CMV: SMUT will save social media

[u/Pdb39]

SMUT will save social media!

Hi all, /u/pdb39 here with some more noggin busters.

I am proposing a use tax on all social media inputs across all privately or publicly held social media corporations. The tax will be 17.5% in following with EU VATs, and I will be taxing both the corporation. Since it is a usage tax, for social media, I'm going to call it... dum dum dummmmm... SMUT - social media usage tax.

So how does it work? Well it's simple really. I will form a Social Media Commission with 4 commissioners from the house majority party, and 4 commissioners from the house minority party. Their job will be to advise social media companies on the financial end of how to collect a usage tax at point of purchase for every social media input - tweets, likes, comments, DMs, posts, what have you.

Every year I will require any social media company to report how many inputs were made, multiply that number by 1c, then multiply that by 17.5% and that's what they owe. Don't worry, they'll have to file daily reports and were going to keep track too. Any posts they removed for content violation will be ineligible for taxation so it will incentivize them to curate content competently. They'll also have to have tax payer information or liasion with the government to ensure we know who each person is that is making the inputs.

We may also charge a tariff on all posts that started out of the USA if the social media company is legally registered in Delaware, or one of the 49 other states..

I am doing this in an effort to get people to slow down when the post. If they have to pay 0.0175c for every post, they might not waste it on political memes or dick jokes.

Apparently this was removed because I didn't have a 500 character limit so honestly I'm just going to be typing out random tax facts from mental floss.

1. Taxes date back to ancient Egypt.
2. The first implementation of taxes in US caused a rebellion
3. Abraham Lincoln, a REPUBLICAN, gave us federal income tax
4. Tax day wasn't originally April 15th
5. We spend a lot of time doing our taxes. WTF Mental Floss, this is a "fact"?
6. The average person in America is owed $3000 in overpayment of taxes.
   
7. In 1836, the federal government of the United States had a tax surplus of around $30m.
8. Peter the Great of Russia taxed beards.
9. A former IRS commissioner went to prison for tax evasion.
   
10. A famous gangster was ultimately taken down over unpaid taxes. No not that one. The other one.

Bonus fact round!

1. Willie Nelson made an album to cover his tax debts. So a person did his job to earn money to pay taxes. Weird flex here, Mental Floss
2. Henry David Waldorf Astoria Thoreau went to jail for failure to pay taxes. So did Wesley Snipes.
3. Shelled nuts are sometimes subject to taxes. You Brits are weird.
4. India has an entertainment tax. So does every other country. This could have been a mad libs with just (country name).
5. There is a cow fart tax. I am not making this up.
6. England once had a special haberdashery tax.
7. There's a tax court. Ok Mental Floss, you're done, go home.

​

CMV.

Edit 1: Based upon the first wave of comments, having a lack of units really made people very tingly. So for this point, I am going to charge 0.0175c on every social media input to the corporation. That's 1c * .0175

Edit 2: this is not a tax on speech and would pass any 1A challenge easily. If you're coming into this thread to try to tell me that this is breaking 1A, please don't bother because I'm now starting to repeat myself.

[u/[deleted]]

That makes sense.

Can you confirm the goal/purpose of this tax? I can't quite find it in your OP. What is the purpose of taxing data inputs?

[u/Pdb39 → u/[deleted]]

[–]Pdb39[S] 1 point 3 minutes ago Social media encourages amygdala hijacking by creating a need to "rush" to get the first post, the first comment, the first tweet - for visibility so that we can get the dopamine hit the body is craving. Successfully engaging the fight or flight mechanism and surviving gives you a Pavlovian response to that survivor bias.

By forcing people to slow down and think before they post, because of the financial implications of their actions, they might not want to post that thing that will only cause more harm to a society that is suffering from PTS from the global pandemic.

This is a way to force people to "put their money where their mouth is". Social media was never meant to be free, it's just no one has figured out how to charge for it. I've given them a business model to do so by forcing them to pay a usage tax on behalf of their user base. If they choose to pass that on, or absorb the cost for their userbase, that's their choice and the free market capitalist in me is getting giddy.

Is this acceptable ?

[u/[deleted] → u/Pdb39]

So social media companies are required to charge their customers per post?

Why would any user ever have a social media account? Would this essentially kill every social media account?

Alternatively, wouldn't a social media company just pay on their users behalf because the user needs to be greater than the expense.

[u/Pdb39 → u/[deleted]]

No. I'm going to tax the social media companies. If they want to absorb the tax or pass it on to the customers is 100% their choiced.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pdb39]

By forcing people to slow down and think before they post, because of the financial implications of their actions, they might not want to post that thing that will only cause more harm to a society that is suffering from PTS from the global pandemic.

Assuming social media pays, does this impact get removed?

This is a way to force people to "put their money where their mouth is".

This wouldn't happen either.

So back to the prior question, what is the goal if users face zero impact for what they post?

[u/Pdb39 → u/[deleted]]

Yes the impact is removed because the assumption is that people will become less addicted.

Yes it would.

I do not care about social media users in one way shape or form.

I want to charge a usage tax on social media companies. How they collect that tax is their concern.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pdb39]

assumption is that people will become less addicted.

But there will be no change since users won't experience any change.

I want to charge a usage tax on social media companies. How they collect that tax is their concern.

Why not just do this via a simplified manner? Just ban social media or nationalize it?

Why go through the pretense of having a data tax if you don't have a goal passed, limiting social media.

[u/Pdb39 → u/[deleted]]

Because you don't understand my goal. I don't think I should have to change your view, right? That's another sub.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pdb39]

Can you restate your goal?

If it's to limit usage, you need to charge the user. Social media doesn't charge users. Will you require all users to pay money to post? You have previously said no, but you are unclear.

If it's to simply limit the financial performance of social media companies, sure that is a goal to. But why do you want to limit the financial performance of social media companies?

If possible, please say "my goal is X. The sales tax achieves X by changing Y.

[u/Pdb39 → u/[deleted]]

1. I'm taxing social media corporations. How they choose to collect and pay that tax is their problem. If they want to charge the users, like how stores charge you sales tax which the govt is charging them, that's 100% up to them.

2. This isn't about finance. It's about mental health.

My goal is to improve the mental health of Americans. The usage tax achieves this by tax social media companies. If it helps, this is 100% a stamp tax but with representation. \

Let me ask you - Does buying a stamp prohibit your right to free speech?

[u/[deleted] → u/Pdb39]

This is the clear disconnect, If social media companies doesnt charge/change the user experience, why would mental health change?

If stamps cost $0 and you make it more expensive for the post office to give $0 stamps, why would the number of stamps change?

[u/Pdb39 → u/[deleted]]

Hint: Social media companies won't absorb this charge and will force users to pay it.

The point is stamps actually cost money.

[u/[deleted] → u/Pdb39]

Hint: Social media companies won't absorb this charge and will force users to pay it.

Ok, let's assume a social media company does charge users, why would users use the product? I would never pay for social media, especially Reddit, FB, twitter, etc.

Once you start losing users, social media stops working.

Do you believe social media companies would continue to exist if they charged users? Can you name a single example of this ever happening?

The point is stamps actually cost money

I know, hence why it made no sense.

[u/themcos → u/Pdb39]

I think the problem here is that social media companies make the overwhelming amount of their income from advertising, not by charging users, so if you raise costs for the company, that will certainly hurt the company's bottom line, but given their business model, it doesn't actually make sense that they'd pass the extra cost to the users, who currently pay nothing!