[kevinmchugh]

The drug companies have legal requirements to publicize side effects

[bostonsre]

Yea, definitely feels like there needs to be regulation around social media. Fb almost feels like the new Philip Morris. They may not give you cancer, but they have a product that affects the mental health of millions.

[DoingIsLearning]

Not just mental health.

- Multi-level marketing ponzi schemes

- Anti-vaccination

- Far-right extremism

- Islamic extremism

- Totalitarian government political propaganda

- Censorship of anti-totalitarian movements leading to incarceration and torture.

All of these had an exponential growth amplification platform, all of these would have otherwise had an organic growth at best.

Teen suicide is just one negative aspect that happened to be studied in more detail probably due to CYA liability more than anything else.

[mavhc]

Stop following idiots, I don't see any of that.

[harry8]

As long as /you/ are all right there's no problem them. Done. Thanks.

edit: I'm sorry the tone of that obviously rubbed me the wrong way. Let me try again.

If you have personally been able to fully avoid direct contact all the suggested problems listed that actually doesn't make those problems cease to exist for others. Such problems also may affect you quite profoundly in an indirect fashion via people you love or society at large or a number of other vectors.

I'd suggest that these problems are extremely likely to exist and more research needed on their full effect and indeed the trade offs involved in any suggested solutions to it. Your proffered solution of "don't follow idiots" probably isn't particularly useful to anyone. The majority of people would believe, just like you do, that they don't follow idiots.

[mavhc]

If we can't trust people not to follow idiots, then we must find the idiots and stop them being publishers.

Point is it's not the social media company's decisions that cause the problem, humans cause the problem.

So in the end it's an absence of government overseeing the health of its people, because it decided to be involved in as little a way as possible.

The internet does the same thing as any previous media, just better, faster, and governments aren't keeping pace, or being global.

Facebook isn't broken, government is.

If you want Facebook to be the new government, that's an interesting question.

[bostonsre]

So you are saying that facebook has exactly zero moral obligation to do the right thing?

They make instagram, they know instagram can cause suicidal thoughts in teens, the government hasn't regulated it yet, so facebook is in the clear?

That sounds like a zuckerberg-y level denial and blame shifting. I don't think they should operate like philip morris, and I'd guess that some of their employees would agree or we wouldn't have even heard about this information.