I didn’t say it was a lie, I said I think it’s inflated the way I already explained. Also, the fact that they are lower than other publishers indicates they will see a bigger impact from this than others.
Physical media is making a resurgence in other areas. Vinyl, DVD, 4K BluRay. Not a big one, but it’s on a backswing. I’m not doubting video games are lower every year because they are still in their initial era.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the impact. I think the knock-on effect will be bigger than they anticipate. Obviously they agree with you that it won’t impact anything. I think it will, for all the reasons I just went over. It’s not a 1:1 relationship between sale and impact. When people don’t have the console because it doesn’t attract them, they can’t make any sales. So they won’t lose one sale from me, they’ll lose the console sale and dozens of physical and digital games.
This is exactly what Microsoft went through with cutting BC, trying to kill physical media, and trying to play their dominant hand and we all know how that worked out. Turns out it’s more than the sum of its parts. Sony might succeed, it’s a different era. But it certainly gives a lot of weak spots for competitors to target.
I do buy digital and have for decades, but primarily for PC. I don’t for console because that’s the last thing I wanted a console for. I have no intention of abandoning the hobby, but this is my last reason to buy a PlayStation. They offer nothing that isn’t done better on a gaming PC.
I saw the 85% stat they are pushing. I honestly don’t believe it. I strongly believe they are pumping that number up by counting PlayStation Plus redemptions and smaller games in that total. I would be much more interested to see what the actual Physical vs. Digital sales are for a single new release title on day one. I would guess the split is much closer to 70/30. That might be higher in markets where internet access is less robust. This will also piss off retailers and distributors, which now are expected to sell low-margin consoles without high margin games. They chose such a far off date in purpose, to see the feedback and test the waters. I doubt this will come to fruition. Physical media is seeing a resurgence as trust for these companies to maintain services is at an all time low.
On that note, companies need to be careful taking industry wide trends and extrapolating from them with no nuance. That’s why I worded my first comment carefully. I am not anti-Digital at all, but I buy a console for collecting exclusives. I have hundreds of digital Steam games and some digital PS5 games. You know how many digital PS6 games I’ll have? Zero, because I won’t own one. Like backwards compatibility, the benefit of it can’t be quantified by how much time people use it vs. cost of development. Physical media is a draw, even if it is not always taken advantage of. I’m not boycotting, I’m genuinely no longer interested.
This is the kind of decision that looks great on a balance sheet when you have no competition. But when your hardcore audience stops buying, collectors that buy extra releases and collectors editions stop collecting, retailers stop pushing because they can only sell one low margin box, and your competitors see your weakness and double down on it, it might not turn out so great.
I can’t speak to market trends, but I can say this 100% makes my PS5 my last Sony console. I’ve bought every one, and the only reason I continue to buy them is so I can collect exclusives on disc for my collection.
A digital only console is just a bad, expensive gaming PC. I already have a good expensive gaming PC, so I’ll just buy games digitally there.
Without casting aspersions on RE5 & RE6, this isn’t all that surprising for two reasons:
They don’t really need remakes. We are entering the HD era of games here, and RE5 was not an early entrant of that era like some of the similar remakes we are seeing, like Dead Rising and Oblivion. They have been porting them to recent consoles, they have modern control schemes and are very accessible. You COULD remake them, but you wouldn’t be achieving much.
They don’t appeal to the audience that modern Resident Evil has been cultivating. They lean far too hard into action, and modern RE has been defined by incorporating both. They have nailed this almost every time, releasing a near flawless string of new entries and remakes that their entire audience can consume and enjoy.
I’m biased because they are my two least favourite entries by far, but even trying to set this aside this gels with what I’m seeing from Capcom. Especially with the announcement of CVX, a game that I would never have expected them to remake. If that does well and keeping this in mind, you should expect REmake 2, RE0 Remake and RE10 before getting your hopes up on 5 & 6.
I have to wonder why, exactly. My hunch is that this really only appeals to people who want a console-like experience but refuse to buy a console and are willing to pay a huge premium for worse performance to do so.
I don’t even think this is a bad idea, if you have an extensive Steam library then it might be the smart long term financial decision and it’s nice to have a set-it-and-forget-it option for gaming on your TV that can leverage that. I don’t think anyone who buys this will be unhappy with it.
I just think this is a very small market, and most other people have a gaming PC already, would prefer better performance or would save the premium price and just buy a console.
If this can get down to $1000CAD and they introduce a $2000-$2500CAD model when component pricing is sane again that has actual 4K60 performance then this has potential to upend the industry. As it stands I can’t recommend it to anyone.
This is a tough price point for any crowd. The spec of a PS5 at twice the price? Enthusiasts want better specs, and console gamers want a better price.
This is a swing & a miss. The initial order will sell out on speculation and because component prices are garbage so it will have a small run. I’m not so hopeful for future batches unless they can at least match the price of the PS5 Pro.
Except a PS5 Pro is $1100CAD and this is $1500CAD ($2000CAD if you match storage with the PS5 Pro, which is 2TB.) That is a huge jump. This is too underpowered for enthusiasts, and too expensive for console only gamers. Early indication is that it’s also underpowered vs a PS5 Pro, so I think it’s underpowered even for console gamers.
I know why they have the price pressure they do. But I can’t say I’m not wildly disappointed. This had the potential to end the console market entirely and now it’s looking like another also ran.
I was almost definitely going to buy this. At this price vs performance, I don’t think I’ll even put my name on the list. Much of this is out of Valve’s hands, but maybe they should have just scrapped it until pricing is better. This might be worse than nothing.
One thing I will say is I love the form factor. If was looking to build a living room PC this would be a serious contender because the design is great. But it’s just not enough to pay $1500 for a PC that matches the spec of my $800 PS5.
Bethesda ported Skyrim to 4 successive console generations across 15 years and made a VR version, all of which had very minor enhancements. In that time they made zero other Elder Scrolls games.
Nintendo made one enhanced port across 28 years, and is now making a remake. In that time they have made countless Zelda games.
I had Quake 3 Arena running on my N95, when the phone was still relevant, someone ported all 3 Quakes to it and they ran really well. I know people are glazing it in this thread but it was such a great example of why Nokia died.
It had a proper PowerVR GPU, same one as the iPhone. Should have been great… except the OS didn’t even use it. Most games neglected to as well. When they did use it, like with NGage or OVI titles they worked great, but the OS and apps felt as dated and laggy as ever thanks to S60.
Had great Bluetooth support, full A2DP when iPhones couldn’t even change volume over Bluetooth. But Bluetooth headphones had limited battery life, usually only 1-2 hours in that era. What happens when they die? Auto-pause? No, IMMEDIATELY play your music over the loudest speaker in the world in the middle of the subway.
Why put in such advanced hardware and not take advantage of it properly? Because the OS & Hardware teams didn’t talk to each other. Apparently hardware would dictate features, OS would code to support them and nobody was looking at the big picture.
I’m pretty sure it’s because they’re franchises and the franchisees can set their own prices.
Except for specific price points for advertised specials that they choose to participate in, no pricing is chain wide. So there isn’t really a good solution other than the one they implement.
I’m not a customer of the airport, the airline chose the supplier and arranged the service. I didn’t pay the airport anything, I don’t have a point of contact for them.
Hence my shipping metaphor. When looking for support for something, the first rule of thumb is contact the person YOU paid, and don’t play middleman for B2B contracts that you have no say in.
You go to the airline, they compensate you. The airline files the compensation claim with the airport and passes on the cost to their supplier, exactly how it would work if you ordered something online and UPS lost it.
In your example, although I wouldn’t be caught dead in the US right now I would blame my airline if local airport security couldn’t get me through in time assuming I arrived with adequate time as advised by the airline.
The APPR sets out the expectations for airlines when situations happen that are outside of their control, such as extreme weather, emergencies, or security, labour and airport issues.
When uncontrollable events unfold, Canadian airlines are required to rebook passengers, free of charge, on a replacement flight — on the original airline or another that holds a commercial agreement with that original airline — within 48 hours of the departure time on the original ticket.
I don’t have a contract with the airport. Easyjet does. Your car traffic metaphor is not accurate as those are entirely unrelated services. You could have walked, taken other roads, flown, taken a taxi, etc. to get to the airport on time. But there is no way to get to your flight without being processed at the airport.
This is the same logic as contacting UPS because your package is late. But you shouldn’t do that, call the person who sent you the package. Their contract is with them, and you are not their customer.
I’m not a customer of the airport, I’m a customer of the airline who uses the airport to fulfil part of their agreement. Their supplier failed, and thus the airline needs to provide compensation.
I don’t think the airline should be on the hook ultimately. They should have some kind of SLA with the airport that says if their passengers get to the airport within the allotted time they will process them or pay X as compensation, and they should activate that. But how is a customer going to go after an airport in a foreign country that they didn’t pay anything to? It makes no sense.
That’s a good point, but I guess it’s because I don’t see it having much to do with parenting at all. I don’t have kids, I don’t presume to know exactly how difficult it is except knowing that is far more difficult than people who say “just do this” say.
Kids are the most impressionable and susceptible to this influence to this but everyone is impacted, that’s my point. Starting by protecting them makes sense, but that’s why I lead off by saying I support a ban for everyone. It’s hyperbolic, but if it really was a binary choice between having social media as is or not having it at all I would choose not.
Parenting is being used as a scapegoat here. 30 year olds can and do fall into this trap just as easily and no parent is coming to save them.
I think the issues you describe are arguably part of the situation, but we saw a massive increase these right wing, bigoted attitudes almost overnight. That doesn’t just happen because boys and men are neglected. Men enjoy massive societal privilege and power, married with some expectations and pressure. Mostly put on them by other men who benefit from retaining that power structure or who are deathly terrified of change. It’s toxic masculinity in a nutshell.
The position you describe is frequently dismissed as misogyny because it is one many misogynists hold. Men have had to give up privilege and make space for women, are no longer the centre of the universe and all things must cater to them, and that’s why they are easily swayed to right wing talking heads who tell them actually, society has failed you because they think women and minorities are more important than you. We think you’re great as is, so you don’t have to shut up, give up anything or make space for others. We’ll put you back where you belong, right on top. I can’t sympathize with that. It’s just hateful selfishness, pure and simple.
Kids don’t find Rogan or Tate. It’s shoved in their face by social media companies because it’s engagement bait. Social media is the starting point. I can’t stop people from seeking these things out, there will always be a group. But deplatforming this content from social media will massively reduce the number of people that are exposed to it. Short of that, removing children from these spaces will do the same, at least for them.
I don’t think this is worse than doing nothing. I think we have seen where we’ve come in a couple years. This is so much worse than anyone could have imagined. If it helps, I would much prefer deplatforming of hateful content enforced by the social media companies with harsh penalties and strict regulation. Pushing these people to the corners of the internet does help, nobody gives a fuck what happens on Truth Social for example outside of Trump’s ramblings. I agree that Meta amongst other companies is trying to push toothless legislation that will only further their ability to track and sell each individual user’s data. I also agree the idea of “submit your ID to every social media company” is about the worst shit imaginable and not a solution. So I don’t think we fully disagree.
But I’m not willing to turn a blind eye to it, and I’m not waiting for idealistic solutions like “parent boys better” to magically solve everything.
Poor parenting is arguably some of the problem, but it’s not a realistic solution. The right loves solutions like “personal responsibility” because they are basically excuses to do nothing.
It’s your fault that tech bro oligarchs have hijacked your child’s brain with billions of dollars in research to create the most addictive thing possible, just like it’s your fault that your child is overweight when they are constantly exposed to food that is engineered from the ground up to manipulate the pleasure centres in their brain. Is it true? I mean, a little. Sure. But are there steps we can take as a society to make that job less than completely impossible and a constant battle? Yes.
I think it’s much easier to say to parents “just do this” than it is to do that when you have a real person in front of you pleading that your rules are way worse than their peers and will serve to alienate them from everyone they know.
Parental controls are not a solution, let’s get real. You can buy a SIM with data and a functional internet device for less than $50. Hell, you can get castoff devices for free. You can get free internet access anywhere. Parental controls are a tool that you can and should use to increase barriers, however they are not a panacea.
Regardless, the argument here still boils down to “wait for people to fix themselves and get mad when they don’t”. This is never a solution. We don’t say to people “just eat more iodine and you won’t get goiters”. We put iodine in shit that they eat and solve the problem.
I agree, this solution is painfully flawed. I don’t know what to do though, and I sincerely believe our fear of regulating online content has landed us in this current mess. I think the path we were on before Trump, deplatforming hateful content, was actually pretty good. You could see the temperature change as Nazis, misogynists and Trump himself were kicked off platform after platform and relegated to their own crappy little corners of the internet.
Then this shit came roaring back, Musk bought Twitter, Zuck went full facist and Trump came back into office and everything went to shit. In the space of a year, we now have the richest man in the world on one of the biggest social media platforms and the most followers amplifying literal Nazis, white supremacists and misogynists on the daily. You spend 10 minutes on YouTube watching gaming content and you will have videos from every right-wing influencer in your feed competing for your attention.
It’s so, so bad. Forget happiness stats, we’re letting the far-right brainwash a generation and make them actual Nazis under our nose and we’ve done fuck all about it. We will look back on this period as one of the biggest generational losses of control we’ve ever had and it will take decades to undo the damage, if we ever can.
I feel your concerns here, I really do. I have them all myself. I don’t want harm to come to marginalized groups as a result of tying online activity to a real world ID. But I’m not aware of anywhere to start that has any political support besides here, and I truly believe that letting this continue unchecked will be far worse for us in the long run.
I support a social media ban for people over 16 too. I notice the people criticizing this offer no solution except “parent better”. I’m surprised Lemmy has such a stupid and regressive take. I think if the story were about the results of this issue, such as a rise in misogyny or racism amongst youth people would rightly blame unregulated, corporate social media for landing us in the massive right-wing backslide we’re in right now.
Yet these threads are indistinguishable from the tech bro anarcho-capitalist solution to these problems of “fuck you, figure it out lol”. We’ve waited too long and the right wing has already poisoned Gen Z men and turned them into Joe Rogan loving, misogynistic, racist little monsters. The first generation in modern history to be more conservative than their parents.
I don’t love age verification either. It’s a deeply flawed solution to a massive, unchecked problem that is already unravelling decades of social progress. But I’m not hearing much in the way of alternative solutions. I would prefer massive regulation of all social media platforms, but that’s political poison and will never happen. So before you knee-jerk to “freedom and personal responsibility”, look at the world right now and acknowledge that we need to do better at a societal level. Then come with solutions, not just criticism.
I didn’t say it was a lie, I said I think it’s inflated the way I already explained. Also, the fact that they are lower than other publishers indicates they will see a bigger impact from this than others.
Physical media is making a resurgence in other areas. Vinyl, DVD, 4K BluRay. Not a big one, but it’s on a backswing. I’m not doubting video games are lower every year because they are still in their initial era.
We’ll just have to agree to disagree on the impact. I think the knock-on effect will be bigger than they anticipate. Obviously they agree with you that it won’t impact anything. I think it will, for all the reasons I just went over. It’s not a 1:1 relationship between sale and impact. When people don’t have the console because it doesn’t attract them, they can’t make any sales. So they won’t lose one sale from me, they’ll lose the console sale and dozens of physical and digital games.
This is exactly what Microsoft went through with cutting BC, trying to kill physical media, and trying to play their dominant hand and we all know how that worked out. Turns out it’s more than the sum of its parts. Sony might succeed, it’s a different era. But it certainly gives a lot of weak spots for competitors to target.
I do buy digital and have for decades, but primarily for PC. I don’t for console because that’s the last thing I wanted a console for. I have no intention of abandoning the hobby, but this is my last reason to buy a PlayStation. They offer nothing that isn’t done better on a gaming PC.
I saw the 85% stat they are pushing. I honestly don’t believe it. I strongly believe they are pumping that number up by counting PlayStation Plus redemptions and smaller games in that total. I would be much more interested to see what the actual Physical vs. Digital sales are for a single new release title on day one. I would guess the split is much closer to 70/30. That might be higher in markets where internet access is less robust. This will also piss off retailers and distributors, which now are expected to sell low-margin consoles without high margin games. They chose such a far off date in purpose, to see the feedback and test the waters. I doubt this will come to fruition. Physical media is seeing a resurgence as trust for these companies to maintain services is at an all time low.
On that note, companies need to be careful taking industry wide trends and extrapolating from them with no nuance. That’s why I worded my first comment carefully. I am not anti-Digital at all, but I buy a console for collecting exclusives. I have hundreds of digital Steam games and some digital PS5 games. You know how many digital PS6 games I’ll have? Zero, because I won’t own one. Like backwards compatibility, the benefit of it can’t be quantified by how much time people use it vs. cost of development. Physical media is a draw, even if it is not always taken advantage of. I’m not boycotting, I’m genuinely no longer interested.
This is the kind of decision that looks great on a balance sheet when you have no competition. But when your hardcore audience stops buying, collectors that buy extra releases and collectors editions stop collecting, retailers stop pushing because they can only sell one low margin box, and your competitors see your weakness and double down on it, it might not turn out so great.
I can’t speak to market trends, but I can say this 100% makes my PS5 my last Sony console. I’ve bought every one, and the only reason I continue to buy them is so I can collect exclusives on disc for my collection.
A digital only console is just a bad, expensive gaming PC. I already have a good expensive gaming PC, so I’ll just buy games digitally there.
Without casting aspersions on RE5 & RE6, this isn’t all that surprising for two reasons:
They don’t really need remakes. We are entering the HD era of games here, and RE5 was not an early entrant of that era like some of the similar remakes we are seeing, like Dead Rising and Oblivion. They have been porting them to recent consoles, they have modern control schemes and are very accessible. You COULD remake them, but you wouldn’t be achieving much.
They don’t appeal to the audience that modern Resident Evil has been cultivating. They lean far too hard into action, and modern RE has been defined by incorporating both. They have nailed this almost every time, releasing a near flawless string of new entries and remakes that their entire audience can consume and enjoy.
I’m biased because they are my two least favourite entries by far, but even trying to set this aside this gels with what I’m seeing from Capcom. Especially with the announcement of CVX, a game that I would never have expected them to remake. If that does well and keeping this in mind, you should expect REmake 2, RE0 Remake and RE10 before getting your hopes up on 5 & 6.
I have to wonder why, exactly. My hunch is that this really only appeals to people who want a console-like experience but refuse to buy a console and are willing to pay a huge premium for worse performance to do so.
I don’t even think this is a bad idea, if you have an extensive Steam library then it might be the smart long term financial decision and it’s nice to have a set-it-and-forget-it option for gaming on your TV that can leverage that. I don’t think anyone who buys this will be unhappy with it.
I just think this is a very small market, and most other people have a gaming PC already, would prefer better performance or would save the premium price and just buy a console.
If this can get down to $1000CAD and they introduce a $2000-$2500CAD model when component pricing is sane again that has actual 4K60 performance then this has potential to upend the industry. As it stands I can’t recommend it to anyone.
This is a tough price point for any crowd. The spec of a PS5 at twice the price? Enthusiasts want better specs, and console gamers want a better price.
This is a swing & a miss. The initial order will sell out on speculation and because component prices are garbage so it will have a small run. I’m not so hopeful for future batches unless they can at least match the price of the PS5 Pro.
Except a PS5 Pro is $1100CAD and this is $1500CAD ($2000CAD if you match storage with the PS5 Pro, which is 2TB.) That is a huge jump. This is too underpowered for enthusiasts, and too expensive for console only gamers. Early indication is that it’s also underpowered vs a PS5 Pro, so I think it’s underpowered even for console gamers.
I know why they have the price pressure they do. But I can’t say I’m not wildly disappointed. This had the potential to end the console market entirely and now it’s looking like another also ran.
I was almost definitely going to buy this. At this price vs performance, I don’t think I’ll even put my name on the list. Much of this is out of Valve’s hands, but maybe they should have just scrapped it until pricing is better. This might be worse than nothing.
One thing I will say is I love the form factor. If was looking to build a living room PC this would be a serious contender because the design is great. But it’s just not enough to pay $1500 for a PC that matches the spec of my $800 PS5.
Bethesda ported Skyrim to 4 successive console generations across 15 years and made a VR version, all of which had very minor enhancements. In that time they made zero other Elder Scrolls games.
Nintendo made one enhanced port across 28 years, and is now making a remake. In that time they have made countless Zelda games.
This is not even remotely the same situation.
I had Quake 3 Arena running on my N95, when the phone was still relevant, someone ported all 3 Quakes to it and they ran really well. I know people are glazing it in this thread but it was such a great example of why Nokia died.
It had a proper PowerVR GPU, same one as the iPhone. Should have been great… except the OS didn’t even use it. Most games neglected to as well. When they did use it, like with NGage or OVI titles they worked great, but the OS and apps felt as dated and laggy as ever thanks to S60.
Had great Bluetooth support, full A2DP when iPhones couldn’t even change volume over Bluetooth. But Bluetooth headphones had limited battery life, usually only 1-2 hours in that era. What happens when they die? Auto-pause? No, IMMEDIATELY play your music over the loudest speaker in the world in the middle of the subway.
Why put in such advanced hardware and not take advantage of it properly? Because the OS & Hardware teams didn’t talk to each other. Apparently hardware would dictate features, OS would code to support them and nobody was looking at the big picture.
I’m pretty sure it’s because they’re franchises and the franchisees can set their own prices.
Except for specific price points for advertised specials that they choose to participate in, no pricing is chain wide. So there isn’t really a good solution other than the one they implement.
I’m not a customer of the airport, the airline chose the supplier and arranged the service. I didn’t pay the airport anything, I don’t have a point of contact for them.
Hence my shipping metaphor. When looking for support for something, the first rule of thumb is contact the person YOU paid, and don’t play middleman for B2B contracts that you have no say in.
You go to the airline, they compensate you. The airline files the compensation claim with the airport and passes on the cost to their supplier, exactly how it would work if you ordered something online and UPS lost it.
In your example, although I wouldn’t be caught dead in the US right now I would blame my airline if local airport security couldn’t get me through in time assuming I arrived with adequate time as advised by the airline.
Canada consumer protection seems to agree: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/march-break-travel-passenger-rights-9.7115327
I don’t have a contract with the airport. Easyjet does. Your car traffic metaphor is not accurate as those are entirely unrelated services. You could have walked, taken other roads, flown, taken a taxi, etc. to get to the airport on time. But there is no way to get to your flight without being processed at the airport.
This is the same logic as contacting UPS because your package is late. But you shouldn’t do that, call the person who sent you the package. Their contract is with them, and you are not their customer.
I’m not a customer of the airport, I’m a customer of the airline who uses the airport to fulfil part of their agreement. Their supplier failed, and thus the airline needs to provide compensation.
I don’t think the airline should be on the hook ultimately. They should have some kind of SLA with the airport that says if their passengers get to the airport within the allotted time they will process them or pay X as compensation, and they should activate that. But how is a customer going to go after an airport in a foreign country that they didn’t pay anything to? It makes no sense.
That’s a good point, but I guess it’s because I don’t see it having much to do with parenting at all. I don’t have kids, I don’t presume to know exactly how difficult it is except knowing that is far more difficult than people who say “just do this” say.
Kids are the most impressionable and susceptible to this influence to this but everyone is impacted, that’s my point. Starting by protecting them makes sense, but that’s why I lead off by saying I support a ban for everyone. It’s hyperbolic, but if it really was a binary choice between having social media as is or not having it at all I would choose not.
Parenting is being used as a scapegoat here. 30 year olds can and do fall into this trap just as easily and no parent is coming to save them.
I think the issues you describe are arguably part of the situation, but we saw a massive increase these right wing, bigoted attitudes almost overnight. That doesn’t just happen because boys and men are neglected. Men enjoy massive societal privilege and power, married with some expectations and pressure. Mostly put on them by other men who benefit from retaining that power structure or who are deathly terrified of change. It’s toxic masculinity in a nutshell.
The position you describe is frequently dismissed as misogyny because it is one many misogynists hold. Men have had to give up privilege and make space for women, are no longer the centre of the universe and all things must cater to them, and that’s why they are easily swayed to right wing talking heads who tell them actually, society has failed you because they think women and minorities are more important than you. We think you’re great as is, so you don’t have to shut up, give up anything or make space for others. We’ll put you back where you belong, right on top. I can’t sympathize with that. It’s just hateful selfishness, pure and simple.
Kids don’t find Rogan or Tate. It’s shoved in their face by social media companies because it’s engagement bait. Social media is the starting point. I can’t stop people from seeking these things out, there will always be a group. But deplatforming this content from social media will massively reduce the number of people that are exposed to it. Short of that, removing children from these spaces will do the same, at least for them.
I don’t think this is worse than doing nothing. I think we have seen where we’ve come in a couple years. This is so much worse than anyone could have imagined. If it helps, I would much prefer deplatforming of hateful content enforced by the social media companies with harsh penalties and strict regulation. Pushing these people to the corners of the internet does help, nobody gives a fuck what happens on Truth Social for example outside of Trump’s ramblings. I agree that Meta amongst other companies is trying to push toothless legislation that will only further their ability to track and sell each individual user’s data. I also agree the idea of “submit your ID to every social media company” is about the worst shit imaginable and not a solution. So I don’t think we fully disagree.
But I’m not willing to turn a blind eye to it, and I’m not waiting for idealistic solutions like “parent boys better” to magically solve everything.
Poor parenting is arguably some of the problem, but it’s not a realistic solution. The right loves solutions like “personal responsibility” because they are basically excuses to do nothing.
It’s your fault that tech bro oligarchs have hijacked your child’s brain with billions of dollars in research to create the most addictive thing possible, just like it’s your fault that your child is overweight when they are constantly exposed to food that is engineered from the ground up to manipulate the pleasure centres in their brain. Is it true? I mean, a little. Sure. But are there steps we can take as a society to make that job less than completely impossible and a constant battle? Yes.
I think it’s much easier to say to parents “just do this” than it is to do that when you have a real person in front of you pleading that your rules are way worse than their peers and will serve to alienate them from everyone they know.
Parental controls are not a solution, let’s get real. You can buy a SIM with data and a functional internet device for less than $50. Hell, you can get castoff devices for free. You can get free internet access anywhere. Parental controls are a tool that you can and should use to increase barriers, however they are not a panacea.
Regardless, the argument here still boils down to “wait for people to fix themselves and get mad when they don’t”. This is never a solution. We don’t say to people “just eat more iodine and you won’t get goiters”. We put iodine in shit that they eat and solve the problem.
I agree, this solution is painfully flawed. I don’t know what to do though, and I sincerely believe our fear of regulating online content has landed us in this current mess. I think the path we were on before Trump, deplatforming hateful content, was actually pretty good. You could see the temperature change as Nazis, misogynists and Trump himself were kicked off platform after platform and relegated to their own crappy little corners of the internet.
Then this shit came roaring back, Musk bought Twitter, Zuck went full facist and Trump came back into office and everything went to shit. In the space of a year, we now have the richest man in the world on one of the biggest social media platforms and the most followers amplifying literal Nazis, white supremacists and misogynists on the daily. You spend 10 minutes on YouTube watching gaming content and you will have videos from every right-wing influencer in your feed competing for your attention.
It’s so, so bad. Forget happiness stats, we’re letting the far-right brainwash a generation and make them actual Nazis under our nose and we’ve done fuck all about it. We will look back on this period as one of the biggest generational losses of control we’ve ever had and it will take decades to undo the damage, if we ever can.
I feel your concerns here, I really do. I have them all myself. I don’t want harm to come to marginalized groups as a result of tying online activity to a real world ID. But I’m not aware of anywhere to start that has any political support besides here, and I truly believe that letting this continue unchecked will be far worse for us in the long run.
I support a social media ban for people over 16 too. I notice the people criticizing this offer no solution except “parent better”. I’m surprised Lemmy has such a stupid and regressive take. I think if the story were about the results of this issue, such as a rise in misogyny or racism amongst youth people would rightly blame unregulated, corporate social media for landing us in the massive right-wing backslide we’re in right now.
Yet these threads are indistinguishable from the tech bro anarcho-capitalist solution to these problems of “fuck you, figure it out lol”. We’ve waited too long and the right wing has already poisoned Gen Z men and turned them into Joe Rogan loving, misogynistic, racist little monsters. The first generation in modern history to be more conservative than their parents.
I don’t love age verification either. It’s a deeply flawed solution to a massive, unchecked problem that is already unravelling decades of social progress. But I’m not hearing much in the way of alternative solutions. I would prefer massive regulation of all social media platforms, but that’s political poison and will never happen. So before you knee-jerk to “freedom and personal responsibility”, look at the world right now and acknowledge that we need to do better at a societal level. Then come with solutions, not just criticism.
I still use the machine that ruined my life and drove me crazy, but only because I’m too lazy to type “lasagna recipe” in to Google.