alt Hacker NewsAs someone else noted "Hook, hold, harvest and hide" is the framing from the plaintiffs. There likely wasn't some twirly mustached executive giving a presentation with those words on the slide deck. Instead the "decisions" made are far more banal. Shareholders wants growing revenues and users, executives tell their subordinates to implement those objectives, and it eventually hits the ICs where they're tweaking the color of the buttons to be maximally engaging. All these tweaks cumulatively makes the product addicting, but it's not like making meth or cigarettes where it's addicting from day 1.
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TheOtherHobbes • today at 3:24 PM
It is exactly like that, and future generations will see it like that.
> There likely wasn't some twirly mustached executive giving a presentation with those words on the slide deck.
why oh why are giving them the benefit of the doubt? There was in fact a twirled moustache executive.
> Internal chats within the company stated, “Oh good, we’re going after <13 year olds now? Zuck has been talking about that for a while…targeting 11 year olds feels like tobacco companies a couple decades ago (and today). Like we’re seriously saying ‘we have to hook them young’ here.”
> Even after determining internally that teen safety was a massive problem on its platforms, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, “teen time spent be our top goal of 2017.”
> One internal email from September 2018 indicates that, according to Meta, “The lifetime value of a 13 [year old] teen is roughly $270 per teen.”