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Comment by abootstrapper | Hacker News Reader

Bad metaphor. Drugs are heavily regulated by the government. I mean, personally I think recreational drugs should be legalized, but definitely regulated. Further, maybe you can’t stop determined individuals from hurting themselves, but policy and regulations absolutely solve problems at large: seat belts, traffic laws, FDA, manufacturing laws keeping led out of your kid’s toys, etc.

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I don’t think regulation of drugs works.

If you want to post every detail of your personal life on social media and suffer the consequences , you have a right to .

Basically I don’t see anyway to stop people from hurting themselves via social media without violating their rights .

If I had a magic wand I’d essentially ban all social media/ dating apps. I personally see more downsides to these platforms than benefits. But I’m not a king . I can only control how I decide to spend my time

Sorry, I’m still hung up on the drug metaphor. Regulation of drugs does work. You know your prescription of X is not cut or laced with something because it’s regulated. It’s how you know how strong your alcohol is. It’s how you know what your buying is what it is claimed to be. I trust the pharmacy over the street corner. To reiterate, I’m pro legalization, but I’m also pro regulating.

I think the analogy works well in the sense that we know we don't want to live in a world where the government is restricting what types of websites are legal in the same way they decide what types of drugs are legal. Even trying to pin down what counts as "social media" is pretty difficult.

Basically I don't think drug prohibition works and thus , even though social media is very harmful, a social media prohibition would also fail.

You can only make the choice to not poison yourself.

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