From Paris to New Delhi, the Push to Ban Teens from Social Media Is Going Global
wsj.com
wsj.com
Yes, and simple solution could be (or: could've been) making parents control their kids social media usage. It's only harmful in excessive amounts, several hours a day. (Unlike drugs, or alcohol that only needs secons to be harmful.) Parents can control that, and absolutely would if government told them so.
There is absolutely no reason to ban kids from social media.
fuck it, ban kids from having any form of smart phone or social media. give em all sony ericssons with pre paid sims that force them to put effort into their texts and actually socialize. maybe that will give imagination a fighting chance. what possible benefit could there be to let kids doom scroll? if you were a kid, why would you read or play or socialize when you could doom scroll? yes it is a parents responsibility to control their kids, and not one parent has any idea or education as to how modern social media affects a child - do you expect modern parents to spontaneously manifest this knowledge?
for what its worth , i once suggested to simply make it illegal for parents to let kids on facebook. but that doesn't offer much scope for multi national corporations to scrape PII (which is probably the real priority)
That was a "we are not in Kansas anymore" moment.
How?
- moderate amount of Internet is *not harmful* for children
- parents, in most of the cases *can* control excessive amount of usage
- governments haven't tried educating the children and their parents yet. (Or any other method)
- instead they are banning the kids from the Internet and deanonymise adults
Can you explain what this means?
Are people not aware that the Internet can be dangerous for children? Probably everyone thinks this so what else does the government need to educate?
What about the significant amount of people who don't trust the government
AIM and IRC did not get us to this point. I doubt the original Instagram that was purely about posting dumb photos with your friends would have either.
Given how concentrated the industry is, the buck stops with about four dudes who decided this was the course they wanted to set.
I don't think this is what social media provides. With social media people are able to choose one perspective and seem to just immerse themselves in a bubble so that they only get exposed to the view of their choice.
From being informed of literally anything.
Before COVID, the median US High school grad could not pass a middle school reading or math exam by merit. The trend has worsened so that today's median grad cannot demonstrate knowledge they were presented after elementary school. By the numbers, scrolling is inhibiting education on a societal scale.
The GP implied that nefarious forces might be working to remove social media from youths in order to control them better. My argument is that social media has them pretty well under control.
edit: rewording
Just this past 12 months both my drivers license and passport have been involved in data breaches and there are no penalties or recompense for the companies at fault, so my patience for providing ID is near zero.
Because self inputed age fields don't work. People just lie to access what they want.
You have to understand that the goal here is not token compliance but actually limiting teenagers exposure to something we now know to be highly addictive and damaging to mental health.
Clearly, the market is not able to self restrict and will exploit every opportunities given to it. It's only logical to take stronger restriction. That's basically bringing regulations on social media on the same track as tobacco and alcohol.
Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense.
Requiring ID is not entirely the right approach here I think. You're forcing people to reveal PII for limited gain, and building systems you can't knock down later.
The EU is working on a zero knowledge proof system for exactly this purpose, but it doesn't quite seem to be ready for prime time yet.
https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/annexe...
It is in the sense that it entices the industry to come up with a better approach.
Otherwise they'll just sit on their piles of gold saying that it can't be done, as they have been doing for far too long.
We have gone from the industry clamouring that what's being done now is not possible and spending millions of lobbying money against it, to such laws spreading like wildfire.
The next step is the (inevitable) mess up because implementations won't be foolproof, followed by yet more millions of lobbying money being spent to amplify the effect of these mess ups.
Eventually we will come to a new normal. It will take time. But the hope is that the cat is out of the bag and we don't come back to a model that we know hurts children and pretend it's just how it is.
You can expect another law or directive to explain how it has to be done. In the EU, GDPR does apply so you can be sure that poorly storing ID copies for this purpose will not fly.
But, I think it's clearly what ID is for and a legitimate use case for electronic ID. ID is the tool the state uses to give you a way to prove you are who you pretend to be.
I think there's something a bit funny in worrying about giving a copy of your IDs to companies who already know everything about you from your full social graph to your political leanings and interests.
I believe it's because the governments (which are far more powerful than any "corporation", because they have the de facto monopoly of violence: Microsoft can sue you, but the government can just jail you) can then pressure said companies if there's something that is not liked, with all consequences that come from there.
There's no need to bring conspiracy theories in, FTR. The power of the government must be always limited and bound by strong chains, and this goes in the opposite direction.
But the idea that giving your ID changes anything is a fiction. These platforms already require you to provide your phone numbers or an email. They have your location. They already know who you are and they can already be pressured by the government for all that. They don't even need to be pressured actually. They willfully share a ton of information as has been shown time and time again. The ID that you can somehow get plausible deniability regarding the association between your social media profile and identity is a complete myth.
> There's no need to bring conspiracy theories in, FTR. The power of the government must be always limited and bound by strong chains, and this goes in the opposite direction.
I don't think a theorical, overblown and mostly fictitious increase in risks trumps the very real need to limit the armful impact of these actors. It makes for ok-ish lobbying but that's pretty much it.
I'd say it's an expansion of the "attack surface". Not to mention: what happens with those IDs after the fact?
> I don't think a theorical, overblown and mostly fictitious increase in risks
It already happened in my country (an European country) during the pandemic (and not in the first days). So it's not fictitious.
On Android you cannot limit app installation
The tension between freedom and public health is obviously very real. That's why liberal democracies generally rely on public debate and expert opinions to decide what should be controlled and what should be widely available.
Turns out, the expert opinions on social media is not very good and very much in favour of a ban for minors. Also turns out that the public is apparently in support of the ban.
but no parent lets their kid play with either land mines or crack cocaine do they? cos the dangers are real. if the dangers were real, YOU wouldnt be on it would you?
Just like porn, its so dangerous kids just CANNOT be shown it, yet fine for adults obviously. that is not the same for crack cocaine and land mines (ie real dangers)
If this would have been the case, proper parental controls would have been in place everywhere. Instead, parental controls are only used to maximize profits.
It's just so rare for so many governments to simultaneously, suddenly, after so many years of social media agree that it's a problem on the scale of chloroflurocarbons.
Pro-suicide content has been a thing since the days of USENET. It's been a (lesser) problem on social media since the start. Is it really just that one case got over the hysteria threshold?
But yes, if the algorithm is suggesting pro-suicide content then the developers are morally, if not legally, liable for that and should expect some consequences. I note that one of the few taboos maintained by the otherwise grossly irresponsible UK media is not reporting on suicide (because this is known to be a trigger). You might see "famous musician died suddenly at a young age" and have to connect the dots yourself.
if she hadnt searched for it herself, it wouldnt have suggested it. the parents (understandly) want to blame someone for it. politics is emotion, not logic.
That is not an excuse for suggesting it.
Just have a look at Epstein files, you can see that a lot of "occidental" politics and business leaders were connected to him one way or another. You see that we don't have equal rights but some get privileged info about big financial changes that could help them grow their wealth.
Look at how hard we had to fight Microsoft contracts creeping in everywhere in public institutions and schools, when you see in background that Microsoft was spending billions organizing events, gifts, ... to "legally" bribe officials.
Now we can all see that there is a big dictatorial shift in the political leaders of occidental countries that used to be lands of freedom and rights. Politics see that they are unpopular and there is an uproar of the population to have change, but on the other side they see that a lot of dictatorial countries are able to control their population and stay in power using liberty restriction regulations (China, N Korea, Russia, Arabian countries, ...). So they are going to do the same.
And the best way for them to support such reduction in freedom for populations is to bound together to do it together: - One "western" country leader that would instigate censorship, and reducing freedom and privacy right would be seen too clearly as abusing and on a dictatorial trend. - But if multiple of them push for that at the same time, it might more easily be seen as "for the greater good", because they are the "free countries"...
So sad that the second world war is so far away, almost everyone forgot what happened in the years before the Nazi took control of Germany and started the obvious horrors. But we are on the same path.
Putin's Russia is also a good example of how a country that was on the verge of freedom and liberty for its population, slowly but surely shifted to the current dictatorial state. All of that without a clear "revolution" or sudden shift. And officially it is still a "democratic" country...
Yes. Like most of the "news".
Google, Meta, Microsoft and Apple really need your personal data.
They work with other orgs, e.g. Fairplay (formerly CCFC) in the US.
There is also the related term “defensive democracy”, supposedly different but in practice the end result is the same. In both cases the democratic process is failing to achieve the results desired by those in power, so forceful intervention is used to steer future results.
Managed democracy seems fine so long as you can remove the bastards if they become Putin-like.
There's a lot of hot air about democracy being voting for parties or politicians for the policies we like. Personally I have never felt that I've ever positively influenced policy with my voting. I have voted against a party because I disliked their policy, but that counterfactual is harder to judge (either my vote loses, or the policy doesn't occur : either way it is unclear if my vote mattered?).
I'm rather cynical about democracy - it feels mostly like children's participation awards (which are great!).