As an adult, I do not want to be "protected". I can decide for myself if I like the algorithm or product/service and choose not to use it if I don't like it.
Given that statement, I'm not sure you're fully an adult.
Every single person living in modern society is "protectected":
- You're protected from people deciding which side of the street to drive on
- You're protected from a bank who tells you the money you depisited is "all belong to us"
- even a "market" can't exist without "protection"
Once every person has their own army of ML engineers and psychos at their disposal, then there is an oportunity for personal choice in anti-social media.
Or much simpler, the anti-social corps can be required to allow each user to configure their own feed algorithm. This would be a useful "protection".
The negative consequences of not having _any_ "protection" in anti-social networks are clear across society.
These are analagous to the damage done in the US by lack of gun protection. Guns are now the leading cause of childhood death in the US. Combine guns and 4chan/Discord and you get the rash of idiots shooting up the populace and then themseelves.
The problem is in modern societies the society is footing the bill for those who choose, let's say, unwisely.
Why should my mandatory social and medical insurance taxes go fix issues created by such wrong choices? Should the society not cover them? E.g. smokers with lung cancer should pay out of pocket? Or should society try to minimize wrongdoing instead?
Indeed, there are different interpretations of the social contract.
You have essentially two polar options.
First option is that social services come with strings attached that entitle the providers to control the lives of the recipients.
Second is that social services are freely given, and the recipients have not given up their autonomy. the givers can choose to stop giving, or place conditions on gifts, but they dont get direct control over the recipients.
Either are fine in theory, but the problem is with ex-post recontracting. for example, when a gift or service is freely given, and then someone demands payment later.
There are some interesting works of fiction that explore alternatives. For example, allowing adults to choose how much of their autonomy they want to abdicate for differing levels of entitlements and guarantees.
> is in modern societies the society is footing the bill
This isn't exactly true.... All societies always have footed the bill, modern or not. If you cast the person out in a middle age society then expect to get robbed by bandits on your next visit to the town next door.
Which emphasizes why you should attempt to minimize wrongdoing before it gets expensive, when you don't it turns into that story of "there was an old lady who swallowed a fly"
I'm an adult, history of ADHD. Youtube, facebook, reddit is a disease for me. I am a moderator of some niche subreddits but if I stray away I will find myself stuck reading comments and engaging in conversations for hours.
I take steps by not using my phone during work or after a certain time but it is extremely difficult and I still fall into the trap and watch some shorts for 2-3 hours at a time.
I'm not stupid either, graduated with honors in CS and people consider me really smart. My brain just likes how it makes me feel.
Now, I have a fear what all this stuff will do to my child, if even I have trouble with it.
I hate almost everything about the modern commercialized web and really miss irc and forums.
I am undiagnosed (from a parent who was ADHD anti-diagnostic) as an adult but strongly suspect I too. I've never taken an amphetamine to see if there is improvement.
Privacy reasons aside, a big reason I ditched social media and much of the normiesphere technology is the distract-ability. I take great care and pride in reducing unwanted automated interruptions to zero. My phones only make a noise if a cleared human on the other side is initiating the noise. There are zero "check this out" or "your coins reward is ready" crap pinging me, and I won't have it!
> Youtube, facebook, reddit is a disease for me. I am a moderator of some niche subreddits
I had a friend who developed a problem with alcoholism. He went through a period of time where he'd stop by the bar several nights a week to have a single beer because he thought it was important to his social circle.
To no one's surprise, that one drink often turned into two drinks. Two became four, then six, then eight, then he was blacked out on a Wednesday again.
It took some time, but he finally admitted that his habit of visiting the bar was a trigger for the exact behavior he was trying to avoid.
When I see someone talk about how they have a severe social media addiction that they're trying to overcome, but then go on to talk about how they're a moderator on the platform they're trying to avoid, I see the exact same thing.
I don't know what else to say, other than that my friend is doing fantastic now that he's stopped visiting bars at all. He discovered that once he removed the bar as an option for his free time, he realized how many healthier alternatives there were in the real world. He wasn't constantly playing the game of moderating his alcohol intake because he wasn't in environments where he had to. He's much happier now.
For now at least, reddit doesnt seem to have all those dark patterns you see on say FB (forced refresh if you turn your screen off on mobile, minimum and deliberately bad moderating).
> reddit doesnt seem to have all those dark patterns you see on say FB
Reddit is one of the worst offenders for rage bait, algorithmic feeds, content farming, and vacuous content.
> (forced refresh if you turn your screen off on mobile, minimum and deliberately bad moderating).
Reddit absolutely refreshes your feed under certain circumstances depending on the platform, such as hitting the back button.
Your claims about moderation are also completely backward. People complain about Facebook being too sensitive about moderation, but Reddit is basically the wild west. Nearly anything goes on Reddit and the mainstream subreddits are frequently full of highly upvoted misinformation.
When facing off against an army of ML engineers and psychologists?
It is obvious that even adults are suffering negative consequences from social media, and if it isn't obvious, take a look at any of the studies showing the negative impact on adults of social media usage.
Every single consumer is outmatched. The only winning choice is to not play at all.
> Every single consumer is outmatched. The only winning choice is to not play at all.
If someone can't handle their social media usage, you're right that they should stay away.
But this idea that "every single consumer" can't handle it is patently false. The vast majority of social media users aren't completely sucked in to their apps and phones. The time spent on platform graph for every platform has a long tail where the addicts reside, but most people just don't get in that deep.
It can seem that way when you're surrounded by addicts or, more commonly, when your social interaction comes primarily through social media (because addicts are over-represented, obviously). However, what you're missing is all of the people who aren't engaged in social media all day every day.
While I 100% agree with these statements, I still think children should take priority and are more vulnerable than the vulnerable adults. Eventually this whole dark pattern enterprise should be stopped. I see it spread its tentacles towards children and children who are compromise so early in their development may be damaged too much to be able to have a full recovery.
The adult is vulnerable as hell but children are an order of magnitude more vulnerable. Consider an adult with ADHD who can't stop themselves from these traps and consider a child with the same condition, possibly the child of a parent with ADHD. The adult is at least aware something is wrong, for the child there's no baseline and the patters are ingrained deeper.
