I only see social media as a bad thing for humanity. The less moderated, the worse it is.
It is an attention destroying device that is stealing humanity’s creativity, peace, and well being.
I cheer for each reform, and the more shortsighted and impractical, the better. I want it all to burn.
You argue that social media should be controlled. I can concede that point. The question is, who has control over it? If it's a politician or government, no thanks. If it's me, or you, or any adult or parent controlling it for themselves or their children, yes, by all means.
Why does Social Media suck? Maybe it's not because we don't have the right commercial entities running it. Maybe it's not because we don't have the right government rules regulating speech on it. Is the real problem with Social Media (and modern technology like idiot-proof cell-phones) that it's now possible for every low-IQ idiot out there to provide their (almost always) useless opinions to more people than the qualities of their ideas merit?
To make a long conversation short, most people are not that bright and have no serious useful ideas to add to any discussion outside of personal discussions about family and friends. When it comes to political discussions as an example, most people can (at best) parrot slogans they hear from politicians. Yet the Internet is flooded with political opinions anyway.
Why was the Internet a haven around say 2003? It's because most dumb people didn't have a computer with Internet access yet and it wasn't accessible to the average person. The Internet was great only when the idiots of the world weren't on it. You didn't need complicated rules or structures when the average online user was a smarter person.
4chan (despite whatever flaws it has) is still relatively good for some types of discussions because the immediately unintuitive UI makes it relatively inaccessible for dumb people.
HackerNews is relatively good because while the UI is pretty good, the culture and topics discussed make it inaccessible to dumb people.
Is this accessibility the real issue with Social Media and the Internet in general?
I don’t disagree, but it’s irrelevant to how I feel. The point is that the apps themselves are designed to destroy our minds. It doesn’t matter if you have valuable things to say.
I myself don't have extra money to give Twitter, for example... and thus its utility for me is going to take a huge hit as the new rules take effect.
Social media isn't bad... social media moderated by AI to maximize engagement (and thus profit) is downright evil.
Most communication is computer mediated, the poor kids won't be heard.
Aside from that flippant line there is nothing wrong with being an accelerationist. If you think something is happening or going to happen then it is fine to make it happen faster and harder.
Something else governments should ban: smartphones. They won't even consider it since they'd lose that surveillance apparatus.
There is good that we want to keep. But you're right that there are also bad effects. In some peoples' lives, the bad outweighs the good by a large amount. It would be really cool if we could fix the bad effects without removing the good...
I visited my daughter at the hospital yesterday and her roommate's TV was tuned to a 24/24 news channel that seemed entirely focused on countering Russian disinformation and propaganda with… their local variants. The excitement of all those talking heads at the prospect of a nuclear arm wrestling was palpable. An interesting contrast with their audience's general inability to do anything constructive with all that "information".
Only? That is some black and white thinking.