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France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

rte.ie

71–80 of 172 posts

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#71

I've noticed that there's a decent amount of people who had benefitted having access to computer and internet really early on that seemed to be pro on banning teen access to social media, is there a reason why? the social media of today don't seem all that much different from the internet forums of back in the day if algorithmic amplification is the reason then I'm not sure why social media as a whole has to be banne…

It's like pot.

Back in the day, it was much less concentrated and less dangerous than what you can get today.

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#72

I don't like the idea of centralised digital ID for the obvious surveillance/privacy arguments and think that side of the conversation needs to be focused on. BUT, I also think that the Social Media experiment has shown that social media in general really, really sucks. It sucks for adults but it's objectively damaging to kids. So like, I am all for restricting kids from it, and honestly I'd happily see it regulated…

Social media is objectively damaging to the interests of the ruling class, who have been objectively damaging to western civilization during the past decades in which they had near-complete control over the flow of information. It'd be batshit crazy to go back to the times when information flow was centralized in the hands of a few corporations, just because a some neurotics can't handle the increased flow of informa…

Isn’t the information flow being controlled by the few major social media players another form of centralisation where their algorithms decide which decentralised voices are heard?

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#73
post #47

I think this is a good thing. Social media should be treated a bit like drugs, with regards to both production and consumption.

Yes, the more government intervention the better. history has shown that government intervention always works out well.

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#74

What a weird idea to isolate teens from a platform instead of regulating it. It’s like if children were forbidden to drink a soda at a bar because they also sell alcohol. Enforcing platform’s safety and educating users (young and old) would be much better to help everyone be healthy in a connected world.

We have not learnt anything from the war on drugs, even though many people compare social media to drugs.

Very off-topic, but war on drugs failed in NA, but is successful in East Asia. It really depends on government and how they handle it. I’m not American, but my understanding of war on drugs was also that it wasn’t just about drugs, might be wrong.

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#75

It's a good start. Ban it for all under 30s and over 60s.

Nepal tried to ban social media to keep the youth from organizing, and the youth rose up and burned the government buildings and politicans' homes down. I'd like to see you try.

That's an incredibly simplistic narrative of what happened in Nepal but I get that that is what the media in the US/EU have been running with

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#76
post #27

So I guess in 10 or so years whoever doesn't submit their ID card to every online service in existence will not be able to do much of anything online.

Funny thing is, too, that you can do age verification with zero knowledge proofs. No ID needed -- in principle.

Yet in practice, yeah, it'll be the death of anonymity. To allow ZKPs to take off would be letting a good panic go to waste, right? /s

While I believe the genesis of this age limit push is a good old fashioned moral panic, it's also obvious that the usual enemies of free speech are salivating at using this panic as a pretext to ban anonymity on the internet.

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#77
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if they need age verification they will ask for everyone's ID, that is why they are doing that in the first place.

They're doing this because it's bad for teen mental health, and polls keep showing 70% support and 15% opposition.

Why just teens though? Getting manipulated by algorithms crafted to maximize screentime and ad revenue is bad for anyone.

These platforms rely on ads to survive. Which means it should be easy to regulate them. You can prevent them from selling ads at which point they will be forced to comply. If they don't, someone else will get the ad revenue. Europe is already hostile towards american tech giants anyways.

The possibilities are endless. Pass a law that forces all social media with more than x users to not implement constant scrolling, make their ranking algorithm open source, allow people to use their own algorithms, employ robust moderation etc.

Instead we have a blanket ban that requires id checks but leaves the manipulation machine intact so it can prey on adults. Mental health is not the real issue here. They want to be able to track people and destroy anonimity online. Children are a convenient excuse.

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#78
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if they need age verification they will ask for everyone's ID, that is why they are doing that in the first place.

They're doing this because it's bad for teen mental health, and polls keep showing 70% support and 15% opposition.

Despot governments are also harmful for teen mental health but we don't see those being banned.

Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#79

What a weird idea to isolate teens from a platform instead of regulating it. It’s like if children were forbidden to drink a soda at a bar because they also sell alcohol. Enforcing platform’s safety and educating users (young and old) would be much better to help everyone be healthy in a connected world.

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Re: France passes bill to ban social media use by under-15s

#80
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imo the difference is enormous between social media and forums. Infinite feeds are designed to game you for attention, whereas the forums of yore were there to facilitate discussions. I'm sure some forums would also have liked to game you if they could, but they didn't have the scale to always have something juicy to serve up. To me it's super uncomfortable to expose my kids to a product designed by large teams with…

The bodybuilding.com forums always had something juicy to serve up. Today’s social media really isn’t much different. I find it uncomfortable for the government to yoink any citizen’s access to discussion platforms. I would be more comfortable with other means.

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