[myrmidon]

In a perfect world, when you realise that your company creates and fuels addiction in children, that company should be concerned about having resulting profits seized (fully!) and responsible decisionmakers criminally prosecuted.

I would argue that we fail completely at doing this (historically, too, see e.g. leaded gas).

This incentivizes companies toward net-negative behavior until it is fully regulated despite knowing better, because it is clear that it won't be really punished anyway and remain a net-positive for them.

It is a difficult problem though.

[elevatortrim]

I am all for it, I do not think Mark Zuckerberg deserves any of the billions of dollars he has and he has contributed nothing to society in return for that. On the contrary, everyone knows his contribution has been a net negative but our systems do not accurately reward positive contribution, or disincentivise the negative.

[engineer_22]

Without discounting social media's harmful effects:

I do think Instagram in particular has been a boon for small businesses, providing them visibility in the marketplace that was previously unavailable to them.

Social media has also been a way for communities to connect organically with discoverability features missing on the old web.

There are positives and negatives - if it was only negatives people would be quicker to abandon the platforms.

Although I'm not familiar with the case at hand, I agree there's potential there for real harm, especially to children.

[macintux]

It has been frequently demonstrated that capitalism is terrible at pricing in externalities. In the U.S. it used to be industrial waste in the environment; now it's climate change and addiction and culture wars.

[NickC25]

Upvoting you because all the Zuck worshipers and meta stockholders downvoted you for speaking the truth.

The guy is worth a quarter trillion dollars and doesn't seem intent on calling it a day, and insists on destroying society's youth so he can make more money. Intelligent or not, that's a mental disease.

Imagine having that sort of money where if 99% was taken away, you'd still have over 2 billion dollars to your name....and you refuse to just walk away and focus on things like your family, making the world a better place, or just enjoying your life. Tom took the money for MySpace and actually seems to enjoy time with his family, traveling, doing photography, etc.

For all his (many) faults, Gates took a look at the polio virus and said "I'm bigger than you" and pretty much spent until it was wiped out. Doesn't counteract the bad or the Epstein stuff at all, but wiping out polio has helped people.

Mark's done jack shit to genuinely help people besides his shareholders and his immediate family. One might argue that his whole bunker thing is an indicator that he's realized he's done tremendous damage to society, but instead of fixing it, he's insulating himself for when the proverbial bomb goes off.