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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

#761

Post by [deleted] »

maximinus_thrax wrote: post #438
LVB wrote: post #360

Let the experiment take place, I say. Just like Oregon’s now-repealed drug use decriminalization bill. It didn’t achieve its intended goals, but there is now a mass of data about what assumptions were wrong, implementation issues, etc. IMO there is real value in letting states put such changes into play to get beyond the debate and actually test the hypotheses.

> Let the experiment take place, I say. I think the experiment is more about the judiciary and about tribal politics. There's ample case law against something like this, so to me this seems unconstitutional, and I doubt it will stand. But DeSantis will win some more heart and minds of the folks who secretly do want big government protecting them from the boogieman. Regardless of anyone's views about social media, the…

[deleted]

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

#762

Post by [deleted] »

maximinus_thrax wrote: post #736
d0gsg0w00f wrote: post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it doesn't represent all mindsets. That's what elections are for. All Floridians participate in the vote to elect a desired philosophy into power and then the winning party hopes that philosophy will reflect in the laws and policies created in the near future. You elect a like minded leader to act on your interests so you don't have to micro manage the governance of a state. The alternative could be to have…

I am well aware of how direct democracy vs representative democracy works, so I don't need you to educate me on the subject. My issue with your comment is that you assume that a large group of people agree with the law as if we're talking about direct democracy, which I believe is not true. I do not believe that a large number of Floridians (large enough to matter in terms of voting, I'm not saying large as in city-l…

[deleted]

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

#763

Post by [deleted] »

Clubber wrote: post #158
macintux wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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. I think the point is that the internet and particularly social media is now the de-facto town square. States are basically requiring identification to speak or criticize government in the town square. If you take a step back and look at it that way, it's grossly an…

[deleted]

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

#764

Post by oliwarner »

scarface_74 wrote: post #716
oliwarner wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you imagine that will be enforced? Perhaps by... ID? Emphasis mine. It's that that which I'm disputing. This law does not require you to have an account to go onto a website . It is a law that requires you are age-checked to hold an account on social media platforms. These are different things. Holding an account —broadly speaking— allows you to post, like, comment, follow and be profiled in an enduring fash…

When you buy alcohol, it’s very easy to see whether they are taking and storing your picture. You can also buy alcohol with cash leaving no digital footprint. And is AI the new blockchain that will magically solve every problem? And most children over 14 don’t have government IDs either. If you don’t want your kids to be on Facebook, use parental controls. It’s the parents responsibility. I live in Florida for contex…

Parental choice exists where parents can make informed choices.

You don't know how much their child is being affected by platforms that have been designed to be addictive, that go out of their way to spur conflict and argument (sorry, "engagement"), and that have so few parental controls that it's near impossible for a parent to actually vet what's going on, who's interacting with them.

You're not even allowed to give your kids alcohol. There's clearly some precedence for protecting kids from their parents' inability to make informed choices.

And ML models for detecting age have existed for a long time. It's not magic unicorn dust. It's just one way to avoid this ID stuff that everybody is upset about.

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

#765

Post by oliwarner »

jonathankoren wrote: post #723
oliwarner wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've just answered in a sibling thread. I'm not asked for ID when I order a drink. The bartender takes a look at my ugly mug and makes the call: I'm [painfully] clearly over 25. Facebook has more than enough processing power to have an AI watch you reading a script straight to camera for 30 seconds to work out a rough age. If you're within 5 years of their idea of 18, surrender that ID, the same way you would if you…

Thank you for answering. You have a bit more faith in a technical solution working at scale than I do, but I have to point out, that after repeatedly claiming that no one wanted an ID scan, your proposal involves an ID scan. I also have to point out, that PII and GDPR protections are meaningless here. Under a government mandated censorship regime, the threat is the government, not some data broker somewhere.

The reason I have faith in a pure-technology solution is because setting up ID-linked database APIs will take time and querying it will cost social networks real money. When this was discussed in the UK, we were looking at 10p per check. That's $1m for Florida alone plus engineering to get it in.

They have innumerable GPU cycles they could redirect to a ML solution, and more importantly this is something that ML and facial recognition systems have been doing in prosumer-grade hardware for well over a decade. If I could set something up to do this in an afternoon, I believe Facebook probably could too.

My proposal only involves ID if you look young enough that the AI isn't certain or you don't want to upload a video. It's cutting out ID checks for 99% over 25yo.

But I do see this more about child safety than a censorship regime. Social networks are poison, even to adults. They're designed to trap us there, keep up "engaging" and not wander off to another platform. Our ability to make an informed choice about whether our kids are being damaged by them (and the people on them - who we have no control over) is seriously diminished. I've seen the stuff my daughters' 8yo friend uploads and the comments would change your mind. Yes, I'm biased, but I don't think that makes me (or this) wrong.

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

#766

Post by [deleted] »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #722
ricardobeat wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don’t see how that comment answers mine? In my experience it’s impossible to properly block anything that is also available as a web app (which is most of social media apps).

You block app by time or uninstall it, and black/white list the site.

[deleted]

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

#768

Post by tekknik »

autoexec wrote: post #548
EnigmaFlare wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No he's not because the experiment doesn't depend on them. Social science researchers use these kinds of sudden differences in laws all the time to study their effects. People in general can look at the outcomes too if they're obvious enough.

I don't think it's very likely we'll get any actionable data out of this. It doesn't actually stop children from accessing social media, or even creating accounts on social media sites. Tracking social media usage by children will depend entirely on self-reported data and there are an endless amount of confounding variables that would make a direct comparison of children's mental health difficult/impossible to attrib…

Digital IDs are becoming more and more a thing. Soon it will be quite easy to validate that someone is over 16 or require a parent to provide their ID and vouch instead.

This is an old way of thinking and with some recent developments more of the wild west internet will die.

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

#769

Post by mixmastamyk »

bdw5204 wrote: post #758
mixmastamyk wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bill of Rights restricts Uncle Sam. It doesn’t guarantee minors the right to use a private computer system.

The Bill of Rights applies to state and local governments. The Supreme Court has been pretty clear about that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_R...

That doesn't change the equation unfortunately.

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

#770

Post by thomastjeffery »

iAMkenough wrote: post #755
thomastjeffery wrote: post #714

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've seen an argument, therefore I'm making it? That's not how it works.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply that was your argument. That's not how I meant for you to interpret it. I meant to get your opinion on whether the First Amendment would create a barrier for what you're proposing: government mandated moderation of protected speech on private platforms. You're talking about legislation and where to place barriers, so I thought you'd be interested in discussion. Sorry.

OK

I think that private companies shouldn't own the public square. So long as we allow corporations to encapsulate social interaction, we will continue to fail at moderation.

I don't think that law is a really meaningful avenue to fix this problem. I do think that aggressive anti-trust action could help a lot, though. If we do want to use law, then I think the focus should be on punishment for facilitation of harm. We should be able to prosecute Facebook for hosting fraudsters and failing to moderate harmful content.

As it is, a tiny number of companies hosting the social activity of billions of people, and those companies have utterly failed to accommodate that reality with proportional moderation. The failure of Facebook to adequately moderate has already lead to genocide.

My greater dream is to replace centralized social networks and content moderation with a decentralized network of curated attestations.

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