Not in the UK, but from Romania, I last checked Tripadvisor back in 2012, and that was for a holiday stay in the Greek islands. Google Maps has eaten the lunch of almost all of the entrants in this space, and I say that having worked for a local/Romanian "Google places"-type of company, back in 2010-2012 (after which Google Places came in, ~~stole~~ scrapped some of our data and some of our direct competitor's data and put us both out of that business).
> I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation
Why not? Why won't you give political agency to young adults? I'm saying this as a kid who grew up in Romania, just after Ceausescu had been executed, so throughout the '90s, I do very well remember all the political news and commentary coming my way (I was a teen), but I can't say that it bothered, not at all, it made me more connected to the adult world and hence more prepared to tackle real life just a little bit later on.
I won't comment on the other stuff, because that would make me bring back memories of watching TV1000 (a Swedish TV satellite channel) late at night on Saturdays, also in the early '90s, I won't say for what but suffice is to say that I turned out ok.
There's hardly any parallel between the type of political content (or corn) that was available on TV in the 90s, and what's found in today's social media. It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour.
> It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour.
This is exactly what conservative talk radio was like, and it radicalized a bunch of boomers – especially the ones with long car commutes who had limited counter examples. There’s a direct line between the guys joking about eating spotted owls or how feminists were too ugly to worry about rape to the modern environment, or saying that the government was discriminating against white men, but the difference now is scale and variety: now it reaches more people and there are more flavors available so the young woman who would’ve been turned off by Rush instead gets some wellness influencer talking about how birth control causes cancer.
Rush Limbaugh started broadcasting in the 80's. Fox News in the 90's. Prior to that you had decades of propaganda against "communists" and anti-war protesters. Prior to that you had blatant lies about what would happen if black people got civil rights. Before that you had blatant lies about women's suffrage. The bullshit has always existed in very large quantities. The common uniting thread for the vast majority of the bullshit is conservative beliefs. They are always doing their most to make the world a worse place for some group or another.
- It's not young adults, it's 15 and under. Personally I would classify 17-20something as young adult (it's a bit subjective isn't it).
- The younger children don't really care about politics honestly. Curious if you have an age that you're ok with only ensuring irl politics for children? I think age to vote is a much bigger concern for me here in terms of civil liberties.
- Parents can still make that choice for their child (unclear how this will work to me yet, to be fair).
- I've become convinced no one really practises 'politics' online. People barely even debate anymore. They argue, they perform activism, they aggitate, its what gets attention (thanks to social media). I'm worried people think this is normal, it's not- political discourse used to be much more productive. I remember when fallacies were actually brought up logically on the internet and people actually cared about the accusation.
- I did explicit rp with adults as 7 year old on MSN chatrooms back in the day :')
Social media is full of extremist and untrue content of all types. Antivax or free birth content are just two small examples of viral content that is untrue and kills people. It has a very negative effect on adults, and adults at least have brains that are fully-developed.
Exposing kids to the firehose of misinformation on social media just poisons their brains. Political agitation is mostly political misinformation. Even among the causes online that I agree with, most of the content online is deeply biased, one-sided or inaccurate.
I don't think we should allow the government to ban political agitation, but I do think its fine to allow the government to ban children using social media
The most dangerous, untrue, and extremist content I've ever seen has come from governments.
Lies upon lies about WMDs and going to war for our freedoms and how we need to "liberate" Libya and fund and arm rebels and insurgents. Millions of people killed, trillions of dollars wasted and stolen.
Someone who is not completely trusting of politicians or pharmaceutical corporations, or who wants to give birth like 99.999% of humanity has, really are so far down the list of "dangerous misinformation" they don't even register.
When you say "our", do you mean "the median employee", tech workers, or some other group?
Because while this is true for tech companies, you must consider where that money comes from and how much (more) human suffering goes into it. I'd rather live in society where I make a decent living and people aren't (as) exploited.
edit, to add: I'm exaggerating to make my point clearer, but in these discussions I always get the distinct feeling that if the US still had slavery, American farmers would be making snide remarks about how uncompetitive and anti-business the EU is with all of our pesky regulations.
Meanwhile a vocal minority of European farmers would be pointing at the US, complaining about how much less money they make than American farmers, and pressuring our representatives to legalize slavery because otherwise we're all going to get left behind. In other words it all feels a bit absurd when nobody is considering the negative externalities of these policies.
This was in the context of innovation (or lack thereof), and this being a tech-website then, yes, I'm mostly talking about tech workers. One cannot have (tech) innovation while getting paid 5 to 10 times less (and in many cases I'm being generous to the European employers here) compared to what's happening across the ocean. That's why SAP is still a big thing in Germany and that's why Tesla (and then the Chinese) were able to eat Germany's car-software lunch.
> magical thinking and pseudo babble, it hardly fits on HN
Don't ask Newton about the pseudo babble stuff. Nor the string "theorists". In fact, don't ask any of the "theoretical" physicists (an oxymoron by definition, which seems to be lost on almost all of them) about "magical thinking and pseudo babble".
Those are conjectures. Even the most diehard proponents are seeking verifiable proofs, not simply stating, "Well, like, that's just your opinion, man...".
Scientific hypotheses and religious/metaphysical articles of faith are orthogonal ideas.
If you continue with the idea of transfers, which is, in effect, the current government buying off parts of its constituents, then "democracy", whatever has remained of it in the West, will die for good. What happens if I receive money from the Government but in the same time I'm also actively opposed to said Government's actions? Will I be allowed to speak against the Government that is, as a matter of fact, paying me? Will I have second thoughts of doing it? Will the Government cut off aid to me if I'm too vocal against said Government's actions?
All this to say that all we're doing is turning most of our countries' citizens into de facto slaves, people with no political free-will and who are well-aware that if they were to speak out against the powers that be they risk destitution.
> What happens if I receive money from the Government but in the same time I'm also actively opposed to said Government's actions?
Nothing? That's how it's worked in literally all functioning democracies. The purpose of any government, democratic or not, is to benefit its constituents. If it doesn't do that, we have a moral obligation to destroy the tyrants. Those benefits range in their tangible value, from hard to quantify things, like establishing public expectations of behavior (laws), to easy to quantify (subsidies like wellfare, farming subsidies, etc).
I'm truly baffled by your take that seems to insist that helping the needy somehow makes you moreso a slave to the government than the whole monopoly on legitimate use of force thing.
You can have net transfers to the poor without turning most of your country's into net recipients.
I also don't understand why you assume that people who are net recipients would stop complaining or voicing their opinion? That's not at all what happens in practice.
You're turning the "poors" into slaves, into slaves to the Government that is keeping them (the "poors") on the Government's payroll. I'm not "mixing" anything, so if we can please leave that condescending tone behind that would be best.
> who are net recipients would stop complaining or voicing their opinion
Why? You're asking why the "poors" will have second thoughts about openly criticising the hand that, literally, feeds them?
> Why? You're asking why the "poors" will have second thoughts about openly criticising the hand that, literally, feeds them?
No, I'm not asking why the poor would stop complaining. I am pointing out that empirically we observe that people who receive government largess don't shut up! (And that's true for all kinds of government largess, eg also for subsidies for rich people or companies.)
No, the "why" question I am asking is: why do you think that recipients of government handouts would shut up, when in the real world they haven't done so?
> You're turning the "poors" into slaves, into slaves to the Government that is keeping them (the "poors") on the Government's payroll.
Would you say the same about eg car drivers, if the government provides roads free of charge to the user? Or about anyone who benefits from national defense? Or are in-kind benefits excluded from your calculus? In that case, would giving poor people food and clothing and shelter instead of money mean they are no longer 'slaves' by your definition?
(For comparison: real-world, actual slaves like in the American South were usually provided with in-kind benefits to keep them alive. Money rarely changed hands, partially because it leads to autonomy.)
> Pure greed would have a strong incentive to understand what the market is actually demanding in order to maximize profits.
Not necessarily, just look at this clip [1] from Margin Call, an excellent movie on the GFC. As Jeremy Irons is saying in that clip, the market (as usually understood in classical economy, with producers making things for clients/customers to purchase) is of no importance to today's market economy, almost all that matters, at the hundreds of billions - multi-trillion dollars-levels, is for your company "to play the music" as best as the other (necessarily very big) market participants, "nothing more, nothing less" (again, to quote Irons in that movie).
There's nothing in it about "making what people/customers want" and all that, which is regarded as accessory, that is if it is taken into consideration at all. As another poster is mentioning in this thread, this is all the direct result of the financialization of much of the Western economy, this is how things work at this level, given these (financiliazed) inputs.
Why didn't he take the ferry there?
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