Summary
A Danish study found Instagram’s moderation of self-harm content to be “extremely inadequate,” with Meta failing to remove any of 85 harmful posts shared in a private network created for the experiment.
Despite claiming to proactively remove 99% of such content, the platform’s algorithms were shown to promote self-harm networks by connecting users.
Critics, including psychologists and researchers, accuse Meta of prioritizing engagement over safety, with vulnerable teens at risk of severe harm.
The findings suggest potential non-compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act.
Guess its time to ban them too. Since the last social media ban was bipartisan Im sure this one will happen quickly /s
To be clear the last ban was a ByteDance ban, not a TicTok ban. If ByteDance sells off it’s portion of TikTok, TikTok would be able to remain.
But in this case, the Section 230 needs to re-visited. It was written before social networks started algorithmically deciding what to show people. It needs to be adapted so these companies can be held liable for the content they “recommend” to users. Once they can be sued for their algorithm’s decisions, those algorithms will magically get better. Or at least less harmful.
I feel like we need a phrase for this.
“It’s the algorithm, stupid!”
And if they can be sued for algorithmic recommendations at all, I feel like their resort would be going back to pure “user” recommendation like community managed feeds, following other’s recs and such. Which would kill SO MANY birds with one stone.
If the courts were competent, it would already be the case.
Not really. Because the law gives them quasi common-carrier protections. So they can’t be held liable by the courts.
That made sense at the time; When the feed was just a simple reverse chronology of whatever you decided to subscribe to. But now, they actually decide what you see and don’t. The laws need to catch up.