Then start your own company where you control the direction of the products. All these people make millions and only speak up after they are set for life.
Steve was a real, well known, and well documented person with many surviving first-hand witnesses. In his biography, for example, it mentions him pressuring Clinton to tell the truth.
I think it's disingenuous to map one's insight into Steve to an insulting comic about a fictional character.
> it mentions him pressuring Clinton to tell the truth.
Truth about what? Did he also pressure the CCP to tell the truth about Tiananmen Square after he moved manufacturing there?
Virtue signaling to the press in a democratic country is cheap when your company is not at stake and politicians won't retaliate if you run your mouth. He wouldn't try that with the CCP and not with Trump today.
Social media is like tobacco. We went after tobacco for targeting kids, we should do the same to social media. Highly engineered addictive content is not unlike what was done to cigarettes.
No, it isn't. Tobacco is a physical substance that alters users' biochemistry and creates a physical dependence. Social media is information conveyed via a computing device. You can criticize social media for what it is in its own right, without having to engage in these kinds of disingenuous equivocations.
> Sounds like you need to read up on dopamine and addictions a bit more.
Nah, I just need to not equivocate between them. The use of the same term to describe activities that produce a dopamine response as is used for ingestion of chemicals that create a direct physical dependence is little more than a propaganda tactic.
You're blurring the lines a bit. Gambling isn't inherently an addiction. Just like a good TV show isn't inherently addictive either. Social media trying to be more engaging shouldn't really be viewed as an evil action anymore than HBO trying to create compelling content is.
The problem with comparing social media use to tobacco is that they are completely different. It's like saying weed is just like heroin because they both make you feel good. It's reductive and not productive.
The completely anti-social media stance ignores the good parts of social media. People can connect from across the planet and found others who shares the same views or experiences. People who are marginalized can find community where none may exist in their local area. So we should approach this more carefully and grounded.
Maybe this will make it more clear, so big difference is that people can connect across the planet without "big social media".
There are internet forums, chats, e-mail, blogs, there is no inherent need for "big social media" as we know. I do understand those companies made it much easier for average person to participate but still using internet forum or e-mail isn't exactly rocket science.
Here we are on HN, where no one is changing the layout and not doing much to drive engagement. Some days I don't even open any discussion because there is a lot of stuff that is not interesting for me.
"Big social media" companies had already multiple people speaking up explaining that they specifically made changes to drive engagement to hook people up and keep them scrolling without "creating compelling content". They specifically tuned feed algorithms to promote lowest common denominator trash content that makes people react in anger/frustration/whatever and not "creating/promoting compelling content".
Comparing internet forums, chatrooms, email, and blogs to Facebook and TikTok seems like a bad joke. I don't think you recognize how impactful "Big Social Media" is. Facebook brought about the ability to easily reconnect with people you had lost touch with and stay in touch with them. Things like Instagram made photo sharing and discovery significantly easier than simply looking at what the most recent posted photos on Photobucket. TikTok mass marketed bite sized videos and community trends. These things either did not happen on other platforms or could not happen on them.
I think most people remember the earlier days of Twitter where having a centralized place with strong discoverability led to unique communities forming and expressing themselves. I shouldn't need to say this but, it obviously wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. So I'm not saying these platforms were perfect or without major issues. I am say that their unique nature is not something that can be replicated via other mediums. It simply doesn't scale.
Honestly I'm not seeing the issue with these platforms wanting to maximize time users spend on them. That's the goal of every business. What seems to get lost though is self control. TikTok being fun and enjoyable does not mean that you are incapable of closing the app. It's like banning phones from leaving your house because you are so addicted to texting and apps. You cannot fully control what comes up on most social media. But as any therapist will tell you, all you can control is your response. I just think there is a space for big social media sites in the world. I don't even use them, but I can recognize the impact they have made with the good and the bad.
So now you're demonstrating that you can criticize social media for its own flaws without having to conflate it with something else. I don't disagree with anything you're saying here, but nothing you're saying here involves attempting to equivocate social media with physical substance abuse.
I don't think I implied that. Of course, but the ability to regulate usage is hampered by nicotine. That does not mean one cigarette and you're addicted though.
You can make the point that social media has real positive benefits as well as negatives without minimizing the well proven fact that gambling creates a form of addiction in a significant proportion, though not all, of its users, one every bit as devastating as heroin or alcohol.
Seems like you're overestimating how many people are addicted to gambling. Much in the same way those who are anti-alcohol will conflate responsible drinking with alcoholism. Gambling can be just as terrible, but it is different than heroin and alcoholism since it does not have a chemically addictive component. Reducing all addictions to being the same thing is damaging to addicts and addiction recovery. Much the same way reducing all crime to the same thing is for inmates of the prison system. You're removing nuance and difference which helps promote understanding.
You’re right, it’s actually worse than tobacco. Tobacco simply makes your body sick, but social media attacks the most vital part of us. Even the CDC has studied this: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a3.htm
No, addiction involves physical substances interacting with a person's biochemistry. Attempting to extend the concept of addiction to include positive emotions brought on by sensory experiences or behavior is a disingenuous rhetorical tactic.
It's simply not legitimate to redefine "addiction" as anything that people might have an emotional or psychological motivation to participate in.
People trying to use the same terminology to describe social media as is used to describe tobacco or alcohol are trying to sneakily attach the negative associations of those substances to something unrelated entirely to them.
This is a form of deception, and a silly one, since social media has lots of negative aspects that can be argued against in their own right, without needing to engage in manipulative dialog.
Whether you like it or not, addiction is most commonly used as a general term to refer to any sort of compulsive behavior that acts against one's own self interest. Not your strawman of "anything that people might have an emotional or psychological motivation to participate in."
There are plenty of perfectly valid parallels between addiction to alcohol, gambling, porn, social media, junk food, etc. Are you denying that?
You can't just declare anyone comparing them to be disingenuous or disrespectful to those who are addicted. In fact what really seems disingenuous is the huge volume of this kind of pedantry in the thread by you and the same few accounts. Feels like misdirection away from the actual discussion about how to truly mitigate these addictions. Would appreciate your actual thoughts on this.
> Data centers in space only make sense if they are cost effective relative to normal data centers.
Author made a fatal mistake. By flying enough hardware in space, you can simply blot out the sun and steal their solar capacity. Drink their milkshake with a long straw!
Didn’t Elon say that orbital solar collection was a stupid idea due to energy loss in transmission? Using AI as an almost proof-of-work shows that it may potentially be more complex problem than previously thought. If we threw Bitcoin miners up to those satellites you could literally beam money down.
100%. Go on Facebook or Instagram today and you’re more likely to see viral videos than to see anything to do with your friends. It’s just a moth to flame.
I think I've seen all of his stealth camp episodes, and they've only been outside airports. (Once outdoors, once in a parking lot.)
I think a lot of the humor would be lost because he couldn't get his camp stove in to cook. Or maybe he could, but would risk arrest if caught with it...
I didn't think I'd see Steve mentioned on this site! The camp stove would probably be fine, but the fuel would be an issue. I wonder if axes are allowed in carry on?
It's as close to on-topic as most of the other comments.
"The internet isn't secure enough to trust for voting" could be generalized to
"The internet isn't secure enough to trust for _____" just a reasonably as it could be to
"______ isn't secure enough to trust for voting" as most of the other commenters have chosen to do.
The fact that one of the generalizations is more popular doesn't make the other wrong, and addressing both (as, say, the GP or people talking about internet banking do) adds both depth and breadth to the discussion.
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