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Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says
- rimbo789 8mo agoGreat. About 10 years too late but better than nothing. Hope it becomes the global norm. Once that’s done we should ban the over the 65+.
- dist-epoch 8mo agoYeah. We need to introduce social-media literacy tests that certify that you are capable of being a good valuable citizen on social media instead of a disinformation sharer and slop consumer.
- amelius 8mo agoMaybe we can also introduce an informedness test for voters while we're at it.
- chrisjj 8mo ago> We need to introduce social-media literacy tests that certify that you are capable of being a good valuable citizen on social media instead of a propaganda sharer and slop consumer. ... and force it first on Zuckerberg, Musk ... and Trump.
- Der_Einzige 8mo agoI'll accept it when we can ban bootlickers off of HN.
- wronex 8mo agoI think the opposite is in order. Ban phones with screens for those over 18 (driving limit). Phones are a drug that people cannot seem to let go off. Even when driving. Kids don’t have cars. Perhaps a trade? A phone or a car?
- energy123 8mo agoI want to see regulation of the algorithm. Something like forcing a chronological feed, or somehow nerfing the recommendation engine. Figure out a way to make it boring, bypass the whole censorship debate.
- andy81 8mo agoThere are more options - Banning advertising targeted at the user rather than the context Enforcing Do Not Track Enforcing GDPR (especially sites that use cookie banners)
- jacquesm 8mo agoOh no! But yes, you are right, the elderly are very susceptible to really bad social media influence. Drawing that to its ultimate conclusion: people are very susceptible to being influenced and social media may well turn out to be a net negative.
- lossyalgo 8mo agoNot great, because they promise to delete our IDs but don't, and get hacked (see Discord hack from a few months ago where 70k users had government IDs leaked). To reiterate what I wrote above: We need to ban addictive dark patterns on ALL platforms for ALL ages.
- budududuroiu 8mo agoSo... de-facto mass deanonymisation of all Spanish social media users? I see a lot of supporters of these policies either not acknowledge that you can't identify under-16yo without identifying over-16yos.
- chrisjj 8mo ago> So... de-facto mass deanonymisation of all Spanish social media users? So all Spanish social media users are currently anonymous? I do not think so.
- Markoff 8mo agode iure yes, prosecution would need to prove you was actually using the computer which posted whatever online
- chrisjj 8mo ago> de iure De jure?
- Markoff 8mo ago"Both de iure and de jure are acceptable, with "de iure" being the original Classical Latin spelling and "de jure" the common modern spelling." https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/de-jure-or-de-iure.4031447/ https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/de-jure-or-de-iure.4...
- Hizonner 8mo agoThere is a difference between "not all, by choice", and "absolutely none, by compulsion". This is something your average 4 year old can easily understand.
- arrrg 8mo agoAge verification is possible without revealing personally identifiable information (beyond old enough yes/no, which is not in any way personally identifiable info) and from my perspective should be a strict requirement with any such laws. In fact, if these laws make the requisite infrastructure (ID cards that offer that functionality) a hard requirement then creating an anonymous web that nevertheless has age checks easier, not harder. What you basically want is an ID card where you as the owner can decide what you want to share with the private business. And for age verification that’s basically just requirement fulfilled yes/no. So if the law is well written then this could be an advantage, not a disadvantage. Preemptive cynicism isn’t helpful here.
- circuit10 8mo agoI worry that these measures (if they actually work, which is unlikely) will isolate people who struggle with real-life interactions. I remember reading somewhere that autistic people tend to find community in online spaces, and it seems like a lot of people gain their tech skills that way, including me. So indiscriminately banning young people from these spaces will prevent them from finding community and people like them
- maxehmookau 8mo agoI guess it depends on which spaces they're banned from. Before Facebook, online communities were bulletin boards and chat rooms. They weren't hyper-addictive social media platforms designed to suck as much attention as possible; they were genuine places of connection. My hope is that children being banned from the mega platforms would lead to a growth in less harmful online communities for folks who can benefit from it. But I don't know.
- circuit10 8mo agoUnless an exception is made these types of laws only make things much harder for small communities, since they can’t afford to implement the required measures and take on the legal liability. The result will be that everyone moves to larger platforms that are able to do these things
- lnsru 8mo agoWhat real life interactions? With scammers, bots or troll farms? Facebook from first years is long gone. I am pretty sure that autistic people as easy target should be kept away from internet for their own good. There is nothing good to find there.
- circuit10 8mo agoPersonally I joined Discord servers for open source projects and this is how I got my start using GitHub, learning how code review worked and the process for communicating with other devs etc. I feel like I may not be in a software development career if these laws had existed when I was growing up Autism is a wide-ranging spectrum, I find the idea that I should be “kept away from the Internet” because I have (high-functioning) autism quite patronising. Maybe this is true for some people, but my point is that these social media ban ideas are too indiscriminate I would agree that addictive platforms are harmful for children, and I haven’t looked into this law so maybe it does make a distinction, but any online communication (e.g. GitHub) is sometimes considered “social media”. A lot of people seem to exclude the platforms they like from what they count as “social media”, as they see social media as the evil thing they look down upon
- andrewstuart 8mo agoGovernments everywhere are following suit.
- wesleywt 8mo agoIn this case, saving the children from the toxic misinformation firehose that is social media might save our democracies.
- u_sama 8mo agoThe cynical in me doesnt see that as the main problem, lack of diversity in thought and debate is already an issue, censorship laws about what subjects and what opinions are correct is an issue that will be exacerbated. To save the democracies you need, a better population who votes in competently and informed, as well as a public debate that is honest and doesnt decry any deviation from the standard as fascism. Far-right populism only exists in coutries where debate is not honest and pragmatic enough, and avoided in countries like Denmark because population and government are in a tight loop where each feels heard by the other.
- account42 8mo agoYou can only have a democracy when the vote actually matters. In a representative democracy where representatives are not held accountable to their campaign promises that can hardly be said to be the case.
- account42 8mo agoA yes, we most protect others from being exposed to information that might make them vote differently from what we want. After all, democracy is all about getting the votes we want, right?
- pandemic_region 8mo agoHas there ever been a society that cares less about its future than the current?
- pjc50 8mo agoThis is really globally coordinated, isn't it? I'm just not sure why now and not previously. Is it just that Twitter went over the toxicity threshold that everyone noticed?
- lava_pidgeon 8mo agowhy is it globally coordinated? Maybe just bunch of politicians find the idea appealing after Australia implemented it?
- Ekaros 8mo agoVery cheap way to appear to be doing something about anything. Lot of talk, a few memos. All implementation burden on private sector. Aimed at group that can't currently vote. Only ones against it on principle care about implementation not actually the ban. And some of us think it doesn't go far enough. I would set limit to 18. Would solve lot more issues. Like make adult content fully allowable by default as everyone can automatically be considered to be an adult then.
- Devasta 8mo ago> I'm just not sure why now and not previously. Shock at how many people believe Palestinians are human got the ball rolling, but now its prepping for the fallout of the release of more and more Epstein files.
- vachina 8mo agoKind of dangerous to let malleable young minds in the hands of another country’s “algorithm”. Ideologies are cultivated young.
- Maken 8mo agoMaybe it's because now we are starting to realize the effects that social media exposure have on human brain, specially on teenagers. Legislation always lag behind.
- m000 8mo agoWhy now? Because in the past 2-3 years it has been made abundantly clear that: (a) Social media operators choose to do nothing at all against coordinated influencing operations, unless the influencing goes against the interests of very specific countries and groups. (b) US government most likely has unfettered access to social media data. As if this isn't bad enough, they will probably give them out to Palantir for "data integration" and under uncertain terms.
- vachina 8mo agoFunny how China is 20 years ahead of everyone.
- ZeroGravitas 8mo agoSeems easier to justify if social media owners are hanging out with child sex traffickers and enabling features that let you undress anyone who posts photos to the site.
- yomismoaqui 8mo agoIf we follow that logic maybe some of the politicians that have created/voted for this would have liked a visit to that infamous island.
- ZeroGravitas 8mo agoCould you expand on this as it makes no sense to me?
- littlecranky67 8mo agoGood, heavily in favor. Social media has just become media, the social aspect is mostly gone. Especially since all of them just try to shove down 30sec shorts/reels/tiktoks down your throat. I have not a single real-life friend or family member (except those, that are under 16 and use tiktok) that ever recorded a short.
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- tamimio 8mo agoI hate social media and never used it, and I am in favor to ban it entirely, however, we all know this is not about “protecting the children!!!”, but the old school government’s way for more monitor and control.
- thegrim000 8mo agoOoohhh I finally get it. It's another "protecting the children" guise when in actuality they want to introduce new mechanisms to control speech, classify what they don't like as "hate speech", fine/punish companies for hosting content they've decided is "hate speech", etc. How naive of me to think it was just about protecting the kids.
- gruberjl 8mo agoI haven't set up my kids on social media. They haven't asked either. I do worry that banning kids from doing something makes it all the more intriguing to them when they are then allowed... Or makes the kids that lie and get on anyway "cool" I do hope it works out, though. I think Social Media is one of the main reasons for depression.
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- surgical_fire 8mo agoThey should just ban social media outright, regardless of age.
- croon 8mo agoWe just need a distinct definition first. Moderated forums were kind of great in general. Early social media with chronological feeds of your friends were useful too. The nebulous algorithms pulling people into reinforcing rabbit holes of trash or simply optimizing for "engagement" (outrage) is the primary issue IMHO. If we can only ban the bad stuff, great, but it's rarely that easy.
- lossyalgo 8mo agoExactly - ban addictive dark patterns in ALL software for ALL ages.
- surgical_fire 8mo agoFair enough. Typically what I call Social Media is akin to things such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. Anything that has a personalized "feed" generated by an algorithm. Old moderates forums had no personalized anything. Incidentally, as much as I despise Reddit, this would exclude Reddit from being banned. Last time I used it, it didn't really have a personalized feed (unless things changed ever since). I could subscribe to subreddits and see the activity on what I subscribed, but anyone with the same subscription list (fully controlled by the user) would see the same activity, so it was not a personalized feed per se.
- Markoff 8mo agothat's great idea until you will try to define what is social media - HN, Reddit, youtube, various PHPBB forums? so pretty much ban any human interaction online other than 101?
- surgical_fire 8mo agoNot that hard. Ban any social media that has a personalized algorithmically generated feed. Those things can be gamed for engagement and are poisonous both to the individual and to society. HN, Reddit, PHPBB forums would be excluded. There's no personalization outside the user control on those as far as I am aware. Last time I used Reddit, I could aee the activity on the boards I was subscribed to, but anyone with the same subscriptions would see the same activity. There's o dark pattern there. And just to be clear, I absolutely despise Reddit. I don't even like HN all that much to be frank. I would be the last person that would try to protect Reddit. I am just being coherent with my thoughts on the matter.
- sailorganymede 8mo agoA lot of teenagers complain they spend too much time on social media and this will put some friction that wasn’t present before. I assume this will put a dent in traffic for companies like SnapChat etc. so I wonder how those companies will react.
- yomismoaqui 8mo agoThis sure will imply that over-16 users will have to also authenticate themselves using some kind of personal id (DNI, I guess?) As a non-user of social media (only have an anonymous Facebook account to check some hobby groups) this doesn't directly affect me but I'm starting to feel like a frog on a pot of what was tepid water and now it's starting to feel kinda hot.
- 627467 8mo agoOf does affect you, it has always done. Not using social media has been a marker, placing some negative incentive on joining social media will help normalize people like you
- elashri 8mo agoI feel like people avoid the elephant in the room that social media companies became too influential and too big that going after them for addictive and dark patterns is not possible. Specially that most of them is in the US with current political situation it will not be possible anyway. So they are taking half measures that are more problematic on different aspect like privacy. Not to praise China, but it seems they seem to do doing better job against their big companies to prevent such situations (please don't pass the point here). I think things would be much better if these companies is to be held accountable for their actions beyond the current fines that they just consider it now cost of doing business.
- rustyhancock 8mo agoSurely this should be for parents to decide? Even if the infra is in place for social media services to check IDs. It seems quite bizarre to ban it since the vast majority use it safely. Social media is the double edge sword I avoided MySpace, Facebook etc entirely. But I can understand people finding communities online they can't access in their location. Oh well. I'm sure those that want to will be able to bypass it, and I've also no doubt that social media at a population level is a net harm. Even if this feels like overreach. What seems truly harmful is the 12month old who is handed a tablet with YouTube running constantly depriving their brain of the big early exposure to the real world.
- tsoukase 8mo agoIn total social media has long surpassed drug addiction in bad effects in young people (mental, psychological and physical). Together with the economic situation they are the cause of the unfortunate state of youth today. Banning them is in the right direction even at the cost of any deanonym. A dozen entities, both public and private, know us very well already. They know that eveyone watches porn, now they will know how offen.
- insane_dreamer 8mo agoThis seems to be gaining momentum. I think it's a good thing in the absence of banning ads altogether on social media and forcing it to be subscription-based only, which I think should be the goal. That de-incentivises media platforms from always increasing engagement because revenue isn't directly tied to time spent on the platform (in fact, the more someone is on, the more it incurs cost without increasing revenue).
- scarlehoff 8mo agoThe issue I see here is: what counts as social media? Is this site social media? Will anything with a comment box be banned? If yes, what about online newspapers? If not, how will they prevent almost-social-media sites from popping up? How will they deal with mastodon? If I have an instance in my home server at home, do I need to check people reading my posts are over 16 or is the onus on the servers where they are logged in? For the record, I'm totally in favour of banning social media for kids and, contrary to other people here, I think it can be done without deanonymising anyone. I just don't think it is possible. Ban facebook, x, and bluesky and tomorrow all the cool kids will be using facemagazine, y, and greensky.