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Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

reuters.com

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Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#71

Post by stinkbeetle »

m000 wrote: post #58
pjc50 wrote: post #10

This is really globally coordinated, isn't it? I'm just not sure why now and not previously. Is it just that Twitter went over the toxicity threshold that everyone noticed?

Why now? Because in the past 2-3 years it has been made abundantly clear that: (a) Social media operators choose to do nothing at all against coordinated influencing operations, unless the influencing goes against the interests of very specific countries and groups. (b) US government most likely has unfettered access to social media data. As if this isn't bad enough, they will probably give them out to Palantir for "…

Those things were pretty clear well before 2-3 years.

Social media is seen as a driver for people having opinions deemed a threat to the status quo. Western governments have been fighting a long battle to use these tools to control domestic influence and at times have probably thought they were winning, but recently things seem to be turn a bit.

"Think of the children" is obviously the oldest and most pathetic trick in their playbook. We know it's a bald faced lie because data and studies on social media harms on children has been coming out for well over a decade by now, and not a finger was lifted for years. So we know that is not the reason, and we know they are lying about the reason. Therefore we know the real reason is seen as unpopular with the electorate. And curbing foreign (including US government) influence and access to data is not unpopular anywhere.

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#72

Post by Markoff »

surgical_fire wrote: post #56

They should just ban social media outright, regardless of age.

that's great idea until you will try to define what is social media - HN, Reddit, youtube, various PHPBB forums? so pretty much ban any human interaction online other than 101?

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#73

Post by lossyalgo »

aacid wrote: post #23
budududuroiu wrote: post #3

So... de-facto mass deanonymisation of all Spanish social media users? I see a lot of supporters of these policies either not acknowledge that you can't identify under-16yo without identifying over-16yos.

You need ID to buy cigarettes and alcohol, prescription drugs or to get sim card... you will need it to register for social network account... do not seem as big of a deal to me. Even less when considering all the positives.

The problem is that they promise to delete IDs but then don't, and get hacked, and then all that personal information is published to the dark web for nefarious purposes. If you need evidence, it just happened again to 70,000 Discord users: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8jmzd972leo

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#74

Post by budududuroiu »

andrepd wrote: post #41
budududuroiu wrote: post #3

So... de-facto mass deanonymisation of all Spanish social media users? I see a lot of supporters of these policies either not acknowledge that you can't identify under-16yo without identifying over-16yos.

False dichotomy. Plenty of governments have a digitalised id/login service to log into the tax office, government portals, whatever. This is usually also offered as a "single sign-on". After signing on, the website can request any piece of information, the list of those pieces is presented to the user, who clicks Accept or Go Back. Pretty standard stuff. Meaning: these websites simply need to request 2 pieces of data…

> Where does the mass deanonymisation enter into this?

How is it not deanonymisation when your tax ID is inextricably linked to your social media profile?

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#75

Post by lossyalgo »

rimbo789 wrote: post #2

Great. About 10 years too late but better than nothing. Hope it becomes the global norm. Once that’s done we should ban the over the 65+.

Not great, because they promise to delete our IDs but don't, and get hacked (see Discord hack from a few months ago where 70k users had government IDs leaked).

To reiterate what I wrote above: We need to ban addictive dark patterns on ALL platforms for ALL ages.

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#76

Post by budududuroiu »

arrrg wrote: post #18
budududuroiu wrote: post #3

So... de-facto mass deanonymisation of all Spanish social media users? I see a lot of supporters of these policies either not acknowledge that you can't identify under-16yo without identifying over-16yos.

Age verification is possible without revealing personally identifiable information (beyond old enough yes/no, which is not in any way personally identifiable info) and from my perspective should be a strict requirement with any such laws. In fact, if these laws make the requisite infrastructure (ID cards that offer that functionality) a hard requirement then creating an anonymous web that nevertheless has age checks…

It is not preemptive cynicism. My issue isn't with private corporations having access to my data, it's with my government having access to my social media profile.

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#77

Post by lossyalgo »

croon wrote: post #68
surgical_fire wrote: post #56

They should just ban social media outright, regardless of age.

We just need a distinct definition first. Moderated forums were kind of great in general. Early social media with chronological feeds of your friends were useful too. The nebulous algorithms pulling people into reinforcing rabbit holes of trash or simply optimizing for "engagement" (outrage) is the primary issue IMHO. If we can only ban the bad stuff, great, but it's rarely that easy.

Exactly - ban addictive dark patterns in ALL software for ALL ages.

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#78

Post by chrisjj »

Markoff wrote: post #66
chrisjj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So... de-facto mass deanonymisation of all Spanish social media users? So all Spanish social media users are currently anonymous? I do not think so.

de iure yes, prosecution would need to prove you was actually using the computer which posted whatever online

> de iure

De jure?

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#79

Post by surgical_fire »

croon wrote: post #68
surgical_fire wrote: post #56

They should just ban social media outright, regardless of age.

We just need a distinct definition first. Moderated forums were kind of great in general. Early social media with chronological feeds of your friends were useful too. The nebulous algorithms pulling people into reinforcing rabbit holes of trash or simply optimizing for "engagement" (outrage) is the primary issue IMHO. If we can only ban the bad stuff, great, but it's rarely that easy.

Fair enough.

Typically what I call Social Media is akin to things such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Anything that has a personalized "feed" generated by an algorithm.

Old moderates forums had no personalized anything.

Incidentally, as much as I despise Reddit, this would exclude Reddit from being banned. Last time I used it, it didn't really have a personalized feed (unless things changed ever since).

I could subscribe to subreddits and see the activity on what I subscribed, but anyone with the same subscription list (fully controlled by the user) would see the same activity, so it was not a personalized feed per se.

Re: Spain to ban social media access for under-16s, PM Sanchez says

#80

Post by rustyhancock »

Surely this should be for parents to decide? Even if the infra is in place for social media services to check IDs.

It seems quite bizarre to ban it since the vast majority use it safely.

Social media is the double edge sword I avoided MySpace, Facebook etc entirely. But I can understand people finding communities online they can't access in their location.

Oh well. I'm sure those that want to will be able to bypass it, and I've also no doubt that social media at a population level is a net harm. Even if this feels like overreach.

What seems truly harmful is the 12month old who is handed a tablet with YouTube running constantly depriving their brain of the big early exposure to the real world.

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