Summary
A YouGov poll revealed that 77% of Germans support banning social media for those under 16, similar to a new Australian law.
The survey found that 82% believe social media harms young people, citing harmful content and addiction.
In Australia, the law fines platforms up to AUD 49.5 million (€30.5M) for allowing under-16s to create accounts, with enforcement trials set before implementation next year. Critics
Urgh. This is a tough one. Social media has been a part of asymmetric warfare for at least the past ten years, and I don’t want my kids to be bombarded with propaganda from Russian and Chinese-funded far-right groups like the AfD.
At the same time, I understand how important it is for kids to explore the internet on their own.
If I had the choice, I would ban TikTok and Instagram.
But if that’s not possible – then honestly, ban everything. I will then work something out with my kids myself.
The True Problem, is that an actual-safe-space is required, for kids,
& that costs investment to produce, & to maintain.
We pay for kindergarten & schools to be safe-spaces, don’t we?
Children’s forming brains require healthy place, right?
Same is required for internet, for them.
So, a “walled garden” with wikipedia ( not the gore-centered stuff, & there seems to be some of that on there ), & TVTropes,
etc, is required for them to develop their minds healthy,
but the only “successful” walled-gardens were made with machiavellian intent, thus-far…
Apple’s walled-garden, Microsoft’s, AOL’s, Google’s, etc…
Nobody’s done a not-for-profit edition for humanitarian reasons…
Big Tech’d sabotage it any way they could, in order to “prove” it “doesn’t work”
( it’ll never be seen in Google News, Facebook may well disappear all references to it, Apple wouldn’t permit it on their platform’s App Store, etc… )
Exterminating-alternative is required when the stakes are world-possession, right?
NO competitor allowed, right??
Nobody’s got the spine to create the required walled-garden which simultaneously gives children
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access to meaningful friends
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lots of learning opportunities & learning-means
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gamefied learning, like projects-done-together on interesting-to-them subjects, with real accomplishings, like Science Fairs can be, irl
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systematic stomping of abuse, predators, bullying, etc…
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systematic training them in sane privacy-habits, device-health habits ( update your apps weekly! Reboot your device weekly! Use antivirus! )
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systematically training all children in critical-thinking, dismantling ideology-programming as completely as possible, from the next-generation
etc.
& if anybody did have the spine, then it’d be force-disallowed by Big Tech.
Humankind waited too long to care, & now the bad-guys own the whole “game”, it looks like, to me…
Human children never will know what honest, proper, supportive systematic-development through interesting challenges, & safe growing-up can be, because our-generations wouldn’t do what was required, when we had leverage to be able to do it.
“fighting over crumbs” is all that’s left, it looks like…
( lobbied “representatives” wouldn’t allow world-integrity to violate their owners’ interests, either, obviously… )
Sorry for my bitterness, but I’m old.
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An even higher percentage — 82% — were “absolutely certain” or “somewhat certain” that social media use is in some way bad for children and teenagers.
What’s the percentage of those who are “absolutely certain” or “somewhat certain” that authoritarian adults wanting to control teenagers’ lives out of a belief that the former know what’s actually best for the latter is “in some way bad” for children and teenagers?
Whatever it is, it certainly includes me.
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I absolutely agree that the modern internet has been turned into a corporate rage-bait hellscape, but do keep in mind that every generation that’s ever lived feels that their childhood was better and safer than what exists today. It’s human nature to prefer our fondest memories at our most carefree point in life - but although ipad babies are a scourge that terrify me, it’s important to remember that children aren’t all drooling fortnight zombies these days either.
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From what I understand of the Australian law, companies are prohibited from requiring a government-issued ID. In practical terms, how can this law be implemented, then? Bypassing a prompt that asks for a birthday is as easy as just lying. Other than requiring an ID, I honestly can’t fathom a way this would actually work. I suppose you could require a active credit card number, but that would exclude adults and kids over 16.
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Banning social media is the easy cowardly thing to do. Are our representatives to afraid to regulate big tech?
Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups. Yes it’s hard. Grow the fuck up, put on your big boy underpants and do your fucking job.
Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups.
There’s a lot of nuance here, but in general I agree. Hank (of vlogbrothers and SciShow fame), summed this problem up brilliantly. To paraphrase: social media is engagement based, not quality based. Upvote/like content on all you want, but misinformation, propaganda, rage bait, and doom-scrolling fodder will dominate any platform where the only valued metric is eyeball time.
So, the top-down solution would be to somehow strictly define how for-profit ranked media feeds and news aggregators are allowed to operate. Unintended consequences of such a law aside, I think it’s possible to legally define a “well-behaved” social media site, but it won’t be easy.
Begin with the “cherry-picking”:
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Disinformation gets cut out.
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Fact-checking is protected-speech, not immediately-auto-deleted-because-it-harms-profitable-disinformation.
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Ideological-prejudice gets cut out.
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The major racisms: sex/gender racism, skin racism, class racism, & national racism, get stomped.
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Correct & true journalism ( going to require independent ratings for individuals & organizations & for sub-branches-of-organizations ) gets automatically & consistently boosted.
You put those in-place, & MASSIVE improvement is inescapable.
The Problem™??
Big Tech WON’T TOLERATE anything interfering with their highjacking of the world, with their asserting their claim to monarchic/polyarchic world rule.
EVER.
Try linking a Wikipedia article, to fact-check something, on yt…
Autodeleted!
Rabies is their means-of-gaining-possession-of-the-world, & NOTHING can be tolerated to interfere with their rabies/means.
No matter how many humans die, in which circumstances their platforms helped enforce.
For-profit-corporations are psychopaths, by default…
So long as we continue maintaining-otherwise, they continue winning…
until it’s too late.
( & we don’t get told when it is too late, either: that’s movie-fantasy plot-point, not reality )
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