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Comment by phendrenad2 | Hacker News Reader

Of course, many countries and states are doing similar things. Don't believe what they tell you, though. It's not about "rotting their brains", it's about social control. It's about keeping them from reading "misinformation" and "disinformation" at an early age, and coming to distrust "official" sources. This buys the government 15 whole years of pure, unadulterated, propaganda. Hope it makes good little citizens. Probably won't, though.

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Because everyone uncritically accepted government propaganda before social media came around?

When I was 13-14 I believed a lot of bullshit. You might not remember so, and probably think you were very different and unique and special, but you too were not immune to propaganda.

when i was 13-14 i was taught by the youtube algorithm to hate women and "SJWs"

this is, in my opinion, worse than goverment propaganda

Ah, the old, "This thing happened to me, and even if other people say it didn't happen to them IT MUST have happened to them and their denial of it just makes me even more justified" argument.

What’s this, the old “I’m too smart for propaganda to work on me?”

Nice strawman, I guess?

Social media is so, so much worse than anything a government could come up with. This is a good thing for the world even if there are ulterior motives at play.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot

Yes, social media creates useful idiots, you are correct. And also possibly one of them, if you're arguing that it somehow makes people smarter or more informed.

You're on it right now, this terrible, evil social media. Vaguely defined as it is

I also don’t think people under 15 should use Hacker News.

Massively different from algorithmic doom scrolling feeds.

I would call HN a type of social media lite, but not the type of social media that's leading to generation-wide mental health issues in children/teens.

> leading to generation-wide mental health issues in children/teens.

Is it though? Because half of these conditions didn't even exist 50 years ago so naturally the data will see an increase

Right, you're entitled to your wrong opinion. Don't say we didn't warn you when you find out how wrong you were, and what the consequences are regarding government control of people's minds.

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