Profiteering Platforms' Incentives, Not 'Bad Users,' Are the Core Disease Experts Claim
The discussion centers on the structural failings of profit-seeking social media platforms, with commenters noting that addiction and toxicity stem from the underlying business model, not the nature of connection itself.
Commenters split sharply on remedies. Some argue for aggressive legal precedent, viewing any successful lawsuit as a necessary legal win, like 'beek' suggests. Others, notably [SmoochyPit] and [fluffykittycat], dismiss this legal focus, calling it a distraction because remedies like banning E2EE dilute any supposed victory. The key arguments include demands for outlawing dark patterns and making data retention illegal, pushed by 'definitemaybe,' and 'TheAlbatross' advocating making the platforms hostile to advertisers.
The consensus points away from user behavior. Instead, the overwhelming structural fault line is the platform's profit motive. The most extreme structural proposal, cited by [hallettj], is that these services require public ownership, benchmarking against public broadcasting models, instead of remaining private corporate profit centers.
Key Points
Structural incentives of profit-seeking platforms cause user harm.
There is an underlying consensus that the network effect and advertising model, not social networking itself, is the root problem.
Legal action sets necessary corporate accountability precedents.
Some view lawsuits as major wins, while others like [SmoochyPit] argue the financial remedies undermine any perceived victory.
Dark patterns must become illegal, along with data limits.
'definitemaybe' pushed for explicit 'click through' consent for minors and strict legal limits on analytics.
The solution must involve fundamentally breaking the advertising business model.
'TheAlbatross' insists the fix is making the platforms wildly hostile to advertisers and corporations.
A public, non-capitalist model is the only true cure.
[hallettj] suggested public operation, citing public broadcasting as the ideal benchmark for eliminating the profit motive.
Users significantly overestimate the prevalence of harmful content.
'alyaza' cited data showing American users wildly overestimate how often peers post harmful content compared to actual platform data.
Source Discussions (3)
This report was synthesized from the following Lemmy discussions, ranked by community score.