Dr. Keith Ablow, the bald butch daddy psychiatrist FOX contributor often called in an The O’Reilly Factor to dispense advice about personal responsibility has one area where he thinks you can’t be allowed to take care of yourself – FaceBook. He’s calling for FaceBook to have mandatory labeling to warn users that it can be addictive.
Since anything can be addictive, it’s difficult to view conservatives fads and fears about how something “new” is dangerous (birth control, rock music, social media) as anything other than an expression of their own psychological obsessions. And it’s easy to see how the governmental nose they propose to stick under the tent will be abused (limiting and controlling social media, from blogs to twitter, is something governments from Tehran to Cairo to DC would love to be able to do). Ablow’s argument is shaky, with premises like an assumption that when people use FaceBook to build lists and networks (e.g. of tea party or antiwar activists, potential customers, alumni, neighbors, etc.) they actually think these are “friends.”
But that aside, its not even original. Ablow is just regurgitating a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode from over two decades ago.
The Insomniac Libertarian 