Canada

"Education" doesn't really feel like a solution to things that people often lean into cognitive dissonance on.

Everybody has the opportunity to know how reprehensible the conditions the meat that ends up in supermarkets (and probably your local market too) is but very few people are willing to change their diets. Many people talk about caring about 'loving animals' but when it comes down to making changes, the head just usually goes into the sand.

Kurzgesagt did a good video recently on what the cost to improve animal welfare for things that end up on peoples plates would be but the truth is the only reason why we know what those numbers are is because some places have banned certain practices. The only way to realize those benefits is through legal changes, not 3% of people paying 3 times as much for fancy free range eggs.

That said, I'm also generally against banning things, I just don't know how you make that sort of thing less attractive- a Twitter Tax?

I am in favor of banning X because it's run by someone who has threatened our sovereignty and, to be honest, a lot of people are pretty fucking dumb.

maybe instead, pass a law. one with substantial penalties for failure to comply, that requires 'social media companies' of a 'certain size' to do (reasonable) 'things' in order to operate or make themselves available in canada. things that spaceman fireball would never do

America is the best example that you just can't teach some people. Doesn't matter if it is scientists and doctors doing the teaching. If anything in the eyes of idiots that makes them even less credible. Don't underestimate stupidity.

That idea is beautiful in theory, but useless in practice.

Why not both?

I'm against banning things. It's better to teach users how not to use these platforms.

Just because there's deeper root causes, doesn't mean the end result shouldn't be banned if its immoral or destructive. In particular, we figure out what parts of it are problematic enough to be worth banning, and ban those: I.E. the heavily biased algorithm which users have no control over.

Aside from that, theres also the option of providing alternatives. Said alternatives don't even have to be publicly run. It could come in the form of something like a one-time grant to Mastrodon and opening up a server exclusively for government departments to share announcements or PR with the public.

I get updates on X from my local news and police stations about traffic, weather, etc. We'd need to get this type of stuff into another single platform before many people would switch.

+1.

This just suggests to censor us. I'm all for an open and free internet. If you censor it, you look ight as well join the book burning club.

Education is key. Just look at what they doing in the United St... Oh wait, nevermind.

Except that it doesn't work. The most effective way to shut down a movement is to prevent it from existing in the first place, not to reeducate millions.