Clearly there needs to be room for both things to occur. You should absolutely begin with passing laws, but to think that the laws on the books can cover every situation is naive. When companies skirt the law and cause harm, there needs to be a remedy.
I don't agree. The benefits of a business environment governed by due process and the rule of law far outweigh the benefits of individual government actors having arbitrary discretion to fill the gaps. As we've seen clearly on the federal level this past year, once you create that discretion, the common way for corporate executives to "prove" that they're nice and generous and deserve favorable treatment is not good behavior but open bribery of public officials.
Bribery is illegal. What hope do you have for due process and the rule of law when it is being carried out as it is now? You can't use an extraordinary case to justify your belief about the ordinary case.
Also, we don't live in a world adjudicated by machines, there will always be discretion and the potential for special favors. No matter how much you tie the hands of regulators there will be some actor who will have the power to extort. Not to mention that regulation is not opposed to due process and the rule of law, but is the most important component of both.
Imagining a world without discretion is imagining a world where corporations can do as much irreparable harm as they want as long as there isn't a law against it.
Social media companies are also regulated, but we are talking about whether social media companies should be liable for creating addictive content when porn has the same qualities of being easily available and free.
This is the lie that keeps people addicted. Plenty of people quit their very real addictions every day. If you imagine you're helplessly addicted, you will remain addicted.
I believed that for years, I did CBT, changing beliefs, "just do it" et cetera and I was helpless still, went from one addiction to another. Turns out I had ADHD. My life was totally changed after medication.
You don't have infinite willpower. If humans had infinite willpower humanity would have worked itself to death long ago. There is a natural balance of willpower in your brain, it's called the dopaminergic system. If you have ADHD, you have much, much less willpower than a normal person because you literally lack the dopamine hormone in your prefrontal cortex. No amount of belief will magically create dopamine in your brain out of thin air.
Distinction without a difference. The social media companies re-use the playbooks these two industries practically invented. Yet social media doesn't have government-mandated surgeon general warnings or 24x7 support hotlines.
This isn't about regulation. This is about people bringing a lawsuit against social media companies for their addiction. Problem gamblers and alcoholics aren't suing the casinos and distilleries.
If it was legal to hand out cigarettes to children and the parents consented I don't see how the company could be held liable. The state should not be doing the job of parents, and the judicial branch should not being doing the job of the legislative branch.
You're saying parental responsibility should govern because TikTok is legal, while cigarettes require state intervention because they're illegal. But they are only illegal because we made them illegal (for minors). And isn't that exactly what is being discussed here?
For the sake of consistency, do you think cigarettes should be legal for minors if they have parental consent? If not, what is the distinction between TikTok and cigarettes that causes you to think the government should be involved in one but not the other?
What I am saying is that if you want to regulate social media companies, pass a law, don't punish companies for breaking a law that isn't on the books.
The harm from cigarette use is direct, and there is no level of cigarette use that can be considered safe and healthy. Additionally, it would be very difficult for parents to prevent their children from buying them if they could walk into any convenience store and buy them. On the other side, social media use can be harmful, but it is possible to use social media in a healthy way.
I'm curious where it ends when you start banning kids from things that are only potentially addictive or harmful. Should parents be able to let their children watch TV, play video games, or have a phone or tablet?
What's the distinction between those things and social media for you?
This requires many asterisks, as once you hit any appreciable size of "giving out food" you tend to hit tons of local ordinance about food safety, permits, and just general distrust of directly interacting with other people's kids at a playground (depending on the age we are talking about, but since we said playground, I'm assuming pretty young).
I'm not stretching it at all. The context was McDonalds, and the added context was giving food to children at a playground. I'm completely bounded on that context.
> go set up a "Free Candy!" stand at a local playground and see how long before the police show up
This is a sign of a broken community. Handing out candy is absolutely fine as long as the kids are old enough to understand their own allergies and limits.
> kids don't know their own allergies and limits, because they're kids. That's the point
Counterpoint: Halloween.
Most kids are competent enough to manage their survival in such circumstances. Some are not. And sometimes it’s not the parents’ fault. But if a community is raising a generation too imbecilic to choose if they can eat chocolate, their life path is sort of already written.
Halloween happens once a year, that’s a big reason it’s tolerated. Also, many parents do provide guidance/control over how much and how fast the candy is eaten. Because otherwise everyone suffers.
The better comparison is what if there was a bottomless bucket of candy in your 10 year olds room all the time.
>The point is, when tense situations happen, you need to have everyone keep their cool.
That's why we train law enforcement to de-escalate instead of doing what they are doing right now, which is antagonizing and brutalizing. You absolve them of their crimes when you pretend that this was all inevitable.
This argument would apply to any voting method regardless of how secure it was. If the "threat actors" are the only important factor then the voting method is irrelevant.
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