This really strikes at the core social/philosophical divide: should people be free to choose to destructively engage in addictive goods and services?

Ultimately we're not free if we're not free to destroy ourselves if we so choose.

It seems that most people want to burn huge amounts of their time consuming ad-laden social media, just as they did with ad-laden tv before it.

A much less dishonest (or maybe just less naive) way to frame it is to ask whether we're okay with someone exploit systemic weaknesses in human nature en masse for personal gain and to the long-term detriment of those exploited.

This watered down idealized absolute interpretation of 'freedom of choice' is just so goddamn naive, and ignores pretty much everything we know about systemic flaws in human behavior and decision making. We can do so much fucking better than that.

You nailed it.

Food industry is really bad too, they have been exploiting human weakness for longer, and they have mastered all these shady techniques in marketing and in their product composition. And the health damaging they cause is extensive

That's just it, though: giving people additional options and choices isn't exploiting them.

Detriment is in the eye of the beholder.

What are you talking about? Did you read any of what I wrote?

> whether we're okay with someone exploit systemic weaknesses in human nature en masse for personal gain and to the long-term detriment of those exploited.

Still doesn't seem like you've given it any thought...

If I go round giving people the 'choice' of free samples of heroin, with full knowledge that they're highly likely to become addicted and will no longer be able to choose not to parttake, and even with the intention that they do, and then I make bank, that's pure exploitation. And detriment there is definitely not subjective. Maybe there's a little more nuance to the equivalent in social media but it's not all that different, and negative effects on mental health are even more scary because they're not as blindingly obvious as the results of a physiological addiction.

Maybe you should try understand the limits of rationality in human decision making, especially with immediate vs. delayed rewards, then you might get some idea that choice is often more a function of the options in front of you than whatever might have the best outcome. Reality is just a little more nuanced than this oversimplified ECON101 libertarian ideal of absolute freedom of choice.

> If I go round giving people the 'choice' of free samples of heroin, with full knowledge that they're highly likely to become addicted and will no longer be able to choose not to parttake, and even with the intention that they do, and then I make bank, that's pure exploitation.

That's not how heroin or addiction or exploitation work.

Many people have received single doses of heroin or its analogs. The vast majority of them are not addicts.

I have multiple junkie friends who decided to stop buying and using opiates.

Ultimately the choice is the user's, and nobody's attitudes or beliefs can change that simple fact. It's actually a GOOD thing that the buck stops there, and not anywhere else.

It's not anyone else's place to decide for someone that their addiction is or is not detrimental to them. I am addicted to caffeine and while many (eg Mormons) might call that a bad thing, I vastly prefer my life addicted to caffeine over my life when I am not.

The world would be a much better place if free heroin were available in unlimited quantity on every streetcorner.

> Ultimately the choice is the user's

That's really not how choice seems to work in real life.

Anecdotes about recovered junkies are meaningless until you talk to those, which in my experience are the majority, who a) haven't recovered and b) repeatedly choose to try and c) fail to recover because humans just don't have the infinite willpower and rationality that this freedom of choice dogma always assumes. I mean people often don't even have enough information to make rational/good decisions in the first place. Until you stop looking at only success stories, and really have a look at the rest of the iceberg that is human failure, you're just chewing on ideological preconceptions.

> I am addicted to caffeine

Apples and oranges. Caffeine doesn't have much in the way of negatives, and if you experience one of the negatives then the positives most likely aren't strong enough to keep you coming back. So sure, Mormon judgements would then in the 'eye of beholder'.

Maybe talk about alcohol, there's some pretty objective negatives - not only for the person 'choosing' to do it but almost anyone around them - and I know plenty of alcoholics who wouldn't be alcoholics if they were capable of making that choice.

> The world would be a much better place if free heroin were available in unlimited quantity on every streetcorner.

Well now I really can't tell if I'm just feeding the trolls...

> should people be free to choose to destructively engage in addictive goods and services?

Should people be free to engineer addictive systems and services to extract more money from others?

The irresistable donation machine...