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Comment by lavabiopsy | Hacker News Reader

I believe children ages 13-17 are able to use twitter.

That's a special subset that are generally seen as competent enough to see and hear more adult material in order to better prepare for adult life. So actually, there's a real argument to let them see a twitter joke like this. They have less overall protections than a child under 13 for a reason.

I don't understand why you are saying that or what that has to do with the conversation. Please imagine a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video on how to cut off your leg" or something like that and then not explaining that it's a joke. My original point is not if any given child is competent enough to see the joke or not, but that it could be misinterpreted.

> Please imagine a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video on how to cut off your leg" or something like that and then not explaining that it's a joke.

You seem to be confused. Where does "a video on how to cut off your leg" come into this? The tweet was about willingness to give up a leg to be able to access the tutorials. A more appropriate equivalent would be imagining a schoolteacher going into a classroom on the first day of school and saying with a straight face to students "I am going to show you a video you would gladly give up your right leg to see."

There is no reason for random Twitter users to comport themselves as school teachers. All your comments are assuming some strict level of etiquette that most people don’t care about. Nor should those that care to present themselves that way relate to ban-able offenses.

Sorry if I wasn't clear, I don't think Twitter users need to comport themselves as school teachers. Twitter (and also Hacker News) requires you to conduct yourself to a certain level of etiquette in order to use the service, and some of that may be similar to the way a school teacher would behave -- in either case, you may be in the presence of 13 year olds that could be upset by your comments. I don't get why you are saying some people don't care about that etiquette -- that doesn't matter, agreeing to the etiquette is required to use the service, if you are using the service then it's agreed upon that you care about it.

> I believe children ages 13-17 are able to use twitter.

Based on all research available so far Social networks make the life of teenagers worse. So your belief is not supported by anything.

Just from my own experiences on the net as a teen where jokes about self-harm and suicide were extremely common -- One of those reasons could be because social media is not doing enough to protect children from this type of toxic content. Obviously the deleted tweet here is on the "could be harmless" end of the spectrum of that though.

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