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Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

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Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Utah. If that's what happens, that would be awesome! "Sorry kids, no fb/tiktok/insta and there's nothing I can do about it. None of them work where we live" Would be a huge win for all parents. No social media, and we don't have to be the bad guys taking it away.

Hopefully this is hyperbole. Seems a bit extreme to hope the government legislates away industries because you don't want to handle the parenting yourself.

I would love it if you would state what you think the viewpoint opposite yours is and then try to defend it, then explain why that defense is wrong.

> legislates away industries because you don't want to handle the parenting yourself.

What are your thoughts on pharmaceutical/heroin legislation? What are your thoughts on making it illegal to advertise unhealthy food to kids? How do you feel about the idea of product placement in children's TV shows? How do you feel about letting pharmaceutical companies directly market to children?

You look at parenting as black and white. Good parents would prevent their kids from doing bad things. Bad parents can't prevent their kids from doing bad things. "If a kid does something bad then it is because they have bad parents."

The reality is that parents are just one element of the childs environment and that their choice to do bad things can be fit to a bell curve based on the complete set of environmental factors for which parenting is one element.

Holding parenting ability constant, the government could make changes that would improve outcomes for some set of children.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#112
post #51

this is a crappy headline. by trying to put some age limit on things, they're forcing absolutely everyone to give up their identity to the government / sites.

And is that bad or something? If you want to use a harmful product (and make no mistake social apps are harmful), then being careful about who is using it is a good idea.

This law affects GitHub. You shouldn’t be able to upload code or submit a pull request anonymously?

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#113
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the state has total control over every aspect of their citizens' lives they can model the population into any perfect utopia they desire. I'd still not like to live in that world.

Isn't this the opposite though? They're not telling people how to live their lives. They're taking away the power Facebook has over many people's lives so people might enjoy their lives in more social and healthy ways again.

"any legislation restricting behavior actually frees people to do what they always wanted (the government knows best what that is) but just couldn't because of all these other possibilities misguiding them"

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#114
Its always crazy to me how proponents and opponents never address each other’s points. They just talk past each other saying their own completely unrelated points.

A: “But what about kids in abusive households that get cut off from communication”

B: “We have tools to ensure kids safety that requires actively using our social network already”

that’s a frustrating way of having a conversation

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is precisely the solution. Tech platforms are far more culpable than parents in this matter. If that means your startup idea no longer scales - good riddance.

> If that means your startup idea no longer scales - good riddance. And if that means no startup can possibly compete against the existing players in the industry that have the bandwidth and resources to implement the regulation?

After reading this thread I realized that's exactly what people (in this thread) want.

They want "the old internet" back, whatever it means. Of course it means no more startup. Startups change things and we don't want that! We want the exact internet from 1998.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#116

Is it a bad time to mention that sites like stack overflow, discord, sub stack, medium, Reddit, hacker news, GitHub, YouTube, and so forth have the same traits - the same identifying markers - as what we consider traditional social media sites? How the bill defines social media: 10) (a) "Social media platform" means an online forum that a social media company 160 makes available for an account holder to: 161 (i) crea…

Yes, and a 13 year old should absolutely not use any of those services. Discord in particular has become known as “groomercord” for it’s open pedophilia.

Agreed.

Hacker News had a good run. I'm going to miss it when it's decided that tracking enough PII on its users to be compliant with this law (and the ones that will follow) is more trouble than it's worth to Y-Combinator, but so it goes.

The open forum era was a grand experiment, and the experiment is winding down.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#117
post #43
post #16

Whether this is a reasonable law or not, my big problem with it is that it puts the burden of enforcement on tech platforms rather than the kids' parents. There is no way for any company to check for something like this without also affecting every other user of the site, whether they are in Utah or not and whether they are a teen or not. What do they do exactly, start collecting government IDs from us before every v…

> it puts the burden of enforcement on tech platforms rather than the kids' parents What else do you expect? When tech companies make phones secure enough for the NSA, every app has passwords, and most apps have disappearing messages, how exactly do you expect parents to monitor what their kids are doing? All the "parental monitoring" apps do is check how much time kids are using the phone. They give zero info on wha…

You don't have to give your kids a phone...

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#118

Is it a bad time to mention that sites like stack overflow, discord, sub stack, medium, Reddit, hacker news, GitHub, YouTube, and so forth have the same traits - the same identifying markers - as what we consider traditional social media sites? How the bill defines social media: 10) (a) "Social media platform" means an online forum that a social media company 160 makes available for an account holder to: 161 (i) crea…

Yes, and a 13 year old should absolutely not use any of those services. Discord in particular has become known as “groomercord” for it’s open pedophilia.

Why should a 13 year old not use GitHub?

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read the bills yet but according to the article it applies to children under 18. 17-year-old me would have considered this draconian bullsh*t, for the same reasons I would now. (So does dad me, incidentally. My kid's messages have always been her business, not mine.)

I'm sure many of us wouldn't have been a programmer if we hadn't had access to SO/Github around 17.

Absolutely zero chance, SO was the only resource on the internet that had simple enough explanations for me when I started out programming at 11.

I was making PRs to oss projects on Github and churning through Project Euler by 15.

I literally owe my entire career to SO which is weird to say typing it out now.

Re: Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

#120

Is it a bad time to mention that sites like stack overflow, discord, sub stack, medium, Reddit, hacker news, GitHub, YouTube, and so forth have the same traits - the same identifying markers - as what we consider traditional social media sites? How the bill defines social media: 10) (a) "Social media platform" means an online forum that a social media company 160 makes available for an account holder to: 161 (i) crea…

Yes, and a 13 year old should absolutely not use any of those services. Discord in particular has become known as “groomercord” for it’s open pedophilia.

I agree, and along that same logic we should also be extremely concerned about what the local libraries are up to.
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