4 ms·

All I see is left and right agreeing that social media has become too dangerous and they need to create a moral panic and smokescreen as a pretext to regulate i

by krapp 2y ago

All I see is left and right agreeing that social media has become too dangerous and they need to create a moral panic and smokescreen as a pretext to regulate it. Same shit as the FUD around TikTok and "Chinese mind control." Can social media be addictive? Yes. Should we trust the government when it claims it wants to "protect the children?" Absolutely not. This will end up being about enabling surveillance, harassment of minorities and policing political wrongthink, like every other such initiative. And it's kind of sad that Hacker News, which is usually critical of the motives of government almost to a fault, is willing to let its hatred of social media excuse naked and authoritarian power grabs like this. Like y'all rise up if Apple tries to track CP on people's phones but if someone declared all social media illegal tomorrow most people here would have a party.

ethbr1 2y ago
IMHO, social media should be much more heavily regulated (specifically: mandating transparency) in democracies. Used to be, you could buy a newspaper and print your viewpoint, but everyone could see it. Now, you can trivially individually target users, invisible to any oversight. How is that not an existential threat to democracy? (Whether from a foreign nation-state or anyone else is immaterial)
- krapp 2y ago
  I think the bigger threat to democracy in this case is having the government be the gatekeeper of public discourse.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Mandating transparency doesn't require publishing censorship.
jappgar 2y ago
You can trust that the government wants to protect the children. The question is what does "protect" really mean. Western governments do a pretty good job of protecting kids from labour exploitation, for example. But that's because it's relatively easy to enforce. Protecting them from other harms is more difficult and involves tradeoffs with personal or parental freedoms. I really don't think these initiatives are intentional power grabs... although you're correct that opportunist entitites will exploit these regulations to empower themselves.
- techjamie 2y ago
  > You can trust that the government wants to protect the children. The moment I hear a politician say "protect the children" is the moment that I want to know what kind of garbage they're trying to pull under our noses. It rarely comes across as being little more than a pretext to pass some other agenda through.
logicchains 2y ago
The left and the right both agree 100% on protecting Israel, and social media is the biggest threat to Israel's existence given how low support for Israel has plummeted in Americans aged 18-25 thanks to unfiltered access to imagery from the war in Gaza.
- krapp 2y ago
  The American military industrial complex couldn't care less about optics. The Iraq war led to some of the biggest protests in history and it didn't matter, and the current social media landscape doesn't actually matter wrt American policy in Israel. Also, it shouldn't be the role of social media to ensure the existence of Israel, even if one assumes that opposition to their actions in Gaza is de facto opposition to their existence as a state, which I wouldn't. Also what you're describing immediate, unfiltered journalism which provides one of the strongest arguments against having social media be regulated by governments. Seeing the cruelty and violence of government unfiltered by media gatekeepers and in realtime is a good thing. Americans should have the opportunity to question their government's unwavering support for Israel and the consequences of their own imperialism. Of course social media can also be just as much a platform for propaganda and misinformation as traditional media, but it's also easier to undermine than traditional media. We need a way for the masses to be able to publish to the masses, and social media is currently the best option to allow that, even with its downsides.
- thruway516 2y ago
  >The left and the right both agree 100% on protecting Israel Sorry I call bull on this. In the first part of your comment you say 'agree 100%' and in the latter part you yourself say 'how low support has plummeted' and imply social media is to blame. In what way is 'low support' == 'agree 100%' ? It sounds like you're calling for some form of censorship to enforce 100% agreement.

by krapp 2y ago

ethbr1 2y ago

IMHO, social media should be much more heavily regulated (specifically: mandating transparency) in democracies. Used to be, you could buy a newspaper and print your viewpoint, but everyone could see it. Now, you can trivially individually target users, invisible to any oversight. How is that not an existential threat to democracy? (Whether from a foreign nation-state or anyone else is immaterial)

krapp 2y ago
I think the bigger threat to democracy in this case is having the government be the gatekeeper of public discourse.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Mandating transparency doesn't require publishing censorship.

jappgar 2y ago

You can trust that the government wants to protect the children. The question is what does "protect" really mean. Western governments do a pretty good job of protecting kids from labour exploitation, for example. But that's because it's relatively easy to enforce. Protecting them from other harms is more difficult and involves tradeoffs with personal or parental freedoms. I really don't think these initiatives are intentional power grabs... although you're correct that opportunist entitites will exploit these regulations to empower themselves.

techjamie 2y ago
> You can trust that the government wants to protect the children. The moment I hear a politician say "protect the children" is the moment that I want to know what kind of garbage they're trying to pull under our noses. It rarely comes across as being little more than a pretext to pass some other agenda through.

logicchains 2y ago

The left and the right both agree 100% on protecting Israel, and social media is the biggest threat to Israel's existence given how low support for Israel has plummeted in Americans aged 18-25 thanks to unfiltered access to imagery from the war in Gaza.

krapp 2y ago
The American military industrial complex couldn't care less about optics. The Iraq war led to some of the biggest protests in history and it didn't matter, and the current social media landscape doesn't actually matter wrt American policy in Israel. Also, it shouldn't be the role of social media to ensure the existence of Israel, even if one assumes that opposition to their actions in Gaza is de facto opposition to their existence as a state, which I wouldn't. Also what you're describing immediate, unfiltered journalism which provides one of the strongest arguments against having social media be regulated by governments. Seeing the cruelty and violence of government unfiltered by media gatekeepers and in realtime is a good thing. Americans should have the opportunity to question their government's unwavering support for Israel and the consequences of their own imperialism. Of course social media can also be just as much a platform for propaganda and misinformation as traditional media, but it's also easier to undermine than traditional media. We need a way for the masses to be able to publish to the masses, and social media is currently the best option to allow that, even with its downsides.
thruway516 2y ago
>The left and the right both agree 100% on protecting Israel Sorry I call bull on this. In the first part of your comment you say 'agree 100%' and in the latter part you yourself say 'how low support has plummeted' and imply social media is to blame. In what way is 'low support' == 'agree 100%' ? It sounds like you're calling for some form of censorship to enforce 100% agreement.