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I agree that social media has enabled mind control on a scale we haven't seen before and it's incredibly dangerous, but I'm not sure it's a problem we can fix with censorship exactly. I don't know that censors can be nimble enough to stop the mind virus before it takes off. I'm pessimistic about it.
Within a community I ran, though, I'd definitely ban meme stock promotion.
I'm also not sure banning meme stocks is even a good idea. If someone lost their shirt on meme stocks, weren't they destined for financial ruin one way or another? Should we mandate that retail investors can only do index funds? Should we ban gambling and excessive charity donations, and should we ban liberal arts degrees?
Do we want to ban cults on general principle?
No, because gambling losses are not socialized. liberal arts degrees are more socialized. A case can be made that bad food should be banned because it imposes an externality in the form of higher healthcare costs
Defining bad food is surprisingly hard. Most people can agree that empty calories like soda shouldn't be consumed by anyone, but that's about where the agreement ends. Should we all eat like Vegans? You've got to admit, they tend to be skinny. Or are they emaciated? What about keto... do we abolish bread?
Do we ban dessert because some people will eat cake every day if we let them?
maybe disallow people who habitually engage in poor eating habits from using public healthcare services.. deny public healthcare to alcoholics and smokers is a starting point.
And you would enforce this... how? Maybe we'd need to log every food/drug purchase with the government? Social credits? I'll pass on that thanks.
for smokers and alcoholics, you can probably tell from their illnesses and physical condition. Same for obesity, except moreso. The insurance company already has your drug purchases, and they're already heavily regulated by the government.
I'd rather deny driving privileges to alcoholics if we're playing this game.
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I don't think you even have to ban "meme stocks", I think that a targeted shutdown of a few dozen at most promoters who are milking the remainder of the community would be effective enough.
Part of the reason I am so upset about this is that I'm sure all of the money-losing sob stories will cause the SEC to restrict the freedoms of responsible retail investors later on, and I view the prioritization of speech rights of influencers over my long-term rights to investment as the inevitable trade off, and I'm salty.
Well, I think your right to invest in an index fund or whatever doesn't trump my right to shitpost about anime on the Internet. If anything, I value financial speculation way, way less than that.
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Well there are many on the dissident right and weirdo left who believe that the world both before social media and orthogonal to it is the real mind virus. So they have a complicated relationship with acknowledging this kind of problem.
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