Comment by wackget
11 hours ago
It's way more complex than "no self control". Social media is addictive by design and is peddled at such scale that it is literally impossible to ignore. It's also backed by billions upon billions of dollars.
Pitting the average person up against that, then blaming them for having "no self control" once they inevitably get sucked in is not a remotely fair conclusion.
People keep saying this and yet, I have never used any of these short form video services or really any social media outside of desktop websites like hackernews and reddit. Even on reddit I just subscribe to a few niche and mostly technical subreddits. It seems extremely easy to ignore it all.
Considering the median amount of time people spend on social media daily, it sure does not seem to be so easy for the average person (as was implied in the comment you replied to). I've got a pretty good self control when it comes to the common vices, but I can't see why that would generalise to everyone else.
It's easy for you and me. At the same time, it doesn't seem right to make a business of intentionally going after the people who get addicted to this, like flavored cigs meant to appeal to teenagers. And these social media companies have a paper trail of internal research on user engagement.
But I'm still wary of the motives behind these bans because they seem to be about controlling information, not addiction.