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What these corporations were trying to do is bad and vaguely feasible to a degree. I think it's bad enough regulation could apply. But there is an additional co
by superkuh 7mo ago
What these corporations were trying to do is bad and vaguely feasible to a degree. I think it's bad enough regulation could apply. But there is an additional consideration that's really important in how we as a society deal with this.
Screens are not drugs. They are not somehow uniquely and magically addictive (like drugs actually are). The multi-media is not the problem and not the device to be regulated. The corporate structure and motivations are the problem. This issue literally applies to any possible human perception even outside of screens. Sport fishing itself is random interval operant conditioning in the same way that corporations use. And frankly, with a boat, it's just as big of a money and time sink.
We should not be passing judgements or making laws regulating screens themselves because we think screens are more addictive than, say, an enjoyable day out on the lake. They're not. You could condition a blind person over the radio with just audio. The radio is not the problem and radios are not uniquely addictive like drugs.
We can't treat screens like drugs. It's a dangerous metaphor because governments kill people over drugs.
Without this distinction the leverage this "screens are drugs" perceptions gives governments will be incredibly dangerous as these cases proceed. If we instead acknowledge that it's corporations that are the problem and not something magical about screens then there's a big difference in terms of the legislation used to mitigate the problem and the people to which it will apply. The Digital Markets Act in the EU is a good template to follow with it only applying to large entities acting as gatekeepers.
- jfengel 7mo agoMaybe governments should stop killing people over drugs.
- maxaw 7mo agoScreens on their own aren’t “uniquely and magically addictive”, but infinitely scrollable short form video delivered through that screen is, because a few companies spent billions on the smartest minds in the world to make it so.
- megaman821 7mo agoSo you would support banning any form of entertainment that people spend more time on than TikTok since it would be above the threshold of addiction?
- InvertedRhodium 7mo agoMore or less, yeah. There might be some nuance about the threshold for maladaptive behaviour, but if it’s all or nothing I’ll take all.
- twoodfin 7mo agoHow would you get around the First Amendment difficulties?
- bjt 7mo agoThere are plenty of public interest limitations on free speech. Food labels, cigarette warnings, deceptive ad laws. Regulating addictive social media isn't really an outlier here.
- twoodfin 7mo agoEven commercial speech regulations need a stronger basis than, “People spend a lot of time listening to it.”
- intended 7mo agoThe parent comment set up a false choice and then had to adapt to the response calling their bluff. The issue isn’t with reading or consuming content, as was set up in the challenge above. The issue is with designing feeds and surfacing content in ways that take advantage of our brains. As an analogy, loot boxes in video games, and slot machines come to mind. Both are designed to leverage behavioral psychology, and this design choice directly results in compulsive behavior amongst users.
- 7mo ago
- hattmall 7mo agoIt's not the screen, it's the format. It's an engineered gambling addiction where the currency is time and instead of the house taking your money the arbitrage your time to an advertiser, often surreptitiously.
- fc417fc802 7mo agoWorse than that, often times the content that fosters the most engagement borders on propaganda that directly damages the social fabric over time. A lot of the extremist content (left, right, and otherwise) fits this description.
- hightrix 7mo agoScreens are drugs. They are uniquely and magically addictive. Try to take away a kids tablet, a teen's phone, or an adult's phone. They will fight just like an addict.
- fc417fc802 7mo agoThis is not particularly insightful if you stop and think about it. Try to unilaterally snatch a book that someone is in the middle of reading and you will probably be met with a hostile reaction. Grab the tool someone is using to do a task, similar. What you're describing is the natural reaction to messing with someone else's possessions. Without further context it's blatantly toxic behavior even if you happen to have the authority to force the matter.
- durzo22 7mo agoYou aren’t reading or using a hammer for 6 hours a day. It’s hard to find a tone ppl aren’t using their phone that would be appropriate to take it away if it’s only while not using it
- fc417fc802 7mo agoPhones and computers are used for more than one thing; in that sense they aren't analogous to a single item such as a book or hammer but rather an entire closet filled with odds and ends. Keeping in contact with acquaintances, checking traffic and looking up other day to day information, reading a book during down time, these are three completely distinct activities that have all been nearly entirely subsumed by screens for me.
- burnished 7mo agoMotherfucker you try to take my fork while I'm eating and you're going to get a stabbed hand. Are forks addicting?
- ineedasername 7mo agoso… choices, as you see them in this issue, the lenses through which on the one hand you think is extreme and the other appropriate… are either screens-as-drugs or sports fishing? Some middle ground might be there somewhere. But if forced to choose… the choices for interpreting behavioral engineering funded by $billions in research for over a decade + data harvesting on a scale unprecedented, for the purpose of manipulating users: Doesn’t sound a lot like fishing to me.