Meta Platforms Inc., Snap Inc., TikTok Inc., and Google LLC can’t invoke the First Amendment or the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230—a decades-old legal shield for online services—to block allegations that they designed their platforms to addict young people causing depression and anxiety, Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl ruled in an 89-page order.
I abhor Donald Trump. I canvassed for Bernie Sanders. I considered myself to be "liberal" until what seems to be the majority of liberals who I know turned pro-censorship, war-friendly, trusting of the FBI & CIA, abandoning the working class in most things except rhetoric, willing to applaud authoritarian measures during COVID & clueless that they were being played by the corporate media on numerous major issues including Russiagate. The majority of these people wouldn't recognize themselves if they time-traveled to meet themselves from ten years ago. For several years I have considered myself to be politically homeless.
At Reason, Robert Corn-Revere discusses the recent trial court ruling of Missouri v Biden. An excerpt from Corn-Revere's analysis:
One thing is clear about Missouri v. Biden: The decision cannot be understood by viewing it through a polarized lens. Bullying tactics by government officials violate the First Amendment regardless of who controls the levers of power. Accordingly, it is not a huge victory for the right as some have imagined, or a loss for the left, as others fear.Corn-Revere's analysis is excellent and nuanced.
Assuming it is upheld on appeal, as it should be, it will limit the ability of future administrations to engage in behind-the-scenes censorship. And that is true whether the administration is led by Biden, Trump, or someone else.
Parents are pushing back against smartphones for their children, as described by Olivia Reingold, in "The Parents Saying No to Smartphones in her article at The Free Press: ‘How you help them learn to be present, in a task or with a relationship, is one of the top challenges of our generation. Part of that is going to be saying no.’
Nicholas Kardaras specializes in treating young adults aged 17 to 25 with screen addictions at the Omega Recovery treatment center in Austin, Texas. Kardaras says the first hurdle is often convincing patients they’re actually addicted.The above article links to Ronald Riggio's 2022 article on social contagion: "Social Contagion: How Others Secretly Control Your Behavior: We are often unaware of how others can influence us." Here's an excerpt:
“They don’t realize that they have a problem even though they’re on their device for 18 hours a day and flunking out of school because most addicts don’t see their addiction as a problem when they’re in the middle of it,” he tells me.
Kardaras says his patients are often convinced they’re dealing with other issues, like Tourette syndrome or borderline personality disorder, which they’re introduced to through “psychiatrically unwell influencers” on social media.
He said he knows these patients are actually suffering from “social contagion” instead, because the treatment—forbidding access to cell phones and the internet for a short period of time—is usually the cure, which “shouldn’t really happen with genuine borderline personality disorder or genuine gender dysphoria.”
Paradoxically, Kardaras says that almost all of his young patients were raised by “helicopter parents,” many of whom did their best to keep their kids away from smartphones or heavily monitored their internet use.
“A lot of the young people I’ve worked with will say, ‘I don't feel a sense of control in my life,’ ” he says. “They feel like they’re being smothered and being told what to do all the time. But if they take out their phone, and maybe go on a gaming platform, then they feel like they’re conquering fantasy worlds. They feel a sense of empowerment and control.”
Social contagion is the subtle and sometimes unwitting spread of emotions or behaviors from one individual to others.
Emotional contagion is the spread of emotions through crowds and is the reason why a movie seems funnier if we are in a crowded theater as opposed to watching it alone–our mood is influenced by those laughing around us. The same process would cause a stampeding wave of fear if someone were to suddenly yell “Fire!” in the crowded theater.
A study by Friedman and Riggio (1981) found that emotionally expressive individuals–persons who displayed high instances of nonverbal cues of emotion (primarily facial expressions)–were able to “infect” the emotions/moods of others in the room without any verbal interaction. Subsequent research found that certain individuals are more prone to emotional contagion processes (Doherty, 1997).
Reggio's article did not specifically mention transgender ideology, but he does provide a taxonomy of social contagion includes: "Deliberate Self-Harm. Such as “epidemics” of self-cutting, eating disorders, and suicides." Consider also Abigail Shrier's writings on transgender ideology and social contagion, for which she was viciously attack, even though transgender ideology would clearly be a prime candidate for social contagion.
Jonathan Turley is concerned many people in the news media business now consider it a bad thing to be "objective." His article is titled, “'Objectivity has got to go.': News Leaders Call for the End of Objective Journalism."
We previously discussed the movement in journalism schools to get rid of principles of objectivity in journalism. Advocacy journalism is the new touchstone in the media even as polls show that trust in the media is plummeting. Now, former executive editor for The Washington Post Leonard Downie Jr. and former CBS News President Andrew Heyward have released the results of their interviews with over 75 media leaders and concluded that objectivity is now considered reactionary and even harmful. Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, editor-in-chief at the San Francisco Chronicle said it plainly: “Objectivity has got to go.”
Notably, while Bob Woodward and others have finally admitted that the Russian collusion coverage lacked objectivity and resulted in false reporting, media figures are pushing even harder against objectivity as a core value in journalism.
Those who claim that objectivity is impossible often advocate the vague notion of "social justice" as the only alternative. Just because objectivity is difficult is not a reason for giving up on trying to find common ground on many facts. Giving up on trying to describe things objectively opens the door to mob rule based on feelings of what justice requires, feelings that are unanchored to a mutually-shared understanding of what is going on. Giving up on objectivity is giving up on the Rule of Law. Throwing the quest for objectivity overboard is one of many modern-day examples of violating the principle of Chesterson's Fence, explained here by Shane Parrish of Farnam Street:
Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place. Chesterton went on to explain why this principle holds true, writing that fences don’t grow out of the ground, nor do people build them in their sleep or during a fit of madness. He explained that fences are built by people who carefully planned them out and “had some reason for thinking [the fence] would be a good thing for somebody.” Until we establish that reason, we have no business taking an ax to it. The reason might not be a good or relevant one; we just need to be aware of what the reason is. Otherwise, we may end up with unintended consequences: second- and third-order effects we don’t want, spreading like ripples on a pond and causing damage for years . . . Many of the problems we face in life occur when we intervene with systems without an awareness of what the consequences could be.