this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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34
Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They’re Actually Cheering For (www.techdirt.com)
submitted 2 hours ago by General_Effort@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 57 points 2 hours ago (4 children)

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine Instagram, but every single post is a video of paint drying. Same infinite scroll. Same autoplay. Same algorithmic recommendations. Same notification systems. Is anyone addicted? Is anyone harmed? Is anyone suing?

Of course not. Because infinite scroll is not inherently harmful. Autoplay is not inherently harmful. Algorithmic recommendations are not inherently harmful. These features only matter because of the content they deliver. The “addictive design” does nothing without the underlying user-generated content that makes people want to keep scrolling.

This feels like an awful argument to make. It's not the presence of those things that make Meta and co so shit, it's the fact that they provably understood the risks and the effects that their design was having, knew that it was harming people, and continued to do it anyway. I don't care if we're talking about a little forum run by a Grandma and Grandpa talking about their jam recipes; if they know that they're causing harm and don't change their behavior, they should be liable.

[–] HeartyOfGlass@piefed.social 11 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

"We designed, marketed, and sold the gun, but we didn't think anyone would use it."

[–] KoboldCoterie@pawb.social 5 points 44 minutes ago

It's like if someone had a forum where insurrectionists were discussing how to build bombs and where they were going to use them, and the owners had an internal meeting where they said, "Hey, we're hosting some pretty awful people, should we maybe report them or shut this down?" and the answer was, "Nah, they're paying users, and we want their money."

Pretty sure Section 230 wouldn't protect them, either.

[–] Chulk@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Yeah this feels very much like, "censor content, but don't change Meta's practices"

Which begs the question, does the author know what they're cheering for?

[–] Maeve@kbin.earth 3 points 1 hour ago

You can bet they do.

[–] XLE@piefed.social 6 points 1 hour ago

It's like he's describing a slot machine with unpainted wheels, leaving out the context that it's in a casino with a big "paint me and enjoy a share of the profit" sign above it.

The social media machine was designed to be a self-serve addiction generator. It intentionally used every trick it could legally get away with.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 hour ago

Also they can now generate content without users, which they already do a lot on Facebook.