Social media is a public health emergency
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London: Do you know what will eventually do in social media? The health issue: it’s killing us, mind and body. As I predicted that on Sky News the other day, it occurred to me that, in a previous decade I would’ve said it with a cigarette on the go, the interviewer pausing to offer me a light.
But just as health scares stopped smoking in public, so social media will eventually become a taboo, even a matter for state regulation. I for one will be very happy. I wish we could uninvent it altogether.
Not a week goes by without another story of its deficiencies. Mark Zuckerberg is as responsible for what’s posted on his site as I would be for permitting racist haikus to be painted on my roof, and it’s time to stop passing the buck.
We’ve had the conversation about how individual users need to learn to be nicer online and, thanks to other legal actions, we’re slowly getting there – but there will always be extremists, fake news and frauds, and these platforms ought to have found a better way of weeding them out by now.
They insist they’re trying their best and that it’s awfully hard – but as Mr Lewis says, their business model militates against doing what it takes. He’s right. Why wouldn’t these sites want to stick to a Wild West model that keeps costs low while maximising profit?
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