Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

abcnews.go.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 720 posts

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

#611

Post by mirekrusin »

WalterBright wrote: post #560
satellite2 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can't run for loop on buying booze with fake id.

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

#612

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan »

reactordev wrote: post #610
causal wrote: 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…

The answer to our problems is not less freedom. It should never be less freedom. I’m opposed of any law that restricts freedom of information. No matter the age. I think we need to do better on educating kids on online behaviors and we should hold social media companies accountable for addictive features but what we absolutely shouldn’t do is blame little Jenny and take away her access to groups and social interactio…

Yes. Little Jenny should also be free to purchase and drink a bottle of whiskey, but only if her parents are sufficiently negligent.

I would've backed your argument up until a few years ago, but the science is coming down pretty hard now showing that social media use is absolutely detrimental to still-developing minds.

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

#613

Post by reactordev »

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #612
reactordev wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to our problems is not less freedom. It should never be less freedom. I’m opposed of any law that restricts freedom of information. No matter the age. I think we need to do better on educating kids on online behaviors and we should hold social media companies accountable for addictive features but what we absolutely shouldn’t do is blame little Jenny and take away her access to groups and social interactio…

Yes. Little Jenny should also be free to purchase and drink a bottle of whiskey, but only if her parents are sufficiently negligent. I would've backed your argument up until a few years ago, but the science is coming down pretty hard now showing that social media use is absolutely detrimental to still-developing minds.

I’m not refuting that. Only I don’t think we should be reacting with laws to restrict access. Who’s to say “what” a social media platform is? Does this mean discord as well? Steam? Roblox? Where do we draw the line on what is social media and what is social?

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

#614

Post by neilv »

jackvalentine wrote: post #571
neilv wrote: post #564

What is "social media", and how much are they actually banning communications , speech , association , organizing , political activity , etc. by young people? Plus a backdoor way to promote surveillance tracking to communications for everyone, by the likely mechanisms to be used in practice for excluding those under 16.

Definition with inclusions and exclusions is in the bill: https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2024/1/BillText/e1/PDF

Interesting. To meet their definition of "social media platform" requires that it "Utilizes addictive, harmful, or deceptive design features, or any other feature that is designed to cause an account holder to have an excessive or compulsive need to use or engage with the social media platform."

Also, they have a large list of exclusions. Some of the phrasing sounds like under-16 people are mostly limited to person-to-person messaging, consuming content produced by others, and being able to access certain services that got exclusions.

Being able to speak publicly is sometimes expressly not allowed in these exclusions, but it is at least implied in other exclusions (which I guess might have originated to allowlist specific companies).

Teens who care to observe the law at all (many will not) will quickly realize that they can figuratively drive a truck right through some of those loopholes. (Example: a "photo editing & hosting" service with accounts and likes and comments is pretty much Twitter or Facebook, once an exodus of kids from "social media" starts congregating there. Bonus rebelious vibe, and the freedom/coolness that your parents and grandparents, and mean school principal haven't yet discovered it.)

If I had an online service that had under-16 among its users who were doing public expression/communication/content, and my business wasn't already clearly excluded, I would be scrambling to lobby for an exclusion. (I would also be discouraging this particular formulation of law, in the public interest, but remiss if I didn't have a backup plan for my immediate business in the case that it passed.)

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

#615

Post by jonathankoren »

whiddershins wrote: post #601
jonathankoren wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last court case was 2004, and the New York anti-mask was upheld. You don’t have to pontificate. The link was right there.

Random aside, I haven’t seen NY enforce the anti mask legislation during the Halloween parade, various protests, or Covid. So I bet a new constitutional challenge could be erected.

You're trolling right?

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

#616

Post by cloverich »

scythe wrote: post #152
captainmuon wrote: post #89

I guess for me it depends on what the law considers "social media". Is something like the bulletin boards we used to have around the late 90s/early 2000s social media? What about chat rooms? Local social web sites for the school or your city? I think a lot of these things can even be beneficial, if I think about my own experiences as a somewhat introverted teenager. And what about things like Netflix, Youtube, Podcas…

> I guess for me it depends on what the law considers "social media". It's a bill written by the Florida House of Representatives, so there's a definition there. Mind you, it's the Florida House, which has put out some extremely bad laws in its current session -- from "Parental Rights in Education" to the Disney speech retaliation. But given that this is a less ostensibly partisan issue, there are reasons for hope. T…

Thank you for sharing all the context; very interesting.

1d does stand out. I can guess what they were going for. I wonder if it could be somehow scoped to gamified, or to feed-based algorithmic sites. As a random example, Reddit's site definitely underwent such feed based boosting in the last few years. I'm constantly getting suggested content that is some form of region-based outrage event, Person X doing horrible thing to person Y, etc, and its nauseating. You click one such thing and it knows and it just hits you again and again, and eventually you just have to get out. Which sucks because every time I pick up a new interest, its an easy place to go to find more people that are into it; but you can't get that without the BS.

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

#617

Post by seattle_spring »

An extremely transparent attempt to ensure Florida children do not have access to news and information that goes against a very particular narrative. It's all about the control of information, which sure is ironic coming from "the party of small government" and self-proclaimed "free speech absolutists." Absolutely disgusting.

It would be fantastic if social media companies instead simply blocked all access to IPs located in Florida regardless of age.

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

#618

Post by seattle_spring »

nanolith wrote: post #536

The bill is pretty broad, with oddly specific carve-outs. I did not think that I would need to pay for a VPN service to avoid weird legislation in my state, but here we are. The sad thing is that, with the exception of the occasional comment on Slashdot / HN and my LinkedIn profile, I'm barely active on social media anymore. Still, I'm not giving PII to sites that this bill considers "social media" sites, just to pro…

> I did not think that I would need to pay for a VPN service to avoid weird legislation in my state

Why not? Were the book bans not a sufficient warning signal?

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

#619

Post by bimguy »

lukev wrote: post #210
causal wrote: 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…

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…

"Unconstitutional" arguments only go so far. I am not America (I'm a proud Australian) so I can easily see the incredibly obvious and ridiculous destruction "freedom" in your country entails.

Anonymity services can still exist without fostering an environment to addict children and young adults to social media or a device... and without your precious "rights" being taken away.

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

#620

Post by viraptor »

badpun wrote: post #433
viraptor wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are interacting through online games quite often though. You can't throw them all in one basket. You can make friends / longer term connections that way (I did) or keep in touch with people you don't live near to.

That's not community, though. You're not inhabiting the same space, share the same problems and try to work them out them together. You're not helping each other out if someone falls into trouble.

It's up to you what you build that way. You can build a real community, you can build a shallow friend group, the medium doesn't have to limit it. My boss met his wife in a MUD.
Post reply on HN