Comment on I wonder why the widespread adoption of the internet hasn't been good for society as a whole.
Signtist@bookwyr.me 1 day agoThe real question is whether the benefit of better access to scientific research offsets the detriment of social media. Unfortunately, I think social media use is much, much more widespread, and is thus having a significantly stronger detrimental effect than scientific research access and every other benefit combined.
hansolo@lemmy.today 16 hours ago
It’s really only just a few platforms that are more toxic than average. “Social media” includes things like WhatsApp and Signal, which are functionally similar enough to email threads that they don’t compare to Twitter where everything is public-facing.
Signtist@bookwyr.me 9 hours ago
Fair, I used the term as a catch-all that ends up inadvertently catching less-harmful sites as well. However, while there are only a few toxic sites, they're the most popular, and even when they fade into obscurity, they're replaced by other new toxic sites. They're designed to draw people in, so it doesn't really matter how few there are, they're always among the most popular websites on the internet.