[joshgel]

Like cigarettes? I have no sense of whether FB is physically addictive like smoking.

But, if a company directly contributes to decline in civil discourse and harms democracy, and thereby harms the users, then isn't it a government role to step in? And isn't this the governments role even if users can't see the harm at the micro-level of their daily interactions with the company? I guess that is the argument at least. Really its a balance between values: individual freedom and the collective good.

[sokoloff]

> if a company directly contributes to decline in civil discourse and harms democracy, and thereby harms the users, then isn't it a government role to step in?

The chief problem here is “who decides?” If a government in power is being undermined, they have incredibly strong incentives to determine that those undermining actions are “harmful to democracy” (rather than merely harmful to their party). (I think we could point to many examples in US politics in the last 5 years where “this is bad for my party” is cast as “this is bad for democracy!”)

Which is why I think that, of all the speech that must be protected, political speech is of the highest criticality to protect. (And that claims by the government or strongly politically aligned citizens that ‘X is bad for democracy’ should also be viewed with a healthy amount of skepticism.)

[cute_boi]

Facebook is addictive tbh. I heard they hired some prominent psychologist to make it more addictive.

My mother is surely addicted to facebook. She knows all data implications but she enjoys getting likes/shares etc. And fake news etc which is intentionally specious make the platform even more enjoyable.

I can't tell her to stop facebook and I am sure it is harming her right?

Yes this is government role but as with every government in democracy most of them are vested for short term profits and company like facebook lobbies a lot. We know facebook pushes millions of dollar in lobby so why would government solve it? Also facebook also provides sweet taxes to government.

[to1y]

>I heard they hired some prominent psychologist to make it more addictive.

This is basically what the argument to ban it amounts to whenever this discussion comes up.

Facebook is a simple site, there's nothing to it really. It's just an endless mediocre content website that happens to have your friends on it.

Good user experience = "designed to be addictive by army of ill-wishing psychologists."

The only reason id like to see it banned just so something better can finally take it's place

[mavhc]

Humans enjoy being liked, what specific harm does your mother experience from using facebook?

Better to be addicted to typing words than drugs, it's free and you don't die.