211–220 of 593 posts
This will become closer to truth than conspiracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree, we should have age verification but maybe it can be done in a mostly anonymous way like a central arbiter of identity from the government or something.
> like a central arbiter of identity from the government or something This comes up in every ID thread on Hacker News, usually with suggestion that we do it via zero-knowledge cryptographic primitives However, all of those proposals miss the point. These ID verification laws aren't simply designed to confirm that someone has access to an >= 18yo ID. They are identity verification to try to confirm that the person pre…
This makes no sense. This is exactly like asking someone older to buy you beer. Will there be rule breakers? Sure but they will be in the overwhelming minority.
Unfortunately, rationally thinking through 2nd and 3rd order effects is hard. As we see on social media, appeals to emotion drive the highest engagement, and "think of the children" is the ultimate emotional appeal.
But hey, with European countries moving to tie all internet activity to their national ID system to "protect the children from social media" and "ban speech we don't like" maybe we can finally get rid of those cookie popups?
Making Lambi Toilet Paper jump through bizarre hoops when targeting their toilet paper ads to people seems silly now...given we're voluntarily handing our browser history & permission to access the open web to a much more powerful entity (the government). Consumer goods companies combining your IP address and email address together for the purpose of selling you more toilet bowl cleaner...becomes a bit of a moot point, no?
Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matt…
I wouldn't be surprised if Meta turned WhatsApp into a TikTok clone just to get around the restrictions. They know that banning WhatsApp for teenagers in Europe is almost impossible. I look at my kids, all their sports clubs and other extracurricular activities are organized through WhatsApp. I already had to block Youtube on their devices. I was alright with them watching a couple of long-form youtube videos every d…
If you want to block Shorts. I recommend you to try out revanced which gives you youtube without any ads and a lot of other customizations.
To be honest, I find it funny that paid youtube customers might shift to revanced which is technically piracy jsut to remove shorts.
I was this close to rooting the phones but she had just bought a new phone.
But if pricing wasn't the concern for me (which right now it is but I don't think for many HN users it might be), here's what I suggest.
Go buy a phone which can be easily rooted and also use an somewhat secure os (just short of graphene)
Patch revanced (I have even made a nix flake or some nix file [i don't use nix that much but I was curious and ended up using LLMs to generate the file] whose purpose was to take android file and patch it when I was in nix, but I don't have it with me right nwo as I may haev lost it)
Have in the options the short block option.
Newpipe is great as well but it doesn't really allow having comment support.
Also given that HN is a very techie and well hacking with software community. If anyone's interested to take an challenge within Java/Kotlin (Unfortunately, they scare me) then I have got an idea for you guys:
"But the option of turning shorts back on can still be toggled. I wish if anybody whose an expert in java/kotlin can take a look at how revanced works and maybe how to have a revanced patch which can block shorts by default (additionally with ads preferably too with the download option patch as well & the sponsorblock) while atleast in the revanced specific settings option blocking just the option/toggle switch to turn shorts back on."
Also I am a teenager. I would consider the fact that I am on this website partially because of a loop of youtubers that I started following [ Fireship the goat before he turned VC -> Primagen the legend -> Theo t3 (I do feel like he's not the best guy following but he covered so much about YC that I ended up opening news.ycombinator.com and reading it and not watching him read it and ended up making account)
oh yeah before Fireship, I used to follow Code with harry when I was around ~13 yo. I learnt python from him many years ago before it was introduced to us in school so much so that I ended up picking the finance subject out of curiosity and I enjoyed both finance and tech.
One of the funniest stories from this whole is when Code with harry loved one of my comments on youtube loooong time ago and I was around 14 or osmething and then my mum saw it and she didn't know what loving a comment in YT mean and she got suspicious about it and questioned me and then I had to describe hearting a comment to her xD.
Oh yeah. I started learning about python itself around this time because one of my cousins whom I deeply respect who works in aerospace but back when in his university started mentioning how he worked on a ~2-3k loc and he mentioned python and I was like hmm what's python.
I don't know if a parent is interested to hear this but I feel like teenagers really replicate those they admire. A lot of my traits first started just being around that cousin & he actually taught me about assets/liabilities when I was in 5th grade and taught me chess which both became very obsessive points for me later down the life (My joy when I finally ended up beating him at chess fair and square)
I don't think that I do that well academically per se though, it really just depends on my mood so :/ yeah but I really ended up butchering some prestigious college's paper real hard and still tensed about it but honestly as a teen, I don't even know why I am typing this but my point is that your kid would have a personality and just nudge him in the right manners & let him think for himself to think that he reached at a particular conclusion. I do feel like that's generally how I approached and I was the youngest of my whole entire family tree so that made me more mature but I do feel like it came at a trade off of wishing to grow up fast asap when I was a child and now wishing to go back too seeing say not being able to cope up with massive study efforts or competition but that's another matter I guess.
Though parenting is definitely really really hard, kudos to every parent out there.
Did go a little tangent so sorry about that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying it would be impossible to have a service where the site (social media, say) would issue some sort of random token and ask me to sign it using a centralized ID service. Then I log in to the centralized id service and use it to sign the random token and bring it back to the service. The centralized service see who I am, but not what I'm proving my age for. The social media or other site see that I have s…
The problem with that is if someone gets a hold of the logs from both the centralized service and the social media site they can compare timestamps and may be able to match them up. Most people will be doing the whole process (site gives token, person gets token signed, person returns token) as quickly as possible which limits the candidates for a match. Worse, if the central service is compromised and wants to make…
Rather than really address what is ass about social media, we just "ban" it for folks who we can ban it for. This seems off. Kid's have unlimited time. They'll find something else, likely pretending to be adults and thus even more at risk. Meanwhile everyone else gets an internet license and the government every website tracks you ... This is a classic case of nice idea and the results will be all wrong / not even ad…
By creating 'rules' for social media based on what's good and bad instead of banning it altogether you end up creating loopholes instead. Even in the case we instead first discuss what is "ass" we will probably end up having a debate instead of getting anything done for another 10 years. I'm on team, just get shit done.
Everyone but kids is still exposed, and likely still kids...
Also you now have to have a license for social media, probably the internet eventually.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Myspace and early Facebook were already a downgrade to classic chatrooms. They were not a downgrade, they just worked the other way. With classic chatrooms (or a random vBulletin forums, if you wish) you would meet somebody online, then you would become friends over time and then you meet them in real life. I did that too. With early Facebook, you would meet somebody at a party, have fun together, and decide to bec…
> With classic chatrooms (or a random vBulletin forums, if you wish) you would meet somebody online, then you would become friends over time and then you meet them in real life. I did that too. And it was usually themed around a specific hobby or activity, which would naturally turn into offline, real-world activity. almost as if it was a conduit to connecting real people with real interests, who would seek out commu…
It feels like by including everything on one site, Reddit et al just end up as a bland "soup." But they're so useful by the sheer mass of population that they end up drowning out everything else.
Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matt…
I wouldn't be surprised if Meta turned WhatsApp into a TikTok clone just to get around the restrictions. They know that banning WhatsApp for teenagers in Europe is almost impossible. I look at my kids, all their sports clubs and other extracurricular activities are organized through WhatsApp. I already had to block Youtube on their devices. I was alright with them watching a couple of long-form youtube videos every d…
I am in my late thirties so surely out of touch, but am friends with people in their mid twenties and frankly I don't know anyone who spends any significant time on anything other than TikTok. I guess you could call TikTok "social media", but it wouldn't fit my old person definition.
I think pretty much everyone below the age of 60 is aware that Facebook/Instagram/etc is just slop now. You don't even see your friend stuff. You just see slop. I use Facebook primarily for marketplace these days, but when I do scroll my feed, it's all like weird east asian AI slop. Women cutting open impossibly large fruit, fake tartar removal, fake videos of fights.
Literally nothing that compels me to stay on the site like I hear people on here talk about.