[echelon]

Are you sure it's just kids?

In dealing with the ills of social media, you do what you do with every other negative externality - you tax it. At least the parts of it you don't like.

Designing privacy, freedom, and liberty destroying mechanisms is not the way.

Big social wants these regulations to pass so that they can get better identity tracking for ads targeting. To them it doesn't matter if the tech ushers in 1984. It makes them more money.

[Gigachad]

It's definitely not just kids. Social media is a lot like meth, we should at a bare minimum stop giving it to kids as soon as possible. And then come to realise it's bad for everyone and should be wound back.

[Paracompact]

Their argument would be, "If meth is a negative externality, we should just tax it instead of banning it in stores for kids to buy." Kids may die, but I'm sure with all that extra state revenue we'll get a nice park or museum or kickback to Tesla or something.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Kids may die, but I'm sure with all that extra state revenue we'll get a nice park or museum or kickback to Tesla or something.

The argument, which has some pretty decent evidence behind it, is that prohibition is the thing that kills people. Because it has to be smuggled, dealers switch from "normal" hard drugs to overdose triggers like fentanyl with 1000x the potency because then they only have to smuggle 0.1% as much of it, which in turn kills people because street dealers cut it improperly and users get wildly different effective doses or drugs cut with dangerous contaminants.

Notice that meth literally is legal in the US. Essentially anyone can get amphetamines by going to a doctor and telling them you have the symptoms it gets prescribed to treat. It's even prescribed to kids. The primary barrier is having health insurance and the ability to take off work during the day every month to get a refill. Which is why the people dying of overdose are the people priced out of that system, who wouldn't be if they could buy it at Walmart, but because they can't they resort to the entirely unregulated black market and die of a fentanyl overdose.

[kelseyfrog]

[flagged]

[tancop]

looking for me?

[kelseyfrog]

Are you willing to expound on the meth tax idea? Just curious.

[AnthonyMouse]

But then what's the point of forcing IDs on everyone instead of cutting to the chase?

[bloqs]

I'm not sure I get your arguement here

Are you saying that we should let children smoke and just tax it because its better for their liberty and freedoms?

Or are you saying we should just tax social media for adults but banning it for kids is ok

[anonzzzies]

We do that here; heavy tax sigarettes (and booze): both dropped like a lead balloon. So yes, tax it for everyone. Kids cannot pay for sigarettes and most adults don't want to (most vapers I know do it because it costs far less; that should be taxed more too imho). If browsing insta/tiktok costs an euro per hour, let's see how many still do it; I'd say they go bankrupt in a few months. Apparently it was never that interesting.