It did for me. You have to be truly heartless to see a dog being sad about not going outside. So you take it for a walk, then another and another. Soon enough you're researching hiking trails in your region and getting healthier.
agreed, with an addendum : we have rescue cats too, and they too are like "nope, off the computer, time to play".
And perhaps because we have both, they all will play games together (and with us humans): the cats are like dogs who can do gymnastics.
the cats will walk outside on leashes but look annoyed and embarrassed. however our feral ancestry dog is like having Richard Simmons on meth...and makes me amused at people who are like "a border collie is a handful". i'm like tell it to her paw.
> If people demand evil, they will make evil, if people demand good, they will make good.
This is so naive.
People do not ask corporations to be evil and they certainly don't demand it. People ask for good value and convenience and corporations respond by doing by amorally pursuing that.
However, when you ask consumers if they want value and convenience at the cost of *evil*, they almost always say no.
Corporations have a demonstrated and well-documented history of actively hiding their evil actions because they know consumers are not aligned with them at all.
If consumers "demand" evil, as you say, then corporations wouldn't try to hide it.
Even when eggs are clearly labeled "caged" and "free range", many people will buy the "caged" eggs despite the clear implications in terms of animal welfare.
Also, while I consider organic food to be mostly (but not completely) a scam, most people don't buy organic. Which can be interpreted as "if it is cheaper with pesticides than without, I will go for pesticides".
In cars, emission control devices have to me made mandatory and almost no one would pay for them. And even with that, people sometimes break the law to remove them (ex: catalytic converter). It is common for all environmental laws.
Of course, if you talk to people face to face, most will tell you that they don't want value and convenience at the cost of evil, but in private, if can turn a blind eye, they will.
And most of these company evil practices are often not very well hidden. Sometimes, they are genuinely criminal, highly secret operations, but they are often not, as criminal lawsuits are costly, and secrets like that don't last long in big companies. But if it is legal and it brings value convenience to people, people usually don't want to look too much, even when some NGOs try to bring awareness.
I think "caged" is not "evil" in a lot of people's minds. This is NOT society saying "we will look the other way", it's society saying, "that's not evil"
Also, organic doesn't mean, "without pesticides" it means a lot MORE than that. For example, I have no problem buying genetically modified produce. If there was an option for "pesticide free, but not organic because of GMO" I would probably buy that.
Anyways, my point really being, you can't extrapolate that people are looking the other way because of price. All your examples are more of examples of society not being morally aligned to what you are considering evil.
> Even when eggs are clearly labeled "caged" and "free range", many people will buy the "caged" eggs despite the clear implications in terms of animal welfare.
Are many egg cartons actually labeled as "caged" around you? Where I am its either advertised as cage-free or its unlabeled. Its not like the options are "tiny torture chambers": $2.99, "unclean hellscape": $3.99, "rainbows and sunshine": $4.99. Its also hard to tell what these things mean, because "cage-free" can still be a pretty terrible existence for the birds as well.
But I do agree though, if there's a seemingly similar product with a much cheaper price tag a ton of people (myself included) will often reach for the cheaper product.
It's quite dystopian. Seeing people in your family, and friends, just mindlessly consume that shit, for hours upon hours - and many of them are completely oblivious to the fact that these reels and shorts are engineered to keep them engaged.
Using ML/Data to keep people hooked on content - I'd be embarrassed to be an engineer at any of these companies actively destroying our society.
TV had the same effect before the internet. It just had to use less effective Nielsen instead of AI/ML. People make this complaint about all new media when it appears, including books even (well, that kids and adults would spend their time reading trashy novels rather than study the Bible), and later serial articles (which were designed to keep readers hooked with literary cliff hangers so they would buy the next issue).
HN literally has an algorithmic feed and the karma system is the most addictive system used on forums. It's why Reddit is so addictive.
Either HN is part of the evil social media club or the rule for what separates the good ones from the bad ones needs updated. HN and TikTok are different and I think being able to articulate what actually makes them meaningfully different is the first step toward useful legislation.
Social media is the smoking of our age, and it will come to be seen the same way we see smoking now.
Just like the tobacco companies, social media companies have known about the ills of their platforms for a long time and actively hidden it and/or publicly downplayed it.
No: It's more like leaded gasoline. People of the future will be like, "why would you let a big corporation control the feed algorithm?" Social media is fine. It's the algorithm that seeks addiction/engagement that's the problem. Not social media in general.
"Social media" is far too ambiguous anyway. For example, under most definitions, Steam is a social media platform. Yet no one is addicted to sharing things via Steam. But you can! You absolutely can share and browse people's posts, screenshots, videos, and even chat (text and voice)!
The reason why no one complains about Steam's social media features is that they're not designed to be addicting. That's not the point of the platform (it's to sell more games).
> equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return
This seems incredibly shortsighted.
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