Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
171–180 of 506 posts
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#172IMHO, social media itself is not the issue. The issue is rather, why are teenagers glued to their screens? The answer is because they aren't doing something else that is social and physical. So if you ban their access to TikTok or whatever, they are still stuck at home, bored and glued to their screen. Other online entertainment will capture their focus. Before you know it you'll end up trying to ban the whole internet.
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adults should be protected from these predatory services as well.
This is mindless paternalism. Who gets to decide what is 'predatory' and why do those people have the right to make decisions in place of able-minded adults?
Why stop at removing restrictions on social media, why have laws at all, they're just mindless paternalism! why should we have seatbelts? why have laws against murder? Mindless paternalism is all those laws are!
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#174Good, social media is cancer on society and will only get worse with LLMs, Deepfakes etc. All the astroturfing in favour of social media couldn't possibly change my mind on how harmful social media has been on society.
Does HN count, or is the actual problem the algorithmic feeds?
Great question. Algorithmic recommendations with infinitely scrolling feeds that get fresh, fungible content—i.e. content produced by strangers, not your friends—whenever you visit the platform are are the biggest issues I have with social media. They're designed like slot machines to boost engagement at the cost of, you know, accommodating social connections.
I'm worried that while these bans have good intentions, they might be targeting the wrong things. The direction is right, and I'm glad action is being taken, though.
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you can iterate quickly, sure, but that’s something governments famously don’t do well. It’ll take five years to assess the results and another five years to change them.
It is certainly better than the status quo. Don't underestimate the effect of simply making something illegal.
Yes, the effect of prohibition was enormous. Same with America's War on Drugs, that had a massive impact.
Probably not the impact you're implying though.
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#176IMHO, social media itself is not the issue. The issue is rather, why are teenagers glued to their screens? The answer is because they aren't doing something else that is social and physical. So if you ban their access to TikTok or whatever, they are still stuck at home, bored and glued to their screen. Other online entertainment will capture their focus. Before you know it you'll end up trying to ban the whole intern…
I think many people on HN grew up glued to an internet that wasn't trying to intellectually molest them for capitalist and political gains.
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#177[dead]
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#178Is there any evidence for all this? This sums up my understanding of the current situation ( https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/understand-the-im... ) That isn't anywhere near definitive. Further it seems to me, this will just allow the tech companies to assume there are no kids, and remove the protections currently available. Yes there is an issue of quantity, but it seems that we should be focussing on soci…
> Is there any evidence for all this? There was a study shared on Hacker News a few months ago that looked hard to find correlations between different measures and social media use or gaming in kids. It didn’t find any evidence of negative correlations between social media or gaming with different negative effects. The response here was largely skepticism and disbelief. This topic has jumped out of the realm of evide…
HN is so full of bootlickers. I really hope they choke on the boots they seem to love to fellate.
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#179Should be banned for under 40s and over 70s really... Also ban giving toddlers iPads with YouTube.
We all have a day when we'll be over 70, I wonder if you'll still think the same way then?
Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s
#180Doing this without the parents on board does not work. Kids can lie about their birthdate by a few years. Facial age estimation has error bars of like 5 years and many teens don't have any ID. Younger kids use a parent's phone. Many are not supervised by parents or have parents who are complicit/encouraging in getting them more access. Oh you could be famous! But it is clear that more persistent identifiers online wi…
Parents are massively on board.
And they are probably moving to a system where you need to link your device with a government issued cryptographic ID (i.e. passport) using zero knowledge proofs. With a system that ensures an identity can only be installed on one device at a time.
This means a parent would have to give up all social media accounts and chat apps on their own phone, in order to give their identity to their kids.