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The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

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Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#101

Post by cowboylowrez »

There is nothing good on the internet for kids. If we ban kids from the internet this will all go away. Make a smartphone every bit as regulated as alcohol or cigarettes or sexual intercourse. If a parent is found providing their kids alcohol, cigarettes, sex, or internet, we have to hold them accountable and rehabilitate the kids from their traumatic experience. These parents deserve serious prison terms, and those victimized kids will need to be institutionalized as they are now traumatized for life (plus their parents are deservedly now serving decades in prison for child abuse).

Why are we pushing our kids onto the internet? There is nothing there for them. Any politicians pushing for kids internet access are probably doing it for nefarious reasons in my opinion. The internet is not really all that safe for adults either, why are we pushing kids onto it?

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#102

Post by mikgp »

enoeht wrote: post #37

Couple of Months latter kids will have vipe coded their decentralized sm version that's here to stay. When will politicians understand how and why the internet was build?

Wouldn’t this be an amazing outcome of the legislation and prove politicians understand exactly how and why the internet was built?

I don’t think people have a problem with “social media” per-say, it’s a problem with algorithmic feeds controlled by a few giant companies with very little if any competition, showing countless optimized ads.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#103

Post by thrance »

cbdumas wrote: post #6

If governments want to set up online age gates, they should be responsible for providing an electronic ID system and enable privacy preserving age verification (zero knowledge proofs)

It's coming to European Union citizens. Any day now.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#104

Post by inigyou »

anthk wrote: post #89
oliwarner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people do want this crap. If you have kids of a certain age, you know kids that have had near misses with grooming on Roblox, or have seen the comments from men on child Tiktok accounts. It's a stupid amount of exposure that we just didn't have to deal with as kids. People just don't understand the problems implementing AVS. I'd be much much happier submitting details or a face scan to a .gov.uk service than all…

Then do your parenting and stop limiting the rights of the rest.

"crack dealers are trying to sell crack to my kids at street corners, can we ban that?" "No! Just do your parenting!"

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#105

Post by cowboylowrez »

oliwarner wrote: post #92
anthk wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then do your parenting and stop limiting the rights of the rest.

Tell me you don't have teenagers without telling me you don't have teenagers. I'd love kids to do what they're told. That would absolutely solve this but as we all know, they don't. But how are your rights limited?

Who's buying your kids internet access? Are they getting it on a street corner from a stranger? lol I doubt it.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#106

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

cowboylowrez wrote: post #101

There is nothing good on the internet for kids. If we ban kids from the internet this will all go away. Make a smartphone every bit as regulated as alcohol or cigarettes or sexual intercourse. If a parent is found providing their kids alcohol, cigarettes, sex, or internet, we have to hold them accountable and rehabilitate the kids from their traumatic experience. These parents deserve serious prison terms, and those…

Banning kids from alcohol, cigarettes, and sex sure did work. I can't think of a single kid I went to school with that did any of these things (and certainly not me). All those laws and rules were absolutely effective in preventing us as kids from doing them. /s

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#107

Post by inigyou »

globular-toast wrote: post #84
CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #81

Probably an unpopular view, but why not fix the issues with social media.

I really wish we could just pass "common sense" laws. Like, you just can't use addiction to make money, full stop. You can't use any kind of trickery in marketing, in particular anything trying to circumvent people's rational brain and preying on the weak animal brain underneath. Marketing and advertising would be gone overnight - good riddance -because anyone can write an honest advert. The problem with us is we get…

Until it all collapses.

You know, various historians have studied this. No society has ever avoided this collapse scenario. It's like the Great Filter. But in 2026 because of the internet we only have a handful of global-scale societies instead of a hundred thousand regional societies like we used to. The first one to collapse might just catch the whole world in its debris cloud.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#108

Post by inigyou »

hactually wrote: post #67
ilovecake1984 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody needs to use social media though. Really they should just torch the lot.

you don't use YouTube?

Nobody needs to. It's an addictive cancer just like TikTok.

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#109

Post by inigyou »

guilhas wrote: post #100

A society whose individuals needs government laws to make good "choices" is probably doomed The only possible law is making bigco social media less addictive, and better controls for parents But maybe this is UK just exercising some soft power, since they have no tech to speak of

Then we've been doomed since we banned children from buying cigarettes, or even further back, since we banned children from having sex with adults. Do you really think banning those things made society worse?

Re: The UK's new under-16 social media ban will cause more harm than it prevents

#110

Post by inigyou »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #58
proxyscore wrote: post #34

There's no defending social media, not for adults, not for kids, ever. It's a toxic trap which will do absolutely nothing good for and to its users. Keep the kids away from it, doesn't take an Einstein reincarnate to realize that.

Hacker News is a social media site, but not according to the UK government. According to the UK government, YouTube is a social media site.

Hacker News is a cancerous time-waste, no different from TikTok.
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