>I'll put it like this - what you're doing with that comment above is a lot like blaming smokers for feeding the tobacco companies. Despite all the lies and ads and manipulation, despite all the dirty tricks, despite the hard-core science used to get people hooked from every possible angle.

I have never used Facebook and I never will. What they have done is immoral and unethical and deserves regulation.

What I fear is that regulation will be informed from the false and dangerous equivalence you've made there comparing addictive drugs to looking at an audio-visual screen. Drugs literally can make you want without there being any enjoyment. Screens are just a medium, like, a radio (which can also be used for random internal operant conditioning), the screens and the radio are not the problem and they are NOT LIKE DRUGS. You actually have to enjoy the experience and repeat it. And that's just normal learning. That drug comparison will lead to government's treating computers' like drugs which means heavy regulation of end users and violence against them. A far more dangerous scenario than the issues were facing from the corporations now.

We need regulation of the corporations intentionally doing random interval operant conditioning. Not regulation of the medium they do it over and the people enjoying using that medium.

> What I fear is that regulation will be informed from the false and dangerous equivalence you've made there comparing addictive drugs to looking at an audio-visual screen.

Let's be extremely clear - I'm not the one who first made that comparison. That would be the tech bros, who hire all manner of addiction and gambling specialists and scientists in order to make their products as addictive as possible.

> the screens and the radio are not the problem and they are NOT LIKE DRUGS

For a fully competent adult, you can make that argument. Kinda.

To an unsupervised 9yo? An 89 yo? Facebook is a lot like drugs, only with the mind-altering effects much easier to direct. No, that's not the screens fault (or the radio), and no one said it was.

> That drug comparison will lead to government's treating computers' like drugs which means heavy regulation of end users and violence against them.

If I really believed that avoiding such a comparison would prevent government from over-regulation and violence toward social media users, then I'd avoid it. But I don't.

Also, using the insanity and violence of the drug war to self-censor obvious comparisons is certainly a choice.

> We need regulation of the corporations intentionally doing random interval operant conditioning. Not regulation of the medium they do it over and the people enjoying using that medium.

No one anywhere was arguing for regulating your screen or the internet - except maybe the government which you insist on doing the regulation, and the corporations who are large enough to own politicians. If you got that impression purely from the tobacco analogy (which you then morphed into the drug war somehow) I'd encourage you to try and reinterpret the point.