What control is missing from parent who want to control their children? From what I see they can already set strict parental controls
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.
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...'
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.
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.
It's not that different from a school telling kids to smoke a cigarette as a homework assignment.
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.
They don’t get a say in your kids diet or religion or choice of sport.
If you don't like it, contact your representative instead of spinning your wheels on HN.
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'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.
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.
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.
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?
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.).
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.
Just as the Framers intended.
Change my mind.
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.
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 ...
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.
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.