HN Distilled

Essential insights from Hacker News discussions

Meta suppressed research on child safety, employees say

Original Article

Hacker News Discussion

Here's a summary of the themes from the Hacker News discussion:

Meta's Suppression of Research and Recurrent Pattern of Harm

A significant theme is the widespread perception that Meta (and Facebook previously) has a pattern of suppressing internal research that highlights negative impacts, particularly concerning children. This isn't seen as an isolated incident but a recurring behavior. The discussion points out that the criticism isn't just about releasing research, but about the company's response (or lack thereof) to its findings.

  • "The continued 'outrage' is that they've exhibited a recurrent pattern across myriad occurrences." (jermberj)
  • "This is a repeating pattern of someone raising the alarm to them, teams realizing it’s a possible concern and the company reacting by telling them to avoid looking into it lest it bite them later." (dagmx)
  • "Meta delenda est." (MengerSponge)
  • "Meta continues to prove that they have a company culture of trying to ignore their responsibilities to users." (dagmx)
  • "This is the company that: Enabled genocide in Myanmar... Literally pirated books to train their trash AI LLM... Violated human rights for Palestinians... Interfered in British politics with the Cambridge Analytica Scandal... The CEO of the company is famous for ass-kissing even dumber people than himself." (ath3nd)

Corporate Responsibility vs. Shareholder Value and Profit Motives

A core debate revolves around whether corporations, driven by profit motives and shareholder value, can or will act ethically, especially when it conflicts with financial goals. Many argue that the business model itself incentivizes harm, and that "growth at all costs" leads to negative outcomes. There's a strong sentiment that fiduciary duty to shareholders is often prioritized over societal well-being.

  • "They have one goal: $$" (realz)
  • "Profit maximizing sure but that’s not ethical if you’re knowingly harming others." (bix6)
  • "The unending quest for growth leads to bad incentives. We could absolutely build products that turn a reasonable profit and respect users. They already did this in their early days. Chasing growth forever doesn't allow this." (2OEH8eoCRo0)
  • "The Friedman doctrine... holds that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits." (palmotea)
  • "It’s worrying that we have to keep repeating this so often. The amount of people defend a version of the 'fiduciary duty to shareholders' is insane." (latexr)
  • "The failure mode of capitalism is abuse, followed by regulations to curb that abuse, followed by regulatory capture, followed by growing corporate power, leading the cycle back to abuse." (btilly)
  • "Expecting a company, public or private, to behave morally and with a long-term human vision is setting yourself up for endless disappointment." (swed420)

The Role of Parents vs. Platform Responsibility in Child Safety

The responsibility for protecting children online is a contentious point. Some believe the onus should be entirely on parents to monitor and control their children's access to online platforms. Others argue that platforms themselves have a significant ethical obligation, akin to societal expectations for protecting children from things like alcohol or cigarettes, and that companies like Meta should be far more proactive and capable of enforcing age restrictions.

  • "The responsibility to protect children should be put on their parents." (djrj477dhsnv)
  • "Harm is subjective and I'd much rather parents make that call than the government." (djrj477dhsnv)
  • "If social media is harmful to children, each child deserves to be protected, no matter what isه‌های their parents' opinion. This is obvious for other harmful things, we don't argue that it is up to parents to decide if your child should be allowed to use alcohol or cigarettes." (mixedbit)
  • "The government already made the call, that's why... terms of service of social media platforms require age 13 or up. My complain is that companies pretend they are unable to enforce it." (mixedbit)
  • "We expect shops and passerbys to not sell porn or steal from kids in real life." (watwut)
  • "This echoes the past when the tobacco industry performed such tactics. Only difference is that Meta has the means to produce a non-toxic product but chooses toxicity." (yndoendo)
  • "Social media is the 21st century’s tobacco company. The companies selling it know it’s terrible for people’s health, but they keep doing it because $$." (JCM9)

The Decline of Social Media and the Search for Alternatives

Several users express disillusionment with current social media platforms, citing a decline in quality, a focus on engagement over connection, and the general negativity. This has led to discussions about alternatives, including leaving social media altogether, focusing on smaller, more genuine interactions, or exploring decentralized platforms.

  • "I am desperately waiting for someone to come along and disrupt social media. It's overdue. My Facebook feed is entirely low-effort slop and posts from acquaintances I added 15 years ago." (dlivingston)
  • "What if the real disruptor is just not using social networks?" (outime)
  • "So you're searching for Mastodon." (fsflover)
  • "Just stop using it? Delete your accounts, uninstall the apps, and stop being miserable." (LeifCarrotson)
  • "I don't miss the old facebook, but I'm also not 20 anymore. I just don't want to share random thoughts or my life's highlights with everyone I've ever met anymore." (fullshark)
  • "Meta’s harmful impact goes way beyond the US of A so it would benefit probably everybody." (barbazoo)

Societal Failure and the Need for Stronger Regulation

A recurring theme is that the problem lies not solely with Meta, but with a broader societal and governmental failure to regulate powerful corporations. The idea of self-regulation is largely dismissed as ineffective. There's a call for stronger laws, enforcement, and accountability for corporate executives, with some contemplating more drastic measures like government intervention or the nationalization of essential tech services.

  • "Self-regulation is a complete and utter joke." (Frost1x)
  • "If you want things to change, the idea of a corporation and its role in society has to fundamentally change. What should be happening is our government should be doing this research and shutting down corporations that prey on and harm children. Instead our government protects people who prey on and harm children." (ModernMech)
  • "This makes me think that the Chinese model where a company beyond certain size simply becomes a branch of the government actually does have decent upsides." (anal_reactor)
  • "If they fuck up enough they wind up with heads on spikes. That seems quite unlikely in the tech industry." (ceejayoz)
  • "The problem ends up being not who does it, but how much power they have." (ultrarunner)
  • "The more responsible companies of the world axiomatically don't get to be the biggest, because they will be outcompeted by the companies that choose to not be responsible. That is WHY we need laws and enforcement." (watwut)
  • "Our general wellbeing requires additional laws to curb the abuses that capitalism naturally tends to." (btilly)

Erosion of Ethics and the Nature of Corporate Behavior

A prevalent sentiment is that large corporations, particularly in the tech sector, often operate with a disregard for ethics and morality, driven by abstract goals like profit and survival rather than human well-being. This is seen as an intrinsic part of the "capitalism" system, or at least the current iteration of it.

  • "Don't trust big corporations." That's it. It hasn't let me down yet in my many long years of life. (christophilus)
  • "Even in the personal domain he seems horrible eg stealing Kauai birthright land for his mega mansion." (bix6)
  • "Even though corporations are made of of people, don't expect them to have the same attributes of a human being, like empathy or the concept of doing the right thing. Expect that their actions are better explained through abstract concepts like group actions towards a larger goal that's separate from human well-being, like profits and self-survival of the organization at any cost." (atonse)
  • "When they declared corporations to be people, I wish they would have specified it to be sociopathic people." (swed420)
  • "It’s like saying Amazon's business is not scalable because they need warehouse workers." (jjani)
  • "I think his argument is more of the 'fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me' variety. At some point complaining about ethics and morality of someone who has repeatedly shown no concern for either just makes you look like the unreasonable one." (speakfreely)