alt Hacker NewsI'd love to see what a global ban for TikTok, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube, and X would look like. Even better: massive breakdown of iOS and Android installations. Just for a couple of weeks, then revert to the nightmarish status quo we live in. Now that would be an interesting experiment. The change in people's behavior would be palpable for those fourteen days, I bet. It'd be so much fun.
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We got something similar with social interactions during covid lockdowns (if your country had those). Btw i feel like people would go literally MAD, I can see it when just WhatsApp crashses for just a couple hours (doesn't happen often but I remember people's reactions when it happened). You can get a feel of what it would do for yourself by getting a dumbphone and limiting yourself from accessing social media.
People would just switch to a different service.
I have trouble lumping those 5 services together. Maybe its something to do with me being a middle-age American male?
Instagram/X/TikTok: Hot garbage. Good riddance. Ban them and this country is a better place.
Whatsapp/YouTube: Actually quite useful. The former for real-time global communications. The latter for visual how-to's of all kinds (bicycles, home maintenance).
Daniel Dennett was strong proponent of alternative information distribution mechanisms in case of internet goes down for everyone. We haven't even studied such scenarios.