371–380 of 663 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As cynical as it sounds given its frequent use in marketing and often inappropriate use in legal circles, securing what data is collected is important too. Raise the bar for a data breach. It has value. Much more value if the law did a much better job of restricting what is collected in the first place and its dissemination.
Punishing companies for data breaches will solve more data breaches than any amount of encryption.
If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. People struggle to consider the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of anything so asking them to consider what else might happen if we bring in laws and technical mechanisms to 'protect the children' is unfortunately too a big leap for a lot of them. Most people are bad at spo…
Unfortunately, I don't think systems thinking alone would help much. One could present the case in favor of Internet age verification to the nth-order effects, while downplaying the effects in the case against. So, in addition to presenting the cases with foreseeable effects, we need ways to compare the impact of worst-case scenarios in the two cases, and make a decision or compromise based on that.
Systems thinking is one thing. One sided systems thinking is another.
If you disregard the challenges kids and their parents, or adults as a whole, are facing with just social media, you can easily make a case against age verification.
Yet, the whole reason we are at this juncture, is because there are actual injuries being felt by people. Not because privacy isn’t valued or hasn’t been defended regularly.
If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. People struggle to consider the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of anything so asking them to consider what else might happen if we bring in laws and technical mechanisms to 'protect the children' is unfortunately too a big leap for a lot of them. Most people are bad at spo…
I think there are many arguments for and against this type of regulation. Good arguments on both sides take into account nth-order effects. But both sides have different priorities, and have different weighing of the trade-offs. Calling one side effectively "thick" isn't really taking part in the debate. (And cause and effect are taught pretty early on in school; not sure you need to learn "systems thinking" to under…
Now of course, no one is going to “directly” dir from these laws but so much meaning that comes with freedom will be lost, but maybe the wolfs see it under a different light.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn't it be better to curtail social media's addictive design choices, and improve things for everyone, rather than force the audience to carry the weight of responsibility?
> Wouldn't it be better to curtail social media's addictive design choices Hacker news has a doomscroll front page. Ive never notice you have a problem with it
This is already happening if you want to visit the US. Customs officers will look at your social media accounts to make sure you are compliant.
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Right, and therefore we regulate them
And what sort of regulations did you have in mind that don't primarily punish the users?
No algorithmic recommendation.
No mixing between known users (friends, followers etc.), recommended users (swipe feed) and advertised content.
No publication of user content. It's social media, not global media.
I posit that these points will be enough to curtail most of social media ills. Don't allow recommendation of slop and there will be a similar reduction in production. There will still be the village idiot that shares slop content, but their reach is limited since they have to actively persuade people to their message, rather than be recommended for being psychologically stimulating.
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And always have that phone on you at all times please. This goes way beyond any notion of a "hacker tweaking his electronics". With ID checks, device attestation and a device required for any transaction, and all this data piped in to a central brain (none of which are far fetched), we're all pretty much buggered. It is a matter of time until advertising companies claw their way in, insurances calculate individual pr…
Just wait for the brain scan tech to pan out. They'll call you in for a routine scan of your thoughts to make sure you haven't been up to any wrongthink.
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You are confusing the ability to bring information to people, with the ability of people to consume it. As has been mentioned elsewhere on the thread - the real issue is often there are complex 2nd and third order effects, often there are devils in the details. I'm not saying people are not capable of consuming it, I'm saying people don't have the bandwidth. Direct democracy is best when it's used for very specific p…
An alternative would be to select representatives by lot. It would get rid of a political class, would automatically be representative (so no arguments about whether women, minorities, whoever are fairly represented) and not select for people who want power and it would mean people have the same amount of time as those in the current system.
It may work in some other country..
Any site, with any concern about age of user liability, is likely to adopt the practice. Strong laws, sold on their face value safety benefits, will increase that liability.
You won’t see any laws removing or limiting that liability.
The trend will be many more sites becoming government-gated, than we are imagining now.
Beyond surveillance, it’s a real step into government permissioned internet access, on an individual citizen level.
Note that age verification does not rely on you handing over identifying information to the party requesting it, that's just one possible implementation. Another more privacy conscious one is e.g. iDIN or whatever comes after, which works a bit like oauth in that you're redirected to a trusted 3rd party like your bank which only confirms "this person is 18+" to the requesting party. The only thing that the requester…
It most certainly does, because it has to:
https://reclaimthenet.org/starmers-social-media-ban-surveill...
"Monday’s headline was a ban on under-16s using social media which, to some, sounds about as sinister as a wholesome ribbon-cutting until you ask the obvious question nobody in Downing Street wants asked aloud: how, precisely, do you stop a fourteen-year-old from opening Instagram without first checking the age of the forty-year-old?
You don’t. You can’t. So everyone gets carded. Britain is lifting the system wholesale from Australia, where a computer first scans your face and guesses your age from your cheekbones, then, failing that, surveils you to death, studies your browsing habits and the hours you keep, and then, when the algorithm throws up its hands, simply demands your passport."