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So, enter Cyber Spatial.

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Otherwise, enjoy today’s Stove Top!

It’s Not Tech’s Fault

Yesterday, the CEOs of Discord, Snap, TikTok, X, and Meta made the pilgrimage to the Senate for their scheduled flogging. The hearing had all the usual weird shit that these kinds of hearings usually do. Zuckerberg was made to apologize to parents of kids who had either died or hurt themselves “because of social media”. Tom Cotton either is incapable or refuses to acknowledge that Singapore is, in fact, not the same thing as China. Good stuff all around.

But what really caught my eye was how much blame was being put on these 5 individuals. It’s their fault that kids are being bullied. It’s their fault that kids are being trafficked. It’s their fault that kids are buying drugs. It’s their fault that kids are hurting themselves. And it’s their fault that kids are dying.

This is a sentiment that I’ve been increasingly noticing: the temptation to pin all of society’s ills on technology, and social media more specifically.

Look, I am sympathetic to the idea of sensibly regulating social media for kids. But I think people are missing the point here. Technology doesn’t by itself benefit or harm anybody. Nuclear energy can destroy the world or provide it with limitless power. Knives can cut a steak or cut your finger off. Crypto can make you rich or make you poor. A lawn mower can cut your grass or run over a toddler.

What makes a technology “dangerous” is how someone uses it. A gun by itself is just a gun. A gun in the hands of a psycho is a lethal weapon. Social media doesn’t by itself cause kids to cut themselves. It’s how those kids interact with social media that is causing the crisis.

In other words, at some point, people are going to have to stop blaming social media for every bad thing that’s befallen their kids. Yes, some kids become depressed after using social media. Some people also die after drinking alcohol, and I don’t see anybody calling out the CEO of White Claw. That’s because they understand that drinking yourself to death is a personal choice. For some reason, the concept of personal responsibility goes out the window when it comes to social media.

Again, this does not mean I think social media is “good” for kids. If you want to make the case that kids are inherently unable to handle social media and thus social media should be banned for kids under some arbitrary age, then fine. That’s the same argument they made for alcohol, and I don’t have a problem with it. But blaming Mark Zuckerberg for your kid's death is at best lazy and at worst dishonest. It’s just another example of our growing inclination toward treating the symptom instead of the root cause.

What’s peculiar about the social media case is that conservatives usually understand the role of personal responsibility. When there’s a mass shooting, they are the ones blaming the mental health of the shooter instead of the gun itself. In my opinion, this is the correct viewpoint. Lots of people have guns, but only the crazy mfs use them to kill people. So if you stop the crazy mfs from getting guns, the shootings should also stop.

Social media is the same thing. Everybody uses social media, but only the mentally ill or children (and I’d bet there’s a lot of overlap here) kill themselves over it. So we should be trying to keep the mentally ill, children, and especially mentally ill children off social media through either regulation or, even better, active parenting. We could also crack down on the pedos and weirdos that use social media to prey on kids. But nobody on either side says this. Instead, they all just pile into the Zuckerberg hate train.

Beyond being unproductive, the problem with blaming technology itself instead of the people using technology is that it opens us up to a world where the elites are deciding what technologies are allowed. This was my main problem with the otherwise decent article The Rise Of Techno-Authoritarianism by Adrienne LaFrance. The tech kingpins refuse to moderate the speech she doesn’t like, so we need universities like Harvard, Stanford, and MIT (lol) to step up and take the lead instead. Basically, instead of techno-authoritarianism, we need intellectual-authoritarianism.

It’s pretty clear that this doesn’t work. Nobody can successfully control the market. Harvard doesn’t know shit about what technology will be good or bad for society. Neither does Marc Andreessen. That’s what the free market is for. The market chooses which ideas rise above the rest, and then the regulators are supposed to make sure that the worst actors can’t use those ideas to do harm. Keep the gun out of schizophrenic’s hands, and keep social media away from suicidal teenagers.

Even putting aside its ineffectiveness, do we really want a world where the elites tell us what is and isn’t good? Personally, I don’t want Marc Andreessen forcing AI on me. I don’t want Harvard forcing MinistryOfTruthSocial on me. I don’t want Elizabeth Warren taking my crypto away from me. I don’t want Greenpeace ruining nuclear energy. Before you know it, you’ll have the authorities trying to convince us that letting them read our messages is good for society. Oh wait.

Ultimately, a world where the elites are calling the technological shots is going to go one of two ways. It’ll either be a world of stagnant safetyism, or it’ll be a world of dystopian totalitarianism. Give me the free market and SENSIBLE regulation every time.

So, instead of telling social media execs that they have blood on their hands and trying to censor the internet in the name of child safety, let’s just recognize that social media has some adverse effects on kids that nobody could’ve seen coming. Knowing that, parents should take some responsibility and keep their depressed teenagers off Instagram and regulators should pass regulation targeted toward depressed teenagers, not social media itself.

Extras

• Some UN agency staff may have been involved in October 7th.

• So it turns out men are becoming more conservative and women are becoming more liberal. Is this really a surprise?

• Breaking news: exercise is good for you.

• Biden is throwing billions into advanced chips.

• The government is requiring AI companies to let them know when they start new AI projects.

• Shell companies are doing some shady shit.

• Schools are using surveillance tech to catch kids vaping. 

• Speaking of vapes, the UK just banned disposable vapes.

• And speaking of the UK, their current anti-privacy regime must be stopped at all costs.

• Scotland is generating all their electricity from renewables.

• A California bill wants to make it so cars are literally unable to speed. Reminder that Law 3.0 is bad.

• Sayanora, Evergrande.

• The Florida House of Representatives wants to ban social media for kids under 16.

• Neuralink has implanted a chip into somebody’s brain for the first time. 

• The New York Times is getting into generative AI.

• TikTok is still sending your data to China.

• If it exists, NYC wants to regulate it.

• The fossil fuel industry knew about their damage to the climate as early as 1954. And people wonder why nobody trusts anybody anymore.

• Birth rates are falling in the Nordics too.

• Israel and Hamas are getting closer to a ceasefire agreement, and the State Department is reviewing options for recognizing Palestine.

• Defend open-source software.

• Launch the NSA into the sun.

• Self-control is a very important trait.

• Keep body cameras away.

• Europe may finally start taking care of their own.

Until next time, ✌️

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