A company contracted by the government to assess technologies for verifying the ages of online users says it can be done privately, robustly and effectively.
Whole thing is a moral panic. No good evidence exists of harms, but nobody needs evidence to believe what they want to.
You could like ban algorithmic endless feeds if that was bad, you could enforce content moderation standards if bad content was the issue. But no, this is just surveillance state expansion and traditional media handwringing being cheerfully assisted by the feckless “think of the children” crowd.
I think the harms are real. They’re not exclusive to children.
There are three categories of harm:
Radicalization, as the algorithm deliberately feeds you bad takes from your political opponents and good takes from your political allies, to keep you engaged.
Overstimulation, the YouTube Kids channel Cocomelon is way too addictive for kids. This isn’t exclusive to social media, and YouTube Kids apparently has an exemption.
Addiction, social media eats into hours upon hours in kid’s days. Time they could spend with their family/friends or processing their emotions, instead they’re being numbed out on their phone.
I think we should ban algorithmic recommendations (or strictly limit them), ban the practices of Cocomelon, and … I’m not sure what we can do about the addiction thing (humans are super prone to addiction). I’d also ban smart-phones in schools, kids should only be allowed flip-phones/brick-phones.
Produce studies and I swear to god if it’s that one where they say kids are scroiling Instagram for 9 hours a day when the report using it as a messenging application I will reach through the screen and strangle you.
Legislation should not be based on vibes ffs. I think Mark Zuckerburg should be hung in a public square and skinned alive for the evil he has wrought with shit like aiding genocide but there is not sufficient evidence that social media, which covers everything from usenet to lemmy to Instagram to youtube, causes harms warranting age based bans. This is a world where we allow coca cola and factory farming, “it’s probably bad for some people some of the time” is clearly not the bar for criminalisation.
Whole thing is a moral panic. No good evidence exists of harms, but nobody needs evidence to believe what they want to.
You could like ban algorithmic endless feeds if that was bad, you could enforce content moderation standards if bad content was the issue. But no, this is just surveillance state expansion and traditional media handwringing being cheerfully assisted by the feckless “think of the children” crowd.
I think the harms are real. They’re not exclusive to children.
There are three categories of harm:
I think we should ban algorithmic recommendations (or strictly limit them), ban the practices of Cocomelon, and … I’m not sure what we can do about the addiction thing (humans are super prone to addiction). I’d also ban smart-phones in schools, kids should only be allowed flip-phones/brick-phones.
Produce studies and I swear to god if it’s that one where they say kids are scroiling Instagram for 9 hours a day when the report using it as a messenging application I will reach through the screen and strangle you.
Legislation should not be based on vibes ffs. I think Mark Zuckerburg should be hung in a public square and skinned alive for the evil he has wrought with shit like aiding genocide but there is not sufficient evidence that social media, which covers everything from usenet to lemmy to Instagram to youtube, causes harms warranting age based bans. This is a world where we allow coca cola and factory farming, “it’s probably bad for some people some of the time” is clearly not the bar for criminalisation.