Does it harm other taxpayers if people are manipulated to believe that voting for Neofascists will make things better?
Social media addiction is definitely much more detrimental to society than drug addiction, imho. Drugs aren't used by foreign adversaries to sow discord and chaos. We should not treat drugs and social media the same.
I agree on your stance of 'tax and regulate' for drugs, but it should also be accompanied by heavy prevention efforts: people need to learn very early on how to have a healthy relationship with addictive things, whether it be gambling, alcohol, drugs, gaming, TV, or social media. This way they can protect themselves, in freedom.
The problem with social media is that it is very new, very broad, and in part quite innocent (just communication with friendly people). Even if we could magically update the education system to teach people how to not be manipulated by social media, we are way too late to prevent the terrible effects they are having in adults and seniors. We need a way to educate or protect those in a non-authoritarian way. Otherwise the slide developed societies find themselves in today will hit rock bottom again very soon.
> Social media addiction is definitely much more detrimental to society than drug addiction, imho. Drugs aren't used by foreign adversaries to sow discord and chaos. We should not treat drugs and social media the same.
If you'll forgive me doing the cliche HN "well actually"...
Well actually, FARC, revolutionary armed forces of Columbia, used cocaine traffic to fund their political activities.
> I agree on your stance of 'tax and regulate' for drugs, but it should also be accompanied by heavy prevention efforts: people need to learn very early on how to have a healthy relationship with addictive things, whether it be gambling, alcohol, drugs, gaming, TV, or social media. This way they can protect themselves, in freedom.
Agree with this, but I believe the "healthy relationship with addictive things" often comes from "a health life + environment", which can be facilitated with tax money from taxing addictive things.
> Even if we could magically update the education system to teach people how to not be manipulated by social media, we are way too late to prevent the terrible effects they are having in adults and seniors. We need a way to educate or protect those in a non-authoritarian way. Otherwise the slide developed societies find themselves in today will hit rock bottom again very soon.
One idea which I'd like to see attempted would be "government social media".
Rather than argue politics on Twitter and TikTok, have the government of $COUNTRY put that country's text of laws online, put the budget of the government online, and let people propose changes. Create an upvote/downvote mechanism like on HN and Reddit to filter through to proposed changes, have the government enact the most popular ones.
Why bitch about your president on Twitter when you can literally create a proposal to impeach them on your country's official social media site?
Make account creation dependent on showing a valid national ID, so each citizen has one profile, and therefore one 'vote' on each proposal (upvote or downvote), and see if that isn't a better system than "laws will be made by a guy you get to choose every couple years, basically without any input from you, while rich people will buy ads of social media sites to confuse you into voting for their preferred candidate".
Social media addiction is definitely much more detrimental to society than drug addiction, imho. Drugs aren't used by foreign adversaries to sow discord and chaos. We should not treat drugs and social media the same.
I agree on your stance of 'tax and regulate' for drugs, but it should also be accompanied by heavy prevention efforts: people need to learn very early on how to have a healthy relationship with addictive things, whether it be gambling, alcohol, drugs, gaming, TV, or social media. This way they can protect themselves, in freedom.
The problem with social media is that it is very new, very broad, and in part quite innocent (just communication with friendly people). Even if we could magically update the education system to teach people how to not be manipulated by social media, we are way too late to prevent the terrible effects they are having in adults and seniors. We need a way to educate or protect those in a non-authoritarian way. Otherwise the slide developed societies find themselves in today will hit rock bottom again very soon.