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Comment by FractalHQ | Hacker News Reader

As someone 8 years sober from social media, I’m convinced the benefits of banning it would far outweigh the cost.

Out of interest, what's your definition of social media? Because mine is a site / app whose value is derived from its users, where users are all of (roughly) equal importance. Which puts forums / reddit / hacker news into that category.

You can quibble about definitions, but I'd say it's got a lot to do with being personalized. So anything where you need to know something about the viewer in order to optimise what to show each individual. That can be for anything from the content itself to the advertisements, if you need to know something about who is watching, it's what we currently think of as social media.

FB, Instagram, TikTok, but also Google search, and every ad supported site.

Not WhatsApp or the chat services, interestingly.

Sounds a lot like, "I stopped drinking because it became a problem, so everyone else should too."

Drinking causes severe societal ills and is unhealthy in any amount. Everyone should indeed stop drinking. We should tax alcohol until it is unaffordable for the vast majority.

I'm glad the vast majority of people disagree with you. I will continue to drink when I want to. Everyone should not stop drinking.

The world would be better off without widespread use of alcohol. It's not even a question, everything else similar, a society that chooses not to drink alcohol would have a social, economical, and psychological edge over one which does. Individuals are better off if they don't drink, it's just not good.

I wouldn't advocate for a ban on alcohol, it's much too ingrained in culture and too easy to make, but I hope that society some day gets to the point that it rejects it, much like we reject huffing shoe polish.

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