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Comment by gherkinnn | Hacker News Reader

Social media, as we have it today, is not healthy for anybody. It is bad, truly bad, and the companies responsible know it.

You can't lace beer with crack and sell it. Not to a 12yo, not to a 50yo. Regulate the proverbial crack, then we see if further regulations are required.

Earlier this year (0):

> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,”

From 9 years ago (1):

> Facebook showed advertisers how it has the capacity to identify when teenagers feel “insecure”, “worthless” and “need a confidence boost”

0 - https://www.biometricupdate.com/202602/meta-plans-launch-of-...

1 - https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/01/facebook-...

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In spirit I agree with you 100%. As someone who (minus a MySpace account that lasted about 2 weeks, over 20 years ago, and a LinkedIn which only exists for job applications) never had Facebook, Twitter, Instagram (you name it, I haven't had it). So I've been watching what's happened to people from the outside. I know there are positives to social media but the challenge is how to keep them while removing the bad elements.

I actually love your example of selling an otherwise good product with a poisonous ingredient and I think the most middle-of-the-road weapon against the negatives of social media is to remove those ingredients. For example, no infinite scroll, no algorithmic ordering, forced slow loading if you've been on it for more than a certain number of minutes, etc. (I'm just spitballing). In other words, undo/ban all technological features (or "ingredients") of the things that the social media companies have done that are deliberately meant to pull on weaknesses in human psychology. They know they're doing it. They hire experts to do it.

You've already got the receipt for this. That memo isn't a company that stumbled into harm and feels bad about it. It's one picking a launch window based on when the people who'd object are busy.

Thank you, it's been infuriating reading these social media bans for children, as if when kids suddenly turn 16 or 18 or whatever magical nimber the courts come up with, they are suddenly immune to the psychological tricks from multi million dollar companies hiring the best psychologists with no morals money can buy.

Social media needs to be heavily regulated to the point where it's safe for everyone, or banned entirely. I don't understand why there's this belief it should have a right to exist when basically everyone agrees it's a net negative to society.

For starters, what's "social media"? It's kind of a undefinable phrase. Obviously Facebook and Instagram are agreed to be "social media".But is Youtube social media? How about HN? Or any website with a comment section?

Or WhatsApp? Or Matrix? Or SMS? Or the telephone network? Or email? Or Google Docs?

I'd argue that generally speaking, the problematic social media tend to be ad-supported websites that focus on user-generated content.

so Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Reddit are all social-media, because all are ad-supported, and all are focused on user-generated content. HN is focused on user-generated content, but not ad-supported (okay, technically HN is 'advertising for YC', but in practice, the site isn't optimized to get you doom-scrolling so you click on more ads), and a website with a comment section, if it's like a blog or something where the majority of the content is generated by the website owner, isn't focused on user-generated content.

The combination of user-generated content + advertising, however, seems to create websites that will try to get their users addicted to the site, which can harm the lives of their users.

The problem is capitalist companies using heavily gamified psychology to prey on people.

Mastodon doesn't have this problem.

Pixelfed doesn't have this problem.

Lemmy doesn't have this problem.

Peertube doesn't have this problem.

But "social media laws" would hit all of these as well.

They are fundamentally different because they are not centralized and, if they are going to be centralized at some point, they will need to find a revenue stream because giving access for free to the whole world, literally, is technically impossible.

You basically restated that its all about profit, and centralization.

> giving access for free to the whole world, literally, is technically impossible.

Again, this is what Mastodon is doing. This is also how email works.

And its not technically impossible. Its impossible when you have investors who demand 30x growth at all costs.

Its a capitalism issue, with game theory pushing worse and worse solutions to extract smaller percentages of profit.

But email is not centralized, and it grew when Internet was really different. Mastodon - which was born in this new Internet - is used by a very small fraction of Twitter/IG/TikTok/Facebook users. I mean, TikTok and Mastodon started both in 2016 and see the difference now...

> But email is not centralized, and it grew when Internet was really different. Mastodon - which was born in this new Internet - is used by a very small fraction of Twitter/IG/TikTok/Facebook users. I mean, TikTok and Mastodon started both in 2016 and see the difference now...

Email and mastodon and pixelfed and peertube are all federated. Everyone can run their own server, pay others, or join others.

Federated services can still work today.

And yes Tiktok started in 2016 along with Mastodon. Ok. Mastodon's success isnt bound up in venture capitalism or hockeystick growth or 100x returns. Its completely organic growth that doesnt have anything to do with money. People share and talk about stuff all the time, and there's no profit motive in nearly anything. No advertisements, no upsells.

And enshittification and extractive "growth" applies strongly to Tiktok, and that smell pervades everything about it. Advertisements, making usage worse, worse payouts to user/advertiser/influencer. Everyones there for the views and the quick dollars. But they attract more people BECAUSE of the predatory pirahna-dollar water, and the hopes of making it big.

Yeah, and that's exactly the point: they should be regulated if they are ads driven and focused on engagement at all cost.

Now, how to properly regulate and enforce it in a way that's not going to undermine other rights and freedom, that's not an easy task for sure.

Ignoring the capitalism and the money, those still can have the bad effects of social media, just perhaps not amplified for money extraction.

irc doesn't have this problem

Some nitpicker will probably come with "and what about...??" because we are on HN but I think you basically nailed the definition.

And yes, they are toxic. And yes, just as other toxic products (i.e. cigarettes or alcohol) there should be an ongoing discussion on its regulation for both adults and teenagers. Even if it's not 100% enforceable.

I’d start with “platform on which it’s possible to become an Influencer” and work backwards.

So all platforms. Unless you have a definition of "influencer" more rigid than "person with some degree of influence." Because that includes Hacker News.

When I had to fill up the ESTA form to enter the US, this is what was in the "social media" drop down list:

- ASKfm

- Facebook

- Flickr

- GitHub

- Google+

- Instagram

- JustPaste.it

- LinkedIn

- Tumblr

- Twitter

- Vine

- VKontakte (VK)

- YouTube

This is obviously outdated but it can give an idea.

That's interesting - Github as social media? That's an idea of would never have thought of in a million years. Personally, I'd be glad if a child of mine hung out there - not at all like something like Instagram or Facebook.

I was also surprised, but it makes sense.

It is based on user-generated content, it has a comment system, followers and stars (similar to "likes"). There is even an attention economy, and some gamification.

Social media doesn't have to be bad, it just needs to be social.

github's original tagline was "Social Coding".

I don't think there is that agreement that it is in total a net negative to society.

That said, with bans upcoming or in force in a lot places, what measures should we monitor to see improvements in wellbeing etc. (screen time isn't one there, I'd say)? What do we do if those do not go up noticably?

I agree that the positive effects of Social Media is understated, and probably on purpose.

Social Media allowed ordinary people to challenge on a global scale the oficially-sanctioned narrative. A generation has already grown with full distrust on what they learn from traditional media.

With that picture, addressing the (undeniable) negative effects of Social Media is only the sales pitch for introducing new legislation. The true goal of the legislation however is not to "save the children", but rather to ensure that the next generations will be obedient and meek.

> Social Media allowed ordinary people to challenge on a global scale the oficially-sanctioned narrative.

Hasn't been true for a while. Now it grants people with money and state actors unprecedented control over what ordinary people are allowed to see and mold them to desired narratives.

It is still true. People with money and state actors have always had unprecedented control over what ordinary people are allowed to see... before the internet they were the ones controlling all of the corporate media. You don't think the press was molding people to desired narratives back then?

But it's obvious that social media also still allows grassroots action and organization in ways that simply weren't possible under old media. We need to be careful when talking about regulating or banning social media outright that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - we will be losing freedoms when we lose it and centralizing control of media and communication with governments and corporations (even more so than with the big social media silos now.) And freedoms lost aren't easily gained back.

It still cuts both ways. Almost seemingly the entire internet was talking about the Epstein files non stop for months on end. Pre social media that anti establishment narrative wouldn’t have taken hold to nearly the same degree in my opinion. Unfortunately a lot of the discourse was complete nonsense, and misinformation was rife, but it still put the US government under A LOT of pressure, to the point where the AG was fired.

Then again, as I’m writing this, how much of that was due to manipulation and promotion by adversarial powers… almost nothing is truly organic anymore, or at least you can’t tell if it is, and I suppose that’s what you’re getting at.

> almost nothing is truly organic anymore, or at least you can’t tell if it is, and I suppose that’s what you’re getting at

Yes, but over time, even pre-Internet generations have learned to be skeptical of everything watched or read online. Children growing up in this environment will almost certainly adapt and learn to do the same.

So, at best, laws restricting Social Media are a nanny state overreach, and at worst dystopian Big-Brother-style narrative control.

We have witnessed a similar overreach in the distant past with printing-press regulation laws [1]. But at the time, they power structure was different so they could instate an outright ban without hiding behind "think of the children" or the Red Scare.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_166...

Yeah it allowed them to challenge traditional narratives like the earth is not flat and getting the measles vaccine is a good thing.

> Thank you, it's been infuriating reading these social media bans for children, as if when kids suddenly turn 16 or 18 or whatever magical nimber the courts come up with, they are suddenly immune to the psychological tricks from multi million dollar companies hiring the best psychologists with no morals money can buy.

This is sort of true, but there is definitely a scale of development that means the most harm will be done the earlier you start. Same with access to pornography. People's brains don't suddenly become immune to it at 18, it's just that that's the age of legal responsibility that ties in with other things.

Men who turn 18 don't suddenly become disposable meat-based gun-holders in times of war, and yet we still treat them that way.

Many things are harmful for everyone, yet we only ban them for children because banning them for everyone would create huge uproar. Make tobacco illegal and then we can talk about social media.

Tobacco is legal because of large numbers of addicts which would create a huge market for illegal supplies. The UK plans to phase out tobacco by raising the age at which it can be legally bought every year.

In any case, this is whataboutery. There are lots of harmful things that adults are allowed, but lots that are banned for everyone. There are lots of things that cannot be sold without meeting safety standards (cars, electricals), or that are only sold subject strict controls (prescription drugs, guns). We do not allow adults to have whatever they want.

Case in point. There is no chance tobacco would be declared legal if it was invented today. Don't you agree?

How do you reconcile this idea with the fact that marijuana is being legalized all over the place?

Marijuana is not a recent invention

1. Marijuana was not invented today. 2. Marijuana is not tobacco.

Tobacco wasn't "invented" any more than was marijuana, both are naturally occurring plants which have been cultivated and used for thousands of years.

Not really. The US has widely legalized gambling of various forms (sports, prediction markets, etc) in recent years. I'd argue that even more so than nicotine there is zero benefit to gambling.

People don't actually think that's the case. However it is obviously an age in which we believe kids can start to have more agency over their own lives and make bigger decisions because they have matured (hopefully) enough to do so.

We therefore then tack other restrictions to those age brackets.

I would like to recommend a book where the author explains with scientific fundaments why lower age kids are more damaged from social media exposure.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-anxious-generation-how-the-...

A concrete example is the annulation of the 2024 Romanian elections. It probably happened because a certain candidate was able to manipulate the TikTok algorithm using (undeclared) paid influencers and spam.

Really bad example. From the Wikipedia article:

“ No evidence established direct connections between Georgescu's campaign and Russian state actors. There were only assertions that there must have been due to his rapid rise on social media”

And:

the "National Liberal Party paid for a campaign on TikTok that ended up favoring ... Georgescu" and not Russia as previously presented to the Constitutional Court.

Also:

On 28 April 2025, right-wing conservative Hungarian think-tank Mathias Corvinus Collegium filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman because the European Commission denied access to the documents containing information on the EU's DSA proceedings in the case.

That’s not something you would expect from a proper investigation. The whole thing is a mess and what we heard on the news at the time is essentially a made up story.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusations_of_Russian_interfe...

Not a good counterexample either. The link to Russian intelligence services may not be proven, but nobody seems to dispute that there were paid influencers? Also that this was not declared anywhere and the money was at best grey in origin?

In events like these it can be useful to operate on the systems thinking maxim and strictly look at who benefited, as this is interesting in itself without entertaining the suggestion that they engaged in anything illegal.

When it comes to social media in politics, I believe the burden of proof is on those who claim a net benfit. Centralization of traditional media is generally regarded as bad for open democracies, and the ultimate owners of almost all social media globally can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.

The problem with all these is that the mythos of democracy depends on pretending that individuals and the people at large are making intelligent decisions based on available true information - instead of what it really is.

> The link to Russian intelligence services may not be proven, but nobody seems to dispute that there were paid influencers?

As the quotes I included say, there was no evidence that Russia was behind the interference. They did track who paid for Tiktok "influencers" but it was ended up at "the National Liberal Party" - which means it was not foreign interference as pretty much all media in the world reported. If you wan to claim there was without anyone disputing it, you absolutely should provide evidence!

I think the only irregularity was that the Tiktok paid influencers were not disclosed properly. But the same has happened in so many other countries (even in Sweden where I am - the biggest party had to go through a huge scandal about doing just that) without ending up nullifying the result of elections. Of course, if they did not like the results enough, I'm sure similar shenanigans would've been utilized.

Just saying "regulate" it is not an answer and won't give you the results you think.

What you'll get is restrictions on speech. UK arrests thousands every year for what essentially amounts to mean tweets. There have been people that comment publicly on horrendous crimes that get harsher sentences than those that commit the crimes.

At any point in time politicians could have enforced existing terms of service violations like kids must be 13 or older. But they choose to look the other way and target only things that's a threat to their political future.

Social media helps organization and political action. Maybe you don't like the outcome at this point in time but it's a powerful weapon against those in power. It's no wonder politicians will try to neuter it. But it will not help anyone but themselves.

I'm not familiar with what you're talking about. Can you share a real world example of a case like this? You're saying a social media comment about a crime is somehow punished harshly and much harsher than the crime itself?

It's a common (and somewhat right-wing) trope, but it's not really true. Thousands of people aren't arrested for "mean comments" or similar. That isn't to say the UK has no problem with the balance of freedom of expression and regulation, but it is nothing like the impression you'd get from some sources. There are some high-profile cases which are commonly misrepresented to support these claims.

> Thousands of people aren't arrested for "mean comments" or similar

What are they arrested for, or are you disputing the number?

Lucy Connolly was arrested for threatening to kill a thousand people, for example.

I think generally the argument is that these usually aren’t credible threats, they’re hyperbole, and the police are overstepping by arresting people for saying they’ll do something when they have no evidence that that person would actually do that. A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.” It waits until you actually go to so-and-so’s house with a can of petrol, and then arrests you.

Sending death threats has never been legal.

The statical lie with the UK numbers is the vast majority of cases are about the use of messaging services in domestic violence cases.

It’s the same problem as amber alerts - the stories you here about are the dramatic stranger danger ones, but the vast majority of the statistics are “boring” custody disputes.

> A free society doesn’t arrest someone for saying “I’m going to burn down so-and-so’s house.”

I feel like it's a significantly freer society when others can't threaten to murder me without consequences.

It's always weird that these "freeze peach absolutism" never seem to notice that death, is the ultimate censorship

The poster up thread said people were being arrested for "mean tweets" and now you've moved it to "but those death threats weren't serious!" No, the original claim was dishonest bullshit.

They were credible threats though, as the people were doing EXACTLY what she called for

It is definitely true. It's "right wing" because the soft power is with the left (or was until maybe very recently) and so only principled people of the left (e.g. Bill Maher) and all the people of the right (either principled on speech or saying things that are more likely to be censored) are going to be talking about it.

What on earth are you on about, we've had 20+ years of right-wing governments.

>and all the people of the right

Tell that to the Tory MP who had me arrested for upsetting them, or the UKIP goon's forcibly removed me from their "Free Speech Conference"

> What on earth are you on about, we've had 20+ years of right-wing governments.

The Tories were barely right-wing, and they were in power for 14 years, not 20+, and for the first 4 they were in a coalition with the lib dems.

Look at the immigration numbers in the UK to see how not right-wing they were. Insane to think that's actually right wing.

> or the UKIP goon's forcibly removed me from their "Free Speech Conference"

The UKIP conference removing you is not evidence of general soft power in the UK.

Here's an example of Westmidlands police bragging about arresting a 12 year old for racist posts.

There are 30 arrests a day for offensive online messages. It's not heavily reported for some reason but it's very real.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

https://x.com/WMPolice/status/1282627004018364416

If you walk through a town shouting racist stuff you'll get arrested too, and rightly so.

The kid is 12 years old. If he ran around shouting racist stuff in town, that should be addressed by his parents, not by an arrest.

In my Northern European small city, just yesterday, there was some non-native shouting "WHITE NIGGA" at children in the city center. Nothing happend to him.

Here's an overview of the situation: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62ln7mzd5ro

So people are getting arrested for tweeting they want to set fire to a hotel full of people?

Seems good to me

Are you sure that link's the one you meant to share?

> The former childminder from Northampton, who is married to a Conservative councillor, had posted an abhorrent message on X, calling for people to "set fire" to hotels housing asylum seekers following the murder of three young girls at a dance class in Southport in July 2024.

> Yet the fact both men were able to address a huge crowd in London is perhaps evidence that there is rather more leeway for free speech in this country than those likening the UK to a "tin pot dictatorship" suggest.

Seems fine?

> Are you sure that link's the one you meant to share?

Sorry, I'm confused by the question.

The link seems to make the opposite point you intended.

Criminal threats with appropriate punishment, and regular old hateful speech is ongoing.

The link is far broader than that, but even in this case: there was no threat. No more than a university lecturer tweeting that he wanted a white genocide.

I'm sorry, but if you think public calls to burn down occupied buildings during unrest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_Kingdom_riots) aren't a threat, I'm not sure there's a discussion to be had here.

"ISIS never threatened anybody, they just called for bombs to be set off"

The right love to play-down the woman who called for terrorist attacks on British streets as "just a tweet".

Meanwhile there's been two arrests around two prominent right-wing politicians getting threats and celebration of death this week. And they're all silent again.

I have no idea what you're on about.

I said "regulate the proverbial crack" and gave two concrete examples of things going wrong. At no point did I hint at "stop people from conversing freely".

Regulating access to speech platforms is a difference of degree, not a difference of kind, from regulating speech.

Requiring universal access is a form of regulation, and the OP asking for regulating the platform, not the access.

Currently, the fact that these large platforms can block you and they block you randomly (which is the case of Reddit for me, because I dared to use privacy protecting extensions when I commented on a subreddit to which I wasn’t subscribed; Instagram permanently blocked me because I used VPN when I wanted to login) is way larger restriction on my speech than removing these harmful platforms completely. Currently, I’m not allowed to react to others at all on some of these platforms. Even TV is better, because there is contact information for all of them.

Sure there was basically a cartel in social media. You saw coordinated censorship campaigns to ban the former president of the United States for example. But I wouldn't discount the amount of political interference there as well. The last administration admitted to flagging individual posts for the social media companies.

But it's true there is a lot of coordinated censorship even without state interference. But this tends to resolve itself as there is a market opportunity to create a better product. This coordination and censorship campaign has led to the acquisition of Twitter, which lifted its restrictions and other companies more or less followed suit because an open platform is obviously better for most people. And you had offshoots like Bluesky that had the old centralized censorious pre twitter acquisition policies, and things work out in the long run

https://substack.com/@mleverything/p-41310456

If it tends to resolve itself then why has it got worse not better? reality seems to contradict your position.

How has it gotten worse? You have a lot more freedom on all social media platforms than you did 4 years ago.

What's gotten worse in some countries is the government censorship which I'm against.

??? no you don't, if you disagree with Musk on Twitter your account gets visibility-limited and if you want to use Reddit it's hard to even get an account that's allowed to post anywhere and not shadowbanned

I get a ton of ppl on my feed that I do not follow that say awful things about Musk daily. What are you talking about?

> this tends to resolve itself as there is a market opportunity to create a better product

If the market is fair and leveled. Which is not the case without intervention as we know for hundreds of years at this point. And governments clearly started to no intervene even when their own laws would require it.

> which lifted its restrictions

This is categorically not true. Twitter home page is massively censored and coordinated. And this was quite obvious around Charlie Kirk's death, when normalization of racism was heavily promoted, and without a doubt promoted. Not before that, and after that was so obvious that they touched the algorithm for that (I have a far right racist fake account there to monitor this specifically). Also from Musk's own words, when Grok didn't lie for them. And since controversial topics, like racism, alt-right, etc spreads better, "lifting restrictions" mean exactly to form public opinions towards these. The market is not fair even towards ideas for a long time (and probably it was never true).

It's censored and there is a ton of controversial opinions being spread?

Do you see how these two statements are in conflict?

What is being censored? You don't like some speech but that's proof that restrictions on speech have been lifted. Get your narrative consistent at least. There's either vile speech due to lifting speech restrictions or there are still restrictions so these opinions are suppressed.

The charlie kirk stuff wasn't censored. You can still find it there. I see daily conspiracy theories about his wife being involved. Before the acquisition you had a satirical newspaper banned for referring to someone by their biological sex. Do you see the difference?

I guess you could have the opinion that normie moderate speech is censored but thats just silly.

> It's censored and there is a ton of controversial opinions being spread?

> Do you see how these two statements are in conflict?

It's not in conflict. Both can be true at the same time. Also, there is nothing which is not "controversial".

> You don't like some speech but that's proof that restrictions on speech have been lifted.

Still, nothing in conflict. I can have problem with some speech, and I can support full blown free speech at the same time. Also, there is literally nobody who supports uncontrolled free speech. Not even, who lie to themselves that they support that.

> The charlie kirk stuff wasn't censored.

It wasn't "censored" in the sense, that you can find whatever you want. That was true on Twitter always in every single topic, even before Musk. It was censored how you can find it. Which is the case even by government censorship. You can find Mein Kampf even in countries where it's completely banned. You can find weed everywhere, the difference is only how.

I see crazy stuff relating to conspiracy theories about Kirk every day. It's not censored.

If you don't see the contradiction around censorship while seeing a ton of controversial opinions, I don't know how to convince you. It reminds of the quote "It's amazing how much leftist discourse is just them pretending not to understand things, thus making discourse impossible."

Maybe this will help, but I know that your cognitive dissonance will find something else:

- There are 100 controversial opinions - 50 is censored - you can see 50 all the time

Also, you ignored all of the explanation which explained to you why your “censorship” and mine are different. And make your whole question nonsense. Because you predictably used “leftist”, and I anticipated that the problem is empathy.

Twitter was an easy one to get a ban from, just by saying "this is racist" or "racism is bad" and you're gone.

Went through quite literally hundreds of accounts through it.

Reddit is a platform that LARP's about "freeze peach", but you get an automated site-wide ban for nothing. And it will link you to the post, it has now deleted to try and show you what was banned.

I posted "So you're blaming jews then?" to a clearly anti-semitic comment and poof. Gone

Are you confusing subreddit chosen restrictions (like minimum karma) and banning?

Regulate the algorithmic feeds and similar non opinionated regulations rather than content itself.

We imprisoned kids for making an offensive video of a burning cardboard xopy of grenfell tower

But we gave legal immunity to the corporate executives that forged fire testing certificates and caused the actual fire that killed over 100 people

And when I say we have Russia-style corruption no one believes me

>We imprisoned kids for making an offensive video of a burning cardboard xopy of grenfell tower

40 years are not kids bro. and wasn't jailed

>The 49-year-old was given a 10-week suspended jail sentence.

> They were arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and taken into custody

He was arrested, jailed, tried and convicted. He was not imprisoned, which I did not say he was. The only thing I misremembered is the age.

The actual criminals that caused death of a hundred people have not been charged with any crime.

Amazing how pointing out obvious corruption is unpopular here. Or do people honestly believe that making video about a crime should be punished more than the crime itself?

> UK arrests thousands every year for what essentially amounts to mean tweets.

Somebody is peddling lies in your direction. These claims don’t hold up to any sort of cursory examination.

> Social media, as we have it today, is not healthy for anybody.

Millions of employed might disagree.

I'm trying to work out what this means. The "millions" employed at Meta?

> Social media, as we have it today, is not healthy for anybody

Define social media, specifically name the sites you're talking about. And explicitly state the ill health that follows when you consume social media

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