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Comment by akersten | Hacker News Reader

> Clearly we can't do nothing,

Why is that so clear? I can think of hundreds of real daily problems I'd rather my legislators be focused on than deciding how old my kids have to be before they're allowed on some website.

I would like affordable groceries and public transport, not whatever this is.

If they really want to "do something" then require an 18+ ID at a cell phone points of sale. That'll be something that won't affect me and actually will temper a ton of underage Internet use. Then they can study the actual effect of that and whether the harms were exaggerated after all.

And, reminder, so no one here loses the plot: this is a backdoor feel good measure lobbied for by big tech to push us into a world with mandatory device attestation so their ad impressions are worth more. They could care less about your kids.

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Right? If I had to come to with like, five problems that I felt like they were both urgent enough and and significant enough that we should literally implement the least bad policy immediately rather than do nothing until we come up with something better, I don't think this would be on my list, and it definitely wouldn't be the top of my list if it was. There are things I think that are more harmful and have been going on a lot longer where people don't seem to have any desire to push back as hard against letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, so it's hard for me to take legislation like this at face value rather than suspecting that there's something less direct that the government is getting out of it (and I say this as someone who is pretty much invariably very far to the left and often in favor of heavier government involvement in various areas).

Functioning democracy seems pretty important, and a healthy shared reality and news is a key component of that.

Social media, as currently implemented, directly harms that.

I have basically the same reaction to this framing: if I had to list the five largest threats to our functioning democracy in the US right now, social media use by teenagers would not make the list.

What are your five largest threats to functioning democracy in the US right now?

Because I question any list that doesn't include a substantial chunk of voters being ignorant on concerns of critical importance to the country.

And if that's a problem now, as a result of a couple decades of low-brow, high-emotion 80s and 90s conservative talk radio and tv, then what do you think better-engineered algorithmic slop is doing to the next voting cohort's brains?

Democracies succeed or fail on the average voter's ability to somewhat understand matters.

Nothing is not politically viable for the parents who want controls to limit their children's access. It's funny watching HN constantly berate parents for not parenting while parents' material conditions don't change. Same environment, same result, and frankly there's more of them and they're better organized. All it takes is parents to win once. You have to not lose every time.

What control is missing from parent who want to control their children? From what I see they can already set strict parental controls

That would do nothing to help with the pressure kids will feel if others are on social media.

Why is resisting peer pressure during childhood bad?

Social isolation is bad for kids. We learned this during COVID lockdowns.

Social media is anything but social and promotes bad brain development for children.

Change my mind.

You cannot regulate peer pressure, even with the complete ban you would still have kids using other platforms for social interaction and have peer pressure, like on roblox or whatever

There's always going to be 'the actual Internet' accessible by kids, as in non-corporate, non-walled gardens social forums. Chans, IRC, etc.

What this effectively does is disadvantage large corporate social media companies to the benefit of smaller, more decentralized alternatives.

To which the anarchist in me says: fuck yes.

> You cannot regulate ...

This has never stopped anyone. For example, Climate change legislation makes little sense unless implemented worldwide. War crime or anti-terror legislation doesn't really make sense unless it's implemented across borders (and pretending doesn't count. Nobody's even talking about arresting Putin, or anyone else for that matter). Taxation ...

The controls I'm referring to limit all kids access simultaneously. Turning off just my kid's access doesn't change the social conditions under which kids interact. It just cuts off them from their friend groups while nothing else changes.

Where in the settings do I go to turn off every kid's access at once? As far as I know, that setting is only accessible through my legislative representative.

Why are you allowed to dictate how others raise their children?

They don’t get a say in your kids diet or religion or choice of sport.

There are limits to laws and limiting social media companies' ability to have child users is well within those.

If you don't like it, contact your representative instead of spinning your wheels on HN.

I don't understand, could you rephrase your answer to his question? I read his question and read your response, but don't see a connection between the two.

I'll rephrase it for you: "Fuck you".

Exactly. Out donate me. Until then, it's whinging.

So, are you admitting there's no moral justification here? It's just 'do-it-because-you-want-to'?

Debate won't change the minds here. I've never seen a privacy-über-alles person arrive at social media should not exist. Maybe you have?

I'd have to wipe entire years of experience raising my kids in a world of social media. How do you propose I do that?

If you aren't interested in changing minds, why do you comment in forum threads at all?

You've seen someone about face? Please share a link to the thread. I'd love to read it.

Sorry, but that's not an answer to my question. To be honest, I'm starting to feel like you're not really talking to me, you're just responding to me.

If you're asking for evidence of people changing their minds, I've done that, though I will admit I haven't done it in the past page of comments on hackernews.

Normally it's not a wholesale change of opinion, but a shift in nuance or a changing of details.

But even if I found such a thing, that doesn't answer my question.

Respectfully, I'll believe it when I see it.

Most of my interactions in age gating discussions on HN have pushed me toward indignation, rather than nuance. It's arguing against someone's hypothetical dystopian nightmare. I'm tired of the game. If they want to affect change, they can do it financially as I am.

Looking forward to seeing this same treatment on the privacy folks and how they respond.

So why are you commenting here?

It seems like this EFF article is suggesting that sort of political action and attempting to coordinate it. Why exactly are you “spinning your wheels” here on HN?

They do have plenty of influence over the environment your child lives in. Vaccination for public school entry would be a good example.

Vaccination has a very reasonable public health argument, even ignoring the fact that it has been massively eroded, and comparing vaccination to social media is disingenuous.

If Timmy is on Instagram, John’s health isn’t at risk. If Timmy comes to school with measles, John’s health is at risk, and vaccination has been shown to reduce the risk to both Timmy and John.

> Where in the settings do I go to turn off every kid's access at once?

It might be worth re-reading this particular sentence again, out loud, and really consider what you're asking for here. And why stop at internet access once you're starting to think like this?

The above poster isn't saying Internet access; they're saying access to the ad-filled Skinner boxes that are trying to position themselves as necessary for communication through network effects.

Incidentally, the bill doesn't even say they can't use them; it just says the platform has to tone down the Skinner box part for children.

> This subdivision does not prohibit a covered platform from permitting a user who is under 16 years of age to create or maintain an account on the covered platform if that user is not provided with any addictive feature.

So it's not a social media ban. It's an addictive features for children ban. And it seems kind of obvious that running an optimization algorithm with engagement/attention as the objective is going to be bad? If that optimization works, you would almost necessarily have to be detracting from other parts of the person's life (interfering with study, exercise, socialization, etc.), which seems to be exactly what we see in aggregate (lowering test scores, increased isolation, etc.).

The poster seems to be asking to limit access to the platform, not change the platform to be non-addictive. I understand what you are saying is what the law is trying to accomplish, but I think they are clearly expressing the desire to limit all kids access to social media apps.

>Turning off just my kid's access doesn't change the social conditions under which kids interact. It just cuts off them from their friend groups while nothing else changes.

If you don't teach them to resist peer pressure when they're younger then they won't know how to when they turn 16 or 18 either, and they'll end up as losers with an external locus of control who blame other people and apps for their own failures of willpower.

Peer pressure is one thing. The entire commercial might of the US tech and cultural industry is harder to resist. It’s not fair to put responsibility on children to have willpower in their use of SM when thousands of PHds are actively researching how to make the services more addictive and increase their network effects.

It would appear that is exactly what is being proposed : to not place that responsibility on the children, but for the parents and other adults to shoulder that burden by not allowing the children to become victims of the addictive Social Media empire.

Why do you think you need to take action on how other people raise their children?

Why do you think you can limit what relationship I have with my legislative representative? If you don't like it, out spend me in political donations.

What a non answer…

Gee, how very democratic. If others don't like how you're trying to curtail their liberty, they should just out-bribe the politicians.

Just as the Framers intended.

You're writing this like a kid whose about to have their internet taken away. If you're an adult, congrats, nothing changes.

I'll thank you to keep your filthy hands off my kids' access.

The problem is strict controls is not helpful. My kids teachers often assign homework which is watch some YouTube video - which means I have to give my kids access to all of YouTube including channels i don't approve of. In turn i have to stare at my kids screen - a very creepy move - instead of working on whatever my own project is when they are doing homework.

I constantly find something as a parent where I can block way too much, or nothing at all. There is no middle ground. Mind you a middle ground for something the size of YouTube is probably impossible just because of the quantity of things there that I might or might not want my kids to see - but the current situation is not working.

When my kids got to an age they started asking for YouTube videos, I found it entirely frustrating that Youtube Kids was just not feasible to setup like you describe. It was a choice between 3 things, everything, the "kids" section whatever that meant for YouTube, and just tell them sorry, not happening. Within the kids section there seemed to be some controls to help, but I found they did not work well at all and I could easily watch anything in the expanded kids section. I'd have been happy with a whitelist for channels.

This is why blunt legislation is needed.

The existing parental control features are deliberately mis-designed, because there's a lot of money at stake and Meta / Google aren't stupid.

Does anyone really think they didn't run uptake and engagement impact tests on various proposed parental control options... and then ship the one that impacted their revenue least?

The only reason there are controls, in any sense, is as a fig leaf when the lawsuits inevitably started flying (read: now), so they can say 'See, we take this very seriously...'

Yep. All I want is allow/deny permissions on particular channels. For my little guy I'd set up a blanket Deny rule, with a few channels allowed; for older kids parents might want to go the other way.

All of the "parent better" messages are useless (not to mention out of touch) when technical tools to do so are not made avaliable to us. And, of course, those tools are not given because YouTube wants to drop kids into the endless algorithmic feed of slop. The age verification laws are stupid, and will nowhere address the actual problem. YouTube (and the like) - not parents - will still have full control.

It’s useless as a blanket statement, but not if you go in specifics. With enough public pressure targeted specifically at YouTube it’s completely possible they would add more controls, and is more reasonable than a complete ban of social platforms

I understand what you mean, but I do not, at this point, think "public pressure" is sufficient. I once did, but that was before ad companies (and they're all ad companies, at their root) unlocked the full potential (if they even have) of data-mining and algorithmic targeting. They know us better than we know ourselves, and make too much money hijacking our dopamine systems to respond to anything we say we want. Legislation is the only thing that will reign them in.

I'm not saying that social media can't be good, or shouldn't exist, or shouldn't be able to make money. Early-YouTube and early-Facebook and early-Twitter (and their fallen predecessors) were good communicative platforms. I used them, and by-and-large thought they made my life, and society at large, better.

It's the data-mining and algorithmic targeting / feeds that need to be regulated.

Thanks, that’s the type of details I was looking for, as I’m not a parent myself. That does sound like a bad situation, indeed. Though it’s also a bit strange that watching a YouTube video is a homework. I would have assumed that schools have their own platform

This is the source of the problem.

It's not that different from a school telling kids to smoke a cigarette as a homework assignment.

The point that HN libertarians miss is that the whole point of social networks is that they benefit from network effects. This is what makes them profitable. But it’s also what makes it necessary to subject them to democratic accountability and makes them a legitimate target of public policy.

If my teenagers entire peer groups spends 90% of their waking life on addictive social networks and a ‘normal’ social life is impossible without it then the parent is faced with a Hobsons choice. It’s easy enough to band my 10 year old from social networks. It’s much more complex doing that to 14 year olds and potentially does have negative effects for them unless their friends are similarly limited. This is why we need regulation.

One obvious solution is of course to break these companies up. Set a maximum user count that a communication network operator is allowed to have before we break them up (say, 10M). Require some kind of good-faith open federation for any communication provider over a certain size (e.g. if a user adds a user from another provider as a friend/contact/follow, you must allow that and cannot claim you are "blocking spam" or something to act as a gatekeeper).

Then your friends could use the evil instance, you could talk to them on it through your good one as a federating relay (e.g. yours might operate on a friend whitelist), but the parent could otherwise block access to the wider content pool and ad-filled addictive UI of the evil instances.

This would actually work well for ISPs and phone companies too while we're at it. And email providers. Actually a statutory maximum size (customers, revenue, etc.) could make sense for companies in general, probably. Revenue above 0.1% of GDP? Breakup.

If your 14yo spends 90% of their waking life on any device it should be pretty obvious for a parent. If you let your kid spend that much time on a phone, then any government ban in place isn't going to do what you think it will.

Im very, very far from being a libertarian…

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