Theoretically altruistic journalism

The latest episode of the “You’re Wrong About” podcast focuses on phones, and makes the argument that phones are generally a good thing for people to have — even teens.

Included in the show was a discussion on the potential ban of TikTok, where they shared:

And it’s not about improving these systems or improving the world and improving the things that young people, when you actually pull young people and you say, what are you concerned about? And they bring up things like climate change, gun control, covid, you know, Palestine, Israel, like foreign wars that we’re spending billions of dollars on that. Those are the things that they’re bringing up. They’re not like, actually yeah, if you could just block TikTok, that would be great. No young people are against all of this. This is a movement driven by boomers.

The challenge they raise is that when articles come up that want to make things “better” (like banning TikTok), even if they’re wrong it can feel good to share them because you think you’re doing something good. The episode talks a lot about “moral panics” from the past; things that sound scary but are completely untrue, like making sure your Halloween candy doesn’t have razors in it, or worries about kids eating Tide Pods. It feels good to help, but it’s completely worthless.

Or, as host Sarah Marshall says, it’s “theoretically altruistic journalism”.

We see it from our friends on social media, too, and it’s a big source of scams. A popular…