Comment by ghastmaster
3 days ago
Politics works that way sometimes. It could be a fad. It could be the culmination of years of the intelligentsia, political, and corporate benefactors finding this to be the right time to move forward.
There has been a lot of propaganda since the mid teens targeting the social and psychological impacts of social media. It is certainly plausible that some group or the aforementioned entities had a big part of this. Regulatory capture is a real thing that makes companies or breaks companies.
This is not the first time media consumption has been labeled and targeted in a negative way and it will not be the last. We as a society have to adapt to changing landscapes.
We shouldn't burn books. We shouldn't ban dungeons and dragons. Video games do not make people in general homicidal. History is repeating itself.
Anecdotally, I have not ran into a single person who has suggested we need to age-gate social media. It is on the politicians mind, but not the lay-person, as far as I can tell.
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who decides what are bad/problematic/unacceptable books?
Everyone who isn't a dangerous creepy loser, as a rule. We generally call that "society."
Change isn't easy. Any particular individual won't necessarily agree with every change when they first see it. But justice and accountability aren't up to the individual - they're up to society. Our duty is only to be decent people and carry that progress forward.
2 replies →
Your response made me realize the book burning analogy was not appropriate. What I meant to allude to was the historical mentions of people reading all day and not playing outside. Mass production of books led to a cultural change that I have seen reports of it being perceived as anti-social. I admit I had a beer or two before making that comment. I don't understand people's negative reaction to new media. It has been happening for a long time. I repeat. History is repeating itself.