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Comment by shermantanktop | Hacker News Reader

The inverse incentive is what's in place today: a platform actively harming the users who signed up for it, in pursuit of ad dollars. The incentive is to extract maximum revenue while disregarding the real-world effects of actions, including driving children to self-harm or mental illness.

That's bizarre. But I know for some people, it doesn't seem bizarre, and just seems like "capitalism."

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The platform isn't actively harming. It's actively driving them to content they engage with. What they're choosing to engage with is harmful. The fact their parents let them on the platform is the crazy part, but the state already extracts vast amounts of money from them.

Governments regulate all sorts of things that could be handled by the parents. However it works better setting a standard via regulation.

The world is moving to regulate these companies due to the harm they are causing.

> The platform isn't actively harming.

> It's actively driving them to content they engage with

Regardless of whether or not that content is harmful or not

Why punish S.E. Massengill? It’s the parents, after all, who willingly allowed their children to drink sulfanilamide. Hell, if the children simply closed their mouths when the spoon is in front of them, they’d be perfectly fine!

This is a silly comparison. Social media doesn't instantly kill your children, and we've known it's bad for them for ages now so parents have had time to adjust. Give kids devices, win stupid prizes.

I just saw an ad for Instagram's teen features, aimed at parents. You can't advertise for your product and then say that people are using it of their own volition. We are right back to the 90s and Big Tobacco.

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