[HN Gopher] Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated...
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Minnesota Wants to Ban Under-18s from User-Generated Content
Services
Author : germinalphrase
Score : 69 points
Date : 2022-05-11 19:12 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.ericgoldman.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.ericgoldman.org)
| encoderer wrote:
| Two things are true:
|
| 1. this bill is trash, it couldn't be enforced, it's pandering.
|
| 2. Social media as it has existed for the last 5-10 years is
| harmful for teenagers.
|
| Instagram is making teens depressed and suicidal. TikTok videos
| have people celebrating mental illness like Tourette's and has
| brainwashed impressionable kids into believing they too have tics
| or multiple personalities or Tourette's.
|
| Something needs to be done. Not every corporate evolution is good
| or must be accepted as permanent. That's corporate propaganda.
| Instagram needs a "taking the cocaine out of the recipe" moment
| if it's going to survive as a reputable product.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Why isn't it enforceable?
|
| State attorney general notices his kid's social media app is
| giving algorithmic instead of chronological results, subpoenas
| social networks for number of under-18s in Minnesota, files
| charges, court sets up enormous fine.
|
| Which part of this process is impossible?
| pokstad wrote:
| If GDPR is possible, this is also possible.
| encoderer wrote:
| Kids will lie about their age. They already do. You aren't
| supposed to sign up until you are 13. There are lots of pre-
| teens on Social Media.
|
| Stopping that would mean a KYC process for every social media
| signup. I don't think that works either.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I certainly lied about my age to get my Hotmail account
| (which dates me fairly well).
|
| I'm sure there are plenty enough kids who accurately
| represented their age between 13-18 to make this quite
| enforceable. I probably said I was 13 when I was 12, or
| something close enough.
|
| Do a PSA campaign telling parents to make sure their kids'
| social media apps correctly represent their age to keep
| them safe. Would work well enough.
| gorwell wrote:
| I wouldn't dismiss it as pandering. The cultural and corporate
| elites have been increasingly exercising control over speech on
| the internet the past few years, and now we have a Ministry of
| Truth in the government.
|
| More top down control is the natural progression of what we're
| already seeing.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| Have they already tried to ban phones in schools?
| logifail wrote:
| > Have they already tried to ban phones in schools?
|
| My eldest is 12 and in his school they are not allowed to use
| their phones during school time, and I fully support this.
|
| Due to some genius government policy here involving "digital
| classrooms", every child in his year has been handed an iPad to
| use during lessons. Guess what? Kids end up watching junk on
| YouTube during lessons, then get their devices confiscated.
|
| I wonder if the policy wonks in government have met (m)any 12
| year olds...
| csense wrote:
| So how exactly would this be enforced? Would every website need
| to have you click a box that says "Are you over 18? Click [Yes]
| or [No]" and then if you click "[No]" it takes you about:blank or
| something?
|
| That might work for babies, but wouldn't most people over the age
| of, say, 7 simply lie and click "[Yes]"?
| RappingBoomer wrote:
| Proverbs 22:6 "Train up a child in the way he should go, And when
| he is old he will not depart from it."
|
| the elites don't want "unapproved" ideas getting into the minds
| of malleable youth...shaping the minds of youth is solely the
| province of our benevolent elites...
| threatofrain wrote:
| A lot of parents don't want unapproved media to reach their
| kids. If something like this passes, it's going to be at least
| because of parental support.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| In that case, they are free to take responsibility for the
| media their children have access to.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Good luck. My uncles kid was always on dating sites etc at
| a young age. I did everything for them setting up
| restrictions, ensuring the kid had an account that only
| could access a few sites. They took away their tablet and
| phone etc.
|
| The kid still managed to get caught hooking up with older
| men via Grindr.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Maybe teach the child how to think about their decisions
| in a responsible manner instead of trying to hide the
| world from them? You won't win and the child won't know
| why you're hiding it from them. If they knew why, you
| wouldn't need to hide it because they'd understand what
| to avoid on their own.
|
| I was certainly on Grindr before I was 18 because I was a
| curious child and was never exposed to queer people. I
| was thankfully raised by parents that also taught me why
| making decisions like hooking up with old men could be
| bad. So I never did that.
|
| My parents banned the internet from me as a kid -until i
| was 18- except in controlled manners. I flashed Linux on
| a school computer, used it to make a bootable VM of
| android that I could use to run apps on my person
| computer. I was particularly technically literate but
| there's endless ways to avoid your parents wishes.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Funny thing is that I guarantee a lot of the parents in
| support of dumb shit like this lose their minds at sexual
| education classes in public schools. Just shows that most
| people don't have the IQ necessary to be competent parents.
| [deleted]
| RobertRoberts wrote:
| Which do you prefer?
|
| 1) We should have school districts teaching _Republican_
| ideals because the local schools support it.
|
| 2) We should have school districts teaching _Democrat_
| ideals because the local schools support it.
|
| 3) No to both 1 and 2.
|
| You simply can't have it both ways, therefore the
| reasonable option is to say no to both.
| joe5150 wrote:
| good luck teaching much beyond colors and shapes without
| overlapping with some "Republican ideals" or "Democrat
| ideals". especially given the ever-widening scope of what
| so many Republicans claim constitutes Democratic
| political indoctrination in schools.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| If 3, what are schools teaching? Hopefully students learn
| something beyond the reality that their education is a
| political pawn.
| veilrap wrote:
| The problem with this is that Republicans in power today
| equate things like evolution with Democrat ideals.
|
| When facts get labeled as bias it's impossible to remove
| both from the classroom and still have a functional
| classroom.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| If you lose your mind about a sexual education class, I
| agree that's misguided, but saying they have a low IQ
| because of that? Maybe a low EQ if they can't control their
| emotions, but it's absurd to automatically equate emotions
| with intelligence. We've all acted stupidly because we've
| been emotionally invested in an idea. To pretend otherwise
| is disingenuous at best, and probably indicative of a low
| IQ at worst ;)
|
| Anyways, lots of people and religions have wildly different
| ideas on the sanctity (or lack of sanctity) of sex. Some
| people don't like it when a public school decides to teach
| their child something different. Whether that's a school
| teaching that heterosexual monogamy is the one true way, or
| homosexualism or polygamy or whatever. People have very
| different opinions on this and that's OK.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Don't think you got my point. I'd wager most parents that
| don't like sexual education courses don't see the
| hypocrisy in supporting this bill. They're essentially
| letting the state do the parenting for them.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| Ah gotcha. Yep I agree with that completely and must have
| misread your original sentiment :)
| anm89 wrote:
| Good luck.
| [deleted]
| barelysapient wrote:
| How shameful for one of the more "progressive states in America.
| gorwell wrote:
| When and why did progressives become authoritarian?
| chomp wrote:
| >The bill would eliminate minors' access to any algorithmically
| generated navigation aids, such as "top content" and "hot items"
| lists. It would also eliminate home pages that are
| algorithmically organized, whether personalized to individual
| users or not, which would be replaced by a list of items
| presented chronologically (presumably in reverse chronological
| order if allowed because chronological order prioritizes the
| oldest content, which is rarely what users want). Assuming minors
| can subscribe to other users' content, they will have to
| subscribe sparingly to avoid being overwhelmed by an incoming
| flow of content unhelpfully organized solely by date. The minors
| would also have to constantly review the content to avoid missing
| something important (remember, popular or important content
| wouldn't be highlighted, so it could be easily missed).
|
| Sorry for the snark, but could I change my age to 17 to get
| access to this? Sounds like a dream feature.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Yes. The description sounds heavily biased. I know lots of
| people want to see Facebook content chronologically ordered.
|
| People also want this so others can see their posts, not just
| posts from popular posters.
|
| Facebook seems to have this option, but I can't get it to work.
| So I uninstalled it again.
| nybble41 wrote:
| Having this as an _option_ might be nice, though it 's more
| likely to be useless at scale. Having it as the _only_ option
| sounds like a nightmare: Blink and you 'll miss the content
| you're interested in, with no easy way to get back to it. To
| actually stay connected and up-to-date you'd have to monitor
| your feed 24/7, manually filtering through piles of data you
| don't care about to find the rare gems. And what these
| busybodies in Minnesota are trying to mandate is not mere
| availability of a chronological feed, but exclusivity.
| warning26 wrote:
| Purely chronological feed? No "suggested" content? Sign me up!
| Can we mandate this for all ages?
| xwdv wrote:
| Why would you want this exactly? Fixing the problems with
| social media so it becomes more appealing to use... so that
| you end up using it more?
|
| Why not just go outside?
| listless wrote:
| Fixing the problem would just be removing the RT / Share
| button. That's it. Then we would all use it less because it
| wouldn't be that interesting at all.
| ben_w wrote:
| That may help, but I suspect it will not be enough.
| Perhaps limiting people to mutual relationships (can't
| follow without a follow back) and a maximum
| following/followers count of 256 to avoid parasocial
| relationships? (Only semi joking)
| warning26 wrote:
| Quite the opposite actually -- the goal is to make it
| _less_ appealing. Social media is designed to be addictive
| and prey on base psychological impulses.
| xwdv wrote:
| So people find non-chronological feeds and suggested
| content appealing?
|
| I thought people were always saying they hated these
| features.
| uoaei wrote:
| The tiny fraction of people who comment on HN say that.
| It is folly to believe this place represents public
| opinion.
| ben_w wrote:
| Compelling != appealing.
|
| I can't risk going near "idle" genre games, because even
| the ones I hate I find incredibly compelling.
| [deleted]
| dqpb wrote:
| If this was better, it would exist.
| LegitShady wrote:
| if it made them money, it would exist. If it reduces
| engagement, it doesn't.
| computerphage wrote:
| Genius! VPNs would get a lot more useful
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I teach at a highschool (in Minnesota no less). VPN usage is
| already endemic.
| foobarian wrote:
| Before they lock in the language, could we talk them into
| mandating static HTML... pretty please? :-)
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I... would be OK with just plain text.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Best I can do is a weekly email digest.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Does this include Spotify playlists?
|
| YouTube entirely organized chronologically seems like a
| nightmare too. What about sites that offer study aids?
|
| I guess it means all of Reddit would be organized by 'new'?
| Hacker news too
|
| Edit: Etsy and even you could argue Amazon have UGC as well.
| munk-a wrote:
| If it's legally mandated and services don't pull out of the
| market - yea usually it benefits us all since we can hop on the
| train (sometimes requiring a VPN but generally being offered as
| a feature for sale.
|
| I, too, would love to switch over to such a mode on several
| social services.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Funny, was talking to some friends on IRC today and a German user
| posted: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-
| chat-co...
|
| Seems like stoking the Think-of-the-children train is en vogue.
| Brought to you by the 5 eyes nations of course.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Anyone voting for this is clearly not fit to hold their position.
| Aside from the stupidity of thinking this is enforceable, it's
| hamfisted and misguided.
|
| When they propose such open-ended legislation there should be an
| ability for an outside party to make every single one of them
| fill out a survey of "Would this be allowed/disallowed under the
| new law?" with a bunch of examples. If the people who voted for
| it don't have consistency in their answers within some percentage
| (something like 95% must answer identically) then the bill is
| rejected since they clearly have no idea what they are talking
| about.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Why would it be difficult to enforce?
|
| >In addition to other damages, the PRA authorizes statutory
| damages of $1k per violation, capped at $100k per account
| holder per calendar year.
|
| There are 1.3 million under 18 in MN, some percentage of those
| have social media accounts, let's just guess 500k, so a maximum
| statutory fine for non-compliance of $50 billion per year per
| social network. All sorts of ways to adjust that down but still
| a substantial motivation to turn on the "chronological only in
| Minnesota" feature. Or are you assuming a state court can't
| fine a social network?
|
| It makes me wish Republicans were a little more sane so I could
| justify voting for some of them in Minnesota.
| filoleg wrote:
| > Or are you assuming a state court can't fine a social
| network?
|
| Social network: ok, we are blocking users from that
| jurisdiction from being able to access our product to comply
| with recently instated state legislation, please don't use a
| VPN to do so _wink wink_.
|
| Plenty of people (yes, even those who aren't the most
| technologically advanced average users) have been using VPNs
| for a similar purpose to access Netflix shows available in
| other regions since a long time ago, so I can easily imagine
| people doing the same to access TikTok.
|
| See the existing "you gotta be 13 or older to create an
| account" registration requirement on many platforms, which
| exists to comply with the law. Sure, it is enforceable in a
| sense that the government can go after any company that
| explicitly allows kids under 13 to register and flaunts this
| law. But it is utterly unenforceable in practice, because
| what is the government gonna do about kids lying about their
| age when creating an account? Nothing, aside from legally
| mandating identity verification and linking it to every
| account you create. But that's not the route I would ever
| want the world to take, not even mentioning that there will
| be ways around that too anyway (and the potential side
| effects of such id-linking mandate would be much more
| disastrous than the original problem).
| colechristensen wrote:
| You're imagining that a social network would be willing to
| geofence off an entire state in order to not comply with a
| fairly straightforward to implement regulation. Doesn't
| sound like something which would be honoring the fiduciary
| duty to investors required by leadership, leaving all that
| money on the table, or something that wouldn't be worth the
| calculus of cutting off an entire state to avoid losing a
| portion of revenue for part of the population.
| kristopolous wrote:
| because it's general enough that it can be challenged.
|
| I have an amazon profile. The reviews are user generated.
| They certainly rank popularity into categories.
|
| In fact, I also have a wikipedia user profile as well and
| there's talk pages and here's the trending topics:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Top_25_Report
|
| Same goes with youtube, twitch, imdb, discogs, substack,
| medium, and oh yes, video games. Lots of UGC video games.
|
| Social media can be bad, toxic, unhealthy, lead to suicide
| and depression among youth, ok. That's certainly terrible but
| you get a bunch of snazzy lawyers for billion dollar
| companies that work for the bottom line in the room, this
| thing won't stand.
|
| Instead what might work better is to extend liability law to
| such forums of persuasion. It the parents of a dead kid have
| grounds to sue Facebook and Facebook knows it, they'll pull
| back quick. It's a page from the Ralph Nader playbook
| colechristensen wrote:
| On what grounds could it be challenged?
| manicdee wrote:
| Yet here I am deliberately avoiding the features that Minnesota
| wants to ban. There is nothing hamfisted and misguided about
| this, the point is simply to ban the social media equivalent of
| casinos where the entire point of certain features is to stop
| you leaving by distracting you from the rest of your life.
| thethirdone wrote:
| Do you think HN would be banned for minors according to this
| law?
|
| I think it would, and I don't think HNs algorithm for ranking
| is abusive or toxic at all.
| manicdee wrote:
| Minors would end up seeing the same "sort by new" version
| of the site that everyone who sorts by new instead of
| hot/rising/popular/etc will see.
| warning26 wrote:
| This is a valid point -- HN's algorithm is one of the few
| that is good at discouraging flamewars without being
| explicitly chronological.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Eh, I think credit for that goes to dang and the
| community. Flamewars definitely start up now and then but
| moderation stamps many out.
| pokstad wrote:
| I think minors joining social media or forums should
| require parent permission. There's too many weirdos out
| there, and too much self harm from sharing too much
| information.
| Mezzie wrote:
| This is already allowed for under-13s, but almost no
| site/service actually allows for that. I imagine this
| would have similar results with it being a functional ban
| and the kids just all signing up as '18 year olds'.
| basisword wrote:
| >> When they propose such open-ended legislation there should
| be an ability for an outside party to make every single one of
| them fill out a survey of "Would this be allowed/disallowed
| under the new law?"
|
| You claim the lawmakers are too stupid to understand how tech
| works, but you're completely failing to understand how the law
| works. It's rarely (if ever) black and white. It's the job of
| the courts to interpret and decide what is allowed/disallowed
| under the law.
| djbebs wrote:
| The fact that it's not black and white is the problem.
|
| Above all law should be predictable a priori
| encoderer wrote:
| Yes it's hard to imagine who would enforce this and how.
|
| But the reason it's being discussed is that social media like
| instagram and TikTok is toxic to teenagers. Something does need
| to be done, society is not enslaved to the aims of mid grade
| social media product managers.
| [deleted]
| jaywalk wrote:
| You're expecting our politicians to actually _understand_ the
| laws they vote on? That 's just insane. What's next? Banning
| bills that are thousands of pages long and include countless
| things that are entirely unrelated to the actual topic of the
| bill? Come on.
| dvtrn wrote:
| I mean Ron Wyden of Oregon stands out by a country mile when
| it comes to actually trying to grok and pass common sense
| tech laws.
|
| Ain't enough Ron Wyden's out there sadly.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I know, I know, it's a crazy concept. I just get so
| frustrated seeing people pass bills on subjects that they
| have zero knowledge or can't even explain how it would be
| enforced. It would also be a nice resource to the layman,
| "Here are a list of examples/scenarios that would/would not
| run afoul of this law".
| cdot2 wrote:
| This is true of basically all laws. You just noticed in this
| case because it's an area where you're familiar.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| This would effectively ban minors from the Internet. And many
| walled gardens.
|
| EDIT: There's a case to be made for it! The Internet, especially
| social media, is as powerful as illicit drugs and probably
| impacts development. But IMHO, this should be up to parents to
| decide, and I think the lawmakers probably have no clue the
| extent of this kind of rule would be.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I'm all for banning minors from internet if that means we can
| get rid off content gates in general...
|
| Or maybe we should built them some sort of walled gardens. Only
| allow ISPs to link to certain sites.
| manicdee wrote:
| This won't ban minors from the Internet, it will go a long way
| to helping avoid bad habits like catching up on social media
| turning into a three hour binge.
| ipnon wrote:
| It's a little ironic to argue the utility of banning something
| by comparing it to another thing which is already entirely
| prohibited but completely widespread throughout all of society
| anyway.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Isn't that how banning things people want tends to go?
| gilmore606 wrote:
| > effectively ban minors from the Internet.
|
| Oh no! Anyway...
| pyuser583 wrote:
| This is probably for the best.
|
| I'm fine saying "think of the children" when you're talking about
| ... children.
|
| There's really bad stuff out there.
|
| Think of the children.
| falcolas wrote:
| A 16 year old can, in most cases, be legally independent of
| their parents: living on their own. They can also, in many
| states (and countries), legally give consent for sex.
|
| But we shouldn't let them view user generated content?
|
| Seems inconsistent at best.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| The inconsistencies don't even end at adolescence. You can
| die for your country at 18, but you can't buy a drink or
| (since 2020) a smoke until you're 21.
| ben_w wrote:
| I said something similar in a letter to a newspaper back when
| I was 16 and such letters were the closest most people got to
| user-generated content.
|
| Oh, the olden days of dialup and mainly using AOL CDs to keep
| birds away from flowerbeds.
| raulgalera wrote:
| how are they even planning on enforcing this?
| ipnon wrote:
| These old farts couldn't even sign in to Facebook without
| technical support. Do you think they understand even a glimmer
| of the technical ramifications of their proposed law? Usually
| when laws like this fail for technical reasons, they try to
| compensate the embarrassment by hammering harder with the
| penalties.
| aasasd wrote:
| > _the bill only applies to social media platforms with more that
| 1M "account holders" (defined as people who access a "social
| media account," an undefined term) "operating in Minnesota."_
|
| I'm always baffled by these nonsensical and arbitrary cutoffs.
| Obviously the proper approach is to define a function, either
| linear or logarithmic. In this case it's a reverse proportion: if
| you serve 500000 people in Minnesota, you are allowed to have 50%
| of Minnesota's youths on the platform, with 900000 people it's
| 10%, something like that. One could also have the age as a
| parameter of the relation, again to avoid the stupid cutoffs
| where the eighteenth birthday suddenly turns a person into an
| enlightened adult.
|
| Hard zero at 1M also sounds random. I'd say the optimal function
| would be a reverse geometric progression that approaches zero at
| infinity.
| mc4ndr3 wrote:
| The Internet is a user-generated content service.
|
| Libraries are a user-generated content service.
|
| The legal system is a user-generated content service. But okay.
| GameOfKnowing wrote:
| Most technical adults I know are in some stage of trying to
| revert their internet usage back to the offerings this bill would
| allow through. The less than 1 million users careveout is HUGE--
| allowing for the power of small forums, federated socials, etc.
| seems like a great bill unless you're trying to exploit young
| people.
| ipnon wrote:
| It seems you're implying everyone who disagrees with you is
| trying to exploit young people. It's the same rhetoric as the
| politicians who drafted the bill. We need to have open minds in
| civil society, some humility to anticipate desenting opinions,
| and careful fingers to type out comments with.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Yes.
|
| I have some concerns about this bill and tactic. For example,
| even if it worked as intended, would we see an uptick of
| problems in 18 year olds' use of algorithmic social media as
| they're suddenly away from home/out from under their parents'
| supervision _and_ given access to a bunch of exploiting
| content? It 's similar to how the first two years of driving
| are more dangerous regardless of when those 2 years take
| place.
|
| And as somebody who was 12 when COPPA went into effect, there
| are unintended consequences of banning minors from platforms:
|
| 1.) They lie, so either that's going to be commonly
| known/accepted OR a giant millstone around the neck of any
| existing company. This makes it a lot harder to pick out
| accounts that belong to minors, which makes it harder to both
| research and protect kids.
|
| 2.) Related to that, if you're breaking the rules by being in
| a space, you are _way_ less likely to speak up. If you 're a
| 15 year old who lies and says you're 18 to be on whatever
| social media platform, then if somebody harasses you, you're
| less likely to report it because it would get _your_ account
| banned.
|
| That's not even mentioning what something like this would do
| for the edge case of kids who genuinely are artists or
| content creators.
| ipnon wrote:
| It feels like there is no free speech party in the United States
| anymore.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| As far as I know there are no social media platforms operating in
| Minnesota, unless someone is still using the Gopher protocol? So
| this is a nothing burger.
|
| Even so, chronological ordering is the worst choice. Now you can
| just flood the stream with whatever crap you want and it will
| push all the legitimate content down off the page.
| theamk wrote:
| You flood the stream with "whatever crap", people get annoyed
| and unsubscribe/mute. You can no longer flood, the problem is
| fixed.
|
| That's how the things are used to operate, and that is the
| correct way. After all, if someone is annoying IRL, you stop
| make a decision to stop talking to them, you don't expect some
| random third party to remove them.
| bearjaws wrote:
| So once you are of the age you can concealed carry a firearm you
| are also fit to watch TikTok?
|
| Those seem equal... /s
| messe wrote:
| Good point. Probably best to ban TikTok unless you have alcohol
| in your system.
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