
Treat Facebook Like Big Tobacco - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-05-17/regulate-facebook-like-big-tobacco-not-like-a-phone-company
======
sytelus
First, you need to look at human attention as a commodity just like gold -
available in fixed quantity and everyone wants piece of it. It turns out that
FB managed to conquer large portion of human attention after it emerged. This
also meant massive attention transfer from news media to FB. However until
year ago, FB benevolently gave back significant pie of its attention share to
news media by heavily promoting their stories. After last year's WEF meeting,
FB took sudden unilateral decision to reduce sharing its attention pie with
news media. Several media companies saw their traffic dropped precipitously,
sometime cut down all the way to 90%. The management folks at these media
companies tried reach out to FB management to appeal but it all fall on deaf
ears. The result is the barrage of articles from news media for any and
everything they can possibly find on FB. If someone publishes little study on
"FB is bad for you" you can count on news media to amplify it all over. If
there is nothing new available then media folks get opinion writers to write
zero-information articles. It's surreal to see this war for attention playing
out between FB and media.

~~~
rock_hard
Spot on analysis!

"Human progress has never been shaped by commentators, complainers or cynics."

To me, facebook is this amazing place where I get to stay in touch with all my
friends and family, get to plan events with them, laugh about cat gifs and
live through the highs and lows of life together.

So much good has happened to me through facebook...friends, jobs, love (I met
my wife on FB).

And the fact that every day there is millions more joining facebook means more
people get to have these super powers of hyper connectedness I got to have for
over 10 years already!

~~~
kerng
Curious, do you work for Facebook?

~~~
rock_hard
Nope

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SilasX
I think it's a good (if inflammatory) analogy: in both cases, people are
aware, in the abstract, of dangers, but systematically underestimate them by a
big margin.

People knew "smoking is bad for you", but didn't appreciate how bad.

People know "Facebook violates privacy" but not the depth of the profile
they've made on you across numerous websites.

People know "You shouldn't compare yourself to others and feel bad about it",
but don't realize the extent to which use of FB fights against that.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
I think the fundamental difference is that smoking actually shortens lives by
years. On the other hand, Facebook's privacy violations have . . . made people
feel a little squicky? What concrete harm has been done? Nothing to rival even
a hundredth of tobacco's death toll. That's not to say we shouldn't have laws
and regulations around privacy, but personally I think it's a bit of a stretch
to compare Facebook and Phillip Morris.

~~~
Barrin92
the suicide rate, especially among adolescent women has increased by almost
70% from 2001 to now, self-harm has increased, rate of depression, anxiety and
related illnesses has increased in that demographic. Among young men as well,
albeit to a lesser extent.

While it will take more time to figure out precisely how social media impacts
the development of teenagers and young adults, the relationship is pretty
unambiguous. I recommend Jonathan Haidt's latest book for anyone who still
thinks that there is no very real physical and mental health threat associated
with social media.

[https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016](https://twitter.com/JonHaidt/status/1083015453151318016)

~~~
Circuits
This is a classic example of: "Who is responsible for the death, the gun or
the man pulling the trigger?" and from what I have seen, most people want to
blame the gun or in this case, FB. If someone is unstable you can't blame FB
for that, FB didn't make them unstable.. perhaps their excessive use of FB
resulted in social problems that lead to an instability but you can hardly
blame FB for that.

I don't know about you guys but I am seriously getting tired of people blaming
everything and everyone else but themselves for their problems in life.

~~~
harimau777
I don't think "people are to blame for the problems in their life" explains
significant changes in the rates of those problems occurring. It doesn't make
sense that people as a group would become less moral/resolute/intelligent
without any cause.

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aplummer
Look I'm a broken record at this point (if you check my history), but I feel
like _someone_ has to say it.

Lets treat big oil like big tobacco. Big coal. Big fast food. Big soda. These
things _literally_ kill so many people every year and while Facebook is surely
attributable to some deaths as a medium, it has at least some social utility.

Why are there so many articles about facebook and not soda!

~~~
malvosenior
> _Why are there so many articles about facebook and not soda!_

Because soda doesn't threaten Bloomberg or The New York Times' business model.

~~~
Funes-
Exactly! While I don't think that Facebook has any utility that stands out or
is exclusive to it--as the parent comment asserts, this was my very first
thought when I read the headline. It seems to me that they are up in arms now
that FB's reputation has decreased substantially and their true motives aren't
as flagrant.

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markstos
As someone without a Facebook account, it's awkward to read these articles
that assume inevitably of Facebook's influence.

You can quit. We can quit.

Sometimes I run into a group that I want to be more involved with that
organizes on Facebook. When I mention I want to be involved but am not on
Facebook, there is usually sympathy and a response that there are others
interested in the group which are not on Facebook, either. Many organizations
are multi-platform to be inclusive, and more organizations if more people
spoke up to request a non-Facebook option.

~~~
panarky
As someone who doesn't smoke, it's awkward to read these articles that assume
inevitably of tobacco's influence.

You can quit. We can quit.

Sometimes I run into a group of smokers that I want to be more involved with.
When I mention I want to be involved but not breathe pollution, there is
usually sympathy and a response that there are others interested in quitting
smoking, too. Many organizations are smoke-free, and more organizations would
be if more people spoke up to request a non-smoking option.

~~~
throw20102010
Snarky, but poignant. However, note that there are many government funded
programs to help people quit smoking if they want. The government doesn't ban
smoking, but it does tax it to encourage healthier behavior. There is no such
funding to help people get rid of social media, and there are no such taxes to
push people towards other options.

~~~
MikusR
They tax it to get money from addicts.

------
randyrand
Who else finds this really silly? FB is just a social network. It's where dumb
people post dumb things. How does it deserve this much new press.

~~~
tosser0001
I think the election of Donald Trump was the triggering event for the
backlash. There are a significant number of people that feel it was one of the
principal reasons why he was elected. I know several people that quit in
direct response to that.

I find it odd that it is simultaneously a dying platform and an all-consuming
monstrosity that must be destroyed.

Anyone who reads these types of threads and didn’t know what Facebook was
would probably be startled to find it’s mostly just pictures of your aunt’s
cats, etc.

~~~
chillacy
I’m afraid that line of logic is going to lead the democrats to lose 2020 if
they keep blaming Russia, Facebook, etc instead of trying to actually appeal
to swing state voters.

~~~
Something1234
I completely agree.

The democrats need to get their act together, and create a unified front if
they want me to view them as anything more than a fragment who can't get
anything done.

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_emacsomancer_
Why? It's not really comparable.

We can't they (and all of the huge corporations) just be treated like AT&T was
before all of the anti-monopoly laws were gutted?

~~~
amelius
Probably lobbying and the fact that the US likes it better when a US company
has power on the internet as opposed to some company from another country.
Also, the NSA might have installed some secret probes in FB, so it would be a
set-back if all users moved to a different platform.

~~~
_emacsomancer_
Though Facebook is probably less important to three letter agency than Google,
Microsoft or Intel.

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mapt
I think it may be more appropriate to treat them like Big Asbestos. All it
should take is them knowingly handing our private messages in full to other
corporations. They were not a party to these messages, they were a network
service provider.

This actually happened.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/19/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/19/facebook-
shared-user-data-private-messages-netflix-spotify-amazon-microsoft-sony)

Regardless of what may or may not be on the TOS, that's federal wiretapping.
Fuck you, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Wait for
the civil lawsuits afterwards - there will be a lot of them. A TOS does not
override federal law.

The fact that this hasn't happened is a testament to regulatory capture, and
to the federal government wanting to use this capacity for themselves to
wiretap citizens. Both of these are jumping way out of their lane to invade
your right to privacy. You should be at their door with torches and
pitchforks.

~~~
anonuser123456
Yeah totally. Building a website is exactly the same as giving hundreds of
thousands of people lung cancer.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Some might argue a form of figurative brain cancer.

~~~
edmundsauto
What does that even mean, in concrete terms? How does it affect my health, and
what causal evidence is there to support that link?

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Well, I think the answer to your question is the word figurative in my post.

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_cs2017_
Should smart phones be treated like tobacco too? Millions (soon, billions) of
people glued to their phones have hurt their relationships, impoverished their
lives, and developed an addiction quite akin to the addiction to the social
media. In fact, this addiction has killed thousands because someone couldn't
stop messaging while driving. The phone manufacturers and app developers pay a
lip service to these problems, and continue to design ever more accessible and
addictive devices.

Or should we draw a line somewhere, and agree that it's unreasonable to
eliminate every imaginable source of addiction from the world, and that people
should be able to deal with it?

------
shahbaby
Tobacco is inherently bad for you.

Facebook can be depending on how you use it.

~~~
filoleg
>Facebook can be [bad] depending on how you use it.

The same can be said about many things, including movies, video games,
twitter, kitchen knives, construction tools, etc. Not trying to diminish your
point btw, I wholeheartedly agree with it.

~~~
quest88
Yea, like the news.

------
emptyparadise
The companies themselves created so many of the dangers that social media now
poses. If we didn't have all-but-mandatory lack of anonymity, we wouldn't have
issues with doxxing, addiction (to the degree that anonymity can break the
psychological tricks used by the apps), and so on. I doubt we can treat social
media companies like any Big Whatever, because there hasn't been anything like
them before. It's a new problem that needs a new solution - and that solution
surely has to be something better than giving leverage over how we connect to
any government. Sadly, I don't know how to best convince people to give up big
Facebook for some decentralized family photo sharing website that would lack
the addictiveness.

Also, on promoting the health dangers, I wonder, hen did "never trust
strangers on the internet" turn into "give strangers on the internet a
detailed log of every aspect of your life"?

Though with regards to that, I can easily say I made many more meaningful
connections back when the internet was this separate realm of screen names and
forums, rather than this meta web of connections overlaid on top of the real
world.

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sarcasmatwork
The fact they want to track everyone is the abuse and reason they should be
shut down. You dont have to use them, but FB is everywhere to track and gather
data for their profits. If America had privacy rights like Europe we would not
have this issue then we could sue FB and maybe they would learn after
thousands of lawsuits. FB is not being held accountable for their lies and
multiple privacy violations.

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esilver
It’s a handy comparison in that most adults used to smoke in bed before going
to sleep and first thing when they woke up. Sound familiar?

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0x8BADF00D
What's the worst thing Facebook can do to me? Sell me shit I don't want?
That's nothing in comparison to what the government can do to you.

~~~
rat9988
It can give your information to the government. Now it's as bad as the
government.

The argument isn't that strong though. I admit it.

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INTPenis
I only read the title but imagine if Facebook were required to have a warning
on their signup form. Telling people basically that "if you're not paying for
the service then you're being sold to pay for the service".

Smokers ignore worse warnings all the time.

~~~
diablerouge
That ignores the fact that the percentage of the population who smokes has
dropped drastically from when measures were put in place.

Yeah, those warnings don't stop addicts, but they totally changed the public
discourse about smoking, and societal attitudes toward the habit. I don't see
a reason why that wouldn't work for other harmful behaviors like social media
addiction.

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pan_peter
I'd say treat facebook like Compuserve or Iomega.

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drivingmenuts
If Facebook is bad, then how bad are other forms of social media, like
Instagram or Twitter? Or Hacker News? Or Mastodon?

I'm fine with tearing them down if they've committed actual criminal acts, but
going after them for breaches of social norms seems a bit awkward. About the
most anyone can say about that is it makes them feel icky.

It all seems a bit nanny-statist, to me.

