by your username I assume you are yourself one of the droids you're looking for lol.

But also I think people forget: this is not cut and dried. This is not simple. This is not just "these companies are evil and should be stopped". It is: there is a market pressure to do these things. "I enjoy the product and use it a lot" and "I am addicted" is blurry and market pressure is not going to recognize that limit because it does not care about human suffering unless that suffering meaningfully impacts the bottom line.

If these companies hit regulations that effectively cap their advertising revenue per user (i.e. the "addictiveness"), they are dead. That may be totally fine, and I'm sure majority of people would rejoice hearing this. But remember: advertising dollars are earned, especially at tech company scale, by the effectiveness of the targeting to get get more $ / DAU since DAU cannot grow beyond the Earth's population and that is the scale that these companies have already achieved.

If you cap advertising dollars, you cap advertising effectiveness. You cap the ability for small companies to connect quickly with prospective customers without being locked out because they have to spend too much to find them. Yes you also cap scammers and other nefarious actors too, but thats arguably a different issue. The impact of reducing advertising effectiveness is disproportionately concentrated on small business where cheap and effective advertising is so important.

My hope is that there is a way to do both and I don't have to be constantly horrified when I look at my screen time hours.

What's funny is that I don't find fediverse apps like Mastodon to be less addictive. It could be because they (and the ActivityPub protocol) was modelled after commercial counterparts or that information foraging in an endless forest of data in itself is attractive to the human psyche.

Aren't we all! Man, if I could recommend anything it's walks. I'm a little bias because I live in a beautiful rural area. However, going for walks, no head phones, no phone, no videos, no podcasts, no audio books, no anything, is something I feel has really changed my life for the better.

yeah, sorry, associated the two is an attempt to degrade the validity of the claims against meta.

associating a well researched and backed claim about facebooks harm with a poorly done research about drugs and mind control by intelligence services since discredited and made apop culture meme does not aid in taking down facebook. its a bizarre association that looks purely like grafting the two as things only nutjobs would consider.

in reality, facebooks effects on its users has at least a decade of academic and independent research both commissioned by facebook and in spite of them. it is not a conspiracy theory about mindcontrol.

That's literally the opposite of self-regulation.

Amateur motorsports has a similar concept - often called a "claim rule" or similar - in an attempt to control costs.

Basically, for $x amount, a competitor can buy the winning car (or its engine, or similar). Where $x is the amount the group decides should be a reasonable amount to spend on building a car.

A racer is free to spend more, but if they win too much, somebody will write a check and buy the car.

In theory. In reality, plenty of people have the money to spend $x^2 and risk the loss.

Interesting variation on the "I cut you choose" game mechanic!

We're in the "exceptio probat regulam" zone with this example.

I love solutions like that. Like if you are splitting food, one person cuts and the other chooses.

Nitpicking, I have the feeling that's self-declaration, not self-regulation.

sounds like Bernie Sander's modern day "lets just buy 50% of AI companies"

I've heard this so many times. That age gating in AUS was started by lobbying from an advertising firm is a gross simplification / distortion of the facts but a good example of how easily misinformation spreads on the internet. People love a conspiracy.

No doubt that it will be good news to gambling advertisers, but the push for age verification was already underway in 2020, well before government recommended an end to gambling advertising (2023).

It's a neat explanation, so an easy sell, but doesn't match the chronology.

Unfortunately we can’t ignore them when they’re our “representatives” in the government.

> All entertainment is addictive

But not all entertainment is made equal, a simple example is single player games and microtransactions based games.

Similarly, social media as we know it abuses reward mechanism specifically to maximise engagement and screen time with complete disregard of the person's well being and proclivity for compulsive behaviour.

> Have some personal responsibility for once.

I am of this same opinion, people need to assume some level of responsibility for them to get better, but the fact is that addiction forces people to make choices they regret later. It robs the person from their individuality.

Have some personal responsibility for once.

We literally treat minors differently under the law because they are assumed to be incapable of personal responsibility.

> Have some personal responsibility for once.

its probably a bit unrealistic to expect children to "Have some personal responsibility for once." id agree with you if a 50 year old said, "omgolly meta, you used trickery on me."

but if the evidence shows they have specifically targeted children, then i can understand the concerns.

and yes, im aware how dangerous it is to declare "lets protect the children" but we also have to recognize this is a messy situation, and one that needs to be sorted out. i dont pretend to hold the answers, but to hand waive it away as hysteria or whatever is probably not a good solution.

Wait, you seriously believe the point of all entertainment is addiction?

As in, the only form of entertainment that society should (or does) offer should be specifically designed to trigger as much addictive behavior as possible?

I can see why a person, looking at our current world, might think that. Hello Dopamine Fracking.

But is that the world we want? It certainly is not the world that existed before modern extractive capitalism started turning to extracting from the people it is supposed to serve.

Fortunately, capitalism is more efficient that state/centralized planning, so capitalism is doing a better job of turning us into their farm animals than lords ever could do for their serfs.

I suggest personal responsibility for high profile managers and CEO for once. And for those who enable them.

> This is just people seeing dollar signs asking for handouts. Nothing of an real value to society.

this is exactly facebook's business model ???