Live data from Hacker News

A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

wired.com

21–30 of 109 posts

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#23
The issue as I see it isn’t going to be solved by forcing social networks to gather even more personal information about individuals (eg proof of ID and proof of age). The issue is how social networks are engineered, either by chance or by design, to promote negativity in the pursuit of engagement.

If we can find a way to declaw social networks then we’d have a healthier ecosystem for all ages.

But this is a much harder problem to solve.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#24

This seems like it would have been a great idea about thirty years ago, but would be functionally impossible to even try to enforce working from scratch today.

Ah, yes, the famous social network platforms of 1993. More to the point, go on the internet and lie .

The equivalent talkers were a thing in 1993. I found them using gopher in the library my first year of university. Anyone else here remember Somewhere Else? I do remember lots of underaged girls and boys (but no one under 13, I think) on there.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#26
Don't know how this could be implemented in a good way (so FB etc do not get access to important identity information), but trying to limit social media for kids below 13 is a fantastic idea.

One could wish the adults/parents would limit this themselves, but sadly this is seldom the case. For some reason it seems most parents really are clueless to the level of harm imposed by social media to their kids?!

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#27
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Because they take the burden of the companies to age verify their users? Right now they really argue that a kid should have read the ToS and get of Scots free if something happens on their platform.

Yeah just give a scan of your ID to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Snapchat, etc There is absolutely no chance that it will ever get leaked, misused or stored unencrypted

Giving Facebook my picture, in conjunction with ID, is a sure way for the entire platform to do facial recognition on all existing pictures.

They already do it, but such a time save to 100% verify who is who.

And even if you esque facebook, never have an account, you're one step away from the same happening after a buyout, data share agreement, etc.

Banks often get around data sharing laws, by jointly buying companies to perform tasks. Thus, bank 1 owns 20% of an ID company, along with 4 other banks, and can write agreements such as "our associated companies" and such blather.

Inside that ID corp, all 5 entites can share data, aggregate it, anonymized it, and then sell it.

And as we all know, de-anonymizing is trivial... and if one knows who you are, they now all do, simply via the parent corp buying(for pennies) and de-anonymizing.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#29

This seems like it would have been a great idea about thirty years ago, but would be functionally impossible to even try to enforce working from scratch today.

How would it be functionally impossible? At one point kids could buy cigarettes. Now, across hundreds of thousands of stores, they can't. There's only a few social media sites, it's seems infinitely easier. Trivial even.

Requiring every social network to get proof of age for every user would in practice mean destroying the little user privacy that was left.

On top of that, the worldwide leader in age verification software is none other than mindgeek, the porn giant. This kind of law would effectively give this company a file with the official ID and complete social network usage pattern of everyone above 13 in the country.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#30
post #2

Right, and how will they determine what a social media site is? People in power don't get it because they're mostly from the generation when the Internet hadn't yet taken over every aspect of civilization. Trying to impose a ban is such a lazy and naive solution. Kids will find alternatives. There are thousands of options for kids to go online and interact with one another. My guess would be that video games would be…

If you read the proposal, pretty much every website, messaging platform or online game would fall under the definition of social network.
Post reply on HN