This isn't hypocrisy, it's parenting.

Do you think the Pfizer CEO lets their kids have unlimited Viagra? Or the Anheuser-Busch CEO's kids have unlimited Bud Light? I don't think this is the gotcha it's painted as.

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prakashk 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The hypocrisy is not because they are limiting access to their kids.

It is because they are limiting access to their kids, while actively creating and executing algorithms to increase user engagement even to the point of making people addictive and dependent on their platforms.

	▲	naian 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		But that would affect their children exactly the same. It doesn't, because they do some parenting. (Or subcontract it, which is the same thing.)

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quickthrowman 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You didn’t pick particularly good examples. YouTube Kids [0] is an actual product owned and marketed by Google.

Pfizer and Anheiser-Busch don’t market their products to kids.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube_Kids

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gregates 3 days ago | parent [-]

And the reason is that those products are (rightly) regulated. Would there be beer marketed to kids if it were legal? Would it be fine if it were the parents' sole responsibility to ensure their kids weren't drinking beer, including at school, at friends' homes where the parents may have different rules, etc., absent a general social consensus that kids shouldn't have beer?

This is anecdotal evidence for the emerging consensus that social media is bad for you and especially for kids. There's a legitimate question whether the people pushing these products know this and don't care or actively suppress evidence.

Tobacco companies famously did this and it caused a lot of harm. It's about that more than just a chance for a cheap shot "hypocrisy" accusation.

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sokoloff 3 days ago | parent [-]

I think social media has clear positive and negative aspects. That makes it closer to food than cigarettes in my mind.

We can all immediately conjure up images where food or social media has brought something positive into our lives.

News.yc is something I visit almost every day and it has added value to my life, including introducing me to a few people I’ve met in real life and to interesting tech.

Equally, we can all pretty readily conjure up images where excess food or social media has harmed people.

	▲	gregates 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed, it's still not exactly clear what the right place of social media in society is. Perhaps we could even get rid of some of its pernicious aspects without throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Even food is not unregulated! And not because too much food is bad for you, but because bad food can harm you. A disanalogy with food is that there are natural limits to how much food you can/want to eat at one time. Another is that food is necessary for life. Neither is true of social media.

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floren 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you'd have a stronger point if stores sold Bud Kidz, a non-alcoholic beverage with all the great Bud taste and fun mascots.

	▲	sokoloff 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed, the beer companies are far above having Clydesdales and puppies in their ads, or fun dog mascots like Spuds MacKenzie or Alex from Stroh's.

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woodruffw 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It’s hypocrisy insofar as neither Viagra nor Bud Light has a child demographic in their market. The CEOs of those companies don’t let their kids have them because they’re not for kids; YouTube designates at least some its product as for kids.

(In this way, it would be hypocrisy if Anheuser-Busch’s executive suite were all teetotalers.)

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dmix 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s always some other persons poor kid in their imagination with bad parents.

Basically the only solutions I see suggested is some world where all tech companies in multiple countries band together to ban kid/teens from the internet or that government will start aggressively controlling access to the internet.

A big movement to have better education on parenting with tech and evolving via cultural changes is hard. Writing a law sounds simple.