[AlexandrB]

The old adage applies to social media: "the medium is the message". You can't steer a ship whose whole purpose is crashing into icebergs from crashing into an iceberg. You're working against the whole purpose of the thing itself. Even if these engineers are Facebook were successful another, less idealistic, social media company would pick up the slack of promoting the clickbaitiest most sensationalistic content possible. We already saw this happen with the meteoric rise of TikTok.

I don't know what the solution is, but the incentives created by the combination of algorithmic feeds and how lucrative internet "fame" can be consistently encourages the worst kind of content.

[rawgabbit]

Social should and will get the tobacco treatment. Social media is detrimental to public health and will get regulated/taxed to the point the industry will become unprofitable.

[AlexandrB]

I just worry that the wrong thing will be regulated/taxed. It's the combination of algorithmic feed + global reach + monetization potential that makes social media so nasty. But it's easy to create "social media" regulations that would apply to sites like this one, or old-school forums.

[rawgabbit]

In years past, when corporations saw the writing on the wall, they would actually get together and propose a set of regulations that could live with and satisfy the public. Because we are well past that point, yes, the wrong things and the rights things will get shoved into whatever regulation is coming.

[zonkerdonker]

Advertisement as a concept should get the tabacco treatment.