[meiraleal]

> People will easily spend 4-6h on social media daily.

people will easily spend no time there too if their algorithms weren't tuned to be addicted. Which can easily be decided to be illegal in many countries based on the current laws already existing - but those companies will spend billions of dollars and use their brainwashing algorithms to prevent that.

The brainwashing is so strong that it goes out of the social media border and overflow to every corner of the web, including HN. But fear no, _tracno5, we don't NEED Meta.

[_trackno5]

Sure you don’t NEED meta. But it still offers value to their users. Regardless of their “addictive” design, you can’t deny that people want what they (and other social media) offer.

It would be absurd to say they don’t add any value to people’s lives.

We’re not talking about heroin here. You can always just delete all your accounts and live an unplugged life.

And now you have an option to get all the upsides of social media minus the downsides of being tracked/advertised for less than the price of a pizza

[qeternity]

> Which can easily be decided to be illegal in many countries based on the current laws already existing

Sorry which laws are those?

And for the billions of people with free will who use these services, you know what's better for them than they do?

[meiraleal]

> Sorry which laws are those?

In Brazil, false advertising is a crime (and I guess in many other countries). At least for me when I used instagram, 95% of the ads served were scam. The people buying the ads are criminals, the people selling too.