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How do you have such stunning confidence that you're replying to someone who knows 'nothing about' the subject matter? Maybe he's a neuroscientist.

I think YOU are the one showing stunning confidence in something you know nothing about (op's area of expertise. Unless you know them personally. Then ignore me).


It doesn’t need to be perfect - it just needs to be as effective as a human CEO… luckily, many human CEOs suck at their job


Is the average CEO worse at their job than the average software engineer is at theirs? I highly doubt it.


It’s apples to oranges at the end of the day, the question is why can one be automated and not the other.


At a certain point, can a judge just please rule that Meta has lost its right to do business in the United States? It repeatedly ignores rulings and has lost credibility when it claims that it will change its practices. I don't see why they 'need' to exist. Another, more responsible social media platform company would quickly spring up in its place if it were dissolved.


Not before holding Zuck personally responsible economically for all the social disarray, psychological damage, addiction, mental instability, self image issues, spyware delivered over ads, addictiveness-by-design.-


If Zuck is personally responsible for everything, then no one else at Meta is, which mean Zuck will be ruined, but the company will continue doing its nasty things, with someone else at its head.

That's why companies are fined and not just one person.


Fair point - I did think about that. Fine I to bankruptcy first. Then Zuck.-


To be fair, addiction is the problem of the users which have nothing better to do than scroll the app.

To protect teens, Apple, Google and Microsoft must implement one-click "child mode" and block installing or accessing social network in this mode. It is stupid to blame Meta for what is parents and OS developers responsibility. An app should not require selfie and a passport to use it.

UPD: Indeed the subject is selfies and passports, let me quote [1]:

> As part of the case, Torrez was seeking to force Meta to overhaul its apps by implementing features like effective age-verification technologies, altering recommendation algorithms that don’t compromise child well-being and making other modifications that result in “fundamentally restructuring how Meta is allowed to do business in the state,” the AG said at a press briefing before the second phase of the trial began.

> In addition to the abatement fund, Thursday’s order requires Meta to continue improving “age assurance models and tools in New Mexico” using AI, and to attempt “to develop, within two years, a dedicated under-13-years-of-age prediction model.”

First, children should not be on Facebook, second, there should be no selfies (which is what states want) but instead a one-click "child mode" set up by parents without any selfies.

Also note how journalists hide the main issue deep in the text so that by seeing the header you do not get the real issue and be deceived. Typical propaganda trick.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/06/meta-to-pay-into-567-million...


> addiction is the problem of the users which have nothing better to do than scroll the app

- 1996 Purdue Pharma "began a massive marketing campaign", based on a "unique claim" for OxyContin, with FDA permission, that, "as a long-acting opioid, it might be less likely to cause abuse and addiction than shorter-acting painkillers like Percocet."

- 3 February 2021 Consultancy McKinsey and Company agreed to pay $573 million to 47 state governments to settle claims it advised "Purdue Pharma and other drug makers to aggressively market opioid painkillers."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_opioid_epidemi...

give it 25 years i guess


That doesn’t quite explain why eg parents are scrolling instead of being attentive to their kids (something that our brains are wired to pay attention to), people are scrolling instead of paying attention while driving, riding a bike, or walking Even people on their job watch youtube instead of paying attention while riding a train so that they don’t miss red lights (I’ve read of a couple of instances in the news), etc

Apparently, there’s somthing so addictive that our society cannot function properly with everyone glued to screen microdosing dopamine into their brains.


Indeed, I’m impressed Apple dodges the blame for creating the hardware that enables the addiction just as much as the apps.


Also Amazon for selling smartphones. Let's blame everybody so the true responsible for the algorithms can continue getting away with it.


> To be fair, addiction is the problem of the users which have nothing better to do than scroll the app.

That is not fair at all. Meta spent millions A/B testing and engineering the most addictive product possible. On purpose.

It is entirely fair to blame them for the addictive result. And for outrage they intentionally engineer too.


Not at all, the problem is with the apps that are carefully designed to create that in users.


Nobody forces the user to use the app. And from the screenshots I see online, Meta's app, Threads is used mostly by adult people to post dating stories and jokes. Do not consider this dangerous. Instagram is also used mostly by adults. As for Facebook, I do not know who uses it.


You needn't shill for big tech companies; on the contrary, good and sensible regulation has been eroded by all the lobbying efforts these monopolists have done and the pressure of the faux-conservatives that portray themselves as victims of persecution against their free speech rights (when they had been correctly flagged as posting harmful content or hoaxes [0]).

[0]: https://youtu.be/nf7XHR3EVHo


But if Facebook made feed less addictive, would not it become more boring and hard-working Joe would not be able to have a rest after a working day?


There are a couple of fallacies you've managed to bundle there:

1. Doomscrolling Facebook/Instagram is not equivalent to rest

2. Although rest is a good reward for a hard day's work, you're conflating Social Media Usage with resting, which has been proven to be detrimental to overall well-being [0], and associated with poor sleep quality (i.e. detrimental to rest).

3. You were saying that addiction was a user problem, but now you're acknowledging the addictiveness of the platform

Your response may have been facetious and sarcastic, but your previous replies suggest that that wasn't the case.

[0]: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12529-025-10411-9...


It's better than vodka, right? Right?


  > To be fair, addiction is the problem of the users 
You're not wrong, per say, but it feels like saying the crack epidemic is the fault of the users, when there's lots of auxiliary factors. There's way more social pressure for social media. Really we're even actively encouraging "crack use" here. There's tv ads and lots of public support. Hell, anyone that deleted their Facebook (especially around or before the Cambridge Analytica scandal) knows how sticky the platform is. Network effects aren't nothing. Hell, just getting my friends to talk to me on Signal rather than WhatsApp or Facebook messenger (which I don't have) is a pain.

You're not wrong that it's an addiction but there's a big difference between a person being addicted to something and a society being addicted. The response should be different because the situation is different


In the US they first responded with "personal responsibility" but as the drug epidemic started to really impact society it was the Republicans of all people who founded the DEA...


lots of people have better things to do and still scroll the app


One could go into a reasonable argument about how, people, when given a more stimulating set of activities available, would avoid doom scrolling themselves to death. That misses the point, though perhaps valid: The point here is that a loophole in our reward-machinery became widely abused for profit, after having almost hijacked interpersonal communication while masquerading as a social utility, thus performing what might be the most harmful, misleading, insidious bait-and-switch ever imposed upon mankind.-


I read about New Mexico decision and the court ordered to implement age verification. Addiction is just an excuse.


I personally enjoy knowing all of them and all of us using the internet for anything other than just looking up the time are teaching AI how to not weigh the importance or believability of a thing.


Losing WhatsApp would be pretty painful for me, personally.


There will be something else


Considering it was all done intentionally and on behalf of Israel; No.


I have bought every generation of Xbox since the original (I had it in 2005). This is a dealbreaker for me. Won’t be buying their next gen system.


My rule is: I only let AI code for me, I don’t let it think for me.

Since writing is thinking, coding is thinking since coding is writing. That means any time I am not certain how I’m gonna implement some feature or bug fix, I have to code it myself because that’s the only way I can force myself to think through it. Only when I get to a point where I’m line “ok I know exactly what to do now- all that’s left to do is type it out” that’s when AI can be employed - essentially as a autocomplete.

This is only for projects where I will be held responsible for outcomes and must understand how it works. For hackathon / personal projects, I vibe away.

I also use AI to brainstorm at the outset of the task when I don’t know where to start at all.

Is this inefficient? My take: no. It’s maximally efficient. Over the long term it gives me an edge over any teammates who just vibe code everything because I actually, you know, understand how stuff works. I become the guy who can save the day at 3am when the team’s business critical app goes down. I become the guy that gets pulled into meetings so the suits can ask “is this possible?”. I see opportunities and problems before my teammates because I have a relationship with our code and system that they never took the time to develop or think about.


Can someone make an AI agent to target automating tasks of upper management already so they feel the pain as well?

You don’t need to even replace them outright, just make your agent so effective that [big tech company] requires fewer VPs and GMs etc.

Modern frontier LLMs are incredibly good at all types of knowledge work - this should be possible with enough elbow grease


I feel like thats impossible - in the end the reason we have those useless roles is to have someone to shift the blame to


I've seen too many situations where upper management somehow pins a situation on someone. They also play a part in layoffs. So, I'm not sure shifting the blame to upper management is happening.


Blaming an AI model that can't even remember what it did is even easier than blaming a person.


Computers and AIs can't be held responsible.


Yall are missing my point - you don’t gotta replace the upper management - they will continue to hold the responsibility for outcomes and problems like they do today.

There will just be like 75% fewer of those individuals because they all can do so much more per head


Awesome animations!


thanks a lot


That question is probably what inspired someone to create the first ever derivatives market


Great piece, but it misses the elephant in the room: the lion's share of economic benefit from refactoring will come from the fact that it makes it easier for humans to understand. That means 3am pages get resolved faster, fewer bugs will end up in prod, and your team can ship faster than your competition - gaining a leg up in the market. Most importantly, folks will be more comfortable accepting responsibility and ownership of a system when they understand it... this means that if/when something goes wrong, people will more quickly jump in and fix it, and when things could be better, folks will jump in and improve it.


The final user-facing responses are usually a tiny fraction of the total tokens used over the course of a given conversation turn. When you're doing any real work, reasoning and tool uses constitute the overwhelming majority of the tokens in / out... not the final user-facing response.


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