+1 for taming the addictive nature of social media.
-1000 for trying to do this with age-based restrictions. Kids will get around it. Kids SHOULD get around it. Gating content based on age does. not. work. Source: every teenage kid ever.
-1000 for trying to do this with age-based restrictions. Kids will get around it. Kids SHOULD get around it. Gating content based on age does. not. work. Source: every teenage kid ever.
See? Ask an easy question, get an easy answer.
There may be a difference here in that lots of people disliked smoking/smokers/their clothes smelling after going to a pub, perhaps more than there are who dislike the concept of facebook likes manipulating their behaviour more than they like the rewards that likes bring them.
What part of the HN design appears to you exploitative? It's much more like an old school web forum than a gamified social website.
I think this is a touch unfair to people at large. The common end user isn't keen enough to recognize dark patterns, that's true, but that's akin to saying that the average car buyer should be able to spot flaws in a vehicle that could cause them harm. We don't expect that from people; Car companies are mandated to only sell vehicles that meet safety requirements. And even then, it's generally accepted that when you're buying a used vehicle, you take it to a mechanic you trust to make sure it's well cared for and operational. Same as when you buy a home; you're expected to have it inspected.
It's also unfair, I think, to put people down as foolish or stupid for not immediately recognizing things that are psychological tricks companies use in marketing, to steer users towards the options they want the users to choose. I mean caveat emptor indeed, but to say that, for example fast food marketers holding PHD's in psychological studies, working day in and out to get people to be hungry anytime they see a McDonalds logo are on an even playing field with Joe Consumer is a laughable assertion on it's face.
In the days of yore, marketing was just trying to sell someone something but it's become much more insidious since those innocent times. Now companies use dark patterns in their applications, purposely bury privacy and security options under layers of confusing UI, use all manor of colors and fonts shown to steer people's attention to the goal they want, on and on. This is why I find it so unethical, it feels a hell of a lot less like marketing and lot more like "hacking" a person's brain to get into their wallet.
tl:dr; Joe Consumer is playing checkers, and marketing scientists are playing 3D chess. He doesn't stand a chance and everyone just keeps acting like that's okay.
Even if you say 'taking advantage of limited cognitive ability of people' which is true, because everyone is busy, having life problems and is bombarded with all that crap. It makes people stupid, and that is not something to say about particular person.
So second part is about making damage while taking advantage of that created stupidity, which is the same as thieves taking advantage of someone after 12 hour trip. People get tired and do stupid things like not watching their luggage. That is the same as taking advantage of online tiredness, it is also foolishness.
Marketing with McDonalds does not make people hungry, that is of course not the way it works. But when people are hungry and see McDonalds logo, they don't think about alternatives but just go for that option. I fell for that multiple times, when I am tired, I am not going to search for some small restaurant that can have better food. It can turn out that there is one, but food is total crap, so I am not taking chances but going for McD. Getting me tired and hungry to pay them money is taking advantage of my temporary stupidity and foolishness. They have scale and are everywhere so it might look innocent.
That I'd agree with, that it makes people stupid. That's better.
> Marketing with McDonalds does not make people hungry
But it does. The color red has been linked many times to feelings of hunger, most likely because our brains link it to both the color of fresh berries and the color of slaughtered meat. That's why nearly every fast food chain uses a significant amount of red in their packaging: McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Topper's Pizza, Wendy's, Hardees, Carls' Jr., the list is nearly infinite. It's not a coincidence.
And that's the relatively low-tech tactics, not even going into how the engineer the taste of the food to be just right, how the burgers in the ads look absolutely nothing like the product you receive, all the way up to the fact that fast food is laden with sugar unnecessarily to make it literally addictive, since the brain responds to sugar in a very similar way to cocaine.
Again, this stuff exists on a very large spectrum from stuff that's innocuous but very effective, all the way to the stuff that was cooked up in laboratories by extremely smart people to manipulate the general populace into buying their products.
This libertarian rhetorical meme of reducing every instance of proposed regulation to ineffectual drug wars needs to die.
That's not what the ICO is saying though, they're just saying that there are more restrictions if you're dealing with kids.
My 12 year old son was helping his 10 year cousin set up Pokemon Go and he told him to just put anything in the year until it works.
Heck when I was 8 my 10 year old friend and I used to guess the leisure suit larry questions.
There is really no way to fix this, without creating some kind of goverment id system tied to biometrics, followed by the plot of any dystopian scifi.
If something is for adults only, require payment or something. Afaik, you can't get a debit or credit card under 18 without parental approval, so this should lie firmly on the shoulders of parents. However, parents don't like getting blamed for being bad parents.
If my child gets access to adult only stuff, that's my fault.
We have significant, long term, data that age restrictions reduced the use of alcohol and tobacco.
What has changed, in the modern era of internet age restrictions, is that the enforcement of age restrictions online has been reduced.
For example, online pornography has massive numbers of users under 18, but there has been little enforcement by law enforcement agencies.
The solution is quite simple. If a person under the age of 18 is in possession of an application that is prohibited for minors and the company that creates that application fails to verify their age, then the company should face criminal charges, just like we do with tobacco and alcohol.
To say that age restrictions do not work is to ignore almost a century of public policy.
Asking for a user's age and giving a dropdown that lets the user select any age they like is in no way comparable to checking an actual government-issued ID.
The way we enforce this with alcohol and tobacco is that law enforcement runs a test were they attempt to purchase alcohol or tobacco from a store with a minor. Law enforcement can run a similar process where they attempt to access pornography(or other age restricted content) and if the site or application fails to restrict usage, apply crimial charges.
There is certainly public debate as to if we should use age restrictions on certain features of Facebook, but to say that enforcement is impossible, seems to contradict the data we have with other age restrictions.
Because that's the only way to make this happen.
With regards to social platforms, I think we need to consider the health of people under 18, just like we do in the real world. If we indeed decide as a democracy, that certain types of social media content are significantly harmful to children, then I think it is our responsibility as adults to impose certain things upon ourselves that may be uncomfortable.
I have gone to the beach and realized that I had left my wallet(and ID) in the car and was unable to purchase alcohol or be let into a bar. We as a democracy have decided that is a reasonable price to pay for protecting children from alcohol abuse.
If age verification were required to access online content, plenty of online services would be available as a third party to verify your age without requiring you to show every website and application your government ID. For example Apple might verify your age and relay that to a website. Or possibly your credit card company or some other new company which provided that service. PayPal for age verification.
I should qualify that I'm not sure we should impose these age restrictions on social platforms, I'm am instead commenting on the feasiblility of such an action.
Now: sue tobacco companies coercing children using targeted advertisings.
Future: sue social media companies coercing children using persuasive techniques.
Question is: could insufficient age restriction methods hold companies liable?
I know one 14yo who complains about not being able to see restricted content on youtube and also believes her parents can see her history even if she erases it.
Just because you were able to do it when you were a kid, doesn't mean other kids will be able to. You're posting on HN with a "linuxasheviller" handle, that makes you an outlier.
she's not necessarily wrong if her parents are tech savvy. many routers can save recent web history if you enable it.
she could use a VPN of course.
To be clear, I didn't mean to imply she's wrong. She may have good reason to believe that, but I haven't inquired further, just offered to teach her to install Linux.
Do you mean to suggest that you too knew kids who falsely clicked "over 18" when visiting pornographic websites?
The obvious solution is for the companies to ensure that under 18s data isn't used this way. I will certainly start signing up to all services as a 16 year old.
When a boundary is set at 18, its true that many youths approaching that age will look with great interest beyond it. But child friendly networks are important and valuable to children, while they can be children.