Instagram, Eating Disorders, Friedman's BS, And Democratic Control of The Economy

It is astonishing to me that we allow firms to simply do whatever they want. Meta has research that shows that Instagram, owned by Meta, will show “eating disorder” content to teens more often after they express feeling bad about their body. Teens that don’t have those feelings about Instagram content did not see the harmful content at nearly the same rate. Why the difference? Almost certainly because Meta, the parent of Instagram, believes such harmful content will keep those teens engaged on the platform.

It should not surprise you that Meta did not appear to change this behavior when the information came to their attention. The content highlighted by the researchers is not against the rules but is so disturbing to normal people — people who are not in control at Meta, in other words — that the researchers put content warnings on them. The best that a spokesperson for Meta could manage was a tepid statement that they are committed to showing only PG-13 content to teens, something that would not necessarily ban the content in question. Also, again, note that the content is not banned. Meta appears more committed to keeping teens on the application than protecting them.

I blame Milton Friedman.

Friedman was the economist who popularized the idea that the only obligation of a corporation as to maximize shareholder value. Before that noxious notion became popular, corporations — things that are wholly created by the law, I remind you, and given advantages by said law for the purpose of assisting the economy of the society that created them — understood that the benefits they enjoyed conferred upon them obligations to all of their stakeholders. They owed something to their employees, to their communities, and to their shareholders — because all of them contributed to the special status they enjoyed. Friedman argued that by focusing on profit for shareholders over all else, the common good would be protected. That was bullshit, and Friedman must have known it was bullshit.

It is easier to juice profits by pushing the costs of doing business onto society rather than pay them yourselves. It is easier to make money by gutting the long term prospects of the firm than building a sustainable company. It is easier to make money as a monopolist than in competition. It is easier to make money by gutting pay than by dealing with unions. It is easier to make money by cheating customers then dealing with them honestly. It is easier to make money by buying back stocks than by creating sustainable growth. But by pretending that such actions are good for the society that created the corporation in the first place, Friedman created the space for bad people to leverage the benefits of corporations to their own benefit regardless of the cost to the rest of us.

Which brings us back to Meta. We know that they are prone to doing these sorts of things. They contributed to at least one genocide, and have done this kind of harmful content before. They hide behind maximizing shareholder value, and because we have allowed Friedman and his similarly evil disciples to warp our conception of what is appropriate to allow in an economy, they get away with it.

It is beyond argument that algorithmic social media is harmful on every level. This study is just one more pile on the already enormous pile of evidence proving it so. Any sane society would have banned such algorithms a long time ago. The good news is, we still can.

The market is not a naturally occurring system like gravity or Jerry Jones screwing up the Cowboys. It is the creation of people and it’s purpose is to benefit all of society. And that means when actors in the market abuse it, society has the obligation to adjust those rules to protect itself. And that means when social media corporations use algorithms to harm their users to make money, to outlaw those practices to protect those users. That is the higher goal.

Whatever Milton Friedman would think.