issues thrown up every time society goes through a major change.
> The whole premise rests on the idea that FB products are inherently harmful to children
It's also that it's Facebook doing it. I'm not writing off social media or messaging for kids. But Facebook's culture is broken, they constantly lie about everything--I don't trust them with our next generation. (Similar situation tanking their crypto play. Had Libre not been a Facebook project, it would have likely worked.)
People who continue to work Facebook at are going to face tough questions not just from current-day peers, but from future generations about why they willingly continued to work for such a company when there were no shortage of other opportunities available to them. At this point, engineers have to weigh the ability to work on "cool technical problems" at FB vs the serious risk of historical/reputational stain on one's legacy.
I think the blame is misplaced. People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it.
It is hard to understand the breadth of scope of the FAANGs. You read in the newspaper that Google exists to turn over dissidents to the Chinese government, but there are plenty of engineers working on making the Linux kernel more secure, or providing gigabit internet for $79/month. Should those engineers quit and go work on CRUD apps for some startup at half their salary? It doesn't make much sense, and that's why people don't do it.
(I don't know if the scope of Facebook is similar to that of Google, but I imagine it is. I submitted a patch to some open source project of theirs that collects diagnostic information from NTP servers. Are those people really to blame for targeting their product at 6 year olds? No. They just want to work on interesting projects for a great salary, and hope that whatever bigger system they're part of works out.)
Basically, it won't be effective to be an Internet Tough Guy and tell all Facebook employees to quit. They won't do it. Make their work illegal (regulate), or make their work unprofitable (stop buying their ads), and the problem solves itself.
Alternatively, you may be working very close to the issues at hand and watching traditional media distort the facts and social media lie about them may have caused you to distrust both.
My old roommate works there on a database/storage team. They are pretty insulated. He doesn't directly interface with the product-side. Sure perhaps on some level he could look at his role and say he's enabling mass collection of user data. But at the end of the day he has no interaction with the actual filesystem contents or what they mean. They're just bits flying around.
So, should the graphic designers of the emoji buttons feel responsible for misinformation? The CDN/network folks keeping the websites available? The janitorial and cafeteria staff for cleaning up and feeding the "monsters of humanity" ?
Similarly to working at the database team of an online casino or gambling site. Personally, I wouldn’t want to work for such companies or FB no matter what salary.
>at the end of the day he has no interaction with the actual filesystem contents or what they mean. They're just bits flying around
Whatever helps him sleep at night I guess. I doubt history will make this distinction when talking about "legacy," as this sub-thread is.
>"monsters of humanity"
You have to realize that this exaggeration contributes poorly to the discussion, right? Are you seriously trying to satirically hyperbolize the characterization of Facebook's effects on society in order to make it seem like people are overreacting to the whole thing? This is a wild take on the matter, to me, in 2021.
Only a few posts below this is one where someone unironically equates Facebook engineers defending their choice of employer with SS officers defending their part in the Final Solution.
I used to work in defence. A colleague of mine said that he didn't have a moral problem because "we didn't make things that went bang".
We actually worked on training systems for soldiers. Technically, we didn't make things that went bang. But we enabled their use. So I didn't personally believe that we could escape the moral dilemma using that argument.
The short version is that a bunch of tech people are asked to design all kinds of man-traps, the buyer then combines the various traps in a shifting maze and the techies are kidnapped and dumped in the maze trying to survive their own creations.
Ha. Yes. I was just going to write this (in reply to jacquesm's comment above, and also in reply to his parent commenter):
"No, it's that Upton Sinclair quote about salary that is the reason", but you beat me to it :)
When will people learn? Always look for the motive.
As they used to say (and maybe still do) in detective novels, "cherchez la femme", which is French for "search for the woman", i.e. the reason why the crime (of passion) was committed.
Give me a break. Most of us aren't dropping everything to go join the Peace Corps, we want to live a comfortable life, and by no coincidence, most of us work for assholes. Nearly any sufficiently old company has its share of controversies (this includes startups, they're just smaller so they're not as publicized).
I will agree that Facebook's controversies are a bit more egregious than most, but at the end of the day I don't really see how a random Facebook engineer is substantially worse than an engineer who works for Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or Lockheed Martin, or <insert large corporation here>. People just want to make a decent living, not change the world.
However, I think there's plenty of blame you can place on the decision-makers at Facebook (most of the executive level team).
Have you read Solzhenitsyn's "From Under the Rubble?"
It has a section called "The Smatters" where he derides Soviet Russia's intelligentsia for being cowards that would trade physical comfort in return for sacrificing their soul and morality.
This is in contrast to "Old Russia's" intelligentsia, that would canktankerously fight and even sacrifice themselves and their personal needs, just to uphold their own (many times removed-from-reality) ideals.
The former's "pragmatic nihilism" of only taking cares of one's self and one's interests is mirrored today among our society.
I mean, I said in a sister thread that I do think there could be an argument that me working for an awful corporation does enable them and I am at some level responsible for their actions, but I don't know that it's realistic to expect someone in the corporate world right now to drop everything and only work for ethical people right now...our entire society is somewhat based around us working for evil corporations.
But that's just an easy argument that keeps the status quo. In a western society today may be impossible to escape some big "evil" corporation, but there's a major difference between having no choice to participate in the system and willingly choosing to work for said corporation. In the case of Facebook someone who works there may not be directly responsible for its actions if they're not at a very high level but they are directly condoning them by working for Facebook and helping further its mission.
I would absolutely give you a break if you don't join the Peace Corps. I won't give you a break if you choose to take a lucrative job at Facebook. This is not a black-and-white issue.
>I will agree that Facebook's controversies are a bit more egregious than most
So, I would posit that working at Facebook is, thus, "more egregious than most" other jobs. That's the point here. Nobody is saying that it's either work at Facebook or join the Peace Corps. I, personally, think an engineer at Facebook is contributing more harm to society than an engineer at any of the other companies you mentioned, yes. Substantially worse? Depends how we define that. But, worse? Definitely.
>I don't really see how a random Facebook engineer is substantially worse than an engineer who works for Microsoft, or Apple, or Google, or Lockheed Martin, or <insert large corporation here>. People just want to make a decent living, not change the world.
The Nazi SS officers also used this line of arguments during the Nuremberg trials, that they were just "following orders from above, with no choice in the matter (other than the choice to voluntarily join the SS for personal gains), just like the soldiers of the allies; what's the difference that makes them the bad guys?"
My point is, you can make big tech bucks at other places as well, nobody forces you to work for an evil corp, you choose that voluntarily. And there are other less evil places you can work for.
I knew this was going to come up because this is the internet, but I don't think this line of reasoning applies to every arbitrary Facebook engineer.
The Nazi soldiers tried at Nuremburg were directly murdering the Jews, and so "just following orders" led to a direct harm. However, I don't think that logic went transitive for forever; did we execute the secretaries that took phone calls in military Germany headquarters? I don't think we did, but you could argue that they helped enable all the murders.
Similarly, if a person's entire job at Facebook is to contribute to Presto or React, I don't really view them as guilty as a person who worked on all the data-harvesting stuff, and way less guilty than an executive making the decisions.
>did we execute the secretaries that took phone calls in military Germany headquarters? I don't think we did, but you could argue that they helped enable all the murders
Unlike military members of the SS, their secretaries didn't really have the power to send people to their deaths or perform executions.
Isn't that what they are doing? There was a story not long ago about a lady in her 90s who was a secretary at a death camp at 18. She's being dragged to court.
I appreciate the personal evaluation. I worked at Google for about 6 years, and left to make half as much money working on open source software. I can't find a single thing that HN would disapprove of, except maybe banning all the cryptominers that appeared all at once after our product was discussed here ;)
This is not much of a hardship for me personally, because half of a lot is still a lot. It wasn't HN that factored into my decision to leave, though, that's all I'm saying.
I'll add that the majority of my colleagues at Google actively opposed the things that HN thinks is evil, and still do. You can steer things in the right direction from the inside perhaps more effectively than from the outside. You know the tradeoffs and can suggest a reasonable compromise. That's engineering in a nutshell. No doubt, Google has tens of thousands of engineers that think just like the average HN reader, and are working hard every day to steer the company in that direction. Maybe you're not satisfied with the results, but at least they're doing something about it more impactful than typing screeds and sending them into the ether.
You're missing the point... completely. Until unethical behavior doesn't pay dividends, people will engage in that unethical behavior. Ostracizing them to any degree less than the sex offender list offers fails at 'making it not pay dividends'.
Snide comments are useless, and posting a snide comment in response to a post literally saying that snide comments are useless is hilarious and ironic.
As long as a lack of money is able to present a serious danger to one's quality of life, health and well-being, money will always win over not having/getting money.
> money will always win over not having/getting money
This statement could benefit from less certainty. According to Stoics, a non-virtuous life is not worth living. They would prefer to die rather than earning money in a non-virtuous manner.
You might want to reference the Cynics instead, since it's a bit easier to be stoical when you already have money, power and status, as another poster pointed out.
>People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it
I'm curious how you draw a line between "the bad PR" and everything else at Facebook? Are you distinguishing the media coverage of the company as a separate thing that employees have to deal with other than the actual actions the company takes, and the ramifications of its real effects on society?
If someone is "insulated from the bad PR," does that mean they are insulated from anything working with or enabling the bad actions/effects? Or just insulated from the "PR"? If the former, how could we possibly make that distinction with an organization as large and complex as Facebook? How can you be so sure that anything any given employee touches does or does not connect to the bad effects on society? If you just mean insulated from the "bad PR," then can you see why history might look unfavorably on someone who hides the greater negative effects of their actions from themselves?
> I think the blame is misplaced. People work at Facebook because they offer among the highest salaries, and are insulated enough from the bad PR to not feel bad about it.
Would you say the same if they were say peddling crack to kids, that hey it pays better....
If all one cares about is money, then yes, it is one's fault and the blame is correctly placed.
I don't understand your point. Are you saying that things like Linux and NTP servers can be used by an evil organization, therefore people who work on them are partly to blame for the resulting evil? If so, I disagree. There is a pretty clear line between working to improve the Linux kernel and working to get more children and teens to use Facebook.
No, the opposite, that many of the people working for evil organisations are not doing evil stuff, but instead maintaining kernel drivers or whatever, and they don't concern themselves with how exactly the money that pays their salary was generated.
I've never bought an ad on Facebook, and yet it continues to run, and Facebook won't comply to non-US laws, and will almost certainly have a large influence on whatever regulations are put in.
Your suggestions are even more toothless than banning Facebook engineers from the local bars and breweries
When I've gone to tech conferences over the years, I've heard talks given by fb/instagram devs about the problems they're working on, and the tools they've created to do it.
On one level it seems very alluring--pay, technical challenges, being at the cutting edge of new technology. But for me those points can't counteract the role fb has in society and what people generally think of the company.
When you retire, with very few exceptions, nothing you did in your working life will be remembered by anyone but yourself. So it's important that you be content with it. That realization has taken a while to hit me, and it's growing into a desire to retire early so I can do things that are personally rewarding and are not just goals on someone else's project plan.
For various reasons (including age and working in tech) I've considered leaving software development when I reach my 40s, to pursue something that I love doing that's a bit more tangible.
That I very much doubt. The average outrage timer is 48 hours, then everybody forgets and jumps to a new controversy. As for Facebook, many of my relatives still use it, either indirectly through WhatsApp or Instagram, or directly. Maybe my technically minded friends would care if I worked for Facebook, but even then those are far and few between. I barely remember my coworkers from 10 years ago.
A few counterpoints. The average outrage may be 48 hours, but I am sure the median is much higher. I'll boycott nestle and Samsung products forever, for instance, and have for nearly a decade and a half with nestle.
Some of my closest friends started as work colleagues, and since I retired 8 years ago I still talk to a half dozen or so, with a couple talked with daily.
You (nor I) are not everyone, and extrapolation from our own viewpoints is very nearly always invalid.
What’s wrong about Nestle? Also Samsung is strange company to boycott.
Overall boycotting both of these companies is easy because replacement products for everything they do is plentiful, widely available and the same price. Not much sacrifice here.
Having worked for WhatsApp, mostly my friends and family said, "What's That?" ... and I sighed. Of course, when I worked for Yahoo Travel, mostly they said "That's still around?", so no love wherever I work. :)
Nah. They'll remember that you paid their way through college, could afford to make their childhoods and path to "the good life" easy in general, and left them a pile of cash when you died.
> But your family and friends will remember, and not kindly, if you worked for FB.
If this was even remotely true Facebook would have had a massive impact on its usage since its consumer based. It would seem weird that the Facebook brand is so tarnished to the point that the population would still be users but at the same time tar and feather loved ones who maintain it.
Over my career it is somewhat impressive how true this has been. Across companies that say very similar things about what it means to be an employee of X, the behavior of execs and senior leadership ripples through the ranks in obvious ways. When statements from high-level people are empty or specious, you can expect to encounter the same in your own management chain.
It only takes a moment to remember this each time a FB recruiter pings me. Couldn't I be one of the people working on solving these big problems and making XX% more while doing it? It's a false choice.
True, also wgen it comes to changes up the chain. I don't buy the whole "these high level org and management changes won't affect the way work" stuff anymore.
which is what exactly? if they didn't like it, they'd be leaving in droves. tech nerds are really the only ones upset about anything that FB has done/is doing.
instead, the average person looks at what they get from FB. most of them never, not once, think at about what cost. to them it is free to use, and that's all that matters. raising privacy concerns goes no where. manipulating people's emotions isn't really doing much negatively to FB either. addicts are like that though. deep down, they might actually be aware that what they are doing is not good for them, but that isn't strong enough to fight the addiction.
The parallels with the tobacco industry continue to amaze me. People viewed that industry very negatively but continued to smoke even after all revelations about their lobbying and its health consequences came to light. It has taken decades for the number of smokers to decline substantially. I imagine that FB will similarly die a very slow death over the next 10-20 years, and even then it won't die completely (but it will be replaced by other toxic social media corporations).
It's not a lie. People can have a negative view of something and continue to do that something. They can also have that negative view without truly understanding why they have that view. People are actively trying to mislead polls with answers they think the poll is looking for, or just false info to skew numbers. FB is in the news with negative stories, so they repeat those when asked even without thinking about why.
If you asked someone about a teacher or some other adult trying to manipulate a kid, they'd obviously say that it is bad. Telling them FB is doing it with what posts they see, they don't respond the same way. They just don't get how an "al-go-rythym" can be so bad. They don't truly understand the ramifications of the hoovering up all of the data they do. They shrug their shoulders and say things like they are okay with it as long as it's not real money.
So, I stand by my stance saying it is only tech nerds that truly get what is going on here.
That’s not what you said, you said “tech nerds are really the only ones upset about anything that FB has done/is doing” which the article I provided proves that’s not accurate. Move the goalposts all you want, I don’t care, but it is certainly not only “tech nerds” that disprove of what FB is doing.
Maybe. Wasn't my intent, but let's allow the conversation to move past that.
The mass populace is not stopping their use of FB regardless of what's in the news or what these polls say about their views of FB. From the evidence, one can only surmise that people don't truly care what FB does. Most addicts don't care what their drug dealer does as long as they can get their fix when they need it.
Does the majority of the public know that Instagram == Facebook, though? Genuinely curious - non-tech folks do seem to love talking about how awful Facebook is and how they don't use it anymore, but then comes the scrolling through Instagram for 6 hours..
Look at the poll yourself, linked at the bottom of the article.
Facebook 36% positive, 33% negative.
Of course their public image has not been improving, as there is high frequency campaign from newspapers and TV news to attack their competition. CNN in particularly has wanted to deflect blame to Facebook for all of the free airtime CNN gave Trump in 2016. However, it seems to be quite a stretch to extrapolate from 2019 survey that listed 33% negatives for Facebook.
I think Jan 6 and the Big Lie are pretty clear evidence of the power of network effects. To claim I don't understand them is you trying to twist a narrative.
I actually anticipated your diatribe, but decided against making that part of my original comment. Yes, there's "no where" else for them to go blah blah blah. However, some people do actually decide to walk away from it for their own personal health/sanity regardless of how it affects relationships from not being on the platform. We see these comments all the time about "I quit FB x years ago". I'm one of them because of what I know about FB.
Every quarter or so, I tell FB head hunters to go away. I do think about the money I'm turning down, but I also like to sleep at night.
Having morals does cost money.
And yes, I do think less of the 'typical' FB employee. Everyone's story is different and I'll listen, but the presumption is that working there means being OK with enabling genocide for a nice paycheck.
This hasn't really played out historically has it? Goldman Sachs (as a corporation) did a lot of bad leading up to the 2008 financial crash, and yet we continue to hire ex-engineers from there.
I used to work for Apple, but they didn't really ask my advice on how they should charge people on the app store, or how they should make it difficult to repair the phone, or how they should throttle phones if the batteries get worse. I was just a mediocre software engineer working a mediocre job that paid relatively well. Should I be blamed for all the problems listed out before if I didn't contribute to any of them directly?
Maybe, and I do think there is an argument to be made for that, but I don't think that's how most people think. Most people are relatively happy to blame the executives of a company with an understanding that regular salaried workers are more or less stuck with what they're doing.
For some reason everyone likes to blame Goldman for the 2008 crash, but no one wants to blame themselves for getting over-leveraged by buying 3 houses.
Everyone likes to blame Facebook, but no one wants to blame themselves when they're one of the 2.8 billion using Facebook.
Everyone likes to blame oil companies, but they drive cars and have plastic all around them. I worked at an oil company for a few years. I sat near the environmental engineers who were doing their best to make it clean as possible. HN readers want to hate oil workers for doing their jobs but then turns around and still demands cheap oil.
I disagree -- I think a lot of people are concerned with what their job is. Many people have a lot less agency, but software developers are in demand and can more easily change jobs than many other careers.
Would you have worked for an oil extraction company, like Shell or BP?
Would you have worked for the NSA? A defence contractor? The military itself?
There are plenty of technical roles in these sectors, with (at least in Britain, where I studied) a big presence at careers fairs, recruitment events etc. But I, like all my friends, ignored them all.
Someone else I knew joined GCHQ. He was keen to catch criminals, defend British interests etc. I wouldn't do it, but at least he had considered the morality of it and decided it aligned with his own.
Working on something without any care for how it's used, or what is being built... these people deserve criticism for their complacency, at least.
"They paid me $400k a year whereas the median income in the US was like $30k a year" would be enough for a lot of people to forgive you for the egregious crime of working for Facebook.
$80k a year is still a big raise even from $320k. But the bigger issue is that in most cases it wouldn't be easy to establish high confidence that the company offering the $320k salary is significantly less bad for the world than Facebook is (for whatever one's own definitions may be for "bad").
Ethically I felt pretty good working at Rubrik (data backup company), as my first job out of university my total comp was >50% of that, I'm sure the senior people (who would be making $400k at facebook) are making that much.
people who believe drugs should be legal will work as guards at prisons locking up non-violent drug offenders for a lot less money. As a misanthrope I think you expect too much of your fellow humans if you expect a good grasp of ethics.
The criticisms towards FB are definitely warranted, but I'd argue that other tech giants are on the same level. Facebook was just the only one that openly picked a fight with the entirety of traditional media who have massive resources and experience in manipulating public opinion, so bad or gray area things that Facebook does get amplified more than they would were it another company.
In what way are e.g. Netflix and MS evil on a level even close to Facebook?
Netflix has to be some saint in comparison. MS just now is starting to be a wanna-be Googlesque spy and has a history of screwing competitors over, not the people in general.
Netflix is a saint, I'll agree with you. Microsoft less so. They had market dominance in the 90's and got hit with antitrust for, e.g. preventing users from uninstalling and replacing internet explorer. I remember reading that the only thing this changed about their behavior was they started donating more to political campaigns.
The real offense is that it's been 20 years since then and congress hasn't trust busted any of these companies that have committed way more egregious sins. Apple has your device locked down such that you can't get an app on your own phone unless it's been approved by them. The charger changes every few years so you need to buy a new one, and iphone screens crack notoriously easily. Google and Facebook are competing for who can collect more data on users, but Google's more entrenched by providing services that people need to use like email, search, internet browsers, maps, a phone. Facebook's trying to have a monopoly over your online social life.
Microsoft's brand is strongly B2B, which is lucky for them because businesses 1. have a lot of money to spend on your service, and 2. are unlikely to make very public critical statements about you the way an average Joe consumer would. It's a great position so they're doing everything they can stay entrenched. It makes sense that their biggest sins are in being anticompetitive; they hit the jackpot and are trying not to share it.
It's subjective. I don't love Facebook but I appreciate that it's easy* to live without it. Can't say the same for Google's ecosystem when my gmail is increasingly tied to my identity. Can't say the same for Amazon when they have so much monopoly over supply chain that some things you literally can't obtain if you don't purchase through them. There's also Disney silently monopolizing creativity. Facebook manipulates people to keep them on their site to increase data collection and drive up ad revenue. Google put adsense everywhere on the internet, so they don't need to do anything manipulative to keep you on Google because they earn ad revenue and get your data wherever you go**.
Everyone I know who works at one of these companies is a great, smart, kind, talented person -- including those at Facebook. We need better consumer protections and to break up their monopolies.
By manipulation, I meant profiting from dissemination of fake news or other harmful content. I don't think other tech giants come close. Though, I would agree that all of them abuse their dominant position against their users' interest in some form.
I don't mean this to be snarky, but this sounds like someone who has no family, no kids, never been in a serious relationship. Once you're committed to one or more other people, you're pretty much putting their interests ahead of yours most of the day. If my friends who are parents are to be trusted, their kids are their priority in every substantial decision they make.
Also, it's surprisingly cynical to say that people don't put their interests above society -- most of the people I know have taken on work and hobbies that don't maximize their personal gain, because they'd rather improve society somewhat.
I just don't think that's true. Some people scrupulously pay taxes, but others don't and push the line as hard as possible. There's real variation in people's willingness to 'defect' from the public good.
30k is not the median income in the U.S. and there are plenty of ways to make a decent living without working for FaceBook. You can make a very nice living as a developer working for non-tech companies. Or, if you prefer not working in front of a computer, you can make quite a bit driving a forklift or working as a plumber.
Note that “family” for income statistics means a household of two or more people who have relations from specified set between members, so that median family income is kind of like median household income, except that it excludes all single-member households as well as multimember non-family households (who are typically living together to save money), so it is biased strongly upward compared to similar household stats.
The census specifically doesn’t ask for income for children below 15, so perhaps that is the meaning of the sentence above, and per capita calculation does include kids as $0 income for calculating median - although that would be weird IMHO. Unclear, and I got bored looking for exact details, so gave up quickly!
I disagree. This comment seems to come from the idea that work defines you, but that doesn't generalize at all. Family and friends hearing that you work at FB will almost alway only think about the prestige/money angle.
I work at Uber, another company whose leadership historically made some very questionable decisions, and not once did I ever get holier-than-thou crap from acquaintances. And even if I did, I have enough internal perspective to appropriately call BS or disregard people who think parroting 5 year old articles constitutes having an educated opinion on the company today.
Another similar example is Microsoft. They were demonized extremely heavily a decade or two ago, but these days, claiming that working there is a reputational stain would be pretty laughable. LinkedIn, Groupon, AirBnb, etc all had negative press at one point or another. But if you work in any of those, the most common reaction is "Oh, cool!"
> Every major tech company does all the same shit Facebook does, the rest are just lucky that FB takes most of the heat.
> Tell me, what exactly has Facebook done that is so bad compared to Google, Amazon, or Microsoft?
You're angling to absolve Facebook here, but I'll flip that in the other direction. They all deserve a healthy serving of contempt, and frankly it's the reason why I never respond when Amazon and Google recruiters come calling 3 times a week.
But what separates Facebook from the others is the utter lack of shame about what they're doing, and the fact that Zuckerberg has no accountability due to the arrangement of voting shares. That makes them uniquely dangerous.
That's a bit illogical. They're not trying to 'absolve' them, as if somehow Facebook isn't bad because others are also bad. They're all similar (ly bad).
What separate's Facebook is their namesake product is too close to the source of controversy. Google's "public facing" products are things like search, YouTube, gmail, google docs. Amazon has 2-day shipping and prime video and such.
When people think of Amazon/Google they think of that first. Sure, they're doing all the same controversial with their products. But in my experience, the average non-tech person has more buffer for that, when there's a bit of separation between the brand identity and the bad behavior.
A lot of non-tech people aren't even aware that FB (Meta?) owns Instagram and WhatsApp - that's the kind of tolerance buffer that the other FAANG has for _all_ of their main products.
In this sense, the rebrand to "Meta" might actually work a bit.
Facebook's entire business model is creating people addicted to chaos. It has radicalized people, led to suicides, and caused a huge rift in many countries' political ecosystems. That is their business model, it's the only way they make money.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc have flaws but their business models don't depend on creating conflict.
I think that’s a little unfair. As an idea FB genuinely revolutionised person to person communications, not all for the worse. Remember what it was like before to stay connected with family and friends remotely. Swapping email addresses, posting your holiday snaps on your shared hosting server space running some cr*p Perl or PHP scripts. And that was progress. My thoughts towards Facebook are complicated. They certainly have some issues but I am not sure that makes their core mission inherently evil.
That's probably the most damning thing. They know they could promote more positive content and kill doom scrolling with the flip of a switch. But that would probably reduce their session length and reduce the number of ad impressions to sell.
Yeah sure, they report, we decide. Weird thing, I can go on YT or Reddit and easily find all sorts of conspiracy theories and fake news. It's almost as if when you give the population the ability to post their own content, it's going to reflect what different segments of the public believe, and others who agree will be drawn to that.
Most of her claims make a gigantic leap to conclusions. I'm asking for a source that shows, for example, a suicide that was _because_ of Facebook. Radicalization trends as another example have been on the rise in the US long before FB or social media, and there are many other countries where FB exists but radicalization is on the decline.
There is plenty wrong with FB, but this all seems like trying to pin a root cause to something b/c we need something to blame. Maybe correlation, but I don't see the causation.
In said study, Facebook acknowledges problems with the study itself as do other researchers without a dog in the fight. Let's see an independent study show the same thing.
An independent study of the effects of Social Media (instagram, FB, TikTok, whatever) needs no insider information. We're studying the effect, not the company.
Hypothesis: Instagram causes teenage girls to have a lower opinion of their bodies than they would otherwise have without Instagram.
Study: Have 2 cohorts of teenage girls rate their appearance or happiness with their bodies. The two cohorts are separated by those who use Instagram and those who don't. Run independently, of course.
This study is incredibly flawed (like the original) b/c it is self-reported happiness (incredibly subjective, ephemeral, and prone to bias) and subject to the same issues as all qualitative research. The only way to get any semblance of reliable data is with a _large_ set in each cohort. Even then, the data raises more questions than answers it provides. But, you could say after this study whether 'it seems Instagram may be harmful.'
It is also flawed for other reasons but you get the point. You don't need insider info to study the effect of something.
A magazine is not interactive. It's a unidirectional feedback flow. Magazine photos are also at a specific higher standard than the totality of Instagram pictures.
IOW, they are not equivalent. I'm sure we can glean something from those studies, but to get an answer to the question we're asking now, you'd need a better study than Facebook's own.
I agree with hermitwriter here. Currently I'm not at all convinced somebody can claim that all of these negative effects wouldn't have existed if we had a morally correct social media platform instead.
Most of them do plenty of bad shit but at least for a company like Amazon you can make the case that their logistics and infrastructure delivers real value and moves material goods around the world and creates quite harsh but at least reasonably paying blue collar jobs whereas Facebook and other 'social media' giants' drive political discourse to ruins, teenagers mad, and employ hordes of underpaid gig workers to sift through child abuse content and other horrid crap.
And that aside you're not forced to work for FAANG. Plenty of small companies around who do good work in healthcare or what have you, or national security, the defense sector and other public sectors desperately looking for engineers.
Plenty of work to do that is more meaningful than getting kids to click on ads.
>reasonably paying blue collar jobs
As a disclaimer, I'm not from the US and my sources might be entirely biased but I thought a big chunk of amazon employees were ill paid and on foodstamps?
They pay a starting wage of about 18 - 22 bucks an hour depending on the location for warehouse workers. For comparison, that's somewhat more than twice the federal minimum wage or what you make as a cashier, say.
It's not what Facebook does that the others don't, in my opinion, it's that Facebook does not have services for businesses. They have scant little utility to businesses outside of advertising services to temper their outrages with, so they're given even less of a benefit of the doubt than other tech companies.
> People who continue to work Facebook at are going to face tough questions not just from current-day peers, but from future generations about why they willingly continued to work for such a company when there were no shortage of other opportunities available to them.
I honestly don't think so. Were all ex-Enron employees considered unemployable or even immoral? How about Union Carbide or tobacco concerns?
I’m not sure that’s a fair comparison. It seems to me tech companies experience a much higher level of employee activism around moral issues than other industries.
I also think it’s naive to assume reputational stigma won’t weigh in on hiring decisions.
3 years ago I was seeing a lot of candidates with Uber resumes. It wasn’t surprising that they were trying to leave, but it was surprising it took them so long. I would wonder if they were unable to get hired elsewhere.
I always did my best to give a fair interview but it’s possible bias crept in.
I've worked at facebook in past. Facebook has been complimented at a number of interviews and one company I worked for very actively poached fb engineers. It was extremely clear for that company given the resume system even marked resumes with certain desirable companies and the sheer amount of fb employees we hired. I think my current one also has a bias for them. I have tended to stay in social media industry but I've interviewed for other industries and gotten positive reception with facebook. I remember once getting negative reception on going from facebook to a small lidar startup as interviewer viewed it as dropping to lower tier/prestige company.
I have not worked for Uber, but my experience at other big tech companies is they're viewed fine too for engineering talent.
As for non-engineers most of my family/friend group views facebook/similar very positively. Facebook remains largest social media by a ridiculous amount. Nearly 3 billion MAU is something no other social media company comes close. They certainly have negative sentiment too, but there are tons of people happy with them. I have worked at one company that some friends did show negative view and that was tiktok (mostly because of china concerns). Tiktok as worse then facebook in perception and even for tiktok it was still mild thing. It was never a job concern with both of them I found myself in demand anyway.
I remember reading a comment very much like this 3-4 years ago about Uber. Can't find it of course, but there was this article 4 years ago https://insights.dice.com/2017/03/08/uber-alumni-trouble-fin... although that is about Uber having a bad work culture, not that working there meant you were ethically compromised which is what I remember being the previous concern - like yours is for FB.
Hey, my middle name is your username! Neat. Anyways, the pearl-clutching around "working for bad companies" is pretty misplaced. Every major company has things they do that are bad; Google, Amazon, Netflix, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft to name a few are companies that regularly perpetrate evil daily. People need to work to earn a living, the idea that "they can easily just get a job somewhere else!" is a fallacy.
There's a huge number of companies out there that are not as evil as those big ones. And even among those big ones, there are obvious choices for ones that are more or less bad, to anyone with principles. And yes, it is pretty easy to find a job somewhere else if you have Google or Netflix on your resume.
"every company does bad things and therefore they're all equally bad, phew, now I don't have to leave my cushy $300K FAANG job where I push microtransactions to little kids" is not very convincing.
> There's a huge number of companies out there that are not as evil as those big ones.
Facebook didn't start off targeting 6yos. Once you go public, you're on a treadmill to keep delivering profits for Wall Street. So who's to say that the new startup you join will continue to be this angel who does no evil?
> the idea that "they can easily just get a job somewhere else!" is a fallacy.
Actually in today's tech driven world, this isn't hyperbole. There are more than enough opportunities for talented technologists to find opportunities outside of Facebook.
Not really. Facebook's disinformation capabilities are far worse than Apple's or Googles. Key differentiation example - Apple doesn't have an algorithm that bubbles up iMessages in the interface.
Even then, I'm not evening actually alluding to those companies - I'm talking about other tech start-ups, smaller companies, etc.
FB interview standards are extremely high. People who work there, probably about 95% of them could work at any other tech company if they choose to. What keeps a majority of the people there I would assume is 2 things,
#1. The pay is very close to top in the industry, hedgefunds/netflix pay usually more.
#2. Getting to work on products/features that are used by millions and sometimes billions of users, not many companies can offer that to a candidate.
I personally am hounded by their recruiters but will never work there due to moral objections about their leadership and their companies effect on society. That being said I am not judging people for working there, everyone has a free choice to make and some people may not have my convictions and there are many great people who do work there.
Yes, that is the point I was attempting to make. These people are talented enough to work anywhere, but could they make the same pay? Is it guaranteed they won't run into something as morally troubling to them, such as Microsoft/Google's partnerships with ICE and aggressive seeking of defensive contracts, for example?
> People need to work to earn a living, the idea that "they can easily just get a job somewhere else!" is a fallacy.
Do you know anyone at FB? I know several engineers at FB, and it's a fallacy to think they can't easily get offers from many top startups, and other FAANG companies.
Yes, I know many people at FB. I wasn't saying they aren't talented enough to work with other FAANG companies; if you read my entire comment I'm saying that every company has things you can be morally outraged about, so unless you want to cycle through seed-round stage startups every 6 months, you're probably going to run into some things you're not a fan of in your career as an engineer.
Clearly by everyone's perspective on HN, we can establish that there's few companies in the same category as FB. Maybe Experian or something, but I doubt anyone at FB would go there?
Arguably it's so much worse to work at FB, because if you can work at FB, you can clearly work at many decent companies that aren't doing this sort of stuff.
Then don't work for a “major company”. There are hundreds – nay, tens of thousands – of other companies; heck, just Facebook alone has over a dozen household-name competitors.
> Every major company has things they do that are bad
I am sorry, but funding random shows that people might not like as Netflix does is quite below the "evilness" meter of setting up ways to target 6 year Olds.....
The fact that you are even trying to equate these as being anywhere the same, at least in my eyes strongly strongly undermines your capacity to make moral judgments
What level of moral outrage should cause someone to want to quit their job? Does Microsoft's repeated contracts with ICE count? Netflix's ads for content like "Cuties" showing children "twerking" and doing other sexual provocative poses (plus the current strikes from their trans employees and their handling of it)?
People could apply this same reasoning to folks who work for the US federal government. Or defense contractors. Or fossil fuel companies. Thing is, I think very few people would see "Chevron" on someone's resume and refuse to hire them (aside from maybe environmental organizations).
I believe this is false. Every day at work, I see many instances of people choosing self-enrichment over the betterment of society. We are lost in a see of state and corporate sponsored activism for social justice causes, which distracts from other significant existential issues.
I doubt it. There are so many companies out there doing far, far, far worse than Facebook and nobody bats an eye with respect to the employees that work at these firms.
Personally, I don't find it that easy to get another job as an engineer so I'd be very careful with that logic.
For reference, I'm a dropout and therefore struggle with abstract algorithm problems like the ones they dump on you to solve in 30-60 minutes in interviews. I certainly can solve them, just not in that kind of timeframe, but that is now a common expectation in order to achieve a certain level of (mostly unrelated) problem solving and income.
Regarding peers, first, if it becomes an issue just take it off your resume. Second, don't work with those people. Go somewhere else that pays well and work with other mercs instead of people working for free soda to save the whales.
As to future generations, as long as you take responsibility for it your grandkids will think it's pretty bad ass.
Kids: Grandpa, what did you do for work?
Grandpappy: Well, kids, let me tell you about the time that grandpappy came up with this algorithm that reduced obesity in America by several points and made millions doing it. Big Ag wasn't happy about it, but dietpills.com loved it.
If this is what prevents someone from considering a job at Facebook they’re a fool. This day of judgement will never come. Future generations have potential to be just as egregious, maybe even more so than today’s generation of engineers. They might even invent something even worse than Facebook, and we’ll look back at today as the good old days. The only questions that will be asked is how did they make so much money and what advice do they have for replicating such success.
I wonder how frequently this "stain" impacts people in practice. I've got some defense contractors on my resume. I suppose some people might flinch on that, but I've never felt like I had a problem getting work or growing my career.
I suspect it might be like that. A small percentage of people would nix you, but you would never know. Compared to something like the porn industry, which I've heard is death to a resume.
This disregards the effect of inertia. Looking for a job is a lot of extra work that must be undertaken in the context of already having a job - working around schedules, interviewing etc. It is simply easier to continue working at the same job, so I don't think you can say "they would have obviously quit if there were better opportunities."
I hope you're right, but to me that sounds like the probable outcome in a world that is more just than the one we live in. A big organization leaves a lot of room to deny hands-on involvement with the more unsavory stuff that's going on, and on a purely technical level former Facebook engineers still have skills that will be valuable to future employers.
I do not equate Facebook engineers with actual Nazis, but what seems more likely to happen to me is something analogous to the "Clean Wermacht" myth. I think anyone who isn't directly and publicly implicated in especially egregious actions is going to have all the deniability and technical skill they need to remain an attractive hire in most cases.
If we assume that "evilness" or what ever metric we use to shame FB employees is transitive, is it really possible to work in a way that is significantly better?
Or all those evil, "devil-worshipping" heavy rockers, and the the back-masking records. Or like when Bart Simpson said, "Eat my shorts" for the first time, and how that was teaching kids disrespect. Which is truly hilarious now given the many years of Family Guy, South Park and other adult cartoon shows.
Frankly I think that there will be a cultural divide, just as we have pro-covid and anti-covid camps today (due in part to Facebook's algorithmic amplification of disinformation). Many will say "actually, surveillance targeting children is good", "actually, social networks that promote genocide are good", "actually, lying about your numbers and destroying entire industries that rely on your numbers is good", etc. Some entities and people will take a stand, and some will proudly hire anyone who seems in danger of experiencing consequences.
In order for Facebook engineers to be judged by future generations:
- there would have to be future generations
- they would have to have accurate information about what Facebookers have done
- they would have to live in functioning democracies where accountability is possible
The result of Facebook/Meta's efforts, intentional or not, will be to prevent any of these eventualities from coming to pass.
Are you actually saying that Facebook is working to prevent _future generations of humanity_ from existing? I can't imagine how you expect people to take you seriously.
I totally agree. I know people that work in different areas, but their salaries are mainly paid by Ads money. To me is like working for Nazi party and saying you were only working in poster ink technology...
They already are. We rarely hire former facebook engineers anymore. They cost too much, most of them have done very little interesting work and of the FAANG companies, they are by far the most entitled.
I can't wait to see how https://stratechery.com will defend this as a good perspective for Meta or FB. I studied Philip Morris for a paper in undergrad. PM played their fiddle perfectly to the tune of "we didn't know enough to be directly and intentionally wrong." It mirrors Facebook's attempts to be good and let the bad happen while creating smoke and mirrors for the media and government.
I mean they could basically point out that Messenger Kids is a great product and has been extremely useful for connecting kids to friends and family (while allowing parental supervision.) You know, kids who, before this month, couldn’t even get vaccinated against COVID.
Facebook should first understand that a lot of kids avoid Facebook specifically because their parents are on it. No kid wants mom & dad to read everything they write online.
TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram are all the rage among kids, and those apps are like the Wild West compared to Facebook and Twitter. TikTok is the fastest-growing app of them all, and the company don't seem to care at all what kids post online, who views the content, or whether kids are being harmed.
Most kids avoid facebook because it's not nearly as friendly UI-wise as tiktok/instagram or snapchat and lacks a lot of "shiny features" that those apps have. The word "facebook" also comes with a pretty boomer connotation when heard by anyone under the age of 20 nowadays and most kids genuinely think that only grandparents use it.
Also the quality and types of content you frequently find on facebook simply just don't attract people our age anymore.
>nd the company don't seem to care at all what kids post online, who views the content, or whether kids are being harmed.
They have no reason to, all of the names you mentioned make all of their decisions and changes based off of what will increase engagement, not the greater good.
Pretty sure everyone on HN already knows that though.
Well, in their defense, I think they've actually done a better job of it than most. My kids have FB Messenger For Kids and as a parent FB is the one company who gets it right - as a parent, I get to green-light their friends' list.
Considering how many kid apps are based on whack-a-mole an endless list of user-provided content instead of whitelisting, Facebook's approach on this is a breath of fresh air.
How bad is that really? I got the full brunt of the internet at 8 and that's 1000x worse than anything on FB. I still don't think there's anything wrong with FB that isn't just people doing things that other people don't like and then blaming FB for it.
> I got the full brunt of the internet at 8 and that's 1000x worse than anything on FB.
This is like saying you got your ass beat by the big kids at school after messing with them and now every other kid should go through that experience as well.
> I still don't think there's anything wrong with FB
Check out some submissions [0] and see if you hold the same POV afterwards.
> Even before investigations revealed that the company’s products were destroying teens’ mental health
This is tangential, but are we all just credulously swallowing this claim now? What's next, casual references to the obviously-stolen 2020 election? The Facebook study claimed nothing close to "destroying teens' mental health"; it didn't even show net harm! The topline claims were something like 30% of teens self-reporting that use made them feel worse... With 30% reporting no change and 30% reporting it made them feel better. That's ignoring the multiple other problems with the interpretations of the study that are floating around:
1) intentionally unrepresentative sample and minuscule sample size
2) self-reporting, which decades of higher-quality research has shown is not correlated with harm when it comes to the relationship between teens and media use (high-quality studies have so far shown a minimal relationship between phone/social media use and any objective measure of teen mental health)
3) other larger studies are even more positive than Facebook's internal study, showing almost 3x as many teens claiming an improvement in mental health from social media than a decline[1]
I know we're in a post-truth world, but it's a really jarring reminder how universally the rot has spread that this is an Ars Technica article posted on HN, both entities that I once considered to at least display a _pretense_ of intellectual honesty.
The weirdest part about all of this is that I hold and have always held a very low opinion of Facebook, and think their amoral reputation is fully deserved. It's just a more strongly-held belief that it's insane to barrel full-speed towards destroying any sense that we all live in the same reality. It's no more defensible when Ars+HN does it than when a QAnon Facebook group does.
You're so right about this. I'm surprised so many HN users just blindly accept any critical claim about facebook.
The article on Ars is pure click bait. Nowhere in the article 6yo kids are mentioned. The article doesn't even contain any news material, it just regurgitates things published a week ago.
Reliance on self reported studies, that doesn't even paint Facebook bad by itself. If you want to prove that Facebook is bad for mental health, show me at least an observational study that so that I can compare the baseline prevalence of mental health disorders with the mental health of FB users. I doubt it would be different for any other social network user. The key word here is comparison. Raw numbers rarely mean anything by themselves.
From the article... "Facebook was considering new products targeted at children as young as six years old, according to a new document handed over to Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen."
You hit the nail on the head. Any other study which is nothing but a few dozen people surveyed about how an intervention X made them feel, with the results split would barely register on HN. Yet if X = Instagram use it’s suddenly this huge news.
I also wish people on HN would be more thoughtful. If they don't believe six year olds should be marketed to, shouldn't they be similarly outraged about candy companies (where sugar is known to be both addictive and incredibly harmful), ads for toys and other products during Saturday morning cartoons, etc? The simple answer is, they aren't outraged about those things because they're not being fed that message through their media bubble. Most people here probably didn't even read the article about the documents, but they commented or upvoted. That is, like you said, no better than when people are doing the same on crazy conspiracy theories.
Yes, and these pitfalls are so obvious and straightforward that I've been careening for the last decade towards the conclusion that most people who do this simply aren't capable of understanding the concept. It's beyond their ability to understand that their opinions about the world should be anything but an uncritical regurgitation of every single _mood_ that their media bubble pushes on them (despite being in a state of permanent horror at how the "other side" uncritically regurgitates everything _their_ media bubble pushes on them).
I'm sure this is a process that every person with a brain has gone through in every period of history, but being in the early stages of the Internet's massive transformation of the way society communicates with itself seemingly makes it a lot more volatile.
We're not in a post-truth world; people have always made stuff up. We've just got the cultural values of the scientists, applied to our good ol' traditional behaviour, so people are a little more credulous at the moment than they usually are.
> We're not in a post-truth world; people have always made stuff up.
A post-truth world doesn't mean that lies now exist, but I suspect you know that. I'm referring to things like the dramatic declines in trust in journalism[1], a crucial part of how we build our aforementioned shared reality. There are cultural and technological explanations for this, but no small part of the blame falls on journalism itself (though arguably, this is just the inevitable consequence of the structural economic challenges that they've faced).
The explosion of communication and information access engendered by the Internet is a double-edged sword. Decent, intelligent people are able to sift through the firehose of lower-quality info to build a clearer view of the world than ever before, without being bottlenecked by the pitfalls faced by the institutions that used to have a monopoly on producing and transmitting knowledge.
But it seems that the vast, vast majority of people benefited from the paternalism of our scientific and journalistic institutions, and are helpless before the one-two punch of a) a firehose of low-quality info and b) the spreading rot in the scientific and especially journalistic establishment.
True. I was comparing now to the days before newspapers and investigative journalism. Perhaps “post-truth” does make sense as a term, if there was also “pre-truth”, and we have left the golden age of truth.
No, the problem is scientist getting paid by conglomerates. The Institute of Tabaco Studies is the best examples or the bogus pain experts Perdue had on their payroll. People trusted scientist so big cooperation bought the scientists.
Looked at through a less "assume malice" lens: this line of internal questioning is how you get to a safer product for a wide userbase.
The issue that Facebook is trying to solve is that kids already use the platform. They'd rather proactively have a configuration that is appropriate for that age group than offer none and have to deal with the consequences of the underage getting on adult Facebook and hitting content they aren't supposed to be exposed to (and, more corporate-selfishly: running the risk of being hauled in front of a Congressional committee or into court under the argument that they aren't complying with the spirit of COPPA if "kids just lie about their age" is a known issue on their platform that they haven't done anything proactive to address).
The original memo Ars is pulling from here is a pretty good read (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21095535-copy-of-you...). The header is "The internet wasn't built with young people in mind, but we're about to change that." And, yeah... They've identified a real problem and a possible value-add for families.
> The issue that Facebook is trying to solve is that kids already use the platform.
I would assume that if Facebook cared the slightest bit, they would be able to identify users that are six years old and simply redirect them to a safe page that is not facebook. Maybe a page that says that if you really are overage, could you please send your id. At least that's what they seem to be doing if they think the user account is not legit for some other reason.
This company made over $85 billion revenue in 2020 based on the idea that they can precisely target ads to specific groups. The claim that they can't outsmart 6 - 13 year olds (elementary school children) is not believable.
I haven't been on HN for a long time (maybe a year counting my pre-account lurking stage) but I've noticed that quite a lot of comments here seem to just be knee-jerk reactions to what the submissions' title is.
Not saying that's a bad thing in its entirety (the titles here are usually great and can easily spark discussion on their own) but just something I hope I'm not alone in having noticed.
Hey, I read the doccloud PDF in the article, but I wasn’t going to pass on a good Big Lebowski reference opportunity.
I do think I see more people appearing to make substantial comments that are based on misunderstandings from the title alone, and that’s more worrisome to me.
Oops, the reference flew right above my head, nothing personal lol.
>I do think I see more people appearing to make substantial comments that are based on misunderstandings from the title alone, and that’s more worrisome to me.
"Facebook was considering new products targeted at children as young as six years old, according to a new document handed over to Congress by whistleblower Frances Haugen."
Anyone remember when "children's television advocates" were a thing, and there was such pressure on the issue that presidential candidates had to give opinions on forcing broadcasters to air more content for kids?
There's a lot of negativity around these apps, much like there was for TV previously, but I doubt the story is much different. Parents would actually be pissed if kids were blocked from this stuff, particularly YouTube.
I assume they aren't breaking any laws and probably not the only company doing this? It's still a bit creepy. I'm sure at least a few of you are friends with some of the more notable stand-up comedians. I assume Joe Rogan / Jamie Vernon would find the topic interesting to discuss.
Could they instead target the parents of 6-year-olds? Parents should in theory have a better ability to make informed decisions.
i continue to be highly unimpressed with the quality of criticism about facebook - but impressed by its staying power.
FB made no secret of its plans to make an Instagram for Kids with added safety controls and parental controls but it was basically shunned out of exististance for reasons ranging from "Lol Mark Zuckerberg is so awkward" to "we cant tolerate any advertising in our Late Stage Capitalism age" to "Instagram makes teenage girls want to kill themselves".
None of these really stuck and Facebook continues to chug along in general with a good core business model (down a bit due to Apple's ATT, not press coverage) and lots of experimental and ambitious non-core businesses. People continue to use and rely on the products - both brands and the people who love them.
If you were to ask Facebook employees themselves what their real external risk factor is, its definitely not congress or headlines - it's TikTok. And TikTok is not a better alternative when it comes to user privacy, teenage mental health, or the pernicious role of social media in our lives.
Considering that those acquisitions proceeded before the intense scrutiny Facebook has received in the past year or two, it is quite likely that it would be blocked.
This is a fantasy. The US government has not meaningfully regulated big tech and there's no reason to believe they will start now (unless you consider the public bloviation of politicians "reason to believe" - I do not).
General regulation for the tech industry and blocking M&A activity from large companies are completely different things. I think it is very fair to assume that the US will block large acquisitions by Facebook, Google, and Amazon going forward.
Why would they be? The prevailing narrative is that we must enshrine social media platforms into our lives as permanent fixtures, akin to running water and electricity. If the culture were to accept that these platforms are actually unnecessary, unhealthy, and their use should be discouraged (like cigarettes), then our addicted society would have to face a major detoxing crisis that few are prepared to acknowledge.
What law have they broken that they should be punished under?
The tricky thing about the digital space continues to be that, in general, it is under-regulated. It's not whether or not companies have broken laws; it's that there are so rarely laws to break.
COPPA is the only one I can think of that might possibly apply here, and nothing in COPPA says you can't build a service for 6-year-olds (only that if you're going to, it must be done carefully).
(To be fair, I went to a corporate-run day care center when I was a kid. It was run by Playboy. They did a pretty good job of keeping things hidden from us kiddies. We thought it was just a hotel.)
Parents have to protect their children from a plethora of bad influences out in the world. Yesterday was Halloween and my home was soon drowning in a sea of unhealthy and morally questionable plastic wrapped candies from evil corporations such as nestle. Most parents are more worried about the health effects than the ethics of these products, ie most people only care about themselves. Facebook.. is clearly a form of mental junk food to which you can get hooked on but I don't feel it's exceptional in this regard. Just please grow up and say no to shitty Facebook. And parents, don't let your kids/teens etc get hooked on it without a fight
"In contemporary America, children must be trained to insatiable consumption of impulsive choice and infinite variety...So it is with the child versus the gross national product: what individual child is more important than the gross national product?"[1]
FB is the pinnacle of advertising.
Without advertising, American society could not social engineer insatiable consumerism, and therefore could not achieve infinite growth.
Big Ads is what keep the Ponzi scheme from collapsing.
[1]Culture Against Man, Chapter 3: Advertising as a Philosophical System, by Jules Henry (1963)
Messenger for Kids is a well thought out app that lets parents have a lot of control over who their kids talk to. It also allows you to monitor their conversations way that respects the kids' privacy.
Contrast this with iMessage, where literally anyone can randomly message a child using their Apple ID, and there are zero controls available to parents for monitoring or approving contacts.
Look beyond messaging, and the Apple store targets kids with crappy apps filled to the brim with creepy ads. YouTube recommends creepy, addictive, unmoderated, content.
Facebook, and maybe Microsoft, are literally the only companies making products that are actually designed for kids.