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White House urges UK not to ban social media for under-16s
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2026
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That's how you know it's probably a good idea.
Personally I'd go a step further and regulate algorithmic feeds in general. It's pretty clear at this point that feeding people a steady drip of content picked to maximize "engagement" above all else has done incalculable damage.
One of the biggest things I miss is the old YouTube "algorithm". Before everything was personalized based on your subscriptions and watch history. YouTube was a rabbit hole, the whole site. I miss starting out just watching some random video and then going on the adventure of different videos leading to all sorts of different topics. I've always wondered if there's a site that can return that algorithm, or if I could somehow replicate it.
My hope is that’s what the Fediverse and “old web” becomes someday. A sort of quiet, commercially unviable place where all the internet dwellers have congregated once again. Where all those oldschool data hoarders can share their stuff again.
It feels quaint compared to hearing tiktok videos, which is my new #1 pet peeve. Just the sound sets me off.
This. Pre-2010 social media, which basically showed a feed with the posts of the people you followed, had a lot less negative impact on people. The engagement maximization strategy multiplies "negative" news, because outrage apparently engages more than good news. And current algorithmic feeds like TikTok destroy attention span and make people dumber.
And while we're at it, ban (or at least heavily regulate) dating apps, the only business where the companies sell the opposite product of what they supposedly offer. If people find long-term partners through the apps they would stop using them, so the companies are incentivized to help you not find love and real relationships.
Pre-2010 social media still had issues. It incentivised likes and views, which then social media companies capitalized (literally) and then it became a terrible feedback loop. The desire for likes/views is deeply coded in our psyche and can't change that.
The problem is and has been humans.
Social media is older than likes and views. Usenet for instance is older than the Web.
usenet is not social media.
Also RIP usenet. It is long gone.
The Usenet user count has never been higher than it currently is, and it very much is social media. What changed is that AT&T and others stopped including Usenet access as part of your Internet plan several years ago so it got a little harder to get to but not impossible.
In what universe is Usenet social media? Seriously?
Usenet is dead. Gone. What remains today is just a shell game of corporate owners. It is nothing like what it used to be.
Next thing you know you will try and tell me Lemmy is social media.
Lemmy isn't social media? Given that it is mostly a federated reddit clone, I would argue it is. Probably even more social than reddit considering that reddit has now more bots than people, unlike Lemmy (at least for now), and I think that a platform full of bots talking among themselves is not really "social".
It's only a r***it clone because the largest instances are at best reactionaries who market themselves as "progressives." And before anyone gets offended, consider how quickly most users are quick to ally with known Zionazis (🐐) before actual leftists.
I disagree. It's missing everything that makes social media, social media.
Its anonymous. No self promotion. No actual socializing. No controlling body, and rarely even media. No monetization.
Reddit was a link aggregator. They kind of socialized it with adding media uploads, and some people try and use it that way, but it really doesn't meet the criteria either.
Just like a bbs and Usenet were conversational, and in some ways a bit social, neither were "social media". And Lemmy isn't either.
This term comes from companies pushing to monetize and unannonymize people. Facebook, or back in the day certain parts of AOL.
Lemmy and reddit are link aggregating forums. We call them forums!
Edit: its so weird to see people retcon the notion of what social media is. We never called it that back then, and we knew when social media started and began using that name because it was different to everything before. Getting downvotes for this kind of thing really is concerning, you do not understand the difference.
I never had to hear 4x speed laughter, 2X speed music, then 8x speed explanation of something that happened to them that literally only matters to them until tiktok existed. It's so prevalent for mush brains from teens to late GenX that it makes me want civilization to end. It triggers my ADHD like nothing ever has in my lifetime. Like if I can't handle that shit, who can?!? Banning that app was the one thing I wanted from the first term.
That's why I said less negative impact.
And we can't change human nature, but we can force social media companies to change.
Well, yeah, but unless you're suggesting we exterminate the species, the answer must be regulating the way we interact with each other, like the person above suggested.
If I have to hear one more fucking second of some random fuckwit on tiktok, I'm voting for exterminating the species.
Exactly. Anything conservatives urge should probably mean doing the opposite