Yes. Let’s start having the government banning everything that is a health hazard. Let’s have a “War on Algorithms”. That worked remarkably well for drugs.
So what happens when we give the government the power to start banning websites that surface content algorithmically - like say Hacker News.
I can see next we have to ban Reddit because r/cscareerquestions have a generation of computer grads thinking that if they spend months “grinding leetCode” and trying to working “for a FAANG” and failing, they feel like a failure.
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.
>Who defines "too much influence over the public,"?
Everyone knows drawing arbitrary lines in the sand is physically impossible, and we have never done anything like it before, and famously, American law has zero grey area and zero ambiguity about anything because everything is perfectly defineable in human life.
Slippery slope is a fallacy because it just pretends that decisions aren't being made at every single point on the slope. Notice how some drugs are illegal and others are less illegal? But if you ban one drug that's a slippery slope to ban all drugs!!!!
People make decisions in grey areas all the fucking time. There are judges answering those exact questions right now. That's like, their job.
And you’re okay with judges who are always political making decisions for you? How about we just not give government and unelected judges power over our lives?
What's your magical alternative to a human system? Is it anarchy? No thanks, full stop. Is it "just make the laws clear and concise and easy to understand"? I take it you've never built software around human things before, or you would understand that's an unsolveable problem, and would require humans in the loop making human decisions just the same.
So what happens when we give the government the power to start banning websites that surface content algorithmically - like say Hacker News.
I can see next we have to ban Reddit because r/cscareerquestions have a generation of computer grads thinking that if they spend months “grinding leetCode” and trying to working “for a FAANG” and failing, they feel like a failure.