They tried warning us about fb over 10 years ago and nothing happened
I wouldn’t say nothing happened. Young people migrated off of it and it’s now the lead gasoline of the social media world
Yeah but young people didn’t migrate off it because it was harmful
They migrated in part to instagram which Facebook bought and made even more harmful than Facebook itself
Yeah ig is the worst part of Facebook, just people curating what they want people to think their life looks like
This is in stark contrast to… Facebook???
facebook has a very different target audience
facebook is mostly about 60+ year olds holding their beer and saying sth like “beer, car, church is all we need” while instagram is predatory on 16-y.o girls telling them that they’re not pretty and worthy of love if they’re not significantly (scarily, in fact) underweight and wear lots of makeup to cover their true emotions/face.
That’s not how fb started
True, but when it started my feeds were peoples dumb photos not a curated feeds to build influencers. The memes are most noticeable for this, there was very little vaccine nonsense
^ liberal “science” on social media.
At least Facebook has Facebook Marketplace.
back then it wasn’t about political independence from the US.
the EU has made a lot of noise in the last 2 weeks about getting off of US platforms. Here’s a few examples:
https://apnews.com/article/europe-digital-sovereignty-big-tech-9f5388b68a0648514cebc8d92f682060
https://ecfr.eu/publication/get-over-your-x-a-european-plan-to-escape-american-technology/
There’s many more. The movement is significant.
nothing happened
Nah, the perpetrators continues to make endless money, etc. Lots of capitalist stuff has been happening.
Then literally Web 2.0 is the problem. All social media stops existing if we go back from Web 2.0.
social media just needs http requests to exist, how does pre web 2.0 fix things honestly. gui apps have existed since windows 95 or even earlier, how is the tiktok app technically different than the space cadet paddle game with added network functionality?
Just go back to gopher.
25 years ago. Every study on social media and mental health back then showed it was bad.
Children are not the only ones being harmed here. This selective focus is only going to destroy the perception of other groups in terms of harm. Teenagers, young people, old people are also being harmed here - it is by design, and its everyone.
Yup, nobody is immune or above being harmed by the algorithms.
I bet this is related to Palantir facial recognition. Seems like identifying people and feeding it into some database is very important lately.
Always has been. You’ve been fingerprinted on the web for 10 years minimum. You know those secret aliases you had? Yeah they always knew they were you.
Stop. I’m not fucking playing this stupid game. I’m well aware of data brokers and selling our data. This is clearly different uploading pictures of yourself with id as a requirement to access websites.
If she had wheels she’d be a bike
I don’t know where that was ever mentioned, though.
That’s how they want to verify underage kids. You need to upload photo proof of your ID. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that agencies like ICE are also taking everyone’s pictures to upload to Palantir database.
The exact same thing happened with Instagram years ago.
and Facebook.
and MySpace.
and club penguin.
and…
It’s starting to feel this whole capitalism for children isn’t healthy.
But club penguin is kill. I remember. I was at home, eating dorito.
Oh look, another company that knows it’s harming people and society, hides it and keeps on chasing profit and power.
Just remember tick tock is illegal for citizens to use in the country that invented it.
Yeah that’s because they have a state sanctioned version of TikTok that is controlled by an algorithm that police’s peoples speech and what they do and reports anything untoward to the proper authorities.
And now that Fox News has bought TikTok, the US has their own version of an algorithm that will police people’s speech and what they do, and most likely report anything untoward to the proper authorities.
Untoward being anything Israel doesn’t like.
other one is Meta right?
I never wanted TikTok for this reason, and I remember the damage YouTube did to my brother, despite my warnings.
He was happily watching Tree Happy Friends as a toddler.
I’m thinking, how are youtube shorts and Instagram reels any different from tiktok
Jesus, happy tree friends fucked me up and I was legally an adult
I enjoyed happy tree friends as a kid and it didn’t effect me negatively. Different strokes for different folks I guess. It’s like arguing that GTA makes kids violent.
It was sort of funny, but it only had one punchline and wore out quickly for me. Shock humor has a really low retention rate. Compare that to say, Rejected or the parody GI Joe PSAs, they’re really not great and a wonder why Youtube hired them to make their old copyright volition training videos.
I don’t wanna die - I just wanna ride my motorcycle.
It’s harmful to everyone not just children, and so is Instagram. This sounds like more mandatory ID propaganda given how the government won’t stop the most obvious of pedophile sex traffickers.
Edit: It literally is:
Of course, if TikTok is removed, many children will just move to TikTok’s competitors: Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. This is why it’s so important for countries to follow Australia’s lead: raise the age for opening social media accounts to 16 and require the companies to enforce it.
Not only tiktok. My parents are addicted to facebook stories and YouTube stories ;)
The same algorithm…
What is more there a lot of Russian propaganda and misinformation. But in Poland that’s common in social media
Same in Germany. 😒 Why can’t we cut off Russia from our networks or do anything to counter them.
I feel like we are sleepwalking into a disaster.
People need to understand that we are at war and treat Russia as the enemy.
It doesn’t matter that there is little hard proof Putin, his secret service or who ever is behind this. When EVERYTHING points to their direction then you have to act.
We make them bigger than they have to be by ‘playing fair’ when they stopped doing that decades ago or never even did themselves. This is entirely an advantage we can take from them.
Although I admit it’s much harder for an open, democratic society to agree to play ‘unfair’ like the enemy. But maybe there is another way? Don’t compromise your ideals but bring pro western propaganda to Russian minds.
They don’t respect our cyber sovereignty for lack of a better word. Why should we respect theirs.
Other countries do this as well and we need to build our defences or otherwise we will be the punching bag for others.
We should promote long content and books instead of this short-shit
I’ve never installed tiktok. And I got rid of Instagram years before shorts. Additionally, while I enjoy long form YouTube videos from non-brainrot creators, I haven’t used the official app in years, so I avoid shorts there as well.
I’m not bragging, it’s just relevant to my next statement:
I too feel like my content consumption isn’t long enough. I think the instant gratification of moving to the next thing minutes after the first is bad for our brains.
In the last couple of months I have started reading again. Audiobooks mostly, and I know it’s not the same, but it engages my brain while driving for work.
Additionally, in the last few weeks, I’ve changed our TV habits. We usually watch 2 or 3 hours of TV in the evenings, which is probably too long by some metrics but I’m not ready to cut back yet, personally. What I have done, however, is stop binging.
Normally we pick two, maybe three at most, shows we want to watch. Then we burn through them, episode after episode. Churning through the seasons until they’re either gone or we’re caught up with it’s production.
Lately, I’ve done the opposite. We watch one episode of a show we like. Only one. We can watch one of another show if we want. But thus far we haven’t added more shows to the rotation, hard to keep track, might negate benefits, IDK.
When we’ve watched one episode of one or two shows. We either change gears and stop watching TV, or watch a movie.
By that time, the time for TV is more of less over.
Already I’m seeing benefits, small, but I’m happy. The next day, in my idle thoughts, I’ll find myself thinking about what happened in the show, and making connections and predictions that I otherwise wouldn’t have made. I enjoy this.
Plus we have a backlog of movies, we’re really bad about dedicating time to movies, even though we’d gladly waste that time watching several episodes in a row of a show 🤦♂️ So I’m glad to be getting into some good movies too.
Audiobooks mostly, and I know it’s not the same
FWIW, studies have found that reading and speech activate different language regions of the brain… But oddly enough, audiobooks activate the reading parts of the brain, not just the speech parts. So it may be more similar than you’d initially think.
I finally got my AudioBookShelf instance up and running last year, around March. In those remaining 7 months, I “read” (listened to) over 50 books. I used to be a voracious reader as a child. But at some point I lost the spark, as finding time to read got harder and harder. Audiobooks have reignited that love for reading, in a way I can’t even put into words.
I find myself looking forward to my daily commute, because it means I can listen to another two or three chapters in the car. I’ve even started taking the longer route home (which is technically more fuel efficient, but adds like 10 minutes to my commute) because I don’t mind the extra time in the car. I find myself wanting to wash the dishes or fold the laundry, because I can have my earbuds in while I work.
I still doomscroll on YouTube shorts or Instagram reels occasionally, but that doesn’t mean I have to give up long form content like reading. They fill two entirely separate niches.
we’re really bad about dedicating time to movies
I should start watching movies instead of TV-shows. I used to binge-watch and it feels unsatisfying
I’m looking forward to the day when social media is heavily regulated and age-gated.
Or parents can do their job. We have to suffer with age verification bullshit laws that’s just there to have us all in a database.
Not having it be regulated makes it a lot harder for parents to do their job, because the kids with responsible parents are getting peer-pressured by the kids with irresponsible parents.
Or put another way: you’re not making parents do their jobs; you’re making their jobs impossible by forcing them to choose between ruining their kid’s mental health by letting her be exposed to social media, or ruin her mental health by forcing her to be ostracised for not using social media.
The only way to have a successful outcome is to force everyone else’s kids not to use it, not just your own, and no amount of rugged individualist good parenting can accomplish that by itself!
That said, I am extremely sympathetic to the arguments against age verification laws too, which is why my preferred solution would be to fucking outlaw and destroy corporate social media entirely, for kids and adults alike!
You are exactly right. We’re all in this ugly, trapped situation, together, like it or not.
As a parent, do you remove the obviously ruinous toxins from the kiddo’s environment, entirely? Seems like the only sensible choice.
But then again…for the kid, few things could feel worse. An entire childhood spent alienated from their peers? Permanently out of the loop, to where that becomes the personality trait noticed and remembered by others?
What a horrible bargain, I completely hate it.
“Well, a little hideous poison for you, routinely, I guess, dear. I wouldn’t want you to end up weird, after all…”
Agreed. Just the peer pressure for having a smartphone at all is immense. Some kids have one below the age of 10. That is absolutely insane to me.
Or like, use the ample parental controls to limit their time to a reasonable amount 🤷♂️.
the parent can only do that on devices they own. they can’t do that on classmates devices
Oh god, they’ll get some access? Like, I can’t completely control my children and they are individuals who have the right to start making choices? Jesus Christ, I’m not going to be able to exert my will over them indefinitely?
If your child is old enough to leave the house and sneak around on you they were going to do that. You should be teaching them to live in society, not just avoiding it and dumping them into an environment without the skills to process the reality of life.
Yeah man, you’re on top of it.
It’s just lazy parents, right? Like they’re not even trying, huh?
Couldn’t really have anything to do with - I dunno, NO parents except the born-rich, being able to parent properly, on account of having to make the dollars keep adding up.
Probably also NOT the wildly, disgustingly sophisticated Big Fucking Tech doing everything they can to pull our children into their hilariously successful maze of dissatisfaction.
If only the parents would just use the obviously available parental controls! Duh.
Fuck you, in every way, for real.
Nobody can parent 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Clearly you’ve never been to a PTO/A meeting or town hall on education, or entire motorcades of parents spending days traveling with their kids for sports 🤣
Why do so many CLEARLY non parents react so strongly to a topic they have little to no experience in 🤣
Nobody has time 🤣, thank you so much for this chuckle.
Quite the charmed life you apparently lead. If you manage to peer outside your own economic bubble someday you’ll see what I mean. Doesn’t sound like you’ll be doing that though.
Durable societies are unfortunately bound to have such inconveniences for some in exchange for the betterment of many.
Tech companies have released the equivalent of digital opium so they and the government are accountable.
When we look back at the opioid epidemic of the 90s we don’t blame the addicts or their families (well I suppose we did at one point, without the benefit of hindsight or a bigger picture view), we blame the Sacklers, pharmaceutical companies, doctors that took kickbacks etc.
I’d hate for us to make the same mistake just because the drug is delivered in a way we don’t completely understand yet.
It’s also not as simple as asking parents to simply be better at parenting, whatever that may mean. The drug is already out on the street, widely available, and ridiculously addictive. Keeping your child from it is not only depriving them of a dopamine hit that their brains are not developed enough to simply ignore (even most adults are addicted) and it is in many cases relegating them to social ostracization.
This is far beyond what one parent or group of parents can fix. It requires a societal level change which generally needs to come from the government, whether we like it or not.
I’d be happy to hear out possible solutions and, as a parent, share what is viable and what isn’t. It would be nice to hear from other parents also.
It isn’t (just) a technical problem for parents. Having the underage social media ban means that there isn’t the peer pressure for kids to use - well there is, but its much lower
Oh won’t someone think of the parents though?! How can they be expected to parent their own children, oh the humanity
best thing on that front is same fix for most of the working classes problems…
-more pay
-shift to 6hr/4d work week
-actually invest in education
most people are good, amd would probably love to spend more time with their family, but in the US especially they’re overworked and underpaid, one accident away destitution
Most parents won’t. People are people. Those that would want to have to ballance the risk of excluding their children from the collective.
Or parents can do their job.
They don’t, which is why regulation is essential. Not unlike how recycling failed because we expected individuals to behave responsibly instead of regulating manufacturers.
And you’re already in the database.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Nanny
And you’re already in the database.
disgusting. they should be taking us out of the database
I agree. But I think we’re past that point.
well, then we need to go back before that point. There is no reason why laws that apply to my paper correspondance doesn’t apply to my digital correspondence.
If you disagree, please send your personal email credentials and medical records.
Age gated? You’d submit your driver’s license or identity to these sites?
It’s already started, for porn. The kids don’t have to prove their age, they don’t have proper ID. So EVERYONE ELSE has to prove THEIR ages, and if you can’t, you are assumed to be underage.
See how well that works for the Nazis? Now they get to identify EVERYBODY who is on the Internet with their legal IDs, and they will know exactly who posted that nasty meme of Trump.
But it’s okay, because it protects the children.
But it’s okay, because it protects the
children.casino advertisements.Australia’s Social Media Ban is a Win for Gambling Companies
Exactly. I don’t think it’s a surprise this all aligns with companies like palantir collecting people’s images into their database. I have a feeling on the backend these identities will all be used to track people online. Photos of faces and their identities is about to become a hot commodity.
Photos aren’t going to help them track people online, that’s to track people in real life. With a database of images, they can use facial recognition software to track people wherever they go. Right now, they only have legal access to mug shots, which is all they should have. But with a database of normal citizens, they can track ANYBODY, and they don’t have the right to do that.
Imagine if your employer, or a stalker, or some HOA bitch, or overzealous law enforcement, or a lawyer, or an insurance company, etc. wants to hire them to see what you are up to?
I don’t see how what we’re saying is different?
They’re going to tie people to their online activities as well as offline. If anyone shows up to a protest, they’ll be able to take photos and search for every account you are associated with. Think about the smear they could create with Alex if they had this fully operational now.
While the ID shit is godawful, that’s not at all how it works in any implementation out there right now. There have even been multiple breaches of these systems, further demonstrating their issues, but you know what hasn’t been in any of the breaches/leaks?
Direct connection between ID and uniquely identifiable user information.
If I’m wrong about this I’d love to know, but as far as I am aware the ID leaks have not had shit like email address attached.
Probably not. But I don’t use most of them and the ones I do use my account should be old enough that I don’t have to.
The age of your account won’t matter. It’s not about age, it’s about identifying everyone on the Internet, and connect to them to whatever they are posting. They will verify age with your driver’s license, or they will lock your account.
The way around it is with VPNs, but MAGAs are already complaining about them. They are about to lock down the Internet, and to access it, you will have to let them read everything you write.
Yeah, and that’s how you get shitty age verification laws.
It’s a double edged sword
Bummer that they’re necessary, but they are.
They are not. It’s not the governments job to parent the nations children, (and conveniently erode our privacy in the process)
How is this argument different from “it’s not the governments job to provide healthcare / education / social services”
Providing healthcare and social services is not inherently about controlling how people think and what information they have access to.
I notice you left education off that list
“Why the education system is horrible and needs to be dismantled and entirely reconsidered” is slightly off topic, but yeah you got me I do not think the argument is all that different wrt education. It is very different from those other things though.
When I was a kid I wouldn’t dream of wearing a stackhat riding my bike. Then the laws came in, everyone did and it was fine. Same as seatbelts.
This is even more so because of the network effects.
Don’t get me wrong - the Australian laws are a very blunt instrument & I hate the idea of having to identify myself to the government. Fortunately it hasn’t happened to me - yet.Can’t say the law for kids to wear helmets on bikes has done much to get them to do so. Though I don’t think bike helmet laws did much to rob the population of their privacy either.
I don’t think they approach necessity tbh. At best, they’re a bandaid, and a crutch for parents.
But the drawbacks of the laws that have been implemented so far, and are trying to be, as vast overreaches that give a false sense of security with no real benefit. They also do that by placing even more information into the hands of the very companies causing the problem in the first place.
That’s where regulations would focus in an ideal world, limiting the companies from causing the problems in the first place, not slapping bad patches over them.
Yeah bummer that big daddy fascist leader is necessary, but they are.
already starting to happen. Australia, for example implemented a under 16 ban on social media.
I’m looking forward to the police kicking in my door and typing my keys for me. jfc.
Damn… money laundering though LIVE with its “gifts” I never thought about this. Everything else is wrong, at scale, but this surprised me.
If you watch a decent amount of twitch streaming it’s pretty obvious. I’m sure there are a ton of whales out there willing to dump >$1000 in one go on a streamer, but just watch something like a “subathon”, or a “hype train”. You’ll see more dollars than viewers they have move around in the span of like 30 minutes.
Or when streamers “bet” each other large amounts of gift subscriptions. That’s explicitly money, and abstracting it behind subs only masks how damn much a lot of these “bets” are really for.
I’m not going to claim that anywhere near all of it is straight laundering, but it’s pretty damn obvious just how fucking easy it would be to use it all for washing/tumbling of dirty funds.
No wonder trump wanted to “Americanize” the company. More access to kids.
It’s Ok now though cause TikTok was bought by Fox News.
Several folks owe me apologies.
What is this meant to prove?
This looks more like Darwinism, chocking will cause you severe discomfort no matter how old you are.
That Tiktok encourages suicide stunts, as we read above, esp. if it goes against ToS‽
Yeah ofc. It’s run by genocidal fascists now. Libs wanted this.
It was run by genocidal fascists before. Just different ones.
If I ever have children, TikTok will be one of the first things I’ll have blocked for them.
If your parents do that for you, you’d find a way around it. As someone with no kids, it’s something I’ve thought about, but I feel like there has to be another solution.
Yeah, maybe you’re right. Seems like a better idea would be to just talk to the kids and get them convinced that it’s trash and/or find them something more productive to do.
The problem is Network effect
Yeah, the old “strict parents make sneaky kids” thing is unfortunately very true. You won’t stop the kids from doing it. You’ll just lose the ability to monitor them when they inevitably do it behind your back anyways.
If your parents do that for you, you’d find a way around it.
Them finding a way around it , hopefully technically, at least makes them grow their problem solving, motivation and rebellion skills
Right before Facebook, Instagram, Xitter, and probably some other social scourges that I forget about.
