Treat big tech like big tobacco.

Summary

• Big Tech’s problems mirror Big Tobacco, not in size but in the addictive, harmful nature of their products.
• Modern social media fosters misery, fear of missing out, and negative externalities, even for those who do not actively use it.
• These platforms act as active curators, so removing their special legal protections would allow those harmed to hold them liable.
• Reinforcement learning and AI-generated content threaten to intensify these issues by further gamifying human attention.

Highlights

[{“text”:“Treat Big Tech like Big Tobacco\n\nThe problem with TikTok and Facebook isn’t their size”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:17:13.091Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b97490e62278a8522857d”},{“text”:“The problem with Big Tobacco was not that it could charge excess prices because of its market power. The problem with Big Tobacco was that cigarettes were too cheap”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:17:22.447Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b9752c75fdac014698e1b”},{“text”:“Cigarettes caused both externalities to society and also internalities between the higher-level self that wanted to quit smoking and the primary self that could not quit an addictive substance. So, we taxed and regulated their use.”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:17:27.737Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b9757484b88b3c34b46fa”},{“text”:“The fight regarding social media platforms has centered around antitrust and the sheer size of Big Tech companies. But these platforms are not so much a problem because they are big; they are big because they are a problem. Policy solutions need to actually address the main problem with the brain-cooking internet.”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:17:48.476Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b976c65eebaeaf8eda896”},{“text”:“Competition is rampant.”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:18:09.789Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b978119eb6922c244af69”},{“text”:“The problem is what all these companies are competing to do. The data we have, let alone the data I expect we’ll eventually have, indicates that the modern internet is addictive, makes us miserable, and perhaps makes us hate each other.”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:18:17.660Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b978a1b49e09d462c00af”},{“text”:“One study showed large externalities to nonusers of TikTok and Instagram, leading many people to use the sites for FOMO reasons when they would prefer not to. Others show people are happier when they’re paid to stay away from social media. At a societal level, across the world, we’ve seen preliminary evidence of the damage from addictive social media, but”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:18:40.874Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b97a11b49e09d462c05ae”},{“text”:“For three decades, internet providers were merely passive hosts of third-party content, immune from liability faced by publishers. That grant of immunity was foundational, and the costs of such freedom were wildly outweighed by the benefits of the internet.\n\nBoth of these facts are no longer true. Social media companies are no longer passive hosts but active curators”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:18:58.709Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b97b20e62278a852299a9”},{“text”:“The answer is not to destroy these companies or pull the government into the messy and probably unconstitutional world of directly regulating speech. The answer is to remove the special protections they have been granted and finally allow people harmed by these products to hold these companies liable.”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:19:10.129Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b97bec75fdac01469a1b5”},{“text”:“we have learned over the course of computing history that reinforcement learning with a clean reward signal allows computers to beat humans in a wide range of domains. When computers are given a game with an objective function and enough computing power, they master the game.”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:19:38.517Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b97da65eebaeaf8edbf3a”},{“text”:“The problem is that human attention can also be gamified”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:19:45.283Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b97e1662441f949d39ef3”},{“text”:“Big Tech has been trying to master our attention with content created by other humans. But soon, we may be contending with AI-generated content created by the very same platforms that know what we pay attention to the most”,“note”:“”,“color”:“yellow”,“position”:0,“created”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.158Z”,“lastUpdate”:“2025-12-12T04:20:06.517Z”,“creatorRef”:1030861,“_id”:“693b97f63b5be52f31d0e94b”}]