alt Hacker NewsThis idea that regulation fails to destroy industries is farcical. Most examples of “failed regulation” like American prohibition were runaway successes as public policy. Whether it is good or desirable is a different question.
The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience on a “decentralized” network is honestly a bit silly to me. The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture critical mass.
There will be side effects, but social media has been so ridiculously corrosive to the welfare of teenagers that I can’t imagine a ban would be worse.
Replies
> The idea that someone is going to make an engaging experience on a “decentralized” network is honestly a bit silly to me. The market potential of this business is low. Decentralized networks with much larger incentives have failed to capture critical mass.
When decentralized networks win, they often win so big that they become invisible. AOL is dead, the web isn't. Email, the global telephone network, the internet itself, these are all decentralized networks.
The hardest part of doing this for social media is actually discovery. It's easier to show people an "engaging" feed when your algorithm has access to the full firehose to select from. But that doesn't mean doing it in a decentralized way is impossible, and if you pass a law that drives people away from centralized services, the incentive to do it goes up.
The “engaging experience” is the entire problem. The fact that it’s harder to do addiction engineering on a decentralized network is a feature.
Aaannd then the mask came off, proving you were a moralistic authoritarian. I suppose you support cartels destabilizing entire nation-states with billions of criminal funds too
>Most examples of “failed regulation” like American prohibition were runaway successes as public policy.
You pick one of the worst examples? Prohibition drove a black market for spirits . the 21st amendment repealed it because the government missed out on hundreds of thousands in taxes.
The reason to make the law and repeal it were both awful. The lessons learned were all wrong. It's just awful all around (and I speak as someone that doesn't really drink much).