451–460 of 506 posts
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
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
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We didn't need social media before it existed. If no one's on it, that sounds like the ideal situation for young kids.
Same thing with phones in school. When it's banned by a legislature, every kid's like this is actually great six months after being enacted.
This sudden coordinated worldwide effort to ban social media for kids (hint: it's not because of the kids) needs to stop, it's dangerous and people need to stop being so naive and stop supporting this.
I don't know what makes this more "coordinated" (so there is some supra-national organization coordinating this between nations? starting to sound like the Utopia show) than other legislation that trends very quickly
Anyway, as a parent I 100% support it. I really don't care whether people think it's because of the kids or not.
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> There is a zero percent chance this is organic Who exactly has a vested interest in starting a worldwide conspiracy to ban social media for kids? FWIW as an adult in my 30s, social media has caused me far greater harm than even binge drinking. I can't even imagine growing up as a teenager under the social media microscope
It’s pretext for identifying and tracking everyone. A inevitable ”byproduct” from getting your age by digital ID.
For the last few years there have been 400-1600+ "trusted partners" on every website already tracking everyone. In the US, recent news is the FBI is buying that info from the private sector without a warrant: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/25/nx-s1-5752369/ice-surveillanc...
Back in 2016, the UK's Investigatory Powers Act (one of two reasons I moved out of the UK) requires ISPs record domain names for all user browsing nationwide and store them for a year, and will provide it without a warrant to a long list of organisations including the Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#...
If you want to end surveillance, great. That requires at a minimum banning all tracking cookies etc., and we can see from the collective reaction to GDPR (consent popups instead of not tracking people) how hard the real surveillance industry has been fighting against all that.
I feel like education, not abstinence, is the way forward. Prohibition doesn’t work. Educating consumers and holding companies accountable works. It historically takes time though for that pressure to accumulate to the point of having political will. We also need teen social media education - like we have about alcohol and drugs. Where we’re frank about the real research. Don’t moralize. Talk about the realities of t…
It absolutely does. Just look at smoking and alcohol.
> We also need teen social media education
Sure, that too. But to think that it's enough is very naive. Unlike alcohol and drugs, social media is being pushed on teens at every turn. If there was a drug dealer on every corner, and drugs were free and tasted great, the education on drugs wouldn't go that far, honestly.
Wouldn’t it be more effective to ban non-chronological feeds? TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook would be transformed into useful tools overnight.
Social media is a cancer today. When I read news like this, I think "darn kids will never know how good we had it, the internet was for nerds and not hostile!" But as I roll that thought over in my head I wonder, was the internet ever really safe? Maybe there weren't companies messing with your psychology for profit, but perhaps it was all an espionage platform the whole time. The internet, http and html in general,…
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This. Big tech shouldn’t rely on ID laws. We should hold big tech liable when we find them in violation. Shift the onus to them.
We used to hold parents liable.
One one side you have big companies paying huge amounts of money to super smart people to get teens hooked on their products.
On the other side you have parents who on average dont understand how social media algorithm works or in some (too many cases) they cannot follow the logic to a second order effect.
Even here we have comments saying something like "be smarter and teach your kid to be smarter than big social media companies" not understanding that addiction cannot always be defended by improved IQ. Geniuses can have addictions too.
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Do you think this is about kids? It's about online identity and government surveillance and control. Even if you think it is about kids, then take responsibility into your own hands, be a parent and prevent your kids from using it. Or you just want to tell other parents to raise their kids the way you want? Then tell them that, don't hide behind fascist police and justice system to force online ID for adults.
>Even if you think it is about kids, then take responsibility into your own hands, be a parent and prevent your kids from using it. Common but bad argument. You've misunderstood what the age verification control is for. It's to hold online services accountable for illegally providing services to minors. A parent being negligent doesn't mean Facebook should not be held responsible for breaking the law.
Further, facebook users could chose to use platforms that don't exploit their users. By allowing facebook to benefit from the network effect, they are responsible for kids wanting to be on the platform. They give facebook power, and then facebook uses that power to exploit children. Yet facebook's adult users don't even see the need to defend themselves. To take responsibility.
Some of these laws affect mastodon, so these laws are not a regulation of facebook. What exploitive features of mastodon deserve such a ban? Are children addicted to mastodon's default chronological feed? It seems like it would benefit facebook to establish a regulatory moat that smaller non-ad-driven competitors don't have the resources to comply with. It certainty doesn't seem to have affected their stock.
Also there is reasonable suspicion that meta lobbied for similar laws: https://tboteproject.com/git/hekate/attestation-findings
So much for holding facebook accountable.
Oh, also: https://xkcd.com/743/