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It's funny .. earlier today there was a front page HN post about the federal government mandating safer circular saws. It seemed like the majority of users in t

• ImPleadThe5th 3y ago
  While both paternalism. Requiring safety features on a saw does not restrict free speech. It's more akin to seatbelt laws. It's also made to protect everyone who uses a table saw and not just children. Imo, I do think social media needs to be reeled in by policy. But I can see why it makes people uncomfortable and why there is a difference with the saw.
  • Ekaros 3y ago
    I wonder how many would be for seatbelt laws if the addition of seatbelts say doubled the price of car.
    • throwaway2037 3y ago
      > if the addition of seatbelts say doubled the price of car Here is the problem: They didn't. So what is your point?
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • red_admiral 3y ago
      I think this confuses cause and effect. Seatbelts are brought up so often precisely because they are an intervention with a huge benefit-to-cost ratio. Seatbelt laws were made long after the fact - seat belts for cars started to appear in the 1950s, with the common three-point variant in 1955; the first seatbelt law appeared in 1970 (in Australia). The US started introducing seatbelt laws for cars in the 1980s (though as far as I know, some organizations/insurers required them earlier for employees driving for business).
  • Capricorn2481 3y ago
    How does not having social media restrict free speech? Do you think free speech didn't exist before social media? Arguably, the presence of social media homogenizes the speech we're allowed to have.
    • eviks 3y ago
      It restricts free speech in the most direct, literal sense - by... restricting your ability to freely speak. The historical existence is simply irrelevant. Just like existence of pre-TV/newspaper speech is not a relevant factor in determining whether banning all TV/newspapers in 1950 restricts free speech
      • RandomLensman 3y ago
        What access to tools or avenues for speech should fall under the first amendment then?
      • sammorrowdrums 3y ago
        Making publication easy on social media has certainly had an impact on public speech, but private platforms do not offer free speech by design. Naomi Klein went into this in No Logo with shopping malls replacing public spaces where you also don’t have a right to free speech and can be evicted arbitrarily at the owners discretion. You’ll find virtually all of social media platforms have moderation, usage policies and user banning practices that go well beyond allowing the fully legally protected free speech you are afforded in a public space (in many countries).
        • cnity 3y ago
          If all spaces that attract the majority of people are private and have homogenous terms of use, then free speech ends in all ways except on this technicality. Edit: removed unnecessarily inflammatory phrasing.
        • eviks 3y ago
          It (practically) doesn't matter what the moderation policies are, a legal ban on social networks will still be a restriction on free speech
  • drawkward 3y ago
    Which of Haidt's 4 suggestions restricts free speech? Is free speech (for adolescents) more important than the well-being of those same adolescents? Has American jurisprudence aligned on the notion that adolescents have an inviolable right to free speech?
• lynx23 3y ago
  Because it is the parents responsibility to set boundaries for their children. It can be complicated at times, granted. But that doesn't make it less of their job. Heck, I got my first CD player with 14. Yes, I felt left out at school, but... guess what, I didn't die. Children need to learn that there are rules, and someone else dictates them. Throwing tantrums is a typical reaction that needs to be weeded out as a part of growing up. Besides, the "somebody has to think about the children" meme is slowly but surely getting old and tiresome. Not somebody... Their PARENTS. If you dont feel like setting boundaries for your children, please, with sugar on top, dont have any.
  • dotinvoke 3y ago
    I was one of the last people in my class to get a phone, which taught me that not having the cool new thing was not nearly as bad as I had thought.
  • RandomLensman 3y ago
    You can say it should be on the parents here and reason why, but for a lot of things it is not just on the parents (children are not allowed to vote, drive a car, buy guns, go to bar and drink alcohol, gamble, ... - it is a long list).
    • graemep 3y ago
      Such bans are not clear and are contentious, and often leave room for parental discretion. In most countries whether children drink alcohol at home is up to their parents. In some countries an adult can buy teenagers a drink (in the UK they increased the required age from 14 to 16 - and I think its a bad thing). There are people who think 16 year olds should be allowed to vote. Kids cannot buy guns, but can use them. I did a bit of rife shooting at school.
      • RandomLensman 3y ago
        Is it really contentious if 10 year old children cannot on their own buy liquor or guns, for example? I would not have put that high on the list of contentious issues. There is a difference in being granted unsupervised abilities vs supervised ones.
• raxxorraxor 3y ago
  The reason I am against government intervention is the fact that governments seem to not be competent enough to solve problems like this and they would use content controls for their own purposes. It is vastly different and more complex than regulating saws. The comparison falls short by a huge margin and a false conclusion that any federal legislation would be desirable just because it is the case for saws. Some suggest it would be the "hate" on the net that is causing the issues and we see legislation that penalizes some content already, but I heavily doubt it to be the source of any problem. Might be something similar, perhaps the strong indignations some statements on the net seem to get to some people, although these can be as politely stated as any frivolous statement can be. And the resulting expectations on opinions you are allowed to harbor.
  • unclebucknasty 3y ago
    Irrespective of where people fall on this particular issue, I find it odd how the people who are so distrustful of government would allow things that are overtly dangerous, as long as it prevents government from...governing. It's like we have this generation of people who believe government overreach is a) inevitably the outcome in every scenario; b) present in every situation; c) always the worst possible thing that could happen. As in, literally worse than mass sickness and death.
    • ryandrake 3y ago
      Not only that, but they assume that corporations, free of government regulation, will simply act in everyone’s best interest, with responsibility and accountability. At least in theory, my government representatives are accountable to me. To whom is Facebook accountable?
      • unclebucknasty 3y ago
        Exactly. People who want to disempower democratic government are just disempowering themselves. But, they seem to think the power held by the government would simply evaporate. They don't realize it's really a question of who will rule over them, and whether there's any chance it will be themselves. Sure, our democracy has been crippled, but the solution is to fix it, not dismantle it. And ironically the people who are crippling it (Citizens United, lobbying, regulatory capture, etc) are the same who would rule over us if it were completely abolished. That is, essentially, their project.
• maxioatic 3y ago
  It was about table saws, not circular saws. There’s a big difference between the two. Table saw accidents often result in losing fingers and it’s not that difficult to mess up while using one. There’s a well known, proven, easy solution to table saw accidents called SawStop. It’s basically as obvious to use as a seat belt is if you want to be safe. The only problem is those table saws are very expensive. Social media doesn’t have an existing and obvious solution (besides not using it).
  • XorNot 3y ago
    I think this could be aptly summarized as "you can't accidentally slip and become depressed" using social media. You can absolutely slip and lose one or several fingers or your entire hand using a table saw. The more pertinent comparison would be alcohol IMO: none of the people who want "something" done about social media seem to have a problem with the widespread, massive use of alcohol within society and the incredible amounts of continuous and ongoing damage it does.
    • unclebucknasty 3y ago
      >I think this could be aptly summarized as "you can't accidentally slip and become depressed" using social media I think the point is exactly that you can.
      • XorNot 3y ago
        No you can't. You can, through usage over a long period of time, and by ignoring a lot of good advice, create problems for yourself just like anything else. If a table saw could only remove your hand after years of dedicated usage, then sawstop wouldn't be the obviously good idea it is. Hence why the comparison to alcohol is much more apt, and yet, mysteriously - absent in the discussion.
        • unclebucknasty 3y ago
          These read like distinctions without differences. Damage from social media use is gradual and insidious. Additionally, it's designed to be addictive, slowly pulling users in. There is no threshold that announces itself when users are addicted or have begun to "ignore a lot of good advice". There's also no absence of discussion around the dangers of alcohol or drugs. And, there are actual laws regulating or outright banning their use. But, even if it was absent from the discussion, that would not absolve social media. Is every world issue rendered illegitimate if we don't also mention the dangers of alcohol with equal fervor? It seems a random, meaningless requirement. Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
• 0xEF 3y ago
  This is a silly comparison. The table saw was not designed to be addictive, turn its users into a highly lucrative commodity, or push algorithmically driven agendas. Social media was. The dangers being compared here are very different.
  • kristiandupont 3y ago
    That seems to reinforce GP's argument, though?
  • moffkalast 3y ago
    You mean to say, with a saw the intent is for it to be a useful tool and the danger is an unintended side effect, while for social media the danger is the intent and it being a useful tool is an unintended side effect.
• forgetfreeman 3y ago
  Yeah funny as a one-legged rabbit hopping in neat little circles. If I were still on social media I wouldn't want to take a long look at the quality of my interactions or the costs associated with them either.
• nearbuy 3y ago
  Because people don't think the government should always prioritize protection over freedom, nor do people think the government should always prioritize freedom over protection. It's like asking, if people are okay with the government restricting the sale of bombs to private citizens, why aren't they okay with restricting steak knives? They're also dangerous weapons. People judge the cost and benefit of each situation.
  • zelphirkalt 3y ago
    Playing the devils advocate: Isn't social media much more a "bomb" than circular saws?
    • Sammi 3y ago
      For teenagers it is.
    • runeks 3y ago
      There's clearly not agreement on that; hence this article from Jon Haidt.
• dfxm12 3y ago
  Regulating a physical product being sold within the country, like a circular saw, is obviously materially different from enforcing age restrictions or other regulations to a website probably owned by a multinational company. Personally, I don't have much of an opinion around circular saws, but I don't want my government to build a framework where they can choose to hide certain parts of the Internet. I also think the issue isn't social media, per se, but algorithms that promote negative content, personal data harvesting, etc. Banning tiktok et al isn't going to solve those problems. They'll still exist because other types of sites are implementing them.
• uconnectlol 3y ago
  hes actually trying to say, "that's stupid". HN and reddit would be so much easier if negative posting were allowed. your argument is dumb too, it doesn't even deserve acknowledgment, but we are little babies here and have to politely explain to everyone why they're wrong, to the point that the insane people just always win and get their dumb ideas into law because nobody cares anymore and are tired of explaining common sense over and over. having safety controls on hardware is not anything remotely equivalent to the hypothetical problem the article pitches. there is not any world where regulating social media makes sense, and i say this as someone who has never used social media in my life. the entire issue at hand here is like a bear shitting in the woods and someone happens to step on it once in a thousand years, almost none of these so called people who get addicted to social media would have any better off chance at life without it, they would just get addicted to one of the millions of other things one can get addicted to. the remaining one in a million people who actually had their life ruined by social media is like the bear shitting in the woods, its just life.
• s3p 2y ago
  Well, circular saws can maim and rip off human body parts within a fraction of a second, and children can't use them ?