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Comment by appleflaxen | Hacker News Reader

Your complaints are totally valid until you get to this part

> There needs to be regulations which prohibit apps from generating content which incites such stupidity. Sure, freedom of speech is precious but when kids interact with one another under the impression that there is limited oversight, they do dumb things. We've all been kids and we can at least attest to that.

The appropriate entity to police children's behavior is the parent. Some parents do a crappy job, but the state tends to do it even worse.

Some people might feel just as strongly as you do about "violent video games" (defined in some arbitrary way) or "rap music" or "morally objectionable literature" [1]. You wouldn't want them to regulate your use of these, and they don't want you to regulate their use of social media.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic#Examples

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>The appropriate entity to police children's behavior is the parent. Some parents do a crappy job, but the state tends to do it even worse.

I'd say the appropriate entity to police children's behavior is the community.

The state is too powerful and over-reaching (and doesn't have skin in the game), the family unit is too restricted (and not enough people to include a representative variety of opinion).

It seems like it would be hard for a parent or the community to monitor kids' social media use in a way that's appropriately hands-off. Maybe mandate that users under 18 have parental consent and give the parent access to something limited, like a graph of contacts with their frequency of interaction.

That would be akin to a parent's ability to see who their kid is hanging out with in real life, without the extent of listening to every word they say.

In the US, the “community” calls the police if a parent let’s the child walk to school. I’m pretty sure that qualifies for “overreaching”.

In the US the community didn't use to do that at all.

It has been taught to do so, assisted by the government (overzealous social services, etc), academic "experts" of all kinds, and hysterical media.

This is a very nice piece of writing from the Austin Chronicle that tells the story of a much freer US and community:

http://michaelventura.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/This-Is...

Parents are part of the community?

Yes, but a part is not the whole -- and even less so a very small part.

So the parents doing it is not the same as the community doing it.

The appropriate entity to police children's behavior is the parent

And the appropriate entity to ensure that parents have the ability to police their children's behaviour is the government. As with all other toys, the government can impose usage restrictions and safety levels. Mandating the availability of parental control or oversight on Internet services accessible by children is perfectly within scope.

> And the appropriate entity to ensure that parents have the ability to police their children's behaviour is the government.

Parents already have the ability to police their children's behavior. Just because people make decisions about their children that you disagree with doesn't mean there needs to be a law.

More government is rarely if ever the appropriate response.

Mandating the availability of parental control or oversight on Internet services accessible by children is perfectly within scope.

Unless the parent is policing the child's behavior, all Internet services are accessible to them. Legally mandatory age-based restrictions/requirements would only be effective if you could strip the internet of all anonymity.

I'm glad we reached the same conclusion. So many people think that government can magically fix everything!

And others think that it can fix nothing and should provide no services, while you still pay taxes.

I agree with you thar regulation is not an answer here, however there are places where the government has to step in, things like building regulations etc. and in my opinion single payer healthcare. It should however absolutely not step into a parental role.

>The appropriate entity to police children's behavior is the parent.

I believe this assumes that the generation of the parent understands the psychological warfare being waged on them and their children. Not everyone can recognize an attacker until it is too late.

Whether the attacker is a family member that is also a sexual predator, or a team of psychoanalysts at Facebook, the damage is done all too often before anyone recognizes it.

The problem with your source is that it doesn't negate what the OP is saying.

We have countless examples of people acting in a mob mentality manner because of social media. Moral panic in many ways is a type of mob mentality. I'm not exactly sure how an example (your wikipedia link) of people acting in senseless ways because of what everyone else is doing is supposed to negate people acting in senseless ways because of what everyone else is doing.

There is direct evidence of social media influencing bad patterns of behavior, even if you wouldn't consider this an obvious point, there is hard evidence for it. Everything from which hunts, to bullying people, to SWAT'ing, to getting people to shoot up a pizza place.

>but the state tends to do it even worse.

I'm not sure what evidence there is for the state not being able to adequately control socially-negative behaviors (well, besides drug use, but there is an extreme biological motivation for drug use). We often look to the state in times of social crisis or socially tense situations and it's done a pretty damn good job. Saying the "state does it worse" seems like bald-assertion that ignores the countless examples of where the state sufficiently guides social practices. You could very well argue that you don't like the state doing this, but the state is definitely able to consistently influence social behaviors. Everything from the FCC regulating content to the government influencing common sexual practices.

OP seems to be basing his opinions and perspectives in actual experience and with evidence, without resorting to typical "the government can't do that (even though it already does)" talking points. So good on him.

If it wasn't obvious I definitely think we should be regulating on-line content. The modern internet has shown that it's a tool, and it can be used to empower the darker sides of human behaviors. There is absolutely nothing wrong with curtailing that.

The state has handled juvenile detention pretty terribly all around, at least in america. There's been several highly egregious cases in which judges were found to be taking kickbacks from prisons for jailing children, as well as inhumane treatment of children in prisons. Similarly, we have the splitting of families and essentially keeping illegal immigrant children in internment camps.

>The state has handled juvenile detention pretty terribly all around, at least in america.

Isn't this just an example of private interests interfering with what the state can do sufficiently in the first place? It's definitely a common problem with the American government, but not necessarily a knock against the state's (as entity) ability to regulate social behaviors in a consistent manner.

Also with the splitting of families, we know that this was intended and explicitly designed as a process by the current administration as a way to socially influence immigrates; it was designed to reduce the amount of people who thought the risk of legal/illegal immigration would be worth it.

These are certainly inhumane practices, no argument there, and I definitely don't agree with them.

Then that is a problem with that instance of state juvenile care, America's. Hard to draw conclusions about such a wide reaching topic as the role of the state in raising children about one example, in America no less, where the incentives seem to be always so fucked up backwards.

Witch hunts, bullying, and the like didn’t start with social media, and regulating social media won’t stop them, either.

No one is saying that. In fact I very specifically used the words empower and curtail.

Censorship is a dangerous thing not because people should have their freedom to say terrible things, but because it leads to unintended consequences. Censorship have always been used against outcasts or lower class members in society. Blacks, gays, women, are all examples of groups that have had censorship used against them. The rules that allow us to shut up Nazis is the same rules that can be used to silence anyone. The rules aren't, and can't be, written as "no Nazis". Because it's too hard to define and enforce. Then you have to keep adding groups to the blacklist, and who isn't to say that a unlike group isn't going to be thrown in there and we regret that action years from now.

And do you really want Silicon Valley making that choice for you?

Silicon Valley already is making that choice. Company produces the terms of service, act on those terms, and they adjudicate them per their exclusive interpretation. If you don't agree, then you're disconnected. There is no negotiation, no redress, you have no say beyond the binary.

As for limited free speech vs (nearly) unlimited free speech, this is an old debate and as yet it's not answered, and may not even have an answer. The U.S. 1st amendment is unique in liberal democracies, most countries do in fact have limits on speech. Germany has no problem defining and enforcing the restriction of propaganda of unconstitutional organizations, it is not vague - it is context specific.

Meanwhile the U.S. Constitution didn't protect Japanese Americans from being labeled, and incarcerated en masse, without due process.

Traditionally during times of war the US Constitution does not apply. This used to mean an official vote by the Senate[1], but since WWII the US decided that we no long would have wars with other countries. We renamed the War department the Defense department in 1947 and have not have a declared war since. Instead the Congress passes resolutions authorizing the use of military force. Presidents sometimes claim this gives them "War" powers and the Supreme court sometimes agree. An unfortunate state of affairs, I would say, especially now with the forever "war" on terror.

It would have been great if when the Department of Homeland Security was created it was called the Department of Defense and the Department of Defense reclaimed its true name, Department of War. I wonder if this idea and practice of renaming something to try and change the nature of a thing started around then, or if it has a much older history.

[1]https://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_a...

> Traditionally during times of war the US Constitution does not apply.

False.

> This used to mean an official vote by the Senate

No, it didn't. A time of war doesn't require a declaration of war, and while a declaration of war does involve a vote in the Senate, it's not just the Senate, but the Congress (by normal legislative process, e.g., both houses plus the President, or with a subsequent supermajority in the event of a veto, though it's hard to imagine Congress declaring war over a veto.)

> but since WWII the US decided that we no long would have wars with other countries.

No, we didn't. Hence, well, lots of post-WWII war-related legislation, including the War Powers Act.

> Instead the Congress passes resolutions authorizing the use of military force.

Which are exercises if the power to declare war, which requires no special magic words, just like sky other legislative power.

I stand corrected. Thanks.

The really hard thing is to act moral when we are afraid. It's easy to say how moral and righteous we are in times of peace, but when stuff goes wrong then a lot of people will give up freedom for a sense of security (you may have heard a really famous quote about this). With Japan I think everyone admits it wasn't the moral thing to do, but many argue that it was a necessary evil. And you should be wary when you hear those arguments, so we don't repeat history.

I don't see a problem with him having (in my opinion) poorly thought out opinions. This is why we let teenagers post stuff on the internet but don't let teenagers vote. System is working as intended. Nothing to see here.

I not only have no problem with their opinions, I wholeheartedly encourage them. It's by expressing them that the poster gets to read contrasting (and complementary) opinions and consider another point of view - and what better way to form a balanced view of a subject?

14 year olds can't go into a bar in quite a lot of cities and towns in the U.S. sometimes not even with an adult or a parent. There's precedent for regulations that keep kids out of certain situations, rather than expecting parents are tracking their child's every movement.

The degree to which businesses and their platforms are subject to "free speech" vs "fighting words" is thus far entirely up to the officers/board of those companies, society has zero say legally, short of re-regulating some of these businesses as public utilities.

Ths is going to be open and on-going question as anonymity permits people the power to say and do things they wouldn't do in person because if they did, they know it would damage their reputations. And online personas have trivially disposable and resettable reputation.

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