Great if you're able to do that easily. Please understand that some of the most brilliant minds in the world get up in the morning usually somewhere in California, and work many hours in the day, and their literal job is to figure out how to subvert this.

> some of the most brilliant minds in the world

Some of the most brilliant minds in the world are working on anything you could name.

> their literal job is to figure out how to subvert this.

I mean sure, but at the end of the day all we're talking about here is an app that shows you a sequence of entertaining videos, it's not streaming directly into your brain stem, it's not fundamentally different from any of the other addictive things that have existed on the internet for years.

Frankly, it's not even that important... So what if you waste your time looking at a bunch of random videos? I personally know people who spend 6+ hours a day on twitch, youtube, minecraft etc, they don't frame themselves as victims being subverted by the insidious machinations of majong, it's understood that they simply enjoy minecraft so they play it a lot, sometimes more than they know they should, but that's just life, there is nothing special about tiktok that merits this subversion of agency narrative.

Let's try it like this -- a disproportionate and extremely high number of the most brilliant minds in the world work in Silicon Valley. Overwhelmingly, that work is essentially "harvesting the behavior and attention of human beings for profit, most often through advertising" That describes all of social media and all of FAANG to various extents.

Those are facts. Up until now I haven't said anything about whether this is good or bad, and I'm still not saying "this means we should shut it down."

But I've seen too much to suggest that it makes sense to hand-wave this phenomenon away and say "it's just life."

No. It's worth studying and doing our best to determine how dangerous this is.

Unfortunately regulations will always be one step behind. Asking for them is victim mentality. We’re responsible for our own choices.

Everyone might get addicted to TikTok for some period. But everyone needn’t stay addicted to TikTok. (Of course I use “TikTok” as a placeholder for any infinitely consumable feed of targeted content.)

Regulation has a place. For example, an obvious and easy win would be to pass a bill requiring any product with a consumable feed to offer and default to an option to sort it in reverse chronological order.

But regulation is a reactive and slow strategy to shrinking a problem that continues to metastasize. There are more proactive social strategies available to us. Education is free. Self-control is free. Unfortunately, they’re only “free” modulo the minutes of attention we can allocate to them from our finite lifetime supply.

I wonder, how many minutes of education or self-introspection is required to prevent one future minute of app usage? I’m optimistic this ratio is favorable, so that once people sufficiently internalize the effect of infinite consumable feeds, they will naturally reduce their self-sabotaging usage of them.

People will adapt. It will just take a while. Sometimes you gotta get burned to learn not to touch the stove. In the meantime, we could require the products to provide resources and tools to reduce addiction (like HN’s noprocrast). And we should also find a way to blunt the impact of social media on those who have not yet begun their journey with its addiction (like children, or people yet to be born into our satirical dystopia of a society). If kids are glamorizing social media before they are old enough to use it, they will not have an easy experience separating themselves from it later in life.

Cigarette smoking rates are way down since twenty years ago when we started convincing children it was gross and uncool. We can do that with social media too.

> Unfortunately regulations will always be one step behind. Asking for them is victim mentality.

Is this a self-serving idea you apply only to the industry you work in, or is this a general principle you apply to all industries? Do you feel this way about the petroleum and chemical industries? The pharmaceutical industries? Food processing? The nuclear industry?

Are all industrial regulations instances of 'victim mentality', or only those that apply to your industry?

I’m not sure where you got the idea that I harbor some absolutist opposition to regulation in any industry, or even in the social media industry for that matter. My comment listed specific examples of social media regulation that I would support.

My goal was simply to highlight the naïveté of thinking regulations alone will solve the problem, unless the USPS is going to send a weekly pill bottle of amphetamines to every citizen who is vulnerable to the dangers of social media addiction.

> Unfortunately regulations will always be one step behind. Asking for them is victim mentality. We’re responsible for our own choices.

We are responsible for our own choices until we aren't. Until we are deceived, directed, subverted to some choices. If that wasn't true then the whole PR + advertisement industries wouldn't be as massive and effective as they are.

I do recommend watching Adam Curtis' "The Century of the Self" to dispel a little the myth that we are solely responsible for our choices...

We are accountable to them, we suffer the consequences of them but definitely not solely responsible.

"Victim mentality" is too big of a sweeping statement for this case, actually I'd consider it extremely dismissive of pretty complicated human behaviours.

Your first sentence is wildly and dangerously misguided. Yes, it's slow and difficult but it's also the reason we have underappreciated institutions like the FDA.

The greatest trick they pulled is convincing people like you that you have no personal autonomy.

It’s one thing to show you stimulating content once you open the app but it’s a whole another level of self-deception to convince yourself that you can’t prevent yourself from opening the app.

reminds me that "the greatest minds at 1600 Amphitheater Parkway" made it harder to open your list of apps on Play Store but never mind

Open the list, select 'TikTok' and click 'Uninstall'

This is not to be demeaning. But if you're having too much trouble disconnecting from it, then that should be the way. You can still see videos in a browser.

Preaching to the choir here, I don't do any social media on my phone at all.

But still, kind of unhelpful. What do we do about them?

It's addictive. Many users don't uninstall because they are addicted, and the social media companies exploit this for profit.

this is the personal responsibility or bootstraps argument in a poorly made sheep's clothing.

They clearly did uninstall it but "use some some-discipline" is pretty disingenuous given companies are abusing biological mechanisms to get people hooked on their apps. This is especially true for teenagers who are underdeveloped in the self-discipline department.

Replace TikTok with food, porn, or drugs. At some point the individual has to take responsibility for their actions and seek support if it's something they can't do on their own. Or we just ban everything.

I'm not sure what your point is, we do ban some of these (with various successes and failures), so why wouldn't we do the same for social media?

Yes we shouldn't ban everything, but there's a large spectrum of acceptable regulations with different tradeoffs and it's fine to discuss what your society wants in that regard instead of precluding any kind of regulation.

TikTok is not as harmful as drugs (at least I haven't seen anyone end up on skid row over watching too many dancing videos). So if it's to be regulated it would likely be similar to porn or gambling and be age restricted.

OP is clearly an adult capable of making their own decisions, so this regulation wouldn't help them.

So what is your point?

In many countries gambling regulations go beyond age restrictions and companies evolving in that space have to provide safeguards to prevent certain behaviors. I don't think it's far-fetched to imagine similar regulations for things like social media, at least it's a real possibility that exists before simply banning everything.

There is such a thing as shared responsibility. An individual smoker is responsible for quitting; Phillip Morris is responsible for making a harmful and addictive product. In the case of social media, individuals are responsible for how they use them, but Facebook/Tiktok/Twitter are also responsible for building apps that encourage overuse.

Commenter: “I have (insert DSMV behavioral condition) and it makes having X with Y extremely difficult” You: “It’s just Y, have X. Problem solved”

I don't use TikTok but even in my mid 40s fell victim to Instagram reels. What's astonishing to me is that I have a level of self control that's way more than the average individual (for instance I have taken cold showers for ever).Even with such an otherwise resilience I fell victim to Instagram reels and their infinite supply of mindless entertainment. It took a week for me to unshackle and get rid of this imbecile nonsense. I still have the app on my phone but am actively not opening it. My hypothesis is that if you can do this for a continued duration, then the existence of the app won't bother you. You can't go around deleting everything from your life. You lead your life on your terms, despite the distractions.

So the addictive forces are quite powerful and for the average individual, it's really hard to get out of this addiction.

Some of the brightest minds in the world work tirelessly to develop impossibly advanced algorithms which exploit our monkey-brains' attention mechanisms. It's scary to me that there's people working in the tech industry who would upvote a comment like this-- it shows a lack of respect for the level of power software engineers possess over real people's lives.

Exercise some self-discipline and read what I wrote. I did uninstall it.

Yes, I read that, I am speaking in the general sense with respect to remarks such as "it feels like they are making a real attempt to take my agency" and "I feel like I am intentionally being taken advantage of by TikTok". I can see why that's not clear though, so fair critique.

I understand you literally removed the app from your phone, but framing yourself as hapless prey without any agency negates the ethos of self accountability and self discipline.

I am not hapless. However I do have a mental disability that makes me especially susceptible to the psychological tricks (and they are tricks) that TikTok employs to keep people scrolling. The fact that I was born with ADHD and can't get rid of it, even if I can curb it, does reduce some of my agency by definition. It sucks, but it's the truth.

It’s just a bottle of liquid, exercise some self-discipline and don’t drink it.

I think that comparison makes the opposite point that you intended.

The answer to treating alcoholism actually is some amount of personal responsibility and strengthening of willpower, not blaming the companies that manufacture alcohol.

If an alcoholic goes around making pronunciations about how they lack agency and how they feel like bars are victimizing them, they will be sternly told to exercise some self-discipline and self-accountability at a minimum, likely they will also be told to check into rehab.

Imagine if, guided by your analogy, I were to have instead replied to the OP with "check yourself into rehab". Most likely, I'd have been downvoted for snark, because everyone understands a sequence of entertaining videos is a different kind of thing than a drug which you ingest and become physically dependent on.

Yes and no. I mean, you are correct in a very abstract way, but there is something to be said for an industry that is able to manipulate a large swath of the population by exploiting various human predilections. Saying it is just self-discipline and accountability is limiting the conversation to a frame that benefits those companies without looking at the totality of the reasons behind it.

Imagine something you have struggled with for a very long time. Now apply (the spirit of) your reply. Good luck, I hope it helps!

It's just poker, show some self-discipline and self-accountability and uninstall the app!

They did.

Let me guess, the solution to ending world hunger is..

It’s just hunger, use your wallet, just go buy some food and eat it.