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Comment by King-Aaron | Hacker News Reader

I don't like the idea of centralised digital ID for the obvious surveillance/privacy arguments and think that side of the conversation needs to be focused on. BUT, I also think that the Social Media experiment has shown that social media in general really, really sucks. It sucks for adults but it's objectively damaging to kids.

So like, I am all for restricting kids from it, and honestly I'd happily see it regulated out of existence entirely.

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Yeah, but should the state really be this deeply involved in the personal choices of it's constituency? We don't stick our hands into similar activities such as religion, political affiliation, or dietary habits. Sure you can make a slightly better case that children need greater protection but the evidence for the harms of social media are contentious at best. There's no scientific consensus on social media, but there is pretty strong agreement on calories and sugar, but we're not banning sugar for children. This to me just seems like a power grab.

I’d like good social media regulated into existence. Let people take their data, move to a different service, set up redirects, have some meaningful ways to customize or reject algorithms, etc. I don’t think it’s likely to happen but one can hope.

That would be nice. Maybe take it back to a time when it was about forming and maintaining interpersonal connections rather than 'following' influencers and peddling ragebait.

Absolutely. What’s weird it seems that current form of social media encourages this behavior - and yet we don’t seem to explore doing the opposite.

Yeah I like this framing too. Personally I like parts of social media, and there must be ways to achieve a good balance. I just imagine it wouldn't be 'profitable'.

Social media is objectively damaging to the interests of the ruling class, who have been objectively damaging to western civilization during the past decades in which they had near-complete control over the flow of information. It'd be batshit crazy to go back to the times when information flow was centralized in the hands of a few corporations, just because a some neurotics can't handle the increased flow of information from decentralized media.

Isn’t the information flow being controlled by the few major social media players another form of centralisation where their algorithms decide which decentralised voices are heard?

> Social media is objectively damaging to the interests of the ruling class,

Maybe double check who owns and controls most social media platforms, and then think a bit if you'd categorize them more in the ruling class or working class.

Thats not argument for anything in this topic. The choice was never binary and it seems you don't understand the discussion.

That illuminati mumbo jumbo part doesn't deserve a comment.

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