alt Hacker NewsHook, hold, harvest and hide: Meta's alleged strategy laid out in first week
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I hope people can see Meta is funding the other side in order to get Child Safety laws passed so they can have an out when children use their parent's device and Meta spies on them. Child Safety laws are just mass surveillance in disguise which has always been Meta's game plan since day one.
Sounds like the lawyer's spinning what any successful business does with trying to acquire customers and serve their needs as though they were dealing drugs (granted, the line can be blurry between things that are simply enjoyable versus that which is more strongly addictive - some people get "addicted" to eating, but we can't really ban food, for example)
This HHHH strategy phrase is made up by these lawyers. It's not like the Microsoft version their mimicking where Microsoft actually said it. It makes the headline misleading like it alleges they said it internally as their strategy.
I think what's missing here is elderly.
Arguably, that's even more harmful.
I hate when people say things like “Google did this” or “Meta did that.” There are actual named humans making these decisions. I want them found and held accountable. As of late these people have more power than ever. A single contributor at a company like Meta can make a change that impacts 0.025% of users (potentially hundreds of thousands of people) with zero notice or oversight, for their own individual gain. Not even to mention the systemic decisions this article describes.
INT META BOARDROOM - DAY
Expensive Image Consultant: "It's vital we present a friendly, innocuous brand throughout what promises to be a long--"
Zuck: "We still got that scary fucker who looks like he just defends mobsters on retainer?"
Lackey: "We do, boss."
Zuck: "Think we're done here."
exeunt by taking off glasses
> The jury’s role is advisory, which means they will give recommendations to the presiding judge, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who will make the final decision on the verdict and damages.
What kind of trial is that, and what provision is there for it in the law? Who gets to choose that? The trial is in US federal court in Oakland [0].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/18/meta-chil...
This is oddly reassuring
> Rather than sticking to the facts or the law, the states have instead decided to chase an outlandish payout.
Those evil states!
Morals at Meta is an oxymoron.
No person with 'morals' would join this company in 2026, unless with the next RSU cliff, the morality hormone immediately gets triggered when the bank account reaches 7 figures.
In my opinion at least, any attempt to intentionally engineer addiction is morally wrong and should be at the very least civilly if not criminally actionable (if it can be proven).
It's mind control. That phrase is often associated with woo woo conspiracy theory, but I don't think that's hyperbolic. If you are engineering addiction, what you're doing is attempting to run a black hat security attack against the human central nervous system to violate a person's will and autonomy. That is the definition of mind control. Properly framed I think it's a form of assault, especially when deployed with deliberate concealment of motive or against children, the elderly, the mentally ill, anyone not strong enough to resist it.
The medium doesn't matter: addictive drugs, slot machines, web sites, social media apps, games. In that list I actually think explicitly labeled gambling stuff like Las Vegas is the least evil since at least in that case it's kind of up front and overt about what it is. I mean, it's a casino. WTF do you think a casino does? Hard drugs are kind of the same at this point. The thing that makes this case so awful is that people genuinely didn't know. Nobody including myself understood just how effective addiction engineering in a digital medium could be, and these companies were secretive about just how hard-core they were getting about studying and engineering this. They hired psychologists. There's stories of studies putting people in FMRI machines. It was a deliberate R&D program with the (secretive) stated goal of addiction.
The next thing important to understand is that businesses are structurally incapable of self-policing something with a profit incentive. I didn't say unwilling. I said incapable. Businesses, like all "corporate" entities (non-profits, governments, etc.) operate with a certain set of constraints, social customs, and rules, and for a business one of those is that they must earn revenue and/or attract investment to survive. If addiction results in revenue, then any business that refuses to engineer addiction will fail.
This is also why regulation of things like child labor, forced labor, safety requirements, etc. are required. If a safe workplace reduces profits than any company implementing a safe workplace loses to those who do not, etc.
BTW this is something a lot of "online Marxist" type anti-capitalists don't understand when they vilify business leaders. A business that doesn't do the profitable thing stops being a business. It's outcompeted by those who do the thing. The only way to stop these things is to universally police them, which levels the playing field and allows businesses who don't do the bad thing to keep operating. It's an instant race to the bottom because a business cannot not race.
So yeah... lots of words but I think this is an important issue and it's good that it's happening. I really hope an example gets made here, or that this at least raises awareness.
I think it's critically important that we start dealing with digital addiction engineering as an issue before the AI funding bubble pops. When that happens all the AI companies will have to look for other sources of revenue. Addiction engineering online became a thing after the dot.com bubble popped for exactly that reason. We already have AI driven addictionware in the form of digital partner apps and such, but if the AI investment gold rush stalls and we have a mass push for revenue among AI companies then with no policing here this will get really really bad.
A final moral to the story, I think, is that science f'ing works.
Like I said, it shocked me to see how much addiction a web site or a mobile app could create. Learning that it was deliberately engineered makes it less surprising.
Science works. When you apply the scientific method to an engineering goal, progress gets made, often dramatic progress. If the laws of physics and the nature of the system you're studying will allow it, you can get so far that the result can be shocking. Look at the hydrogen bomb. Look at aviation, space flight, AI, modern medicine. There's good and bad in there of course cause people do both good and bad things.
Which is why saying "we are going to apply science to make our product more addictive" should be criminal conspiracy. "We are going to apply science to do X" where X is some form of assault should be criminal. "We didn't think it would work that well" is a poor defense because I think at this point we should have learned that science works.
Side note: what the everliving fuxxorz is up with their cookie banner. It seems wildly illegal.
Enough that I'm not gonna read their shit ever again if they stick with THAT.
The only two options are "accept all" and "reject all and subscribe".
$META has everything it needs: the best distribution channels on the internet, a massive user base, GPU infrastructure, and an amazing, talented young team. I think $META will succeed.
In the opening sentence:
> according to a lawyer who is prosecuting the world’s largest social media company.
The headline makes it sound like something internal at Meta got revealed. The catchy four-H phrase is the clever hook the lawyer came up with to try to hold the jury’s mind through the case.
If you’re unfamiliar with how these trials work, the lawyers are trying to create a compelling narrative to support their case and catchy phrases that sound like marketing lingo are often used. This wasn’t some internal Meta doc that got revealed.