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Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

blog.ericgoldman.org

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Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#81

Post by dqpb »

warning26 wrote: post #52
chomp wrote: post #13

>The bill would eliminate minors’ access to any algorithmically generated navigation aids, such as “top content” and “hot items” lists. It would also eliminate home pages that are algorithmically organized, whether personalized to individual users or not, which would be replaced by a list of items presented chronologically (presumably in reverse chronological order if allowed because chronological order prioritizes t…

Purely chronological feed? No "suggested" content? Sign me up! Can we mandate this for all ages?

If this was better, it would exist.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#83

Post by jacobsenscott »

As far as I know there are no social media platforms operating in Minnesota, unless someone is still using the Gopher protocol? So this is a nothing burger.

Even so, chronological ordering is the worst choice. Now you can just flood the stream with whatever crap you want and it will push all the legitimate content down off the page.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#84

Post by ben_w »

falcolas wrote: post #11
pyuser583 wrote: post #7

This is probably for the best. I’m fine saying “think of the children” when you’re talking about … children. There’s really bad stuff out there. Think of the children.

A 16 year old can, in most cases, be legally independent of their parents: living on their own. They can also, in many states (and countries), legally give consent for sex. But we shouldn't let them view user generated content? Seems inconsistent at best.

I said something similar in a letter to a newspaper back when I was 16 and such letters were the closest most people got to user-generated content.

Oh, the olden days of dialup and mainly using AOL CDs to keep birds away from flowerbeds.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#85

Post by LegitShady »

dqpb wrote: post #81
warning26 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purely chronological feed? No "suggested" content? Sign me up! Can we mandate this for all ages?

If this was better, it would exist.

if it made them money, it would exist. If it reduces engagement, it doesn't.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#86

Post by Mezzie »

pokstad wrote: post #55
thethirdone wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think HN would be banned for minors according to this law? I think it would, and I don't think HNs algorithm for ranking is abusive or toxic at all.

I think minors joining social media or forums should require parent permission. There’s too many weirdos out there, and too much self harm from sharing too much information.

This is already allowed for under-13s, but almost no site/service actually allows for that. I imagine this would have similar results with it being a functional ban and the kids just all signing up as '18 year olds'.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#87

Post by filoleg »

colechristensen wrote: post #47
joshstrange wrote: post #5

Anyone voting for this is clearly not fit to hold their position. Aside from the stupidity of thinking this is enforceable, it's hamfisted and misguided. When they propose such open-ended legislation there should be an ability for an outside party to make every single one of them fill out a survey of "Would this be allowed/disallowed under the new law?" with a bunch of examples. If the people who voted for it don't h…

Why would it be difficult to enforce? >In addition to other damages, the PRA authorizes statutory damages of $1k per violation, capped at $100k per account holder per calendar year. There are 1.3 million under 18 in MN, some percentage of those have social media accounts, let's just guess 500k, so a maximum statutory fine for non-compliance of $50 billion per year per social network. All sorts of ways to adjust that…

> Or are you assuming a state court can't fine a social network?

Social network: ok, we are blocking users from that jurisdiction from being able to access our product to comply with recently instated state legislation, please don't use a VPN to do so wink wink.

Plenty of people (yes, even those who aren't the most technologically advanced average users) have been using VPNs for a similar purpose to access Netflix shows available in other regions since a long time ago, so I can easily imagine people doing the same to access TikTok.

See the existing "you gotta be 13 or older to create an account" registration requirement on many platforms, which exists to comply with the law. Sure, it is enforceable in a sense that the government can go after any company that explicitly allows kids under 13 to register and flaunts this law. But it is utterly unenforceable in practice, because what is the government gonna do about kids lying about their age when creating an account? Nothing, aside from legally mandating identity verification and linking it to every account you create. But that's not the route I would ever want the world to take, not even mentioning that there will be ways around that too anyway (and the potential side effects of such id-linking mandate would be much more disastrous than the original problem).

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#88

Post by kristopolous »

colechristensen wrote: post #47
joshstrange wrote: post #5

Anyone voting for this is clearly not fit to hold their position. Aside from the stupidity of thinking this is enforceable, it's hamfisted and misguided. When they propose such open-ended legislation there should be an ability for an outside party to make every single one of them fill out a survey of "Would this be allowed/disallowed under the new law?" with a bunch of examples. If the people who voted for it don't h…

Why would it be difficult to enforce? >In addition to other damages, the PRA authorizes statutory damages of $1k per violation, capped at $100k per account holder per calendar year. There are 1.3 million under 18 in MN, some percentage of those have social media accounts, let's just guess 500k, so a maximum statutory fine for non-compliance of $50 billion per year per social network. All sorts of ways to adjust that…

because it's general enough that it can be challenged.

I have an amazon profile. The reviews are user generated. They certainly rank popularity into categories.

In fact, I also have a wikipedia user profile as well and there's talk pages and here's the trending topics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report

Same goes with youtube, twitch, imdb, discogs, substack, medium, and oh yes, video games. Lots of UGC video games.

Social media can be bad, toxic, unhealthy, lead to suicide and depression among youth, ok. That's certainly terrible but you get a bunch of snazzy lawyers for billion dollar companies that work for the bottom line in the room, this thing won't stand.

Instead what might work better is to extend liability law to such forums of persuasion. It the parents of a dead kid have grounds to sue Facebook and Facebook knows it, they'll pull back quick. It's a page from the Ralph Nader playbook

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#89

Post by nybble41 »

temp8964 wrote: post #36
chomp wrote: post #13

>The bill would eliminate minors’ access to any algorithmically generated navigation aids, such as “top content” and “hot items” lists. It would also eliminate home pages that are algorithmically organized, whether personalized to individual users or not, which would be replaced by a list of items presented chronologically (presumably in reverse chronological order if allowed because chronological order prioritizes t…

Yes. The description sounds heavily biased. I know lots of people want to see Facebook content chronologically ordered. People also want this so others can see their posts, not just posts from popular posters. Facebook seems to have this option, but I can’t get it to work. So I uninstalled it again.

Having this as an option might be nice, though it's more likely to be useless at scale. Having it as the only option sounds like a nightmare: Blink and you'll miss the content you're interested in, with no easy way to get back to it. To actually stay connected and up-to-date you'd have to monitor your feed 24/7, manually filtering through piles of data you don't care about to find the rare gems. And what these busybodies in Minnesota are trying to mandate is not mere availability of a chronological feed, but exclusivity.

Re: Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content Services

#90

Post by colechristensen »

filoleg wrote: post #87
colechristensen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be difficult to enforce? >In addition to other damages, the PRA authorizes statutory damages of $1k per violation, capped at $100k per account holder per calendar year. There are 1.3 million under 18 in MN, some percentage of those have social media accounts, let's just guess 500k, so a maximum statutory fine for non-compliance of $50 billion per year per social network. All sorts of ways to adjust that…

> Or are you assuming a state court can't fine a social network? Social network: ok, we are blocking users from that jurisdiction from being able to access our product to comply with recently instated state legislation, please don't use a VPN to do so wink wink . Plenty of people (yes, even those who aren't the most technologically advanced average users) have been using VPNs for a similar purpose to access Netflix s…

You're imagining that a social network would be willing to geofence off an entire state in order to not comply with a fairly straightforward to implement regulation. Doesn't sound like something which would be honoring the fiduciary duty to investors required by leadership, leaving all that money on the table, or something that wouldn't be worth the calculus of cutting off an entire state to avoid losing a portion of revenue for part of the population.
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