Should Social Media Algorithms Be Regulated

But for young people in particular is his point. It's having really bad effects. I mean, he looks at like, he charts the introduction of social media and the rise of like self-harm, hospitalizations for self-harm, especially among adolescent girls. It's like been doubling every three years basically since Facebook was introduced. Well, it's really from the introduction of the smartphone. It's really from 2007. It's the coddling of the American mind. People haven't read it. It's really good. And talking to Jonathan and getting the sort of, it's almost like he's sending out a warning. The British are coming. The British are coming. It really is like the dangers are only going to be exacerbated by AR and whatever new technology comes along and haptic feedback suits and all this chaos. All the new stuff that's going to be invented over the next 10 years, 20 years is only going to be more immersive. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he just thinks that the social media companies have to be forced to at least not make, not let kids on. Well, not like, I mean, at the very least it should be like cigarettes and booze where they make a genuine attempt to keep people under the age of 16 or 18. It's interesting because there are some things that for those kids are, well, this is what's really fascinating. The way China is handling it is so different than America. China's version of TikTok celebrates academic achievements, athletic achievements. It's all science projects, all these different fascinating things. And they lock it out at 10 PM. At 10 PM, no one's on it. Those kids are not allowed to get on it because they're trying to encourage achievement. They're trying to encourage, like China has a program to try to make men more manly. Like this open program where they're trying to make men more masculine. They're doing all these things with like this idea of engineering a society of more accomplished, more successful people. Whereas what are we doing on TikTok? Kids are fucking dancing and they're screaming about veganism and how blue their hair is. It's wild. Yeah. I wonder. The difference is interesting because I don't think we should engineer the way our society interacts with each other. But if you look at the way China is doing it, like they're doing it clearly with this idea that they want to stimulate young minds and they want to promote this idea that doing things that you are, you know, like you're going to become more accomplished, you're going to become more athletic. These are what they're trying to encourage. I mean, I'm a little bit reticent about holding anything up that the Chinese Communist Party does as being a great idea. And if we're worried about things like the New York Post article about Joe Biden's son's laptop being suppressed by Twitter, just wait until you get on it. All of the people who are being suppressed on conventional social media outlets, like just wait until you get a load of what a bureaucracy would do if they had control over what the algorithms show you as well. No denying that. No one would ever argue that with a fucking clear conscience. Yeah. So I mean, what do you do? Like, I mean, the other thing that Hite says is maybe you try to force them to make the algorithms like not constantly addictive. Because I mean, I think what people don't necessarily always think about when you're using these platforms is that they're not blank open spaces into which your friends and the people you're following are commenting and then it's just kind of, you know, filtering down in a neutral way. It's obviously being rejigged at the back end to maximize the time that you're spending on the site. All they want, all the algorithm wants to do is to keep you there for one second longer so they can maximize the time that you're spending on the platform. John Hite's like, could you change that algorithm so that it's like, you know, more fulfilling stuff instead of more addictive stuff? And I'm like, I don't know how you would legislate that. I don't know how you would make them do that. That's what China is doing. I think essentially the only way to do it is to have no algorithms, just allow people to search what they enjoy and find it on their own. The suggested side of YouTube, that's what gets you. Yes. And it seems like they've stopped playing auto playing new shows. Oh really? Is that real, Jamie? Like, when I watch YouTube, it doesn't necessarily always do that anymore. Like sometimes it just shows me a new video, but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the video just stops. It could just be a, they might be just changed the default setting to off and maybe it's turned back on or something. It could be something like that. Well, that's probably good. But if there was no algorithm whatsoever, you know, the argument would be that, well, there's probably a lot of things that you would be introduced to that you would enjoy that you're going to miss if there's no algorithm at all. Yeah, sure. And that would be fine. I mean, isn't that the way that I wander through life normally? Like there's all kinds of stuff that's out there that I miss because it's not being constantly shoved into my face. Like I don't necessarily need the most addictive food at all times. I can also just sometimes have a salad. Right, but the business model for them, like they're concerned with the most engagement and the best way to get the most engagement is find out what Josh Zeps likes and then show it to him over and over and over again. Yeah. You know? I mean, as you say, once AR and like, whenever you talk about like haptic feedback suits and stuff like that, my mind just goes to like once porn gets mastered in that world, there's going to be a large percentage of the population that's just in the basement for long periods of time.