If you want to stop this instance of "think of the children", build a working and cheap alternative that respects privacy. It is technically possible, so if you feel as strongly about it as your words suggest, do it. Once it's ready, spread awareness through old-media, new-media, politicians, everything and every means.
Isn't knowing if someone is above or below a certain age already privacy invasive if one chooses they don't want to share that? At least under GDPR age is protected as an indirect identifier.
I don't agree with age verification, but there isn't anywhere 'set your children's ages in their device accounts' that limits their access to inappropriate content and social media. You can set age in Google Accounts, but they can access pretty much anything when they reach age 13 (which is about the age a lot of these things start to become a real problem) and as a parent you don't have any way to limit that. They d…
In moments where you can not supervise them, do not let them play with the dangerous device anymore. You wouldn't leave a kid alone with a gun either. I think there are many ways to limit that. E.g. Google Android parental control https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103028?hl=en#zip... I understand technological advancements can be overwhelming for older people. But that does not warrant giving up on kids...
I have a hard time calling it a technological advancement, that's what it was when we had bloggers and forums some 20 years ago. Until we all collectively agree that kids should not have smartphones and iPads until they're maybe 17, or come up with a solution where they do have them but will only be able to use them for Maps, Books, Word/Excel, the Chrome Dino game, Tetris, and obviously messaging/calling with parents - without being the weird ones in the classroom. Until then, it's one ugly experiment which got completely out of hands.
That sounds like a reasonable aim. Online services should be responsible for implementing age verification checks on content that children shouldn't be accessing, just like vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification. The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view,…
I hate this analogy because it isn't true. This isn't like a clerk checking your age before you buy booze this is like a clerk taking a photocopy of your ID and a list of everything you bought and then storing those records forever every time you buy alcohol.
No it's like the publisher of the adult content magazine being liable if an underage person buys the magazine. And due to burden of proof they require all stores that sell their magazine to make a copy of your ID and send it to them along with a recording of you providing the ID at the counter, some stores may require your address, iris or fingerprint scan.
Actually not to them through them to one of the few ID verifier 3rd parties that now receives a big portion of the records of anyone that buys adult content in any store with any publisher.
I hate this analogy because it isn't true. This isn't like a clerk checking your age before you buy booze this is like a clerk taking a photocopy of your ID and a list of everything you bought and then storing those records forever every time you buy alcohol.
Most stores already have continuously-recording CCTV, which effectively does that too. At least online there can be a separation between the age verification provider and the online content provider, so that the latter doesn't learn anything from the former except that the user's age is above or below a specific cut-off point. So it can actually be more privacy-preserving than purchasing age-restricted goods over the…
A lot of countries have limits on how long CCTV footage may be stored (often there is a minimum and maximum limit). I believe in the US it is regulated on a per state level.
Idk about that one chief, maybe 2016 was tamer than that, 2006 was still wild.
By 2006, you already had Google, Amazon, and Facebook outpacing their competition. Apple was riding iPod success and just about to launch the iPhone. Imho, that's well into the re-centralization of the internet and tech landscape. Rewind another 10 years, and I'd call 1996 wild. That's before XMLHttpRequest/AJAX and when a cat could create as impressive of a website as any corporation.
Right but if we could kill that business model by making platforms chose between age verification and non-targeted ads, that would be a win right? That's not so say I'm in favor of age verification, just pointing out the silver lining.
Yeah, but you could also kill that business model without any legislation by simply... not visiting those websites.
I already don't, and yet I still have to deal with the fallout from its harmful effects on society. More drastic measures are needed.
Overprotected in the real world, underprotected online.
Kids need private spaces. If we overprotect them in the real world, and overprotect them in the digital world children will fail to explore all sorts of things.
By definition everyone agrees we should't overprotect kids online. It's in the word "overprotected."
The claim I'm making is that they are underprotected online.
I think you are concerned about the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction but I don't think I said anything that suggests that should happen. Unless perhaps you think the current amount of protection is already the maximal amount that is useful?
Is there any evidence social media is improving mental health? It feels absurd to even ask.
Forums and Fediverse could do that, if you choose wisely and use it responsibly
I asked about social media though. Not a tiny subset of social media.
I ask because if social media has a positive affect on mental health overall then it cant have a negative affect overall. And I ask because I think everyone intuitively thinks that idea is ridiculous. But you can't disprove the net negative affect by looking at some subset.
I think you are saying it can be used such that it has a positive effect. I agree with that but I think it's missing the point.
> The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. I suspect that depends on subtle phrasing. If for the sake of argument I presuppose that film classification ratings are necessary to protect children’s mental health, then the un-filtered contents of shock sites and porn sites will have had an impact even in the early years of the internet. However, the early year…
I don't think the distinction matters that much. Remember ogrish? I was already an adult when that gore came out and I was terrified. I can still picture the throat gasping for air as he was being sliced alive.
> Remember ogrish?
No*, however the point is valid: the internet overall is indeed unfiltered far beyond what is allowed in even the highest cinematic ratings.
* I avoided such things, however I do know the low end of what they can be, and had in mind 2girls1cup which I understand to be criminal "extreme porn" by UK standards, though have never actually seen it.
There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before. Obviously it's difficult to pin a 20-year trend on a single cause. But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones; and with social med…
> almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. Sound reasoning lol some really hysterical folk on here. if you actually believed it were that dangerous you wouldn't be literally on social media posting about this would you?
That's not saying what you think it's saying...
They're saying, that social media use before suicide is like drinking water