Meta is the 'single largest market for paedophiles', says New Mexico AG
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Facts don't mean anything without perspective.
Doesn't sound like a fact.
On FB it's easier to find them compared to Telegram for instance
Wow, what a fact.
I can continue like that for a long time, you know.
Rhetorically speaking it's simple to make the biggest in some class seem to be worst in some related class. If I'm the biggest taxi operator in town, I'm likely to have the highest CO₂ emissions of all the taxi companies, see? You can omit or deemphasise the connection between the two and make me seem bad.
It's just a form of lying by omission.
No, it isn't. Far from it.
Edit: Unless those angled brackets have a meaning that I am not aware of.
To jansan: The angled brackets is what I've used for a long time to represent a variable or as-yet-unknown value, ie. <Fill in the Blank>
The end goal is to morally and legally blackmail every company to act as an active spy for the panopticon.
> And no, the end goal is to not allow companies to profit from human misery
So says you. But the end result will be a panopticon. Good thing government and corporate oppression are solved issues, so there's no need for impractical things like privacy or freedom anymore.
> Do they take a cut from sex-abuse sales, deliberately turn a blind eye to it
that's exactly it.
(It is also interesting to me that in ~2010, such discussions used to use terrorism, and now it’s CSAM/pedophilia.)
Eventually, if you keep threatening people with an outcome that they can easily detect, they'll notice that it's not happening. It's better to threaten them with something invisible.
All this can be true and it is still a bad idea to unilaterally break encryption, just as it was a bad idea to allow unilateral use of wiretap.
If we stick the debate around the truthiness of the allegations, it only takes a few bad examples to lose that argument.
> If we stick the debate around the truthiness of the allegations, it only takes a few bad examples to lose that argument.
That is true, but the argument here is over why people stopped appealing to terrorism to support their policy preferences.
So, I'm just saying we can oppose the policy preference regardless of why they stopped appealing to a problem, and regardless of that problem's "realness"
The allegation here, as seen in the headline, isn't that there's enough pedophile activity on Facebook to rise to the level of being a problem somewhere.
It's just that there's more on Facebook than there is in most other places.
That's all I'm saying. Somehow was that lost? I think we may be having what a former mentor called a "Conflicting agreement" or "Violent agreement" :D
But I think that the point I made is important, different from your point, and topical in the place where I posted it.
Nah, CSAM/pedophilia argument goes way back. It is just that the terrorism argument has largely disappeared because the emotional impact of mostly 9/11 has been dealt with (terrorism was much more rampant in parts of the previous century, can't recall the decade but if I had to say it was 70s or 80s).
The thing is, tools can be used for Good and Bad. A knife, a car, the Internet, social media.
The problem is if we live in a society where your online identity is pseudonymous at best (remember Rotterdam hospital shooting recently, the shooter got found on 4chan), and there is post-moderation instead of pre-moderation you are going to have garbage content.
A lawsuit like this is used to prove negligence in proportion to the amount of users vs content. Ie. it will result in more active moderation by Meta. In that regard, it is The Netherlands hosting providers who were terrible with removing CSAM. And, almost all of them have improved.
Does that mean the content is removed from the Internet? No, impossible. But it sure as hell got more difficult for the perpetrators to distribute the content. Which is a decent compromise.
I have no idea which darknet market holds that crown today, but I'm willing to wager it isn't Zuckerland.
The largest single market is probably Telegram. I bought some cannabis live resin on Telegram just this week. Next day delivery!
IMO no dark net market will ever be bigger than an app you can download on iOS and Android
I heavily doubt that and think you heavily underestimate DN markets by service and volume. We live in crazy times, that's sure.
I ask because… if this is something a lot of people do, then it must either be really simple or there are howtos on youtube/quora/… and I can't find any howto.
It's not complicated at all
You wrote that GP "heavily underestimate DN markets by service and volume". If those markets can't be found using mass-market search engines and don't accept payment using mass-market payment services, then I think they're either nïche or you need to explain how they reached large volume.
A crypto wallet, that connects to one of those multi Billion Dollar networks, very well could be viewed as 'mass market payment service'. I at least know more people using crypto than PayPal, most no 'hackers'.
The number of times I've tried to get friends to make orders on DNMs over the years with no success. If I'd just passed them a Telegram username and told them to download the app they'd have done it there and then.
2. Even if it were true, it's irrelevant.
Because Meta is supposed to have automated systems that try to prevent this.
Which means they're not working, or Meta doesn't care, or both.
Amazon is the biggest market for buying stuff
Tiktok is the biggest market for pedophiles/disinformation
Instagram is the biggest market for self absorbed people
Twitter is the second biggest market for disinformation and terrorism
etc
The HN bubble has moved on for sure, but going by DAU/MAU (which isn’t perfect but is better than “I think”), facebook is still the biggest and is still growing
At some point we just have to acknowledge that young teenagers are going to use it no matter what. So maybe we should focus more on education and harm prevention as opposed to trying to ban it.
Unless of course we ask adults to provide their credit card or driver's license to sign up. Which I suspect they won't.
We haven't tried to ban it for kids. Social media is a network effect. Currently kids have to go on if they don't want to get outcasted. But if you eliminate the network there isn't the same pull factor.
I would never support similarly gimping children in an increasingly online world. Banning kids from congregating on the internet is a reprehensible idea.
This is not to invalidate your own experience - it sounds awful - but we can’t make policy decisions at this scale based only on individual experiences.
Personally I dread the impact that social media might have on our daughters as they move on to secondary school.
Making decisions at scale is always hard, and sometimes outright terrible, because some people always lose out. Nobody likes this or thinks it’s anything other than horrible but, going back to social media, if I can save 5 kids from serious harm by banning social media for them versus 1 or 2 if I don’t, that’s a grim decision but also one I’d make.
Of course, it’s not that simple, and I don’t really know where the net benefit lies, but that’s what we have to figure out.
> if I can save 5 kids from serious harm by banning social media for them versus 1 or 2 if I don’t, that’s a grim decision but also one I’d make.
Not me, and I'd appreciate it if you don't attempt to parent my children for me.
Are you looking for a perfect solution?
Do you also understand that governments and other hostile threat actors already use social media as a propaganda tool to spread misinformation? Do you think it's a good thing that children and teenagers are exposed to this? Do you like that your household is exposed to it?
Do you further realise that social media companies profiting off the back of social and societal problems they cause is also an abuse of power? Is that corporate abuse of power really better than government abuse of power?
I happen to think we can come to a solution that reduces all of these abuses. In fact I think we need to. Whether or not that involves a ban on social media use by under-18s or under-16s or whatever, I've already made clear I'm not sure of, though I can see that it might be a helpful option.
What you're proposing on the other hand is no solution at all: many parents aren't capable of correctly configuring a firewall or securely locking down a phone, even though products exist that make both easier. Some would be able to learn, but some wouldn't. You're simply burying your head in the sand.
> Do you understand that governments already abuse the data held by social media companies and that, by removing, limiting, or regulating young peoples' access to social media one of the outcomes would be that social media companies would hold less data that governments could abuse?
Fixing one problem with another problem. Instead, lets actually take user privacy seriously, and instead of following the abstinence method which works so well, we create a world where this kind of data is not collected/saved or abused in the first place.
> Do you also understand that governments and other hostile threat actors already use social media as a propaganda tool to spread misinformation? Do you think it's a good thing that children and teenagers are exposed to this? Do you like that your household is exposed to it?
Believe me, I do. I also believe that kids have a right to gather online. Our children have always faced danger, and have always needed guidance on how to safely navigate this increasingly complex world. By limiting the collected data as mentioned above, we mitigate this problem as well. Instead of attacking the rights of children, we limit the operational rights of corporations so that individual data privacy and security are better respected.
> Is that corporate abuse of power really better than government abuse of power?
No. See above. Your suggestion of instead limiting the rights of minors to congregate online does not in any way solve or mitigate corporate abuse of power, however it does enable governmental abuse of power, so I'm not sure what point you're making here.
> Whether or not that involves a ban on social media use by under-18s or under-16s or whatever, I've already made clear I'm not sure of, though I can see that it might be a helpful option.
I am very sure it's not the right move.
> What you're proposing on the other hand is no solution at all: many parents aren't capable of correctly configuring a firewall or securely locking down a phone, even though products exist that make both easier. Some would be able to learn, but some wouldn't. You're simply burying your head in the sand.
This is the strongest argument you've made yet, and you're right; Teaching digital privacy and security will be a multi-generational effort, but ultimately society will be better for it. The alternative is still sticking our heads in the sand, and allowing corporations to continue to, as you have agreed, abuse their power and take advantage of both adults and children who get past the filters.
Furthermore, I have no interest in making criminals out of children who circumvent any such laws, and they will circumvent these laws, and en masse. The law is simply unenforceable at scale, and the effect would be to conditiona an entire generation to normalize criminal action. Is that what we want?
Young people have always congregated and that, in itself, isn't a bad thing (quite the opposite - they absolutely need to socialise). The issue we have is that current social media is a far too effective vector for bullying, exacerbating mental health issues and, of course, discovery and sharing of abusive material. Those are some of the problems we need to solve for.
As I say, I sense there may be a net benefit to a ban for younger people, but I could be mistaken - for example, there could simply be greater restrictions or regulation of social media use by young people that would make it safer/better - and would welcome evidence that proved me wrong.
Some states are already moving in this direction. However, it is a firmly unconstitutional approach. Our forefathers are rolling in their graves.
If we share information which is a true risk to national security or the general welfare of the People, that's something the Constitution allows for. But wholesale enforcement of eID is reprehensible and must be met with rigid disobedience.
since this is HN I better clarify - I'm not sure I agree that should pass or would pass, it seems a stretch to me. But if I wanted to make the argument that is where I would go.
An eID can also just make a call to the eID issuer, identifying the person, and then a callback to the service indicating that the identified person complies with certain requirements like age.
Think of it as a bouncer at the door that does not divulge any details to the club owner. ;)
same thing will happen, a leak will occur and the authorities will be thrilled to offer me a 45 cent class action suit -- meanwhile bad actors will have the data and do who-knows-what with it.
if bad internet data is really the problem here then I would suggest more rigorous filtering of results rather than involuntarily signing up the world for a club that every individual may or may not want to be a part of by way of an eID.
And yet democracies predate the existence of digital anonimity by quite a few centuries (or at the very least decades, depending on how many slaves you accept in your definition of a "healthy democracy").
> The "chilling effect" refers to a phenomenon where individuals or groups refrain from engaging in expression for fear of running afoul of a law or regulation.
> Laws that chill free expression do not provide the appropriate level of breathing space for First Amendment freedoms.
https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/chilling-effect-overv...
In the 18th century your word was everything, and your identity was tied to your word. When you came into town, or a tavern, or wherever, you had to identify yourself. And if you lied about who you were your word was tarnished forever.
Now we're doing the same thing in a digital world. It's time to adapt to that.
Online and offline is not the same.
If you got caught you were done.
In a digital world we can combat such fraud in vastly different ways.
Obviously I mean any letter of substance where identification is a crucial factor. Not your anonymous love letters to your childhood sweetheart.
The GP comment was about the right toward anonymously sending telegrams and letters, then the response was about fraud, which makes no sense given the context of anonymity; you can't be fraudulently anonymous.
I must write you this letter to show you my burning eternal love since your 4th grade for legitimate, anonymous and encrypetd communication.
In shivers.
Your uncle.
Publius
Folks seeking to profit from your loss of freedom find it extremely useful.
If I can run multiple person bots in 10 years on my cpu, governments around the world will abuse it to 11 and forcing all actors to such measures.
To your point; we’ve been dealing with a variation of this for decades (maybe even millennia?).
The core issue is that kids have more time and energy than any parent, and they have inquisitive problem-solving minds motivated by an intense-to-them need for social connection.
Parental control software: Bypassed
Firewalls and DNS blocks: Bypassed
Parental locks on modern phones: Bypassed
“Are you over 18?” prompts: irrelevant
Asking for driver’s license? Good luck. Are lawmakers going to commit to the inevitable cat and mouse game that starts with kids doing AI forgeries of licenses?
Through then I would argue for most regulatory reasons it makes sense to count them as one platform.
(The NCMEC is mentioned, and they probably have a decent feel for whether the headline's claim is true...but they might be reluctant to talk on this subject.)
Elon Musk has been very clear on that this kind of activity will get you permanently banned.
They are also actively following known pedo hashtags across X/Twitter to ensure this kind of content gets wiped, without waiting for individual users to report it first.
The difference between Facebook and X seems pretty stark.
You can scan for hashtags all day long but bad actors will come up with hashtags that are not on your list rather quickly.
The same for facebook groups people can setup like train enthusiasts group that would look like one posting photos of trains and then hide bad content in between.
You don’t have even computing power to scan everything.
If they really have some sort of secret channel that no one else can infiltrate, why not just use that to distribute stuff directly instead of running an evil cabal of hashtags?
Surely, even given the evil cabal of hashtags, you could find a lot with simple heuristics? When you ban a tag, track which new new hash tags suddenly explode in popularity. Pull a list of hashtags with an unusually high number of links/images to sites that don't normally get linked? Track the people who follow these hashtags, and see what hashtags they go to next
If you actually want to fight the problem, it doesn't require a huge amount of resources - the problem is entirely that Meta has no actual desire to fight the problem (after all, it costs money and doesn't produce any benefit to them)
> How are these bad actors coordinating hashtags in a way that can't be detected?
They manage to do it in China despite the massive censorship there. https://sg.news.yahoo.com/chinese-vpn-providers-hide-literat...
> it doesn't require a huge amount of resources
Are you suggesting that the Chinese government just isn’t trying hard enough, and if they really wanted to they could stop all dissidents in China for forever?
China would be a perfect example of my point: they've succeeded in vastly reducing the amount of censored content available, and the average person has no real desire to work around that.
I really don't get how you think your example disagrees with me - do you think China hasn't accomplished anything there?
Flipping the question around, I’m not really sure how Facebook’s current systems don’t fit your definition of “it’s not perfect but it works”?
I think there's a lot of low-hanging fruit we could easily address with a small increase in spending, and I think it's fair to shame companies for not doing that.
I also think there's a lot of mid-height fruit that could plausibly be addressed with a lot of spending. I think it's fair to praise companies that ARE doing that, but it's hardly a source of shame.
And of course, there's plenty of fruit we're never going to deal with, no matter how much we spend.
I think Facebook is under-spending and missing out on low hanging fruit
Think more about how memes spread in the internet - there is no “meme administration” that picks what is funny and what not.
You still have to make difference between trends of normal hashtags and evil hashtags how do you do that? Also how do you even think there would be explosion when bad actors are aware they have to hide.
Main point is simple heuristics won’t work and you don’t have to be evil mastermind to circumvent them.
> how do you do that?
I already listed a few examples. If it was unclear, the other part of the process is "have a human check the hashtag", sorry
> Also how do you even think there would be explosion when bad actors are aware they have to hide.
You'd be really amazed how much low-hanging fruit there is here. If someone is posting publicly on social media AND using hashtags, they're not exactly in the top half of OpSec
I do agree that there is a lot that can be caught with a bit more effort and that Meta does not really want to spend resources because it doesn't earn them money.
But also I argue that there still will be a lot of bad stuff and there is not enough money/resources to stop all.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/10/twitter-x...
> The company formerly known as Twitter has faced heat from politicians in a combative hearing over X’s tackling of child abuse material, after the company restored an account that shared such material last month, despite claiming to have a “zero tolerance approach”.
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/twitter-...
> But a review by The New York Times found that the imagery, commonly known as child pornography, persisted on the platform, including widely circulated material that the authorities consider the easiest to detect and eliminate.
please stop spreading bullshit
Hugely downsizing the content moderation team definitively isn't helping preventing such content on X/Twitter.
And one thing which companies which take this topic seriously is to not disclose too many details about their actions to avoid the targets knowing what they need to avoid. So the public pretty much _doesn't know about the actual difference_ in actions done. We can only observe the outcome, where a platform doing more still might end up looking worse due to simply their audience containing different groups of people and the number of cherry picked bad examples which is highly correlated with platform size but nearly always reported in absolute numbers.
But Elon Musk also has been frequently deceptive in many ways when it was beneficial for his ventures (some would say that is required from a CEO) so I really wouldn't take _anything_ he says as truth. Instead look at his actions. Which involve washing out the seriousness and meaning of claiming someone is a pedo (weather he intended that or not). A trend pretty widespread on Twitter as far a as I know. A Trend which helps people harming children by given them the excuse that someone calling them out is just another toxic Twitter(user) hate campaign you shouldn't take serious.
The question here is not how bad it is in other places but how much does Meta do against it and is this another lobby approach to push through things abusing the suffering of children as an excuse.
Through then the "single largest market" claim might be a try to carter public outrage beyond what a fully honest reporting might have produced. Through also it depends a lot on how much Meta actually does against it. If the answer is Meta doesn't care at all then that would be a very reasonable thing to do. Through as far as I can tell Meta does care at least to the degree they legally have too. But it's hard to say because it's always easy to pic examples where it looks like they do not with a company of that size but all the cases where they did care you likely will never hear about. So if this court case goes ahead we might gain some interesting insights.
And if we assume that the Good Guys (hopefully the NM AG is one) have limited resources - then "where can we do the most good?" becomes an issue. It'd be nice to have some hint that they are grown-ups who care about that. Vs. talking smack about going after Meta right now because that's currently trending online.
If people are just using it as a medium to communicate and then doing deals offline or through other channels then it's about as absurd as holding the phone companies accountable for all deals arranged by phone
As an example, the /r/pokemon discord had an ugly situation where predators were exchanging rare pokemon trades with kids for nudes.
But maybe he is talking of contacts and communication that might lead to distribution by other channels? The initial contacts happen on the popular (e.g. Meta) platforms via DM's, and then it's distributed in these stashes on Telegram and whatnot for cash as they groom people?
Might be two different sides of this coin so to speak
Same shit was done forever on the DN. I guess many people think stealing from pedos is somewhat more moralic or so.
Meta is the world’s ‘single largest marketplace for paedophiles’, says New Mexico attorney general
One doesn't buy and sell paedophiles on Facebook.
I can't imagine why someone would want to, but I guess if you really want to buy a paedophile, Facebook would probably be the place to do it!
"Watching paedophiles get raped" doesn't strike me as a very common kink, but I know a woman who's turned on by the Berlin wall, so there's bound to be someone..
"Think of the children" is a common campaign theme so i suppose he's going for reelection soon.
According to Guardian (UK)
""" tech executives faced four hours of intensive questioning from
Congress members """
Four hours doesn't seem like much. My students can sleep through a 4
hour lecture! """ Parents of children who died by suicide after experiencing online
harms packed the Senate for the hearing on Wednesday. Senator
Lindsey Graham said the event drew "the largest [audience] I've seen
in this room". """
If so, this headline is a distraction from the issues at
hand. Paedophilia is not what is primarily being discussed here. It's
more generally that children are harmed by social media. And as far as
I am concerned that is a solid fact. """ In his first remarks, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg cast doubt on the
relationship between social media use and a decline in mental
health. "The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal
link between using social media and young people having worse mental
health," he said. """
Zuck is an outright liar. There are now mountains of exceptionally
good research showing a solid causal link between social media use
and negative mental health impacts on young people (no, I will not
google that for you, please do your own homework). """ Twitter, became the first tech firm to publicly endorse the Stop
CSAM Act """
Of course, because CSAM, while abhorrent, is the perfect distraction
from the problem that your entire platform is socially corrosive.[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/live/2024/jan/31/cong...
Whenever I see people saying "no, I will not google that for you, please do your own homework" they basically take a grenade to whatever argument is being made, agreeable nor not.
No ... YOU ... cite your sources if you wish to communicate a fact-backed point.
Also the new research is coming in so fast it's hard to keep track of. I'm really hoping some people will google that for me too, and I might learn some new ones.
Given that essentially every young person uses social media, I don't see how there can be research showing a causal link - how can you establish causality when there's no control group?
If you'd read this [0], which was the first result for "young people social media use" then you'd know that in Germany, for example only 52% use social media, Poland (58%), Czech Republic (56%), France (70%), Netherlands (65%), India (31%).
At least one third of the global population under 16 yo do not use social media. There's your control group.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/04/02/8-charts-...
what is the point of the statement if you call someone a liar, claim that there exists material to prove the lie and then say, that you will not link to this material?.
I'd like you to show some too.
Obviously you won't be able to refute what I said, because there are no papers out there that show there isn't a causal link between social media use and harms to mental health. That would be asking the impossible. But there is a massive and no longer ignorable body of work out there saying indeed there are direct causal links between social media use and mental harms. And Zuck just pretended that doesn't exist.
You know, I was actually hoping someone smarter and with more time than me would come back with something I'd missed.
Mark Zuckerberg stood up in front of a room full of grieving mothers and gave a limp, fake apology that made them burst into tears. His sheer lack of humanity and emotional disconnect with other humans could hardly be clearer.
"""
"The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link
between using social media and young people having worse mental
health," Zuckerberg told the crowded room.
Lori Schott, a bereaved mother from Colorado, said she cried when
she heard Zuckerberg’s comments.
"""
Those mums showed up to the hearing with photos of their dead kids who
had killed themselves as a direct result of using social media.My point is less emotional. Given the preponderance of evidence against Zickerbergs comments, he lied.
So, above I said that means Mark Zuckerberg just lied to congress and that makes him a criminal in the US right? Whether under oath or not.
That's why I was downvoted. Nothing to do with encouraging you to do a simple search, which you could have done in the time it took you to write a snarky reply.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/feb/01/parents-tech-c...
But Meta at least has some level of verification and active moderation. You can't generally get away with posting explicit porn for any amount of time.
Try signing up to Meta with a disposable email address or without a phone number. Sure these things can be side stepped, but for the average person it's a hurdle, and ultimately many petty criminals will be identifying themselves if it came to that.
On the other hand Xitter is so DESPERATE for you to sign up they don't care about dodgy emails or even insist on phone numbers any more.
And, let me tell you, Xitter makes ZERO effort to even LOOK at porn, so hard core porn is THRIVING on there, including stuff that leans heavily on youth taboos. I don't click or search for illegal stuff, but I've certainly scrolled past some dodgy posts.
It's ridiculous how Xitter is getting away with this while Musk is fully and openly demonising Zuck. Sure Zuck has a history of being an arse, but this new wave of tech bro reality bubble is just... a whole new level of insane.
What has me wondering in the article is that they speak about the platform Meta.
But Meta is like Alphabet a parent company which owned multiple platforms, something I think most people are aware of to some degree (like Facebook+Messenger are one platform, Instagram is another, probably Threads is it's own platform, too).
Now for some contexts it's reasonable to treat them as one (most legal regulatory ones), but in others (e.g. blame framing) it can be misleading.
Meta owns one of the biggest social networks (Facebook is still the biggest when it comes to certain categories, like older people, connecting Family, self help and hobby groups outside of the tech sector etc.) one of the biggest "picture" platforms and two(!) of the largest messengers.
So absolute numbers can be very misleading, like they THEORETICALLY could be the safest platforms for children doing the most against pedophile but still have the largest absolute number simply by shear total user count. Similar not clarifying what 'market for pedophiles' means is an issue like does it mean Meta seriously messed up and someone should go for prison for it, or does it mean people providing pedophilia services elsewhere use it so that customer can find them by providing fully legal content but sneaking in some "subtle but telling hints" about what kind of people they are (e.g. something equivalent to large black leather boots with red laces hinting that you are a neo-nazi in Germany, but sometimes it's just a unlucky coincidence and the person is not).
Similar misleading can be the use of absolute numbers, Meta owns one of the biggest social networks (Facebook is still the biggest when it comes to certain categories, like older people, connecting Family, self help and hobby groups outside of the tech sector etc.) one of the biggest "picture" platforms and two(!) of the largest messengers (which tend to exist at the border line between social platforms and "just" modern sms).
The main question is, is that case done to actually help protecting children or is it another iteration of abusing the suffering of children to push for more legal espionage or other questionable goals with no intend at all to do anything which effectively would help children?
It pains me that we even have to question that.
But too many lobbyist have abused the suffering of children to try to push through bad things, sometimes things which even would have made it worse for the same children they claim they want to protect.
Anyway while there are many gaps in the article it seems that it might be a well intended which would be nice but then it's done by a AG which is meant to act profit orientated which huge that looks sus flag.
Let's just hope that whatever happens the situation does actually get better for children.
But then there are so many many things which can be done in the US to reduce child abuse which are systematically ignored by so many of the people claiming to work to protect children it's really sad. But then in part of the US grooming and child marriages is still a think even thought it's basically legalized pedophilia, like it's just absurd.
Parents should work on keeping their kids away from social media, what’s the point of a kid having a Facebook or Instagram anyway?
Social media is a net negative to adults in my opinion, not to talk of children.
Parents are users too and in some cases they're addicted to social media as well. So it may be a quite hard task to make sure kids are having curated presence on the Internet. It may be even impossible because there's also a social pressure to be among peers and participate in whatever activities they do - nowadays mostly online obviously. Nobody wants to be an outsider and no young wants to be policed by an adult - pretty sure that's a prevalent theme across generations.
If anything, a social change should come from schools I believe but it may be still a hard task to accomplish. A second or third generation of digital natives is growing up and that's also important thing to consider.
No idea which are the most popular networks or activities among the youngest generation but I'd put my bet on tiktok, roblox and discord.