Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

bko

> Then I started to recognize that its predatory and actually not benign or harmless. It is taking advantage of people.

Can't this be applied for most jobs in social media, advertising, lending and discretionary spending?

View on HN

Sure can, many of us avoid jobs in social media, ads and lending for that reason

We are getting at least something useful from social networks. Like, actual social networking.

What you dont think safemoon brings you safely to the moon ?

Several years ago I would prefer to wait for some lay people to get safely to the moon and then decide for myself. Currently I think that the only people who will make it to the moon are founders and maybe first couple of layers of their Ponzi pyramid.

A fairer comparison will be gambling, sports games and drugs.

Sure I guess since they're voluntary. Much harder to opt out of big social media or ad agencies. But that makes my point even stronger since no one is forcing cryptocurrencies down your throat.

Social media has benefits (as much as we love to hate it) whether you agree or disagree. Crypto at this point is scams and get rich quick schemes. Not the same comparison.

Crypto has benefits. It's entertaining and some projects are kind of clubs which is fun for the participants. Also the technology is interesting at least to me. I learned a lot playing around with smart contracts and writing bots.

Some people get hurt and you could think the scammer portion outweighs the benefits. But saying there are no benefits is wrong

But, isn’t the key distinction that this is an unregulated space, which is heavily manipulated. Crypto investors cannot make proper informed decisions, because they are being mislead or outright lied to, and cheated, at a near constant rate. It’s optional for them to be sure, but they are being tricked.

You put a lot of faith in regulations. Take lottery for instance. It's almost entirely controlled by states in the US and they prey on the most vulnerable. They even have state gambling apps now so there's virtually no restriction when and how much you play.

I don't know how much sports gambling is regulated but I doubt its meaningful. Gambling is dangerous because a certain personality cannot control themselves. What can regulation do? Put a little warning? Make sure the house advantage is no more than X? That's not what makes gambling dangerous.

Drugs are same story. Heavily regulated to their detriment. At least with illegal drugs you know it's dangerous and could be abused. But when a doctor prescribes you heavy pain killers for a simple injury, it's not obvious how dangerous they are.

As drugs are dangerous for those predisposed to substance addiction, betting games dangerous to those predisposed to gambling addiction, crypto is dangerous for people who are predisposed to non-regulation addiction. I've seen far too many people addicted to the fantasy of non-regulation and it's effects that it's hard to find sympathy, but I try to stay grounded in viewing it as the disease it is.

One reason to have state-run lotteries is as a harm reduction tactic to keep organized crime out of it.

> no one is forcing cryptocurrencies down your throat.

But they are planning to.

Social media maybe, advertising not always (having been on the other side, thank god for advertising matching us with eventually happy customers), lending can be but also can help expand a business so...

Absolutely. I vowed over a decade ago to never work for social media. The data is coming in, and boy, was that the right decision. I've read in the last year:

* An Ugly Truth

* The Coddling of the American Mind

* Stolen Focus

It is horrifying what this does to us.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com