489
Fucking GOOD. We need these useless companies to fail out and be held responsible for their actions.
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Technology
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Hey wow its like I've been saying that for a decade, but because I'm poor and I say that, clearly I am some kind of antisocial insane person, not somebody who can read a bunch of existing studies and data and form a conclusion.
Facebook helped to cause Arab Spring. These platforms are responsible for the destruction of civilization under the guise of "connecting everyone".
These platforms are responsible for the destruction of civilization under the guise of “connecting everyone”.
CA discovered how to "hack" people's minds, then maybe the Russians and Chinese figured it out, and the oligarchy and the lunatic fringe want all in to brainwash the world.
Makes me angry knowing that at anytime a bigger war could break out.
As far as I can tell, advertisement/profit-driven social media that is directly tied to your real identity might actually be the worst thing humanity has ever invented.
Oops!
Turns out we're mostly vain and stupid, in our default state.
Now amplify.
Oh and as a bonus:
It serves as a kind of self perpetuating auto-panopticon.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people just record thems committing, planning to commit, bragging about committing, or admitting to commiting crimes that can put you away for 5 years plus... on fucking TikTok.
at anytime a bigger war could break out.
Welcome back to the late 1970s / early 1980s I grew up in.
We just learned to live with it- maybe move to a big city for a better chance at instant vaporization.
Meanwhile in 1984: When Doves Cry you might as well Jump, and when the 99 Red Balloons Float by you'll be sitting pretty in this dust that was a city.
Doom them to a modest fine where they will not admit wrongdoing, got it.
"Notice of class-action settlement: your cash payout has arrived, 83¢ has been deposited on a Meta giftcard in your name."
Just send a written letter with your name, bday, ss no., mothers maiden name, address, and return a signed copy of the nda agreement barring you from speaking of the case, our company, lawyers, and holding us harmless. The gift card for .88 dollars will arrive within 6 to 8 weeks, visit www.fuckyouthatswhy.com to activate!
Our politicians are taking bribes. All over the world.
Disable YT history. Make YT Subscriptions page your home page. Now all you see are the most recent videos from your subscribed channels. You can keep up with them without being distracted by garbage suggestions. It's a much better experience.
I don't know man... I found so many nice channels randomly... Kurzgesagt, science asylum so many great educational channels that just pop up
Just remember they are education and entertainment, don't binge watch them like I did
YouTube Unhook is great for this. Blocks suggested video sidebar, too - and can be customized.
I just block the side-bar using Ublock Origin. Makes more room on the page and im not sold shit. If I want random videos ill hit the home page the post-screen after a video.
Keeps my time down on the site by a lot.
That lawsuit documents the case of a 19-year-old, K.G.M, who hopes the jury will agree that Meta and YouTube caused psychological harm by designing features like infinite scroll and autoplay to push her down a path that she alleged triggered depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidality.
What the hell is everyone watching? YT recommends me Red Letter Media, Veratasium, old movies, Blender tutorials and a bunch of other stuff that's never going to drive me to self-harm. I don't understand. May be this woman doesn't have ad blocker installed and is forced to sit through a bunch of soul crushing PSAs? Why is my experience so drastically different from this?
Truth is these people watch garbage and the algo delivers… garbage.
I’m not trying to victim blame but, i mean… not my YouTube either (but I’ve seen the front pages of some…stupid people too say it nicely).
Algorithms try to push body negativity if it thinks you're a teen girl because they tend to scroll more and buy more when depressed.
If it thinks you're a single man then it tries to push manosphere stuff.
On YouTube I find I my relevant suggestions last about a month before I have to mark a bunch of videos as not interested or block a bunch of channels.
Yeah there was a period where it noticed I watched a few trans youtubers and so it started promoting anti trans content, it was around the election (I forget if before or after), but either way it disgusted me that they'd do that
Algorithms aren't that smart. Maybe there needs to be general education about how they work so people will understand that viewing a video is like searching for a topic in google so people will understand how much control over what they see and use the technology appropriately.
If you watch a video about anorexia that's like typing "Anorexia" in Google or pressing 9 on a remote control, you're getting channel 9. That's why to me this sounds crazy. It's like someone complaining their TV keeps pushing the cooking channel at them.
You used to be able to see what Google thought about you.
https://myadcenter.google.com/controls
Can't check myself if they still do but on the advertiser end they definitelyet you target
Sure, google knows I'm a 50+ year old man but YT isn't pushing me a bunch of videos about retirement and how to keep the damn kids off my lawn. If I made a new account and it knew nothing about me, it might. But right now it knows I'm interested in obscure early 20th Century comic books and early 70s horror anthology shows.
Edit:
I misunderstood what you said.
On a podcast I was listening to a researcher had made an account and subscribed to just like technology and sports and within a few months they had him on like manisphere stuff with tate and those types of assholes
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My youtube is used exclusively by my toddler, with me seeing about 10 videos a month. It pushes me AI generated sprunky and brainrot bullshit.
Watching those hack frauds causes psychological harm. Rich Evans is known to trigger depression
That's just because he looks like depression.
all eyes on breen
Sounds like you consume useful information. I wager she uses socials as many: to compare herself to others, perusing a mix of ego-affirming and ego-damning content. These are powerful emotional hooks and oscillating between those states can be confounding. Add a dash of fatalism, which is not hard to come by in this culture, when at a low, and I think it easy to see how one might capitulate.
There are a lot of people out there that think their personality traits are inherent and that their physical attributes are static. In fact, my brother was one of these people, to an extent. He passed away at 40 years old due to morbid obesity. I attribute his downfall to capitulation by way of comparison. He came to think the hole was too big and that his genetics were too poor to make changes, despite me providing an example to the contrary. Sadly, my parents fanned the flames of his dissonance with their own identity-bound delusions.
So, my guess is that you have developed a healthy personal philosophy and have not surrounded yourself with the type of people or digital content that renders that philosophy dissonant.
But it should also be noted, teenagers are particularly targeted by and vulnerable to such messaging. In my 30s I can look around and see the evidence against such comparisons, but at 16 I was just some kid who worried she'd never be attractive or well liked. Had I been in spaces that encouraged such attitudes such as Instagram or 4chan I would have been really vulnerable to it.
Young people are often overly worried about such things because adolescence is a difficult and transitory stage where these worries are developmentally appropriate. They're supposed to have adults who can help them deal with this, and peers that they can learn by interacting with, but it's normal to not believe your parents on such issues and interactions with peers has been moved online with social media and there's little interaction with adults. This has led room for teenagers to be preyed on by algorithms that encourage their worst instincts and online communities that teach anything from antisocial behavior to masochistic epistemology.
Zuck has kissed the ring. He will be fine. You can all stop worrying about him now. Barbecue sauce.
Zuck helped forge the ring
That's just a news bite. He or yuckbook has never ever really been in trouble. It's vital tool for global surveillance.
Remember Cambridge analytica?rohingya genocide? and other countless controversies?
You do not realize how far the us will descend into madness if they fix elections securely. Zuck is safe, for now.
His money will make him a target though. But mark my words, the oligarchy will rue the day they supported a one-party State taking over.
It really is! I was off for about three months, and I decided to go back to it just to be up-to-date with some friends and creators, right? Well, I was doom-scrolling for hours in about just a week of usage. Whenever that happens, I uninstall the app causing it, so I just deleted it again. The craziest part? After a couple of hours, I could feel the craving to open the app. Crazy shit.
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Fuck Facebook and also this is clearly morphing into a moral panic about social media in a way that is extremely unproductive, dangerous and ultimately a distraction from the actual issues at hand.
Billionaires are running the most popular social media sites and utilizing the algorithm to attempt to influence their addicted userbase on a large scale, and succeeded on many demographics and even win elections.
I don't think it is a stretch to call it a moral panic, because its not an unbiased and transparent system that is dictating what is seen and spread. It is a huge black box propganda tool.
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Not sure if you're trying to argue that modern social media is a good thing... Because it really isn't. All of these platforms are actively detrimental to our mental health and destabilizing society. All of them have their billionaire owners manipulating the algorithms to maximize what they want you to see and minimize opposing views, if not outright removing them (like Meta is doing with the ICE List currently).
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nah... mark is clearly an international drug dealer and needs to have all his property seized, and then destroyed while he rots in prison.
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pondered letting “tweens” access a private mode inspired by the popularity of fake Instagram accounts teens know as “finstas.” That document included an “internal discussion on how to counter the narrative that Facebook is bad for youth and admission that internal data shows that Facebook use is correlated with lower well-being (although it says the effect reverses longitudinally).” Other allegedly damning documents showed Meta seemingly bragging that “teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to” and an employee declaring, “oh my gosh yall IG is a drug,” likening all social media platforms to “pushers.” Similarly, a 2020 Google document detailed the company’s plan to keep kids engaged “for life,” despite internal research showing young YouTube users were more likely to “disproportionately” suffer from “habitual heavy use, late night use, and unintentional use” deteriorating their “digital well-being.” Shorts, YouTube’s feature that rivals TikTok, also is a concern for parents suing, and three years later, documents showed Google choosing to target teens with Shorts, despite research flagging that the “two biggest challenges for teen wellbeing on YouTube” were prominently linked to watching shorts. Those challenges included Shorts bombarding teens with “low quality content recommendations that can convey & normalize unhealthy beliefs or behaviors” and teens reporting that “prolonged unintentional use” was “displacing valuable activities like time with friends or sleep.”
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