Agree with OP. This reminds me of fast food in the 90s. Executives rationalized selling poison as "if I don't, someone else will" and they were right until they weren't.
Society develops antibodies to harmful technology but it happens generationally. We're already starting to view TikTok the way we view McDonalds.
But don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Most food innovation is net positive but fast food took it too far. Similarly, most software is net positive, but some apps take it too far.
Perhaps a good indicator of which companies history will view negatively are the ones where there's a high concentration of executives rationalizing their behavior as "it's inevitable."
Obesity rates have never been higher and the top fast food franchises have double digit billions in revenue. I don’t think there is any redemption arc in there for public health since the 90s.
those statistics really gloss over / erase the vast cultural changes that have occurred. america / the west / society's relationship to fast food and obesity is dramatically different than it was thirty years ago.
I'm genuinely curious about the changes you are talking about?
Keep in mind, thirty years ago, I was a kid. I thought that fast food was awesome.
My parents would allow me a fast food meal at best once a month, and my "privileged" friends had a fast food meal a week.
Now, I'd rather starve than eat something coming from a fast food.
But around me, normies at eating at least once a day from a fast food.
We have at least ten big franchises in the country, and at every corner there's a kebab/tacos/weird place selling trash.
So, from my POV, I'd thought that, in general, people are eating much more fast food than thirty years ago.
In the interim America got obsessed with fitness and being out of shape much less obese became dramatically less popular in the middle / upper class.
Like now it's possible to go days in some cities without seeing a single obese person. It's still a big problem. Outside of the cities and in lower class areas, but... I think the changes are trickling down / propagating? That's been my impression at least.
Surprised by your take on fast food, by the way. When I complain about fast food like was ubiquitous in the 90s I think of McDonald's and other highly processed things. The type that are covered in salt and cheap oil and artifical smells and where the meat is like reconstituted garbage, where lunch is 1500 calories, where everyone gets a giant soda, where kids are enticed with cheap plastic crap.
But a corner kebab or taco place seems like an unequivocal positive for society, I have no complaints about their existence at all. I feel like most people eating at corner shops for half of their meals is pretty much ideal--if it's affordable to do so then it is a very sensible and economically positive division of labor. On the condition that the food be of decent quality, of course. Which sometimes it is. Perhaps not as much as it should be though, but people do have standards and will pick the better places.
Since you talked about "the west", I applied your comment to my situation also (France).
But it seems that some things were and are still different.
Related to fitness, sure, there's millions of people who "go to the gym" at least one a week and buy food supplements and protein powders...
But they'll happily eat fast foot several times a week.
And if we talk about ultra-processed food, it's even worse.
> But a corner kebab or taco place seems like an unequivocal positive for society, I have no complaints about their existence at all.
That's probably a big difference, because nobody here will dare say that those place serves actual food.
Not because of the cultural aspect, but just because it's the case.
They use the lowest quality in every ingredients, use lots of bad oils to cook, put tons of salt and other additives...
And don't get me started on the hygiene side.
People are perfectly aware of that and they'll even joke about it while eating their 50% fat kebab.
At least McDonald's have the hygiene on their side!
We don't have the same obesity epidemic, partly due to portion sizing and mobility, but almost half the population is overweight and figures are still going up.
The middle and upper class, city people, are just a fraction of the population. If there's been progress, it's not bearing out in the data. Though there appears to be a slight inflection point around the 2010, it seems the trend is still up. Though this data isn't recent enough to include the effects of semaglutide.
Agree and disagree. It is also possible to take a step back and look at the very large picture and see that these things actually are somewhat inevitable. We do exist in a system where "if I don't do it first, someone else will, and then they will have an advantage" is very real and very powerful. It shapes our world immensely. So, while I understand what the OP is saying, in some ways it's like looking at a river of water and complaining that the water particles are moving in a direction that the levees pushed them. The levees are actually the bigger problem.
We are the levees in your metaphor and we have agency. The problem is not that one founder does something before another and gains an advantage. The problem is the millions of people who buy or use the harmful thing they create - and that we all have control over. If we continue down this path we'll end up at free will vs determinism and I choose to believe the future is not inevitable.
We aren't the real levees though. The system we live in is. Yes, a few people will push back and try to change the momentum to a different direction but that's painful and we have enough going on each day that most people don't have time for that (let alone agree on the direction). Structural change is the only real way to guide the river.
I get your point. I'm merely pointing out that some things, even though they aren't technically inevitable, are (in practice) essentially inevitable because larger forces are pushing things in that direction.
Through a very complicated, long, and ardous process.
Its mostly by design (at least in my country) so one bad actor (e.g. a failed painter) cant change the whole system instantly
Control is the ability to make decisions. The ability to make decisions depends on knowledge.
Without knowledge, you have no control, only the illusion of it. With fast food, we did not know the harm. With smoking, we did not know the harm. With tiktok... we did not know the harm, and still do not fully grasp it.
Society develops antibodies to harmful technology but it happens generationally. We're already starting to view TikTok the way we view McDonalds.
But don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Most food innovation is net positive but fast food took it too far. Similarly, most software is net positive, but some apps take it too far.
Perhaps a good indicator of which companies history will view negatively are the ones where there's a high concentration of executives rationalizing their behavior as "it's inevitable."