this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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It raises the question what does or doesn't count as an addictive feed. I bet this doesn't specify any particular dark pattern or monetization model.
If we gave half a fuck about mental wellnes regarding mobile use, we would have addressed all this when it was particular to mobile games.
No, this is about our kids learning early how fucked society is, and how their own generation is being fed a pro-ownership-class indoctrination regimen before being appointed a string of dead-end toxic jobs.
Social media is how we learn about the genocide in Gaza, police officer-involved homicide rates, and unionization efforts. and that is why we want kids off social media.
Don't make me put up the koala cartoon again.
I agree with the first two paragraphs, but the rest really feels like you projecting your political and social outlook on the situation.
Social media provides and strengthens biased worldviews and confirmation bias. If you stick to social media, you'll think violent crime is rapidly increasing (in the US), but it's actually down. It's still a problem, but it's being used to push political agendas that don't actually solve the problem. For example, banning bump stocks, which are almost never used in mass shootings (most of those are handguns), and make guns way less accurate. Only enthusiasts get them, and pretty much only for range use. And you also have to pull the trigger each time, it just makes that easier (can get the same effect with a rubber band...). It's also how we got the anti-vax movement and various other conspiracies.
Social media is one way to get less censored news, but it's unreliable and tends to lead to echo chambers. We should instead be pushing to get government and political bias out of news reporting (or at least make bias explicit), not protect the less trustworthy, biased social media based news sources. There are countless examples of large social media sources providing incorrect information, and never correcting it, and the false information gets more views than the correct information. Social media drives people toward radicalization, and it's largely how we got Trump.
Social media is a liability. Mobile games are too. Parents should be restricting their children's access to both (we do), and instead teaching children to recognize bias and find good information (we're working on that, but they're still young).