Teenagers should not be on social media. I rest my case.
this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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This type of advertising isn’t new. There is that famous (although the claims from the father have been questioned) New York Times article written by Charles Duhigg in 2012. A father of a teenage girl in Minnesota got upset for receiving coupons from Target for infant care related products. As the story goes, he later learned his daughter was in fact pregnant. It turns out Target was using some predictive algorithm to identify would-be mothers and straight up sending them coupons for infant care products. It seems ever since this article was published that they stopped doing this in such a direct manner. Again, there have people who questioned the validity of the claims for this specific story, but Target did confirm they were doing this.
I think I read somewhere that that was apocryphal, but it strikes me as 100% plausible. It doesn't even have to be a matter of "write a system that detects pregnant women via their purchase history and send them coupons for maternity stuff" I think Amazon's Frequently Bought Together feature could get it done. The same algorithm that suggests a tacklebox and some lures when you have a fishing pole in your shopping cart might recommend diapers and formula to those who buy maternity pants.
That's some cartoon villain level shit jfc
Be aware that the companies would have paid Facebook handsomely to identify users in this way. The world we live in has a sickness with greed for money at its heart.
Saint Luigi deliver us from villains like Facebook
As if there would be no social networking without Zuckerberg.
Like any sin, the change starts with us. If we want a healthy social network, we can build a healthy social network.
Praise the king!
At some point we need to start criminalizing shit like this and actually holding people accountable.
It’s so much bigger than this. It starts young. iPad kids. Strict gender roles. Sexualization of children. Learning from parents who have been conditioned by capitalism, sexism and more. We got little girls that want skincare products and teens talking about plastic surgery. It’s bad.
Agreed though. Punish people for ruining society. I think I read a while ago that France had required social media posts to flag when images have been altered. We need more laws like this too.
As little kids we got like no genderbased education from our parents. When we moved our grandmother got a lot more control and dumped blue boyish stuff on my brother and forbid the girly things. Has never worn a dress since and now is still not willing to wear one
(it could be that us older sisters influenced that he wants to wear dresses too)
Bummer. Happens to almost all men in the US. Maybe less now, but this new red pill generation is wild.
I need context to understand your story. How old was your brother when you moved? How often was he wearing dresses before the move? How quickly did it stop? And how old is he now?
Sexualization of children.
I hate to say it, but something is changing the physicality of age groups. At least I think that is what is happening. I swear there are teenagers today who look like adults in their 20s and young adults who don’t look over 18. I get scared seeing a conventionally attractive person (by stereotypical standards), wondering if I’m being a creep because I can’t identify their age group. Hell, I work among some people who easily can be mistaken for being under 18. Thankfully I know the company has a hiring minimum of 18.
EDIT: My point, that I should have stated, was if you surveyed a random sampling of a American suburban neighborhood, it might not be easy to identify age groups anymore.
It’s hard to say if it’s one of those things that older gens say is different with newer gens even though it the same. I will say though, the convergence of sexualization of children and infantilization of adults have been narrowing the gap and maybe one is winning over the other.
And mass sharing of images/videos which has made it so much easier to connect people, specifically in one case I saw today of someone on Telegram sharing child porn. How do you even put the cat back in the box?
People don’t want to hear it, but AI. Used intelligently and responsibly.
How did you see it
💯 Big tech companies think they’re above the law.
Thus far, they’d basically be right. Any fines are simply chocked up to “cost of doing business” expenses and since no one wants to either make solid laws against this stuff OR hold them accountable for current ones, they’ll just keep at it.
If a law has a fine, it was created to deter poor people.
That depends on if it is a dayfine or not.
A fine of €500 for speeding will only really affect poor people, 30 dayfines which value is dictated by the wealth of the individual is a better system.
History has shown that they are.
they ARE above the law, at least it would seem so.
Oh you mean fines? Sure here's some money $$. Meanwhile AD rev is $$$$$. Just the cost of doing business! Hahahaa
Zuckerberg’s $300 million mega yacht may be tracked here: https://www.vesselfinder.com/vessels/details/9857511
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Who the fuck comes up with this stuff?
The most generous assumption is that they use statistics to determine correlations like this (e.g., deleted selfies resulted in a high CTR for beauty ads so they made that a part of their algo). The least generous interpretation is exactly what you're thinking: an asshole came up with it because it's logical and effective.
Either way, ethics needs to be a bigger part of the programmers education. And we, as a society, need to make algorithms more transparent (at least social media algorithms). Reddit's trending algorithm used to be open source during the good ole days.
Can you make the algorithm open source that determined it was ok for you to murder Tuvix tho
JANEWAY DID WHAT SHE HAD TO DO
if (ugly) {
kill_child(child_name);
} else {
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
}
The kind of person whose past probably includes more than a few vivisected animals.
Wonder how much of a bonus the sick fuck who pitched that got for the idea?
Probably nothing. Most likely, a paid consultant to give ideas. And if it was a worker, they were just doing their job and at most got a "great job, keep up the good work," praise email.
And tiktok is supposed to be our enemy?
Big tech is our enemy. It doesn't matter if it's facebook or tiktok.
I agree!
Both can be enemies.
both ARE enemies.
I agree. I'm addressing the obvious hypocrisy of big tech
TikTok absolutely does the same kind of thing and worse. Engagement is all that matters. Doesn't matter what kind, what about, or how that engagement is generated.
Por que no los dos?
I'm very skeptical that the Chinese government having your data as an American is worse than the American government and corporations (you know, the people with applicable jurisdiction) having it. Seems more likely to me that American interests just weren't happy about a huge platform of Americans not being under their umbrella of control and censorship. Sure, you could argue that China of course has their own, but the two wouldn't completely overlap, so there were windows where things could be freely and organically discussed and organized by Americans, without American government and corporate interference. Obviously that couldn't be allowed to stand.
Yes there definitely would be an alterior agenda to the reasons for the push to hate on tiktok data fears. But that's not to say that people are any safer (data wise) with US big tech.
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How did they come up with this idea? Did the algorithm suggest this pattern, or did someone in marketing come up with it?
Fucking hell. That is vile!
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