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Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access

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351–360 of 719 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to judge a bill, but I read this, and it seems that the intent is to broadly ban everything first and then carve out exceptions for almost everything except for a single category: Direct messaging (^B) between MORE than two users for non-creative, non-commercial, non-educational purposes. AKA forums and memes. Is that a fair analysis? [edit] : per privacy advocates - no, I don't think it's okay to st…

It seems they’re worried about peer to peer interactions. My experience regulating my daughters internet access is that interactions with other kids have the highest potential for toxicity. They seem ok with kids passively consuming a stream of adult generated content. They’re also excluding SaaS which just emulates desktop software. I think that’s about right.

Kids can be mean to each other, now or in your day. Next they ban kids from talking to each other in person or having friends. Is that the life you want for your daughter?

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t consider Reddit, HN, etc. to be social media, at all. There might be media, but there is no social. Social requires a network of real people. You can’t prove that anyone on these sites is a real person, other than yourself. Maybe I, and everyone else on here, is a bot. When everyone is anonymous, there is no network. And, not only is everyone anonymous, but there are no connections. To the best of my knowledg…

Interesting argument. Can a site without discrete named accounts, where everyone is called 'Anonymous', claim that there's no way to verify whether the content is generated by humans? It's basically the 4chan model.

No need to even do that.

The law defines 'social media platform' in terms of what account holders can do, and 'social media company' in terms of the number of account holders.

It really goes out of its way to distinguish 'users' and 'account holders', and if there are no account holders, it’s not social media. Apparently.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how to judge a bill, but I read this, and it seems that the intent is to broadly ban everything first and then carve out exceptions for almost everything except for a single category: Direct messaging (^B) between MORE than two users for non-creative, non-commercial, non-educational purposes. AKA forums and memes. Is that a fair analysis? [edit] : per privacy advocates - no, I don't think it's okay to st…

It seems they’re worried about peer to peer interactions. My experience regulating my daughters internet access is that interactions with other kids have the highest potential for toxicity. They seem ok with kids passively consuming a stream of adult generated content. They’re also excluding SaaS which just emulates desktop software. I think that’s about right.

Guess we should ban all teens from stack overflow, LinkedIn, and hacker news because kids might have toxic interactions online if we don't.

Let's also not mention how the only way to reliably do this is to require identity verification from all adults. Get ready to scan your drivers license to post on hacker news and every other site (except traditional news sites apparently).

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

#354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There’s exceptions for email, Netflix, Amazon, news, traditional media kinds of sites. The fact that there are 20 categories of services exempted shows that this is a terrible bill that is based on punishing specific actors and not regulating data privacy or child wellbeing in a meaningful way. for reference, line 165 to 224 of that link are the exceptions: "Social media platform" does not include an online service…

This seems like a reasonable list. I’m not opposed to the idea of whitelisting healthy online activities and limiting anything else. They could go further and whitelist sites like HN, arch forums etc where it’s educational Sibling comment mentioned how group chats aren’t exempted. I’ve seen group chats get very unhealthy before. 2 is low, maybe 5 or 8 participants max would be ok.

I hope you realize that every adult in the state will now have to verify their state ID to use an account on virtually any website so that the site can prove they're only serving adults. These lists of IDs will leak.

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

#355
post #245

The idea that nobody is entitled to privacy until they turn 18 is crazy. I shudder for all the LGBT kids whose parents all now have a (state enforced!) right to snoop on them. (Honestly headline should be: “Utah bill gives parents full access to their children's online accounts, including posts and private messages”)

Children are not entitled to autonomy - they do not have freedom of movement in general, freedom of employment etc... Privacy, like any other form of autonomy, is in control of the parent and should be given out as part of the educational process. 18 perhaps is too old for the state to grant independence, but that's a problem in general and not restricted to privacy.

You should go read about children's rights ratified by pretty much every country on earth.

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

#356

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…

> There’s exceptions for email, Netflix, Amazon, news, traditional media kinds of sites. The fact that there are 20 categories of services exempted shows that this is a terrible bill that is based on punishing specific actors and not regulating data privacy or child wellbeing in a meaningful way. for reference, line 165 to 224 of that link are the exceptions: "Social media platform" does not include an online service…

"preselected by the provider"

This is the area that gets grey. If the provide applies any filter or AI judgement it becomes preselected. This applies to tiktok, facebook, youtube and ig.

This law bans old school forums and reddit but not if results are displayed by "best match"

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

#357
post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of us, older people, had access to similar things that made us interested... in the 70/80's it was computer magazines (paper magazines, that is) as people got their first home computers and could follow along programming examples, play games etc. If you ran into trouble, you needed either help from someone you already knew or you would have to find a book or manual. In the 90's most teens already had access to a…

And I know these. I'm not "punched card old" but I did start learning programming before SO got traction. And I remember how big the difference SO made for my own learning/career path, compared to mailing lists. As a side note, my first intern job was to make a localized ripoff of SO (within a team, of course). It was still a relatively shining new thing by the time.

Cool... it's just that your comment seems to imply that a lot of programmers were learning their basics when SO was already there to help us... that's only true for those of us lucky enough to be really young, like in their 20's :D. Hope you understand many of us are well past that and watched GH and SO take over the world as a very recent phenonenom.

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

#358
Generally I support parents taking action to protect their kids from the harms of social media; but coming from a state government, and this one in particular, it comes across as a bit draconian the approach being taken. The hidden agenda does seem to be keeping Mormon youth from encountering materials critical of LDS church truth claims. Too little too late, but I'm sure that's one intended consequence.

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

#359
post #245

The idea that nobody is entitled to privacy until they turn 18 is crazy. I shudder for all the LGBT kids whose parents all now have a (state enforced!) right to snoop on them. (Honestly headline should be: “Utah bill gives parents full access to their children's online accounts, including posts and private messages”)

Why are LGBT youth for some reason the special subgroup of people against whom every concern about rights being tested against? More so than anyone else's rights? It's like they somehow occupy a privileged position in your mind that everyone has to watch out for this group. Why is that?

>against whom every concern about rights being tested against?

because they're often the first group these legislations aim at. It's no coincidence that the state in question is Utah, effectively run by the Mormon church with a strong interest in censoring youth access to the internet.

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

#360
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I know these. I'm not "punched card old" but I did start learning programming before SO got traction. And I remember how big the difference SO made for my own learning/career path, compared to mailing lists. As a side note, my first intern job was to make a localized ripoff of SO (within a team, of course). It was still a relatively shining new thing by the time.

Cool... it's just that your comment seems to imply that a lot of programmers were learning their basics when SO was already there to help us... that's only true for those of us lucky enough to be really young, like in their 20's :D. Hope you understand many of us are well past that and watched GH and SO take over the world as a very recent phenonenom.

Uh, yes, this is why I said "many of us" not "most of us". (not sure why i need to repeat this...) Of course I know people who are in 20s are not necessarily the absolute majority of HN. But there are still many of them.
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