[luckylion]

> Facebook and Twitter could literally make the world a better place simply by disabling those kind of features. Just remove them.

I'm not sure about that. I agree that the world might be better, but I'm not sure they could just disable them. The next smaller competitor who won't will have more user engagement and grow. If something is a very effective advantage, I believe you can only remove it by coordinated action and enforce it on a global scale.

Modern weapons are terribly efficient at killing people. But if you're the only country that's removing them from your arsenal, you depend on the mercy of your neighbors.

[tpxl]

Ah yes, the "if we don't do it, someone else will" defense, that has been shown to have merit time and time again.

If you don't want to make the world a worse place, you don't do it. Hiding behind such logic means you're really just virtue signalling.

[jakear]

This doesn’t need to be a secret flipped switch. It could be a very public announcement, which lots of supporting data and arguments. Nobody is going to build a successful competitor to FB based off of “we’re doing the same thing that Facebook just very publicly stopped doing because they took a stand against its society-destroying implications”.

[luckylion]

Maybe, but I have doubts. Nobody likes predatory lending, but it's still a blossoming industry. I believe that works for small things, but if the advantage is large enough, somebody will step up and do it.

And it's not like people don't like it. They "want" to be engaged, to feel anger and surprise etc, those systems work because they're catering to peoples' instincts and desires.