That rationale never convinced me.

Smoking has definite physiological effects. Molecules bind to receptors or neurons and initiate cascades/responses.

I don't see this with user interface in a browser at all. IF you wish to reason for that, why are regular ads allowed? They piss me off. Why do I have to see them? They cause my brain an addiction to want to buy crappy products. So why is there no ban here?

Let's face it - the EU is on a path of "Minority Report" here.

> I think the EU and other jurisdictions should really look beyond just limiting this stuff to kids

Yeah they try to restrict what we can do. We oldschool people call this fascism. See the EU trying to destroy VPN. And this is a meta-strategy we see here - many lobbyists are activated and try to "sync" laws that never made any sense to as many countries as possible. I see where corruption happens. And I don't buy the "we protect kids" fake lie for a moment.

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SiempreViernes 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Already Hippocrates was linking the mind to the physical brain, and if you've never felt a physical reaction from looking at the fairer sex I feel bad for you son, yet if you got ninety-nine problems at least sex ain't one.

It's just so tedious to see this "information cannot harm anyone" theory in a context where a huge fraction of the people spend their entire day jobs tying to make phishing less effective.

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sixo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

To hold this view you have to think of information as "not real", not like "real" molecules and receptors, the mind as distinct from the body, and then restrict the legal definition of harm to only "real" things.

This is an odd thing to do, because :

- information is real, it exists in the universe.

- the harm of social media is real, as measured by many of the same measures as the harm of smoking

Why not do something about ads? No, that's a good thought, we should do that too.

I think a decent conceptualization here is "psychic damage", as in a video game. These things deal a lot of it.

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akersten 2 days ago | parent [-]

The other side of the view is "information is real and I don't like some of it ("it's harmful/addictive/blasphemous") so it must be controlled and regulated."

I don't think it's an odd thing to be opposed to that line of thinking.

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kyledrake 2 days ago | parent [-]

People in here are casually linking social media to cigarettes, a product that kills half its users, and in previous iterations I've seen people compare social media to using heroin. It's completely hysterical.

I expect tabloid journalists and grandstanding politicians to do this, it really scares me when HN users that should know better do it.

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ambicapter 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

This sounds like a "depression isn't real" and "if you're addicted, just stop" type of comment.

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kyledrake 2 days ago | parent [-]

Depression is real, I'm experiencing it right now reading these comments.

You know what, why don't you go buy a carton of cigarettes and some heroin, and go use that for a few months. Since it's the same thing as looking at a news feed you shouldn't have to worry about addiction because you've already done that and not gotten addicted to it, so you should be fine, right?

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AshleyGrant 2 days ago | parent [-]

> Depression is real, I'm experiencing it right now reading these comments.

No, you aren't. You are trivializing what Depression actually is by making flippant comments like that. You're also letting everyone know that you are utterly ignorant to what Depression actually is.

Do better.

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kyledrake 2 days ago | parent [-]

You're mad at me for being flippant about depression while you're being flippant about social media, pot calling the kettle black. I'm not the one that started flattening every bad habit or unhealthy technology into "basically cigarettes and heroin".

If everything addictive is treated as morally and medically equivalent to hard opioid abuse or crippling nicotine addiction, then the language we use to talk about actual addiction stops meaning anything. There are people whose entire lives, bodies, families, and futures have been destroyed by heroin. Cigarettes killed my grandfather, I had to sit there and watch him die as a machine sucked black liquid out of his lungs.

Comparing that reality to doomscrolling on your couch cheapens the severity of one problem while oversimplifying the other. Internet overuse can certainly damage mental health. But pretending that checking TikTok is the same category of damage as opioid dependency is not awareness, it's insanity, and it's actively dangerous. It's also mostly happening because lawyers figured out this might be a way to sucker people into going around Section 230.

If people stop breathing the fumes of the vibes of this idea and start to process how any of this would actually work, they will eventually discover that they are proposing an internet police state where police with guns tell people what they can and can't do on internet forums. If you don't think that will slippery slope into something you don't want, please read more history. Government is fundamentally a dangerous monopoly on force and it needs to be treated with deep caution. People that want government regulated social media (remind me, who is the current US president?) so they can "own the Zuck" are playing an incredibly dangerous game, and I really hope they come to their senses soon, because the irreparable damage this idea will create will far outlive Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.

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AshleyGrant 2 days ago | parent [-]

> You're mad at me for being flippant about depression while you're being flippant about social media, pot calling the kettle black.

Where did I do that?

I stopped reading your comment after that since you accused me of saying stuff I never said, so whatever you wrote is unworthy of my attention.

	▲	kyledrake 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I agree with you, please don't read any of this. Not wanting a government controlling online content (with police with guns!) on a false pretense that "Instagram is cigarettes" is apparently a fringe opinion now and I wouldn't want to damage your brain and make you addicted to my terrible posts. To everyone else reading this: go back to when you were a teenager, and ask yourself how cool you would be with your government saying you can't look at web sites and forums because they're "too addictive", or you can't listen to Nine Inch Nails because it's "for adults only", or Geocities has to be shut down or you need to be carded to use it because it has "adult content" (it had a lot of adult content, including a robust LGBT community when it was very much not safe to host that content). How would you have felt about that?

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2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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jrflo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

With some of the legal discovery happening at Facebook, we know that the company did internal research showing that it's products can be addicting and detrimental to kids: https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/facebook-knows-instag...

That's why I make the cigarette comparison. They know it's bad, but it's profitable for people to be addicted to it. I think it's bad for adults for a different reason, I've seen adults in my own life get influenced by things they see online (conspiracy theories, pseudo-science around health and nutrition, political radicalization). And this happens because it's profitable for people to be hooked on these topics with false or misleading information, not because it's true. That's not to say this never happened before recommendation algorithms, but it's a difference in magnitude. I think that's the reason we are seeing such a dramatic rise in political polarization- because it's profitable.

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afavour 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Yeah they try to restrict what we can do. We oldschool people call this fascism.

Come on, this is an absurd statement. Governments regulate what people can do, yes. It’s part of their role. It’s why I can’t sell tainted meat on the street. It’s a good thing.

Of course there is a line you can cross where the control becomes excessive but “the government sets rules around what people can do, that’s fascism!” is absurd.

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achenet 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yes.

Fascism isn't government making laws, fascism is "we're the superior race, kill anyone who disagrees".

I wouldn't call this move fascism, even if can be considered a bit heavy handed.

	▲	dylan604 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		No, fascism is a comedian is making jokes about me and my wife that I don't like and that comedian should be fired while the company that broadcasts his show should lose their government issued license.