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Honest question: Is this about anything else than forcing all citizens to ID themselves to the government before using digital services?
by designerarvid 3mo ago
Honest question: Is this about anything else than forcing all citizens to ID themselves to the government before using digital services?
- SiempreViernes 3mo agoYes, it's about the explicitly stated goal of getting kids to stop being harmed by the products of some of the largest advertising agencies on the planet that have resisted more subtle regulation for decades.
- piker 3mo agoYes, no doubt there is an obvious first-order reason for this. It's the second order effects that I think folks are rightly worried about, but it's easy to steel man.
- Gigachad 3mo agoAustralian here, the under 16 ban was put in place early this year and I haven't ID verified for anything.
- piker 3mo agoI'm not sure that will bring a lot of relief to the concerned side as it implies you are being fingerprinted by all the websites that are subject to this verification rule.
- dijksterhuis 3mo agowere you under some sort of impression that ad-tech surveillance platforms (“social media”) weren’t already fingerprinting the majority of their users? like, the facebook pixel used to track you across the entire internet (or damn near close enough to it). and that was 10-ish years ago. they’ve been doing this for a while now.
- Gigachad 3mo agoOf course, the social media sites were already fingerprinting you and guessing your age, gender, interests, etc for advertising.
- spwa4 3mo agoSo that's considered acceptable? Seriously? I mean the government can't seriously argue that Facebook or Twitter aren't going to be deceptive about this?
- tsukikage 3mo ago…so, have kids actually stopped watching Youtube?
- Gigachad 3mo agoWatching youtube wasn't banned. They just got banned from having an account and participating in the social features of youtube. As for how effective the ban was on getting kids off social media in general, I think it's a long process that doesn't entirely sit on this change. Banning phones in schools has been a much faster more radical improvement. It's going to take a lot more work to defeat the tech giants but I'm glad we are trying.
- tsukikage 3mo ago...ah. So, kids can doomscroll youtube shorts all they want, but they can't use a premium account that lets them avoid adverts. Does that... help?
- SiempreViernes 3mo agoThat is not an accurate description of the idea expressed in the post I replied to, you might want to start a separate thread to discuss potential second order effects.
- designerarvid 3mo agoHere's a random movie recommendation that has nothing at all to do with the above comment or the original link posted: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0405094
- dyauspitr 3mo agoWho cares, it’s just the internet.
- basisword 3mo agoHave they said you’ll need to provide ID? My guess would be they do it through other mechanisms like age estimation. I know X is already doing this for posts labelled mature. If they do estimation through account age most people are probably already basically verified on lots of the main social media services.
- designerarvid 3mo agoI don't know, hence the question.
- basisword 3mo agoConfirmed these are all options before id may be necessary: - Account age more than 16 years - Age estimation - Credit card
- crimsoneer 3mo agoThis specifically doesn't ID anybody. It's not using the upcoming digital ID, it's just going to use the existing age authentication - eg, you just need to show your company is doing some sort of "serious" age verification (not just enter your DOB here) rather than actually checking identity. It's bad, shallow populism, but it's not some nefarious surveillance plan, as much as the yanks are going to paint it that way.
- designerarvid 3mo agoNot painting it any way, just asking. I'm in the EU btw, we're likely heading in the same direction from what it seems.
- XorNot 3mo agoIts wildly popular to the tune of 70% support amongst the general population? The HN bubble needs to realize that it's not that people don't care, it's that they really want this and also when it didn't work started complaining they wanted even more.
- designerarvid 3mo agoAgreed, surely politicians are good at aligning to what's popular. A certain type of people thrived in 1970's East Germany too, saying to themselves that it was for the greater good.
- moebrowne 3mo agosource?
- XorNot 3mo agohttps://yougov.com/articles/51000-support-for-under-16-social-media-ban-soars-to-77-among-australians https://yougov.com/articles/51000-support-for-under-16-socia...
- sn0wleppard 3mo agoIs that stat from the consultation in which opposing it wasn't even an option? https://xcancel.com/BigBrotherWatch/status/2033877710007611792 https://xcancel.com/BigBrotherWatch/status/20338777100076117...
- dagss 3mo agoAs a Norwegian teen parent: Seeing all the issues cropping up which is /enabled/ (not saying caused) by social media, you don't need to look for ulterior motives. I believe these bans are honest attempts to fix real problems. Examples I know about include 12-year-olds selling nudes, teen experimentation with alcohol being replaced with cocaine because cocaine is so easily available (the issue is the scale and how widespread cocaine is getting; not that it never happened before), several cases in Norway of 13-year-olds being recruited by the mafia to throw bombs at houses through the internet, violence etc. is up the roof, kids have 4 hours of sleep since they doomscroll all through the night, results in school are trending downwards, university reports that students are increasingly unable to concentrate... Are there other solutions than bans to social media? Sure. Could this in theory have been fixed by better parenting? Sure. But parents don't live in a vacuum. Parents and children alike rely on the culture around them. Social media is a HUGE shift to society, and neither culture nor parenting practices has sufficiently adopted to handle it yet. Slowing the shift down a bit until norms and culture catches up doesn't seem like a bad idea.
- designerarvid 3mo agoGood point. Future historians looking back will likely consider 2015/2016 to be the point when we entered the social-media-epoch. Both Brexit and Trump where mainly social-media-driven phenomenon.
- 28304283409234 3mo agoWasn't Obama as well?
- orwin 3mo ago2008? You mean Habbo, MySpace or Bebo?
- 28304283409234 3mo agohttps://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19331681.2014.895691 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19331681.2014.89... or https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3719417/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3719417/ "Barack Obama’s successful campaign for the presidency has been widely attributed to the use of social networking sites, mobile devices, and interactive websites to engage previously hard-to-reach populations in political activity. Campaign communication strategies may be applicable for youth health promotion efforts, particularly for the highly stigmatized issue of mental health. In this article, we examine elements of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign’s use of social media technologies and content designed to foster effective political participation among youth."
- ascorbic 3mo agoThe UK government has no problem being openly authoritarian when it wants to, without hiding it behind other policies. Whether or not you think it's bad policy (I think it's mixed), I think this is genuinely about what it claims to be.
- win2k 3mo agoThe truth is the vast majority of British citizens (70%+) support this. Actually, support for the Online Safety Act went up in the year after it was implemented. People you talk to online are not representative of public opinion as a whole. British society is very pro-"protecting children", which is what this is advertised as. A lot of old people think a social media ban will bring back the good old days of their childhood where kids went outside. A lot of parents don't want to tell their kids "no" to social media because of "peer pressure", instead of just telling their kids to find better friends. Only a small proportion of the population recognises this is about control. No major political party will speak out against this as they know being against it is a vote loser.
- christoph 3mo agoThe currency of the world is data. This the beginning of public restriction to data (currency). It always starts slowly. Start with kids, softly softly. Fast forward a couple of years and we absolutely know this will morph into total control of who has access to what, when and how. It will be used to curb whatever the ruling elite decide they don’t like and we probably won’t even know, as by then they will have full spectrum dominance of all media & comms. Look at how they flipped the switch on Mythos last week - do peope really believe these lunatic governments we’re all currently suffering from won’t go further after they start this? Some of you seem to think they still “ask” nicely... nope, they just do whatever they want now.
- logicchains 3mo agoIt's also about an extremely unpopular government restricting teenagers to only information provided by government controlled/supporting sources, so when they turn 16 and can vote they're more likely to vote for the incumbent regime.
- scotty79 3mo agoProbably? Social media has a ton of negative influence on young people. One of which is reducing time spent on in-person socializing which leads to decrease in number of romantic relationships and children born. This is something government deeply cares about because the business that bought it needs there to be more workers so that the labor remains dirt cheap.
- NorwegianDude 3mo agoThe proper way to implement it is to issue digital IDs and use ZK proofs to verify the age. That way the service doesn't know anything other that the fact that you have an official digital ID and that you are at least a certain age. The ID issuer does not need to be involved in anything other than issuing the ID, making it perfect when it comes to privacy, while still fulfilling the goal of having an age limit. If this is built on open standards, so that anyone can use it for free, it would be a big positive step forward for everyone.
- mrob 3mo agoZero knowledge proofs are unusable for age verification because they're impossible to revoke. One person can share their ID and everyone else can use it.
- H4cks0r1337 3mo agoNo. Simple as. Savvy teenagers will just go to darker corners of the internet.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 3mo agoBut there are many many not savvy teenagers that won't do that. So at least this may help them, until they turn 16.
- H4cks0r1337 3mo agoTeenagers have a way of helping each other out when it comes to things like this.
- hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 3mo agoYou realise they don't need to ban under 16s to come up with an excuse to force online ID checks? This conspiracy theory needs to end.