lizkm

Pretty arrogant of you to assume that liberals aren't arming themselves to protect against people that have been threatening violence and advocating for coups to overturn democratic results.

As if China does not resemble a mass-surveillance state dystopia already? I'm not sure "improving living conditions" in a country where The Party dictates every aspect of life is something to aspire to.

>One has to wonder why they are so focused on [Combating far right extremism and misinformation] when it's clearly designed to benefit the overall establishment system status-quo

Far right extremism is a threat to the status quo of open and tolerant liberal democracy, yes, you are correct.

Cigarettes aren't highly regulated because they are addictive, they are regulated because they literally rot and kill your internal organs.

"Some people feel bad about their bodies after viewing social media" doesn't nearly meet the threshold of measurable harm that tobacco does. And algorithmic promotion can be positive, unlike the universally health-corrosive effects of cigarettes.

Expecting draconian regulations on social media to work is a recipe for failure. How many billions wasted on the war on drugs? People are always going to want to view extremist content, see beautiful people that cause body image issues, etc.

If people didn't want to see it, they wouldn't click on it. Banning it or regulating it is not going to change that, it's just going to cause it to shift elsewhere. It's human nature.

Pornography does not cause you to go into spasms and die though. You being unable to control yourself does not justify undue restrictions on other people. The internet should not be ceded to nanny staters and morality police.

> What about tracking students in high-school precludes your being able to attend university at the age of 28?

Because the "dumb" students are pushed into trades instead. And good luck going back to university when you don't have a long chain of prerequisite courses from age 14 onwards. In the states you can just get a GED and take the SAT (along with individual selection) to prove you belong in university.

Assigning a person a career based on a test they take at 14 seems awfully reductive and like it would segregate students based on the social standing of their parents. Wouldn't surprise me if the German system reduces social mobility.

Should students have their entire lives mapped out for them at 14? And if so, why at 14? Why not at 10, or 6, or at birth?

>In the US this has become increasingly frowned upon by (perhaps) well-meaning administrators who feel that to do this is unconscionable.

Because it is unconscionable. I dropped out of high-school at 16. I was able to go back and earn a degree in computer science at the age of 28 at a Canadian school. Under the European system where your life path and career trajectory is decided for you at 14 years old, I wouldn't have been able to do this.