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Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

reuters.com

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Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#141

Post by nerdawson »

evantbyrne wrote: post #120
lolinder wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't really such a question. The law explicitly requires anonymous third-party age verification to be offered as an option. There are definitely concerns about how well that will work in practice, and I would definitely want to wait and see how it works in Florida before advocating for a wider rollout, but this Florida bill is actually the most reasonable of these age verification requirements rolled out to da…

You say there is no question, but it is already being raised by social media companies as an issue with the law. Anonymous age _verification_ is not something that exists. This requires government documentation, which means any solution that involves storing identity verification information would de facto allow the government to unmask users. This raises serious free speech concerns for everyone that uses these webs…

A fairly basic version of anonymous verification would be that local stores sell an age token. You show them your ID, like you would for buying alcohol, and they give you the token which could then be used with online services to prove you're over a certain age.

It only becomes a problem if stores are forced to store the ID and link it to the token in some way.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#142

Post by armchairhacker »

apantel wrote: post #78

There’s an alternative to a blanket restriction on all types of social media: When I was growing up, there was basically just ICQ (predominantly chat, sparse text profile), then MSN (predominantly chat, sparse text profile with one or a few profile photos), then early MySpace where nobody was uploading their real identity. I think it would have been a shame to not have access to those types of networks. I met so many…

According to the article, the bill requires social media platforms ban accounts belonging to underage users and delete “personal information collected from terminated accounts”.

I’m no lawyer and haven’t read the actual text, but if you have a platform where there are no accounts and everyone posts anonymously or under a pseudonym, like 4chan, it completely sidesteps this.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#143

Post by haswell »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #109
KaiserPro wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you are getting at, but to inject some nuance: TV, print, radio, music and to a lesser extent games are all subject to some level of industry or statutory content regulation. For example, in America, you're very unlikely to have a kids TV channel suddenly switch to videos of people being killed in industrial accidents. new media, not so much. Watershed, age constraints and company ending fines exist…

25 years ago us kids were watching viral content on the internet that wasn’t even acceptable to go on youtube then or now. Still today, we are now your young doctors and lawyers and young business executives, despite all the quite disturbing viral content that characterized the early 2000s internet. I think we did fine and I think the kids will be alright too.

There’s some survivorship bias here. Not everyone who was exposed to disturbing content is unaffected or can move past it so easily. And in 2024, it’s far more likely to encounter something you had no intention of seeing.

It’s worth thinking about the social climate right now as the long tail of the last 25-30 years of technology advancement. Mass shootings are so common now they often don’t even register on people’s radar.

These effects are so complex that we’re still trying to figure out how to measure them, but we should take seriously the power and danger of the instant wide distribution of the worst elements of humanity.

I grew up on the old Internet, and made some of my most important friendships using it. It shaped who I am today, mostly for the better. But I don’t think we can let nostalgia or even the many benefits blind us to what the Internet has become or the real harms that come along with those benefits.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#144

Post by nemo44x »

pjc50 wrote: post #6

Is there a canonical decision of SCOTUS that children don't have First Amendment rights, and therefore it's OK to restrict their ability to post? (note that rules which require proof of age tend also to turn into rules that end anonymity, because it's more work to separate the proof systems) Edit: I ask a question about caselaw and end up at -3? Yes, I know, don't complain about downvotes, but I don't understand thes…

It's not really a free speech question here. For instance, what a student can say in a public school (government tax payer funded) can be restricted to a point, but the courts have ruled that the 1st amendment still protects kids up to a point here. In a private school there are no such protections.

The law here is saying that social media companies are private companies and in order to do business with children they need to follow certain regulations now. This is perfectly normal and legal. For instance, a tavern has certain regulations regarding minors entry to them. There are many examples.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#145

Post by throw0101b »

reaperman wrote: post #95
skhunted wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know at what age people are able to properly deal with things that require self control? I believe that part of the brain doesn’t mature until early 20s. At 18 a person is legally an adult so 18 seems like a much more reasonable cutoff than 16.

When people say "the brain is still developing until you're 25" it means "your brain is noticeably worse at learning after the age of 25". Noting that, should people learn self-control in the presence of social media before 25, or after 25?

> When people say "the brain is still developing until you're 25" it means "your brain is noticeably worse at learning after the age of 25".

No, it means that your prefrontal cortex—which is involved in a wide range of higher-order cognitive functions (planning, decision making, working memory, personality expression, moderating social behavior, risk processing)—is still developing, so until it does fully develop (colloquially at age 25, but it can vary per individual), you may lack those skills because you physically lack the plumbing for them to be present:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefrontal_cortex

* https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?Con...

> They also found important clues to brain function. For instance, a 2016 study found that when faced with negative emotion, 18- to 21-year-olds had brain activity in the prefrontal cortices that looked more like that of younger teenagers than that of people over 21. Alexandra Cohen, the lead author of that study and now a neuroscientist at Emory University, said the scientific consensus is that brain development continues into people’s 20s.

* https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-ye...

Of course even post-"25" some folks still may lack them as well, but at that point there's no longer anything physically preventing you from doing so.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#146

Post by macintux »

alphabettsy wrote: post #81

The biggest problem I see is that we’re now essentially requiring ID to use substantial parts of the internet. So many business only have a Facebook page, Google maps has social features. I already didn’t want a Facebook account just to see a businesses specials, now I’ll need to present ID too? Certainly interested to see how all this plays out.

I’ve gotten by for the last several years without Facebook or Google (I do use a YT account, but not for anything meaningful). It’s annoying, but doable.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#147

Post by nemo44x »

setgree wrote: post #3

I support this in theory, but good luck trying to outmaneuver teens on the internet. I foresee a proliferation of age faking tools, VPNs, etc.

You only have to disrupt them enough to make them useless to kids. There needs to be a critical mass of users for the social media tool to work. If some kids get through, fine. Liquor stores sell kids with fake IDs alcohol sometimes. But most kids won't be able to get access making the site more or less useless to those that can. Any large enough mass (someone at a school distributes to lots of people at the school) will likely be detected and destroyed.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#148

Post by Clubber »

aurareturn wrote: post #25

>Critics have said the bill violates the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections for free speech and that parents, not the government, should make decisions about the online presence of their children of all ages. It's extremely difficult for parents to stop their children, especially early teens from using social media. This law should make it easier and it would put the work on Meta, Snap, Tiktok, Pinterest…

The funny thing is Facebook already has restrictions on serving ads to and collecting data from kids under 13. They have a popup that asks, "Are you over 13?" at which point my then 11 year old daughter clicked yes.

This is feel-good legislation and is not realistically enforceable. People can argue about it all they want, it won't change anything because it's not enforceable.

>It requires them to use a third-party verification system to screen out those who are underage.

We'll see how well that works.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#149

Post by paxys »

Right, Florida teenagers are totally not going to use social media after this law. It's like everyone commenting on this thread was born yesterday.

This is a form of government control on your devices and eyeballs, nothing else. And considering it is effectively impossible to enforce, the state is soon going to start suing all the tech companies they don't like and push further restrictions/censorship.

Re: Florida's DeSantis signs law restricting social media for people under 16

#150

Post by vsnf »

jl6 wrote: post #102
vsnf wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I understand the practical issues with my position. But I can’t ethically condone saying “you have no voice” to a fellow citizen, so I prefer no restrictions.

There are plenty of unethical outcomes available in the "let babies vote" scenario, to weigh against the allegedly-unethical scenario of having a voting age.

Indeed there are. There are many hills I’ll die on, and while this isn’t one of them, I do find it deeply uncomfortable to so clearly deny a whole category of citizens representation.
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