Overly engaging social media has weaponized conservative news media, among many other things.
Blasting propaganda over cable, radio, magazines and such is as old as America itself. Thats fine. Its part of the deal. But a device that lives in your pocket, essentially required for participating in society, with many billions spent on stopping you from disengaging is an entirely different thing. There is no good historical precedent for how psycologically manipulative that is.
Its unacceptable because China could quite probably start a civil war with such influence. Its not OK for Facebook, Google, or any government to have that unchecked power even if they just use it to sell ads or whatever.
So... I dunno where the line should be. But wherever that is, we are well past it.
So we shouldn’t ban media that you can view over cable and radio. But it’s okay to ban media if it is on cell phones? So we should also ban US companies from being able to distribute propaganda over cell phones?
If the US bans TikTok from app stores should they also ban TikTok from being viewed on the web? Do we institute a “great firewall”?
I don't know what good policy would look like, but off the top of my head enforcing "attention guidelines" in iOS/Android and putting limits on personalized tracking in US software seems reasonable.
No, but maybe (for example) notifications constantly popping up in the background begging you to open an app based on highly personalized data should be.
The US is not China, its not going to try and dictate how much screen time kinds should get or whatever.
Right because in the US, no state official would punish a private company - say an amusement park - for speaking out against a law that it passed to keep teachers from admitting gay people exist - because we aren’t China.
Blasting propaganda over cable, radio, magazines and such is as old as America itself. Thats fine. Its part of the deal. But a device that lives in your pocket, essentially required for participating in society, with many billions spent on stopping you from disengaging is an entirely different thing. There is no good historical precedent for how psycologically manipulative that is.
Its unacceptable because China could quite probably start a civil war with such influence. Its not OK for Facebook, Google, or any government to have that unchecked power even if they just use it to sell ads or whatever.
So... I dunno where the line should be. But wherever that is, we are well past it.