Agreed, completely. I used Facebook for all of 9 months before I did the self reflection and realised that it was like voluntarily poisoning myself and got out in, I think, 2012 or so. I was unemployed at the time and it became clear to me that it was doing bad things to me mentally and I was developing an addiction to the scroll.

Imagine if you would that instead of this garbage social media ban on kids we had some serious investigation into the corrosive nature of these social media orgs and they were held accountable for every bit of “experimentation” they conducted without informed consent. While we were at it we could have maybe whipped up some regulstion to curb the gambling industry.

The only people I have personally talked with who say the teen social media ban is unambiguously good just so happen to be the same people whose brains have been completely cooked by a combination of Facebook and Sky News. I kid you not when I say that the last person to loudly assert social media ban good also told me about the time he threatened bodily harm to a man who was wearing a mask immediately after Covid lockdowns were lifted and got upset when he unmasked got within 20cm of his face.

Oh and the absolute bullshit conspiracy theories he spouted about Daniel Andrews while telling me he wishes we had an Australian Trump to “get rid of all the corrupt pedos in Australian Politics”.

Oh how I wish we had some IT savvy legislators who would make good law, since this won’t happen I would settle for them doing nothing. This sort of ineffectual crap serves the sole purpose of creating opportunities for these corporations to further entrench their hold over the internet. I am watching on with dread to find out how much data is going directly to Palantir from this mess.