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by whats_a_quasar 1164 days ago
I didn't dismiss concerns about freedom of speech. I explicitly acknowledged them in paragraph 4. My point is that there is a tradeoff here, and reasonable people can disagree.

That's reasonable a reasonable complaint about how I talked about moral panics. Updated the wording to not say that's the reason for HN's strong reaction. Though I really do think that cultural history is a major factor.

> Also I think I'd object to your framing of "a public health crisis comparable to opioids". Much of that appears to be attributable to the side effects of the "war on drugs". At absolute minimum the vast majority of overdoses are clearly due to unreliable product quality which is simply not an issue for things purchased legally.

I really don't think this is true. The government didn't cause a generation of people to become addicted to Oxytocin. You can argue about the best way to help, and lots of municipalities are trying harm reduction programs, but I don't think you can pin people ODing on fentanyl on the government.

Smoking regulations worked. CFC regulations worked. Automobile safety regulations worked. Sanitary standard regulation worked. Mandatory vaccine campaigns worked. Food and drug safety regulations worked. The clean air act and clean water act mostly worked. Government intervention often goes wrong, but it also often leads to huge increases in well-being. Particularly for addictive things presented to minors.

1 comments

There's one single problem. The addictive thing here is a dual use good. Most kids also use social media for keeping up with their classes and stuff. At this point you can miss an exam if you don't check your social media regularly. I don't know how do you go back from this point where social media is an integral part of our lives.
> Most kids also use social media for keeping up with their classes and stuff. At this point you can miss an exam if you don't check your social media regularly.

This was sure as shit not the case when I was at school, and is an abject failure of the school itself if that is true.

It’s not remotely a problem that needs to be accounted for - trivial solutions exist, ranging from putting information like the date and time of exams on a web page, or just giving them out in class and expecting people to be organised enough to show up, or fail - as usual, a “technology” problem can be solved by looking at how a process worked 70 years ago, where, presumably, people could show up for exams without needing a goddamn algorithmic feed to tell them about it.

Many schools in the UK have specialist apps for this, tied in to the school's data management infrastructure. It definitely is not the case that people require social media accounts to keep up with class timetables, homework schedules or school notices.