Comment by joshuamerrill
19 hours ago
The evidence is pretty clear, and it keeps growing. Social media causes real harm, both to individuals and to society. It is addictive by design, it worsens mental health especially for kids, and it rewards outrage and misinformation. In that way, social media looks a lot like smoking. It was widely adopted before we understood the risks, then aggressively pushed because it was profitable.
Meta did more than just take part in this system. It perfected it, scaled it worldwide, and resisted meaningful change until public pressure or regulation forced its hand.
That is why it is worrying to see Meta present itself as a trusted builder of the next major technology wave. When a company repeatedly puts growth ahead of social harm, skepticism is not bias. It is common sense. Giving that company even more powerful and less transparent tools should cause us alarm.
That’s why I’m building https://roselabs.ai!
I’ve rebuilt out most of Manus internally, plus have a bunch more tools coming in soon :)
Super intelligence shouldn’t be gate kept by Big Tech!!
What’s the difference between social media and books?
Or is your point that all entertainment is harmful to individuals and society?
Taking your questions at face value, the difference is incentives and feedback loops.
Books are static. They do not watch you, adapt to you in real time, or optimize themselves to keep you reading at any cost. Social media does. It measures behavior, runs constant experiments, and tunes feeds to maximize engagement, often by amplifying outrage, fear, or tribalism.
You are comparing apple to oranges. Social media posts are static, don’t watch you etc. But the distribution platform does all these things.
In books it’s exactly the same thing: do not believe for one second that the publishing industry does not watch engagement metrics (aka: sales) and does not adapt to the taste of the market. It’s also tuned to maximize outrage; see how popular unauthorized biographies of polarizing figures have become - who is next on Walter Isaacson list ? I am betting Trump must be somewhere there and it’s gonna be a banger.
Anybody who has meaningfully engaged with short-form dynamically adapted video content and read a book can EASILY tell the difference. It is Morphine vs Fentanyl
>What’s the difference between social media and books?
I am struggling to believe that this was asked in good faith.
If we just take this idea in good faith one could make the point that social media and books are more similiar than they appear. They both end up in escapism. They both can teach or entertain. They both are mostly anti-social.
The difference in form increases effectiveness but in the end they are a tool that is designed to escape reality.
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Well, it’s a good example of social media’s negative externalities.
Books are a medium that encourages literacy and helps understand others. Social media, in its current iteration, discourages curiosity and heightens conflict with others.
Books aren't harassing kids!
or using kids attention as a tradable product.
things I like are good. things I don't like are bad.