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Comment by ferminaut | Hacker News Reader

Facebook (and much of social media) is the modern day Philip Morris peddling addictive experiences...except the harm is way less obvious. Folks arent getting cancer, but they are wrecking their mental health. The difference is social media falls under the first amendment and is much harder to regulate.

It's a borderline national security issue, too.

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I think it’s a plausible argument. But shouldn’t we regulate the whole industry then instead of going after a single company?

Also there are clearly some benefits from social media so I wouldn’t want to get rid of all of it. For example messaging doesn’t seem so bad in terms of harm vs value. Or things like Facebook Groups that are more like discussion forums (even HN itself falls under this!)

Yeah I agree. Singling out the largest player is silly. We've basically given different nations the ability to control the thoughts of society. Social media hasnt been organic for a long time. Organic social media grows until it is consumed by bots and bad actors.

I dont think removing social media is a solution. I do think some sort of realID for social media that could identify every user is real & a certain age would be beneficial (think Worldcoin but not done by a private entity). I think this alone would solve a large issue around social media. The other requirement that should exist is some balanced discussion to remove the echo chamber effects. Amplifying only certain thought patterns is dangerous.

Take reddit for example. A single bot farm with 100 or so accounts can effectively manipulate entire communities.

> (think Worldcoin but not done by a private entity)

The problem with what Worldcoin was doing wasn't that they were a private entity.

yeah -- the concept of world ID if it worked is actually pretty interesting. I just dont trust Sam Altman/crypto/private industry to do it safely.

I can't think of any entity that I'd trust to do it safely. I'm far from convinced that it's even possible to do it safely.

> But shouldn’t we regulate the whole industry then instead of going after a single company?

Yes. The only problem I have with the government going after TikTok is that they should be going after the entire industry.

I keep waiting for someone to scream this out in one of the committee hearings. Going after one company and attempting to ban them from the country is pretty clearly Constitutionally dubious. But passing strict data privacy laws isn't. They must know this.

But shouldn’t we regulate the whole industry then instead of going after a single company?

You go after one company to establish legal precedent. Then you go after the whole industry.

It also helps that the company they started with is the largest in the industry, and that any regulations targeted at them will affect a couple billions people.

For sure. I sincerely hope we look back in 5-15 years (sooner the better) and are aghast at letting children and teens having unrestricted total access to social media. Hell, even adults I hope it is frowned upon - at least social media in its current state. It feels like it will be looking back at smoking and being like what the hell "you just LET people receive push notifications from the worlds largest companies who have teams of PhD data scientists optimizing the content delivery tho maximize your engagement (ie addiction) !?!? Fucking irresponsible!"

The content of social media is protected by the first amendment. Any specific business model isn't. You're not entitled to make money off of other people's speech... or data.

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