A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media
wired.com
wired.com
* Whatever verification system a user has to do to prove they are older than 13 will also being to freak users out about 'whoes listening'. It's insane to think a First Name, Last Name, and Address might be tied to _every reddit account_.
* That data will be used for government surveillance. Maybe I should start creating a hat out of metallic kitchen supplies, but I largely think 'how can we spy on more Americans" has been a central political battle fought over the last 3 decades. It's a long fight, not over.
* This could cause all users to stop adopting these public networks, and and move to underground networks. Some underground networks will just normal application with some social space that aren't targeted. Some might be based on traditional dark-web style services. Others might be based on something more web3-y.
It's one of those things where perfection is the enemy of good. Some kids will do it anyways but parents can install hard to remove monitoring software on devices and the penalty can be similar to a somewhat serious traffic citation.
The fact that a lot of social networks require or request phone numbers “for security” rather than TOTP codes (for example) is another such example of how data collection is hidden behind “safety”.
Installing software? How about just using what's already there and begging you to use it.
Forget about showing credentials to use social media. The issue here may be needing credentials to breed -- but, you know, who watches the watchmen?
I will give you all an example, cyberbullying is illegal right? Yet it happens a lot but making it illegal and when caught, punishing offending kids has reduced the volume (where such laws exist). No ominous backdoor involved.
Source?
2. The amount of teenage smoking/drinking/drug use is pretty considerable. This is even true if you select for involved parents. Shouldn't parents focus be on preventing these? If parents can't stop this, why would they be able to stop social media?
3. Without age verification, how would you know someone on social media is underage?
4. Wouldn't this disproportionality punish lower income families, and richer families could more easily pay the fine?
How exactly would you prevent leaking?
How does the site know that I am using my wallet attributes and not someone else's?
1. These 'digitally signed attributes' (example: 'age: 19') are consistent across services. So if you attribute is leaked in a way that it connected to other PII, then everyone with the attribute will know your PII.
2. These attributes are generated by a central authority. Presumably the goal would be to have governments issue these attributes. Regardless, whatever verification you do with the central authority will reveal your identity, and they can always determine your PII from the attributes they created.
Once LLM-powered bots flood social media [1], websites will have to implement verification as a means of survival.
[1] That hasn't even really begun. Wait until ChatGPT+ capabilities can be run from home at next to zero cost.
If people generate better content with bots, that's a good thing. If the content people generate with bots is worse, then they're not going to be successful with it.
If bad content outperforms good content, that would be a problem for the social network. ... but that would be a problem regardless of the tools used to create that content.
How would my position in this argument be any less valuable if it turned out that I automated it with the help of a text generator?
I wouldn't personally act on this, of course. It's not at all constructive. I find it amusing to contemplate, though, and I also believe it's plausible others will execute on a similar vision.
There will be all sorts of other actors using LLMs for their own ends, too. Astroturfers. Trolls. Griefers. You name it.
One could wish the adults/parents would limit this themselves, but sadly this is seldom the case. For some reason it seems most parents really are clueless to the level of harm imposed by social media to their kids?!
In the event there are no countries left there are still options:
1. Hidden services
2. Decentralized
3. Just create a pool mechanism where you contribute your private key for whatever gov Auth system exists, then use a random id from the pool among all sign-ups everytime you sign up for a service.
Child of a rabble-rouser? Arrest that man! Child of a respected judge? Clearly just an honest mistake.
What is needed, and has been for some time, is an identity service.
This does exist in some parts of the world - here in Portugal, for instance, I access government services online with a smartcard, password and 2FA - and I don’t see why they couldn’t extend this as a general SSO service using oauth or whatever to provide accredited identities to providers who require it due to regulation. The provider doesn’t need to receive anything from the auth apart from a user id, or a “deny access”.
My teen kids aren't on social. I know this because their dumb phones don't support it, and their computers are not permitted in their rooms (Kitchen table only).
I suppose they could get on, through a friends smart-phone, but that would be limited to the time they spend on the bus to/from school.
As a kid I was doing graffiti, and later drinking and smoking weed without my parents knowledge.
2. When would they have the time. They're home, and at school. Band, Judo, Cadets, Tutoring. Where's the time to hide a phone.
3. I'll stipulate that some kids could do it. Vast majority would get caught. And my kids fear the pink bunny suit I have in my closet. I'd walk them to school every day for a month. Lets seem them stay on facebook through that. :)
That 'level of harm' being decided by yourself, I'll wager?
Seems like there's pretty strong revealed preference here (watch what people do not what they say). The people building this tech know it's harmful to kids.
As a parent the argument I hear most often is that all the other kids have it so it's almost impossible to stop your own kids. I don't necessarily buy that, my kids are still young but I intend to keep them away from social media as long as possible.
If we can find a way to declaw social networks then we’d have a healthier ecosystem for all ages.
But this is a much harder problem to solve.
https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/protecting_kids_...
That's the actual Bill, and it's quite a fast read and in fairly plain language, but it's mostly an empty several pages.
Multiple times the Bill states that it is not to be construed as a requirement for Government ID, but then in Section 7 regarding the pilot program, it mentions these as a reference on how to validate users in the pilot program. No other definitions or examples of "reasonable". In fact, the validation method in Section 3 simply says
> IN GENERAL
> A social media platform shall take
> reasonable steps beyond merely requiring attestation, taking into account existing
> age verification technologies, to verify the age of individuals who are account
> holders on the platform.
That's not a ton of guidance besides Government ID's referenced later on, and leaving it to "reasonable" is really too vague; if a user signs up with a gmail email address, is it enough to assume that because Gmail requires a user to be a certain age that they are validated? Is it Gmail's fault if it turns out the owner of an address misrepresented their name or is it the social media company's fault? How exactly are the Social Media companies supposed to validate this?
More importantly, how is an individual supposed to validate it without giving out more information on themselves or spreading records of their Government Identification to a bunch of sites?
The exceptions list in Section 2, Paragraph 6 subsection C is way too big and you can guess the businesses that the Bill has in mind for each entry. But it's also so loose; if TikTok starts adding in-app purchases for the items in ads you get, is it now exempted under ection 2, Paragraph 6 subsection C item i? After all, it's facilitating transactions now with the algorithm, and logically a guardian has given consent to use the platform if they forked over their card number so their kid can make purchases.
There is so much loose language and intent here when the crux of the bill is hidden under Section 6, which is to tone down the algorithm usage.
If a site with user-generated content is missing this header give them a warning, then fine them {n} percentage of their net revenue per day until remediated. After {x} days out of compliance seize their domains.
If a child/parent is having compliance issues on their devices leading to problems, hand it over to social services like they would for any other social/family issue. Social service issues are not tech platform issues.
Using RTA in HTML:
<meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA" />
header("Rating: RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA");
Header set Rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"
http-response set-header rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"
location / { add_header Rating 'RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA'; }But sadly most people wouldn't know how to use this info. It's the first great idea I've read though.
Rather than limiting access, what we really should be doing is limiting the negative harm that social networks can cause. For example YouTube Kids is a vast improvement over regular YouTube with regards to younger audiences.
And equally important, they have no way to really know we aren't 12 even *with* that information.
For example, a 12 year old could easily provide a photo of mommy or daddy's ID. Or a photoshopped copy of an older friend's ID?
Basically, any reasonably secure verification method will need to be equivalent to the KYM (know your customer) process used by banks --- and a lot of *legal* users will be excluded because they can't pass the test. Many teenager's lack a reasonably secure identity document.
The USA suffers from an over abundance of ignorance and stupidity --- and this extends all the way to the government level.
There is absolutely no chance that it will ever get leaked, misused or stored unencrypted
They already do it, but such a time save to 100% verify who is who.
And even if you esque facebook, never have an account, you're one step away from the same happening after a buyout, data share agreement, etc.
Banks often get around data sharing laws, by jointly buying companies to perform tasks. Thus, bank 1 owns 20% of an ID company, along with 4 other banks, and can write agreements such as "our associated companies" and such blather.
Inside that ID corp, all 5 entites can share data, aggregate it, anonymized it, and then sell it.
And as we all know, de-anonymizing is trivial... and if one knows who you are, they now all do, simply via the parent corp buying(for pennies) and de-anonymizing.
Facebook has already been found to be storing passwords in plaintext [0]
How can you trust them, or any other social media for that matter? Even if they do everything right, you are increasing the chance of giving your id to s service is that will get hacked by just giving it to more services
* [0] https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-passwords-plaintext-cha...
I mean, I’m all in favor of the goals of this bill. I think social media is a horrible negative for people of all ages, but especially children since they largely don’t have the mental capability to defend against the smartest people in the world trying to hijack their brains.
But I can’t see how a “social media” ban can actually work. And im not even sure it’s actually better than parental education and information.
I do take issues with the drug laws in a lot of countries though. They are, in part, based around marginalising individuals rather than protecting people from harm. But this is a whole other discussion.
This is why I generally do not support any bans dictated by the government.
In this case it’s difficult to find a reasonable solution that’s not draconian. You could tell parents to use screen limiting tools but those are unlikely to be used by the parents whose children need it the most.
Perhaps making social media require a $1/year fee with it being returned to you after 6 months would stop the vast majority of children.
What's different here that you're free to criticize the Government without fear of (open) repression.
For now
Surely we could come up with a solution that isn't an outright ban? Especially as technology has become so commonplace and many of our social interactions happen in digital spaces.
In any case, maybe it would be interesting to evaluate how other countries have approached these problems. I know that in South Korea you need a government ID to play certain multiplayer videogames, it would be interesting to explore the impact of these systems and what lessons can be gleamed.
Since I'm not a parent myself I haven't really considered the problem domain with much care or consideration, but maybe some hacker parents could share their thoughts and insights as they've dealt with the existing ecosystem?
Personal anecdata, way back in the 90s in my childhood, a games website I used to frequent actually demanded potential users (read: kids) under 13 years old to fax in written consent from the parents to collecting information. Websites used to actually take COPPA seriously back then.
If this bill makes compliance to COPPA more stringent, well, the law already mandated it anyway. Kids and can't-be-arsed parents will find workarounds, no doubt, and the world will keep spinning.
As an aside, I would rather the US government handle identification (they already have all the goods anyway) than the likes of GAFA.
I have the same feeling about motorcycles. The age for riding them should be a bit later, when you've acquired some sense. Maybe 21 or even 24.
The difference is that driving is a privilege not a right (riding a motorcycle especially so), as you are endangering the lives of others.
Maybe some type of tiered system could be in place. Text one limit, images next and then video one more.
At one point kids could buy cigarettes.
Now, across hundreds of thousands of stores, they can't.
There's only a few social media sites, it's seems infinitely easier. Trivial even.
It stands to reason that an equivalent online system would require a similar online solution; most people are not particularly enthused by the idea of having to present an ID to consume any information that could potentially considered to fall under “social media.”
This is incredibly destructive and addictive stuff. The days of the wild west of the internet are over.
If you want to get rid of a destructive and addictive thing, maybe it would be more effective to just advocate for that. Requiring a government ID and government categorization of every site on the Internet is not likely to accomplish what you want.
So the only effective thing would be to put it behind a government id check.
The reality is we've relied "on the parents" to police devices and it hasn't worked at all.
it's too much to ask them to do, the internet is too vast and too chaotic. The onus needs to be put onto the companies.
Requiring a government id is all there is, it's the solution.
On top of that, the worldwide leader in age verification software is none other than mindgeek, the porn giant. This kind of law would effectively give this company a file with the official ID and complete social network usage pattern of everyone above 13 in the country.
Don't think for a second you scanning your ID and providing it to facebook/twitter/youtube would be at all safe.
This decisions should only be up to the parents, not someone in DC...
Furthermore, peer pressure is very strong, and children and adolescents will make your life miserable if they can't have what everyone else has. So it would be a lot easier if nobody else had social media.
Whether you want to accept it or not, it really is up to the parents.
There are, of course, ways to implement this that don't include sending even more personal data to social media companies. The most obvious way, for starters, would be through a government app or system that simply tells Facebook "This user is over the age of 13" without sending over any more information.
The reality is that we do need to do something about the issue, just like how porn shouldn't be freely available to literal children. It's an inevitable consequence of the internet moving into the very center of our lives.
That way a parent can set up the account for the child, and then monitor their activities through the site. Once they age out, their parents roles are reduced appropriately.
The same should also be true in reverse, so that adults can monitor the social media of their elderly parents, to keep them from getting scammed. This can be negotiated and agreed to by the parents.
Either way, a person under care of another should see zero ads.
Trying to impose a ban is such a lazy and naive solution. Kids will find alternatives. There are thousands of options for kids to go online and interact with one another. My guess would be that video games would become the next social platforms, and then what, ban video games? ban multiplayer games? I'm not saying do nothing. There are plenty of potential and creative solutions. Maybe something like incentivizing companies to build a kid-friendly version of their apps, and advising parents on how to be aware of what they're using. Banning tech is usually not the answer in a world where tech is more and more part of everything.