4297

So I can vote for people who want to regulate / outlaw FB, and that’s enough?

I mean, I get the sense of moral imperative behind don’t use product X because the makers / owners of product X are really just world-destroyers. I just can’t figure out where you guys are drawing the line, or why you’re drawing it there.

This right here is what I’m trying to say up there. If you didn’t put in your own solar array, you must not give a shit about climate change at all. If you did, you would have. That’s the reasoning you’re selling.

4298

There are a lot of avenues of change to tackle climate change at the personal level.

Advocate and vote for cap and trade emissions reductions (Oregon is working on this)
Bike commute
Public transit
More fuel efficient cars when you need them
Consolidate trips and reduce driving
Purchase local produce
Transition beef to chicken, chicken to plant protein
Advocate for better and more nuclear power
And, yes, install solar panels

For the record that is just the list of things I personally do, except solar panels because renting and PNW.

It’s a good start. Also my Elizabeth Warren comment was in regards to financial institutions, which individually that is really the only lever I have, the political one. Not so with Facebook. But I certainly am in favor of that as one of a multidimensional approach.

Vote for regulations
Personally stop using service
Talk to others and get them to stop using the service
Block all Facebook trackers when possible

But Facebook is insidious, like cockroaches. They’re hard to stamp out all traces. Still get the can of roach spray and use them when you can.

4299

If I delete my Facebook account but retain Instagram, is that any different in terms of impact than keeping the Facebook account?

4300

But that statement isn’t accurate.

A more accurate phrasing would be this:
“If you don’t put up a solar array, you care less about reducing your carbon footprint by that much, than the money you would invest in that system.”

Although even in that case, it’s not actually accurate, because it presumes that you actually have the available resources to purchase a solar array, which most people don’t have.

In terms of facebook, anyone here has all the resources necessary to stop using facebook, so it doesn’t really fit with the solar cells… But if we ignore the resource constraints, then it becomes “you don’t care as much about what facebook does, as you do about the services that facebook provides to you.”

So then the question becomes… how bad is what facebook does? Seems, based on what some of you guys are saying, you think it’s REALLY bad. Like, destruction of American democracy bad. On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is trivial, and 10 is like… nazi holocaust… how bad is facebook?

Once you have that number, the question becomes, what is facebook giving you that is MORE important than that?

But if you want to OUTLAW Facebook… then why not just freaking stop using it? Because the impact to you would be the same.

Or is it that you only want to stop using facebook if everyone else is also forced to stop using it?

4301

I mean, this is obviously false. I could stop using Facebook today, and they’d go right on radicalizing who they’re gonna radicalize. I want them to not do that. Whether I use Facebook or not has no impact on that.

Question for the “just stop using it” folks – where do you draw the line? Even if you don’t use Facebook, the company is still constructing a voodoo doll-esque profile of you based on your activity on sites that track via Facebook. If I use a website that feeds information to Facebook, I’m still contributing to their data pool, just on a smaller scale than if I had an account. So which browsing activity is acceptable?

4302

Well, network effects matter in this conversation. Deciding to stop using Facebook is not really just a personal choice.

4303
4304

Well, it would have an impact because if enough people stop using facebook, because they believe that Facebook is harmful, then Facebook would change its behavior because they need people to use facebook.

Corporate boycotts can in fact work.

Now, if no one wants to actually boycott them, because they’re essentially addicted to the services Facebook provides, then that means the overall user base doesn’t care that much about it. But then the question becomes… who are you to say otherwise? Hell, especially in this case where you yourself aren’t even willing to go without those services.

There just seems to be some weakness here, in that people are incapable of taking actions on their own, so they are hoping that government can step in and force them to do the right thing.

4305

What do they do with this? I go to this site, ESPN.com, and Google’s news aggregator, and that’s it for the most part. Really, Google and Amazon seem to track me more than anything else. If I look at something for sale I start seeing ads for it all the time. I assume that’s Google and/or Amazon tracking me.

4306

Is it just me, or has Youtube suddenly started running lots of Republican Party fundraising ads? In the last four or five days, about 50% of the ads I see are about the desperate need for money so that we can fire Nancy Pelosi. I’m a bit curious as to what provoked it. Is is just a GOP marketing surge (though I don’t get why now), or has the algorithm identified me as a good target for GOP ads?

4307

There are a fair number of factors. What state you live in is a huge factor.

As an Iowan every 4 years Youtube ads are so bad that not having an ad blocker means not watching Youtube.
Being forced to listen to Ted Cruz talk in an unskippable ad several times in a row is enough to break a person who watched ads to support the people who’s content one enjoys.

And sometimes you just get weird ads because Youtube thinks what you’re watching isn’t family friendly or whatever horseshit they use for adverts. Like I watch a lot of people talk about medieval arms and armor. That’s deemed “dangerous” or whatever by Youtube, because weapons and killing people. So those channels get the bottom of the barrel ads. You know who else gets bottom of the barrel ads? Alt-right types. The GOP doesn’t give a shit, if anything it’s great because those ads are cheaper to buy and more likely to hit their target demographics.

TLDR: A lot of it is where you live and then nature of the video you’re watching.

4308

I mean, social media is addictive and Facebook is harmful, and there’s precedent for regulating, restricting, and even banning things that are both addictive and harmful. I consider addiction a disease deserving treatment – do you consider it a moral failing? I assume you are generally in favor of the regulations we impose on cigarette manufacturers and opioid makers. At what point does something cross the line and require the government to step in?

4309

I do not believe that there is scientific evidence suggesting that social media is on par with substances like nicotine or opiates when it comes to addictiveness, but I may be mistaken.

4310

I’m not sure that the the colloquial use of “addiction” in relation to social media really matches any medical definition, and my idiot layman’s understanding is that the psychological components of addiction aren’t well understood anyway. Despite people name-dropping dopamine into these kinds of conversations to sound more sciency, I’m not sure we know how any of this stuff really works.

4311

Yeah, on some level, anything that we enjoy is “addictive” in that we like doing things… That we like doing.

But that’s very different from the chemical pathways that lead to physical addiction with drugs like opiates or nicotine.

4312

We’re getting off-topic a bit now, but my (still layman’s) understanding is that even physical addiction (e.g. where opiates suppress production of endorphins) isn’t just about the chemistry. There’s always a psychological component.

4313

The science is sparse, but I think you can have behavioral addiction as well as chemical dependence. Video games, junk food, marijuana, social media, online gambling, etc aren’t injecting some chemical that your body will withdraw from if you quit, but those things are certainly addictive for more people – more so than podcasts, home cooking, incense, meeting up with friends, and philanthropy.

Truthfully, I think we’re a little too gun-shy about regulating things that are behaviorally addictive, mostly for the reason you noted - who are we to say what others are allowed to do, if they’re not harming others? But I think we naively assume there isn’t harm being done to others for most of these behaviors. Someone who subsists on junk food or who lives a sedentary, videogame-driven lifestyle is going to be a drag on the healthcare system for decades. Along the same lines, someone who gets too addicted to Facebook is going to withdraw and, if Facebook has its way, get radicalized into a hate group eventually.

I just don’t like the concept that “well, all these people are making their own shitty decisions, so we should let them self-destruct on their own”. Not only does it lack any empathy for people whom you would likely consider weaker than you, but we’re all so connected in tons of tiny ways that you’re not really unaffected by someone else’s choices.

4314
4315

But those things are choices… As humans, we need to be allowed to make our own decisions. We aren’t children. This is the essence of freedom and liberty.

It’s not the place of you, or anyone else, or the government, to force sometime to live the “correct” life that you think they should live.

Take something like cigarettes. I used to smoke, years ago. I still miss it. I quit because I didn’t like the control nicotine had over me, but I did in fact enjoy smoking. It was a pleasurable activity, and it had tangible pros, not just downsides.

Now, I chose to quit, but it was my choice. It wouldn’t have been right for someone else to have made that choice for me.

It’s totally cool to make rules that prevent me from harming others, but the government should not be in the business of deciding everything for me.

4316

See they went after cigarettes, pretty bluntly and effectively. Not by making it illegal, but simply shifting the cost burden they place on society, as well as cutting through some of the more deceptive practices of the cigarette companies.

Things like warning labels, limits on advertising, excise taxes, banning indoor smoking in public places, etc. Not made illegal, just changed the incentive structures and marketing to reduce demand and use.