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Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

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Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#391

Post by gslepak »

pessimizer wrote: post #386
gslepak wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Written by sig a few minutes ago: > It's very noticeable that this is the part of my comment you responded to and not the question How funny you won't answer his question now. I'm also curious, what is your motivation for denying the obvious?

It's so aggravating to have to have arguments about whether some coordinated political push is happening due to money being spent. Literally every coordinated political push, at least ones with any success, is consciously planned and lobbied for, even the ones that I support. I don't get pretending that no one is behind it. There are definitely people sitting in conference rooms in front of whiteboards trying to come…

Just don't imply he's doing it on purpose or you'll get called a conspiracy theorist. ;p

Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#392

Post by rgblambda »

postexitus wrote: post #376
Aurornis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like you can't get around a random adult buying for kids. It's just an imperfect deterrent. This argument feels really weak. Convincing an adult to buy alcohol for kids is dramatically more difficult on average than setting up a VPN. If you’re on this tech website you should know that it’s not hard to get VPN access even with cash by buying cards at retail. You can also use one of the various free (ad supporte…

Is it though? Do you actually live in the UK? Do you want to know how often it happens in London?

I live in the UK, though not in London. I can count on one hand the number of times a group of children asked me to buy alcohol for them. So it's not that it doesn't happen, but it almost never happens.

Compare standing outside a supermarket, repeatedly begging passers by to commit a crime for you every time you want alcohol, with the one time action of installing a VPN client on your device and it's obvious one law is enforceable while the other is not.

Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#393

Post by cooper_ganglia »

roysting wrote: post #340
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the answer is banning phones (except in school, context dependent), it’s letting lazy, bad parents have natural outcomes for their children and allowing the rest to work itself out through the social free market. It sounds cruel, but if someone is set on allowing their children to be raised by strangers on the internet and the government, they need to be ready to accept any outcomes that come along with…

Although I agree with you directionally, reality simply is that at least speaking for the west in general terms, this approach does not strike me as feasible because it will always contact the pathological altruism of our current civilizational state that will be compelled to "help" and "protect". But there is also the issue of simply writing off the children of such parents is rather callous and simply not compatibl…

I don’t care how anyone else chooses to raise their children. They can let their kids rot their brains, do poorly in school, and fail in life without ever getting me or the government involved. I am not responsible for raising the failed children of failed parents. I care ONLY about the outcomes of my family, friends, and, to a slightly lesser extent, my broader local community.

Promoting failed parents and children, not in spite of their failures but because of them, is suicidal empathy, a modern mental illness that was never able to fully take root in the past, because the world was always much smaller, divided, and cutthroat.

If given the binary choice between “being an individual” or a “civilization”, I would choose to burn down the civilization in a moment IF it meant the eradication of the individuality of those that I love. I would hope every single person with a heart beating in their chest would feel the exact same way, or else THAT is when a society truly collapses.

To borrow your analogy, the Indians became alcoholics because “they were genetically predisposed to it”? Okay, well why would we want to increase genetic predisposition to alcoholism in the gene pool by denying someone their freedom to drink themselves stupid?

You can argue that it wouldn’t be fair to their children, but those who aren’t drunkards could become wealthy casino owners whose children will prosper more than even you or I, while those whose genes, according to your perspective, apparently don’t allow them to control their own urges will fail, and their lineage will end, along with their hereditary alcoholism.

I see no reason for society to bear any level of responsibility for individuals regardless of context, as society is built by successful individuals , and it is torn apart by failed ones. We must allow the natural outcomes, which is that failed people will fail.

Evolution, if guided by humans, would quickly devolve into chaos, as we can’t accurately select for the correct pressures for success. It simply has to occur. Society is a living organism in the same way.

Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#394

Post by fc417fc802 »

retired wrote: post #331
asdfman123 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We didn't need social media before it existed. If no one's on it, that sounds like the ideal situation for young kids.

I remember a time around 2010 where I benefitted from social media, Facebook in particular. It wasn't addictive, I used it for 15 minutes at the end of the day to catch up with what foreign family was doing, we would organize real-life parties through Facebook, share photos of those events, tag each other. If you traveled internationally it was easy to keep in touch with people you met along the way. I'm afraid we wi…

It could still be like that if there was no opaque algorithm and even better if there was no endless feed to doomscroll. If you only got alerts for messages directed at you and otherwise had to actively visit a person's page to check up on them. But that wouldn't be as engaging (ie addictive) and there wouldn't be nearly as many opportunities for ads or even the collection of data to drive those ads.

Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#395

Post by pessimizer »

andrewla wrote: post #317
pzo wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why 'silly' conspiracy? Many cases of documented conspiracy in the past anyway. Being on this social media (YC) people aware it's all about implementation and we should at least demanding better solutions. If you want to regulate/limit access of kids to social media just make that you have to be 16 years old to buy simcard - in many places in EU you already have to show ID to seller. Allow parent to buy simcard to th…

For the first part -- silly because there's literally no evidence presented of a conspiracy. No connection between the individual agents and actors. No motivation given for the underlying commonalities. And most importantly, for this "scale" of conspiracy, there's no suggestion that other avenues towards the same nefarious ends are in progress. It's just a bunch of countries and organizations proposing similar laws b…

> No connection between the individual agents and actors.

This is obviously untrue. They all know each other and communicate. This would be true even if it were something more anodyne like antismoking regulation (that governments maybe don't have a particular stake in.) They coordinate their messaging, they use the same publicity agencies, they apply for the same financing, they cosponsor and circulate the same studies and thinktank output. Why would you just say that there is no connection between them?

What I think you've done is silently dismissed the open connections as harmless. It's really a "no true connection." The evidence would have to be a bunch of connected organizations with Snidely Whiplash mustaches, or an explicit declaration of conspiratorial intent written down, signed, and published in a newspaper that you approve of.

Although I can't imagine what they could possibly confess to: "We coordinated with national governments to generate studies and messaging, were funded by them directly and indirectly, through foundation grants, lobbied politicians who would support the bans and gave them statements to make, and attacked politicians who were against the bans."

What's wrong with that? You make it sound like some sort of conspiracy.

If we try to argue this case on the merits we've already lost. There's no technical reason to root everyone's computer to keep kids offline. Just put age statements in the protocol, legally make people serving adult material require them, and give people the tools to strip those statements or put them behind passwords at the workstation, server, or even ISP level. Kids would get around it, but they'll certainly get around this, too, unless you're going to require cameras on computers to identify their users at all times.

It's a pretense.

Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#397

Post by fc417fc802 »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #368
traderj0e wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on board with it too, but the timing and methodology is suspicious. We already got a "protect the kids" law to semi-block TikTok in the US, but it was really about protecting Israel's image (its sponsors even admitted). I hope it's not related to that.

So tiktok is the only uncensored source of information about Israel?

A disingenuous response. No one said that.

Tiktok in the US previously had an algorithm that wasn't in keeping with US government goals. That's not a value judgement on my part BTW. Personally I avoid the ingestion of opaque algorithmic feeds to the extent possible.

Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#398

Post by cooper_ganglia »

skithrowyouknow wrote: post #380
cooper_ganglia wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a parent, you have direct control over who your kid’s friends are. We used to say, “If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?”. Now we say, “Well, the kids are going to jump off a cliff anyway, I can’t stop them, so the government should make a law about it!” I don’t think that’s the way to handle things. Parents who are bad at parenting will raise kids that fraternize with kids who jump off of cliffs. Ma…

You do not have control of who your childrens' friends are unless you spend all hours with them. And most people are happy nobody can legally sell smokes, booze, and drugs to 12 year olds.

Surely you can see how requiring ID for a physical cigs, drugs, and alcohol purchases is different from requiring ID to use a website?

“Think of the children” is the exact tool fascists use to erode liberties. Governments worldwide salivate at the idea of having a registry of what every individual is doing online at any given moment.

Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#399

Post by fc417fc802 »

slg wrote: post #347
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who do you think is behind this? Anyone who is interested in connecting an identity with every computer on the internet, like a tamper proof license plate for computers. Just ask local law enforcement. There has been a growing awareness for the possibilities of foreign states to manipulate social media and other platforms with fake personas. So any kind of counter intelligence would be interested as well. There hav…

Do you not see how this comment is actually counterproductive to the point you’re arguing? The long list of suspects, most of them being totally independent of each other is evidence of this not being orchestrated by some central group.

The fact that a bunch of seemingly disparate actors are behaving in a highly coordinated manner is evidence against central orchestration? What an absurd suggestion.

Re: Norway set to become latest country to ban social media for under 16s

#400

Post by slg »

AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #364
slg wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you not see how this comment is actually counterproductive to the point you’re arguing? The long list of suspects, most of them being totally independent of each other is evidence of this not being orchestrated by some central group.

So if I don't answer your question, you use the fact I didn't answer against me and if I do answer, you use the fact I answered against me as well. It's hard to take your non constructive way of arguing serious. Have a nice day.

This is a very strange response. Am I not allowed to criticize the answer you provide when it doesn't actually answer the question?

For example, if I asked you who killed JFK and you responded with "It could have been Oswald acting alone or the mafia or the KGB or the CIA or Fidel Castro or a misfire from Secret Service...", you didn't actually answer the question, you just gave a list of potential answers. One of those answers could be right, but the way you provided so many answers shows that you can't actually answer the question with any degree of certainty. You effectively answered "what's 2 + 2" with "something between 2 and 10". I'm not going to respond with it's not "2+2 is not 8 because..."

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