Large groups of people just don't know how to solve these sorts of problems. A government will never say "facebook should either not exist or should radically modify its product so that it is no longer successful" At best, they will push for identity verification or age verification.
These are not the only two possible courses, but these will be the choices put in front of us. Get used to reading books and going on walks. The internet is almost dead.
It seems a relatively simple first step should be to declare that algorithmic feeds which cater content to individuals render the platform a publisher and thus no longer subject to section 230 protections.
The government regulates plenty of complex products and markets. Software isn't that special.
The trick is to cut away at the user-hostile foundations of the product. In theory, a product like Facebook or Instagram would have no need to be regulated, but the sale of user data, the engineered addictiveness (looking at you “Data Scientists”), etc. are all worthy of being regulated.
by your username I assume you are yourself one of the droids you're looking for lol.
But also I think people forget: this is not cut and dried. This is not simple. This is not just "these companies are evil and should be stopped". It is: there is a market pressure to do these things. "I enjoy the product and use it a lot" and "I am addicted" is blurry and market pressure is not going to recognize that limit because it does not care about human suffering unless that suffering meaningfully impacts the bottom line.
If these companies hit regulations that effectively cap their advertising revenue per user (i.e. the "addictiveness"), they are dead. That may be totally fine, and I'm sure majority of people would rejoice hearing this. But remember: advertising dollars are earned, especially at tech company scale, by the effectiveness of the targeting to get get more $ / DAU since DAU cannot grow beyond the Earth's population and that is the scale that these companies have already achieved.
If you cap advertising dollars, you cap advertising effectiveness. You cap the ability for small companies to connect quickly with prospective customers without being locked out because they have to spend too much to find them. Yes you also cap scammers and other nefarious actors too, but thats arguably a different issue. The impact of reducing advertising effectiveness is disproportionately concentrated on small business where cheap and effective advertising is so important.
My hope is that there is a way to do both and I don't have to be constantly horrified when I look at my screen time hours.
What's funny is that I don't find fediverse apps like Mastodon to be less addictive. It could be because they (and the ActivityPub protocol) was modelled after commercial counterparts or that information foraging in an endless forest of data in itself is attractive to the human psyche.
Third option: Facebook changes it's business model from data gathering and selling to pay-to-use. Make Insta and FB both be gate communities where folks have to pay to post.
Fourth option: product becomes less addictive and the algorithms stop optimising on "angry users click more". Less advertising profits, perhaps less engagement but probably still profits on advertising.
Fifth option: don't aim to continually increase profits and instead change the rules of capitalism to be less focused on making "profit at any price" to perhaps a more gentler form. After all, Monopoly(TM) is restarted once one player has all the money, it's about time that we do that in real life too or how many more trillionaires do we need?
So there are also grey choices here and not only b/w.
That was my point. Intelligent people on HN can find other options, but none of those other options will either impress Meta shareholders nor will they make it into legislation.
at least until Flock reports that you're reading a book you bought 2nd hand, and Amazon shuts down your AWS account for the audacity.
It would probably improve my life that the internet dies, except there are no longer many third spaces. Those spaces that do exist are also recording my every movement anyway. As is my privately-owned vehicle that I took to get there.
>Get used to reading books and going on walks.
As someone who does both, it's quite lovely! You might even be happier doing that than whatever it is the modern internet has become.
Agreed. I'm working on the transition. I'm still a work in progress.