Just because we can’t eliminate all harms doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try to minimize them.

Online radicalization is a documented issue. Engagement optimizing algorithms pushing extreme and polarizing content is also well documented. Even the excess screen time on algorithmic feeds is well documented as harmful in young populations even if the radical content issues are ignored.

So while we did have shootings before, we did not have incels, groypers, ISIS sleepers and other weird people encouraging and glorifying them. If we can stop one at the cost of eliminating endless scrolling on Facebook, I think it’s a fair trade.

Meta claims itself to be beneficial because of all the ads it sells in support of small businesses. We had ads and small businesses before the internet, too. The question that both Meta and anyone opposed to infinite scroll has to answer is: did this change anything?

Well, one thing that definitely changed everywhere in a way well-correlated with local access to smartphones, is reduced fertility, so something definitely happened, but was that something infinite scroll, or something else?