OK. That may be true. but demand is also a poor signal of distinguishing progress from regression.
So let's work on that. On a better method for doing so. It seems possible to do so, using the knowledge we gained in the many sciences dealing with human/eco welfare.
>> Let's duke it out in the process of government. ... You will lose, badly, because your position is wildly unpopular with the vast body of the population.
Leaving aside the many failures of democracy, people not always know or prefer the thing that is good for them in the long term. I'm not saying that totalitarinsm is OK, but most people do benefit from living in an environment that guides them well, surrounds them with good things, and makes it hard for them to choose the wrong choices.
And "knowledge"? What knowledge? The social sciences largely do not reproduce. For the past few decades, the social sciences have been a mystic cult with political aspirations. We knew more in 1990 than we "know" now.
In the grand parent post, we talked about "YT and FB could fix these social issues overnight, if they wanted to: turn off autoplay, turn off recommendations, restore chronological timelines, and dial down the ads.". It is quite different from the great evils of history.
And sure, we should work on reproducing social sciences. it's a big problem.
But i would guess that if you'd describe something like the internet that is today in very general terms(possible to predict once you know that attention/engagement is the lead driver) to psychologists, a decade ago, they would have told you that it may hold some serious potential problems.
Does it mean we need to stop progress ? maybe not, but slowing "progress" in the name of caution may not be a bad trade-off. and once we see the dangers, rolling it back(even against the addicted population's wishes) may also be a decent option.
So mild totalitarianism is be okay?
No, there is no acceptable "middle ground" in which a bunch of Twitter gets in the way of consenting business and consumers and tells people how to run their lives.
The idea of a republic is not that different. Acoording to its tenets, the masses are still not to be trusted to make the decisions because they dont know whats good for them. Instead, they are supposed to choose a small fraction of people who not only are supposed to know whats good for them but would also make decisions that is good for them.
It is not a whole lot less patronizing than 'masses don't know what's good for them'
The world absolutely _should_ work that way. Companies _should_ have half a brain to realise that selling bottled water is bad for the environment, that fracking causes earthquakes, that sugar is the root of all dietary evil, that tobacco is carcinogenic, that overfishing causes unspeakable damage to ocean life, that SUVs are colossal wastes of space and fuel...
All the companies doing the above are providing wildly popular goods and services. And a lot of them are perfectly legal too.
Your suggestion implies that all this is just dandy, thank you very much, so take your hemp clothing and your vegan sandals and your do-gooderness off of my property and gtfo acting as a "self appointed guardian".
What kind of extreme libertarian hard-on does a man have to possess to believe that all of this is how society SHOULD work?
I deeply resent this sentiment that you have to take the good with the bad of a free market society because there is no alternative. Of course there is! Regulate these idiots into the ground! While this is clearly a pipe dream, that's a long way away from the statement that this is how society _should_ be.
That firms are able to dismantle, oppose, co-opt, or avoid such frameworks is very much part of the problem.
I'd like to see vast changes in liability and increased veil-piercing abilities.
For those who are vocabulary stunted (like me apparently):
myopic: nearsighted.
vitriol: cruel and bitter criticism.
And it's funny that you're challenging people to fight Facebook & co in the process of government, which has been subverted by lobbyist money from... Facebook & co. Why do you think that the US government is asleep at the wheel when it comes to privacy? Because they're paid a lot of money to not worry about it. And with enough money changing hands, it becomes easy to think that in fact those services are needed by the public and they represent progress.
So no thanks. The self-appointed guardians of the public are smart to use different tactics.
Citation needed.
The world shouldn't work that way either: if companies stopped providing the goods and services people needed because a few self-appointed guardians of the public good scream about it on social media, we'd never have been able to make progress at all, since these activists have no special power to distinguish change from regression, and so err toward stasis.
If you want high-engagement features disabled, fine. Propose a law. Let's duke it out in the process of government. You will lose, badly, because your position is wildly unpopular with the vast body of the population.