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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

#421
post #374
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is much more globalized now. Countries are watching each other, political movements can be global. That wasn't the case when drinking laws were enacted. Also, the object - social networks - is global. Yes, all kinds of societies have had alcohol, but alcoholic beverages don't suddenly become 20% more potent or harmful everywhere at once. With centralized platforms, that can happen.

>political movements can be global. You are saying exactly what OP is saying but just rephrasing it another way. The more a movement crosses borders, the less likely it is to be based on the needs of any particular country and the more likely it is to be based on the needs of the transnational billionaire class. Drinking age is not the only example, driving age is another good example and also the old TV rating syste…

>the less likely it is to be based on the needs of any particular country

there has been no such thing in decades. The idea that there are 'organic needs of countries' compared to 'artificial needs of global consumers' in the internet age where digital infrastructure is long post-national is conspiratorial.

We're here on HN right now. I'm German, you might statistically I guess be American, but maybe Indian, maybe Chinese, we likely both consume media made in South Korea or Japan so the fact that legislation emerges kind of in tandem isn't "coordinated censorship", it's reflecting a reality of how information flows. Politics, economics, and media consumption is now horizontally intertwined, we don't live in vertical silo countries any more.

If you made a digital worldmap and connected each person you'd get something that doesn't look at all like the one on your physical globe and if you don't realize that the distances there are a bit different you're going to think spooky coincidences are happening.

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

#422

Earlier 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?

That would be fine if people had symmetric information and strong education

Anything less is exploitation

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

#423

We can't even get countries to agree on a unified drinking age, but somehow the whole world is simultaneously coming to the conclusion that you need to be 16 to use social media, and websites and operating systems all need North Korean ID verification to prove you're over 16. There is a zero percent chance this is organic

I can't quite understand how Australia was at the forefront of this. It seems like an easy way to limit the open web, and no children actually saved.

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

#424
post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What counter evidence is there against you, AnonymousPlanet, and gslepak being the same person? You're all seemingly acting in a highly coordinated manner. Would it be reasonable for me to assume you're all one person? Because a suspicious similarity seems to be the only reasoning any of you are providing for these laws being centrally orchestrated.

> Would it be reasonable for me to assume you're all one person?

Depends on context. Would that be the statistically favored explanation for the behavior you're seeing here?

In the case of international politics it is indeed the highly favored explanation. Particularly when there's such a clear nefarious motive.

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

#425
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.

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.

You are assuming without evidence that they are coordinated, then using that to infer central orchestration, and then using that inferred central organization to support coordination.

When there is something that aligns with the interests of several disparate groups it is common for them to all support that something with the need for some central organization.

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

#426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> silly because there's literally no evidence The evidence is the part where it very obviously isn't organic. The behavior is clearly too coordinated when compared to past global changes in regulation. > People and lawmakers are just not thinking through the privacy implications ... It seems much more likely to me that they are thinking them through and that they have ulterior motives. BTW "violent agreement" refers…

> The evidence is the part where it very obviously isn't organic. Global Context: Norway joins France, Spain, and Denmark, which are considering similar measures, while Australia and Turkey (which bans users under 15) have already implemented restrictions. The UK recently rejected a similar under-16 ban. I think it obviously is. Just as much as the migration to solar is organic. There are foils, but there is also an…

Where have you provided anything to refute the observation that this bears the hallmark of being centrally orchestrated? The context you cite appears to trivially restate my own observations rather than support a counterargument. International laws never proceed in such a uniform manner all at once like this without external coordination.

Of course the lobbyists are playing off of public sentiment and almost certainly working to actively fan those same flames. Notice that the laws aren't the most sensible or least intrusive but rather just about the minimally privacy preserving and maximally authoritarian enabling "solution" that you could possibly come up with. Also notice the convenient alignment of this outcome with various well established ulterior motives of existing actors.

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

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a real dichotomy. There's not a lever positioned between safety and freedom that people can collectively choose to shift one way or another. The best way to enhance safety is to directly ban the harmful behavior, not install cameras everywhere to make sure that only the right people fall victim to it. A panopticon is both less free and less safe than the world we have now, and a world where Meta and Google…

Privacy and freedom are not the same thing. You can have lots of freedom with low level of privacy, but it's impossible to high privacy and high freedom at the same time.

No it isn't

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

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did say something. "Think of the children" became a cliche because of how commonly it crops up in politics. At this point it's far more common to see it attached to nefarious measures as opposed to those with accurate statements of intent. The bad faith rhetoric on your part is unwelcome and explicitly against the rules here ... I say to the account from 2014. Given you've been around awhile assuming you were legit…

> The bad faith rhetoric on your part is unwelcome and explicitly against the rules here . Asking for clarification is a hallmark of good faith discussion. More of that and less snark is healthy. Yes there are side effects. I would still vote that it's a net good as a practical solution to a number of problems. Notably the suicide rates, declines in testing, and skill development. The eternal debate between more soci…

The request for clarification was not what I was referring to as bad faith rhetoric.

It seems like you're actively trying to change the subject. No one said anything about side effects and I don't think anyone was handwaving. The exchange you jumped into here was one regarding the presence of outside centralized influence on the legislative process at the international level.

The separate question of whether the initiative is of net benefit for society needs to be considered alongside potential alternatives in addition to any expected downsides. The elephant in the room is that the least invasive and most straightforward option of mandating the presence of accurate content classification headers has never been tried even though it would appear highly likely to solve the problem as I've usually seen it stated.

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

#429
post #274

We can't even get countries to agree on a unified drinking age, but somehow the whole world is simultaneously coming to the conclusion that you need to be 16 to use social media, and websites and operating systems all need North Korean ID verification to prove you're over 16. There is a zero percent chance this is organic

The world is much more globalized now. Countries are watching each other, political movements can be global. That wasn't the case when drinking laws were enacted. Also, the object - social networks - is global. Yes, all kinds of societies have had alcohol, but alcoholic beverages don't suddenly become 20% more potent or harmful everywhere at once. With centralized platforms, that can happen.

are you for real suggesting that this is just countries that just so happen to look at eachother than then all go "wow, gotta get that age verification going" ?

its blindly obvious that this is an agenda that SOMEONE is pushing EVERYWHERE, one can then speculate who that might be, or for what purpose

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

#430
post #423

We can't even get countries to agree on a unified drinking age, but somehow the whole world is simultaneously coming to the conclusion that you need to be 16 to use social media, and websites and operating systems all need North Korean ID verification to prove you're over 16. There is a zero percent chance this is organic

I can't quite understand how Australia was at the forefront of this. It seems like an easy way to limit the open web, and no children actually saved.

Any time the powers want to do something to help out Fat Cats and top end companies with something they don't like happening, any action thrust out, the excuse it's always "for the children" or "think of the children."

Make no mistake social media as it was with scraping so hard kids bled, was bad for children. Facebook ignored the lessons learned from the 90s with TMI (too much information) and in fact some people who used a lot of yahoo mailing groups from that time might still recall the big sweep that occurred. It came to pass that some people still ignored Facebook rules and used pseudonyms - you know just in case and in Australia this became a big big thing back a few years ago with a different govt running the show here with a prominent pro Trump (sycophantic) leader ruling the roost. maube hours after Trump got roasted by an anonymous comment, the crew in Australia were pushing to require ID to access the internet ... a person was appointed to address anonymous accounts ... and in the end after the govt changed she was also tasked to oversee social media.

One might think that age limiting a site it would force ID checks, however other smarter people know that most social media sites, especially the ones there were scraping hard and targeting young teens dieting and other BS young teens seem to susceptible to, have the capacity to guess fairly accurately if the account holder is a youngster. Right now these companies are saying nah these algorithms are dumb and the govt can't do a thing ... right up to the point when the present govt decides to start fining for every account that should not be there and or just offering bounties to the average Joe Jill public [and not businesses or those tooled up with A.I. help] There's a phase in time going now at the moment -- none of the big tools out there have figured out how bureaucracy works in Australia.

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