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Stop KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)

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Re: Stop KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)

#31

Post by shkkmo »

jjackson5324 wrote: post #14
teeray wrote: post #9

Entire generations have grown up with the unfiltered internet at this point. What good can possibly come from introducing them now?

> Entire generations have grown up with the unfiltered internet at this point To be fair, if you look at statistics around gen z you can see that there definitely are negative consequences of internet access (along with amazing benefits of course). I don't support this measure or measures like it, but some of action should probably be taking considering the skyrocketing amounts of depression.

> To be fair, if you look at statistics around gen z you can see that there definitely are negative consequences of internet access

I haven't seen any such data. It's hard to separate generation effects and look purely at the effects of internet access in any sort of valid way.

You're probably thinking of studies around social media use. It isn't clear to me that internet filtering will combat any of what makes social media use such a mental health risk for teens.

Re: Stop KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)

#35

Post by ceejayoz »

shkkmo wrote: post #30
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entire generations grew up with polio. There are many good arguments against KOSA; this isn’t one of them.

Except it isn't really an argument, so much as a question. In your example, the good created by eliminating polio are blatantly obvious to anyone who knows what polio is. For your analogy to hold, then the answer to the question posed must be equally blatantly obvious. This doesn't seem at all obvious to me, so fails as a rebuttal.

It's absolutely an argument that filters are unnecessary. It's not a good one. It combines survivor bias with the false implication that today's internet is the same one we had in the 90s; it is not.

I'm opposed to KOSA - I think vague appeals to "preventing harm" are going to be weaponized against queer kids in red states and cause real harm... but again, I think there are far better arguments against it than the "we came out fine" one anti-vaxers and corporal punishment advocates trot out.

Re: Stop KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)

#36

Post by phmqk76 »

Here’s an unpopular opinion among the typical Hacker News crowd: Section 230 (inadvertently?) artificially created a market wherein a platform provider has the exclusive right to earn revenue on the content you post, and yet has zero culpability over that content. This allowed companies like Facebook to pop up and literally print billions and billions of dollars, scaling exponentially, with nearly zero overhead, wreaking havoc on society. Legal culpability for what you host is a very potent way of preventing enormous scale, as content moderation is costly to scale, and provided direct incentive to maintain clean platforms. Section 230 created a system in which Facebook et al. get all the upside, including the privilege of building a platform without having to charge their users, with zero downside.

Maybe this isn’t the internet we deserve?

Re: Stop KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)

#37

Post by Brybry »

ceejayoz wrote: post #15
teeray wrote: post #9

Entire generations have grown up with the unfiltered internet at this point. What good can possibly come from introducing them now?

Entire generations grew up with polio. There are many good arguments against KOSA; this isn’t one of them.

It's fairly easy to prove the harm from polio.

It's not so easy to prove harm from internet access.

There are studies that suggest social media can harm adolescent mental health[1] but there are also studies that suggest the magnitude is small enough that we don't really know.[2]

It needs more study (and it sounds like what we really need is more transparency from big tech so that it can be better studied).

For an actual argument against KOSA I would say it doesn't at first glance look like it will target issues that are likely more important: peer pressure, bullying, suicide promotion/romanticization, etc on social media.

Edit: Having spent more time reading the KOSA bill (thankfully linked by another commenter) it does actually appear to try to target the biggest known issues to help minors. Some of the bill seems reasonable.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10476631/

[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21677026231207791#:...

Re: Stop KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)

#40

Post by jjackson5324 »

shkkmo wrote: post #31
jjackson5324 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Entire generations have grown up with the unfiltered internet at this point To be fair, if you look at statistics around gen z you can see that there definitely are negative consequences of internet access (along with amazing benefits of course). I don't support this measure or measures like it, but some of action should probably be taking considering the skyrocketing amounts of depression.

> To be fair, if you look at statistics around gen z you can see that there definitely are negative consequences of internet access I haven't seen any such data. It's hard to separate generation effects and look purely at the effects of internet access in any sort of valid way. You're probably thinking of studies around social media use. It isn't clear to me that internet filtering will combat any of what makes socia…

> You're probably thinking of studies around social media use

Yes? Social media use is done through the internet? The vast majority of internet use for young teens is social media use.

I'm not sure what you mean by drawing the distinction between internet use and social media use.

> It isn't clear to me that internet filtering will combat any of what makes social media use such a mental health risk for teens.

I'm not suggesting that the government should be taking action through legal means.

I'm just saying some type of action should be taken.

I'm a really big fan of what Apple did with Screen Time & wish the implementation was better (it's super buggy on my device at least).

Apps that give people better power to control their own internet use is the way IMO.

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