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Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

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Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#551
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the only way to do this is to require ID checks, effectively regulating and destroying the anonymous nature of the internet (and probably unconstitutional under the First Amendment, to boot.) It's the same problem with requiring age verification for porn. It's not that anyone wants kids to have easy access to this stuff, but that any of these laws will either be (a) unenforceable and useless, or (b) draconian and…

>It's not that anyone wants kids to have easy access to this stuff, but that any of these laws will either be (a) unenforceable and useless, or (b) draconian and privacy-destroying. Surely not. Imagine: government sells proof of age cards. They contain your name, and a unique identifier. Each time you sign up to a service, you enter your name and ID. The service can verify with the government that your age is what it…

- Would only work if the government, does not have access to the reverse mapping. (otherwise law enforcement will eventually expand to get its hands on it)

- It will likely be phished very quickly (and you'd have no way of knowing since no one is storing it). (making it short lived, means u'd have to announce tot he goverment eveytime u want to watch porn)

- Eventually there will be dumps of ids, like there are dumps of premium porn accounts now

Still doesn't do anything about foreign websites.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#552
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the only way to do this is to require ID checks, effectively regulating and destroying the anonymous nature of the internet (and probably unconstitutional under the First Amendment, to boot.) It's the same problem with requiring age verification for porn. It's not that anyone wants kids to have easy access to this stuff, but that any of these laws will either be (a) unenforceable and useless, or (b) draconian and…

> But the only way to do this is to require ID checks, effectively regulating and destroying the anonymous nature of the internet That seems intuitive, but it's not actually true. I suggest looking up zero-knowledge proofs. Using modern cryptography, it is easy to send a machine-generated proof to your social media provider that your government-provided ID says your age is ≥ 16, without revealing anything else about…

> Using modern cryptography, it is easy to send a machine-generated proof to your social media provider that your government-provided ID says your age is ≥ 16, without revealing anything else about you to the service provider (not even your age), and without having to communicate with the government either.

There's just one problem. How does the machine proving your age know that you are who you say you are? Modern cryptography doesn't have any tools whatsoever that can prove anything about the real body currently operating the machine--it can never have such a tool. And the closest thing that people can think of to a solution is "biometrics," which immediately raises lots of privacy concerns.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#553

One possible result of this that sounds dystopian cool - script kiddy kids < 16 spinning up mastodon server instances and creating their own very leaky insecure rolling social networks. Unless it suddenly becomes illegal to run a server without a license.

Kids could use a social network hosted in another country. Imagine how quickly the US will erect a national firewall, especially since they can plausibly say it's to protect the children.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#554
post #36

I might be the only one here in favor of this, and wanting to see a federal rollout. It is not reasonable to expect parents to spontaneously agree on a strategy for keeping kids off social media- and that kind of coordination is what it would take, because the kids + social media companies have more than enough time to coordinate workarounds. Have the law put the social media companies on the parents side, or these k…

I can't agree. This teaches kids that the government is the answer to everything. this should 100% be the responsibility and decision of parents. Kids are different, and these one-size-fits-all authoritarian tactics that have become a signature of the current GOP Floridian government are just the beginning of the totalitarian christofascist laws that they want to implement. Before you ask, I am a parent, and my kid's…

If you ignore history, yes, it may teach kids that the gov is the answer. Don't ignore history.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#555
post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Protests while wearing robes and masks however This is absolutely permitted in America. It is illegal in countries like Germany which have no strong free speech protections.

No. It is not "absolutely permitted in America". They're Klan Acts, because a bunch of guys in masks and robes marching through is obviously a threat of violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-mask_law

Those laws are frequently overturned as unconstitutional, but may still remain on the books because we don't do a good job of clearing out laws that were ruled unconstitutional.

As a general rule of thumb, almost every time someone brings an edge case about whether or not speech is First Amendment-privileged before SCOTUS, SCOTUS rules in favor of the speech. (The main exception is speech of students in school.) SCOTUS hasn't specifically ruled on anti-mask laws to my knowledge, but I strongly doubt it would uphold those laws.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#556

We've got to stop crafting a special world for children that is disconnected from the adult world. We should be moving in the opposite direction, lowering the voting age for example, allowing toplessness in appropriate places and allowing children in non-sexual adult spaces when with a guardian (like bars). How have we not yet learned that repressing kids is counterproductive?

To what end exactly?

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#557
post #126
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in favor of kids not using social media, but not of the government forcing this on people nor spinning up whatever absurd regulatory regime is required. And the chance of actually enforcing it is zero anyway. It's no more realistic to expect this to work than to expect all parents to do it as you say. It's just wasted money plus personal intrusion that won't achieve anything.

So, maybe it a law - but requiring parents-guardians to enforce it, and not the state - sounds like a reasonable inbetween?

I think it should just be opt-out. A parent can opt-out without any stated reason, easily, and overrule the law.

So kids get a social media "license," maybe.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#558
I often draw the parallel with cigarettes and alcohol. Kids need to produce an ID to purchase them. Sure they can fake it, but then they are breaking the law, and that still raises the barrier.

But that's likely not enough. In addition, there should be public health campaigns to warn against the risks.

Cigarette use has plummeted since the 90's, so something must be working.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#559

I often draw the parallel with cigarettes and alcohol. Kids need to produce an ID to purchase them. Sure they can fake it, but then they are breaking the law, and that still raises the barrier. But that's likely not enough. In addition, there should be public health campaigns to warn against the risks. Cigarette use has plummeted since the 90's, so something must be working.

I like to compare it to gambling — another real gated isdustry, due to using professional psychology to engineer super stimuli for the purposes of addiction.

Social media should be regulated for the same reasons gambling is regulated.

Re: Florida House of Representatives approves bill to ban social media for kids < 16

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the only way to do this is to require ID checks, effectively regulating and destroying the anonymous nature of the internet That seems intuitive, but it's not actually true. I suggest looking up zero-knowledge proofs. Using modern cryptography, it is easy to send a machine-generated proof to your social media provider that your government-provided ID says your age is ≥ 16, without revealing anything else about…

I'm not a cryptographer so I might miss something but I have the impression that - either a stolen card can be reused thousands of time meaning that it's so easy to get a fake that it's not worth the implementation cost - either there is away to uniquely identify a card and then it becomes another identifier like tracking ids.

You can also use fake ID to buy booze.

Making it illegal is, by itself, enough to discourage a lot.

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