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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

#201

Post by random3 »

dragoncrab wrote: post #164
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…

Myspace and early Facebook were already a downgrade to classic chatrooms. I met with so many interesting people on chat in the early 2000s and have met with many offline as well. Multiple times I've travelled 6+ hours to participate in chat meetups with 20-50 others from the same chatroom. Those were different times: Over 4 years, I've never received a d*ckpic or was target of stalking, harassment, abuse or scam. Peo…

Not many digital cameras, not enough bandwidth for multimedia either. Your “face” was a nickname.

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

#202

Post by logicchains »

cal_dent wrote: post #194

It's all picking up steam. The thing is whatever the implementation may be, the writing is on the wall that social media's are numbered, well at least its in current form. I.m sure there'll be downsides to this but, have to say, I'm happy the de facto position that social media's should be allowed to be the wild west is now seriously being questioned

>the writing is on the wall that social media's are numbered, well at least its in current form

There's enough of us devs that absolutely fucking hate the idea of governments controlling how people communicate that the next stage of social media will probably be a decentralised system that's extremely difficult to shut down. Unless every government devolves into full on China-style authoritarianism with deep packet inspection, a national firewall and ubiquitous surveillance, there's no way to stop a well designed distributed social media platform. There just hasn't been enough incentive yet for people to build one.

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

#203

Post by NickC25 »

mrighele wrote: post #190
dragoncrab wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Myspace and early Facebook were already a downgrade to classic chatrooms. I met with so many interesting people on chat in the early 2000s and have met with many offline as well. Multiple times I've travelled 6+ hours to participate in chat meetups with 20-50 others from the same chatroom. Those were different times: Over 4 years, I've never received a d*ckpic or was target of stalking, harassment, abuse or scam. Peo…

> Myspace and early Facebook were already a downgrade to classic chatrooms. They were not a downgrade, they just worked the other way. With classic chatrooms (or a random vBulletin forums, if you wish) you would meet somebody online, then you would become friends over time and then you meet them in real life. I did that too. With early Facebook, you would meet somebody at a party, have fun together, and decide to bec…

> With classic chatrooms (or a random vBulletin forums, if you wish) you would meet somebody online, then you would become friends over time and then you meet them in real life. I did that too.

And it was usually themed around a specific hobby or activity, which would naturally turn into offline, real-world activity. almost as if it was a conduit to connecting real people with real interests, who would seek out communities based around their interests, connect, and then eventually go and do those interests.

I was heavily into a few growing up, all of which revolved around real-world activities, which the forum members all actively participated in. One, in particular that really stuck with me for years, was tennis. The forum I was on had monthly meetups for my region (NYC metro area) and dozens of people would show up, engage, and enjoy each other's presence and participation. There was also a travel section, so if I was traveling to another country or part of the US, I'd be easily able to tap into that region's meetup and get a chance to hit some balls whenever I was on the road. Lovely.

What was nice is that genuine communities were formed, and people actually and actively policed their own communities not as a power trip (hey Spez!) but rather in earnest to ensure their communities were welcoming and that whoever was interested in that topic/activity could participate.

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

#204

Post by nish__ »

baq wrote: post #192
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.

HN doesn’t optimize for addictive . Fortnite and wow do. No opinion on NFL, but they probably do at least somewhat.

The difference is whether or not the platform is for-profit. If the goal of the platform is to make money, decisions will be made to keep people more addicted than would otherwise be natural. And that's the problem.

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

#205

Post by NickC25 »

pxoe wrote: post #97
Noaidi wrote: post #60

Can we be it for adults now? Seriously, can we? I mean, if it affects a children’s what makes we think it doesn’t affect adults? Alcohol affects children, and it affects adults. If social media affects children, it also affects adults. The big live social media was it was meant to connect people but in truth, it was designed to control people.

Why is it that some people are so hell bent on limiting how people communicate? Ironically, this is also seeking to control people.

If it was a pure communication platform, we wouldn't be in this situation.

Social media as it exists in mainstream life is an advertising platform which happens to have a few methods humans can use to communicate with each other. But that's a bug, not a feature.

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

#206

Post by mike_hearn »

baq wrote: post #192
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.

HN doesn’t optimize for addictive . Fortnite and wow do. No opinion on NFL, but they probably do at least somewhat.

HN lets users opt to automatically lock themselves out after a while (noprocrast). Fortnite and WoW do not. Sounds like one knows they have users with problems, no?

I think the term addiction is way overused in this stuff. If a company makes a product you enjoy using that doesn't mean you can just describe it as addictive and get out of jail free. If there's some chemical in it that messes with your brain, fine, otherwise people need to take ownership of their own choices.

I think the disturbing reality is these countries are wanting to control social media to control the population politically. There was even a Labour MP in the UK who admitted it on television. If it weren't the case they'd just tell concerned parents to turn on the parental controls devices already have, problem solved. Instead they pass laws to end internet anonymity, but only on the big networks, which won't do anything for kids but is an excellent way to control political discontent.

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

#207

Post by hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm »

duxup wrote: post #131

Rather than really address what is ass about social media, we just "ban" it for folks who we can ban it for. This seems off. Kid's have unlimited time. They'll find something else, likely pretending to be adults and thus even more at risk. Meanwhile everyone else gets an internet license and the government every website tracks you ... This is a classic case of nice idea and the results will be all wrong / not even ad…

By creating 'rules' for social media based on what's good and bad instead of banning it altogether you end up creating loopholes instead. Even in the case we instead first discuss what is "ass" we will probably end up having a debate instead of getting anything done for another 10 years. I'm on team, just get shit done.

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

#208

Post by mike_hearn »

baq wrote: post #195
tedmiston wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think most users need more screen blocking control than they get out of the box on iOS. tools like one sec [1] have been invaluable for me. [1]: https://one-sec.app/

Yes, but most importantly I need to manage my children’s devices; it cannot be opt in and it mustn’t be possible to disable without me approving. Screen time is too easy for kids to work around as is. I also need in-app content type filtering (eg. no shorts, no music videos on music streaming apps) and literally no one is providing such options, not to mention it should be managed in screen time, too. Parental contro…

So buy an Android: https://families.google/intl/my/familylink/

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

#209

Post by tzs »

alkonaut wrote: post #111
salawat wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the opposite of anonymous. You cannot have anonymity & age verification that actually guarantees anything. It's a contradiction. Either the chain exists, or it doesn't.

Are you saying it would be impossible to have a service where the site (social media, say) would issue some sort of random token and ask me to sign it using a centralized ID service. Then I log in to the centralized id service and use it to sign the random token and bring it back to the service. The centralized service see who I am, but not what I'm proving my age for. The social media or other site see that I have s…

The problem with that is if someone gets a hold of the logs from both the centralized service and the social media site they can compare timestamps and may be able to match them up.

Most people will be doing the whole process (site gives token, person gets token signed, person returns token) as quickly as possible which limits the candidates for a match. Worse, if the central service is compromised and wants to make it easier for log matching to identify people they could purposefully introduce delays which would make it easier to distinguish people.

Most people will use the same IP address through the verification process which would really make it easy.

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

#210

Post by alexjplant »

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…

Reddit has been a cesspit of recycled pablum, populist image macros and low effort reply comments for more than a decade. Enthusiast subreddits are astroturfed to hell and back by people with a Shopify storefront and a dream trying to growth hack their way to a hockey stick. The low barrier to entry to each community means that this vapid culture eventually diffuses itself across subreddits that might otherwise be good. It's a postmodern toilet that flushes into its own tank.

I don't care if I sound old and salty when I say this: I miss phpBB and Invision forums. Even those are being bought up by marketing companies to sell ads and transformed with social media features... Xenforo (which everybody uses now) allows liking posts and supports Instagram-style content feeds.

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