What’s interesting is that this is far more an example of a social, rather than political, failing of our society. We can all agree that social media is harmful to everyone in many contexts, but can also provide a certain benefit in the sharing of knowledge, information, and ideas. How many of us had something of a queer awakening after being exposed it on social media? I sure as heck fall into that boat.
I once heard it equated to drinking, your taught from your parents what a responsible (or not) way of in taking alcohol is. Same with driving, same with work. In all these things were there is a fine balance of harm and benefit, we are taught be the older generation. But what if there is no older generation to teach us? Well, as is the case with certain indigenous communities in Alaska where no alcohol existed, you find yourself with no one being responsible. For the regulators, the obvious solution is an outright ban. But banning subsistence that are “bad” for you if addictive, never works. Prohibition, and the war on drugs are key examples of that.
We see this and scoff, because we are the ones who, though trial and error, found something approaching that balance. We see the harm is not in the social platforms themselves, but rather in the algorithmic monetization creating great psychological harm for everyone. We see that anyone using the internet is (more or less) a pseudonymous peer, and attempting to classify groups by geography and/or age is quite foolish. We also see the abuse and harm that attempting to do so would cause. Unfortunately, but rather predictably, the politicians are corrupt ass hats in the pocket of big-tech and invariably, make exceedingly stupid laws greatly to the detriment of the people. It is, therefore, of my opinion that the only reasonable solution is to get rid of them in their entirety Ⓐ.
The largest “public” scientific institutions in the United States are the national labs. Most famously, Los Alamos, but also INL, Sandia, Oak Ridge, Fermilab, NREL, NTL and some others I am forgetting. From my experience, their mission tends to be less aligned with “doing science to benefit people,” and more aligned with, “doing science that’s too expensive or risky for businesses to do themselves.” Or, “doing science for ‘national security.’” You see very much the same thing at NASA, where they consult and do science on technologies expressly to benefit the business.
In comparison, the largest scientific institution in Europe is CERN, and is rather equivalent to the US’s national labs. Though I have no direct experience with CERN, from what I have seen from their experiments and practices, they tend to do science more for the sake of science compared with the American labs.
Granted, this is a vast oversimplification of the topic, but the point still stands, “the US government is aligned with companies that exploit science for profit.”