Comment by potsandpans
14 days ago
> You are putting forward a false equivalence...
> This is the digital equivalent of the tobacco industry we are talking about
I reject the counter-equivalence you've offered.
This is not mutually exclusive: I can acknowledge that social media is bad (for everyone) and also advocate for a non-gated free and open internet.
My argument is more sharp: do not pass laws for- and build a censorship infrastructure to- solve an institutional problem. If we must discuss this, then we should first discuss fining and breaking up the companies and criminally prosecuting the executives that did the harm knowingly. This takes more care to understand: how is it we want to shape our commons, and what are the steps that we'll take as citizens to enforce it.
But that can't be packaged into a short quip.
If this is a meaningful debate, then we should avoid sloganeering. Your last sentence is a nice soundbite, but it disregards all nuance. It's exactly the kind of content that creates harm on social networks: optimized for being being catchy and divisive. Something someone can go repeat and remain uninformed. Funnily enough, the construction is also a tell-tale marker of something written by an LLM. (To be clear: I'm not accusing you of writing this with an LLM, just noting how prevalent this rhetorical device is).
That's neither an argument nor more sharp.
You are pretending that the moral value you place on unfettered access to any places on the internet trumps the provable deleterious effects social media as a product have.
The issue with my analogy - it is not a slogan - is not that it's unnuanced. It's that the framing - that social media is actually a product - completely dismantles your point.
I'm sorry but banning for an age category is a perfectly fine and workable solution. I don't see why France should artificially limit itself to suing foreign corporate executives to appease foreign absolutists.
Oh, the _no you_. Response.
You're not sorry. And your argument is not nuanced, it's a blunted half-clever framing. The propaganda has no effect on me. There's no point in arguing further. We are ideologically opposed. Your support for these policies in my mind are worst than the companies doing harm.
I do not respect people begging to be policed. I'll fight you more then I'll fight them, and I look forward to it!