This reminds me of the TikTok ban that lasted all of twelve seconds.
I’ve been using the internet for longer than I care to admit, and I’ve never seen anything like it.
It was like 300 million junkies all lost their drug supplier at the same time.
I’ve been using the internet for longer than I care to admit, and I’ve never seen anything like it.
It was like 300 million junkies all lost their drug supplier at the same time.
That timeline has way more to do with the corrupt politicians than consumer behavior.
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Both in the sense that the original semi-bipartisan law should've been ruled unconstitutional [0], and also in how the Republican party turned around and broke portions of that law for months until Trump could ensure the assets were handed to his major donor buddy--and fixing none of the original PRC influence issues. [1]
[0] https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/banning-tiktok-i...
[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2025/12/19/tiktok-deal-done-and-its...
So looks like politicians never had any problem with the addictiveness of social media, they only have a problem when it's used by foreign adversaries and not by domestic companies...
Are you even remotely surprised by that? Honestly.
Mass misery is still misery.
I have to disagree with this. Having talked to heroin addicts in the past, I was told that the heroin addiction destroyed their relationship with their families and their friends, causing heart-break in the process (particularly for mothers). They use everyone around them so that they could get their next fix: borrowing, constant cajoling and stealing results in alienating them from everyone in their social circle – other than fellow junkies.
When cut off from family and friends, junkies resort to begging, stealing, street prostitution, shop-lifting and other petty crimes, all of which have a negative effect on their community. Some junkies end up committing violent crimes which has a more destructive effect on society. They often end up in debt to their dealers and commit other crimes at their behest.
All these things are much worse when the junkie is a parent or has others depending on them for a safe and secure family life.
Also, in my country (Ireland), heroin junkies also place a huge burden on the health service. Their chaotic lives result in multiple health issues and they take up a significant portion of hospital beds.
How do you make sure that whoever makes that choice makes it in a way you yourself will agree with?
People's lives are ruined by gambling all the time, for instance. It is dumb to pretend like the pleasure a few people get out of it is worth someone betting away his family's welfare. It is ok to just decide "this needs to be regulated." Not everything is some intractible philosophical mystery that no consensus will ever coalesce around. Not every single thing every single person wants needs to be taken seriously.
If you're going to get philosophical, go all the way. Why have society at all because it's just people imposing their will on others? Or do you at least agree that there exists a line?
It’s not at all obvious that “adults can’t have TikTok” is anywhere near the correct side of that line.
The TikTok ban successfully forced the sale of the US TikTok operations. I wouldn't be so dismissive of it.
No, it was not. It was actually nothing like that.
No babies were left to die because their parents were out searching for tiktok clips. I saw no people whoring themselves on the street just to see a few tiktok clips. I heard no stories of children stealing from their own family to get a few scrolls of tiktok. There was no people killing each other just to get a hit of tiktok.
Let's not trivialize something like drug addiction by comparing it to kids procrastinating by watching their TV phone app.
The median child of a social media user (so basically, the median child) is vastly more well off than the median child of a heroin/crack cocaine user and its not even close.
The fact you're suggesting some level of equivalency is wild imo.
Glad I could draw attention to the irrational logic of the current "social media is evil" moral panic.
I'm just astonished how hard all of the supposedly rational engineering minds of hackernews are falling for this classic moral panic. The crowd of mindless pitchforks is cringe.
It must be a cognitive gymnastics that makes people here feel more important. How powerful it must feel to believe your email job can addict and destroy the world...via...javascript scroll effects on...mobile entertainment apps.
I mean, how else do you rationalize the fact that you're paid as much as a heart surgeon to implement react components and reply thumbs up to messages on slack? All this doomsday cosplaying must help square the cognitive dissonance.
Instagram was supposedly the same, with Meta internally knowing that. They said it themselves, the teenagers couldn’t stop using Instagram even if they wanted to. I mean, isn’t that addiction?
I don’t need to feel important. I’m an addict trying to stay away from my triggers. It’s not Instagram, but I also know how that one feels, because I had an account for years. Of course I’m not saying it’s exactly like a drug — any drug —, but that to dismiss the very real, very negative design of these tools is also folly. They hijack the same brain chemistry, to similar results, and a different scale of recovery.
No, developers aren’t special. Nobody in tech is. But Instagram themselves, in their own document, are basically admitting to behaving like a very capable dealer of a neural drug.