Italy has a similar size economy as Russia and they also have their own payment network. Technically there is nothing special. Countries have to come together and decide on a solution together.
On the other hand, if you step back a little bit, Russia is currently stuck in a Sovjet civil war, so I don’t think the Kremlin way is that great.
It is a good way if you want to protect yourself against pressure from the US. Sure, the Kremlin did it for reasons that don't exactly paint them in a good light, but this has nonetheless become a real risk for Europe as well.
The whole issue with NIMBYism are: contradictory democratic wishes and disproportional power of home owners. This points to issues with the democratic process, and not democracy itself.
Most people agree that more homes need to be built, but no home owner wants it in their backyard. So you end up with a deadlock where nothing is done.
Every country in the world already does tons of intervention combatting addiction. There are already bans and restrictions on gambling, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes etc… Wether we consider social media addiction to be harmful and how to do it is a good question to be asked, but intervention into harmful addiction is generally uncontroversial.
Note that gambling is currently the only recognized non-substance-related addiction in the DSM-5. As a society we speak of things like 'tiktok addiction', 'gaming addiction', 'food addiction' and 'porn addiction' but none of these are real recognized disorders. That is not to say that certain behaviors cannot be maladaptive and hard to quit, but this is not enough to make something an addiction - we don't call hypochondria a 'cleaning addiction' even though it might look like one.
Gambling mechanics are also banned for certain ages and in some countries for everyone. We don’t say that it’s just a game, and people should just control themselves. Without going into the specifics of this case, design pattern intervention have existed for a long time and it has been in most cases desirable.
And there are grey areas for gambling that have been settled on, like how video game "loot boxes" were recently reconsidered as gambling in some places (besides just being stupid).
You know it's stupid because you grew up immersed in the message that gambling is bad. Humans don't know that innately. The target audience for these platforms doesn't know it yet. The target audience is still growing up, immersed in whatever message the platform wants to send.
It's better to over regulate than under regulate, if you look at it in terms of utility. The damage of under regulation can be catastrophic, like people getting cancer or irreversible loss of species. Based on examples I read here, overregulation is much easier to solve. For example, the weaponisation of environmental regulation to block new development is a political problem not a technical one, which is solvable if people really want to.
Gas infrastructure is expensive to build and maintain. Often times with tax money. What tend to happen in Europe is that they phase out gas by not building gas lines for new development.
Content on social media nowadays isn’t organic. State level resources are being thrown to influence people. So you are being beamed some government propaganda anyway.
I grew up in the forum days and internet discussions were very different back then. Accounts like “Endwokeness” would never work. People will make fun of him for being so obsessed with trans. You can’t just post some low effort political openings and walk away. Your openings need to have substance and you are pressured to engage. Otherwise people will see through your schtick and you get banned.
I don’t have a solution for this, and I think it’s a different problem regarding social media for kids.
Billions of people are posting real organic content on places like Instagram and Facebook. Their vacations, their workouts, their barbecues with friends, their thoughts and feelings on different matters. What you're saying is the opposite of truth.
The topic at hand was state propaganda and BBQ recipes are outside the scope of state propaganda. Perhaps I should have made that more clear that this is only applied to political topics.
But you do point out something interesting. I still follow football sites and football is still outside of the scope of state propaganda. Although you definitely have tribalism and biased fans and pundits, the vibe is completely different from any political topic.
Gambling doesn’t cause physical harm either, but it’s also banned for children. It’s similar to social media in that both are made to be as addictive as possible and they exploit human psychology.
I think it’s telling that many people here who work in tech don’t want social media for their kids, but there are no comic book readers who want to ban comics for their kids.
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