I remember this phenomenon back when Facebook was less algorithmic — some days there’d just be no new content at all. Especially I’m guessing if you limit adding friends to actually just the people you’d be happy to grab lunch with.
Here in the UK we require cigarette suppliers to advertise the dangers of smoking on every package.
I'd mandate that every social media platform is required to advertise the dangers on every page, and also give a very visible option to reveal the workings of the algorithm that is feeding you the pages.
I'm not saying that drugs should be legal, only that given perverse intensives, legitimate problems are routinely used as a Trojan horse to sneak in oppressive regulations.
In the case of communications and speech, the government's incentives for censorship, eavesdropping and control are enormous - otherwise there wouldn't be a Constitution, 1st amendment or the entire Bill of Rights that depends on it. Once the routine circumvention of these becomes acceptable, any kind of true but inconvenient for Big Brother speech will become impossible - with or without a written permit.
The manner of doing it doesn't matter, the permit was a figure of speech, kind of telling that I have to state it explicitly.
Social media isn't just bad interactions, there isn't just one twitter or reddit, its about what you choose to read and interact with and most of its not toxic its just people talking on the same topic.
