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Comment by aprilthird2021 | Hacker News Reader

aprilthird2021

This is crazy, Meta is not solely responsible for people and kids having addiction to their phones (very similar if not identical to social media addiction).

Gambling has regulations all the companies have to abide by. Social media and content platforms have nothing like that.

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They profited so thoroughly from building the addiction machine that they sought to lobby for legislation that imposed restrictions on internet usage that will actively and permanently add friction to computing and make the internet as a whole less free, just to try to avoid culpability for their actions. They knew what they were building.

> Gambling has regulations all the companies have to abide by. Social media and content platforms have nothing like that.

Ah, then I’m sure Meta will be quite happy to support legislation that requires a message to be displayed every time you open the app, upload a photo, or post a comment:

  - “Social media use is shown to directly cause significant mental health distress, especially to children. Continue? Yes / Close / Configure allowed applications”

Similar to tobacco products.

They are a very, very, very significant contributor.

Who is paying for their internet access?

How is that at all relevant to the comment you're replying to. We don't need to find a single party we can apply all blame to.

I think some blame lies with whoever was paying for Facebook's internet access, and encouraged them to foist more of a predatory approach and cast a wider net than would have been possible otherwise.

There have always been so many people having higher integrity to choose from for those possessing better judgment of character.

Edit: not my downvote btw

Imagine being so out of touch that you think parents are generally equipped with the knowledge, features, and emotional capacity to manage their child's entire exposure to the internet in a way they cannot or will not circumvent. Laughable.

Imagine thinking parents stand a snowballs chance in hell fighting against products explicitly made to exploit their children from companies spending billions on it. It’s like 0.00001% of parents that has those skills, if that.

They don't have to be solely responsible. What they are responsible for are their own actions.

True. They’re just one of the largest companies who deliberately engineered their software to be addictive, the Sacklers of social media, if you will.

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