I think your point is well made but surely we have to move beyond reaching for the stick at every turn? That path will lead to more and more punitive (or larger) measures being put into place and ending up in a system where simply being becomes an offence to something or someone. We seem to be going down that road anyway but I believe the solution will not come about by more and more laws.
Surely governments have to lead in a more thoughtful(measured) way going forward.
Personally I donāt love having more laws telling me that I am going to be caned for being a bad kid. But unfortunately I do think for this situation, it warrants this. And I do think governments have been pretty measured so far in dealing with the abuse of social media. Too measured maybe. But I think while you and me differed slightly on the means, I would think what we can agree on is that something has to be done, whether through laws or education, sooner rather than later.
The problem with education is that as long as the population can have an average reading age of about 8 or 10 and can (loosely) add and take away, there will be enough āeducationā for governments to be able to go to war, This part of education is taken fairly seriously. However, the education of living, how to live and social responsibility is not. It is to an extent seen to be the domain of parents - which nowadays is sort of like the blind leading the blind in many cases (me included). I think this is starting to be taught but again it is going up against the constant push to excel in the 3Rs and then later exams thatāll get you a job. There needs to be equal weight behind things like personal development, how to maximise it and social responsibility.
The argument that the responsibility is on the users to act responsibly is undercut by the that fact these platforms are not passive, but actively moderate what you see with a view to tweeking your emotions.
Agreed to an extent but should users not be able to see beyond that - if sufficiently made aware?
The most insidious aspect of this is EVERYONE thinks they are immune to its effects because they know better.
Agree also.
Like a lot of these things, it is both/and. The platform users should be educated and informed, so they have the ability to sift bad information from good. And the platform owners have a responsibility to have mechanisms in place so misinformation is not propagated unchecked.
Anecdotally I know, but I remain astonished at how many educated people are misinformed and entrenched in a dodgy position with regard to covid vaccines. Which is to say, it needs more than education and availability of good information.
On the flip side, how are the un-informed taking the decision to take up the vaccine? Itās quite odd isnāt it? Even Trump has had the vac.
This comes back to the reality that even smart, educated people make few of their decisions based on rational evaluation of the empirical information. We develop heuristics based around what sources we trust are saying and what feels right. Sure, education can help fine tune and calibrate those heuristics, but that still leaves us open to being swayed on issues that are highly emotional, or in which bad faith actors are operating. Which essentially describes social media.
As I mentioned earlier, should we not be making more effort to create more rounded/socially aware future generations?
Im not sure I fully understand the question, but my earlier point about how people form their opinions allows one to take two contradictory positions and reconcile them without any discomfort being felt. As such, it is perfectly normal for someone to do something or take a position that is seemingly at odds with everything else they think and believe. This is where you get seemingly smart but in actuality dumb positions like āIām not anti vax iām just anti mandateā from people who seemingly spend half their life bitching about the vax.
People like Trump though are just bad faith actors and so are operating on a different level.
Sorry, wasnāt raising a question in particular - just a general ramble.
I donāt want my stating the need for more education to be taken as meaning that well educated people are immune from making bad decisions, in the end stupidity known no social or class bounds. It is more that there is almost a complete unawareness for the need to teach children how to live and how to live responsibly. It has always been up to the parents and the āschool yard rumbleā to teach these sorts of things. May be it is time to really understand and structure into the mix this education. My thinking is that in the long run this may be a solution to the toxic nature of most social media platforms.
big news yesterday that Peter Thiel is stepping away from Facebook and leaving his position on the board. For all the focus on how dangerous Zuck is, it is Thiel who is really the DC comic baddie. Zuck is far more like Big head from Silicon valley than he is Lex Luthor.
The story is that he is stepping away to put more energy into trumpās reelection bid, which is largely terrifying. The flip side is it is likely an indication of him viewing that the period of peak facebook has passed, which seems like a positive but there is no guarantee at all that what comes next will be any better. Especially when there are people like Thiel now on the sidelines having gained the experience of facebook and are ready to apply that to the next venture.
Hello darkness my old friendā¦ 
Yeah he looks like the proverbial James Bond villain. No doubt one of those who have turned Facebook (Meta) into the monster it has become.
That doesnāt mean I trust Zuckerberg one bit. Only the nameā¦ āMountain of sugarā. 
A fitting name for someone whose declared goal is to attract the whole of humanity into a virtual world with some flashy technological products, in order to make billions out of our personal data and if possible to gain maximal control of our lives.
Whenever I think about this, the story of Pinocchio comes to my mind. Facebook/Meta is the current version of the Land of Toys, designed to trap gullible people, to transform them in order to take possession of them, and finally to sell them off. Zuckerberg is the Coachman, and his aim is to trap the whole of humanity. Hopefully heāll fail.
Iām no Twitter user, so it wonāt affect me directly, and as a matter of fact, I couldnāt care less. Twitter for me is a cesspit of everything which is wrong with current society anyway.
But what do the Twitter users in here think? Good thing, bad thing? Hereās a piece from Robert Reich in the Guardian about Muskās likely motives.
and will it mean the return of Trump?
I use twitter, most of the time as part of a small movie discussion community.
Iām in two minds about continuing. Obviously if there is any kind of subscription added Iāll be off, and I am very wary that his idea of āprotecting free speechā translates to promoting right wing speech. Once itās his, Iām sure he can very easily manipulate the algorithms to show more of what he agrees with and less of what he doesnāt - and of course let Trump back on.
I donāt want to enrich Musk further. As much as I appreciate what heās contributing to the space program, I have no respect for him as a person. But that equally means I donāt want to just walk away and let him and the deplorables have it for their own playground.