Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's crazy that social media is banned but kids are still subject to gambling ads prior to or after watching the footy on free to air TV.
Can they gamble?
Supposedly no but they will soon be able to.
Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
821–830 of 1001 posts
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#822Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly. I don't think this is much of an issue at all. The path of least resistance, by an overwhelmingly wide margin, is just using a proxy, TOR, or whatever else to bypass the filtering. Sites will be doing the bare minimum for legal compliance, and so it won't be particularly difficult.…
The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content, as they result in more engagement (time spent). This is a fundamental trait of humans. Even babies look at angry faces longer than happy faces.More time spent means more advertising revenue. It means the current generation gets exposed to a lot of toxic content all in the name of driving advertising revenue. In t…
I agree with you 100%, but I would add the bubble effect.
You watch something, you like it, then you get all the time similar things.
Simple example: you click on a post about vegetarian meals. Then the next you see is cows ending up in a slaughterhouse. And then etc.. In less than a week, your posts are all about "why become a vegan".
The end effect is that they shape our children culturally, and it's very hard to explain what is true vs what is fake. Or why something is right vs wrong. They are just not there yet.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#823Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly. I don't think this is much of an issue at all. The path of least resistance, by an overwhelmingly wide margin, is just using a proxy, TOR, or whatever else to bypass the filtering. Sites will be doing the bare minimum for legal compliance, and so it won't be particularly difficult.…
I think one difference from how we grew up (remember bbs’es?) is that it was something in your desktop, not an omnipresent force in your pocket
And here lies the actual fix unless you just want to sit back and wait for regulators to pick it up - phones should be the means of communication, not consumption.
Remove those apps that make you do so, and the world becomes a little bit brighter over time. I did it years ago with FB apps (which was draining battery while unused, typical fb crappy engineering when they can't even snoop on you in more subtle ways) and have 0 need to put anything there. I can check FB on desktop if I need to, and do so rarely due to lack of any actually interesting stuff there.
Same can go for any other social cancer out there.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#824Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I’m seeing in Australia is most parents know it’s bad, and want their kids off social media. But it’s a Herculean task when the social media companies have such a grip on their kids and when all the other kids have it. It’s the same story with banning phones in schools. Everyone knows it’s the right thing to do but individual parents or teachers don’t have the power to do it alone.
Of course individual parents have the power to do something. Take the phone when they go to school. Problem solved.
I agree but this sounds harder than it is.
Not every parent is an expert in arguing against these actors that have very deep pockets.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#825Earlier quoted context omitted.
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly. I don't think this is much of an issue at all. The path of least resistance, by an overwhelmingly wide margin, is just using a proxy, TOR, or whatever else to bypass the filtering. Sites will be doing the bare minimum for legal compliance, and so it won't be particularly difficult.…
The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content, as they result in more engagement (time spent). This is a fundamental trait of humans. Even babies look at angry faces longer than happy faces.More time spent means more advertising revenue. It means the current generation gets exposed to a lot of toxic content all in the name of driving advertising revenue. In t…
> a small fraction of kids branching off into fringe networks that are off the radar and will take them to very dark places very quickly.
‘Fringe networks’, and ‘off the radar’ feel like a very negative framing for a kind of smaller, more intimate, and often pleasantly communal feeling internet that I quite like!
Old fashioned online forums—maybe even Hackernews itself?—would likely fit into this ‘fringe’, ‘off the radar’ internet, and yet, it still feels much less toxic here than it does on twitter.
> The real problem is social media. Their machine learning algorithms are optimised to boost toxic content
…and you need a massive network to enable this, right? You can’t do it without the money, and the volume of content, that the giants in this space have.
If this just pushes kids onto the small web—sure, it’s not _all_ wholesome—but at least it’s not as carefully, as deliberately manipulative.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#826The next step is to outlaw social media in general, and maybe the world will become a bit better. Edit: in case someone decides to disagree with me, here is a non-exhaustive list of issues that social media has created: isolation from the real world, unrealistic expectations in terms of looks/status/success, dehumanization by turning people into likes-dislikes, dehumanizations by creating influencers whose sole purpo…
This must be the modern version of Fahrenheit 451. Books are bad because „list of bad things“, let’s not weigh in if people like it or not… just burn the books.
I truly don't understand how people can make such comparisons, and in general defend social media. Is this some sort of Stockholm syndrome?
Social media has ruined my mental health, when I fell into a deep hole of propaganda. It took me a year to recover, and I'm still not fully recovered, and I'm still trying to separate between what I truly think, and what social media "made" me think. People underestimate the power of echo chambers created by the algorithm.
I saw how friends and family got radicalized thanks to social media. Social media is currently fueling at least one war and multiple regional conflicts, where people who know nothing about the events, get "educated" by social media. Social media is fueling hatred and bigotry, further diving already fragile societies. Social media disinformation campaigns were behind Brexit. And social media is used as a tool by government to spread misinformation or influence social opinions. All these in addition to everyone being an influencer and showing their phone into the faces of people in public places, while selling crap from AliExpress for 500% markup, as if you drink electrolytes, put a nose tape, and clean your face every day -- your life will become ten folds better.
I can't name one good thing that came out of social media. None. And even if there are things, and I'm sure someone will name them out, they are minor comparing to the negative sides, or could be achieved in a more sustainable way.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#827Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think one difference from how we grew up (remember bbs’es?) is that it was something in your desktop, not an omnipresent force in your pocket
And here lies the actual fix unless you just want to sit back and wait for regulators to pick it up - phones should be the means of communication, not consumption. Remove those apps that make you do so, and the world becomes a little bit brighter over time. I did it years ago with FB apps (which was draining battery while unused, typical fb crappy engineering when they can't even snoop on you in more subtle ways) and…
Yeah the current situation is akin to having to open a pack of cigarettes every time you wanted to check the weather or use satnav.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#828To be honest, I wouldn't mind they'd ban it for adults too, would help me from wasting time on them. In all seriousness though, I'm curious what counts as social media, can they not play MMORPGs anymore for example? Are niche forums included ? What about chat apps like Whatsapp? Phone texting? Email? I'm also curious if say TikTok and YouTubed simply deactivated their social features? No comments, DMs, and so on for…
I don't know about Australia, but there's a page here detailing some of the sites that got shut down because of the OSA in the UK: https://onlinesafetyact.co.uk/in_memoriam/
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#829Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, yes but the other problem is this is putting authoritarians in charge of more stuff. I had a comment comparing this to allowing people to eat too much food and that is literally where the logical outcome of this sort of thinking goes - it happens in practice, that isn't some sort of theoretical risk. The more the government decides what people can and can't want to do the worse the potential gets when they make…
That is an argument and worth monitoring, but IMO it's not a strong enough argument to stop this. This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving until kids are of age they will (on average) have sufficient maturity to handle the responsibility. Something we accept. Kids are not banned from digital communication. My daughter can still send text messages and make ph…
> I believe that the line in the sand over which platforms this applies to is the ones that
You know a law is broken when its definition is defined by random people "knowing" where and how it applies.
> This sort of ban is the same as existing laws banning the sale and consumption of alcohol or driving
No it's not. Is every social media platform banned? How is it defined? This is the equivalent of going into a supermarket with a "kids" alcohol section and 1 for everyone else hand-picked by whoever in charge.
Re: Australia begins enforcing world-first teen social media ban
#830Earlier quoted context omitted.
The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars, do you think that's part of the slippery slope that has led to all of those happening-in-practice bad things?
> The government has laws saying people under 16 can't drive cars We did, though. The chances of getting caught were slim to nil. Will kids (and adults for that matter) have the same easy opportunity to evade enforcement here?
I thought the point of laws was not that enforcement is perfect but rather that the consequence of getting caught created a counter-incentive to doing the thing?