Casey Newton

Do you think it would look a lot like the Instagram that we have today?

Or do you think it would look a lot different?

I bet it'd be the latter, right?

I bet it would look really, really different.

And I think that there is a world where, we don't live in this world, but I think that there's another world where the executives at Instagram did do that and said, you know what?

We're actually gonna put out that version of Instagram for teens.

And look, it's mostly educational content.

It's actually not personalized to your teen at all.

We've disabled all the communication features.

You can only use it during daylight hours.

You can imagine a million things that would probably just make this a safe product.

So on some level, yes, it's tricky to figure out, oh, what would the right version of Instagram be that would not get Meta into trouble?

On the other hand, I think you actually could kind of sketch it out.

So my curiosity is to what extent are they going to try to go down that road?

Because I'm sure they're going to be desperate not to be sued by every teenager in America.

And to what extent are they just going to, you know, I don't know, try something shady and underhanded that I haven't thought of yet.

No.

I mean, my sort of nihilistic view on this is ultimately what solves the meta problem is that they just get out-competed by another company that maybe is better in certain dimensions.

But yeah, I don't think the change is going to come from within from these guys because all they care about is just winning.

And for them, winning looks like maximum time engaged.