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From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

reuters.com

121–130 of 150 posts

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#121
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids don't need Twitter. There would obviously arise a market for a moderated, or more regulated, version of this type of social media. Social media doesn't deserve an exemption from the efforts society makes to protect children in other domains.

So basically you just ban any company from serving both kids and porn stars, no matter how hard they keep them separated? This is one of the avenues people often go down to censor the porn industry. You're effectively doing "think of the children! ban porn!" without doing it explicitly.

A system as above would matter only to sites that want children among their audience.

Those that don't, or don't care, would not seek a rating, and would not be accessible to devices that parents control. Otherwise they would be free to host whatever legal content they wish.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#122
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what we call a "thought-terminating cliché"

Call it what you want, but spoiling children with digital devices before they can even talk properly and then trying to forcing everyone to upload their ID to random server (which will sell/leak that) is definitely a parenting issue.

What causes it?

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#123
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're letting your kids be lured and attacked, that's a parenting issue. Responsible parents aren't letting their kids slip out alone. The better solution to this would be some sort of penalty for irresponsible parenting.

> Responsible parents aren't letting their kids slip out alone. Frankly, this is nonsense. European countries like Germany or Switzerland of France find it completely normal for their kids to walk to school without parents (at 6 or even 5 years old) or to play outside without parents. That is responsible parenting and good for kids themselves. The American idea that parents must not let kids out of their sight until…

It is nonsense. But thinking it's okay for kids to be able to go outside and do what they want, but oh no the internet is dangerous and we need IDs is even more ridiculous, quite frankly.

If you don't want kids using social media, set up a network filter. But if you want to have mandatory ID for social media to "protect kids", but you have no trouble letting your kid go outside and get up to who knows what (they're absolutely going to be browsing the internet on their "cool friend's" computer and doing devilish things like saying naughty words on reddit), then I think anyone who really believes that needs to post their ID as proof. Because it's a very contradictory and inorganic thought process.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#124
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically you just ban any company from serving both kids and porn stars, no matter how hard they keep them separated? This is one of the avenues people often go down to censor the porn industry. You're effectively doing "think of the children! ban porn!" without doing it explicitly.

A system as above would matter only to sites that want children among their audience. Those that don't, or don't care, would not seek a rating, and would not be accessible to devices that parents control. Otherwise they would be free to host whatever legal content they wish.

Twitter wants to serve children and it also wants to serve porn stars, and there's no good reason it can't do both as long as it keeps them separate, but your proposal doesn't allow it to know who's a child so it can't keep them separate and in response to that it has to ban one or the other from the platform entirely.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#125
post #116

The only way to force sites to exclude children is to have them ID everyone. This is why forcing each site to restrict access is a terrible idea. It’s a backdoor to destroying everyone’s privacy. What we really need is for each of these sites to advertise its category or age targets, similar to how TV shows have a rating. Then end user devices like phones and browsers should have the option of setting parental contro…

Is that the only way? It seems conceivable to me that you could have some sort of publicly run infrastructure that asserts your age is above some threshold without sharing your identity. So long as that system recorded no log of who asked it for assertions about whom then I can't see an objection to age verification.

> long as that system recorded no log of who asked it

Two problems with this:

1. Any system which is anonymous becomes trivially abusable. A true anonymous system with no records kept means a single stolen or leaked ID could be used by everyone, defeating the system. You can try to search for and block leaked IDs but that doesn’t stop one kid from copying their 19 year old brother’s ID and using it to authorize the entire school. So these systems gain logging facilities to try to rate limit requests and the politicians don’t like it because it’s too easy to circumvent. They really want ID attached to accounts so there can be some consequences for ID fraud.

2. Routing every request through a government entity will not be anonymous or log-free, no matter how much you want it to be. With everything we know about government intrusion into services in the name of national security, you can’t expect a centralized service that gets access to people’s ID, IP address, and sites they visit to be kept as a special zone for privacy. It would be a top target.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#126
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system as above would matter only to sites that want children among their audience. Those that don't, or don't care, would not seek a rating, and would not be accessible to devices that parents control. Otherwise they would be free to host whatever legal content they wish.

Twitter wants to serve children and it also wants to serve porn stars, and there's no good reason it can't do both as long as it keeps them separate, but your proposal doesn't allow it to know who's a child so it can't keep them separate and in response to that it has to ban one or the other from the platform entirely.

Twitter can make a "Kid's Twitter" (Kitter? Kidder?) if it wants. It's far less oppressive than forcing people to reveal their identity to Twitter.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#127
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state should take the children from them instead of destroying the rights of adults

Have a look at what's going on in the foster care system and tell me with a serious face that taking children away from parents, outside the absolutely worst cases, is actually helping the children.

[deleted]

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#128

Techno-libertarianism was always a con. I'm convinced it was an information operation organised by enemies of the West to "prep the battlefield" to enable revisionist state aggression against the West in the cognitive domain. We mustn't forget that the Russians claimed that the internet was created by the CIA to attack Russia and steal its resources -- after a Russian clairvoyant told Vladimir Putin she read Madelein…

Delusional Red Scare claptrap. Russia is obviously a geopolitical competitor, and exerts some influence, but its reach is limited by its smaller economy and cultural differences. The real threat is homegrown authoritarian looters who would spend the whole treasury into their pockets if they could, while constantly tightening the screws on dissent to keep the grift going. Fortunately you people are losing your grip on…

I'm sorry - did I trigger you?

On one hand -- I read the opinion of one anonymous random on the internet posting a Russian-accented sneer, trotting out the usual Russian disinformation talking points, on one hand -- and the combined weight of decades of intelligence estimates of 50+ countries decrying the very real and serious hybrid warfare being waged by this out-of-control rogue state on the other.

So who should I believe? You tell me.

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#129
post #7

In Australia, back in 2021, we had a senior politician run out of politics because a relatively small-time YouTuber just wouldn't shut up about his connections to organised crime. And friendlyjordies house was eventually firebombed by the organised criminals too, so that was interesting. Now obviously one bad apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch [0] but it always struck me as the sort of thing that would ruffle feathe…

"And friendlyjordies house was eventually firebombed by the organised criminals too, so that was interesting."

No ID required; it seems his identity was not secret

Anyway, he was over 16

Can social media users, i.e., Facebook, YouTube, etc. users, including marketers, hide their identities

How many do that

How many do the opposite, e.g., "influencers", people seeking to be "internet famous", advertisers, people connecting with family, friends, colleagues

Is this identity concealment, for those who try it, effective or are their identities discoverable

Is there a theory that age restrictions will shrink social media

If social media is truly useful then won't people continue to use it even with age restrictions, giving Zuckerberg, Google, etc. photo ID

Re: From Australia to Europe, countries move to curb children's social media access

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which rights, exactly?

Someone in another post was claiming there was a "right" to anonymity on the internet. That was news to me. The "rights" of my children to not be exploited by Zuckerberg and the rest of them are far more important as far as I'm concerned. To counter the privacy nuts, no age gates and social media bans won't lead to a North Korean style government. If anything it is the antidote as children will have a chance to grow…

The KYC/permissioning of the web will be abused by governments to censor dissent and cutoff dissidents from the internet.

You're free to put child-safe software on your personal computer at home. Your desire to keep your kids safe doesn't justify stripping everyone else's right to permissionlessly access the internet. Having to get the permission of a gatekeeper (who, at first, will only verify you're an adult, but tomorrow, will verify your speech is not subversive) to access the internet subordinates the populace to the state in a dramatic fashion.

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