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Comment by changoplatanero | Hacker News Reader

How come legislators want to stop social media companies from using their power to manipulate consumers, but aren’t as interested in other industries doing the same? Like imagine how much harm is caused by the luxury fashion industry manipulating people to spend $20,000 on ugly leather bags? Or the jewelry industry in getting people to buy shiny rocks? Or sports gambling companies? That money could have been used for something good.

I’m obviously biased. But my point is that the guy that wrote the linked article had preexisting biases too.

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Because of scale. Social media companies manipulate literally billions of people, whereas the luxury fashion industry only manipulates millions of people.

Sports gambling is another example of the issue at scale. When it was at a racetrack, it's naturally limited to those who can go to that physical location. When it moved to OTB, the scale goes up an order of magnitude. When it moves online and to apps, the scale goes up again. And so it's become important to regulate.

> Like imagine how much harm is caused by the luxury fashion industry manipulating people to spend $20,000 on ugly leather bags?

The EU is actually working on that, at least from the environmental angle.[1]

Beyond that, I agree, but in a 'yes, we should do that too; that doesn't mean we shouldn't do this' way.

[1] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/news/new-eu-rules-stop-dest...

I'd call getting people with too much money and not enough common sense to spend their money a good thing for everyone. Sales taxes collected, property taxes on the store paid, income taxes on the employees and company, less generational wealth passed along, etc etc.

> How come legislators want to stop social media companies from using their power to manipulate consumers, but aren’t as interested in other industries doing the same?

Because its like comparing murder with genocide. You have to stop the enormously larger problem first before you get around to fixing your nails.

The entire media industry uses tactics like that, and has for ages. They probably only notice it with social media, because social media itself is new and different. More at 10:00, but really 10:50, because I'm going to make you stay up late watching a bunch of ads, before I tell you what'll be in tomorrows newspaper, anyway.

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