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

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

661–670 of 783 posts

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

#661

Post by freejazz »

seoulmetro wrote: post #653
freejazz wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only people on earth that should matter to are the kids themselves, their parents, or their future partners, whom they will be able to choose, based on a willingness to beget children. It seems like a much more expansive and reasonable list than you described as being a "logical fallacy"

That's because the logical fallacy is the last paragraph in the comment.

Oh, who is different in the last paragraph? It's your own list from your own comment and you are so knee-jerk defensive that you don't even realize what you wrote.

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

#662

Post by anon373839 »

hn_acker wrote: post #637
anon373839 wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the test courts use when they evaluate the constitutionality of a law that curtails a fundamental right (such as speech) is twofold: 1) Does the law serve a compelling government interest? 2) Is the law narrowly tailored to serve that interest? The features I listed all relate to “protecting the children” in some way, which is why I thought they could be the basis for courts to distinguish previous case law reg…

> Well, the test courts use when they evaluate the constitutionality of a law that curtails a fundamental right (such as speech) is twofold: 1) Does the law serve a compelling government interest? 2) Is the law narrowly tailored to serve that interest? Almost right. Strict scrutiny has a third factor [1]: Does the law use the available method which is least restrictive of speech? An alternative method to banning youn…

I almost feel embarrassed to be so pedantic, but it's actually not clear that it is a third factor. Quite a few scholars interpret this requirement as being a component of "narrow tailoring", or vice versa. Realistically, I don't think many cases will hinge on this distinction: if a less restrictive method exists that can serve the compelling interest comparably well, then of course the more restrictive method isn't narrowly tailored, and is overbroad.

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

#663

Post by friend_and_foe »

exabrial wrote: post #333

I'll be the odd guy out and say it should probably be illegal to attempt to enter a contract (AUP, privacy policy, etc) with a minor anyway (for a lot of reasons around exploitation), so I don't _really_ have a major issue with this at face value. I know the devil is in the details though, so kinda curious what the actual provisions are. The alternative is a free internet, where we don't need accounts to do things, b…

That's an interesting thing regarding this law. This law is entirely unenforceable on sites that don't make their revenue by knowing exactly who you are. Any social network that allows pseudonymous accounts and doesn't require real identity information can easily be used by a kid, just click "I'm over 16" when the dialog pops up. But Instagram or Facebook is going to have a hell of a time convincing a court that they didn't know that Brayden who is posting pictures from school wasn't actually 40, or that he was in Illinois when all his contacts are from the same town in the Florida panhandle. So laws like this actually further the concept of a free internet without constant tracking, companies that track you have no plausible deniability.

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

#664

Post by novok »

notyourwork wrote: post #617
t-writescode wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would the internet be a better place with people being identified? No. Marginalized groups __need__ their anonymity to be safe. Should a teenager in Utah be doxxed by a message board where they're working through their gender identity? What about a kid in Georgia that's working through whether or not they believe the religion they were raised in? How about a wife who is beginning the research process and asking que…

You bring up a good point. How were these problems addressed before the internet?

A lot of things were not recorded, there were no mass video recording, no cell phone location tracking, no ALPR, low credit card use with high cash usage and what was recorded was in the bottom of some basement cabinet of some government office.

Libraries had very strong privacy protections culturally and legally.

If you lived somewhere with good transit and didn't have a papers please id culture, you could also travel without any identifying information on your person!

If you had half decent opsec, the only thing to worry about is people you know noticing you somewhere, and even that is reduced by driving somewhere 1 hour away.

We have lost a lot of effective privacy today.

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

#665

Post by philwelch »

freejazz wrote: post #464
handoflixue wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain a bit more about how Brandeis' philosophy relates to that case? Was he pro-sterilization, or are you just trying to imply that "experimentation"/science means you lack any morals?

I think the argument is that states are not laboratories for behaviors that violate the constitutional rights of others, or in the case of this law, go beyond the legislative branch's constitutional powers, so that just suggesting there isn't an experiment is in itself not sufficient to defend this law.

I don’t think banning social media use by minors either violates constitutional rights or exceeds constitutional powers. And the constitutional powers of a state legislature to enact state laws are extremely broad; much more so than the powers of Congress to enact federal laws.

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

#666

Post by hackable_sand »

Sargos wrote: post #630
mcmoor wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering the real cost, it may be more accurate with 10^-5c per HN post, 10^-4c per Facebook photo (numbers made up). But they're a pain in the ass to pay, so we depend on people who do pay them in bulk, that is, the advertisers. But if we can invent any other method to properly trade this small amount of value, I think we can finally do away with them.

This is how web3 operates. A post cost a bit of gas (usually a penny or less) and that pays for the infrastructure (data processed and stored in the smart contract. Each user paying for their own actions prevents the need for advertisers.

Also conveniently prevents having to hear those pesky poor people complain.

Back to work!

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

#667

Post by anon373839 »

iteygib wrote: post #631
anon373839 wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only see these as approximate precedents in the rough sense that they involve limiting minors’ access to speech. Otherwise, factually, I can see several distinguishing features: - social media being optimized for addiction - social media potentially compromising minors’ physical safety - social media use having documented adverse mental health outcomes for minors - the fact that social media use requires an ongoing…

Those aren't factual though, those are one just one side of an opinionated argument. Social media can also be argued to have positive values. IE, I would argue that most kids use social media not because of being addicted, but because they find and form new types of communities: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK594763/#:~:text=Social... Given it's Florida and the political leanings of it's governor, I would argu…

This is one of those times when legal English sounds like everyday English, but isn't. In this context, "factual" doesn't mean "proven true", but rather "of the category of issues that are factual in nature" (instead of legal in nature). The point here is that the factual bases Florida will offer in support of there being a compelling governmental interest are somewhat different (and probably better substantiated) than the factual bases California gave in Brown, for example.

The reason this matters is that the precedential effect of a prior opinion such as Brown depends on how similar the underlying facts are to the present dispute. If a court wants to go in a different direction, it will usually prefer not to overturn the previous opinion, but rather to say that it doesn't apply here because the facts are different.

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

#668

Post by novok »

ricardobeat wrote: post #446
wvenable wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might feel that way but what's the real difference between TikTok and watching TV? Society has always restricted children's access to specific content but now we're restricting children's access to specific mediums regardless of the content itself. Why is TikTok or YouTube shorts not a valid way to consume media? It's a bit like arguing graphic novels are acceptable to children but short comics are not.

The difference is massive . Your weird neighbour who has a feet fetish would never get to be a TV star, but he can amass 50k followers on TikTok, and request feet pics via private messages to them. Including underage children. Now multiply that by ten thousand. TV, by nature of being a group effort and holding a sliver of a monopoly for your attention, had a natural content filter (based on societal standards, for ba…

Replace that with books and written content on the internet, which has been a thing for almost 30 years by this point (like a lot of fanfiction on the internet).

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

#669

Post by philwelch »

vkou wrote: post #472
handoflixue wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else are we going to find out which policies work, if we can't perform experiments? The experiment is the basic tool of science.

Some experiments can't be performed, for ethical reasons. We don't test if parachutes work by throwing people not wearing them out of planes, for one. States can experiment with variability in their legislature, but there is a unified federal law that guarantees certain fundamental rights. Much of the south is currently trampling all over them.

Of all the states I can think of which are blatantly infringing upon an enumerated constitutional right, none of them are in the south, unless you’re going to be pedantic and count California and Hawaii.

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

#670

Post by azinman2 »

richrichie wrote: post #621
jorvi wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that once such a thing fails, it gives massive ammunition to future naysayers that get to conveniently ignore all the implementation failures because campaigning for/against will ultimately boil down to bullet points.

This is a feature of the US system. Dont think we can work around it. Imagine that Biden campaigned in 2000 extensively off a hoax that Trump called nazis fine people. This was well supported by professional media.

Just remember this is the same guy who told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by." And they in fact did rise up on Jan 6.

That he was defending people at all associated with the unite the right protest that went all neo Nazi is crazy. Why bother trying to point out that there were “good” and “fine” people protesting the statue when we all know what was going on at that event? It minimizes what happened, and reduces the blame on the literal Nazis marching and driving into crowds.

It wasn’t a “hoax”, but it was choice editing. But if you look at the spirit and context, it’s effectively what happened.

Post reply on HN