this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
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[–] historicaldocuments@lemmy.world 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

“autistic kids are retarded, and you aren’t so you can’t be autistic”.

Growing in a small rural town comes with a lot of good things but also a lot of prejudices that can make your life tough if you aren’t “like the rest of the kids”.

This is why I waffle about banning "social media" for kids under a certain age. If the parents and the communities they allow say that it's not possible for a kid to be a certain way then there's no way for a kid to independently check. I don't have any idea on how to balance that against the algorithm.

[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social 9 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I don't have any idea on how to balance that against the algorithm.

Just ban the algorithms on social media and you solve a good portion of the issues they cause.

[–] historicaldocuments@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Just ban the algorithms on social media and you solve a good portion of the issues they cause.

There's no way to enforce that, and you have to have seen some bs before to recognize it again. Plus, if you're the only kid that never sees stuff the algorithm provides then you're right back to being surrounded by people with different knowledge sets.

[–] AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@piefed.social 3 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

You could force every social media to get their code audited regularly (once a year maybe?) to prove they are not using an algorithm on them. And the penalty for being caught using one or by refusing to be audrted is a 10% yearly revenue increasing by +10% every time they get caught using it or they refuse to be audited.

[–] stickly@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

You could force every social media to get their code audited regularly

Halting Problem goes brrrrrrrrrrrr...

This is unenforceable. The absolute best case is requiring something trivial, like serving content by recency. And even that can be gamed, aside from defeating the base offering of social media (connecting you to people and topics that interest you)

[–] historicaldocuments@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

audited regularly

You won't overturn hundreds of thousands of years of human nature and ungodly profits this way. People already have the ability to vote with their wallets and they don't for the most part. We do have at least one example of someone who tries, but I wonder how much of that page is still true today: https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

I was surprised to find the old Edward Bernays books online. I guess they're just that old now. From the first book Propaganda:

In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to its attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.

Stallman's notions probably aren't going to manifest themselves in the middle of nowhere without internet. Bernays' probably will.