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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

But what do we do with that information? Un-invent social media, ban it? How would such a ban work and what should it cover?

At this point I feel like we should pick a time in history, say the late 1930s or 1940s, somewhere around there, and use that as a frame of reference. Any new technology would be assessed based on the value added to average persons life, vs. the overall cost to society and the planet. Only if it hit a certain threshold is it to be implemented. Social media is out right away, negative impact on individual and society and provide little value that postcards and "letters from the readers" didn't already cover.

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That's a very romantic approach ("good old times"), but it's fundamental broken even if we could implement it.

The late 1930s and 1940s weren't exactly the greatest time to be around, and using that as a yardstick sets us up for a large downhill climb. And then there's the problem that often, changes interact with each other, and their full value (or cost) is only clear when it's together with other inventions.

You can't ask "what would social media in a 1930s society be like, what's the impact". It requires the existence of computers, of the Internet, of ubiquitous device access. These require advanced electronics, rocketry, etc etc.

This also goes in the opposite direction - a "social media is out right away" would end up leaving a ton of people completely isolated. It can't be simply undone, the genie is out of the bottle. (It might also require removing all group texts apps, and you go from there)

We can only do what we've always done - assess risks before implementing, possibly implement, assess actual changes after implementing. There is no idyll we can return to. Only daily work to make things better.

> That's a very romantic approach ("good old times"),

My grandfather used to say: So when was the good old times, because I don't remember them? He was born in 1921.

The point of picking a somewhere in the past would be to avoid debating which things we'd want to get rid of, and instead focus on which technologies would we have adopted, if we had the current knowledge of it's ramifications. E.g. we'd skip the mass adoption of internal combustion engines and go for EVs if we had the full future vision and technology in 1940, so we should get rid of gas and diesel cars.

To it was just to have a reference point where living standards where fairly high and where most of us wouldn't be completely lost, and use that as a starting point for judging the value of various technologies.

> assessed based on the value added to average persons life, vs. the overall cost to society and the planet.

Cost presupposes value. If I'm the buyer in a transaction, I am trading value in exchange for value. The 'cost' is value that I am parting with.

I'm making this pedantic argument to say "cost to society or the planet" is the same as saying that "society" and "the planet" value things, and that those values are at odds with what the individual values.

The concept of "value" presupposes the question "of value to whom and for what?" Only individual people can value things. "Society" is just an arbitrarily defined group of individuals, each with their own values. So at best, what "society" values is what the majority of the individuals within that group value. And "the planet" is a rock. It values nothing.

While I don't think it's your intent, this word game (what "society values") is often used as a sneaky way of justifying transferring value from certain individuals to other individuals. Whoever gets to "represent society" gets to place their values first and claim that it's OK to target the individuals that are "costing society."

The way to approach the issue of social media causing damage is to demonstrate that it is providing a dis-value to all individuals and that each and every individual has healthier alternatives that they can choose that present a greater net value. In some extreme cases, if there is no healthy alternative, and the majority of individuals decide that the dis-value is great enough, they may vote to pass legislation to make the "thing" in question either more expensive or illegal ... such as with the case of tobacco for example.

Banning dragnet spying and/or making retaining data about people very risky, has some chance of killing algorithm-feed social media (by drying up ad dollars) and would be a good thing to do anyway.

Making companies liable not for content they host or deliver/show to an explicit recipient or set of recipients, but for content they both host and actively elect to promote, would kill the algorithm feed, suggested videos, et c, but not ordinary Internet hosting services or messaging platforms (or even traditional forums!).

Neither is impossible, and either would probably be good to do anyway.

If the core problem is companies shoving shit at you based on what drives "engagement" and with little regard for anything else, those are policies to look at.

In broad terms, you've basically described the Amish.

> But what do we do with that information? Un-invent social media, ban it? How would such a ban work and what should it cover?

Decentralize it, so that nobody is able to make it more addictive for profit.

Just banning more or less all advertising would probably do the trick. In general advertising and marketing are an even bigger problem for mental health too.

But who gets to decide this? How do you prevent people from making new unapproved technology and using it?

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