Anything to avoid holding big tech accountable and having to learn parental controls, eh?
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social media laws are a treatment of a symptom, not the cause.
meta/tiktok/google capitalize by maximizing engagement, most lucratively outrage (risking ideological polarization) and addiction (many health harms associated). five years ago, this was very different, before the sudden takeover of short form media. now, surveys are indicating that average screen times of children are nearing 8 hours a day.
the need to address this dire situation is the greatest is has ever been historically.
yet, banning it outright (aside from the heinous privacy violations) does not entail any accountability whatsoever for these large corporations in creating highly addictive and harmful social media platforms that have consumed our youth
further, without changes to the structural incentive of maximizing profit, these companies will continue to maximize engagement, and thus addiction to what is a harmful way to spend 8 hours of a day.
i am hopeful that the lawsuit happening in northern CA against meta will result in some decision ruling these engagement maximizing tactics illegal.
i also hope that voters will choose candidates in the future that will pass legislation preventing these products from existing, leaving platforms that are actually productive to society, decentralized, and (most importantly) non-profit.
Yeah, kids won't get groomed, killed, and capitalized.
Social manipulation slop ≠ the internet. Anyone that tells you otherwise wants kids oppressed.
Biometrics shouldn't exist. Now tell iPhone & Android users to cease faceapp & fingerprinting themselves.
Let's stop the global elite from fucking them first. How about that?
What a weird false dichotomy. A planet with well over 7 Billion people can do at least two things at once.
edit: Not that I support age checks on social media, in any way. That is a bad idea for myriad reasons. For-profit corporate social media is probably the worst technological development since nukes... mutually assured distraction.
What a weird false dichotomy. A planet with well over 7 Billion people can do at least two things at once.
You are correct in general, but one cannot do two things at once when the first thing is (at least, arguably) a necessary prerequisite to the second thing.
Maybe we should figure out what is so awful about social media that we think children shouldn't be subjected to it, and ask if it's any less bad for adults. Idk
"The world" (lawmakers, politicians, big tech, military, intelligence agencies) doesn't give 2 shits about children, they want control of the internet.
How about instead of banning kids from social media we ban the degenerates actively grooming into joining unnatural subcultures from social media.
You know ... like Turning Point USA, PragerU, and the various "alpha male" / incel influencers.
The world doesn't.
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