Comment by _chu1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _chu1 | Hacker News Reader

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What disturbs me is these people are all angry with a complete lack of an outlook or any attempt to discover the root of the problem and create a solution. The reason young people have been detrimented by social media is because of multiple different fundemental issues.

1. Most kids and teenagers have unmonitored access to the Internet

2. Parents don't see the harm in any of this because it gets them to shut up

3. Maybe it's because of where I'm from (Alabama) but most kids come from bad home lives and mostly cope with it negatively

4. The age of not having to be somewhat technologically adequate to use the Internet since it's now behind flashy colorful locked down bricks has only made technology and society worse, but this is just my personal opinion

5. The algorithms of these platforms are engineered to promote this horrid content due to the boosts in user engagement and therefore ad-revenue, and almost all humanity and sympathy is completely lost in publicly traded companies owned by shareholders that care about nothing

Attaching ID confirmation to use TikTok or Youtube or whatever is a duct-tape fix when parents will just scan their ID so their kids will shut up. ID confirmation to use online social networks is in my honest opinion a major violation of freedom in exchange for a little bit of security (remember what Ben Franklin said?). The Internet is the place where you throw vile insults at someone 8 states away on a multiplayer game, buy those weird books you like and get a second perspective on the dumb exhaust mod you're doing on your car, we don't need to know who you are. For additional context, I'm 15 nearing 16, so maybe I'm just spiteful out of angst.

#5 here for sure

before Google gave results relative to the region you were in, google search results were amazing. you could search generically and get loads of websites with lots of rich content; it was not always about getting the exact 1 "absolute" answer - it was about finding MORE websites with lots of content...

it's evolved though, several times over, for their profit...

Journalism and SEO really ruined it. Search for any sort of newsworthy info like a video or statistics, and you used to get the raw video or report. Now you have to wade through clips of said video with some news person talking over it, or articles about the actual data instead of the data itself. Adding "raw video" or "raw data" to the search has minimal effect. Search for anything with commercial relevance and it's SEO spam all the way down.

I found out with some iterations you get raw videos.

First check if negative filtering works. If not, give up straight away or use a different search engine.

Then add the term `-news`. This filters out a lot of these videos, but not all.

Look at the video headings. Most of them contain the name of the company. Add about three to five of them. Like this for example: `-NBC -"Fox Weather" -Guardian -CBC -CNN`.

Then just scroll about three pages till you find a raw video, or add more negative terms and repeat. Be careful not to accidentally exclude raw videos, for example if there is something about people guarding something, don't use `-Guardian` but perhaps `-"Guardian News"`.

Or just give up and don't watch Internet videos.

You can still find things if you work really hard for it. But the point is that Google could give you better results, it knows how. It is CHOOSING not to because worse results for you means better profits for them.

sometimes i still use https://millionshort.com/ for filtering out those crap tier sites; web site search engine still means finding useful webpages - i hope the AI search engines do recognize that as a target to list actual useful sites vs the 1-summary-to-rule-them-all

> Parents don't see the harm in any of this because it gets them to shut up

My mom used to tell me this when I was a little kid, referring to parents who were buying too many video games for their kids. Those games were at least challenging and could cultivate some skills...

Don't get me started on the Geometry Dash craze. Zero redeeming value.

Legislators cannot fix parenting, but they can enforce controls and governance on social media platforms to govern to the mean. Duct tape fixes work when more aspirational fixes are unattainable. To the dismay of many, duct tape holds the world together.

It can be true that politicians are out of touch and all we're left with are suboptimal solutions to complex problems at scale.

> For additional context, I'm 15 nearing 16, so maybe I'm just spiteful out of angst.

Early 40s with two kids under 10 here. Welcome to the shit show.

> Duct tape fixes work when more aspirational fixes are unattainable.

Duct tape fixes convince people to get back into the car even though it's still unsafe and then the duct tape gives way at 70 MPH and you crash into a tree.

Duct tape is for ducts. Sometimes it's also useful for patching leaky hoses. It's not for attaching the steering to the wheels.

If you're going to propose an institutional solution by legislative fiat, do it right or don't do it at all.

Lets go with speed tape then.

> Speed tape is an aluminium pressure-sensitive tape used to perform minor repairs on aircraft and racing cars. It is used as a temporary repair material until a more permanent repair can be carried out. It has an appearance similar to duct tape, for which it is sometimes mistaken, but its adhesive is capable of sticking on an airplane fuselage or wing at high speeds, hence the name.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_tape

> If you're going to propose an institutional solution by legislative fiat, do it right or don't do it at all.

This is not the world we operate in unfortunately.

> Use of speed tape should be authorized by engineering teams and comply with certain requirements. Fines can be levied against airlines that use it to make improper repairs.

Legislation is the polar opposite of a one-off repair that has to happen in the field under strict time and resource constraints. It generally applies to everyone, permanently, and inaction is equivalent to delegation to decentralized decisionmakers so you can take as long as you want to be deliberate and correct.

When the farmer fixes the tractor with baling wire and chewing gum, you give them credit for making do. When the tractor maker systematically does the same thing in the factory, it's time to get your tractors from someone else.

> This is not the world we operate in unfortunately.

The is/ought dichotomy is no excuse when you're the one deciding what to do or who to support, because it's you choosing what is with the opportunity to do as you ought.

> do it right or don't do it at all.

IOW, don't try to fix anything, since doing it perfectly is usually impossible.

There is a difference between imperfection and incompetence.

In one case you do things having thoroughly considered them and refrain from issuing mandates when their net benefit isn't large and unambiguous. A government that acts cautiously and deliberately and refrains from acting when that isn't possible is not one that never takes any action at all. You can be careful without being infallible.

In the other case you pass sloppy rubbish based on rhetoric and populism, don't solve the problem, create new problems, waste resources and divert attention from better solutions, often make the original problem worse and generally just make a hash of things because you're proposing something loud instead of something good.

And issuing no central mandate doesn't inherently mean the problem doesn't get solved, it just means it gets pushed to someone else who may have individual preferences or better context and allows different people to make different choices.

The only way anything like that could get through Congress is if one party had a filibuster proof majority in both houses. As I said, never.

Every year some bills pass with wide bipartisan support. That isn't any guarantee that the bill is any good -- the Patriot Act passed with entirely too many votes in favor -- but in most cases they're simply bills with low opposition. Provide counseling for veterans or something.

Which is exactly what you get when you find the right solution and nobody has any reason to object to it. But if you haven't found the right solution, go back and try harder instead of passing something wrong.

I came to the conclusion the world is held together with painters tape when I learned there are companies hiring people to mantain OS/2 Warp systems today.

I'll take the OS/2 painters tape anytime over some new thing that's unstable and will fall out of fashion in a few years. Only to be replaced by something less stable.

Laughs in COBOL

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