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…”
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
“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.
Its perfectly relevant to my point, which is that the government is already involved in the sort of behavior we’re discussing. If we accept that preventing societal damage, or promoting social well being, or whatever else you want to call it, is a part of what the government exists to do, then why would something like preventing mega corporations from hijacking the development of children fall outside its purview?
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.
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
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Nanny
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.
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
Its perfectly relevant to my point, which is that the government is already involved in the sort of behavior we’re discussing. If we accept that preventing societal damage, or promoting social well being, or whatever else you want to call it, is a part of what the government exists to do, then why would something like preventing mega corporations from hijacking the development of children fall outside its purview?
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Nanny
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.