I think it sounds more like "why is the town square covered in ads now , who installed actual mantraps in the town square , why is everything we do in the town square used against us , town squares were fine less than two decades ago and we let the rich parasitize them for profit"

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heavyset_go 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Except you're doing nothing about that besides going "let's keep the town square terrible" and ensuring kids are 100% unprepared for the way the modern world communicates in the 21st century lol

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spaqin 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Exchanging messages with your contacts isn't really that hard that you really need to prepare for it.

	▲	heavyset_go 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Zealous parents are using this as an opportunity to take phones, computers and means of digital communication away. Hell, by law, you can't even use Discord without verifying your age lol Imagine if they banned video games and texting 20 years ago because parents were convinced their kids were addicted to Halo and T9Word. They could always roll hoops in the street and send letters to each other with a little planning, too.

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collingreen 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which part is "keep the town square terrible"?

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heavyset_go 10 hours ago | parent [-]

The part where social media goes completely unchanged except for banning some kids from communicating with their friends

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yallpendantools 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Which just begs the question, how much can you really change social media? How much are you really in control of your feed? This is where the "pubic square" analogy breaks down. Besides, there are a lot of communication mediums/messaging apps that are not social media.

Even back in the early 2010s I've been trying to consume social media mindfully. I made sure to follow pages with meaningful content (e.g., The Dalai Lama, The Long Now Foundation, Aeon Magazine, tech-related pages, SpaceX, Elon Musk, indie creators). I don't just add or follow blindly.

Back then I could justify why my selection was "good" but even then, they were drowned out by the tedium of vacations, new restaurants, felt-cute-might-delete-later selfies. Slop/engagement bait is quicker to produce than meaningful thought-provoking content.

I am also pretty sure Facebook's negative signals (unfollow, don't show me this type of content) did not work back then, at least not deterministically. If something I did not like had enough traction, it will still pop up in my feed.

And of course, goes without saying that a lot of my choices aged like milk. Elon Musk turned out to be, well, Elon Musk. Some of the tech pages started shilling out crypto (and nowadays doubtless AI). The indie creators either stopped posting or fell out of favor with the algorithm which meant exodus from the platform. All that goes on top of my pre-existing grievances against my feed recommendations.

	▲	direwolf20 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You could ban it