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by permo-w 138 days ago
And yet consistently the arguments you hear against regulation are these "let's pretend there's no such thing as nuance, how can we ever regulate an extreme case of something when we don't regulate minor cases?" arguments that act like no law has ever successfully regulated a nuance and improved people's welfare. Should we also allow heroin in baby food because cliff-hangers are allowed in films? Don't restrict my personal freedom to choose to be addicted to heroin from day 1!

I'm not saying these feeds are as bad as heroin for your health, but the difference in addictiveness between cliff-hangers in film and tiktok on your phone is about as big, and I equally think nicotine should be heavily regulated for similar reasons
1 comments
D-Machine 138 days ago
Yes the argument quality has become poor too, and there is less nuance than before.

And like obviously society benefits from some paternalism for things like this, and we really do need to see good, concrete recommendations be proposed.

Imagine if HN were discussing the merits of things like "interrupt every X minutes of infinite-scrolling with reminders / popups / forced X/10 minute breaks" or other actual concrete, balanced solutions to such problems. This would introduce the nuance and make things interesting again.

But it is increasingly the case I find I need to look elsewhere for such discussions.

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permo-w 138 days ago
I absolutely get what you're saying in theory--discussions about how and why are far more valuable than dialectic no yes no yes no yes debates--but in practice for this case, I feel like those how why conversations would perhaps feel a bit redundant? I think almost anyone on the site could quite easily come up with an effective legal method for reducing the addictiveness of short form videos. The issue lies more in the action/inaction of regulators than the makeup of the actions they should take. Then again, this is all recreational anyway, so why not see who can optimise for the absolute best method?

I also wonder if these discussions are going on, just further down the thread

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