| I'm going to echo what others are also saying, which is the unpalatable core of the crisis we face wrt Facebook and in particular Instagram and its ilk: They are by their own admission and indeed nature, optimizing addiction. The headline passed this week, Is this Facebook's Big Tobacco moment?, and it's a good one to take seriously. Social media, particularly Facebook and its ecosystem, pursues "engagement" as the only ultimate KPM. Let's say the ugly part outloud: "engagement" is the word we use in shareholder reports for "addiction." What does that mean? It means that a $billion company has Sauron-like focus of will on ensuring that its user base grow and are as addicted to its services as possible. Setting aside the societal costs of the surveillance panopticon that results for another rant, the personal consequences are that we have 21st c. data-mined constantly-tuned machinery with one purpose only: bypass and circumventing any cognitive or behavioral or social or regulatory/legal constraints, on intensifying that addiction. This is exactly the playbook of Big Tobacco. We need to take seriously as a society that what Facebook et al are selling (to the consumer... who they aren't "charging"... again, a rant for another day...), is digital nicotine. The presumption that individual kids can "make good choices" or that activist engaged non-exhausted tech-savvy parents can "educate" their kids out addiction, is preposterous on the face of it. Abstinence education does not work. There is no "just the tip" for Instagram. Instagram is digital fentanyl. We need to start talking about, reasoning about, and regulating it as such. It's not enough to break up the company. Social media based on engagement would best be reasoned about as a threat to individual and societal help on par with say biological weapons. If you think that's hyperbolic, review the WSJ Facebook files again, and the endless whistle-blowing, and look at where we are a culture wrt consensus reality around the pandemic and fair elections. We are close to civil war, and it's a predictable outcome of the KPM Facebook uses. |