There is a flood of lawsuits against social media, from a variety of different parties, all claiming some kind of harm. Would you feel differently about some of those lawsuits if you found out the …
Even if you believe that: suing social media platforms for being “addictive” isn’t just an act against that company.
It may cause that social media platform and many others to restrict what people can post or see on them, and/or to start verifying users’ ages. That harms the userbase more than the platform.
It may cause smaller platforms (like fediverse instances) to become afraid of being the next targets and deciding it’s not worth the risk of operating at all.
That makes such lawsuits attacks on freedom of speech on the Internet as a whole, in my mind. Not something anyone who wants the participatory Internet to keep existing should be celebrating.
Even if you believe that: suing social media platforms for being “addictive” isn’t just an act against that company.
It may cause that social media platform and many others to restrict what people can post or see on them, and/or to start verifying users’ ages. That harms the userbase more than the platform.
It may cause smaller platforms (like fediverse instances) to become afraid of being the next targets and deciding it’s not worth the risk of operating at all.
That makes such lawsuits attacks on freedom of speech on the Internet as a whole, in my mind. Not something anyone who wants the participatory Internet to keep existing should be celebrating.