[tylerhou]

I think their argument is that if IG makes the rest of their users much more happy, that happiness outweighs the cost of making a small portion of users suicidal.

First of all, it's not clear that this is the case -- that Instagram makes some teenagers so much happier that it outweighs the downside.

Second, any product with the capacity to make some population of their users die or harm themselves (1% suicidal maybe leads to 0.01% of people actually attempt suicide; not counting other detrimental effects like eating disorders or depression) should be regulated for safety. C.f. cars, guns, tobacco, alcohol, food, medicine, etc. Such a product should not be under the control of one private company.

I.e. it should not be Facebook's choice to create winners and losers for those who use Instagram. We need regulation from some independent entity that is not motivated (or as motivated) by Facebook's profit. The best candidate would probably be some independent government agency.

[umanwizard]

You are correct, but none of what you said contradicts what I said. I just said that the original comment was not a logically sound argument; I didn’t make any counter-argument of my own, nor did I even say that his conclusion was necessarily untrue.

Indeed it’s not at all clear without further study whether Instagram increases people’s happiness enough to be worth the downsides.

[cybernautique]

I quibble with your notion that this argument needs be logically sound in the first place. Logic is about consequence; this is a question of values.

It is my value judgment that Facebook is disgusting, and my arbitrary desideratum for this judgment is that Facebook (allegedly) spun a narrative to cover their suicide machine.

You'd be right in saying that this line of thought is decidedly not sound; nor could it ever have been sound in the first place, because it's irrational and arbitrary. Does its irrationality and arbitrariness make it less valuable than logically sound arguments? If so, why?