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Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

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Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#151

Post by bnastic »

Tade0 wrote: post #16

I'm eternally grateful that the social media network that I was part of throughout my teenage years abruptly disappeared from the internet, never to come back again. Some say it was a technical failure during migration when the company was trying to pivot to file hosting, but it's impossible to verify. Perhaps these bans are a blessing in disguise and future generations will be happy to not have their most awkward st…

> technical failure during migration

Showing my age when the first thing that came to mind was ' but ma.gnolia was more of a social bookmarking...'

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#152

Post by jnordt »

andix wrote: post #98

Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matt…

Tictoc, Instagram, Youtube shorts and in parts Linkedin are Digital Drugs. Similisr to smoking cigarettes or vaping.

Whats fascinating about thid is that we have managed to create a new class of drugs - that does not require physical substances to be added to our bodies...and works via visual stimulous only.

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#153

Post by rhines »

verdverm wrote: post #96

How long before the kids use Ai to build their own?

What matters is content, not communication. They could build a platform to chat with each other, but they could just use WhatsApp or text or email for that. But they can't build a platform with an infinite stream of targeted content (until AI generates content I guess).

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#154

Post by alkonaut »

peyton wrote: post #53
alkonaut wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any kind of zero knowledge verification should be ok. But with minors it often goes a long way to just make the law. It’s a good instruction to parents who should be able to control this. Laws on bike helmets for minors are followed nearly 100% not because they are enforced by authorities but because the law gives parents guidance.

Bike helmets are for safety but reading the article the ban is more for some kind of societal change. I don’t know if it’s really comparable.

I think parent's _want_ to keep kids in helmets and away from social media. But the pressure is some times high when Joe can ride without helmet, or can use TikTok. A law really helped the bike helmet thing at least. That they are fundamentally different I think doesn't matter since the peer pressure thing and what parents want is the same.

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#155

Post by parineum »

tedmiston wrote: post #129
api wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not really social media at all and we should stop calling it that. I call them chum feeds or scrollers. There’s no social component. It’s just addictive short form infinite scroll brain rot. Social media deserving of the name is almost dead. It’s not that profitable and the sites are expensive to run.

likes and comments aren't social?

I get where you and parent are coming from. It's social in the way that anti-social behavior is social.

The content is generated by users but the consumer of the content is served whatever user content drives engagement. People aren't really having conversations on these platforms.

The only places where you can really have a conversation are places where engagement is low enough that the odds off a set very high engagement comments can't shove everything else down the page.

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#156

Post by Aurornis »

cheeseface wrote: post #118
andix wrote: post #98

Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matt…

Agree on how the platform’s have changed. However, I don’t think Reddit is an exception. Popular is often filled with content that is driven by the feelings of fear and hate. Not something I’d like to continually expose kids or teens to.

I agree completely about Reddit. It's a clickbait factory with a misinformation density that makes my Facebook feed look downright informative.

I was an early Reddit user. It felt like there was a distinct shift when the site went from programming and news topics to being meme-heavy. Then again recently when they started recommending niche subreddits into everyone's feeds so that even the small subreddits couldn't count on being islands of quality.

Now it's just a doomerism factory. The young Redditors I've known feel like they've had their hope about the future hollowed out and crushed. They open the site and consuming a stream of content telling them that everything is awful and will continue to be awful, and anyone who disagrees is shouted down and downvoted. It's a real crabs-in-a-bucket website now.

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#157

Post by barbazoo »

zhug3 wrote: post #28

The phrase "uncontrolled human experiment" is doing interesting rhetorical work here. It frames the status quo as the experiment and regulation as the control—when historically it's been the reverse.

I’d say status quo is before social media as that’s where most childhoods have happened. Targeting children with social media is definitely a new thing and still an experiment since those poor souls that had their lives surveilled by Meta are just coming of age and we’re just learning about the damages.

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#158

Post by mrob »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #90
Mindwipe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing in practice. Anything with zero knowledge is never going to be considered robust enough by a government. Zero knowledge protocols really have no functional revocation mechanism.

(Without accepting the premise that it should be acceptable to have to provide any kind of proof...) > Zero knowledge protocols really have no functional revocation mechanism. None would be needed, you (sadly) only age in one direction, so valid proof would never become invalid proof.

>valid proof would never become invalid proof

Somebody can give their proof of age to another person.

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#159

Post by quotemstr »

XorNot wrote: post #138
whatever1 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackernews is also addictive. Fortnine is addictive. World of Warcraft is addictive. NFL is addictive. Addiction does not strike to me as a unique trait of the social media. The echo chamber bubble on the other hand, seems quite unique.

Hacker News has plenty of its own echo chamber, no different to any other social environment.

Nah. Hacker News has a diversity of views! In this very thread, you can see a robust debate between

1) people who want to ban kids from social media, and

2) people who want to ban everyone from social media.

See? HN captures the full range of legitimate perspectives on technology.

Re: Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

#160

Post by whyenot »

cheeseface wrote: post #118
andix wrote: post #98

Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matt…

Agree on how the platform’s have changed. However, I don’t think Reddit is an exception. Popular is often filled with content that is driven by the feelings of fear and hate. Not something I’d like to continually expose kids or teens to.

What I find particularly bad about Reddit is the platform is specifically designed to amplify group think and silence competing opinions. All it takes is five more downvotes than upvotes and a comment will lose visibility. It can turn subreddits into little bubbles where like-minded people upvote each other and almost never have to see dissenting opinions. That may not be a big deal on a gardening subreddit, but it can be a big problem or even dangerous elsewhere.
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