In my experience, the ads are the _least_ harmful parts of social media. It's the regular accounts that are causing FOMO and mental health issues by displaying unrealistic lifestyles that the majority of people won't ever achieve.

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Cthulhu_ a year ago | parent [-]

That's only one fragment of social media though, it's not helpful to focus on this part of social media alone; another big one is the rhetoric hidden in otherwise normal / legitimate content that seems to be a nontrivial factor in a hard shift to the right, politically.

	▲	whimsicalism a year ago \| parent [-]
		the government should not be in the business of regulating social media to ensure that public opinion stays within [A, B] ideological bounds. for a long time I didn’t think this needed to be said, but now I realize it needs to be said quite forcefully actually