Netflix’s The Social Dilemma highlights the problem, but what’s the solution?

You can immediately help yourself, right now by being aware of the true nature of "free" services. Awareness is a great first step.

Next comes actively managing your intake of information, by doing a bit of curation, instead of letting someone else's algorithm do it for their profit. For example, if you're using Facebook, you can use ...book.com/?sk=h_chr in a web browser to show your feed in fairly strict reverse chronological order. Youtube subscripts work the same way. Sure, it's ok to just let them feed you cool stuff when you're tired... like junk food, a little is ok.

When you post, do it in more than one place. If you haven't already done so like a decade ago, start a blog, and post the insights you've found and don't mind making public there, don't worry at all about hits or traffic... it's a diary you can search or refer to later instead of saying the same thing over and over. Cross-posting is a low effort way to avoid disruption should a walled garden implode. You've already written the post, why not copy/paste it elsewhere and tweak it slightly?

Survivalists preppers anticipate the collapse of society... Internet Survivalists anticipate the collapse of walled gardens, and plan appropriately.

I don't think it's a single solution but rather a lot of little adjustments. I think Instagram's "You're all caught up" notification is helpful as is Apple's weekly usage report.

Some other ideas

- Lock screen notifies you how many times you've unlocked your phone that day / how long it's been since you've unlocked your phone

- browsers / apps notify you how much time you've spent on that site / app that day, or how long it's been since you last checked that site / app

I'm sure the combined efforts of HN could drum up some other optimizations.

Personally, I've introduced some speed bumps for myself. If I want to use Instagram, Pinterest, or Reddit I have to download them and login. When I'm done browsing I delete them from my phone.

Some days I download them multiple times, other times I reach for my phone and think "ugh, it's not worth it to me to download again. I'll just wait until I really want to check and I'm more likely to see something new."

Have there ever been government interventions that have managed to improve anything in a situation like this? It seems to me like every new technology has its detractors trying to ban it or limit it in some way.

People thought reading and writing would rot our memories (don't have to remember things anymore), radio would kill reading, TV would atrophy our brains (it was called 'the idiot box' while I was growing up), video games would lead to violence, and so on. All of the dangers were vastly exaggerated.

Stop using social media. Help your friends and family move to alternative communication channels. If you own your site, remove any kind or Facebook of social integration.

While there is no regulation, you need to vote through elimination of these parasite services from your day to day activities.

People should look more at neurobiological solutions. Addiction comes from brain chemistry.

That doesn't necessarily mean the solution is drugs. Even certain vitamins are precursors to neurotransmitters. The form of Vitamin B6 known as P5P is a precursor to dopamine, as well as Vitamin C. I notice that these help me whenever I feel drained from social media.

I imagine with much better understanding and study of this, we could limit the damage.

But some of the most obvious tricks like infinite scrolling and autoplay could/should be controlled by users, and off by default.

A fundamental right to own your data. I think the U.K. is going in a good direction with their laws but the compliance portion of their laws are too weak. If a company won’t give you your data the executives should go to jail, otherwise with only fines it’s just a pay-to-play crime scheme.

Privacy protections are great, but as long as there is an ad-based funding model, there will be incentive to circumvent them. You have to stop this at the source — by eliminating ad revenue.