The Coddling of the Boomer Parental Guilt-Complex

I’m simply gobsmacked that an author who is popularly known as one of the lead critics of safetyism and the risks inherent in figuratively wrapping one’s children in cotton wool to protect them for the world, should now whirl in-place and start demanding bans and blocks to stop kids talking to one another — finding community, finding agency, and possibly finding themselves — because somehow in the past 5 to 15 years he reckons that everything has changed?

It’s not even science, it’s speculation to the point of admission, and (worse) it’s going to be infecting other talking heads who will “preach the controversy”; there are others who are brave enough to fight to hold back this spillage of gut feels but, really, we don’t need this pseudoscience, not ever, but especially in a US election year.

So why do this? We don’t need detailed studies and evidence of pros and cons, obviously, so it’s clear from correlation that all this coverage is:

…and in this case it’s the generation who just launched their kids and are looking to make reparations by making the same mistakes their parents did, differently.

https://alecmuffett.com/article/109529

#coddling #jonathanHaidt #safetyism

“But we do forget that most people are good. By letting the narrative only ever reflect the presence of abusive actors, we enable people who want to pervert social media to their own political control.”

Over on Threads, George Scriban was writing about how features — in this case, search — may be misused by bad people towards bad ends:

t’s absolutely understandable for people to want to see real-time search results in certain situations, such as for live events (anything from news, to entertainment, to sports). What Meta has to consider with that feature (as they do with every feature) is how the worst people in the world could abuse that capability.

https://www.threads.net/@georgescriban/post/C0Uv9oMPKWL

Ever the optimist, I responded in kind:

Excellent threat, George, but a request:

…[you note the importance of considering:]

“how the worst people in the world could abuse that capability”

…[but I would add:]

“…and weigh that against the benefits of providing it to all of the good people”

I have lived in Infosec since ~1988 and did a rotation through FB Sec Infra in ’13-16 with 2x product launches. It’s important to not let safety doomerism be the only concern, but we so often let it drive the narrative.

As you say: it is possible to [build a feature] in a stupid way, but [stupidity] is not necessarily given characteristic of the broadly described feature. [Addressing risk] could [for instance] be a simple matter of downranking bad content.

But we do forget that most people are good. By letting the narrative only ever reflect the presence of abusive actors, we enable people who want to pervert social media to their own political control.

In short: by far, most people are good. Possibly a bit naive, but good.

https://www.threads.net/@alecmuffett/post/C0Vw1uyNPnG

I was delighted that George agreed.

#safety #safetyism #softwareEngineering

https://alecmuffett.com/article/108544