Heck, many people make their self worth based on Instagram or whatever, and many make their livelihoods online. The Internet is not what it was two decades ago, and pretending otherwise is foolish. It simply cannot remain the Wild West, like the real Wild West couldn't and didn't. Real life people are impacted, up to and including death (radicalisation and joining a terrorist group, or driven to suicide through harassmwnt, to name two "fun" ones)
That’s unhealthy; why should promoting unhealthy social media adoption be our policy priority?
> Real life people are impacted, up to and including death (radicalisation and joining a terrorist group,
This occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship.
> or driven to suicide through harassmwnt, to name two "fun" ones)
Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box.
Nobody should promote it, people should fight against it, but until that changes, it should be taken into account.
> This occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship.
Before the Internet the potential reach was much more limited. Recruitment for ISIS online, for instance on Twitter, was highly successful where before they would have struggled to reach disillusioned youth in France or Indonesia for instance. More education, ideally secular, is needed, but how do you force that to happen in Indonesia for instance?
> Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box.
How ? How do you make it so everyone is immune from, for instance, rape threats or personalised ( e.g. racial) harassment online ?
There were mean, bad people before the internet too. We can deal with that fact, or fail attempting to get rid of them with censorship, while harming real information and exchanges in the process.
What they want though is to be "reachable" by everyone without the drawback of people actually demonstrating a negative view, very much like removing dislikes from Youtube. They want to remove the dislikes from their online personas but done for everyone so it's less obvious they are hiding their critics. Because at the end of the day they need to be famous to get sponsorships or money whatever way they do it, hence they need to pretend to be "reachable".
The alternative is to destroy the tech industry as it exists. That's a fair chunk of the world economy. How do you plan on implementing that policy?
"[Radicalisation and joining a terrorist group] occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship."
I don't suppose you could provide an example or three? Of your "answer" working; I have plenty for the problem.
"Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box."
1. Victim blaming.
2. Personal responsibility for one's actions.