I feel like there are some key differences between the companies though.
The second one outlined for Meta is:
> Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day).
This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive.
The first one outlined for YouTube is:
> Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s autoplay feature plays in “Tech Addiction” that concludes “Verdict: Autoplay could be potentially disrupting sleep patterns. Disabling or limiting Autoplay during the night could result in sleep savings.”
This sounds like YouTube proactively looking for solutions to a problem. And later on for YouTube:
> Discussing efforts to improve digital well-being, particularly among youth. Identified three concern areas impacting users 13-24 disproportionately: habitual heavy use, late night use, and unintentional use.
This sounds like YouTube taking actual steps to improve the situation.
1bpp 23 minutes ago [-]
My YouTube use definitely isn't healthy, but it's still the only social app that asks me to take a break if I use it too long or late at night. That should be standard in any of these apps.
nico 14 minutes ago [-]
I get those on TikTok. There’s a video of someone asking if you’ve been scrolling/watching for too long and recommending to take a break
ryeights 15 minutes ago [-]
TikTok does this as well.
jhhh 2 minutes ago [-]
YouTube Shorts exist, which they brag about hours watched, so I don't think they really care about those things at all.
corranh 37 minutes ago [-]
With the looping TikTok-style shorts, YouTube seems to be more habit forming than ever.
jacquesm 47 minutes ago [-]
No, it sounds like youtube being fully aware of the consequences of their offering but couched in terms that allows them to pretend they were not. 'could' indeed.
nisegami 42 minutes ago [-]
Not realistic to reply to all your replies re:youtube, but they've absolutely added some features to mitigate bedtime use and at least for me they were opt-out rather than opt-in.
ares623 47 minutes ago [-]
Are they taking actual steps though? Or was that letting a team do the work to make them feel better but never actually implementing it.
iwontberude 45 minutes ago [-]
It doesn’t.
micromacrofoot 44 minutes ago [-]
> This sounds like YouTube taking actual steps to improve the situation.
And yet here we are years later without change. So we've got proof that they knew this and have done nothing. Don't need to speculate at all.
sharts 50 minutes ago [-]
This is obvious for anyone that understands sales and marketing. The real question isn’t whether this was true—the question is why does anyone expect this revelation would change anything?
They made their wealth. They bought their politicians. In the worst possible case for them they would pay some fee that amounts to absolutely nothing making a dent in their personal day to day lives as a consequence of their actions.
It’s the cost of doing business these days. Do the wrong thing so long as you make more than enough money to cover the penalty fee.
Nothing to see here.
worik 14 minutes ago [-]
> In the worst possible case for them they would pay some fee that amounts to absolutely nothing making a dent in their personal day to day lives as a consequence of their actions.
Probably, not definitely
It would be possible to put the executives in jail.
soco 9 minutes ago [-]
Based on the aggressive reactions all across the billionaire board toward the European wrist-slap initiative, I would guess Europe is moving in the correct direction with it and the slaps would correctly hurt.
RajT88 34 minutes ago [-]
And why not? AAA game companies have been reported to have psychologists on staff to help make their games more addictive.
We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive. We seem to be fine with expanding gambling - where I live (not Nevada!) slot machines are everywhere. Nice restaurants even will dedicate corners to slot machines - not just seedy bars. Sports betting apps are all over streaming ads, and their legality is expanding even though when they are legalized in an area the divorce and loan default rates go up measurably.
Why would we regulate big tech if we don't bother with anything else?
The kids are just the latest victim of a long ongoing trend.
michaelt 31 minutes ago [-]
> Why would we regulate big tech if we don't bother with anything else?
I’m pretty sure we do, in fact, ban under 18s from tobacco, alcohol, and real-money gambling.
sidrag22 21 minutes ago [-]
> real-money gambling
this is doing a lot of heavy lifting for how loose we have become with under 18 questionable products.
RajT88 17 minutes ago [-]
Let's check in on how we're doing preventing the tobacco industry from marketing to children.
Hmm, candy flavored vapes both for THC and nicotine. Teen psychosis from THC. Popcorn lung. Not so good it seems!
Just looking at the US, tobacco comes with warnings, there are limits on advertising (see any tobacco product commercials on TV?), and the manufacturers lost a lawsuit leading to massive fines and many of these outcomes.
The idea that we don't regulate things would be shocking to the anti-regulation crowd, and the staffs at the FDA, FCC, etc.
jacquesm 32 minutes ago [-]
> And why not?
Because it is simply wrong.
> AAA game companies have been reported to have psychologists on staff to help make their games more addictive.
> We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive.
Three wrongs don't make a right I guess.
RajT88 24 minutes ago [-]
My exact point. Our current moment seems to be us being happy to expand societal harms for whatever reason. I'd hazard a guess it's our political system getting more and more susceptible to lobbying money.
malfist 24 minutes ago [-]
This is defeatist. Just because something is bad doesn't mean we shouldn't care at all and just let everything be bad.
helterskelter 23 minutes ago [-]
I know Doom Eternal had one, I believe she was even credited. But the line between "making a game more fun" and "making a game addictive" is a little blurry.
draw_down 32 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
benoau 12 minutes ago [-]
Not just teens, addiction has been weaponized and monetized relentlessly - the whole concept of "whales" is contingent on fostered addiction.
sagacity 53 minutes ago [-]
It's good to see that many countries are working on lesiglation to protect children and teens against this, since the companies clearly aren't trying.
mikkupikku 47 minutes ago [-]
American tech corps act like cigarette companies but we're still at the point where banning them for kids is considered weird, fringe and even dangerous. Crazy.
idontwantthis 52 minutes ago [-]
That’s pretty much the whole purpose of government and if it isn’t doing that then it has abdicated its primary responsibility.
uniq7 34 minutes ago [-]
The problem is when government's solutions go through identifying everyone and collaterally tracking their actions.
In the same way parents can be blamed for not keeping their children safe around guns/alcohol/drugs, they should also be blamed for not keeping the children out of digital dangers, and keep mandatory age verifications out of here.
sagacity 21 minutes ago [-]
This is like saying parents are at fault when a gun salesman sells a weapon to their 12 year old.
ares623 16 minutes ago [-]
Not even “sell” but “give for free, constantly, every day, delivered directly to their house, disguised as a toy”
ares623 23 minutes ago [-]
Problem is that social media doesn’t have negative connotations like guns/alcohol/drugs do. That makes it hard or impossible for individual parents to restrict it. They are perceived as crazy or paranoid or controlling. Plus if their child does opt out of social media, they become a social outcast from their peers who are still on it, which is a worse outcome for the child.
It almost sounds like multiple parents from a large number of households need to collectively act in unison to address the problem effectively. Hmm collective action, that sounds familiar. I wonder if there’s a way to enforce such a collective action?
To be clear, I do agree that putting the ban on the software/platform side is the wrong approach. The ban should be on the physical hardware, similar to how guns/alcohol/tobacco which are all physical objects. But I don’t have the luxury to let perfect be the enemy of close enough.
mikkupikku 49 minutes ago [-]
I fully expect this to get ignored like all the other similar revelations. Heads should roll, literally, but nothing will happen. Does anybody have any earnest hope for reform? Even in Europe where the public is supposedly keyed in, and where there is some political traction for getting away from American companies, nobody seems to take the idea of banning these corporations seriously.
jmusall 33 minutes ago [-]
I think the possibility of banning certain sites at least for minors is being discussed, after Australia set the precedent. But this of course has downsides, too, as some form of verification has to be implemented, that would almost certainly reduce anonymity and carry risks to personal data protection. A complete ban is unrealistic since people actually like to use these platforms. Plus, it would certainly entail massive political repercussions from the US government. This is already happening when US American companies are simply fined in the EU.
reorder9695 7 minutes ago [-]
Does that outweigh the loss of privacy involved? I really don't think it does personally, I should not have to show anyone ID to have an Instagram account, privacy and anonymity is a feature not a bug.
integralid 32 minutes ago [-]
The idea of banning meta or Google is indeed not serious. What's realistic is forcing them to behave by issuing fines that make such behavior prohibitively expensive. Admittedly there's nobody doing that in Europe seriously yet, but that's because the current unhinged head of American state has meltdown every time American bigtech get a wrist slap.
mikkupikku 13 minutes ago [-]
> What's realistic is forcing them to behave by issuing fines that make such behavior prohibitively expensive.
Europeans have been saying that for what, 20 years now? How long does it have to not work before we stop saying that it's a realistic solution?
tryauuum 27 minutes ago [-]
how would you ban it?
I don't want the russian-style ban enforced by ISPs
Probably punishing companies who pay YouTube for ads would work
soco 11 minutes ago [-]
On which grounds would you punish some companies which are using a fully legal platform? If you had beef with the ad contents, you'd punish them already for that. But if you have beef with the platform algorithms, punish them for exactly that. Not over proxies! As long the algorithm was designed for creating dependence, than regulate that - exactly like you (should) regulate other substances creating dependence. And some countries are going exactly this way: not only Australia but also Finland, Spain...
mmooss 13 minutes ago [-]
Social media is being banned for minors in multiple countries, and more are seriously considering it.
But if people keep proselytizing that nothing will happen and all is hopeless, it's going to be hard to get people together to support a change. You and others here are doing the work of social media companies by spreading that - on social media. In fact, nothing can stop the public if they want something.
skirge 27 minutes ago [-]
"make customer come back" - every (good) car dealer
Awesome song. Gives me chills. Wish I believed in a just God like that.
betaby 39 minutes ago [-]
Meanwhile 2 billion Coca Colas are sold per day. That's over 75 million kgs of sugar/day - no one bats an eye.
Teen/kid addiction to sugar was and is a priority.
Social networks is a sugar for minds.
shimman 36 minutes ago [-]
You must have been a child when Michelle Obama said that children needed better food and half the country lost their collective minds. Hard to do anything when corporations control what most legislation is passed.
betaby 30 minutes ago [-]
> You must have been a child when Michelle Obama said
My kids were born long before Obama took the office.
What's your point again? That president can't control the quality of the food in the country under their control?
reaperducer 24 minutes ago [-]
The way I read it, he takes issue with your assertion that "nobody bats an eye" at sugar in Coke.
This is quite the opposite of everything I've ever seen in my entire life in America.
Or perhaps since you mention sugar, not corn syrup, and list quantities in kilograms not pounds or tons, he suspects you may not actually have first-hand experience with this.
betaby 20 minutes ago [-]
> you may not actually have first-hand experience
Sigh ( in canadian )
reaperducer 28 minutes ago [-]
I've always wondered if her initiative, which caused some big food companies to reduce fat and salt in their products, and change their frying media, is the reason for the rise of Sriracha in America.
My theory is that the food tasted less flavorful, so people compensated by adding their own.
I don't eat a lot of junk food, but for a long time after the Obama administration, when I did partake, often my immediate reaction was "Wow. These aren't as tasty as I remember."
/I'm looking at you, Cool Ranch Doritos.
malfist 20 minutes ago [-]
Can you point to any examples of big food companies actually making changes for Michelle Obama's campaign?
mikkupikku 17 minutes ago [-]
Sisco, e.g. public school cafeterias. That's probably about it. The way in which school menus were actually changed was very misguided however.
antiframe 26 minutes ago [-]
"No one bats an eye" is a weird take when the Federal Government, via the Department of Health and Human Services, has literally just declared war on added sugar. [1] Also, lots of people have already changed their diets [2] regarded added sugar.
Sugar has been vilified for longer and more vociferously than social media use by kids, but that may be changing now.
Well the narrative has already been promulgated that they are "anti-science" so it's being ignored. Sugar is good. Hey Mom, send down more Pixie Stix!!
antiframe 19 minutes ago [-]
You must run in different circles than I, most people I know have reduced their added sugar consumption. My point was that there has been a swelling wave of anti-sugar sentiment over the last decades and it's reach the point were even RFK loudly said sugar is bad. That's the opposite of "no one bat's an eye". Of course people will ignore all sorts of advice for all sorts of reasons, but the sentiment (as shown by the decline of added sugar consumption) is there, and growing.
tokyobreakfast 13 minutes ago [-]
I recall a discussion here recently whereupon the list of items eligible for nutrition assistance (food stamps) in the USA were changed to exclude unhealthy foods, especially those with added sugar. Which BTW affects poorer communities disproportionately with long-term health problems like diabetes.
Elimination of processed sugar is a good thing.
Despite this, the discussion quickly pivoted to "how dare you keep poor children from enjoying birthday cake".
worik 11 minutes ago [-]
> no one bats an eye.
Untrue
My six year old grand child made up a food related game for me to play with them that involved penalties for choosing food with sugar.
Somebody is getting to them, good
jacquesm 48 minutes ago [-]
All of these guys should end up behind bars. To purposefully prey on vulnerable kids like this, it is absolutely disgusting. And here I am as a parent trying to stem the floodgates against people wielding billions of $ and armies of programmers and psychologists to harm my kids. Fuck them. And if you work for them then...
miltonlost 51 minutes ago [-]
I hope that all the engineers who went along with this are able to sleep well with their stock options.
Shamar 1 hours ago [-]
The documents provide smoking-gun evidence that Meta, Google, Snap, and TikTok all purposefully designed their social media products to addict children and teens with no regard for known harms to their wellbeing, and how that mass youth addiction was core to the companies’ business models. The documents contain internal discussions among company employees, presentations from internal meetings, expert testimony, and evidence of Big Tech coordination with tech-funded groups, including the National Parent Teachers Association (PTA) and Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI), in attempts to control the narrative in response to concerned parents.
“These unsealed documents prove Big Tech has been gaslighting and lying to the public for years
mahirsaid 56 minutes ago [-]
Are people surprised by this. Clearly this was a tactic widely used in the tech industry. Their aim is to keep people on the platform specifically teens. Why else would you need curated algorithms for users.
idle_zealot 55 minutes ago [-]
Anyone paying attention knew. A smoking gun means that legal action is possible. Or it would be in a better time.
lostlogin 53 minutes ago [-]
It might, but would that achieve much? Tobacco has done ok.
ludicrousdispla 14 minutes ago [-]
Companies don't necessarily have to suffer when restrictions are placed on them.
Ask any educator what the biggest positive change was to U.S. high schools in the 1970s and they'll probably answer that it was the ban on smoking in schools.
I expect a similar response in the future regarding bans on social media.
jmcgough 38 minutes ago [-]
Tobacco paid billions of dollars, and we've heavily restricted where it can be used, where it can be advertised, and who can buy it.
hansvm 49 minutes ago [-]
How did that work mechanically though? At YT we were banned from doing basically anything with pre-18yo data, even if we only suspected they might possibly not be an adult -- no A/B tests, no ML, no ad targeting, no nada. Did leadership design a system where those sorts of things would happen anyway? Were there just enough rogue teams to cause problems?
worik 20 seconds ago [-]
> At YT we were banned from doing basically anything with pre-18yo data
I guess things are different at Google now.
jacquesm 45 minutes ago [-]
Because the product is made to appeal to that particular demographic. The data doesn't really matter if you have that kind of reach.
iwontberude 41 minutes ago [-]
For business, government, and religion: achieving scale and centralization necessarily leads to corrupt outcomes. This is also where Marx’s legitimate criticisms of capitalism turn into a solution which is essentially its doppelgänger, a scaled system of corruption with absolute authority with the rhetorical veneer of democracy.
pembrook 9 minutes ago [-]
This reads like an Onion headline.
Gosh, I hope the media never unearths the documents on my company.
They’ll learn that keeping my customers coming back was also my top priority. The horror!
If they dig a little deeper they might uncover a vast conspiracy, that every business on earth has been secretly conspiring for decades to give people a service so good they’ll come back again and again for it.
If this isn’t Pulitzer Prize winning journalism I don’t know what is.
dxuh 13 minutes ago [-]
I feel like this is ultimately uninteresting. This doesn't change anyone's image of these companies. We know they are evil. They have done worse and they will do worse. They never got a meaningful punishment and I have no reason to believe they will. All they get is outrage on the internet, which is effectively meaningless to them.
The files being examined right now shows me that there is nothing bad enough to actually make anything happen, no matter how absurdly evil it is. Are we too easily distracted? Or are we too used to inhumanity now? Or are the powerful simply more powerful than most of the rest of the planet?
Rendered at 19:20:37 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
The second one outlined for Meta is:
> Heavily-redacted undated internal document discussing “School Blasts” as a strategy for gaining more high school users (mass notifications sent during the school day).
This sounds a lot like Meta being intentionally disruptive.
The first one outlined for YouTube is:
> Slidedeck on the role that YouTube’s autoplay feature plays in “Tech Addiction” that concludes “Verdict: Autoplay could be potentially disrupting sleep patterns. Disabling or limiting Autoplay during the night could result in sleep savings.”
This sounds like YouTube proactively looking for solutions to a problem. And later on for YouTube:
> Discussing efforts to improve digital well-being, particularly among youth. Identified three concern areas impacting users 13-24 disproportionately: habitual heavy use, late night use, and unintentional use.
This sounds like YouTube taking actual steps to improve the situation.
And yet here we are years later without change. So we've got proof that they knew this and have done nothing. Don't need to speculate at all.
They made their wealth. They bought their politicians. In the worst possible case for them they would pay some fee that amounts to absolutely nothing making a dent in their personal day to day lives as a consequence of their actions.
It’s the cost of doing business these days. Do the wrong thing so long as you make more than enough money to cover the penalty fee.
Nothing to see here.
Probably, not definitely
It would be possible to put the executives in jail.
We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive. We seem to be fine with expanding gambling - where I live (not Nevada!) slot machines are everywhere. Nice restaurants even will dedicate corners to slot machines - not just seedy bars. Sports betting apps are all over streaming ads, and their legality is expanding even though when they are legalized in an area the divorce and loan default rates go up measurably.
Why would we regulate big tech if we don't bother with anything else?
The kids are just the latest victim of a long ongoing trend.
I’m pretty sure we do, in fact, ban under 18s from tobacco, alcohol, and real-money gambling.
this is doing a lot of heavy lifting for how loose we have become with under 18 questionable products.
Hmm, candy flavored vapes both for THC and nicotine. Teen psychosis from THC. Popcorn lung. Not so good it seems!
https://www.lung.org/research/sotc/by-the-numbers/8-things-i...
The idea that we don't regulate things would be shocking to the anti-regulation crowd, and the staffs at the FDA, FCC, etc.
Because it is simply wrong.
> AAA game companies have been reported to have psychologists on staff to help make their games more addictive. > We don't police big tobacco very well on making their products more addictive.
Three wrongs don't make a right I guess.
In the same way parents can be blamed for not keeping their children safe around guns/alcohol/drugs, they should also be blamed for not keeping the children out of digital dangers, and keep mandatory age verifications out of here.
It almost sounds like multiple parents from a large number of households need to collectively act in unison to address the problem effectively. Hmm collective action, that sounds familiar. I wonder if there’s a way to enforce such a collective action?
To be clear, I do agree that putting the ban on the software/platform side is the wrong approach. The ban should be on the physical hardware, similar to how guns/alcohol/tobacco which are all physical objects. But I don’t have the luxury to let perfect be the enemy of close enough.
Europeans have been saying that for what, 20 years now? How long does it have to not work before we stop saying that it's a realistic solution?
I don't want the russian-style ban enforced by ISPs
Probably punishing companies who pay YouTube for ads would work
But if people keep proselytizing that nothing will happen and all is hopeless, it's going to be hard to get people together to support a change. You and others here are doing the work of social media companies by spreading that - on social media. In fact, nothing can stop the public if they want something.
Teen/kid addiction to sugar was and is a priority.
Social networks is a sugar for minds.
My kids were born long before Obama took the office.
What's your point again? That president can't control the quality of the food in the country under their control?
This is quite the opposite of everything I've ever seen in my entire life in America.
Or perhaps since you mention sugar, not corn syrup, and list quantities in kilograms not pounds or tons, he suspects you may not actually have first-hand experience with this.
Sigh ( in canadian )
My theory is that the food tasted less flavorful, so people compensated by adding their own.
I don't eat a lot of junk food, but for a long time after the Obama administration, when I did partake, often my immediate reaction was "Wow. These aren't as tasty as I remember."
/I'm looking at you, Cool Ranch Doritos.
Sugar has been vilified for longer and more vociferously than social media use by kids, but that may be changing now.
[1]: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2026-01-07/trump-admin...
[2]: https://ajcn.nutrition.org/article/S0002-9165(23)02461-9/pdf
Elimination of processed sugar is a good thing.
Despite this, the discussion quickly pivoted to "how dare you keep poor children from enjoying birthday cake".
Untrue
My six year old grand child made up a food related game for me to play with them that involved penalties for choosing food with sugar.
Somebody is getting to them, good
“These unsealed documents prove Big Tech has been gaslighting and lying to the public for years
Ask any educator what the biggest positive change was to U.S. high schools in the 1970s and they'll probably answer that it was the ban on smoking in schools.
I expect a similar response in the future regarding bans on social media.
I guess things are different at Google now.
Gosh, I hope the media never unearths the documents on my company.
They’ll learn that keeping my customers coming back was also my top priority. The horror!
If they dig a little deeper they might uncover a vast conspiracy, that every business on earth has been secretly conspiring for decades to give people a service so good they’ll come back again and again for it.
If this isn’t Pulitzer Prize winning journalism I don’t know what is.
The files being examined right now shows me that there is nothing bad enough to actually make anything happen, no matter how absurdly evil it is. Are we too easily distracted? Or are we too used to inhumanity now? Or are the powerful simply more powerful than most of the rest of the planet?