• andallthat@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Not just teenagers. Facebook and quite a few others should outright be banned. Not only they are scientifically proven to be a mental health catastrophe and a political threat to democracy, it’s also pretty clear now that both these things are part of their design, not bugs or unintended emerging properties.

      • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
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        3 months ago

        Facebook actively contributed to the genocide in Myanmar, and did basically nothing about it because they didnt want to hire more moderators that spoke the language, so that they could adequately remove pro-genocidal content

    • Someone8765210932@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Ok, but the genie is already out of the bottle. Arguing like this is kinda pointless.

      I don’t think it will be possible to get them off social media (or the internet in general), so you need to find ways to make it work.

      E.g. minors can not be advertised to, no algorithmic content, no doom-scrolling, and heightened data protection. I think teenager should get access to as much as possible to reduce the “risk” of them trying to go around it. “Their” version of social media might even be the superior one in the end.

      If the world wasn’t on fire at the moment, people could calmly discuss possible solutions and propose laws in every country to actually protect their children from e.g. the stuff mentioned in the linked article. Sadly, this isn’t going to happen …

      • andallthat@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The thing is that social media have an oversized influence that makes a calm discussion of possible solutions very hard to have. When the US recognized the implications of letting a foreign power exert so much control over their people, they tried banning TikTok, or breaking it up so their US operation would be under US control.

        Facebook should also be split and its EU operation purchased by a European company, that could then spend more time implementing the other changes you mention (doom-scrolling, data protection) and less time lobbying to get all these pesky EU regulations removed.

        And yes, it does feel heartbreaking to count the US as a threat to national security, but China has never threatened to annex Greenland with military force, so what would have been paranoia and extreme anti-americanism last year is now the sensible, level-headed thing to do.

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Ya!

        Important to keep a semi-reasonable option in the major app stores, unless we want Social-Media-Tor dot Mirror or something to become the new hotness

      • theblips@lemm.ee
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        3 months ago

        How isn’t it possible? Just don’t give them phones, it’s not that complicated

        • cooperativesrock@lemm.ee
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          3 months ago

          Ok, when was the last time you saw a working payphone? 2010? It isn’t safe for teens to not have a phone because payphones don’t exist any more.

      • vegetvs@kbin.earth
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        3 months ago

        That’s a fallacy. Teenagers are the victims here. So I’m obviously blaming greedy corporations, lack of good parenting and proper regulation from authorities.

    • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
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      3 months ago

      I wish I could ban old people from it as well because when their mental processing ability declines, so does their ability to detect bullshit news from bots