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Comment by macintux | Hacker News Reader

I’ve gotten by for the last several years without Facebook or Google (I do use a YT account, but not for anything meaningful). It’s annoying, but doable.

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>I’ve gotten by for the last several years without Facebook or Google (I do use a YT account, but not for anything meaningful). It’s annoying, but doable.

I think the point is that the internet and particularly social media is now the de-facto town square. States are basically requiring identification to speak or criticize government in the town square. If you take a step back and look at it that way, it's grossly anti-American.

Imagine back in the day, if you had any type of meeting/gathering to discuss anything that might be related to politics, and the police were there to collect everyone's Id. AA meetings, computer meetups, hobby gathering, HOA meetings, etc. This is essentially that, except on a computer. Just think of the children!

I can't reply to the other responder, but even if these are shopping malls... Those are already acknowledged as common spaces at least in California where most of them are headquartered. Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, it was held that a shopping mall was not allowed to remove students asking for signatures on a motion.

PruneYards was found not to be significantly harmed by the expressive activity, because the goal of the commercial activity is to sell stuff. But the goal of an online social media platform is to curate a coherent speech product, and allowing people to insert themselves unwanted into that product is a very significant imposition on the platform.

Also no one lives or eats or breathes on Twitter so the notion that they are exercising an online platform the same way they would exercise the park on Main Street does not follow.

Not to mention the fact that the entire point of the town square is that it is a place for discussion of the function of the polis with the citizenry of the polis. Online social media is a place to consume garbage from foreign actors and influencers.

>PruneYards was found not to be significantly harmed by the expressive activity, because the goal of the commercial activity is to sell stuff. But the goal of an online social media platform is to curate a coherent speech product, and allowing people to insert themselves unwanted into that product is a very significant imposition on the platform.

That is true but unrelated to the DeSantis law. The social media companies obviously don't want to kick kids off their platform considering they are a significant portion of their audience.

The DeSantis law states the government is mandating that social media companies ID everybody. This does have precedent though because governments require bars and food marts to ID young people for cigarettes, but it's different because they are not required to ID everybody. I'm not sure they are even required to ID people, they can just be prosecuted for selling cigarettes and alcohol to minors. I think the ID part was just the most convenient way to not get prosecuted.

Of course requiring social media companies to ID everybody will have a massive chilling effect on political discourse. That might be part of the objective or at least a convenient side effect.

It is related. One poster suggested that the online platforms (which are, for a number of reasons previously noted, not town squares) are actually more like shopping malls. Another post noted that shopping malls (in California) can be subject to requirements to allow someone else’s speech in their area of commerce.

But online platforms are not like shopping malls, because online platforms sell advertiser access to a coherent speech product, which is distinct from the sale of goods in ways that profoundly affect first amendment protection of their business.

>But online platforms are not like shopping malls, because online platforms sell advertiser access to a coherent speech product, which is distinct from the sale of goods in ways that profoundly affect first amendment protection of their business.

But the social media companies aren't the ones who want age verification and to kick people off their platforms, the government is. The companies want kids in their audience, kids want to be in their audience, many parents are fine with kids in their audience, it's the government of Florida who wants to ban kids.

Correct me if I'm misunderstanding but you seem to be arguing that social media companies should be allowed to kick people off their platforms, which would trump the individual's free speech. That isn't the issue here.

This discussion has gotten a bit convoluted. I apologize for not being clear. Original idea was that the government can’t kick every kid off social media because social media is the public square and kicking people out of the public square is wrong.

The reason why this argument is bad is that online social media platforms aren’t the public square. They’re not the public square because they are something else: a coherent speech product.

They are allowed to kick people off because they produce a coherent speech product.

But you are right, the fact that they are allowed to kick people off is not directly related to the fact the government wants to bar kids from using these sites.

Are you and I in full agreement now? I think we might be.

Thanks for clarifying.

>the government can’t kick every kid off social media because social media is the public square and kicking people out of the public square is wrong.

I think kicking kids off isn't the primary complaint. I think that to enforce kicking kids off requires social media platforms to ID everyone to ensure they aren't kids. That's the chilling effect. Fewer people will post their true feelings (good or bad), which lessens citizen discourse (which IMO is bad).

>They’re not the public square because they are something else: a coherent speech product.

How do you define a coherent speech product and what makes it unable to also be a public square?

Oh, apologies if ordering shifted. I was replying to another replier, but unable to do it on their actual post.

I'm not particularly rooting for this either. I am sympathetic that social media might be bad for kids, but this isn't the way

I think in the first couple minutes after posting, replies are disabled.

It’s not a defacto town square though.

If anything, these services are more similar to shopping malls. And don’t be surprised when the mall cop throws you out for causing a scene, or just lounging about and not consuming enough.

1. You don't need an ID to shop at a mall.

2. The government doesn't tell mall cops what to do.

Even if it was the town square many actual town squares require adults to accompany minors. Sure enough if you had a bunch of unattended 12 year olds hanging out the cops would be called and parents asked to be parents.

Even worse would happen if you left your 6 year old wonder around the town square unattended while you went to a movie.

Except that's new too. When I was a kid, I could travel wherever I wanted without anyone calling the police on me. It was just normal for gangs of elementary schoolers to wander about. I'm a millennial, so it wasn't even that long ago this was a thing.

It's crazy. We've stopped treating children like children and started treating them like babies that need constant supervision.

And once again, it is literally safer now than when we were kids. By every crime statistic, it's safer now than ever.

The issue here has absolutely nothing to do with how it affects kids, it has to do with how it affects adults. Again: "States are basically requiring identification to speak or criticize government in the town square."

The fact that the legislation is intended to affect kids is irrelevant if the only legally permitted way to comply damages the individual liberties of adults.

>Even if it was the town square many actual town squares require adults to accompany minors. Sure enough if you had a bunch of unattended 12 year olds hanging out the cops would be called and parents asked to be parents.

What? Where is this the case?

This has become such a common trope that I think people fail to apply even a modicum of scrutiny: the internet is not the town square and whatever your idea of the town square is likely wrong if you think its as wild-west-y as the internet is.

Firstly, try to approach children in the town square while wearing a mask for anonymity; or try to hold up images of porn in your town square. You will not be there long, you'd likely be detained, and you'd likely be asked for identification.

Secondly, why do people think there is some sort of town square? I have lived in several large US cities and several small towns. In neither was there any sort of common place where we all congregated to address matters of the town. At best, there are city hall/city council meetings where the public can speak but at least in my town (and I know of many others), identification is required to prove that you live in the town!

Even the founding fathers, when writing under pseudonyms, understood that anonymity and circulation was incumbent upon them to maintain, not that they were entitled to it because "town square."

To address your last point: this is not simply some ill conceived moral panic/think of the children type moment. Go try to host - as an adult - an AA meeting or "computer meetup" with children that happens to be held in the local adult toy shop. See how well that goes for you. At this point, we know children are getting approached by adults at a large scale on instagram, we know children are getting exposed to a lot of adult content on twitter, and on the spectrum between innocent HOA meeting and damaging to society as a whole, its clearly more towards the latter.

"Secondly, why do people think there is some sort of town square?"

Cities and towns in the US were once often built around town squares. Many cities have open public areas like this in Europe and South America where people can congregate. Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires comes to mind. Cities in the US haven't been designed around a central town square in a long time, but the term has stuck colloquially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_de_Mayo

Below is a link to William Penn's original plan for Philadelphia, where the city would have a five town squares, with one in the center of each of four quadrants, and the largest in the city center. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gary-Libecap/publicatio...

https://lauriephillips.com/philadelphias-five-original-squar...

Boston long had a number of town squares, many of which no longer exist, such as Haymarket Square. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_Square_(Boston)

My point is not that they NEVER existed, its that they no longer exist in the capacity most people mean when they use the term. As you mentioned, cities used to be organized around them. Most people now live in cities that are either don't have one at all or don't have one that is used in the way they were hundreds of years ago.

Furthermore, the behavior that was tolerated in the town square would not be close to what we tolerate online. And we don't afford kids the freedom in the real world that we do online. I am not sure why people think that requiring parental consent or age verification online is some sort of assault on personal liberty.

Requiring age verification online for adults is the only way to keep kids out.

And requiring identification to lounge on the town square is generally considered unconstitutional in the U.S.

I don’t know how to square this circle. Can you conduct age verification without requiring identification?

I think this again comes back to the idea of thinking of it as some sort of digital town square.

We don't seem to have an issue with the government requiring businesses to check ID for alcohol, tobacco, porn (in the physical world), and firearms. Movie theaters check ID for rated R movies if you appear to be under 17. In fact, a lot of online retailers of alcohol and tobacco now require ID to be verified at purchase instead of at delivery.

Facebook/Twitter/TikTok/etc are not the digital town square; the most charitable analogy for them is they they are merchants in the town square. And the rules should still apply to them.

For the most part, those real-world ID checks do not involve keeping a record, or a durable storage of what you say, or see, or listen to while you're there.

There's nothing preventing us from the law requiring the same for online verification. It doesn't have to be the case that Facebook or Twitter or whatever store any information other than at some point they did verify your age.

As to the other information, you're more making the case that online tracking should be illegal (which I'd agree with). For the majority of people, they are either unaware or uninformed about how to prevent online tracking to a sufficient degree. If you're signed into your Google and Facebook accounts and then surfing the web, theres a good chance you're getting caught up in cross site tracking. Hell, even if you don't have accounts explicitly, its not like Facebook isn't tracking non-users. In the real world, stalking is illegal.

Also, in my state (Washington), IDs now have barcodes on them. When I buy beer at the store, the clerk doesn't even look at my ID; he/she scans it and thats it. I'd hope the information about what type of beer and how often I buy it isn't being stored somewhere but I'm just hoping.

>This has become such a common trope that I think people fail to apply even a modicum of scrutiny: the internet is not the town square

Where is the majority of politics and recent events discussed? Where are new ideas shared and accepted or rejected? Where is this topic being discussed? Case rested.

>Secondly, why do people think there is some sort of town square?

It's an international phenomenon, probably as old as civilizations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_square

The rest of your post sounds like moral panic.

If actual politics reflected sentiment on the internet, US politics would look very different. The Overton window on the internet is very different from real life, there is tremendous bot traffic from outside the US, there are people with multiple accounts, and algorithms and "trust and safety" rules that promote certain views above others. You are confusing signal and noise. The majority of politics - that matter - is not discussed online, the majority of new ideas are not shared/accepted/rejected online - even in a business sense most founders know their cofounders personally, not from online chats. Case rested.

You idea of the town square is also outdated. Do you think the municipal government in Rome still meets at the Forum? And you did not address my point that even if it did exist as it did in whatever millennium you yearn for, would the behavior that is present on the internet be tolerated the same way? Was the Forum or Copley or Dock square known for adult men showing their genitalia to underage women? Your idea of a town square is antiquated and likely would not have tolerated the behavior you think the internet should just because its the town square. Case rested.

> The rest of your post sounds like moral panic.

Nice rebuttal there. If it's just moral panic, why does the data suggest that social media use its detrimental to adolescents' mental health and well being? Why is the effort to curtail social media influence on kids' a bipartisan effort in an increasingly partisan society? Even the misguided level of libertarianism you're probably advocating for understands that short of pure anarchy, there are some externalities governments have to address, chief among them are social media platforms that are evidently harmful to certain parts of society (young kids). Case rested.

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