7 ms·

I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, et

• jfindper 9mo ago
  >If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar. If you think the arguments are eerily similar, I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws. I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.
  • Sevrene 9mo ago
    >I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws. Or maybe I just have a different conclusion to you? Because I do care, I do try to listen to the arguments. I'm no stranger to advocacy for civil liberties, they are important to me. I think all else being equal, freedom should be valued more over harm prevention. So if I'm for these laws, consider that a sign of how bad these sites have become, not how uninformed I am. > I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences. Yep of course it's not a 1:1, I agree. I don't mean to imply that people saying the same arguments today are wrong simply because people in the past were, but it does make me think more about it when I spot the same rhetoric. Often both sides have very reasonable concerns, as an example, the question isn't "should we have all or no freedom" Either extreme creates issues, yet both sides have valid arguments worth our time considering. We settle somewhere in the middle. Here's one vox pop with the introduction of breathalizers in UK (1967): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_tqQYmgMQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_tqQYmgMQg
    • jfindper 9mo ago
      >"Or maybe I just have a different conclusion to you?" Whatever your conclusion is, it’s sort of beside the point I was making, which is that the many of the arguments about mandated seatbelts (or smoking, alcohol) are meaningfully different than the arguments being made today about age verification for websites. >“So if I'm for these laws, consider that a sign of how bad these sites have become, not how uninformed I am.” This is kind of reinforcing what I said in my first comment. Most, if not all, of the arguments against these types of laws aren’t based on the premise that these sites aren’t bad. I haven’t seen anyone saying that TikTok is a societal good. Almost everyone agrees there. I’m saying that the main arguments are different. I am suggesting that there are more differences between the seatbelt debate and the age-verification-for-websites debate than there are similarities. Which is why I thought your comment of “eerily similar” was off-base.
      • palata 9mo ago
        So you're using many, many words to say that you disagree, and none of them to explain how you disagree? I (not the person you're disagreeing with, BTW) would be interested in your demonstration of how you disagree.
        • shafoshaf 9mo ago
          My takeaway is that jfindper is saying that seatbelt laws had a justification that does not have a parallel with this action regarding social media. IDK if this is how they would say it, but I think argument for seatbelts is that there is minimum disruption to usage, there is limited revocation of other rights, and the societal benefit is large and pretty unambiguous. The idea that I have to give up privacy, expose myself to additional risk (by having my identity logged), increase the chances that mentally susceptible people will have more exposure to fraud in order to get a solution that is not clear on how effective it will be makes the parallel a bit academic, if not an out right straw man.
          • palata 9mo ago
            > I think argument for seatbelts is that there is minimum disruption to usage, there is limited revocation of other rights, and the societal benefit is large and pretty unambiguous. Said like this, it looks to me that it has a parallel with social media. > The idea that I have to give up privacy You don't have to, though. > expose myself to additional risk (by having my identity logged) It doesn't have to be, we can have privacy-preserving age verification. Now we could discuss the specific implementation, but in general that's feasible. > increase the chances that mentally susceptible people will have more exposure to fraud It's not enough to say it: is it actually the case? You can already get phished by trying to access a social network, how does that make it worse? I don't think it's obvious. While the problem with kids and social media is, at this point, very well documented. > if not an out right straw man. I, for one, think it's an interesting experiment. All the arguments above could be used against making cigarettes illegal for children. Yet I am very convinced that making cigarettes illegal for children is the right choice.
• colordrops 9mo ago
  > I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified. This may be true but it has nothing to do with what the person you are replying to said.
  • biophysboy 9mo ago
    The original comment suggests that the policy is politically motivated. The commenter replied with other reasons for the policy other than political agitation. I think its a valid response. I also don't buy the implied claim from the original commenter that age-limits are paternalistic/suppressive with regard to political thought/speech. Large tech platforms control political thought/speech on a regular basis, a lot of which is executed by state actors. Even in the absence of devious actors, algorithms are editorial by nature; they are not neutral infrastructure by any means.
    • colordrops 9mo ago
      No, sorry, it's orthogonal to the poster's comment, which states that, regardless of merit, the purpose of the ban is political. Arguing for or against it is beside the point. Perhaps the original comment should have been more direct in and just said that Zionists are the ones pushing for these bans. The head of the ADL has made comments about this. A video by Sarah Hurwitz, Obama's speechwriter, went viral recently about how social media needs to be banned for young people because it's hurting the zionist movement. https://x.com/jennineak/status/1992395176283922767 https://x.com/jennineak/status/1992395176283922767
      • biophysboy 9mo ago
        The head of the ADL is a firehose of stupidity; that does not mean he controls policy. I also reject the pretense that public opinion of Israel would be higher among teens without social media, given their actions over the past few years.
• yfw 9mo ago
  If we are so concerned about the materials make the platforms moderate them like they used to do. Banning them reeks of favoring the murdoch outlets which are free to spread misinformation
  • fizwidget 9mo ago
    The ban is being enacted by the Australian Labor Party, which the Murdoch media is certainly not friendly with. If it ends up favouring Murdoch, it won’t have been deliberate.
    • joahua 9mo ago
      Murdoch media killed a story critical of Labor government member so there is not _no_ evidence of support here. https://archive.is/Hlr4l https://archive.is/Hlr4l
    • yfw 9mo ago
      You mean this guy? https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/08/29/albanese-murdoch-meeting-silence/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2022/08/29/albanese-murdoch-meetin...
  • biophysboy 9mo ago
    The traditional outlets you are referring to are now worse because of social media.
    • bdangubic 9mo ago
      nothing is worse than social media - absolutely nothing
      • deleted 9mo ago
        [deleted]
  • Sevrene 9mo ago
    I bet you Sky news gets more views through social media than TV broadcast these days! Many of their hosts are all over X, spreading misinformation. They are downstream from social media now, not seperate from it I suspect. Murdoch benefits from the political agitation that the landscape of social media provides. I do agree on making platforms moderate themselves. This legsliation helps do this by creating a discussion about the harms, enforcing a culture of harm (this is not for all ages, not default for everyone). Saying to the companies: "Hey, if you don't want to be regulated, clean up your platform so it's safer". Will that happen? no idea, but if it doesn't, no children is still a good goal (it's how you get there that has the contention).
• Hizonner 9mo ago
  > I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. You mean like the outside world? What happens when these hot house flowers of yours reach whatever magic age and get dumped into all of that, still with no clue, but with more responsibilities and more to lose? I haven't noticed a whole lot of governments, or even very many parents, worrying about doing much to actually prepare anybody for adulthood. It's always about protection, never about helping them become competent, independent human beings. Probably because protection is set-and-forget, or at least they think it is... whereas preparation requires actually spending time, and paying attention, and thinking, and communicating. Maybe even having to answer hard questions about your own ideas. ... and since when are kids supposed to be protected from politics? We used to call that "civics class".
  • lo_zamoyski 9mo ago
    I think you're taking things to an extreme. Let's make some distinctions first. On the one hand, you have violence and pornography, and also other crude content. There is nothing good about exposing children to these. It does not contribute to their growth or to their maturity as human beings and it is ridiculous to think it could. On the contrary, this content will cause psychological harm, causing distortions in their emotions, in their habituated appetites, in their self-understanding, and their understanding of normal relations. When deviance like that is tolerated, it shifts the Overton window. Children observe this tolerance and roll it into their sense of normality. Individuals suffer. The quality of society degrades substantially. On the other hand, we have political agitation. This one is more difficult to define and handle, especially in a liberal democratic society. There are examples of obvious political agitation, of course, but children should generally not be exposed to political agitation at all, except as a subject matter at an age appropriate level and in an appropriate pedagogic setting. Children don't have the intellectual or emotional maturity to examine such material in the wild on their own where they would be at the mercy of unscrupulous adult manipulators who couldn't care less about the well-being of children. (Ask yourself what kind of person would want to involve children in their political agitation to begin with.) So, there's a big difference between common sense things like these and coddling children. We want to prepare children for life, not teach them adaptation to depravity. You throw them into the filth of social and psychological pathology. Neither violence nor pornography should be normalized even in the adult world - it is harmful to the adults who consume it as well - so the idea that we should prepare children for life in some violent and twisted pornland is preposterous. Nobody has to put up with that garbage, and the law should be making sure they don't.
• pizza 9mo ago
  The platform operators have a responsibility to remove garbage from their site. I don’t see how it’s better if adults are the recipients of these alleged harms. And I definitely don’t see how the platform operators are going to clean up their act if — rather than being penalized — they can pretend that the problem has vanished into thin air because a specific category of vulnerable users is now de jure disappeared.
  • anonymous_sorry 9mo ago
    In the same way it's better that adults are the recipients of the harms of smoking, drinking or gambling. It's still not desirable, but societies have settled upon thresholds for when people have some capacity to take responsibility for their choices. Not saying those thresholds are always right and should definitely apply in this case, but it surely isn't an alien or non-obvious concept.
  • AlexandrB 9mo ago
    I don't want Mark Zuckerberg, or the government, deciding what's garbage. If they can empower the user to filter this stuff out on their own accord, that's great. The second problem is that the medium itself is garbage. Algorithmic feeds strongly encourage clickbait and sensationalism. Removing content does nothing to change the dynamic.
    • dlisboa 9mo ago
      So, do absolutely nothing is your plan?
      • behringer 9mo ago
        Yes. The internet is awesome and the government will destroy it.
        • roguecoder 9mo ago
          Ah yes, the genocides, fascists and blackmail are just delightful parts of that awesome internet that any kind of cooperative governance would simply _ruin_
• paganel 9mo ago
  > I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation Why not? Why won't you give political agency to young adults? I'm saying this as a kid who grew up in Romania, just after Ceausescu had been executed, so throughout the '90s, I do very well remember all the political news and commentary coming my way (I was a teen), but I can't say that it bothered, not at all, it made me more connected to the adult world and hence more prepared to tackle real life just a little bit later on. I won't comment on the other stuff, because that would make me bring back memories of watching TV1000 (a Swedish TV satellite channel) late at night on Saturdays, also in the early '90s, I won't say for what but suffice is to say that I turned out ok.
  • ricardobeat 9mo ago
    There's hardly any parallel between the type of political content (or corn) that was available on TV in the 90s, and what's found in today's social media. It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour.
    • tstrimple 9mo ago
      Rush Limbaugh started broadcasting in the 80's. Fox News in the 90's. Prior to that you had decades of propaganda against "communists" and anti-war protesters. Prior to that you had blatant lies about what would happen if black people got civil rights. Before that you had blatant lies about women's suffrage. The bullshit has always existed in very large quantities. The common uniting thread for the vast majority of the bullshit is conservative beliefs. They are always doing their most to make the world a worse place for some group or another.
    • acdha 9mo ago
      > It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour. This is exactly what conservative talk radio was like, and it radicalized a bunch of boomers – especially the ones with long car commutes who had limited counter examples. There’s a direct line between the guys joking about eating spotted owls or how feminists were too ugly to worry about rape to the modern environment, or saying that the government was discriminating against white men, but the difference now is scale and variety: now it reaches more people and there are more flavors available so the young woman who would’ve been turned off by Rush instead gets some wellness influencer talking about how birth control causes cancer.
• plantain 9mo ago
  > These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. From their users in Australia? Clearly not.
• jorblumesea 9mo ago
  yeah social media is proving itself to be a bad actor like big alcohol, big tobacco. No incentive to do the right thing or improve anything. ripping audiences away from them is the only way they'll understand.
• xethos 9mo ago
  > I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified. I hope we can agree that allowing every social media site to devolve into the above is the bigger problem. There can be some places that are adults-only; just like reality though, the world is better when open-by-default, with some places gated to adults-only. Shifting focus to "Why are we letting some of the most profitable companies the world has ever seen get away with being a cesspit?" lets us keep kids safe by default, doesn't attack E2EE, and doesn't default to the internet becoming a surveillance state. If we start by getting Facebook and Twitter (et al.) to clean up their acts, we can all work, yell, and vote together, instead of some yelling about their kids being shown unexpected pornography, and others yelling about the internet becoming a surveillance state. Because both can be real concerns - but a starter solution can get the vast majority of voters on-board, and garner real progress, instead of giving Facebook more data and control, or governments a turn-key dictatorship.
  • roguecoder 9mo ago
    I don't think we've shown that that cleanup is possible. Whenever platforms have taken even the smallest steps in that direction, the right-wing authoritarian political parties freak out and blackmail them into stopping, or in the case of Musk simply buy them out outright.
    • makeitdouble 9mo ago
      If cleaning it isn't possible, getting kids to know it and navigate the filth is required. Same way we teach kids how to interact with people on the street and get a sense of who to trust when they're in trouble and how to avoid trouble in the first place.
      • ratatougi 9mo ago
        I agree. However social media is so addictive that even if we are aware of its harm, we stil use it
• protocolture 9mo ago
  >I don't think we should normalise children on platforms where the content contains political agitation, sexual and violent content, crypto and fintech scams, etc. Especially when this content is packaged up to them and commodified. The law could instead prohibit scams and violence? >These platforms make more money than the ATO (Australian Tax Office) brings in a year. Irrelevant. >but the idea that there isn't a legitimate goal here (keeping children safe) Almost every other avenue, including doing nothing, has more merit than that which has been implemented. >If you look back at vox pops from when drink-driving laws were introduced, or when seatbelts became mandatory, or when ID requirements were tightened, the arguments for and against were eerily similar. Theres some basic negative freedom implications from those, but they dont intend to ban a class of person from accessing a mundane element of human society.