Comment by pembrook
1 day ago
You’re strengthening OP’s point instead of undermining it.
The “some governments banned it for kids” argument is an appeal to authority, a logical fallacy.
The actions of tech-reactionist leftist governments absolutely do not constitute sound science or evidence in this matter.
And if you’re claiming the French government only makes government policy based on sound data, I will point you to their currently unraveling government over the mathematically impossible social pension scheme they’ve created.
Responding to the point "it's [only] litigated on substack", things like government bans are relevant counter-examples
The bans might be unfounded or well founded, you might agree with them or not, but clearly the idea that social media might be bad has spread beyond substack
At no point did I have your inserted [only] in my mind when I wrote that.
I certainly do think the idea that social media might be bad has spread far and wide. What I would like to see is experts in the field reaching a consensus on to what extent that idea is true, and what should be done about it.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00902-2#ref-CR6
It should be noted a lot of ideas have spread in recent years. We would do well to not believe all of them, no matter how comforting it is to externalize blame.
Your argument contains the fallacy fallacy, a logical fallacy in which one wrongly cites an informal fallacy in order to discredit a valid argument.
The actions of several democratic governments is evidence that there is enough popular support for these actions to argue for a broader trend. And before you try for a gotcha, I am well aware that a democratic government can enact regulations without a direct vote proving that a majority of people support such an action. But inasmuch as a government reflects the will of the governed, etc etc etc.
Huh? Claiming something is true because a government supports it, is quite possibly the most cut-and-dry definition of an appeal to authority I've ever seen.
Governments aren’t banning or restricting it because “god said it was bad”. Nor is the GGGP arguing that we should take it seriously because governments do so. Those would be specific appeals to authority. The GGGP argument uses examples of cases where social media has been taken seriously enough to result in government regulation to directly rebut the GGGGP’s claim that social media is only being discussed on substack and not more broadly.
"several democratic governments"