This is a discussion between Mike Masnick of Techdirt and Professor Andy Przybylski from the University of Oxford about research Przybylski has done about the effects of social media on children, mental health and video games and the effects of Facebook on well-being.

https://soundcloud.com/techdirt/social-media-mental-health

In short, he didn't find a lot of evidence supporting the claims that social media and video games had a negative impact on people's well-being.

It is a good conversation to listen to and consider in the light of the increased scrutiny that the tech industry is under. The tech industry has escaped scrutiny for too long but there are times when bad regulation is worse than no regulation. There is a danger of the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction.

I want to see better regulations drafted when considering the best available evidence. A major problem is that the data required to perform this research is locked within servers owned by the companies who aren't really incentivised to allow academics to use it, especially if they feel it could impact them negatively. There is need of a transparent process to give researchers the access they need while also protecting the sensitive data that the companies should be protecting.

I briefly introduced Mike Masnick and Techdirt in a previous post. I was thinking about writing a longer article about him but then Kashmir Hill did a better job than I could in this profile in the New York Times.

An Internet Veteran’s Guide to Not Being Scared of Technology

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Cory Doctorow. I do like Mike Masnick and the work he does on Techdirt. I don't always agree with them but they can make compelling arguments. I appreciate hearing an alternative viewpoint that is smart rather than just contrarian for the sake of it.

Cory appeared on the Techdirt podcast this week to talk about his most recent book "Red Team Blues". A lot of the conversation covers ground that has been dealt with in other interviews.

What stuck out from this conversation comes towards the end of the episode. Doctorow talks about the using the infrastructure that unions and organised labour had built in the preceding decades to participate in protests. He speaks of his experience as those structures were degraded and eventually dismantled.

Once those structures are gone then everything gets so much harder. There isn't a solid foundation to build on. It takes time to build something solid. Digital tools have helped to regain some of the ground lost over the past 40 years.

Mike Masnick has an undergraduate degree labour relations. He suggests that the internal corruption of the unions meant that they needed to be burnt to the ground before they could be rebuilt.

I'd agree with Doctorow's retort the the labour movement should be improved instead of jettisoned.

Once that ground has been taken or that institution destroyed, it is so difficult to get back to where you once were. The opportunity cost can be extremely high.