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Yeah, I'm sure surviving adolescence needs even more insecurities brought by comparing yourself to the ad-fueled fake happiness machinery that is social media, let's wait for the damage during a couple of decades so we can have conclusive data that satisfies you before we decide to do something, feels like not having enough people with terminal cancer to decide to do something about cigarettes.

by krapp1 hours ago|

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That's an emotional statement, not a rational one, which kind of proves the point that what's going on here is a moral panic. As does a cursory glance at this thread. It's all heat and very little light.

by pacman13371 hours ago|

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This exactly the issue. Anyone with common sense knows that social media have many negative effects, attention span, negative beliefs and ideas, addiction, etc. Just like inhaling smoke into your lungs can't be healthy right? But then comes so called scientist who say well since we thought the the universe was Euclidean but now we see it is non-Euclidean what is common sense is not common sense, there is no common sense. We need some sort of impossible proof to what was originally common sense.

by AmbroseBierce1 hours ago|

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The issue of having to prove things beyond any doubt before we do something is a systemic problem that science itself it's aware of about itself and have been discussed extensively in purely rational settings, how many lives would have been saved from lung cancer if academics had took more seriously the initial research about smoking?. So no I don't believe for a second you are discussing in good faith, instead it seems like you quite a clear agenda and wouldn't care much about any evidence against social media, maybe because you work at one of those corporations or just are ideologically attached to one, so in other words I believe you are the one here due an emotional response, specifically one against the backlash towards social media.

by krapp1 hours ago|

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>instead it seems like you quite a clear agenda and wouldn't care much about any evidence against social media, maybe because you work at one of those corporations or just are ideologically attached to one.

And there it is. I don't agree with you so I must be a shill or a disinfo agent. No, I'm not. I just disagree with you.

No one is actually arguing that things have to be proven beyond any doubt. Nor is anyone arguing that nothing at all can or should be done about the negative effects of social media exposure or the use of ALGORITHMS. There are ways to mitigate the harms of social media that don't involve the government's monopoly on violence.

What's being argued is that the arguments being made to justify having governments regulate and ban social media (and by extension, free speech on the web) haven't been justified by the science. "something must be done before it's too late" isn't a valid argument. It's the same "but what if there's a bomb" argument used to justify normalizing torture after 9/11, and the abusive policing of the Satanic panic before that, and literally every other ratcheting up of authoritarianism in the face of a moral panic.

But since I know you aren't willing or able to approach me in good faith on this topic, I'm done now. I apologize for triggering you with wrongthink.

by AmbroseBierce1 hours ago|

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It's already impossible to even talk about Palestine in TikTok, the biggest social network used by teens, so if you think corporations will not willingly bend to distort free speech you are quite delusional, the ability to make up one's mind is also inversely related to how much propaganda you are exposed to, in other words to be free enough to think for yourself.