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

Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 453 posts

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#41

Post by notepad0x90 »

It sounds extreme, but I support banning usage of anything that runs software for children under 13. Under 13, children are still developing their minds, it is important for their welfare that they learn how to function without technological dependencies.

You know how in school they used to tell us we can't use calculators to solve math problems? Same thing. It can't be done by individual parents either, because then kids would get envious and that in itself would cause more problems than it would solve.

It is important for kids to get bored, to socialize in person, to solve problems the hard way, and develop the mental-muscles they need to not only function, but to make best use of modern technology.

It is also important that parents don't use technology to raise their children (includes TV). Most parents just give their kids a tablet with youtube these days.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#42

Post by martin-t »

Telaneo wrote: post #5

It'll be interesting to see what they can cook up at home. Chat Control was pushed in large part by Denmark, and Minister of Justice Peter Hummelgaard is on record saying some pretty disturbing things regarding the right to privacy online.[1] Now for this, they don't need the entire EU to go along, and any laws already on the books might prove ineffective to protect against means that end up achieving similar goals t…

> Denmark's constitution does have a privacy paragraph, but it explicitly mentions telephone and telegraph, as well as letters

And this is why laws should always include their justification.

The intent was clearly to protect people - to make sure the balance of power does not fall too much in the government's favor that it can silence dissent before it gets organized enough to remove the government (whether legally or illegally does not matter), even if that meant some crimes go unpunished.

These rules were created because most current democratic governments were created by people overthrowing previous dictatorships (whether a dictator calls himself king, president or general secretary does not matter) and they knew very well that even the government they create might need to be overthrown in the future.

Now the governments are intentionally sidestepping these rules because:

- Every organization's primary goal is its own continued existence.

- Every organization's secondary goal is the protection of its members.

- Any officially stated goals are tertiary.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#43

Post by awillen »

The one thing I don't see and always wonder about with these sorts of things is how they define "social media". Seems like a tough thing to do - if you cast too broad a definition you'll end up with just about anywhere one can communicate on the internet, including email. If you take the very narrow approach of naming FB, IG, TikTok, etc., you almost certainly miss out on whatever the next platform is that's relevant to kids.

Remember YikYak? IIRC that was worse for kids than most of the big social media sites, but how do you write a law that anticipates the next YikYak without banning everything?

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#44

Post by iLoveOncall »

delusional wrote: post #6
casesarplus1 wrote: post #3

How will they achieve that without introducing a requirement to identify yourself on every online platform, which some would say is probably the whole reason for introducing something promoted as being "for the children"™.

the EU is working on a system for age verification that won't identify you to the platform. The details are of course complicated, but you can imagine an openid like system run by the government that only exposes if you're old enough for Y. The platforms asks your government if you're old enough. You identify yourself to your government. Your government responds to the question with a single Boolean.

This is an acceptable solution only if the government doesn't know which platform you are trying to access either.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#46

Post by everdrive »

delecti wrote: post #38
everdrive wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Tylenol is a drug just the same as heroin. Do you think that HN has the same sort of impacts on people as instagram or facebook?

Do you think a law which restricts "social media" will be crafted delicately enough to affect Instagram and Facebook but not HN?

In principle, certainly. In practice, Congress can't be trusted to craft more or less any law these days. I'm not necessarily sure that the law will be able to help us here, but I also think it's not helpful to take the broadest possible definition of social media to try to shutdown discussion. (I'm not suggesting that you are doing that)

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#47

Post by dlisboa »

delecti wrote: post #38
everdrive wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Tylenol is a drug just the same as heroin. Do you think that HN has the same sort of impacts on people as instagram or facebook?

Do you think a law which restricts "social media" will be crafted delicately enough to affect Instagram and Facebook but not HN?

I'd gladly give up HN if it means Instagram and Facebook are eradicated. Yes, yes, "those that would trade liberty for security...", but we were better off without any form of social media at all.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#48

Post by delusional »

gumby271 wrote: post #36
Semaphor wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to, that's the thing. The site requests "are you over 18" and you use your ID to prove it without them getting any other information from it. Requires a phone with NFC, but the app is open source

hopefully the protocol is open source too. I'd hate to find that it just works on iOS and Google certified Android.

I think that ends up being a more difficult problem than just open source. There will have to be some cryptography at play to make sure the age verification information is actually attested by your government.

It would be possible for them to provide an open-source app, but design the cryptography in such a way that you couldn't deploy it anyway. That would make it rather pointless.

I too hope they design that into the system, which the danish authorities unfortunately don't have a good track record of doing.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#49

Post by oblio »

Semaphor wrote: post #7
delusional wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the EU is working on a system for age verification that won't identify you to the platform. The details are of course complicated, but you can imagine an openid like system run by the government that only exposes if you're old enough for Y. The platforms asks your government if you're old enough. You identify yourself to your government. Your government responds to the question with a single Boolean.

Our German national ID supports just verifying that you are over age X, with no other info given.

It needs to be scaled to the EU level.

Re: Denmark's government aims to ban access to social media for children under 15

#50

Post by gumby271 »

Semaphor wrote: post #39
gumby271 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hopefully the protocol is open source too. I'd hate to find that it just works on iOS and Google certified Android.

Should all be open, but I don't know for sure. Works with ungoogled android unless something changed. https://github.com/Governikus/AusweisApp

That's very cool and good to hear. Thanks for sharing!
Post reply on HN