Social Media Archives

February 27, 2023

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The Main Criticism – The main criticism I have heard is that I’m just another old man (I’m 59) shaking his fist and complaining about “kids these days,” when in fact “the kids are alright.”
Self-Reported Depression and Anxiety – Section 1 of the Collaborative Review summarizes self-report surveys that have been conducted at regular time intervals since 2010 or earlier. Do members of Gen Z *say* that their mental health is declining? Yes, in every study we can find.
Self-Harm – If Phillips and Friedman were correct that “the kids are alright” and the appearance of an epidemic is an illusion based on Gen Z’s “more honest relationship with their mental health,” then we would not see any change in objective measures of mental health, such as hospitalizations for self-harm, or deaths by suicide. But in fact, we do see such changes.
Suicide – Section 3 of the Collaborative Review doc presents the most tragic data of all: a large increase in the number of completed suicides. For suicide, the rates are always higher for boys and men. Girls and women make more suicide attempts, but they are more likely to use reversible means.
Conclusion – The evidence that this time is different is very strong. In 2010 there was little sign of any problem, in any of the long-running nationally representative datasets (with the possible exception of suicide for young teen boys). By 2015 the teen mental health was a 5 alarm fire, according to all the datasets that Jean Twenge and I can find. The kids are not alright.

Published February 24, 2023
Visit Chartbook to read Adam Tooze’s original post Chartbook #197: The Ukraine-Aid Reality Gap

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Announcing Forecasting Impact Mini-Grants [Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten]

By William McClain

In Scott Alexander [Astral Codex Ten]

February 27, 2023

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Section 230 is going before the Supreme Court: Are content recommendations covered like moderation? A loss for Google would be an opportunity for Congress to protect essential rights.
Section 230 Genesis: The law gives internet platforms legal immunity for almost all third-party content hosted on their sites.
Section 230 Implementation: There is widespread support in Congress for overhauling Section 230, but legislative efforts to do so have stalled amid partisan disagreements.
Gonzalez v. Google: The case was brought by the family of an American college student alleging that YouTube failed to take down some ISIS terrorist videos and even recommended them to users.
The Position on the Stack Matters for Moderation: At the top of the stack are the service providers that people publish to directly, with absolute discretion in their moderation policies, while ISPs are about access with no right to be heard.
Algorithmic Timelines and Recommendation Engines: The question in Gonzalez v. Google is whether platforms are liable for their recommendations. A win for Gonzalez would be a disaster for the way current platforms work.
Congressional Action: If Gonzalez wins the case, there should be no liability for posting a link and infrastructure companies should be given immunity to be content neutral.
The First Amendment and U.S. Speech Controls: Much of the discussion around moderation of content forgets that the First Amendment explicitly denies Congress any role in determining what is moderated and what is not.

Published February 24, 2023
Visit Astral Codex Ten to read Scott Alexander’s original post Announcing Forecasting Impact Mini-Grants

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New cracks emerge in Elon Musk’s Twitter [Casey Newton, Platformer]

By William McClain

In [Platformer]

February 24, 2023

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Governing

The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Twitter v. Taamneh, and appears unlikely to hand down a sweeping ruling about liability for terrorist content on social media.
The US Copyright Office said AI-generated images that were created using Midjourney should not have been granted copyright protection.
The Department of Justice is inching toward a lawsuit challenging Google’s dominant position in the market for digital maps and location information.
The FTC won’t challenge Amazon’s $3.49 billion acquisition of One Medical parent company 1Life Healthcare, and the deal will close later this week.
Federal officials are charging FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with bank fraud and operating an unlicensed money transmitter in addition to the eight counts he already faced.
The US Supreme Court declined to hear a bid from Wikipedia to resurrect its lawsuit against the National Security Agency challenging mass online surveillance.
For all his talk about transparency, Elon Musk hasn’t published a Twitter transparency report detailing government content removal demands.
The European Commission banned TikTok on government employee devices.
A shadowy cybersecurity company called S2T Unlocking Cyberspace is marketing its services, which include accessing someone’s phone and turning on their camera without their knowledge, for use against journalists and activists.
Chinese regulators told major Chinese tech companies they can’t offer ChatGPT services to the public.

Industry

Microsoft rolled out new safety measures for Bing that ends chats if prompted to talk about “feelings” or “Sydney.”
Microsoft just expanded access to the new Bing on Android, iOS, Edge mobile, and Skype.
Microsoft has been secretly testing its Bing chatbot “Sydney” for years.
Microsoft Edge is running an aggressive ad on the Chrome download page to dissuade people from switching.
TikTok stars are accusing Carter Agency, a talent agency for TikTok creators, of withholding money and concealing the rates of brand deals.
Elon Musk laid off dozens of Twitter employees across sales and engineering last week, after telling people repeatedly layoffs were done.
Russian propagandists are using Twitter’s new paid verification system to appear more prominently on the platform.
Meta is planning more layoffs and will push some leaders into lower-level roles to flatten the layers of management.
WhatsApp appears to be working on a “private newsletter tool.”
Meta, the personalized news reader built by Instagram’s co-founders, is officially open to the public.
Google is asking some employees to share desks and alternate days in the office, citing “real estate efficiency.”
YouTube Music released a new feature to allow users to create custom radio stations with up to 30 artists.
YouTube is rolling out access to multi-language audio tracks to more creators, allowing them to add dubbing to videos.
Spotify announced a new AI feature called “DJ” that will deliver a curated selection of music alongside AI-powered commentary using a “stunningly realistic voice.”
Social media is a major cause of depression and anxiety in teen girls, according to an analysis of major studies.
Ben Rubin, the founder of Meerkat and Houseparty, launched a new project called Towns — a protocol and decentralized chat app designed to facilitate self-owned, self-governed online communities.

Published February 24, 2023
Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post New cracks emerge in Elon Musk’s Twitter

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Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence. [Jon Haidt, After Babel]

By William McClain

In Uncategorized

February 23, 2023

141 views

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Most teen girls (57%) now experience persistent sadness or hopelessness, and 30% have seriously considered suicide – the CDC’s bi-annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey showed a substantial increase in these mental health issues since 2011.
COVID restrictions added little to the overall trends – teens were already socially distanced by 2019.
Social media is a potential cause – although evidence has been limited and mostly correlational.
The debate has shifted since 2019 – new research has indicated that social media is a substantial cause, not just a tiny correlate, of depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide.
Social media has network effects – which can create a cohort effect and a collective action problem.
The empirical debate has focused on the size of the dose-response effect – but much of the action is in the emergent network effects.
The Coddling of the American Mind (2018) mentioned the possible role of social media in Gen Z’s mental health issues, but concluded that more research was needed.
Orben & Przybylski’s study (2019) found that the average regression coefficient (using social media use to predict positive mental health) was negative but tiny, indicating a level of harmfulness so close to zero that it was roughly the same size as they found for the association of mental health with “eating potatoes” or “wearing eyeglasses.”
The Social Media and Mental Health Collaborative Review Doc (2019) compiled relevant studies and found that nearly all of the published studies fell into one of three categories: correlational, longitudinal, or experimental.

Thousands of adolescents reported how much time they spend on social media, or digital media more generally, and then reported something about their mental health.
The great majority of studies find a positive correlation between time on social media and mental health problems, especially mood disorders (depression and anxiety).
The relationships are tighter for girls; with correlation coefficients of roughly r = .20.
Amy Orben’s narrative review of many other reviews of the academic literature concluded that “The associations between social media use and well-being therefore range from about r = − 0.15 to r = − 0.10.”
Jeff Hancock and his team posted a meta-analysis in 2022, with data that went up through 2018, reporting very low associations (near zero) of social media use with some mental health outcomes, but with associations between r = .10 and r = .15 for depression and anxiety.
Longitudinal studies found evidence indicating causation in 25 of 40 studies (62.5%), but only 1 of the 7 studies that used a week or less found an effect. 33 studies used a month or more (20 were annual) and of these, 24 found a significant effect.
True experiments found evidence of a causal effect in 12 of 18 studies (67%), with college students or young adults randomly assigned to reduce their social media use for a while and then measured self-reported mental health outcomes, compared to the control group.

Conclusion: Social Media Is a Major Cause of Mental Illness in Girls, Not Just a Tiny Correlate

10 experiments found evidence that social media is harmful (80%) and two that did not.
6 quasi-experiments looking at real-world outcomes in real-world settings when the arrival of Facebook or high-speed internet created large and sudden emergent network effects, all six found that when social life moves rapidly online, mental health declines, especially for girls.
Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls.

Published February 22, 2023
Visit After Babel to read Jon Haidt’s original post Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls. Here’s the Evidence.

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America’s Culture Is Booming. Really. [Ted Gioia, The Free Press]

By William McClain

In [The Free Press]

February 18, 2023

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Jason Allen recently won an art competition with an AI-generated piece—just one example of our current culture boom time.
Our culture is just as important as politics, maybe even more so. And right now, some harsh truth-telling is needed.
The metrics for our culture have never been larger. A hundred thousand songs are uploaded daily to streaming platforms, 1.7 million books were self-published last year, 2,500 videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and there are now 3 million podcasts.
The supply of culture is huge, but the demand side of the equation is ugly. In many cases, the metrics have been shrinking or even collapsing, and there is an ocean of stuff out there, but consumers sip it through a narrow straw.
The most obvious saviors of culture are the large culture businesses, but they are the most cautious and risk-averse players in the whole culture ecosystem. They give grants to create more songs and poems and plays and books, but they hardly care one jot about building a smart, discerning audience for culture.
The future of culture lies in alternative culture, with platforms like podcasts, Bandcamp albums, YouTube channels, and Substacks. There are 36 YouTube channels with more than 50 million subscribers, and some of these are growing exponentially.
MrBeast has launched new music acts, and is likely to become a bigger force than Sony and Universal Music Group combined.
There are many other successful stories in alternative culture, although their metrics are often kept private.
Hundreds of start-ups are trying to revitalize our culture.
Alternative people and platforms are the only successful audience development force in contemporary culture.
We need a culture with hundreds or thousands of organizations doing audience development and outreach.
The MacArthur Foundation and other organizations should play a role in bringing good music, writing, film, and painting to a million people.
The real question is whether the huge dinosaurs like major record labels or movie studios will get on board.
We should support the arts by becoming discerning members of the audience.

Published February 18, 2023
Visit The Free Press to read Ted Gioia’s original post America’s Culture Is Booming. Really.

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The Tragic Mystery of Teenage Anxiety [Derek Thompson, The Atlantic]

By Spencer Chen

In [The Atlantic]

February 16, 2023

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• American teenagers, especially girls and LGBQ teens, are experiencing historic rates of anxiety and sadness.
• The Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that the share of teenage girls who say they experience “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” increased from 36 to 57 percent from 2011 to 2021.
• LGBQ teens are more likely to experience poor mental health, unstable housing or homelessness, bullying, and suicide attempts.
• The surge in teen anxiety has coincided with other behavioral trends that aren’t obviously bad, such as a decline in smoking, drug use, and drinking.
• Possible explanations for teen anxiety include social media, school shootings, climate change, and changes in parenting.
• The best evidence suggests that social media is not like smoking, but more of an attention alcohol.
• The relationship between rising LGBQ self-identification and rising LGBQ anxiety is complicated, with liberal and conservative explanations that are irreconcilable.
• Despite the ubiquity of “therapy-speak” on the internet, modern internet culture has adopted therapy-speak while repeatedly setting fire to the actual lessons of modern therapy.

Published February 16, 2023
Visit The Atlantic to read Derek Thompson’s original post The Tragic Mystery of Teenage Anxiety

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An Interview with Eric Seufert About Meta’s Earnings and the Google-DOJ Case [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen

In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]

February 2, 2023

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• Eric Seufert discussed Meta’s earnings and the Google-DOJ case.
• Meta’s earnings showed a decrease in revenue but a skyrocketing stock price.
• Seufert discussed the importance of increasing impressions and the corresponding decrease in price, as it crowds out competitors and provides more room to grow.
• He also discussed the four ways to increase ad revenue for an ad platform: increasing ad load, increasing reach, increasing the value generated by ads, and increasing time spent on site.
• Facebook has managed to increase engagement and ad load, and has introduced new ad placements to increase the value generated by ads.
• Increased ad load on Reels is justified, as it had no ads before.
• Facebook has created new ad formats, such as click-to-messaging, which have the potential to convert better than other ad formats.
• AI and machine learning are being used to automate the process of managing campaigns, eliminating human error and inefficiency.
• The black box automation suite, Advantage Plus, is used to test different permutations of audiences and creative to find the right mix.
• The application of AI and machine learning is more compelling from the advertising side than the consumer side.
• Generative AI can be used to create assets and interpret what works and what doesn’t.
• The end game is for Facebook to integrate these tools and do it for the advertiser.
• The duopoly of Google and Facebook is over, as brand advertising is moving onto the web from TV in a meaningful way.
Amazon is the one big exception, and ATT has been an accelerant for their ad business.
• Apple and Amazon are capturing direct response budget that has fled from Facebook.
• Facebook is trying to recapture some of those dollars by improving efficiency and engagement, and taking more of the human element away.
• Facebook reintroduced 28-day click attribution reporting, which is modeled, in order to comply with ATT.
• SKAdNetwork 4.0 is more signal, and the biggest platforms will benefit most from it.
• Apple may be shooting themselves in the foot with ATT, as they benefit from in-app purchases.
• ATT has caused a difficult transition for mobile gaming, but Apple may start providing better measurements and signals to help developers.
• Facebook’s earnings results validate the ATT Recession thesis, with revenue down 4% year-over-year.
• Recent decisions in Europe have been problematic for ad targeting, with Meta not allowed to use a contractual basis to get user agreement for ads, WhatsApp not allowed to use first party data for general analytics and security, and Voodoo Games not allowed to use the IDFV.
• The European Union is not likely to allow companies to offer services on terms they don’t want, and this could lead to decreased monetization in Europe.
• Activists and special interests may prevent the right thing from being done, preventing the use of AI technologies.
• The DOJ’s case against Google is that it used its end-to-end ownership of the ad tech stack to suppress competition and prevent other companies from being able to compete.
• The DOJ’s argument is flawed because it portrays supply as chasing demand, when in reality, it is the other way around.
• The DOJ’s chief harm demonstration is that publishers made more money than they should have, which is the only part in the stack where there is arguably lock-in.
• The counterfactual is not that advertisers would have gotten more margin on their ad spend, but that they would have been starved from incremental conversions if Google had not made this available at all.
• The remedy proposed by the DOJ is to split off the exchange and the publisher tool, which highlights the weakness in the case itself because Google Ads are first and foremost for Google Properties.
• Facebook is building up customer engagement to attract advertisers.
• Google divesting Google Ad Manager and AdX could lead to lower prices for publishers and higher prices for advertisers.
• Google is acting as a market maker, pricing long-tail traffic that would otherwise go unsold.
• Google’s data gives them an advantage in pricing, and they may be keeping the third-party ad business alive for the data rather than the revenue.
• Stricter privacy regulations benefit larger companies with more signal.
• Advertisers choose Google because they have no choice, but if Google had been more transparent about their practices, they may not be in as much trouble.

Published February 2, 2023
Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post An Interview with Eric Seufert About Meta’s Earnings and the Google-DOJ Case

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Instagram’s co-founders are mounting a comeback [Casey Newton, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen

In [Platformer]

January 31, 2023

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• Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the co-founders of Instagram, have created a new venture called Artifact, a personalized news feed that uses machine learning to understand user interests and will soon let users discuss articles with friends.
• Artifact is a kind of TikTok for text, Google Reader reborn as a mobile app, or a surprise attack on Twitter.
• The app opens to a feed of popular articles chosen from a curated list of publishers, and users can follow other users and comment on posts.
• The breakthrough that enabled Artifact was the transformer, which Google invented in 2017 and allowed machine learning systems to understand language using far fewer inputs.
• Artifact is attempting to do the same thing as TikTok, but for text, and is funded by Systrom and Krieger themselves.
• The company plans to include only publishers who adhere to editorial standards of quality, and will remove individual posts that promote falsehoods.
• The team of seven people working on the app includes Robby Stein, a top product executive at Instagram from 2016 to 2021.

Published January 31, 2023
Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post Instagram’s co-founders are mounting a comeback

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Meta’s EU Fine; First-Party versus Third-Party Data, Redux; The EU’s First Party Imposition [Ben Thompson, Stratechery]

By Spencer Chen

In Ben Thompson [Stratechery]

January 11, 2023

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• Meta Platforms Inc. was fined €390 million ($414 million) by the European Union’s main privacy watchdog for the way users’ data is used for personalized ads on its Facebook and Instagram units.
• The Irish Data Protection Commission found that Meta’s terms of service requiring users to accept personalized ads when signing up to the social media services violated EU rules.
• The EU ruling is not about third-party data, but rather first-party data; Meta argued that using first-party user data for advertising is integral to the service, and thus they can make access to their services contingent upon agreeing to letting one’s data be used for advertising.
• The EU disagreed, finding that Meta was illegally “forcing” users to let their data be used for personalized advertising.
• Meta must now offer personalized social networking to users without tying that to offering personalized ads, which is likely to have a broad impact on companies that use first-party data for advertising.

Published January 11, 2023. Visit Stratechery to read Ben Thompson’s original post.

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Why TikTok’s future has never been so cloudy [Casey Newton, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen

In [Platformer]

January 3, 2023

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• TikTok is currently the third most-downloaded free app on iOS and Google.
• 19 of the 50 US states have restricted access to TikTok on government computers.
• The US government has banned TikTok from devices under federal management.
• TikTok is attempting to reach a deal with the Council on Foreign Investment in the US to continue to own the company while putting user data, recommendation algorithms, and corporate governance into a kind of quarantine.
• An internal investigation found that ByteDance employees had used TikTok to record journalists’ physical locations using their IP addresses.
• This has undermined the goodwill the company spent the past few years cultivating and could give President Biden all the reason he needs to finish what Trump started.

Published January 3, 2023. Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post.

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Conclusion: Social Media Is a Major Cause of Mental Illness in Girls, Not Just a Tiny Correlate

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