[HN Gopher] Utah is first US state to limit teen social media ac...
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Utah is first US state to limit teen social media access
Author : djoldman
Score : 501 points
Date : 2023-03-25 21:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| psithurism777 wrote:
| I applaud the law. I personally have children and want my
| children to be able to manoeuvre through adolescence,
| development, and puberty without the barrage of garbage the world
| throws at them.
|
| The law allows parents to open up everything and give full access
| if that's what they decide is best for their children. No
| freedoms are removed.
|
| The world existed before the internet. Let kids be kids. I
| personally would rather have my children playing outside, running
| through creeks barefoot, learning to interact with people face to
| face than have them develop so many of the destructive behaviours
| that can develop through un monitored internet access. Many here
| are assuming it's an all or nothing approach to internet usage
| which really isn't the case. The spirit of the law is to limit
| the facebooks and the TikTok's that have been shown to be one of
| the influences on increased suicide rates among youth.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I feel like banning outlets for self expression is going to be
| even worse for teen mental health than the status quo.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > without the barrage of garbage the world throws at them.
|
| Surveillance, for-profit mythomania, and predatory consumerist
| garbage... as well as other types of predation.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| As a parent, this isn't something for the state to mandate. I
| feel they took the choice away from me.
|
| If my child breaks one of these vague laws, who gets brought to
| court?
|
| The parents.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| Keep saying it. Whatever China does is ridiculed and laughed at
| only to be quietly adapted into Western democracies 10 years
| later. But we get to vote on it so that makes it better I guess?
| jquery wrote:
| First of all, this law isn't going anywhere. Second, I was in
| China ten years ago and their internet was absolute garbage.
| Any site not on the approved list was blocked or throttled. I
| had to use a VPN the entire time. China does some thing well,
| but its internet policies are absolute trash.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I feel like a lot of discussion has already the color of Utah's
| politics even before discussing the objective aspects of this
| issue. Would HN have the same reaction if this was a law passed
| in California or EU?
| r00fus wrote:
| This law might _might_ make sense if it simply disallowed
| children to view algorithmically curated feeds.
|
| Most of the harm from FB, TikTok, etc stems from a non-
| chronological algorithmic "amplification".
|
| Otherwise this is clearly 1st amendment bait.
| devalidating wrote:
| How is it 1st amendment bait?
| r00fus wrote:
| Interaction on a public forum may be construed as speech.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How is it 1st amendment bait?
|
| Because it restricts speech and association, on both sides
| (provider and user.) While minors' rights in this area are
| somewhat attenuated, they are not null, and while commercial
| entities have rights which are attenuated in different ways
| than minors, the fact that it the regulation is _explicitly_
| content based (in that the exceptions are content-based)
| means the first amendment is more relevant than in the
| average commercial regulation.
|
| (Depending on how the 5,000,000 user cutoff was reached, it
| might also have Commerce Clause issues; if its a selectively
| measure that imposes costs and favors in-state entities by
| only targeting at a scope that no in-state entity otherwise
| within its coverage has reached, that looks a lot like a
| prohibited discrimination against out-of-state business.)
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| Social Media use is probably worse than smoking for kids. Smoking
| gives you a 15% chance to get cancer in 50 years but instagram
| gives you a 66% chance of depression today.
|
| It's incredibly, empirically unhealthy and it should be banned
| for children.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Why let 18 year olds+ use it then? If it's that bad, it sounds
| more like crack, which we ban for everybody.
| AbrahamParangi wrote:
| I'm in favor of autonomy for adults but yeah, that might be a
| better world.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I can respect that position. I tend to be very in favor of
| autonomy for older kids/adolescents because I think going
| from 0 to 100 and having them be 18 and fully responsible
| is going to result in bad decisions. Like we see with
| drinking, or if we gave kids driver's licenses at 18 with
| no education. They need a period of time when they have
| autonomy but also support and some people around them to
| veto things or else they can't learn to make good
| decisions.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Social media is toxic and addicting. Kids hardly stand a chance
| against it.
| tzs wrote:
| Europe might help here with getting around the privacy issues.
|
| Organize your social media company so that all of the posts are
| made through, stored, retrieved, and controlled by a European
| company and all the processing/storage occurs in Europe.
|
| GDPR would then apply to the European company. Yes, it would
| still apply even when the data is about someone who is not
| European. GPDR's extraterritorial rules are that it applies (1)
| to companies not in Europe that are offering products or services
| to people "in the Union" or tracking the actions of people in the
| Union that take place in the Union, and (2) to companies in the
| Union regardless of where they operate or where the data subjects
| are.
|
| The CLOUD Act in the US would not apply, because the data would
| be controlled by a European company. The CLOUD Act applies to the
| case where a US company is storing data in a non-US location but
| still under its control, and allows the US to order that US
| company to retrieve the data.
|
| It should be fine if the European company is partly or even
| completely owned by a US company, just as long as it is set up so
| that the European company controls the data. GDPR would still
| apply because of the European company, and the CLOUD Act would
| still not apply because the US company would not control the
| data.
| jjcm wrote:
| Actual bill is here:
| https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0152.html
|
| For those wondering if it'll affect your site/service, this only
| applies to social media companies that have > 5m account holders.
| judge2020 wrote:
| 5 million is not a lot, especially if you're just counting the
| number of users in your DB. Something like MAUs would be a
| better metric, but would still include things like Steam.
| thelock85 wrote:
| This is smart for the times and perhaps useless in the future. I
| wonder what is the level of support amongst parents and teens in
| Utah.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Can anyone familiar with the law tell us if this will stand? What
| grounds does the government have to limit access like this?
|
| On an unrelated note, I'm a little surprised how positive people
| are on this. How many of us spent time online in forums or chat
| rooms as teens? That can be a very formative experience.
| Especially for kids who feel like they don't fit in with the
| local crowd or feel unaccepted by their parents. I'm too old to
| get discord, but I can see that internet subculture is going
| strong there.
| docandrew wrote:
| I think the toxicity and addictiveness of modern social media
| are a whole different ballgame from the forums and chat rooms
| of old. The forums we grew up with weren't explicitly trying to
| maximize "engagement" by showing the most viral content and
| distorting perspectives of the world around us. The fact that
| most of the forums were anonymous meant that people could be
| honest if they wanted to, but also bred a healthy skepticism of
| what strangers were up to, I think.
| vlunkr wrote:
| And yet this bill will probably impact them in the same way.
| sibeliuss wrote:
| > How many of us spent time online in forums or chat rooms as
| teens?
|
| As if this relates in any way to visual social media like
| Instagram and TikTok, the primary sources of teen discontent.
| Nerds buried on some internet forum or chat room can hardly be
| compared to what is clearly a rapidly deteriorating public
| health crisis brought on by the use of these applications.
|
| I'm overjoyed for all of the parents in Utah right now.
| Legislators are looking at the data.
| krapp wrote:
| I assume by default the true motive behind this is surveilling
| and outing gay and lgbt youth, thought-policing and suppressing
| progressive political speech and activism. I don't trust the
| motives of any red state in this regard.
| seb1204 wrote:
| I would rather argue it is again easier to treat the symptoms
| rather than address underlying issues - regulate the toxic
| platforms. Similarly like smoking, the please don't smoke signs
| and over counter sales have not really helped until
| advertisement was largely prohibited/limited.
| gtop3 wrote:
| Teenagers need access to social activity and information
| outside of their parent's view to form their own identity and
| ideas. This is very healthy and natural. I understand social
| media is having a negative impact on teenage mental health, but
| so is having your parents listen in on every conversation.
| ashleyn wrote:
| That was the first thing I thought of, personally. The internet
| is how I came to learn what transgender identity was in the
| thick of the Bush era, when _you could not talk about these
| things with anyone in person._ In many parts of the country,
| that hasn 't changed since then, or it's even gotten worse. The
| internet helped me put into context a lot of things I simply
| couldn't talk about with mom and dad, or even god forbid, let
| them find out it was something I even wanted to talk about.
|
| This wasn't mentioned in the debate over the bill (only it
| being marketed as some "common sense" bipartisan initiative),
| but I strongly suspect it benefited from the culture war over
| queer kids, and they will be disproportionately harmed by this.
|
| One thing worth mentioning is that it only affects platforms
| with >5M users, and many of the resources I used back then were
| garage-run websites with much fewer users. I'm kind of mixed on
| this because I do believe major platforms are better equipped
| to handle abuse reports than rinky-dink forums. But on the flip
| side, said rinky-dink forums weren't constantly manipulating
| you for attention.
| t-writescode wrote:
| You're downvoted; but this is the obvious result. Mormons in
| the state don't want their kids learning about sex or have good
| sex or find out all the contradictions in their holy book and
| they don't want to find out that what their parents are doing
| is serious and scary manipulation and abuse and so banning
| their access to the internet is a way to protect the families
| and "protect" the children.
| ksenzee wrote:
| I'm no longer a practicing Mormon, and I understand where
| you're coming from, but that's not what's happening here.
| They'd be banning wider swaths of the internet if they were
| trying to keep kids from learning about sex or church
| history. This is a more generalized "protect the children
| from the world" instinct.
| lumb63 wrote:
| I think you and the parent comment are off base. I have no
| concrete evidence of that, but in a very blue Massachusetts,
| most parents I know begrudgingly allow their children on
| social media, and only to the extent required to prevent
| their children from being social outcasts. Social media has
| very real negative consequences for a lot of kids (and
| adults). I don't think this is a red team/blue team game.
| MBCook wrote:
| I agree. The stated reason is easily enough to explain the
| action. Tons of parents are concerned about this everywhere
| and would probably love such restrictions (if enacted by
| the networks instead of the state).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I feel like this is a response to the exponential popularity of
| sites like r/exmormon among younger generations. For example,
| look at these exceptions. It seems like organic, unapproved
| discussion between users is what the bill is trying to stifle:
|
| > _(D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is
| preselected by the provider and not user generated, ... (Q) to
| permit comments on a digital news website, if the news content is
| posted only by the provider of the digital news website,_
|
| If this law was in place when I was growing up, my life would
| probably look very different, and not for the better. My
| interests, hobbies, profession, my sense of humor etc, all have
| deep roots in the online communities I participated as a kid.
| More importantly, those communities gave me a sense of hope when
| I didn't have much.
|
| Parental approval does nothing to stop the real harm that social
| media can cause, nor does this bill provide incentives for
| platforms to improve past that potential for harm. It's about
| ensuring that kids aren't exposed to their peers, or ideas, that
| might disagree with what their parents believe.
| morbia wrote:
| Gay guy here.
|
| I have always said that these sort of laws designed to protect
| children will do precisely the opposite. An LGBTQ child is
| effectively forcibly outed by this law, potentially before
| they've come to terms with their sexuality / gender themselves.
|
| Whilst I don't doubt social media causes a lot of harm on
| children growing up, giving parents full access to your
| messages is not the solution. In my opinion, based off a scale
| of a child's age and maturity, children are entitled to some
| privacy. Clearly a 4 year old shouldn't be left alone with
| unfettered access to the Internet, but equally a 16 year old
| shouldn't have to feel like their parents are watching
| everything they do or say. Both can cause long term
| psychological harm to a child.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Social media is not the same as it was 10 years ago.
|
| The level of which kids compare themselves to other kids took
| an exponential leap to a near hive mind level. Constantly
| comparing themselves to the instagram people with fake lives,
| rich kids, or extremely beautiful people is mentally damaging
| them.
|
| My daughter asked me for plastic surgery, and I was
| dumbfounded. So I went check her internet logs, and she's
| been watching rich kids of instagram/tiktok/etc. So now I'm
| trying to figure out how to talk with her about this.
|
| There is balance, but as her mother I don't think I'll be
| letting her have internet privacy until she's grown up and
| moved out.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| The mental health of teens and pre-teens has gotten really
| bad. This isn't just another "think of the children scare."
| Since the early 2010s the rate of self harm among girls
| 10-14 has ~tripled, and the rate of suicide among 10-14
| year olds has doubled [1].
|
| And there is now lots of evidence that this is because of
| social media and smartphones. The social lives of kids have
| changed drastically, in a way that does not meet their
| basic psychological needs [2].
|
| I think that people's perceptions of social media are
| lagging behind the reality on the ground. There have always
| been moral panics and silly scares about whether the kids
| are alright, most of which were unfounded. So I think we
| are now reacting too slowly to the genuine health crisis
| caused by technology.
|
| [1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-teen-mental-
| illness...
|
| [2] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-
| mental-ill...
| api wrote:
| I really think it's important to stress that it's not all
| technology generally. It's a specific thing: addictive
| content on mobile phones, especially when it also
| delivers toxic messaging (whether intentionally or not).
|
| The really toxic thing here is the portable omnipresent
| virtual Skinner box.
|
| Highlighting that specific thing will help make sure any
| regulation we do enact will be properly targeted. Kids
| learning to code or doing homework on a computer or even
| playing a few games is not the problem. "Social" media
| and hyper-addictive content is the problem. _Tech that is
| designed to be addictive_ is the problem.
|
| Addictive trash on PCs can be harmful too, but the form
| factor limits just how extreme and pervasive it can be.
|
| I also think the mobile ecosystem is just culturally more
| oriented toward making things addictive. Mobile games,
| media, everything on the platform seems designed to suck
| people in and keep them staring. The PC ecosystem still
| seems to have some sense that computers should exist to
| help people or make them smarter, not addict them. It's
| like mobile is run by the people who design slot
| machines.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-teen-mental-
| illness..._
|
| I don't necessarily buy the premise that the economy
| isn't having poor effects on teenagers' mental health
| just because the GFC is "over". Maybe to financial
| markets it is, but for people who need to work for a
| living, things changed since 2008 for the worse.
|
| Teens are more likely to see their parents struggle to
| pay bills despite working full-time and with two incomes,
| they're more likely to see their parents face real
| threats like being unable to afford housing and the
| consequences that brings, they're going to see how the
| march of increasing costs of living affects their family
| in the face of stagnant wages. They also see countless
| examples of older people who do "everything right", yet
| are still laid off and can't re-enter the workforce in
| the same capacity as they had in the past, and are pushed
| out of their careers entirely.
|
| On top of that, they're being told that they'll be
| relegated to a life of even worse poverty if they don't
| get into a good college, but even then, they aren't
| guaranteed a sustainable job and will have to take out a
| mortgage-sized loan just to attend. That loan will hang
| around their necks until they die even if they're only
| able to find a job that pays $30k a year. And if they
| _want_ a job that even pays that much, they 'll need a
| degree anyway, because those jobs have degree
| requirements, too.
|
| I can understand why that would be overwhelming and
| depressing to teenagers.
| Version467 wrote:
| May I ask how old your daughter is? It's concerning
| regardless of age, but if she's ~17 than I can see how this
| came to be, vs. if she's ~12 then I need to update my
| mental model of the world.
|
| Also, did she ask _about_ plastic surgery, or did she
| express interest in _getting_ plastic surgery?
|
| I don't mean to pry, I'm just more surprised than I
| (apparently) should be and would like to fix my gap in
| understanding.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I'm not sure why it would be too surprising.
|
| The problem with the internet is simple: it's easy to be
| constantly exposed to the top 0.001% of any aspect of
| life.
|
| Consider this website. How many people feel diminished in
| the face of the achievements of others? How many seek out
| their advice on how to up their game? If you could get
| surgery to make you better at software development, how
| many would do so? If grown-ass adults are subject to this
| sort of stuff, how do we expect children to be able to
| cope?
| brvsft wrote:
| Think of the _gay_ children.
| kvetching wrote:
| [flagged]
| watwut wrote:
| They are not designed to protect kids. There is always
| campaign designed to elicit fear and contempt and then they
| take controlling laws.
|
| Talking about it as if safety was a goal instead of control
| is just falling into their lie.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| It's never about the kids protection/rights. Kids don't
| vote, parents do. Nearly every proposed law marketed as
| protecting kids is actually about increasing parent or
| state control over kids.
| nine_k wrote:
| It's always important to remember that the tools that
| enable freedom, like voting, can be used against freedom,
| if enough of the population does not value it.
| rayiner wrote:
| The science is that people's brains aren't fully developed
| until age 25. What they have access to before that time
| should be carefully curated by adults.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| In theory I agree with you and the other posters on this. But
| as someone with preteen kids there's the other side of me
| that wants to a) protect them from all the actual shit out
| there, and b) perhaps more importantly encourage them to do
| something more constructive than mindlessly scrolling through
| TikTok clips that have no value whatsoever. In fact I'm far
| more worried about b) than a) because I know they can learn
| to discern a) but b) can become a true addiction. I want them
| to explore whatever their interests are - which may be very
| different than mine were at their age - what I don't want is
| for them to become the equivalent of "zombie couch potatoes".
| I'm also concerned about all the negative comparisons that
| come with "oh look how those peoples lives are so much better
| than mine" ; I suffered from that myself as an adult (even
| though I knew that what I saw on social media was not a true
| representation of peoples lives) and was happier after I
| deleted my FB account (not to mention wasting less time).
| Anyway I wonder how many people responding here have
| teenagers, because when you do, you think of this issue from
| a different perspective. (I'm not religious nor in Utah)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| PS. Having said the above, I do not agree with a law
| parental consent being required until 18. I would want my
| kids to have acquired good habits and be able to make
| reasonable decisions in their own without our involvement
| by 14 or so.
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > An LGBTQ child is effectively forcibly outed by this law,
| potentially before they've come to terms with their sexuality
| / gender themselves.
|
| How?
| woodruffw wrote:
| Presumably the "giving parents full access to online
| accounts" part. It isn't difficult to imagine scenarios in
| which a minor is "outed" because a parent exercises their
| power under the law.
| Eumenes wrote:
| This has me scratching my head too
| GrabbinD33ze69 wrote:
| How is it that difficult to imagine how someone could be
| outed as gay etc if another party has the right to read
| through all of their messages etc lol.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes. This should be seen in the context of the huge set of
| anti-trans laws and the Florida book banning. There is going
| to be another attempt at making it illegal for kids to hear
| about non-straight people at all. And outing kids to their
| parents, even at risk of violence, is a part of that.
|
| The "land of free speech" always has a big "not you"
| exemption that can be wielded against people who aren't WASPy
| enough.
|
| Edit: see the absolutely huge number of people on HN
| downthread cheering this on because they hate Facebook.
| Strange world.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The "land of free speech" always has a big "not you"
| exemption that can be wielded against people who aren't
| WASPy enough
|
| WASPs are the ones pushing pornographic books in schools.
| Florida is one of the most diverse states in the country.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Neither of those things are true? The books being banned
| are not pornographic?
| rayiner wrote:
| "WASP" has the specific connotation of northeastern white
| people of longstanding American lineage. (The term
| typically excludes southern and Appalachian whites that
| technically also are Anglo Saxon and Protestant.) Those
| people are the vanguard of social liberalism today, in
| states like Massachusetts and Connecticut.
|
| In Florida, meanwhile, non-Hispanic whites are just 51%
| of the population (versus 65-70% in Massachusetts and
| Connecticut). And the white people who are there aren't
| really "WASPs" in the typical sense of the word.
| DeSantis, of course, isn't a WASP at all. He's a
| Catholic. American social conservatism is primarily a
| coalition of southern whites, "ethnic whites" (German,
| Italian, and Irish), and Hispanics--none of whom were
| traditionally considered "WASPs."
|
| The books are absolutely pornographic:
| https://www.ibtimes.sg/texas-school-sparks-outrage-after-
| mom.... They contain graphic depictions of underage
| people engaged in sex acts.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| The graphic depiction of underage people engaged in sex
| acts is against federal law and most likely Texas law as
| well. It is baffling to me how the media depicts this as
| "anti trans" or "anti lgbt" book banning while managing
| to never mention the specifics of the books.
|
| I'm about as liberal as they come on social issues. But I
| don't think these books are appropriate in an elementary
| or middle school library.
| rayiner wrote:
| > It is baffling to me how the media depicts this as
| "anti trans" or "anti lgbt" book banning while managing
| to never mention the specifics of the books.
|
| It's because a lot of people are using a small number of
| sexual minorities as a pretext for encouraging everyone's
| kids to explore their sexuality.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| It is well known that more teens commit suicide in insular
| religious communities.
|
| It's not social media it is people driving other people to
| despair. Ofcourse you can't really fix that.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| Source? That isn't true.
| datavirtue wrote:
| The goal was to make kids unwilling to use social media.
| [deleted]
| deepGem wrote:
| +1. As an Indian kid growing up in a very conservative
| family/neighborhood I can attest that what I have learned and
| have helped me in becoming successful was all through my peers
| and books (mostly fiction). If I had no access to those and had
| purely followed what my parents prescribed, I would have been a
| very different individual and most likely, would not have
| pursued computer science. More than anything, succees or
| otherwise, peer learning and learning on my own was and still
| continues to be the emblem of freedom.
|
| There surely is a downside to this, that this self learning can
| veer you off in a sub optimal direction of laziness,
| procrastination, lost concentration etc, as experienced in
| today's social media. However, it's better to bet the odds on
| freedom of individuals than on oversight.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > (D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is
| preselected by the provider and not user generated, ... (Q) to
| permit comments on a digital news website, if the news content
| is posted only by the provider of the digital news website
|
| Sounds more like they are protecting against children consuming
| toxic or mind numbing content.
| tzs wrote:
| > Sounds more like they are protecting against children
| consuming toxic or mind numbing content.
|
| If that was the case it would not exclude comments on digital
| news websites. Those are usually a cesspool.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I doubt anyone thinks reading those comments are good. They
| just made the carve out to avoid including news sites in
| the ban.
| taxyz wrote:
| I think this is a little less sinister than you are making it
| out to be. To me, it reads as the intent of those exemptions is
| because those sites (CNN, Fox, ESPN, etc) exercise editorial
| discretion around what content is posted and, presumably,
| should be more active in moderating/enabling/disabling
| discussion comments. Sites like reddit (since you mention
| r/exmormon) while are user moderated ultimately escape
| liability behind section 230.
|
| It's a separate debate for us to argue what is more harmful to
| children/minors/teens - news/sports/entertainment media vs
| social media but with our current legal framework these
| exemptions kinda make sense. If what you are worried about is
| brainwashing, being solicited, general harm from both users and
| algorithms, its probably true that that is less likely to
| happen to a kid in the comments section of an ESPN article than
| it is on reddit/4chan/tiktok/instagram - and when it does
| happen at least there is someone to hold somewhat responsible.
| data_maan wrote:
| This is yet another instance of "Think of the children":
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > If this law was in place when I was growing up, my life would
| probably look very different, and not for the better. My
| interests, hobbies, profession, my sense of humor etc, all have
| deep roots in the online communities I participated as a kid.
| More importantly, those communities gave me a sense of hope
| when I didn't have much.
|
| There's not enough details but I take it online communities
| were social networks of that time ?
|
| I understand self-hosted boards would still be available to
| teens under this law.
|
| Otherwise, I don't see how algorithmic generated content
| benefits teens if the goal is to participate in a community.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'd like to add that this may have outsized unintended effects
| like COPPA did - COPPA being the law that established that
| accounts online required you to be 13. I was 12 when COPPA went
| into effect. What a lot of people don't know about COPPA is
| that there is a provision to allow for children under 13 to
| have accounts with proven parental permission. My parents would
| have allowed me - I'd been online for 8 years at that point and
| they were both techy types who could supervise me. However, it
| wasn't worth the extra logistics for companies, so they just
| outright banned anyone under 13.
|
| Likewise, if this is enacted in enough states or the logistics
| of figuring out which people to track becomes too burdensome,
| I'd expect to see sites not letting _anyone_ under 18 use them
| and to start collecting _everyone 's_ information.
|
| Which would have some really bad second-order impacts. In
| addition to the impacts others have mentioned on minority
| populations, I have two main concerns:
|
| - Cutting off the parental rights of those who _want_ to be
| permissive with their kids. My parents didn 't believe in
| content restrictions; the one ideological idea they agree on is
| free access to knowledge. I was given an adult library card at
| 5-6 and full Internet access at around the same age and
| discussions on how to interpret what we saw in the news/in
| media/etc. was a common discussion point. My mother is from a
| media studies family and my father's family are tech tinkerers.
| Families like mine will be functionally unable to raise their
| children as _they_ would prefer.
|
| - More relevant to society as a whole, sure, let's ban their
| access until they're 18. Then when kids move out/leave at 18,
| not only do they have to navigate the world, they have to be
| introduced to social media with absolutely no oversight. And 18
| year olds are legally "adults", so companies will have a group
| of _completely defenseless people to take advantage of who can
| be held to their bad decisions_. (Think like credit card
| companies who hang out at freshmen college /uni events). It's
| similar to raising the driving age: While raising the driving
| age does prevent accidents, the highest rate of bad driving
| comes from _new drivers_. If the driving age is lower, those
| new drivers are more likely to have people to call if they do
| get into trouble and make their mistakes when they 're less
| likely to ruin their lives. Likewise, the worst effects of
| social media will be felt by those who are _new users_.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| How likely is it that today's teens simply check the "I am
| over 18" box and set themselves a fake birthday that is Jan 1
| from 20 years ago? I've been 25 for the past 25 years, after
| all.
| Mezzie wrote:
| The problem is that you can't easily verify whether someone
| is 12 or 14 with documentation so the checkbox is all they
| had. You _can_ easily verify if someone is over _18_ and
| there are systems in place to do so, which means it 's
| highly likely if this takes place that ID is going to be
| required. (I mean I also just lied after COPPA, but I was
| pissed to lose so many accounts that I'd signed up for
| honestly in 95-99.)
|
| Are the kids going to get around it? Yes. (And _good_ ,
| that's one way to develop a healthy skepticism as well as
| some systems thinking.) But it's going to be way harder and
| likely involve forging documents or impersonating
| _particular_ adults. (I can see a reverse of a situation I
| had growing up where my parents used us as shields against
| piracy accusations: "Ooops, sorry, I'll talk to my kid.
| They're totally the one who downloaded this game." _nudge
| nudge wink wink_ where children act through their parents -
| it 's not like it's hard for a 15 year old to take their
| mom/dad's driver's license and use it). Those actions are
| more likely to be punished, whereas a simple lie is 'kids
| will be kids'.
| [deleted]
| thrwwy27464 wrote:
| [flagged]
| transcoderx wrote:
| Fox News makes the laws in Utah?
| blintz wrote:
| The idea that nobody is entitled to privacy until they turn 18 is
| crazy. I shudder for all the LGBT kids whose parents all now have
| a (state enforced!) right to snoop on them.
|
| (Honestly headline should be: "Utah bill gives parents full
| access to their children's online accounts, including posts and
| private messages")
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that nobody is entitled to privacy until they turn 18 is
| crazy_
|
| But precedented, through the history of parenting.
| jquery wrote:
| Child abuse is precedented, doesn't make it okay.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Straw man.
| jquery wrote:
| The most likely parents to exercise a right to read their
| 16-year-old teenager's online messages would be abusive,
| controlling ones.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| The American stance on children is different. Children
| are the property of their parents, to raise and
| indoctrinate however one sees fit.
|
| Luckily everyone grows up and when you're 18 you can move
| to a Democrat state never entering a church ever again.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| That's a further, unsubstantiated assumption of malice.
|
| Some involved, worrying parents want to know their kids
| aren't getting mixed up with bad lifestyle habits or
| dangerous persons.
| kepler1 wrote:
| Why are LGBT youth for some reason the special subgroup of
| people against whom every concern about rights being tested
| against? More so than anyone else's rights? It's like they
| somehow occupy a privileged position in your mind that everyone
| has to watch out for this group. Why is that?
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| As a European my concern is actually for Muslim girls. Every
| year a few of them end up honour killed.
|
| So no it's not just the gays who have to fear their parents.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| They are the targets of one of the largest hate groups in
| North America. Christians. And in particular, they are forced
| to live under the roofs of people who hate them by virtue of
| being children. Who if they discover they are gay, may send
| them to camps to be tortured until they are "cured."
| JackMorgan wrote:
| Downvoted for speaking real facts right here. Many
| Christians are given a pass to feel contempt for LGBTQ
| folks, which leads to dehumanization and hate. I had
| friends growing up in the 90s who were outed and then
| forcibly disappeared off to realignment camps. I never saw
| two of them again and lost contact. After the camp didn't
| work, they were sent away to live with relatives or
| boarding schools so to not embarrass the parents with the
| gay. The comment above isn't hyperbole, it's what really
| happens. I grew up in terror of my close LGBTQ friends ever
| getting outed, because I knew we'd never see them again. We
| all did everything we could to help them keep their cover.
| We'd never even mention it, we all just knew, and would
| fabricate stories that made them appear straight.
|
| And keep in mind, there is no evidence that conversion
| therapy has any success rate. However, it is well known to
| increase suicide rate by 2.5x. The people who run these
| groups know they don't work, but do it anyway. There's a
| saying that sums this up perfectly, "the cruelty is the
| point".
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They are the targets of one of the largest hate groups in
| North America. Christians.
|
| "Christians" is overly broad here, though, yes, its a large
| subset of Christians. (Its a particularly divisive issue
| _among_ Christians, both between denominations and in some
| cases - e.g., the Catholic Church - within them.)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Why are LGBT youth for some reason the special subgroup of
| people against whom every concern about rights being tested
| against?
|
| They _aren't_.
|
| But they are a group particularly targeted right now, and
| targeted by legislation, and targeted by the same religious-
| social-political faction pushing this legislation even if
| this particular piece of legislation doesn't _overtly_ target
| them, so...its reasonably to pay particular attention to how
| this legislation affects them.
| blintz wrote:
| I'm gay, so it just hits more personally.
| monksy wrote:
| I'm not, but I wish it was known that I want to unify in
| the importance and right to privacy.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >against whom every concern about rights being tested
| against?
|
| because they're often the first group these legislations aim
| at. It's no coincidence that the state in question is Utah,
| effectively run by the Mormon church with a strong interest
| in censoring youth access to the internet.
| Illniyar wrote:
| Children are not entitled to autonomy - they do not have
| freedom of movement in general, freedom of employment etc...
|
| Privacy, like any other form of autonomy, is in control of the
| parent and should be given out as part of the educational
| process.
|
| 18 perhaps is too old for the state to grant independence, but
| that's a problem in general and not restricted to privacy.
| vasco wrote:
| You should go read about children's rights ratified by pretty
| much every country on earth.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I recently saw a short video by Syria's Assad in which he
| argues that parents should be able to dictate their religious
| beliefs to their children, rather than allowing children to
| decide their religious beliefs on their own initiative.
|
| It's somewhat less extreme than the old medieval feudal that
| the feudal lord should be able to dictate their religious
| beliefs to their serf population, but not really by much.
|
| Freedom of choice with respect to religious beliefs, and
| legal bans on religious discrimination, are a fundamental
| necessity in any democratic system of government.
| Additionally, children do have the right to privacy, just as
| adults do.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Children are not entitled to autonomy
|
| Counterpoint: Of coursw they are.
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| "Entitled to privacy" _from whom_?
|
| 1. Corporations?
|
| 2. Educators?
|
| 3. Strangers?
|
| or
|
| 4. Parents?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Utah bill gives parents full access to their children's online
| accounts, including posts and private messages
|
| I see no problem with that.
|
| Parents, as legal guardians, are legally liable for their
| childrens' actions. Parenting also necessitates having
| privileged knowledge of their childrens' circumstances and
| situations.
|
| So no, I see no problem with parents having "full access to
| their children's online accounts". That is simply part of the
| duties and responsibilities as parents, and whether the parents
| exercise their authority is also their decision to make as they
| raise their children.
| watwut wrote:
| This makes abuse much worst. Also, this is about teenagers -
| 16-18 years old. Parent demanding full control is neither
| normal nor healthy nor something historically expected.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Teenagers are still minors and legally beholden to their
| parents or guardians. Parents should have full access to
| their childrens' circumstances because parenting
| occasionally requires such privileged information.
|
| Whether parents would make full use of such authority is
| another story, of course. In most cases they probably
| won't, but the option to exercise must exist in order for
| parents to parent properly.
| watwut wrote:
| I think that this is simply not true. Actually, starting
| 16 parents dont have access to what was said in
| psychologist office anymore. Nor should they. Parents
| should not have full access to their teenage children
| diaries nor to all their communication.
|
| > Whether parents would make full use of such authority
| is another story, of course
|
| The most abusive parents would use that access.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| A Utah resident connects to a server in California, controlled by
| a company in California. This seems like interstate commerce to
| me, and is thus regulated by federal law, not the laws of
| individual states.
|
| Consider Wickard v. Filburn[0], in which the courts ruled that a
| farmer growing crops on his own land, to feed to his own animals,
| all within a single state, was participating in "interstate
| commerce". Given this extreme bias towards classifying everything
| as interstate commerce, I can't imagine that a Utah resident
| connecting to a California company wouldn't also interstate
| commerce. This isn't something Utah can regulate.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn
| dehrmann wrote:
| > This isn't something Utah can regulate.
|
| The stream of commerce doctrine gets silly pretty quickly since
| literally everything has some degree of it.
|
| I was convinced federal courts wouldn't allow states to collect
| sales tax on out-of-state purchases (or at least say states
| can't enforce it), that seems to be ok.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I may be wrong, but I think it depends on whether it actually
| conflicts with any federal law. States _can_ pass laws that
| affect interstate commerce if there 's no superceding federal
| law and if they don't fall afoul of the Dormant Commerce
| Clause, which sort of generically restricts interstate
| protectionism.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| So, for example, I could setup a server in Oregon, which
| responds to requests received from other servers in
| Oregon[0], and then suddenly I find myself in legal trouble
| in Florida? Why am I subject to Florida law when I live in
| Oregon, and I have no representation in the Florida
| legislature?
|
| [0]: In this example, I connect to an Oregon ISP and respond
| to requests being relayed through this ISP, but I never
| directly connect to servers in other states. This is a
| reductionist view, and may be silly, but it helps make my
| point.
| roywiggins wrote:
| I think that goes to jurisdiction, which is a different
| issue.
|
| The sibling comment by dragonwriter (which I missed somehow
| when posting) is a better-worded version of my point about
| interstate commerce.
| soerxpso wrote:
| You are so smart! I suppose now I can start a gambling site for
| users in all states, in violation of state regulations, as long
| as the servers are hosted in a state with loose gambling laws.
| Can't believe other gambling sites weren't doing this!
| ryanfreeborn wrote:
| Yup. Federal law enforcement uses interstate nexus via server
| locations to establish jurisdiction.
| sircastor wrote:
| Assuming they acknowledge this at all, more and more laws are
| being written and passed knowing full well they violate federal
| law and will be challenged. The intent is not regulation of
| society, it's political visibility and winning "points" among
| your electorate. Whether the law stands scrutiny is irrelevant
| shostack wrote:
| Don't forget trying to tee things up for our extremist
| leaning SCOTUS bench.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Posts like yours only serve to vindicate this new
| law(bill?) in Utah.
| shostack wrote:
| Care to explain your statement?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > A Utah resident connects to a server in California,
| controlled by a company in California. This seems like
| interstate commerce to me, and is thus regulated by federal
| law, not the laws of individual states.
|
| Interstate commerce is generally subject to concurrent
| jurisdiction of the federal and state governments, except that
| state laws which discriminate against out-of-state trade are
| presumptively illegal, state law cannot negate federal law, and
| federal law can explicitly (and sometimes implicitly) forbid
| state regulation of the same conduct. It is not the case that
| the mere fact that it involves interstate commerce
| automatically, without federal law addressing the subject,
| precludes state regulation.
|
| OTOH, to the extent that the elements of site design likely to
| be challenged under this are very closely related to the
| functions protected by Section 230, which _does_ include a
| preemption clause, even if this is otherwise Constitutional
| applying it is going to often be tricky in practice.
| prpl wrote:
| In a fun twist, the data centers are quite possibly in Utah.
|
| That said, assuredly Meta, Twitter, etc... have some kind of
| foot print in Utah
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Meta has Eagle Mountain. It's ~ $3B CapEx + ? OpEx. If it
| means billion in losses, it would pull up stakes and move.
|
| https://datacenters.atmeta.com/all-locations/#united-states
| capableweb wrote:
| Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh
| and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On
| behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.
| You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we
| gather.
|
| We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so
| I address you with no greater authority than that with which
| liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space
| we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you
| seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do
| you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to
| fear.
|
| A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
|
| https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence
| krapp wrote:
| ... a sentiment as impotent as it was naive.
| jjulius wrote:
| This has, "If you write in your FB status that FB doesn't have
| permission to use your pictures as outlined in their ToS (which
| you already accepted) then they have to comply with your
| request," vibes.
| capableweb wrote:
| There was a time when what Barlow wrote spoke to a lot of
| hackers out in the world. Maybe that's not how the world is
| today, sadly.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| Gonna be honest, it's kind of cringey. I don't think the
| sentiment is disagreed with here, but the fact that it
| sounds like an overzealous dungeon master.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'll give you honesty right back: back then, most of us
| either were overzealous dungeon masters or had one as a
| close friend.
| mindslight wrote:
| This would ring a lot more true if we weren't talking about
| centralized websites that will enjoy the excuse to demand your
| government identity, adding to the surveillance databases that
| power their real business. And until tech culture moves on past
| this evolutionary dead end, governments will continue to think
| that the "Internet" is just another thing to be micro-
| regulated.
| norgie wrote:
| I think it's unlikely this law stands up to a court challenge, so
| we'll see what's actually limited
| willmadden wrote:
| I wish this was the case in all 50 states. Kids' minds need to
| develop without screen addiction.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| I think that people aren't giving enough credence to the reason
| Utah gives for the restrictions: The teen mental health crisis.
|
| Social media has radically changed the social lives of
| adolescents, and as a result anxiety, depression, self harm, and
| suicide have all skyrocketed. The data on this is not ambiguous
| [1].
|
| And there's now a lot of evidence that social media and
| smartphones are the cause of the crisis: they screw up childhood
| in a way that has serious health consequences [2].
|
| Time spent in person with friends by 15-24 year olds has dropped
| from an average of 155 minutes per day in 2003 to an average of
| 42 min per day in 2019, a drop of 3x [3, figure 4]. How could
| that not have huge effects on psychological health?
|
| I think these restrictions are a good thing - it's a crude
| approach and will have some negative consequences, but the scale
| of the health crisis requires something to be done.
|
| [1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-teen-mental-
| illness...
|
| [2] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-
| ill...
|
| [3] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-new-cdc-report
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| It would be interesting to see also how much time are couples
| spending with their kids as it seems to be more common to have
| now both parents working long and tiring hours (purely
| observational). With the continued increase in the cost of
| living it would be reasonable to think that many kids are
| actually spending more time alone at home, particularly those
| in lower income families.
| Fatnino wrote:
| Kids hanging out with classmates on Discord instead of in
| person certainly leads to a reduction in teen pregnancy
| api wrote:
| I've been calling social media companies "the tobacco companies
| of the mind" for years.
|
| Modern social media like Instagram and TikTok are not even
| social. They are just skinner boxes that crowdsource and
| amplify addictive content to keep people staring and scrolling.
| Social media started to stop being social when algorithmic
| timelines, weighting of content for engagement, and
| monetization were introduced.
|
| The next major innovation in the field will be pure AI
| generation of the feed. No more human sources at all, just
| endless amounts of mindless addictive filler fine tuned for
| each person.
|
| You can already see it on kids channels on YouTube where the
| content is at least part machine generated and is pure mindless
| drivel. The adult version is coming I'm sure.
|
| Edit: actually I think Replika may be the first adult AI
| Skinner box of note. Imagine that model crossed with TikTok.
| chrisan wrote:
| I don't have any answers to the problem but teen mental health
| issues have grown quite a lot since social media.
|
| My wife works in PICU and she has never seen so many suicide
| attempts in all her career (going back to 2006) as she has in
| past few years. She talks to other doctors who come from other
| areas and their concerns/experiences are the same.
|
| I feel like every week she is talking to me about some new
| kid's attempt.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My wife works in PICU and she has never seen so many
| suicide attempts in all her career (going back to 2006) as
| she has in past few years.
|
| Social media has been around a lot longer than the last few
| years. (In fact, while they weren't even the first wave of
| widely-used-by-young-people social media, both Twitter and
| Facebook opened to the public in 2006.)
|
| There have been a few major events that have occurred in the
| last few years, though, that aren't social media that might
| relate to the effect under consideration.
| philwelch wrote:
| > Social media has been around a lot longer than the last
| few years.
|
| Setting aside the (valid and important) point about the
| lockdowns, it also took time for social media to evolve
| into its current form. Snapchat and Vine came out in the
| early 10's and TikTok in 2017. Twitter has never been
| especially widely used; it has outsized influence because
| corporate media types use it, but it's not what the masses
| are scrolling. Social media might not be new, but the
| short-form video style of social media has taken off a ton
| in the past decade.
|
| At the risk of speculation, I'd also surmise that this is a
| major part of the problem. Humans have a primal desire to
| interact face to face. Full motion video of people talking
| to the camera is sort of a junk food version of human
| interaction. It's the same reason watching people play
| video games on Twitch is more engaging when you can see
| their face in the corner of the screen, and why so many
| YouTube thumbnails include some recognizable face either
| looking into the camera or expressing an emotion. Photos
| and text don't scratch the same itch, so they're less
| addictive.
|
| (Some people can be addicted to text-based social media. I
| am one of these people. But we were the ones who got
| addicted to webforums and Usenet; probably not the typical
| user.)
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| I will continue posting links to Jonathan Haidt's review
| docs all over this thread.
|
| Social media and smartphones became widespread in the early
| 2010s, and that's exactly when teen suicides started
| rising. [1]
|
| COVID does not appear to have significantly affected teen
| mental health [2]
|
| If you have evidence that something else is driving the
| rise in teen suicide rates, I'd love to see it.
|
| [1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-
| mental-ill...
|
| [2] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-new-cdc-report
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Social media and smartphones became widespread in the
| early 2010s
|
| Among adults (or in "household" surveys where adults were
| surveyed? Sure, but the _majority_ of teen internet users
| were using "social networking sites" in 2006.) [0]
|
| If your contention is that _adult_ social media use is
| driving teen suicide rates...well, that's actually more
| plausible than teen use, but none of the policy responses
| address that.
|
| [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/05/21/part-
| 1-teens...
| Scalestein wrote:
| It isn't just social media, it is the combination of
| social media and smartphones. This makes social media far
| more pervasive in a teen's life.
|
| See section 6[0] where they discuss how mental health
| declines correlating with Facebook coming to college
| campuses and with high speed internet arriving in cities
| for some evidence.
|
| [0] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-
| mental-ill...
| lolinder wrote:
| > the majority of teen internet users
|
| This stat can't be meaningfully compared to teen suicide
| rates because the latter is across _all_ teens,
| regardless of online /offline status. If the number of
| "online" teens grew dramatically between 2006 and 2013
| (as I suspect it did), then the relative change in
| percentage of "online" teens on social media would be a
| fraction of the much larger change in teens _in general_.
|
| My personal experience growing up around then is that a
| majority of my peers weren't deep in social media and
| smartphone use until well into the 2010s. I didn't have a
| smartphone when I graduated high school in the early
| 2010s, and I certainly wasn't an outlier at the time.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > If you have evidence that something else is driving the
| rise in teen suicide rates, I'd love to see it.
|
| Will reality do?
|
| Over recent generations, kids have systematically been
| robbed of critical developmental environments - primarily
| they are denied regular hours of unsupervised alone/peer
| time and expansive areas to free range.
|
| The environments that kids absolutely need to develop
| social and problem solving skills have been replaced with
| ceaseless supervision, ceaseless containment and a
| soundtrack of false messaging about risk from stranger
| kidnapping (spoiler: FBI stats are clear that kids aren't
| and haven't been at meaningful risk of stranger
| kidnappings). At the edges of all that are justice
| systems/LEO/authority that stand ever-ready to transform
| routine stupid transgressions into forever penalties that
| systemically ruin future life/job/housing opportunities.
|
| We adults have erased their life prep and endlessly
| notched up pressure on every front. What else do we
| expect to follow that except poor mental health?
|
| As for social media's part, one has to take a lot of
| nuance out of teen mental health studies to single out SM
| as the primary driver of bad mental health. ref:
| https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/21/blaming-social-media-
| for...
| Izkata wrote:
| I think they were referring to lockdowns, not covid. Kids
| weren't really affected by covid, but lockdowns and
| school closures were massive. To see if there was an
| effect on this from that you'd have to account for
| duration and severeness of lockdowns in various places,
| not look at overall rates.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I think they were referring to lockdowns, not covid.
|
| Both were among (but not, even together, the totality of)
| the things I was referring to.
|
| > Kids weren't really affected by covid
|
| A massive wave of death, incapacitation, and serious
| illness that very likely struck sonewhete in their
| families? Kids may not have had particularly severe
| _acute health_ cobsequences from COVID, but that doesn 't
| mean they weren't affected by it.
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| The link I posted is data for the change in teen mental
| health between 2019 and 2021. The data incorporates all
| of the effects of COVID, Lockdowns and school closures,
| and does not show a significant change from pre-pandemic
| trends.
|
| I was using "COVID" as a shorthand for all of the changes
| during the pandemic.
| Izkata wrote:
| > The link I posted is data for the change in teen mental
| health between 2019 and 2021. The data incorporates all
| of the effects of COVID, Lockdowns and school closures
|
| Yes, my point is that is exactly the _problem_ with your
| data. It needs to be broken down by location to account
| for differences in lockdowns and school closures, to
| claim there was any or no effect.
| prh8 wrote:
| [flagged]
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| > How about not having a theistic culture? How about not
| stigmatizing kids who don't fit into the blonde white
| monoculture that Utah pushes everywhere?
|
| The teen mental health crisis is happening everywhere in the
| US, and in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It
| started about the same time everywhere. Utah's particular
| culture doesn't have anything to do with it. They're just the
| state that has reacted first [1].
|
| The suicide rate among 10-14 year olds has doubled since
| 2010, nationwide. If you can present data that shows the
| suicide rate increase is caused by any of those things, I'd
| love to see it.
|
| There's now lots of evidence that smartphones and social
| media changes childhood in a way that does not meet
| fundamental psychological needs [2]. Those changes are
| causing enormous psychological and physcial harm. Regulating
| technology is the only way to deal with that.
|
| [1] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/the-teen-mental-
| illness...
|
| [2] https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/p/social-media-mental-
| ill...
| hedora wrote:
| There's no evidence regulation would help, and strong
| evidence the form of regulation being proposed will make
| things worse, which the article outlines.
|
| Things that could work, that are not known to be harmful:
|
| - Parental education campaigns.
|
| - Elimination of tracking and other privacy invading
| technologies for all age groups, not just children.
|
| The latter eliminates the need for age blocks, and matches
| consumer preferences of 90+% of the US population. It also
| de facto bans technologies that track and encourage mental
| illness (such as cambridge analytica, and arguably
| youtube/tiktok content targeting).
| whats_a_quasar wrote:
| > Strong evidence the form of regulation being proposed
| will make things worse, which the article outlines.
|
| The only evidence in the article that the law will be
| harmful is a quote from a free speech lawyer, which
| doesn't cite any research. If there is strong evidence
| that the law will be harmful it hasn't been presented
| yet.
|
| These laws certainly might be harmful! But I think it's
| much more likely they will have no effect or a positive
| effect. But we don't know, because restrictions like this
| haven't been attempted before.
|
| Regardless, it's the state legislature's job to protect
| public health. I think there's assumed ill intent because
| it's Utah, but I think the evidence is stronger that this
| measure will stop so many kids dying by suicide.
| hedora wrote:
| > _But Common Sense Media and other advocacy groups
| warned some parts of the new legislation could put
| children at risk._
|
| So, at least three groups concurred. Also, the only
| proponents quoted in the article were "commons sense
| media", which is either a typo (implying the proponents
| are actually ambivalent) or someone trademark squatting
| (implying malicious intent).
| api wrote:
| Regulation is needed to kill the peer pressure factor
| that almost forces teens into social media. Without it
| even if the parents try to enforce healthy boundaries it
| won't stick. Network effects are a thousand times more
| powerful for teens that are deeply and pervasively
| immersed in peer pressure and social anxiety.
|
| This is the same reason alcohol, cigarettes, gambling,
| and drugs have age limits. Anything addictive needs to at
| least be age restricted until people are old enough to
| enforce their own boundaries about it.
|
| At this point it should be obvious that social media is
| highly addictive and is designed that way on purpose. In
| some cases the same kinds of spaced repetition techniques
| as slot machines are used.
| rayiner wrote:
| How do those things help the vast majority? What you deride
| as "theism" and "monoculture" have been declining in sync
| with broad indicators of mental health showing more problems.
| Your problem is minoritarian thinking, where you're focused
| on how those social structures might harm small groups of
| people, while overlooking the benefits they provide for the
| broader majority. For example, scientific studies
| consistently show that religion is correlated with better
| mental health, greater longevity, and greater happiness: http
| s://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolefisher/2019/03/29/science...,
| https://news.stanford.edu/2020/11/13/deep-faith-
| beneficial-h..., https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23146600/
| dgacmu wrote:
| These generalizations ignore the specific - Utah has long
| been an outlier on things like teen suicide rates (about
| #10), antidepressant use (#1) [1], and before that valium.
| It has a very specific set of cultural features that are
| not necessarily the same as the broader studies you note.
|
| (I'm from Utah; three of my friends killed themselves as a
| teenager, and all three had aspects of what the GP was
| talking about. It's a culture that blames people's mental
| difficulties on themselves, instead of encouraging getting
| help)
|
| [1] https://www.brainerddispatch.com/community/study-finds-
| utah-...
| rayiner wrote:
| Utah isn't an outliers:
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/suicide-
| mortality/.... Sparsely populated rural areas tend to
| have high suicide rates. Vermont and Oregon are at the
| opposite end of the spectrum in terms of theism and
| culture, but have similarly high suicide rates. New
| Hampshire and Maine are also higher than Mississippi and
| Alabama.
|
| Reducing theism (mandatory social interaction and social
| support) may well increases suicide rates in these
| places.
| dgacmu wrote:
| Salt lake city is not a sparsely populated rural area,
| and its suicide rate is about the same as the state's
| overall rate (24 vs 20.8).
|
| Could be some altitude effects as a sibling comment
| observed, though SLC at only 4200 ft isn't in the Denver
| range.
|
| But Utah also had a large rise in teen suicide over times
| that align also with the social media hypothesis:
| https://utah-health.shorthandstories.com/state-of-
| suffering/...
|
| (It went from already high to awful)
| rayiner wrote:
| Regardless, pointing to Utah" specific "cultural
| features" doesn't make much sense. Neighboring Colorado
| has an even higher suicide rate, and is at the opposite
| end of the spectrum in terms of culture compared to Utah.
| dgacmu wrote:
| This is a logical fallacy - "Colorado is not X, therefore
| Utah is not either".
|
| In your earlier comment, you noted religion's correlation
| with happiness, but allow me to quote from a review
| article about religion and suicide specifically [1]:
|
| > Whether religious affiliation protects against suicide
| attempts may depend on the culture-specific implications
| of affiliating with a particular religion,
|
| [...]
|
| > The relationship between religion and suicide is
| complicated because both religion and suicide are complex
| constructs
|
| You're making the mistake of conflating the individual's
| own degree of religious belief (which is _possibly_
| mildly protective against suicide) with the _cultural
| context_ and its effect on people of varying religious
| belief and identity.
|
| Colorado is not Utah. Utah is, as the saying almost goes,
| a bit "peculiar", and it's tricky.
|
| [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7310534/
| rayiner wrote:
| Just look at the map I linked. There is a clear
| geographic pattern, and Utah isn't an outlier within that
| pattern. Yes, it's theoretically possible that
| religiosity is causing suicides in Utah and something
| else is causing suicides in Colorado (and Oregon and
| Vermont), and for some reason it's not causing suicides
| in Mississippi and Alabama.
| seizethegdgap wrote:
| It's possible Utah's high teen suicide and antidepressant
| use rates have something to do with altitude.
|
| https://theconversation.com/the-curious-relationship-
| between...
| [deleted]
| warning26 wrote:
| _> How about, hmmm, having more mental health resources?_
|
| This rings hollow, in the same sense that every time there is
| a shooting in the US, we are always treated to comments
| explaining that "well actually, you see, the REAL problem is
| that there aren't enough mental health resources", shifting
| discussion away from how easy it is to get a gun in the US.
|
| Solutions are allowed to be multifaceted; we can both
| restrict social media _and_ have better mental health
| resources.
| monksy wrote:
| This is a strange way to legislate behavior. The fact that
| they're selectively cutting access to a population during a time
| period rather than limiting the overall negative reprocutions is
| a weird thing.
|
| This is not the internet I want to participate in. It's freaking
| scary that the government is associating your ability to freely
| access information based on your class and standing. Why we have
| weak journalists and activists who aren't making a shitfit over
| it is just mind-boggling.
|
| Subcomment: I do believe that social media has caused harm,
| however the negative reprocutions on how they're going about it
| does not seem like a good intention.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| We as a society have decided you need an ID for alcohol, and ID
| for marijuana in the states where it is legal, and so forth. We
| know that social media can be just as habit-forming, addictive,
| and dangerous to mental health; especially among teenagers.
|
| I see no reason why society should not extend ID requirements
| to certain times of night.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| An important difference being the ID's purpose being just to
| prove your age during for that transaction, not provide a
| mechanism to create a permanent record of your behavior.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Well, what is your plan? We can't pretend that letting teen
| suicide jump 29%, and having 1 in 5 teens now having severe
| depression, is an issue that parents should be solely
| responsible for solving. And we shouldn't pretend yet
| another social program could be as effective as slowing
| down the source.
| monksy wrote:
| If you have an intelligent problem solving governance:
|
| 1. Acknowledge the problem
|
| 2. Seek a root cause
|
| 3. Attempt to mediate this issue at it's root. My
| uninformed, and unasked for, opinion on this is this is
| due to the adjustment of living situation and social
| expectations of that age group pushes their developing
| social environment to go global rather than staying
| local. (People are scared of their kids in the local
| community hanging out and social, where they've been
| stuck in doors playing xbox/tiktok).
|
| 4. In doing #4 attempt to mediate this issue with the
| parents. Don't try to punish people in the situation,
| provide acceptable alternatives to help people be better.
|
| On a surface level:
|
| 1. Demonstrate in public a way that live without social
| media is a workable thing for people at that age
|
| 2. Provide mental health outreach for the effected people
| (This costs money so it's never done)
| zamadatix wrote:
| I have strong support for the provisions that require
| certain features be built into social media sites
| themselves (e.g. "sites must support curfew scheduling"
| or "sites cannot have free reign on targeted
| advertisements") as it gives controls people want but
| currently can't easily get from most of these types of
| apps.
|
| At the same time I'm not really a fan of the
| implementation being based on providing real identity for
| a hard age cutoff. Maybe I'm 20 years old and don't want
| my real identity to be tied to the social identity for
| privacy/coming out/political/other reasons as personal
| info uploaded seems to always get leaked. Maybe I'm 17
| years old and having the same restrictions as a 7 year
| old that will disappear instantly in 3 months doesn't
| make any sense and I never had good chances to learn to
| make good choices on my own accord while I had the
| strongest support structures I'll have all my life
| available. Maybe I'm worried this is part of a slippery
| slope for all, as the ages keep rising on this type of
| legislation over time.
|
| Overall I'd much rather put the tools (like curfew
| support or removal of targeted advertisements) in the
| hands of people and argue why they should want to use
| them. Similarly, with the tools made available, I'd
| rather trust parents are able to learn to raise their kid
| on this matter as they have every other matter so if kids
| are found to be working around curfews set by parents we
| don't need the government to step in. If one argues too
| many parents can't then I'm sorry to say you've done a
| horrible job convincing anyone what you think is good is
| actually so and relying on unpopular law creates more
| problems than it solves.
|
| Alternatively I'd at least like a solution where the
| associated age verification identification is unrelated
| to your real identity (e.g. a one time proof at the DMV
| when you're getting your first 18+ license that gives you
| some identity token which identifies you as 18+ but does
| nothing else and is not stored or mapped with your real
| identity otherwise). It doesn't solve a lot of the blind
| application problems (and still lacks guarantee
| limitations you want to follow you into adulthood, if you
| so choose, can) but at least it prevents one class of
| issues.
|
| It may sound like I fit in the small government camp for
| everything but I'd say I'm fine with government getting
| involved with what corporations can do a lot more often
| than when people are involved. Overall it also depends on
| the issue and the alternative outcomes with
| implementation. I guess what I'm saying is don't
| generalize because I argue for small government here I
| also argue for it in every case all the time, even if it
| is about people. There are some things I think it's great
| to centrally legislate but content consumption is one I
| don't think the benefits outweigh the costs on. It's
| certainly the most direct and probably has the largest
| impact but "we've waited so long to do anything about it
| that the problem to become really big" is a horrible
| reason to pick direct and largest impact approaches.
| monksy wrote:
| This was a long read, but I'm glad you wrote it out.
|
| I too am in full support of zero trust tokens. However, I
| feel like society doesn't understand and would never
| support this. Corporations have no punishment for
| collecting and abusing people's information, that it's
| disgusting. Even when they're caught abusing it, theres
| no negative repercussions for the organizations.
| (Experian.. which should have been completely closed..
| got a minor fine to continue leaking people's info)
|
| Another point I wanted to make for you. I want to see
| anonymous identity tokens as that we're continuing on
| this path. For example: Hetzner is now requiring
| biometrics + id proof of who you are to pay them money
| for a server. I understand they want to avoid fraud and
| provide services to legitimate people, but that kind of
| info is insane to give to some random person at some
| corporation.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That would be for Utah to solve. At a minimum, Utah
| should be providing the infrastructure for its people to
| be able to obtain a digital ID that has an API for
| websites to use which legally cannot have its history
| recorded.
| yeahsure22 wrote:
| [dead]
| anon291 wrote:
| Large numbers of states actively monitor (via swiping IDs)
| your alcohol purchase history. Many states have entire
| bureaus whose job it is to keep this information.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Interesting, I did not know that, and that is
| disappointing to find out.
| monksy wrote:
| I believe that Utah is one of those places who do that.
| (I can't find a resource that they do, but it's too
| similar to the patronscan tech that near by states
| endorse). That's one of the things that turned me away
| from enjoying that state.
|
| From what I did find, they are required to keep that info
| for at least 7 days. As a Chicagoian, required tracking
| of how much and where I drink at is super concerning.
|
| https://www.abc4.com/news/top-stories/why-is-the-bouncer-
| sca...
| anon291 wrote:
| Age is not a class
| [deleted]
| elchief wrote:
| HN commiserating kids killing themselves due to social media last
| week
|
| HN complaining about a state doing something about it this week
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| I really don't see the overall negativity towards this bill. Yes,
| there may be problems with id verification, but outside of that,
| is it such a big deal that a parent needs to give permission for
| their kid to start using Instagram?
|
| My kids don't get to start using Disney+ or Netflix without my
| permission -- namely my credit card on the family account. This
| doesn't feel much different.
|
| Do you think kids under 14 shouldn't have parents involved in
| guiding them online? I agree once they're older they need more
| freedom. But an 11 year old who wants to use TikTok because all
| his friends do or a 12 year old who wants to use Instagram or
| Snap because all her friends want to message in a group there
| should have some parental involvement. The amount of bullying,
| wealth-shaming (your house sucks), etc going on is mind-boggling.
|
| And yeah, we used to have bullies when I was a kid too, but it
| would be on the schoolyard in front of 2 or 3 other kids, not a
| chat thread with half the school on it.
| [deleted]
| specialist wrote:
| Next, they should limit boomer social media access.
|
| And then everyone in between.
|
| _"...Meta said it has robust tools to keep children safe. "_
|
| Sure.
|
| --
|
| Watching the socials get lumped into the same moral category as
| cigarettes, domestic abuse, the Sacklers, and cable news, is
| giving me a bit of schadenfreude.
|
| Don't worry. My joy won't last.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > Next, they should limit boomer social media access.
|
| Yeah, target the one group who consistently shows up to vote...
| xwolfi wrote:
| Very weird feeling I have here, in China. For once, I feel it's
| the americans following us. What's next, limiting online video
| game time ??
| ngokevin wrote:
| Limiting the platforms of celebrities and influencers?
| specialist wrote:
| Oh no, that'd be limiting Freedom Speeches(tm).
|
| But the US Constitution doesn't guarantee anyone will be
| listening.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| That would also be good. I know people who have shit their
| pants during RuneScape sessions. They can't use it
| responsibly.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| We are talking about banning china owned TikTok in the USA,
| which would be like banning US owned Facebook in china. So
| ya, maybe you have a point?
| kube-system wrote:
| I feel like it is a universally constant thing for some
| subset of people to want their government to "force those
| other people to do what I think they should be doing".
|
| The only the US does relatively well is to provide mechanisms
| to reverse course when these things happen. Which is also why
| a lot of changes end up in gridlock.
|
| Which I suspect will happen soon in this case.
| syklep wrote:
| I'd guess it's more of a "make sure our children grow up
| into healthy working adults, instead of more minimum wage
| tech addicts".
| gtop3 wrote:
| When I was a teenager my screen time was the maximum
| feasible. Now my average screentime is between 12 and 14
| hours a day. I'm yet another gainfully employed software
| engineer.
|
| I don't think there is any empirical evidence correlating
| tech addiction to income, but if there was I wouldn't be
| surprised if the relationship was positive.
| kube-system wrote:
| _Who_ is going to make them grow up a particular way?
| barbazoo wrote:
| For me this is a public health measure. If video games were
| shown to have a similarly destructive effect on our youth I'd
| consider regulating that too.
| s5300 wrote:
| I find what Facebook has done to a non-negligible portion of
| boomers to be a morbid & highly interesting phenomenon.
| patientplatypus wrote:
| [dead]
| willis936 wrote:
| The context of "authoritarian theocracy is the first to do X"
| really helps highlight how bad of an idea it is. _No social
| policy_ that Utah 's government does first is a good idea.
| pc2g4d wrote:
| Generally I support parents taking action to protect their kids
| from the harms of social media; but coming from a state
| government, and this one in particular, it comes across as a bit
| draconian the approach being taken. The hidden agenda does seem
| to be keeping Mormon youth from encountering materials critical
| of LDS church truth claims. Too little too late, but I'm sure
| that's one intended consequence.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| You might be experiencing cognitive dissonance
| tamaharbor wrote:
| Will the app ask, "Are you over 21?" YES - NO
| Buttons840 wrote:
| No, qualifying social media sites will need to see ID. The bill
| specifically mentions driver's license, passport, or birth
| certificate. Although this is a "think of the children" style
| law, all adults would also be affected.
|
| Papers please. Want to speak and assemble online? I'm gonna
| need to see some papers first.
| spoonfeeder006 wrote:
| I get that SM can have lot of bad effects on people
|
| But being controlled and micro-managed by your parents when
| you're at a stage to naturally seek independence and autonomy....
| yeah, can't imagine how that would badly impact anyone of these
| kids. Like, at all.
|
| How about instead empowering kids to learn about the science of
| tech addiction, or addiction in general, and the science of how
| SM effects people...and also teaching them the science of how to
| free ones self from addiction
|
| Allen Carr's "Smart Phone Dumb Phone" might be a good option for
| instance
|
| But micromanaging teens is the worst thing for them. We all learn
| from knowledge and understanding, not being controlled
| _AzMoo wrote:
| In Australia lots of kids are already directly taught about the
| downsides of social media. My daughter is 16 and has had
| mandatory classes about it in school every year since she was
| 12. The problem is the kids don't give a shit and it's the
| parents that don't understand. This should be dealt with
| through education campaigns, but it's the parents who those
| campaigns should be targeted at. If somebody's parents group
| were going to gossip about them actively enabling their kid to
| get access to social media when we all clearly know the dangers
| of it then it would very quickly lead to a dramatic reduction
| in kids having access.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > How about instead empowering kids to learn about the science
| of tech addiction
|
| What if we made selling tobacco legal to minors but continued
| to educate them on the health risks?
| lilboiluvr69 wrote:
| I am...very surprised by some of the discussion here. Maybe I'm
| just not that familiar with the harms of social media as someone
| who chooses not to use it. But support for anynomity and free
| access to information was always part of what I interpreted as
| the 'hacker ethos'.
|
| It's been odd to see this pushback against social media transform
| into actual legislation for a flat out ban. Not forcing social
| media companies to end the use of tracking and dark patterns mind
| you, a flat our ban. It seems like admitting that humans just
| can't have unfettered access to each other's lives on a global
| scale. We can't stand to talk and exchange controversial opinions
| and see each other's best highlights without falling into
| toxicity, envy, and tribalism, nihilism and depression.
|
| I don't like that thought, it doesn't bode well for our species.
|
| I can't imagine what my childhood would have been like if I
| wasn't able to break out of the box my parents and society out me
| in and really reach out to conversations and ideas that many
| people would find dangerous. I don't think its an exaggeration to
| say I probably would have killed myself. And I mean that in a
| very real way. Society doesn't tend to be very kind to people
| like me. I realized I was a MAP from a young age and grew up
| thinking no matter what I did I was going to be a monster. I
| can't imagine what it would be like not to have anyone to talk to
| about that. Being at such a vulnerable age and not finding anyone
| who would listen.
|
| The other commenters are right, this law is going to harm
| marginalized groups in Utah. Replacing the parents and preventing
| children from freely exchanging ideas isn't going to fix the core
| negative incentives that make these platforms addictive and
| toxic. Nor is it going to address the societal changes that would
| reduce people's dependence of social media. It's not going to
| make kids suddenly go outside and meet one another again. Maybe
| I'm wrong, I mean I hope I am, but I doubt it.
|
| God I remember how much it sucked being a kid. Getting treated as
| property of my parents, as if they knew what was best for me when
| they couldn't even take care of them selves. All that unfiltered
| internet access led me to a successful InfoSec career, it led to
| an escape from my shit-hole life.
|
| But my biggest concern is the possibility of stifling online
| anonymity through some aged verification system. A second-order
| effect that basically chills free speech without directly
| legislating on it. I'd hate for my kid to inherit a world like
| that, a world where they have to supply an ID to comment on
| Hacker News.
|
| It seems like something worth fighting against. It makes me feel
| like being violent.
| williamDafoe wrote:
| What a joke every teenager knows how to cloak themselves with a
| VPN to evade parental access restrictions & new tech will emerge
| to thwart all these laws! Google builds infra to make sure your
| kids have 24/7 access to YouTube! I know I used to work there!
| The only restriction we could impose at our house was to turn off
| the router at midnight!
|
| I freaking HATE google / YouTube for filling my kids' childhoods
| with Smosh videos instead of real books or high quality active
| play.
|
| And yes my son flunked out of college because of online social
| media - twice! He's got ADHD which makes him a perfect target for
| the addiction phd psychologists employed at social media and
| videogame companies! For these online tech vampire companies
| addicting your kids is like shooting fish in a barrel! And yes
| I'm a cs phd who got my start in network security!
|
| As a left-wing free speech parent STILL STRUGGLING against online
| addiction with a 21-year old son who is STILL spending 24/7 to
| waste time online I'd put the threat up there with : hard drugs &
| gambling addiction. Yes it's that severe for a not trivial part
| of the population. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
| data_maan wrote:
| This is yet another instance of "Think of the children":
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children
| killjoywashere wrote:
| First they came for the trade unionists...
| egl2021 wrote:
| In the long run, this could be a boon for social media companies:
| they now have a requirement to ask you to identify yourself and
| provide clear proof of your location. This will drive away some
| users, but the remaining users will be great for targeting ads.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| The Democrats have their own flaws certainly, but I'm having such
| a hard time finding a consistent ideology among conservatives.
| Free speech absolutism, mixed with parent choice, no choice for
| women, censorship for some kinds of speech, anti-regulation
| limited government but strong regulation of tech products. I just
| can't square any of this.
| weberer wrote:
| I don't know if there's a term for this fallacy, but I see it
| happening all the time. You're trying to break the world down
| to us-vs-them where "us" is a single narrowly defined group and
| "them" is everyone outside that group. In this case you're
| incorrectly grouping together classical liberals, neocons,
| Christian/Jewish/Islamic fundamentalists, Laissez-faire
| neoliberals, and paleoconservatives. Then being confused why
| they all disagree on different issues.
| stametseater wrote:
| > _I'm having such a hard time finding a consistent ideology
| among conservatives_
|
| I'm having a hard time figuring out why you would expect to
| find one. The people who "vote conservative" do so for numerous
| different sorts of reasons, conservationism is not their root
| ideology, it is downstream of other disparate ideologies. A
| conservative voter who is Mormon has different motivations than
| a conservative voter who is a secular small business owner, and
| both have a different root ideology from an old school Catholic
| or an anti-communist Cuban-American.
|
| Knowing this as I'm sure you do, why would you expect
| "conservatism", aka "voting for republicans", to be a
| consistent ideology? The people who do so were never all coming
| from the same ideological position in the first place.
|
| Btw, the group of people who vote for democratic candidates
| also do so for a wide array of reasons, and don't all share
| much of a common and consistent ideology either. Welcome to the
| two-party system, in which innumerable ideologies get
| pigeonholed into two bins.
| wincy wrote:
| Look, I'll take a risk here and speak my thoughts, assuming you
| genuinely want to learn more about Republicans in 2023.
|
| It's confusing because they aren't unified. I was a Democrat
| until 2015, when it felt like both sides had lost their mind
| and I voted libertarian. It seemed like there was no place for
| free speech advocates in the Democrat party anymore.
|
| Eventually, my wife and I decided to become officially
| Republican when we realized that the Libertarians were totally
| ineffective as a party (the libertarian convention is literally
| just an excuse to have orgies and do drugs) and couldn't fight
| back against the progressive ideology that we see as harmful
| towards successful child rearing, as well as us retaining a
| principled moral stance for free speech against the primarily
| leftist ideologies that had become so pervasive in social media
| circles. We feel like Elon Musk purchasing Twitter was one of
| the most important positive events of 2022, and a huge win for
| free speech.
|
| There's a lot of weird transition going on in the Republican
| Party because of this new group of "former Democrat refugees"
| who tend to be libertarian and free speech supporters are
| trying to integrate with the old guard republicans. We roll our
| eyes at this kind of stuff, but figure "it's better than the
| crazy stuff going on these days on the other side". Republican
| is turning into a much wider tent.
| [deleted]
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Speaking as someone who more or less went down the same road
| as you have politically, this is spot on.
| staunton wrote:
| What do you need a "consistent ideology" for? These things seem
| to be what the majority of people in those states want (for
| better or worse).
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Your cognitive dissonance comes from thinking this is a
| monolithic party platform thing.
|
| This is a Utah thing, with burgeoning consensus in a couple
| other states.
| twodave wrote:
| That's just humanity in a nutshell. I'd be more worried if
| everybody had the same views.
| etimberg wrote:
| Related, but my prediction is that by the end of the decade
| internet anonymity will be gone forever. Social will be the first
| place it falls with governments requiring SSO to a government run
| IdP that is verified by ID
| paxys wrote:
| End of anonymity and end of large scale unfiltered user-
| generated content. The internet is going to become like every
| other form of information media where a tiny group of
| people/companies is publishing and the rest of us are
| consuming, no questions asked.
| gtop3 wrote:
| It's not impossible, but that's a lot of tech for the fed to
| setup and they aren't the best at consumer level software.
| There's also the fact that many political players utilize the
| anonymity of the internet in their campaign tactics. Not to
| mention the possibility of connecting to a VPN to circumvent
| the requirement for using a US ID.
|
| I think it's more likely to see intelligence agencies insist on
| more direct control over stopping "viral" spread of
| "disinformation", and to at least threaten to hold platforms
| responsible.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| They'd probably outsource it. REAL ID by Meta or something
| horribly dystopian like that
| ketzo wrote:
| I could get behind this prediction just because it feels like
| you could take literally any political affiliation and still
| end up pushing for it.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| Libertarian? Privacy conscious liberal? First amendment
| conservative?
|
| No.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| A good first step. Hopefully they can limit their parents' access
| next.
| Mizoguchi wrote:
| The People's Republic of Utah.
| loeg wrote:
| How do they tell if a user is under eighteen?
| tstrimple wrote:
| They don't. They will require everyone to provide an ID when
| signing up.
| loeg wrote:
| Not just signup. The language of the bill says it applies to
| existing Utah account holders as well.
| jmathai wrote:
| <select name="age">
| loeg wrote:
| Clearly teenagers are smart enough to select an age over 18.
|
| The governor's tweet is:
| https://twitter.com/GovCox/status/1639015949964840960
|
| > SB152 requires social media companies to verify that users
| in the state are 18 or older to open an account. Minors will
| need parental consent to create an account.
|
| Ok, so what age verification does SB152 require?
| https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/SB0152.html
|
| > 246 (3) (a) Beginning March 1, 2024, a social media company
| shall verify the age of an > 247 existing or new Utah account
| holder and, if the existing or new account holder is a minor,
| > 248 confirm that a minor has consent as required under
| Subsection (1):
|
| They totally punt on the issue of how you determine if an
| account is a minor:
|
| > 256 (4) In accordance with Title 63G, Chapter 3, Utah
| Administrative Rulemaking Act, the > 257 division, with
| consideration of stakeholder input, shall make rules to: >
| 258 (a) establish processes or means by which a social media
| company may meet the age > 259 verification requirements of
| this chapter; > 260 (b) establish acceptable forms or methods
| of identification, which may not be limited > 261 to a valid
| identification card issued by a government entity; > 262 (c)
| establish requirements for providing confirmation of the
| receipt of any information > 263 provided by a person seeking
| to verify age under this chapter;
|
| It is not remotely clear how you are supposed to enforce this
| without requiring government id for all users. Or at least,
| Utah users.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| There are already laws on the books in numerous states
| requiring porn sites to verify that users are over 18. As
| far as I know, none of them require users to upload a
| government ID. As usual I think HN is making leaps of logic
| without actually reading the law or thinking of how else
| users might be verified (A $0.10 refundable credit card
| charge for example).
| loeg wrote:
| To my knowledge no porn site requires anything beyond
| clicking "yes, I'm 18," which is the exact kind of "how
| old are you?" mechanism easily circumvented by teenagers.
| A credit card charge is not exactly less burdensome than
| providing state ID.
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| It absolutely boggles my mind how this website can purport to be
| about hacker ethos, and yet every time a thread like this comes
| up you get tons of commenters talking about how they are going to
| tightly control which games and websites there kids have access
| to, what kind of devices they have access to, when they have
| access to them, etc.
|
| Myself, I think like a lot of people on this website, grew up
| with basically unfettered access to the internet and computers.
| And that period of time today seems like a golden age of the
| Internet. Maybe you think the internet today is just so
| insidiously dangerous compared to them, but I think that's just
| naive. The internet had a lot of fucked up content when I was
| accessing it at that age too. Our kids are going to grow up
| thinking the time they used the internet as a teen was the golden
| age.
|
| I'm not saying unfettered access is what you should do, but maybe
| imagine yourself in your kids shoes, only it was the 90s with
| home computers instead of the 2000s with apps and social media?
|
| You may have great arguments about the net harm of social media
| or apps you don't happen to like, but they are not going to
| resonate with your kids if you approach it via "I know better
| then you." If you're on this forum, you are very capable of
| setting up home wifi that you can monitor. Why not see what's a
| problem _for them_ first and address it then?
| [deleted]
| corobo wrote:
| My parents and schools having an "I know better than you"
| attitude and blocking sites/access is how I learned how to
| bypass those restrictions in fairness. Within a year I knew
| more than they did about tech, and they could no longer block
| me without physically removing cables (good luck with _that_ in
| a 5G-enabled world!)
|
| They're just setting up the next generation of hacker!
| jart wrote:
| I got my mom to disable parental controls so I could do
| hacking. I showed her that the programming websites I wanted
| to access were blocked and so were the IRC servers where
| programmers congregated. She decided she didn't want to hold
| back my education. I don't think the people who build these
| things really mentally model for children that do more than
| consume Disney.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| dmos62 wrote:
| Are you going to take the same stance with your kids and
| tobacco or alcohol? Why not see what's the problem for them
| first instead of pretending pretending we know better? Come on.
| Regulating social media exposure is somewhere between basic
| hygiene and diet control.
|
| Hacker ethos? Hackers use the unbeaten path to solve problems.
| That's what a hacker is to me. Is a hacker for you someone
| against all forms of moderation?
| base698 wrote:
| > dangerous compared to them, but I think that's just naive.
| The internet had a lot of fucked up content when I was
| accessing it at that age too.
|
| Same. However, my impression is that the focus here is on the
| volume of access not the type of content. We didn't carry the
| internet around in our pocket. Allowing us to use it on the
| bathroom, waiting for the bus, or even in class during a
| lecture.
| aizyuval wrote:
| > "As leaders, and parents, we have a responsibility to protect
| our young people."
|
| So why don't you educate them?
| shampto3 wrote:
| As much as I dislike social media sites and think there is
| sufficient evidence of their harm to teens, I don't think these
| bills have any legs.
|
| There are already people in law that are pushing back on the
| legality of this in regards to violating first amendment rights.
| [1]
|
| 1. https://techfreedom.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/02/TechFreed...
|
| EDIT: pluralized bills, after realizing that there were two
| related bills regarding this.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Its always crazy to me how proponents and opponents never address
| _each other's_ points. They just talk past each other saying
| their own completely unrelated points.
|
| A: "But what about kids in abusive households that get cut off
| from communication"
|
| B: "We have tools to ensure kids safety that requires actively
| using our social network already"
|
| that's a frustrating way of having a conversation
| staunton wrote:
| You're assuming they're trying to have a conversation...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| It annoys me that they are presented as opposites, people
| segregate themselves as if they are opposites, imagine the
| other side is opposite, and then when you actually look at
| the stances they aren't opposite at all and probably actually
| reconcilable
|
| but yes, "opposing" is more accurate than opposite. people
| just seem to only have the mental capacity for two opposites
| uptownfunk wrote:
| Something has to be done. It is too close to alcohol and tobacco.
| Makes you feel good but causes some yet to be diagnosed disorder.
| pongo1231 wrote:
| Agreed. I'm unsure whether this is the right approach, it
| should be the parents' duty to monitor what their children are
| doing and limit access appropriately but it's been clear that
| many of them simply can't be bothered to do so. Someone has to
| step in eventually.
| acd wrote:
| What is the difference between tobaco and social media? What are
| the similarities between tobaco and social media in the brain?
| the_only_law wrote:
| For one I won't end up with emphysema, lung cancer, mouth
| cancer, whatever nor can I pass off the negative affects to
| other people around me by proximity.
| falcolas wrote:
| Is it a bad time to mention that sites like stack overflow,
| discord, sub stack, medium, Reddit, hacker news, GitHub, YouTube,
| and so forth have the same traits - the same identifying markers
| - as what we consider traditional social media sites?
|
| How the bill defines social media:
|
| 10) (a) "Social media platform" means an online forum that a
| social media company 160 makes available for an account holder
| to: 161 (i) create a profile; 162 (ii) upload posts; 163 (iii)
| view the posts of other account holders; and 164 (iv) interact
| with other account holders or users.
|
| There's exceptions for email, Netflix, Amazon, news, traditional
| media kinds of sites.
|
| https://le.utah.gov/~2023/bills/static/HB0311.html
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Yes, and a 13 year old should absolutely not use any of those
| services.
|
| Discord in particular has become known as "groomercord" for
| it's open pedophilia.
| wincy wrote:
| Discord is where my friend runs his youth DM games where he
| carves out a safe space for teens to dip their feet into
| playing D&D and having healthy interactions with adults on
| his discord server. We keep it PG-13 and it's fun. I've been
| giving a kid pointers on AI art generation.
|
| It'd be sad if all them got run off because of hysteria about
| them being "groomed".
| deadbolt wrote:
| > Discord in particular has become known as "groomercord"
|
| Nobody without sufficient brain-rot (ironically likely caused
| by social media) would call it that.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| 90%+ of the useful interactions I have with other humans
| working on interesting problems is through Discord these
| days. If I have an issue with a library, or run into a tough
| to solve physics problem, basically anything where I might
| want to talk to someone more knowledgeable or experienced
| than me the answer is hop on a discord server and ask. It's
| absolutely asinine to deny this resource to kids.
|
| At least we're teaching kids the basics of computer security
| by forcing them to circumvent these restrictions, and I have
| full faith than they will. Most kids are much more
| technologically literate than someone who would unironically
| type "groomercord".
| holmesworcester wrote:
| I haven't read the bills yet but according to the article it
| applies to children under 18.
|
| 17-year-old me would have considered this draconian bullsh*t,
| for the same reasons I would now. (So does dad me,
| incidentally. My kid's messages have always been her
| business, not mine.)
| raincole wrote:
| I'm sure many of us wouldn't have been a programmer if we
| hadn't had access to SO/Github around 17.
| cesarb wrote:
| > I'm sure many of us wouldn't have been a programmer if
| we hadn't had access to SO/Github around 17.
|
| I'm sure many of us didn't have any access to
| StackOverflow and GitHub when we were around 17 years
| old, because StackOverflow and GitHub didn't exist yet.
| For several of us, _git_ didn 't exist yet. Heck, for
| some of us, _the web_ didn 't exist yet!
|
| Kids these days...
| matwood wrote:
| > Heck, for some of us, the web didn't exist yet!
|
| Haha...I learned when the web was mainly AOL. MSN at the
| time had pretty good forums which helped a lot. But the
| main place I was learning programming from was books, but
| they were expensive - especially for a college kid. When
| I would run into problems I couldn't solve I would head
| to the book store with a pencil and paper and copy bits
| and pieces that I hoped would help. Then head back home
| and try again (talk about a long debug run loop). Luckily
| this was around the same time of the rise of big
| bookstores where they encouraged hanging out so no one
| ever questioned me.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| Wow I'm almost 50 and I have been interacting through
| forums (first one on minitel when I was 12), bbs,
| newsgroup since I was a young teenager. Maybe github or
| stackoverflow didn't exist but they were plenty of cool
| places where to exchange.
| raincole wrote:
| Many of us != most of us. What I said and what you said
| are not mutually exclusive.
| brabel wrote:
| Many of us, older people, had access to similar things
| that made us interested... in the 70/80's it was computer
| magazines (paper magazines, that is) as people got their
| first home computers and could follow along programming
| examples, play games etc. If you ran into trouble, you
| needed either help from someone you already knew or you
| would have to find a book or manual.
|
| In the 90's most teens already had access to a primitive
| internet where they could chat with anyone in the world
| using BBS[1], which was not too different from a modern
| social network. Email was already a thing as well for
| some time, but probably became widespread at this time...
| by the late 90's the internet was already quite similar
| to today for geeks, except perhaps videos (and even high
| resolution pics) were not a thing due to the low speed of
| the net.
|
| StackOverflow and GitHub only came around in the late
| 2000's, which is basically yesterday. Before them, there
| were similar sites as well (the infamous expertsexchange
| for SO, and SourceFourge for GH, for example) for quite
| some time, but they surely became very dominant in their
| areas.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletin_board_system
| raincole wrote:
| And I know these. I'm not "punched card old" but I did
| start learning programming before SO got traction. And I
| remember how big the difference SO made for my own
| learning/career path, compared to mailing lists.
|
| As a side note, my first intern job was to make a
| localized ripoff of SO (within a team, of course). It was
| still a relatively shining new thing by the time.
| brabel wrote:
| Cool... it's just that your comment seems to imply that a
| lot of programmers were learning their basics when SO was
| already there to help us... that's only true for those of
| us lucky enough to be really young, like in their 20's
| :D. Hope you understand many of us are well past that and
| watched GH and SO take over the world as a very recent
| phenonenom.
| raincole wrote:
| Uh, yes, this is why I said "many of us" not "most of
| us". (not sure why i need to repeat this...) Of course I
| know people who are in 20s are not necessarily the
| absolute majority of HN. But there are still many of
| them.
| brabel wrote:
| > I said "many of us" not "most of us". (not sure why i
| need to repeat this...)
|
| We understood it. Not sure why you think we didn't.
| MattRix wrote:
| Really? Because there are about 20 comments under their
| original post with the tone of "um actually many of us
| didn't grow up that young".
| McSwag wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised but also not surprised in the
| outrage over the "draconian bulls*t." The problem I have
| as a parent is that I can see it causing real social
| damage to adults around me, my own kids, and kids around
| my kids. Anti-social behavior, Disrespect for authority,
| extreme violence is easy to see and normalized (stuff
| that would normally be considered traumatic), wokeness
| and anti-wokeness is normalized (must we all have such
| strong opinions?). I'm talking behavior way more at
| extreme ends of the polarized spectrum and at earlier
| ages than what I grew up around.
|
| It's basically force-fed opinions at a global scale, how
| can that possibly be healthy? We can barely fathom how
| this media impacts adults as it stands. All this clear
| evidence aside, I feel like it's obvious, how can the
| absence of these things do any measurable harm to kids?
| komali2 wrote:
| Regardless of your ethical stance on the subject, it
| would be a good exercise to consider who you're ok with
| determining what kind of content your children can view.
| Allowing a government to step in to pass laws like this
| is a draconian step too far.
|
| As a parent do you not already have all the tools you
| need to ensure your children don't use tik Tok? From the
| light touch and mundane, using the built in features of
| the operating system (parental blockers and app timers
| are available on Android and IOS) to the heavy touch of
| not allowing your kid to have a smartphone.
|
| Why do you want the government taking over this role for
| you? Maybe there's some parents who don't care if their
| children are on tik tok. Why should they follow the same
| parental strategy you have?
| McSwag wrote:
| I do think this a reasonable rebuttal, but there must be
| some middle ground here. Generally speaking, I can block
| TikTok sure, but because it's so ubiquitous, my kids are
| ostracized because all their friends have access to it,
| they still pass around the content like drugs, alcohol
| and tobacco. It almost becomes one of those things that
| because they're not allowed to have access to it, it does
| just as much damage, socially.
|
| There are three general categories of parents on this,
| and to be clear, I don't think any of these are bad
| parents: 1. Those who are extremely weary and tech savvy,
| like myself 2. Those who are weary but have no earthly
| idea how to set up these controls effectively. 3. Those
| who don't give a f*all about it at all.
|
| I tend to believe it's just as bad but it's about as
| misunderstood as tobacco used to be. The industry KNOWS
| it's bad for kids, it's been proven bad for kids but it's
| peddled to them anyway.
|
| All that aside, let's just say hypothetically I wanted to
| manage this all myself and wanted the government out of
| it, sounds good in theory. The tooling around limiting
| inappropriate content is mind-blowingly inadequate. At
| the very least this should be mandatory and more
| concretely standardized. I'm not flatly against giving
| kids some access to it but it's reached a point where my
| kids can't even do their homework at all without full
| access to all of Youtube which by itself has loads of
| content not remotely appropriate for elementary school
| kids. Youtube kids is a joke.
|
| It's pretty frustrating as a parent to manage content
| restrictions for the 3-4 major browsers, search engines,
| youtube, messenging apps, iphones, macbook, windows app
| store, and so on. This could be a full time job. Then,
| the kids bring home a school provided chromebook or login
| to chrome with a school account which has no content
| restrictions at all and I have zero control over anyway.
| Honestly, parental controls in the current state is
| largely a waste of time.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Doesn't the fact that drugs, alcohol and tobacco (which
| are already illegal for kids) are available in this way
| illustrate how useless a ban would be?
|
| If you want to protect your kids from these things then
| you need to educate them and get them to enforce the
| rules themselves.
| McSwag wrote:
| Yes, parental controls are not are replacement for
| teaching kids why this stuff is damaging. It's not an
| excuse to be lazy parents. Kids need to hear their
| parents say it (with the why). Setting limits instead
| outright blocking can be helpful. It sets the stage for
| letting the kid decide if they would consider what they
| just watched be viewed as inappropriate, which believe or
| not does happen, but some content really shouldn't be
| available to them at all.
| swexbe wrote:
| The vast majority of 13 y.os do not have access to drugs,
| alcohol and tobacco.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Uh...are you a parent of teenagers? Because that
| statement is not true and smacks of Ivory Tower thinking.
| McSwag wrote:
| I mean it's somewhat true, if it were legal for 12 year
| olds to have these things AND it was marketed toward
| them, way more kids would be have it than not. That's not
| to say they can't get it now, but it's harder and
| somewhat self regulating because the stigma around doing
| something illegal.
| nicoburns wrote:
| This doesn't invalidate your point (I think your correct
| that making it illegal provides a disincentive and
| reduces overall uptake), but I should note that making
| something legal does not necessarily mean making it legal
| to market it towards kids.
|
| Case in point being that here in the UK it is illegal to
| market tobacco products _at all_ (including to adults in
| this case). This also applies to politicians,
| prescriptions medicine and a bunch of other things. And
| IMO it's often a good compromise that allows for harm
| reduction without outright banning something.
| nicoburns wrote:
| This probably varies depending on where you live, but
| where I grew up (in a small town in the UK), the vast
| majority of 13 year olds did have access to drugs,
| alcohol and tobacco (which didn't necessarily mean the
| vast majority were indulging in those things, but they
| were definitely available).
| arbol wrote:
| The overhead of managing content restrictions on families
| devices is a very good point. I'll be reaching this stage
| soon and I'm not looking forward to this additional task.
|
| I also think state sponsored content moderation should be
| used to restrict access to harmful online media as
| opposed to lumbering this task on individuals. As you've
| mentioned, some parents need this enforced upon them.
|
| If we were talking about vaping, which is still highly
| unregulated and available for children to buy, I'm sure
| the majority would be in agreement about age
| restrictions. The fact that we're talking about
| preventing psychological addiction and trauma makes it
| harder for people to agree on the harmful effects of this
| type of content. It's simply not as visible as the huge
| plumes of oil-steam breathed out by every 12 year old in
| a bus stop these days.
|
| However, I don't agree with the implementation of content
| moderation proposed by Utah state. It's totally
| unworkable and poorly thought through.
| McSwag wrote:
| I also want to recognize that in the case of Utah's
| implementation,it likely doesn't have my best interests
| in mind so I do see your point. There's always a
| possibility of an agenda which isn't necessarily "good
| for kids."
|
| Maybe what we should focus on is more standardization,
| effectiveness of controls and requiring these trillion
| dollar companies to build parents one single pane of
| glass to monitor and control content for all platforms.
| May not even be feasible but it really just sounds like
| another engineering challenge that requires a major
| investment to get it done.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Hmmm...all I had was a blank screen and a Byte article.
| nkrisc wrote:
| So that's why I didn't become a professional programmer.
| SO and Github hadn't been invented yet when I was 17.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| You're thinking about it wrong. How many people that you
| knew when you were 17 would have become programmers if
| the current resources existed.
|
| See also: survivorship bias.
| bawolff wrote:
| Oh i feel so old.
|
| I probably wouldn't be a programmer without sourceforge.
| spiralx wrote:
| I probably wouldn't be a programmer without ordering
| floppy disks full of random source code by post from
| software-by-post catalogues - one letter to ask for a
| catalogue, get the catalogue in the post, send them a
| letter with your order and a cheque and receive a bunch
| of disks a week later...
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Now I feel old.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| You have no idea.
|
| Before StackOverflow it was PAINFUL. Staring at "Reached
| end of file while parsing" errors and wondering wtf that
| even means...
|
| Then finding out after 5 hours that you missed a
| semicolon.
|
| Oh, and forget rounded borders, what a f@#%king
| nightmare.
| raincole wrote:
| Oh I have a lot of ideas. I started learning programming
| before Stackoverflow got traction. Plus I'm not a native
| speaker and by the time I didn't really speak English at
| all. So I practically needed to learn what "Reached end
| of file while parsing" means in plain English, then tried
| to find out that I had missed a semicolon :'(
| Spivak wrote:
| Absolutely zero chance, SO was the only resource on the
| internet that had simple enough explanations for me when
| I started out programming at 11.
|
| I was making PRs to oss projects on Github and churning
| through Project Euler by 15.
|
| I literally owe my entire career to SO which is weird to
| say typing it out now.
| folkrav wrote:
| Reading these comments about people relying on SO - a
| site founded in 2008 - at age 11, doesn't make me feel
| any younger, and I'm not even that old (inching closer
| and closer to my mid-30s). I got into Linux and
| bash/Python scripting by following tutorials on random
| shady sites and reading official documentation and
| manpages. Let's just say it wasn't as seamless as
| Googling an issue and having a SO thread directly answer
| my question.
|
| Yes, I do realize I now sound like I just said "back in
| my day, we walked to school, uphill both ways".
| raincole wrote:
| "I feel old" on the internet can mean 15yo to 80yo, so
| you have all the right to feel old at mid-30s lol
|
| When I learned my second programming language
| (JavaScript), I asked most of my questions via a mailing
| list. It's quite weird trying to recall it... I almost
| forgot how mailing list work today.
| Mezzie wrote:
| Right? I learned through reading _browser documentation_
| in elementary school when CSS and JavaScript were
| implemented and then running to my dad or internet forums
| /chat rooms when I ran into topics or problems I didn't
| understand. None of us knew what we were doing. It was
| great.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Certainly you participated in related forums right?
| Before SO I was much more involved in online communities
| like https://gamedev.net/ which are also at risk due to
| this sort of bill.
| Avicebron wrote:
| Yea, it was actually wild when SO came out, because I'd
| been teaching myself lua pretty much independently, and
| by the time I got to high school, SO just barely on its
| way out and immediately everything was a lot easier.
|
| Old man yells at cloud, but kids these day won't even
| have to look at code, everything will be filtered through
| natural language.
| swader999 wrote:
| I'm sure our parents would have all let us sign up for a
| programming site. This bill still allows for that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm sure our parents would have all let us sign up for
| a programming site. This bill still allows for that.
|
| But would the site let you sign up if _even with parental
| permission_ if it had to do additional identification
| verification to identify that the permission was from
| your parent, and was liable for (1) actual damages if you
| got addicted [0] because of some element of their site
| design, and (2) huge ($250,000 per feature) penalties if
| they also didn't do quarterly audits to identify, and
| within 30 days after identification eliminate, any
| feature which _might_ addict you?
|
| How many programming sites see minors in general, much
| less _Utah minors_ specifically, as that important to
| their mission to take on the extra costs and risks this
| bill imposes on serving that population?
|
| [0] Using an intentionally broad definition of addiction
| falcolas wrote:
| Who will pay GitHub to not only install age validation
| but parental bypass (also with validation)?
|
| I don't believe they even allow under-13 today due to
| COPA laws.
|
| Of course this focus on the age 13 is completely missing
| the point that the actual age gate is 17.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| The good part about the COPPA law is that it's an IQ
| test. If you're under 13, you have to be smart enough to
| understand that it's a "don't ask don't tell" situation
| and know to keep quiet. I did when I was 10 and joined
| Yahoo (the most popular social media site at the time) so
| I could have a Geocities web site and play fantasy
| baseball.
|
| I'd suggest that teens in Utah just use a VPN but social
| media sites have been cracking down on VPN users for
| years and many of those sites now require phone number
| verification to sign up. This law illustrates yet another
| reason why that's a bad idea.
| htag wrote:
| Looking back on my youth, I think these age verification
| check boxes were my earliest disregard for authority. I
| understood the checkboxes were there because there was a
| law that wanted to prevent me from accessing an online
| service. I thought the law was stupid, and after
| contemplating it for days decided to ignore it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't believe they even allow under-13 today due to
| COPA laws.
|
| COPPA. COPA was the second attempt (after CDA, which was
| the first), COPPA was the third and the one that stuck.
| judge2020 wrote:
| You underestimate how hard it might be to get your parent
| to sign some weird consent form from a "github" site,
| especially if it asks for a picture of the parent's ID
| (to ensure the kid isn't accepting the terms on their own
| behalf).
| swader999 wrote:
| Ok, a picture of parent id is ridiculous. I didn't know
| that part.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Technically it's not spelled out, but chances are Utah
| law enforcement / regulators won't accept a tech
| company's measures if a kid can just say another one of
| their own emails is their parents' and can then consent
| to the social media access themselves. Everyone affected
| by this will likely outsource it to a company like Stripe
| with their Identity product, where you're entrusting
| Stripe to do the ID verification and to delete the data
| once it's been verified.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Good thing gp made that part up then.
| hackernewds wrote:
| GitHub is not being banned. Neither is SO.
| falcolas wrote:
| What part of the bill provides them an exception?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| >What part of the bill provides them an exception?
|
| For Github? 10(b)(i)(N), to the extent that source code
| files are "documents".
|
| For Stack Overflow? 10(b)(i)(J), which was probably
| written for LinkedIn specifically.
| [deleted]
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Reddit is also an incredible resource for niche,
| constructive topics like learning how to build a
| computer. You could draw the line anywhere you want for
| social media.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > 17-year-old me would have considered this draconian
| bullsh _t, for the same reasons I would now.
|
| If anyone thinks that this bill is going to keep 17 year
| olds from accessing everything from Reddit to GitHub, they
| are going to be very disappointed.
|
| It's kind of wild to see so much of these comments
| insisting that anyone under the age of 18 be locked up and
| prevented from accessing basic internet sites _and*
| encouraging laws that would force every site to implement
| strict ID verification just to use it.
|
| Did everyone just forget what it was like to grow up with
| draconian content blockers at school preventing you from
| getting to benign information on the internet?
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| I don't think people instituting such laws are young
| enough to remember contet blockers at school.
| easrng wrote:
| > draconian content blockers
|
| most school content blockers were pretty easily bypassed
| in my experience. i was in school relatively recently, my
| highschool had fortinet which sucked (sni blocking +
| blocks a bunch of protocols), but tor still got through
| if i used a bridge. i probably could've used a vpn but
| tor was easier. before highschool there wasn't anything
| more than dns filtering (and briefly http host blocking
| but not sni blocking) which was bypassed by approximately
| everyone (who wanted to bypass it). most people used
| random vpn apps, i changed dns, both worked fine.
| decremental wrote:
| > My kid's messages have always been her business, not mine
|
| This is such a hilariously bad take. No wonder kids are so
| screwed up with parents having an attitude like that.
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Agreed. It's not even a take it's just a concerning
| statement. They should care.
| falcolas wrote:
| The bill explicitly calls out "Utah minors". That is,
| everyone in Utah under 18.
| thfuran wrote:
| Known to whom? I've never seen it called that.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| [dead]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Hacker News had a good run. I'm going to miss it when it's
| decided that tracking enough PII on its users to be compliant
| with this law (and the ones that will follow) is more trouble
| than it's worth to Y-Combinator, but so it goes.
|
| The open forum era was a grand experiment, and the experiment
| is winding down.
| 14 wrote:
| Can you not just vpn in to Canada with me for the time
| being? I mean hopefully they don't implement it site wide
| for all regions I can't imagine them doing that.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm not sure how VPN'ing to Canada helps.
| eru wrote:
| Why should a 13 year old not use GitHub?
| swader999 wrote:
| They still can with parental permission.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| If Github wasn't confident that (10)(b)(i)(N) excluded
| them from coverage, they probably wouldn't allow Utah
| minors to use the site _at all_ (and the same would be
| true of any other covered or potentially covered site)
| because, _even if_ they are allowed parental access, of
| the civil penalty and actual damages for "causing
| addiction" (under the statute's non-clinical definition
| of "addiction"), only the civil penalty portion of which
| is avoidable with costly quarterly audits. It is a whole
| bunch of dumbass liability that can be almost entirely
| mitigated by excluding Utah minors, and if that does
| economic and developmental harm to Utah, that's not the
| sites' problem.
| redeeman wrote:
| I agree, and along that same logic we should also be
| extremely concerned about what the local libraries are up to.
| alex_lav wrote:
| By who? Source?
| jquery wrote:
| I've never heard it called "groomercord", ever. A google
| search for that term doesn't find anything, either.
|
| I dunno where you're finding all this discord pedophilia, is
| this a self-report?
| Temporarily21 wrote:
| I have heard Discord mentioned a few times on CP catcher
|
| https://m.youtube.com/@CPCatcher
| hackernewds wrote:
| What about YouTube? Lots of educational material there. Fits
| all of the points.
| Gigachad wrote:
| There is YouTube for kids which is meant to be more
| stripped down.
| Syonyk wrote:
| Meant to be, sure.
|
| Ends up being this weird blend of "disturbing kid crack"
| videos that you really shouldn't leave a child unattended
| with. The whole "Peppa Pig Drinks Bleach" stuff was only
| the shallow end of the darkness of the stuff generally
| tossed in the "Elsagate" category.
|
| There is no "safe" way for a... oh, 2-7 year old, I'll be
| nice, to use the internet unattended. I've seen an awful
| lot of it out and about.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I've found YouTube kids content to be significantly worse
| than general YouTube content. Not to say that there isn't
| a lot of content inappropriate for kids on YouTube, but
| the Kids version is explicitly designed to target kids
| with addictive content. The advertisers targeting
| children for their products is brutal on YouTube Kids.
| Since pushing my kids onto the full YouTube, they are
| consuming better content.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Stack overflow and github are the only ones that feel out of
| place there.
| falcolas wrote:
| Stack overflow and GitHub both allow you to make public posts
| and interact with others. The text targets public user posts
| and interactions between users explicitly.
|
| Whether the consequences are intentional or not is still to
| be determined.
| ask_b123 wrote:
| but are they made available by a "social media company"?
| and should that be relevant?
| falcolas wrote:
| Well, here's their definition of such a company (from the
| same link):
|
| 155 (9) "Social media company" means a person or entity
| that: 156 (a) provides a social media platform that has
| at least 5,000,000 account holders 157 worldwide; and 158
| (b) is an interactive computer service.
|
| So, size is really the only relevant discriminator.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > So, size is really the only relevant discriminator.
|
| No, its not, see the vast horde of use/function based
| exclusions starting at line 165 comprising code section
| 13-63-101(10)(b).
| falcolas wrote:
| None of which clearly protect GH or SO, the subjects of
| this thread branch.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > None of which clearly protect GH or SO, the subjects of
| this thread branch.
|
| I disagree, see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35310413 (especially
| considering that because this law creates a penalty, and
| because it restricts speech, its definitions of the
| covered parties and conduct must be read narrowly - and
| its exceptions read broadly [0] - per the rule of lenity
| in statutory construction.)
|
| [0] if, in the first instance, it is Constitutional at
| all.
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| I don't consider Reddit, HN, etc. to be social media, at all.
| There might be media, but there is no social. Social requires a
| network of real people. You can't prove that anyone on these
| sites is a real person, other than yourself. Maybe I, and
| everyone else on here, is a bot. When everyone is anonymous,
| there is no network. And, not only is everyone anonymous, but
| there are no connections. To the best of my knowledge I have
| never read a post or comment from the same "person" twice.
| Every single interaction might as well be (and probably is) our
| first interaction on the site, ever. Complete strangers passing
| in the dark.
| fullshark wrote:
| Reddit used to have an actual community, things like in
| person meetups and its own culture based on various in-jokes
| (bacon,narwhals, etc) and behavior expectations. It was
| pretty social I'd say, though now it's basically just an
| aggreator and not that different from google news for various
| interests.
| CapstanRoller wrote:
| Interesting argument.
|
| Can a site without discrete named accounts, where everyone is
| called 'Anonymous', claim that there's no way to verify
| whether the content is generated by humans? It's basically
| the 4chan model.
| wincy wrote:
| Thank goodness teeangers will still be able to frequent
| 4chan just like I did when I was a teen.
| systoll wrote:
| No need to even do that.
|
| The law defines 'social media platform' in terms of what
| account holders can do, and 'social media company' in terms
| of the number of account holders.
|
| It really goes out of its way to distinguish 'users' and
| 'account holders', and if there are no account holders,
| it's not social media. Apparently.
| tstrimple wrote:
| So kids can visit 4chan, but not TikTok. Makes sense.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > There's exceptions for email, Netflix, Amazon, news,
| traditional media kinds of sites.
|
| The fact that there are 20 categories of services exempted
| shows that this is a terrible bill that is based on punishing
| specific actors and not regulating data privacy or child
| wellbeing in a meaningful way.
|
| for reference, line 165 to 224 of that link are the exceptions:
|
| "Social media platform" does not include an online service,
| website, or application: (i) where the predominant or exclusive
| function is: (A) electronic mail; (B) direct
| messaging [only between two users], (C) a streaming service,
| (D) news, sports, entertainment, or other content that is
| preselected by the provider and not user generated, (E)
| online shopping or e-commerce [when limited to posting reviews
| and wish lists], (F) interactive gaming, virtual gaming, or an
| online service, that allows the creation and uploading of
| content for the purpose of interactive gaming, edutainment, or
| associated entertainment, (G) photo editing that has an
| associated photo hosting service, if the interaction with
| other users or account holders is generally limited to liking
| or commenting, (H) a professional creative network for
| showcasing and discovering artistic content, (J) providing
| career development opportunities, including professional
| networking, job skills, learning certifications, and job
| posting and application services, (K) business to business
| software, (L) a teleconferencing or videoconferencing service,
| (M) cloud storage, (N) shared document collaboration, (O) cloud
| computing services, (P) providing access to or interacting with
| data visualization platforms, libraries, (Q) to permit
| comments on a digital news website, if the news content is
| posted only by the provider of the digital news website, (R)
| providing or obtaining technical support for a platform,
| product, or service, (S) academic or scholarly research, (T)
| genealogical research
|
| (J) is a carve-out for linkedin, wonderful.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| LOL, according to this, my family's group text thread is
| illegal under this law, as DMs can only be between 2 people.
|
| EDIT: serious question; would Slack be professional
| networking or, how does that work under this bill? It's DMing
| for business, but it isn't really networking.
| hattmall wrote:
| Group chats wouldn't be illegal, that's not an online
| service where you sign up and make a profile etc. This
| applies only to sites that would serve you random content
| from random users... i.e. Social Media.
| 8note wrote:
| That would not need a carve out for private messages
| between two profiles
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Most Slack usage I'm aware of doesn't fit the
| description, but some does. Quite a lot of Discord usage
| however...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > as DMs can only be between 2 people.
|
| Nothing in the law restricts to DMs being between two
| people, it just distinguishes them from public content.
| judge2020 wrote:
| As I understand it,
|
| > (I) shared between the sender and the recipient; 171
| (II) only visible to the sender and the recipient; and
| 172 (III) are not posted publicly;
|
| maybe sender and recipient can be considered a group chat
| with multiple recipients? Otherwise you wouldn't classify
| something like Kik or Discord as social media.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| "preselected by the provider"
|
| This is the area that gets grey. If the provide applies any
| filter or AI judgement it becomes preselected. This applies
| to tiktok, facebook, youtube and ig.
|
| This law bans old school forums and reddit but not if results
| are displayed by "best match"
| saalweachter wrote:
| I owe my entire professional career to the Megatokyo forums
| and the associated IRC server.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> (J) is a carve-out for linkedin, wonderful._
|
| It would be utterly fascinating if LinkedIn became Utah's de
| facto LGBTQ online space.
| hackernewds wrote:
| There are a lot of J) category content on TikTok. They should
| have just curated and mandated a kid's version
| bawolff wrote:
| Facebook starts a career networking subfeature in 5, 4, 3, 2,
| 1
| hackmiester wrote:
| You can already apply for jobs on Facebook. (J) already
| applies to Facebook.
|
| edit: This is false as of 22 Feb, when Facebook Jobs was
| discontinued. I didn't realize.
| srcreigh wrote:
| This seems like a reasonable list.
|
| I'm not opposed to the idea of whitelisting healthy online
| activities and limiting anything else. They could go further
| and whitelist sites like HN, arch forums etc where it's
| educational
|
| Sibling comment mentioned how group chats aren't exempted.
| I've seen group chats get very unhealthy before. 2 is low,
| maybe 5 or 8 participants max would be ok.
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| I hope you realize that every adult in the state will now
| have to verify their state ID to use an account on
| virtually any website so that the site can prove they're
| only serving adults. These lists of IDs will leak.
| Mezzie wrote:
| I mean when teens/children congregate in large numbers
| anywhere they get unhealthy. Like it or not, the digital
| realm is part of life and they have to learn to handle
| disagreements, toxic people, etc. at some point. If their
| adults won't supervise them/help them, that's on the
| adults. If they _can 't_, then our society needs to start
| educating adults on how to parent in the digital age. But
| that would be slow and cost $$$ and possibly empower the
| populace, so we won't do it.
| noduerme wrote:
| I don't know how to judge a bill, but I read this, and it
| seems that the intent is to broadly ban everything first and
| then carve out exceptions for _almost everything_ except for
| a single category: Direct messaging (^B) between MORE than
| two users for non-creative, non-commercial, non-educational
| purposes.
|
| AKA forums and memes.
|
| Is that a fair analysis?
|
| [edit] : per privacy advocates - no, I don't think it's okay
| to start with a law that bans everything and carve out
| exceptions; obviously, that way lies totalitarianism. I'm
| just trying to get a handle on the immediate intent. There's
| a boolean at work here. I guess someone was like, "hey, why
| chip away at forums and meme sites when we can just ban
| everything in theory, let most of it slide, and work back
| toward totalitarianism from there with the law already in
| place?"
|
| [edit2] HN appears to be totally banhammered under this since
| /the mods/ don't post the news.
| EGreg wrote:
| Seems that forums are exempt, look:
|
| content that is generated by an account holder, or uploaded
| to or shared on the 270 platform by an account holder, that
| may be encountered by another account holder;
| prox wrote:
| We believe something first and then we add our reasoning
| for it. That is what it sounds like. Which seems
| appropriate for a religious state like Utah.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > HN appears to be totally banhammered under this since
| /the mods/ don't post the news.
|
| Does HN have more than 5 million user accounts?
| jandrese wrote:
| I guarantee that there are more than 5 million bot
| accounts alone.
| dahart wrote:
| Ooh I'm curious to hear more. Do you have inside
| knowledge, or see widespread evidence of bots? I've only
| seen perhaps a few here and there, almost always
| downvoted to oblivion.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It's not just bots posting, but other bots upvoting those
| posts. If it can get on the bottom of the front page for
| even 5 minutes, that's probably x > 1000 clicks.
| EGreg wrote:
| What does it matter whether it has more than 5 million
| accounts? Why not 50K accounts?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It matters because that's the cutoff in the law. If you
| want to know why that's the cutoff in the law, that's a
| question for the authors, sponsors, and supporters of the
| law.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Because every law we write is ultimately arbitrary. Lines
| have to be drawn through massive swaths of gray area,
| those lines are entirely arbitrary and should be a sign
| that making laws like this is pointless.
|
| The 90s Era gun ban that Biden was so proud of is a
| perfect example. They had to include so many caveats and
| arbitrary descriptions of what makes a gun an "assault
| rifle" that manufacturers just dodged the rules with
| tweaked rifle designs. Something as small as a thumb hole
| in the grip made a gun legal because of how specific the
| law had to be.
|
| In this case, what stops a social media company from
| coming up with some business model where a child company
| is spun up for every 4.9m users? You could argue its more
| like Mastodon, a decentralized network that just happens
| to use the same proprietary protocol, app, and is owned
| by the same parent Corp.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Marginalium: _Some laws_ are arbitrary, not all. They may
| all be _contingent_ , which is different from arbitrary.
| Ultimately, law is a prudential determination of moral
| principle.
| _heimdall wrote:
| The distinction between arbitrary and contingent is very
| muddy in a legal sense where arbitrary has a specific
| meaning related to laws and court decisions. The two
| relevant definitions of arbitrary are:
|
| > based on or determined by individual preference or
| convenience rather than by necessity or the intrinsic
| nature of something
|
| > law : depending on individual discretion (as of a
| judge) and not fixed by law
|
| A law itself fits the first definition. At best, a law is
| written by a tiny minority of the population but with the
| intent of best reflecting the majority opinion or
| preference.
|
| I'd be really interested to hear an example of a law that
| is based on necessity or intrinsic nature, though maybe
| there are a few!
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arbitrary
| EGreg wrote:
| I meant where does this law mention 5 million ?
| _heimdall wrote:
| Hah, sorry! I misread your question and have been
| thinking a lot about that topics lately!
| xg15 wrote:
| > _(F) interactive gaming, virtual gaming, or an online
| service, that allows the creation and uploading of content
| for the purpose of interactive gaming, edutainment, or
| associated entertainment,_
|
| Doesn't this loophole even defeat their own hidden agenda?
| Almost every online game today features a chat function.
| prox wrote:
| I think Discord even passes that.
| [deleted]
| pyuser583 wrote:
| It seems they're worried about peer to peer interactions.
|
| My experience regulating my daughters internet access is
| that interactions with other kids have the highest
| potential for toxicity.
|
| They seem ok with kids passively consuming a stream of
| adult generated content.
|
| They're also excluding SaaS which just emulates desktop
| software.
|
| I think that's about right.
| EGreg wrote:
| Apparently videoconferencing with kids is AOK while chats
| are not?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Kids can be mean to each other, now or in your day. Next
| they ban kids from talking to each other in person or
| having friends. Is that the life you want for your
| daughter?
| MacsHeadroom wrote:
| Guess we should ban all teens from stack overflow,
| LinkedIn, and hacker news because kids might have toxic
| interactions online if we don't.
|
| Let's also not mention how the only way to reliably do
| this is to require identity verification from all adults.
| Get ready to scan your drivers license to post on hacker
| news and every other site (except traditional news sites
| apparently).
| frob wrote:
| Utah is small enough that some sites may just geoblock
| Utah. I know if I had to choose between collecting every
| user's ID ever and just adding a block list, I'd go with
| the second.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _that there are 20 categories of services exempted shows
| that this is a terrible bill_
|
| This is how privacy died. Someone fought for everything.
| Compromised for everything but twenty. Nobody supported the
| fight.
|
| Then, when the deal was announced, out came the pitchforks
| for perfection.
| quotemstr wrote:
| Doesn't G exempt Instagram? And isn't Instagram allegedly
| among the worst social network for teens?
| hackmiester wrote:
| (J) applies to Facebook as well.
|
| edit: This is false as of 22 Feb, when Facebook Jobs was
| discontinued. I didn't realize.
| 8note wrote:
| If you've got professional contacts on Facebook, or if
| you're following businesses, I think it would count?
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| (G) photo editing that has an associated photo hosting
| service, if the interaction with other users or account
| holders is generally limited to liking or commenting
|
| Does this mean the 2012 version of Instagram is rendered
| immune to this law thanks to this obnoxious Google Photos
| carveout?
| hatsunearu wrote:
| >(F) interactive gaming, virtual gaming, or an online
| service, that allows the creation and uploading of content
| for the purpose of interactive gaming, edutainment, or
| associated entertainment,
|
| So Roblox, arguably quite harmful to children, is
| specifically carved out. That's great.
| okhuman wrote:
| Whats going on at Roblox? Curious, as a parent myself.
| red369 wrote:
| This article and thread lists some of the issues:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32014754
| jb1991 wrote:
| History of adults masquerading as children for purposes
| of pedophilia.
| MomoXenosaga wrote:
| History of adults masquerading as church leaders for
| purposes of pedophilia.
| tstrimple wrote:
| The church is often on their "team" so it gets a pass for
| rampant child abuse. Notice none of the groomer
| allegations are directed at the church despite the church
| abusing exponentially more children than people in drag.
| There is no global drag organization which is protecting
| members found to be abusing children by moving them into
| new areas where people don't know their priest is a
| pedophile the way we see in the church. If the "protect
| children" cries were honest, the churches and clergy
| should be one of the primary targets.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/religion/nearly-1-700-priest
| s-c...
|
| > Nearly 1,700 priests and other clergy members that the
| Roman Catholic Church considers credibly accused of child
| sexual abuse are living under the radar with little to no
| oversight from religious authorities or law enforcement,
| decades after the first wave of the church abuse scandal
| roiled U.S. dioceses, an Associated Press investigation
| has found.
|
| > These priests, deacons, monks and lay people now teach
| middle-school math. They counsel survivors of sexual
| assault. They work as nurses and volunteer at nonprofits
| aimed at helping at-risk kids. They live next to
| playgrounds and daycare centers. They foster and care for
| children.
|
| > And in their time since leaving the church, dozens have
| committed crimes, including sexual assault and possessing
| child pornography, the AP's analysis found.
| bradford wrote:
| Highly addictive to my kids for reasons that I can't
| grok.
|
| Unfettered social interaction with other participants in
| an unmonitored environment that superficially 'looks'
| like a video game. This social interaction leads to
| bullshit purchases. Not purchasing the bullshit leads to
| peer pressure and bullying.
|
| Is it a technical problem? is it lack of content
| moderation? or do social networks that are catered
| towards children simply lead to a toxic environment? I
| can't say if it's more one or the other, which makes it a
| challenge to try and fix.
| _heimdall wrote:
| That sounds a lot like any other childhood in my opinion.
| Sure I wasn't feeling pressured to buy digital assets on
| an online game but I would noticed when half the school
| has the same LL Bean fleece jacket or backpack with their
| initials embroidered on it.
|
| Was there peer pressure and potential for bullying based
| on what others had? Absolutely. Should a state have
| intervened with a required mandatory dress code and
| government-approved backpack? Hell no, there's always
| going to be peer pressure and bullying no matter how
| oppressive laws become.
| genewitch wrote:
| I watch my son play Roblox sometimes. The chat is heavily
| censored.
|
| He also learned most countries, their capitals, and their
| flags. And that was just a few servers with "country
| balls".
|
| I find the YouTube videos involving those far more
| insidious, because children don't really understand
| biting sarcasm and satire as well as adults, and I'll
| often make him switch videos.
|
| But I haven't noticed anything necessarily harmful about
| Roblox.
|
| Then again, don't they make like a billion dollars a
| year?
|
| I'm more upset that they screw content creators so badly
| that the "bullying and peer pressure" seems to be
| necessary.
|
| Roblox is one of those things that seems impossible on a
| technical level. And with a billion dollars, they could
| hire social workers, moderators, etc.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| But have you actually played Roblox? It's absolute toxic
| trash.
|
| Almost every single game is a front for purchases, and
| those that aren't are barely games at all. Many Minecraft
| mods are one time purchases that are way, way better than
| anything Roblox produces, but Minecraft is so buggy that
| it's truly not suitable for kids, or anyone for that
| matter. Minecraft will continuously corrupt saves, so you
| need to fully reinstall the game, and log out of your
| Xbox/MS account and fail to authorize.
|
| I grew up on counterstrike and StarCraft mods, and there
| is nothing available today that fills the same role. I've
| played chess implemented in StarCraft, DOTA before it was
| standalone, and zombies maps that wouldn't be brought to
| other shooters for years ahead of time.
|
| My kids aren't allowed to play games I wouldn't play. The
| list of actual-games-that-arent-ads is huge, and there is
| no need to let in Roblox.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Sure sounds like a game that will suck and go unplayed if
| kids just aren't allowed to click the buy button.
| Children don't have to have access to spend money online
| and a parent is well within their right already to not
| add a credit card.
|
| That one change would make Robolox a terrible game based
| on how you described it. Isn't that problem solved
| without the need for a complex law full of arbitrary
| definitions and one-off carve outs?
| 7sidedmarble wrote:
| >Minecraft is so buggy that it's truly not suitable for
| kids,
|
| >My kids aren't allowed to play games I wouldn't play.
|
| Nothing says 'hacker mindset' like your parents deciding
| for you what games you should and shouldn't like.
| newjersey wrote:
| This is such a difficult topic. On one hand I want to
| give the next generation the same freedoms that I enjoyed
| but on the other hand the "game" has gotten more...
| everything. Even adults can't avoid falling for these
| traps. I've seen with my own eyes someone justifying
| spending USD 90+ on candy crush saying it isn't that much
| compared to bla bla.
|
| It is a frightening thought though to think -- am I more
| conservative than my parents?
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I'm certainly not. Though i have different conservations
| in different directions than they could've ever dreamed
| possible, i doubt that adds up to anywhere near the real
| conservatism of watching Bill O'Reilly or god forbid
| Tucker Carlson every night
| stametseater wrote:
| > _Many Minecraft mods are one time purchases_
|
| > _Minecraft is so buggy that it's truly not suitable for
| kids, or anyone for that matter._
|
| > _Minecraft will continuously corrupt saves you need to
| fully reinstall the game_
|
| I don't recognize the game you are describing. I've never
| heard of a paid minecraft mod, they're all free. Buggy?
| It has some odd in-game behavior that you could
| reasonably call bugs, but the only crashes I've ever
| gotten were during modding, caused by incompatible or low
| quality mods. Corrupting saves? I've never experienced
| it, nor can I imagine how a corrupted save would be
| addressed by reinstalling the game. What is the supposed
| connection between a save file being corrupted and
| needing to reinstall the entire game?
|
| You've obviously got some strange prejudices about this
| game which simply don't resemble reality.
| watwut wrote:
| My kids never paid anything on roblox. Also, the bullying
| you describe sounds like issue with real world bullies in
| group ofnkids your kids know personally. That sux and is
| hard to fix, but blaming roblox is weird. I would blame
| those kids parents.
| 8note wrote:
| Roblox is neopets afaict
|
| There's a game engine/a large variety of games combined
| with a common community. The games can be silly, but
| they're silly with other people who recognize they're
| silly, and others who aren't in on the joke yet
| crooked-v wrote:
| Basically every negative aspect of modern gaming at once.
| Loot boxes, exploitative use of user-created content,
| unmoderated interaction between adults and children,
| free-to-play treadmilling to peer pressure children into
| spending money, etc etc.
| [deleted]
| shagie wrote:
| People Make Games is one of the YouTube channels that I
| respect in this domain...
|
| Investigation: How Roblox Is Exploiting Young Game
| Developers - https://youtu.be/_gXlauRB1EQ
|
| Roblox Pressured Us to Delete Our Video. So We Dug
| Deeper. - https://youtu.be/vTMF6xEiAaY
| melagonster wrote:
| Isaw twice similar comments but I didn't spend time to
| found it :/
| ssalka wrote:
| Twitch as well
| okhuman wrote:
| Twitch's gambling phase was brutal and no doubt harmful.
| frob wrote:
| And (T) is a carve-out for the genealogy industry run by the
| Morman church
| Brybry wrote:
| Texas had to do similar exclusions for their "anti-
| censorship" anti-moderation bill. [1][2]
|
| [1] https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/872/billtext/html/HB000
| 20F...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_House_Bill_20
| _heimdall wrote:
| The list of bills that don't require long lists of
| arbitrary definitions and exceptions is ridiculously small.
|
| Making laws that cover millions of people is way too
| complex for something so detailed. There's no way around
| that complexity leading to a pile of garbage legal mumbo-
| jumbo as they realize it's nearly impossible to draw a neat
| line around the problem.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nodemaker wrote:
| There is a point to be made that anything coming from Meta is
| just designed by its makers to destroy your mental health for
| ad clicks. Other companies do not have such toxic business
| model even Tiktok.
| MBCook wrote:
| Just more of the unintended consequences we all know will come
| from this.
| falcolas wrote:
| Given how the government reps talked (hah) to the TikTok CEO,
| and some of the speeches leading up to that farce, I'm pretty
| convinced it's entirely intentional.
|
| It gives power and eyeballs back to the entrenched
| traditional media moguls.
| Spivak wrote:
| There won't be any. Look, it's fun to imagine these shitty
| lawmakers getting bit by their own laws applied to the letter
| but that's not how it will go. The law will only ever be
| enforced against social media platforms they see as
| threatening their ability to shelter their kids.
|
| I think it says a lot about any politician that pushes for
| laws that are meant to be selectively enforced.
| falcolas wrote:
| It's not the lawmakers who will be bit, that's true. It's
| any company, and their users who are targeted by an
| incensed enough Karen.
|
| Picture a GitHub.io site that hosts images of nude art.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Look, it's fun to imagine these shitty lawmakers getting
| bit by their own laws applied to the letter but that's not
| how it will go. The law will only ever be enforced against
| social media platforms they see as threatening their
| ability to shelter their kids.
|
| It'll be enforced against whoever individual citizens
| decide to enforce it against; its a purely private right of
| action.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Ah, that's the carveout against the 1st amendment.
|
| Conservatives have discovered that the constitution only
| binds the _state_ , so if they delegate enforcement to
| private lawsuits they can completely bypass protections.
|
| Edit: see https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/texas-
| bounty-hunter-drag... and
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-abortion-law-bounty-
| hunte...
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| I don't understand how any court allows this
| interpretation to exist. If a state deputizes a person to
| act against the rights of others, that person is acting
| as the state, and should be bound as the state is bound.
| Otherwise the state can abrogate all limitations on its
| powers by deputizing people or companies.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Oddly enough, 4chan is not part of that definition.
|
| There's an edgy 12 year old somewhere in my head cackling and
| gleefully shouting 'Let the good times roll!'
| kyleblarson wrote:
| If the US government had control of an app in China or Russia
| used by tens of millions of impressionable young people do any of
| you really think they would not take advantage of that to tip the
| scales and slowly affect political opinions and other outcomes?
| hackernewds wrote:
| How is that relevant to the Utah declaration?
| bananapub wrote:
| this is a crappy headline.
|
| by trying to put some age limit on things, they're forcing
| _absolutely everyone to give up their identity_ to the government
| / sites.
| MBCook wrote:
| Unfortunately that is the most reliable form of age
| verification we have: government ID cards.
|
| If this is 100% true in its face it would look identical to if
| it was a scheme to de-anonymize people.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| And all of the security is in the physical card manufacturing
| itself. Uploading a photo of a card is trivial to photoshop
| and requires no hardware at all.
| ars wrote:
| And is that bad or something? If you want to use a harmful
| product (and make no mistake social apps are harmful), then
| being careful about who is using it is a good idea.
| dannyw wrote:
| This law affects GitHub. You shouldn't be able to upload code
| or submit a pull request anonymously?
| ars wrote:
| GitHub knowing who you are does not prevent you from being
| anonymous to the rest of the world.
| tzs wrote:
| It's not hard to design age verification to avoid that. Briefly
| you have age verification done by sites that already have to
| have your identity or that you trust giving your ID to, and
| then provide a protocol that lets you use the verification from
| them with other sites.
|
| With a little modern cryptography you can make this protocol so
| that the age verifier gets no information about what sites you
| are using the age verification with, and the other sites gets
| nothing that ties the identity used with the age verifier site
| to the identity you are at the other site.
| jquery wrote:
| This bill is draconian BS. Goodbye anonymity. "For the children"
| is always used to pass the worst crap. This bill doesn't do
| anything to help children, it only increases power for power-
| tripping parents by making it so that their kids have no privacy,
| even as teenagers. Imagine being an LGBT teen in Utah right now.
|
| If they really cared about mental health, there's so many things
| they could do... but instead, they did... whatever this is. This
| is the same state that wants to ban pornography on mobile devices
| "for the children", so excuse me if I don't trust their motives
| one whit.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Sure, let's blame social media for the troubles of our youth.
|
| It's not the endless wars.
|
| It's not the endless poverty.
|
| It's not the endless divisiveness.
|
| It's not the endless media fearmongering of X or Y.
|
| It's TikTok. It's Instagram. Etc.
| stametseater wrote:
| Endless wars...
|
| The children of North America have by in large not experienced
| war themselves in well over a century, with cartel violence
| being the standout counterexample _of sorts_. More lost parents
| to wars, but the Vietnam War was now a few generations ago and
| the "wars on terror" effected only tens thousands of North
| American families in this way, counting all casualties not just
| fatalities. Tens of thousands sounds like a lot but this
| country has hundreds of millions of people, so you can hardly
| explain broad social trends with this.
|
| So how else might wars be effecting children in North America?
| Well for one, children may become depressed after watching tons
| of graphic foreign war footage online... on social media.....
| prawn wrote:
| Is this a bit like "what about all the other cancers?!" in a
| discussion about breast cancer? It's not as though this
| prevents action/attention for poverty or other issues. It's one
| tack of many, whether you agree or not with the plan itself.
| docandrew wrote:
| We've always had endless wars, endless poverty, endless
| divisiveness, endless media fearmongering, etc. Those things
| have all been much worse in the past than they are today (maybe
| not the media fearmongering). But youth (and adults too)
| weren't exposed to it every waking minute of their day the way
| they are today.
| 1over137 wrote:
| Good points. But 3 and 4 are partly caused by social media I
| think.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| They existed prior and yes have been elevated since SM. Not
| necessarily because of SM, but because SM can take the blame
| while those who drive the wedge get a free pass.
| MBCook wrote:
| They did it plenty before social media. That just accelerated
| the spread of individual stories.
| stametseater wrote:
| Mass media did it from the start, but was less effective
| because they were trying to create "one size fits all"
| narratives that could reach and influence very large
| portions of the population. Recommendation engines tuned to
| the individual changed the game dramatically. They can lead
| people down rabbit holes that the other people in their
| life don't even know to exist. At least when the town
| newspaper or local church starts shilling some truly wacky
| shit, everybody in town knows about it. But now youtube/etc
| personalized recommendation engines can send your brother
| or father down radicalization paths you never even heard of
| before and had no possible way of noticing before the
| damage was done.
|
| If you think _" Oh I'll just watch youtube to get an idea
| of what other people are watching"_, you're stuck in 20th
| century thinking. It doesn't work like that anymore,
| youtube/etc are fundamentally unlike old media. These
| systems have atomized society in a way that newspapers
| never could.
| jmathai wrote:
| As a parent, restricting social media is one of the most
| effective tools I think we have to promote well being. The
| things you mentioned are also problematic but I can limit
| social media access and when I do my kids are better off.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| My point is, blaming SM and only SM is a (false)
| oversimplification. There are systematic societal issues
| getting a free pass because of our collective willingness to
| buy into a distraction that the cause is SM.
|
| Just because adults have normalized the baggage of negativity
| and lack of progress doesn't mean the kids aren't feeling
| beyond the lies. FFS, any reasonable adult should be feeling
| pain and distraught at this point.
|
| p.s. I forgot to mention climate change / environmental
| damage. Imagine being young and thinking "someday this shit-
| show will be mine." It's foolish and naive to blame SM for
| this.
| jmathai wrote:
| I agree SM isn't the only issue.
|
| But I also don't think my teenagers are nearly as concerned
| about climate change and the world they are inheriting as
| they are living up to the life social media says they
| should have and feeling inadequate being unable to attain
| it.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Isn't this similar to a law that Florida passed? That got
| overturned and I don't see how they could ever enforce this.
| StrangeATractor wrote:
| Sounds like they're incentivizing kids to learn about networking
| to get around this.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Laws can't and shouldn't substitute good parenting.
|
| Laws of this kind only make it worse for everyone and teen who
| knows a bit will find ways to bypass them.
|
| It's a bad slippery slope to even more government overreach in
| what was once, an avenue for democratisation of the conversation
| and freedom: the internet.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| YouTube has content filtering for kids which parents could
| never mimic. App level moderation just cannot be achieved by a
| parent.
|
| These social media companies have a direct relationship with
| their users, many of which are kids. They need to serve their
| child users appropriate content, and in an appropriate manner.
|
| Furthermore, there is nothing in this bill that stops parents
| from parenting.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Good. I really wish we changed the "privacy age" from 13 to 18.
| nodemaker wrote:
| As a tech pioneer and also an otherwise liberal person, I welcome
| this move. The company called Meta is doing extreme damage to
| society and needs to be stopped at all costs.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| > needs to be stopped at all costs.
|
| I can think of a few prices I wouldn't be willing to pay. This
| bill is one of them.
| nodemaker wrote:
| Wait till you have kids who get their lives destroyed by Meta
| products.
| thrwawy74 wrote:
| So this is like... let's introduce these concepts at a certain
| age level ("think of the kids") to normalize control over a
| population, eventually expanding it to undesirables? This is
| dangerous. Just like the groomers thing. The best thing about the
| internet has been unadulterated, unrestricted access to
| information. Parents should be more involved with what their kids
| are seeing, but kids seeing anything (from neopets to al'queda
| beheadings) are what has created some seriously talented and
| informed people. We need outliers and deviants, not curfew-ed
| lambs.
|
| They've had so much success with "groomers" in other states.
| They're trying to "protect" more young kids now.
| eldritch_4ier wrote:
| "Restricting the firehose of content driving mass upticks in
| childhood suicide rates, obesity, porn usage, and mental health
| issues - this is dangerous!".
| tiedieconderoga wrote:
| Interesting analogy.
|
| Have you ever tried to squeeze a firehose shut without
| turning off the water first?
| SpaceL10n wrote:
| "Restricting the firehose of content driving mass upticks in
| Atheism - this is dangerous!".
| ipnon wrote:
| They will not be the last. There is a lot of political capital
| being spent in this area, both because it improves health
| outcomes for young people, and because whatever negative side
| effects might arise will largely be borne by California and the
| larger tech industry alone. Big Tech is not seen as an ally in
| many state capitals.
| doublejosh wrote:
| If only we could get states to increase the age of consent.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_...
| paxys wrote:
| Whether this is a reasonable law or not, my big problem with it
| is that it puts the burden of enforcement on tech platforms
| rather than the kids' parents. There is no way for any company to
| check for something like this without also affecting every other
| user of the site, whether they are in Utah or not and whether
| they are a teen or not. What do they do exactly, start collecting
| government IDs from us before every visit?
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I would say that anonymity on social media currently has a
| serious, real-world price to pay. Teen girls and Instagram
| don't mix - the numbers reporting depression and suicidal
| thoughts since it took off is heartbreaking.
|
| They made us wear masks due to a threat to our physical health.
| Social media is currently having extremely acute effects on the
| mental health of a generation. It may have reached the point
| that losing anonymity and requiring ID is better than suicides
| and depression. At this point, if you look at the numbers, it's
| like claiming the government is infringing your rights to buy
| alcohol anonymously. We should stop pretending that mental
| health damage is of lower priority than physical health.
|
| (And don't get me started about the parents - outside of SV,
| only a few percent even know parental controls exist, let alone
| how to use them effectively without loopholes.)
| monksy wrote:
| > Teen girls and Instagram don't mix - the numbers reporting
| depression and suicidal thoughts since it took off is
| heartbreaking.
|
| This has been a claim for a long time. Esp with self esteem
| and teen mags or the beauty industry. Unfortunately, social
| media is the greatest prison people created for themself.
|
| > losing anonymity and requiring ID is better than suicides
| and depression
|
| Mr gjsman-1000, is this a reasonable claim? SM that advocates
| free discussion in a mostly anonymous forum [HN].. is that
| causing the issue that we're discussing? [My stance is
| engagement oriented industries are causing this at the
| benefit of profit]
|
| > outside of SV, only a few percent even know parental
| controls exist, let alone how to use them effectively without
| loopholes.
|
| This sounds like a great acknowledgement of a problem that
| can be fixed.
| prawn wrote:
| Is anonymity the key issue for your example of Instagram and
| teen girls? I'd guess that a lot of the pressures come from
| their peers and professional users who are quite openly using
| their own identity.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Cyberstalkers use phony IDs. Consider the case of the
| mother who harassed her own daughter last year.
| watwut wrote:
| > Teen girls and Instagram don't mix - the numbers reporting
| depression and suicidal thoughts since it took off is
| heartbreaking.
|
| Funny how people care about youth suicide only when it is
| about making controlling laws they want.
|
| Somehow, there is zero interest in teen girls as persons -
| all I see on HN is tons of contempt towards them, again and
| again. Somehow, boys suicides dont matter at all despite
| being higher. Somehow, boys mental health issues matter only
| when you can use it as talking point against feminists (boys
| are depressed? must be because girls are allowed to refuse
| the sex).
|
| Stop pretending you heart is breaking.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I would say that anonymity on social media currently has a
| serious, real-world price to pay. Teen girls and Instagram
| don't mix - the numbers reporting depression and suicidal
| thoughts since it took off is heartbreaking._
|
| I wouldn't say that anonymity is the problem here, but rather
| that social media sites are crafted to abuse the psychology
| of their users for attention, engagement, ad impressions etc.
|
| It isn't a given that social media has to make teens
| depressed. If the psychologists and researchers that are
| hired by these companies to hone in on engagement were
| instead were paid to make their platforms less
| psychologically harmful, we could see better results. Hell,
| platforms have the potential to improve people's lives if
| they were optimized for those outcomes. Civil and criminal
| liability could be introduced to social media operators to
| ensure that their products aren't causing harm, as well.
|
| Incentives to achieve those results can come from legislation
| and the judicial system.
| monksy wrote:
| In my reply the poster, I did directly point out that we're
| using a mostly anonymous platform to discuss this issue.
| However, I agree with you.. it's about how the platform
| encourages or ignores bad outcomes.
| taylodl wrote:
| Call their bluff - don't make your service available in Utah.
| bdw5204 wrote:
| The solution is actually simpler than that. Just shut down
| any company operations in Utah, refuse to accept any payments
| from users with Utah addresses and require all of your
| employees that are located in Utah to relocate. But people in
| Utah can continue using the service.
|
| It's also quite possible that this law gets thrown out as
| unconstitutional by the federal courts since it seems similar
| to the California video game censorship law from Brown v.
| EMA.
| dumbotron wrote:
| Remember the time Facebook blocked news in Australia?
| jfengel wrote:
| That is the goal. It's not a bluff. The kids are just an
| excuse.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Or be a company based outside the US. "Your laws, your
| problem: my government doesn't care"
| kerpotgh wrote:
| [dead]
| ars wrote:
| That would be nice wouldn't it - mental health would improve
| so much.
| MBCook wrote:
| There are plenty of people it would help. But there are
| likely quite a few it would really hurt, losing access to
| distant family or support.
| ars wrote:
| It's only social networks at question. Direct messages to
| people would not be changed.
| MBCook wrote:
| Honestly this seems like the best idea. You can't get accused
| of letting a kid access outside approved hours if you don't
| allow people in Utah on.
|
| What about adults? They may be lying kids. So either no
| access (safer) or strict age checks involving checking
| licenses and stuff. But that's expensive. No Utah is easier.
|
| How do you know they're in Utah? IP addresses. Blocks people
| outside Utah? Sorry, our lawyers made us do this. Complain to
| _your_ reps that Utah is messing with your state's citizens.
| VPNs? Maybe gotta block that too.
|
| Utah is not a big state. The social networks could easily use
| this to try to "teach a lesson". Just say you'll let Utahans
| back in when their government makes a foolproof age
| verification system.
|
| And wait.
|
| I don't necessarily disagree with the intent of the law, it
| just seems unenforceable/unimplementable, as usual. No
| benefit to the social networks but huge legal downsides.
| chudmeister wrote:
| [dead]
| ajhurliman wrote:
| I'm sure you're writing all of this in a "yeah, that'll
| teach em" voice, but this all sounds amazing. Please, let
| social media block everyone, become irrelevant, then bring
| back the old internet.
| MBCook wrote:
| I expect if it were to happen there would be a very large
| outcry (in Utah at a minimum) and the law would be
| changed/repealed quickly.
|
| It would be a VERY interesting natural experiment if it
| stayed in effect. People would find ways back on, but not
| everyone would be willing to go through the hoops. What
| would that do in even a month or two?
| christophilus wrote:
| I suspect it would improve things drastically in Utah.
| That's what I'd bet on, anyway. I'm a libertarianish
| person, so I don't love this legislation, but... I'm not
| gonna lie. It half makes me want to move to Utah.
| bawolff wrote:
| Wouldn't web forums, usenet, etc all be considered social
| media under this bill?
| t-writescode wrote:
| While you may not like the current method of
| communication and congregation, you must understand _why_
| we have the first amendment, right? Congregating together
| and discussing ideas of (nearly) any sort is an
| absolutely vital part of democracy and a free society
| raincole wrote:
| People (like the one above you) don't care about the
| first amendment as long as their favorite things aren't
| affected.
|
| ...and that's why the first amendment exists.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| They're excited about the idea of those sites blocking
| users _in general_. It 's not really a first amendment
| thing. That comment isn't focused on the broader context.
| ajhurliman wrote:
| I'm sure someone else will cook up a new way to talk to
| people online after we've all decided the current one
| needs to go; nature hates a vacuum. The current
| manifestation is not helping anyone though.
| meghan_rain wrote:
| Lmao imagine Utah becoming the most mentally healthy region
| on earth, suicide rates plummeting, productivity up 300%,
| people spending time with parents and grandparents again?
| record sign ups in sports clubs, record birth rates etc.
|
| Be careful what you wish for ;-)
| paxys wrote:
| If the state has total control over every aspect of their
| citizens' lives they can model the population into any
| perfect utopia they desire. I'd still not like to live in
| that world.
| eru wrote:
| > If the state has total control over every aspect of
| their citizens' lives they can model the population into
| any perfect utopia they desire.
|
| That has never worked before. I don't think it'll work in
| the future.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Isn't this the opposite though? They're not telling
| people how to live their lives. They're taking away the
| power Facebook has over many people's lives so people
| might enjoy their lives in more social and healthy ways
| again.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Isn 't this the opposite though? They're not telling
| people how to live their lives._
|
| Is this not _exactly_ them telling people how to live
| their lives? "Live offline."
| barbazoo wrote:
| Not offline, just not using social networks. Same way
| kids can drink juice, water and pop but not alcohol.
| Should kids be allowed to drink alcohol or smoke? Again,
| if I see this as a public health measure I think it makes
| sense.
| staunton wrote:
| "any legislation restricting behavior actually frees
| people to do what they always wanted (the government
| knows best what that is) but just couldn't because of all
| these other possibilities misguiding them"
| throwaway290 wrote:
| "there should be no laws against tobacco, alcohol, drug
| abuse, gambling because people can't possibly be
| misguided by powerful corporate interests for profit or
| otherwise"
| staunton wrote:
| That's not what I said. There is a balance to be found. I
| only objected to "this restriction actually makes
| everyone free (to do what I think they should)" being
| used as an argument. If enough people agree, sure, you
| can ban social media. The reasoning should be a cost
| benefit analysis though, not "my laws shall make you
| free".
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Yes, balance is important. I guess if the law is passed
| then enough people agree...
| MBCook wrote:
| They're also taking away the support some marginalized
| people may get from social networks (eg LGBT, uncommon
| religions for the area) that their local community
| doesn't provide/discriminates against/their parents hate.
|
| Social networks, for all their faults, are not pure evil.
| They _can_ be beneficial for _some_ people.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Do you think one would have to be on a network with at
| least 5 million users to get this sort of support as
| opposed to a smaller one, perhaps specifically oriented
| towards this sort of stuff? The latter is as legal as
| before I think.
| MBCook wrote:
| If you join the GaySupportForum, it's really obvious why.
| That could be problematic or even dangerous for someone.
|
| If you join Facebook, it doesn't signal anything because
| everyone is on Facebook. Or Instagram. Or TikTok. Or any
| of the other called out platforms.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| I said "perhaps". Just join a social network with less
| than 5m users without "gay" in its name then. This
| attitude of trying to help a monopoly and pretend it's
| good just baffles me.
| vxNsr wrote:
| And your argument is that you're ok with the general harm
| these cause to most people for the marginal possible
| benefit for a very small minority.
|
| Notwithstanding the fact that many so-called marginalized
| minorities are also terribly bullied online.
| MBCook wrote:
| I'm not trying to advocate either way, just pointing out
| it's not as clear cut as some people in these comments
| act like it is.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Are you referring to China or USSR by chance? Hardly
| utopias.
|
| It's not about every aspect of life but a few key norms.
| I see this predatory social media like gambling if not
| worse, and gambling is regulated in most places
| syklep wrote:
| Software Developer is the most common job in Utah, it's kind
| of surprising this happened despite that.
| Jensson wrote:
| Software developers are more anti tech than most.
| monksy wrote:
| It's not surprising at all for Utah. That is a highly
| Mormon run state that has strong stances on how you should
| live your life. Even if you are a "goi" (I use the word
| loosely to illustrate the cultural metaphor in a us v them
| mentality) to them.
|
| What is amazing is that they have this strong stance on how
| to restrictively govern the people inside their borders,
| but yet expect to have a western lifestyle support them.
| More organizations should stand up and say "I'll pass" in a
| blanket ban on them.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| smooth_remmy wrote:
| > That is a highly Mormon run state that has strong
| stances on how you should live your life. Even if you are
| a "goi" (I use the word loosely to illustrate the
| cultural metaphor in a us v them mentality) to them.
|
| I think you're crossing a line here. You are accusing the
| Mormons in Utah of having a us-versus-them mentality. But
| your own comment tries to turn readers against Mormons.
|
| Never forget: The Missouri Executive Order 44, also known
| as the Mormon Extermination Order, was issued on October
| 27, 1838, by Governor Lilburn Boggs. The order authorized
| the expulsion of Mormons from the state and is sometimes
| referred to as the "Mormon Kill Law". However, the order
| was rescinded by Governor Christopher S. "Kit" Bond in
| 1976.
|
| I think we should all be more charitable to Mormons after
| what they've been through.
| kyledrake wrote:
| That was 185 years ago, how charitable have Utah mormons
| been this year to the LGBT community? The unspoken
| intentions of this bill given the state's recent
| legislative priorities are absolutely horrifying and far
| more deserving of criticism and deep skepticism than
| charity.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/8:_The_Mormon_Proposition
| chudmeister wrote:
| [dead]
| kortilla wrote:
| Being through some shit isn't a reason to alienate
| everyone else though.
| taurawah wrote:
| Yeah because the Mountain Meadows Massacre 19 years later
| wasn't an us vs them mentality or anything
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Mormonism was persecuted because it was a sex cult and it
| refused to follow American law.
| yeahsure22 wrote:
| [dead]
| ryankshaw wrote:
| I live in Utah. If that's what happens, that would be
| awesome! "Sorry kids, no fb/tiktok/insta and there's nothing
| I can do about it. None of them work where we live"
|
| Would be a huge win for all parents. No social media, and we
| don't have to be the bad guys taking it away.
| readams wrote:
| Hacker News would fit the definition also
| arpowers wrote:
| Ya would be awesome
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I don't know how I feel about living in Utah if I couldn't
| use GitHub, YouTube, stack overflow, most blogs, or any of
| the dozens of websites I enjoy.
|
| I lived there for a few years in college and while I'm
| somewhat surprised the law passed, I'm not that surprised.
| sbrother wrote:
| Another Utahn here and I feel the same. I don't really see
| how this could work and think it will probably go away
| quietly, but I'd kind of love it if these platforms (and
| the social pressure our kids feel to be on them) just went
| away.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Is love to see Instagram, etc, replaced with a static
| site in Utah asking people to vote for better leaders.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| Also, no Reddit, no Discord, no forums and no Hacker News.
|
| Paradoxically, TikTok and Instagram could pass in a limited
| form. What is targeted is communication between people,
| mindless consumption is fine by that law.
| judge2020 wrote:
| From other comments, it seems the definition is not "what
| you assume is a social media app" but "any service with
| over 5 million users that facilitates chat via posts". I am
| 99% certain this includes Hacker News, Steam, probably also
| bugs.chromium.org and bugzilla.mozilla.org, and maybe even
| any website that allows user comments if they happen to
| have over 5 million users.
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > From other comments, it seems the definition is not
| "what you assume is a social media app" but "any service
| with over 5 million users that facilitates chat via
| posts".
|
| It's baffling to read all the HN comments encouraging
| draconian restrictions and forced PII collection on
| websites, all with the assumption that it will only apply
| to _websites I don 't like_.
|
| Laws like this, if enforced, would make a lot of the
| sites you use on a daily basis require strict ID
| verification. Are you really ready to be doing the ID
| verification dance with GitHub, Reddit, Hacker News and
| every other big site on the internet just to post?
|
| Of course not. You're going to sign up for a VPN and use
| it, just like all of the 17 year old kids who just want
| to use the internet like normal people.
| throwawaysleep wrote:
| I support it because I want to see the Silicon Slopes
| destroyed and young people abandoning Utah.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I welcome it. Breaking the way the internet is used these
| days would be a huge win for society as a whole no matter
| how painful it might look at first.
| hooverd wrote:
| You want full corporate control and mandatory remote
| attestation on your devices to comply with these laws?
| FredPret wrote:
| Some people love being controlled
| vxNsr wrote:
| I don't think that's where this goes. I think this leads
| to less internet use in general. Just like when Apple
| broke Facebook's mobile tracking the ad dollars dried up
| and forced Facebook to scramble to find a new tracking
| mechanism which most agree is subpar and thus that
| revenue hasn't returned. I'm hopeful that people spend
| less time in anonymized spaces that aren't conducive to
| healthy discussion and relationships and instead seek out
| each other in real life.
| lucaspfeifer wrote:
| There are benefits to reducing anonymity: accountability,
| trust, relationships, etc. It's why humans evolved to
| recognize faces so well. We decide who to trust based on
| experience. It doesn't matter who controls the
| identification process, so long as its done fairly. And
| if corporations or government misuse identification for
| self-serving purposes, we should certainly push back.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _And if corporations or government misuse
| identification for self-serving purposes, we should
| certainly push back._
|
| The time to push back is _now_ , before we give them this
| power.
| data_maan wrote:
| There are also downsides to reducing anonymity - many
| more than benefits.
| swexbe wrote:
| Like what?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| Two off the top of my head:
|
| - Chilling effect on political discussions. Good luck
| campaigning to overturn these laws if you can't do so
| without fear of reprisal from government officials or
| your local community.
|
| - Limiting the ability for marginalized groups to seek
| support; LGBTQ youth, ex-mormons, etc., would be directly
| harmed by this.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Why would your local community attack you for campaigning
| for anonymity?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It doesn't necessarily have to be these laws, it could be
| anything, but to answer your question - they might paint
| me as somehow being "against the children", having bought
| in to the angle that these laws make children safer.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Just curious is the any different from what happens right
| now, when someone campaigns against something you
| disagree with? If someone online, pseudo-anonymously
| posts something that is perceived to be against trans
| rights or pro-life, there is already a mob of people
| working to de-anonymize and punish them for their wrong-
| think. How is it any different or better to have the
| current system?
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _Just curious is the any different from what happens
| right now_
|
| Because right now you _can_ be anonymous /pseudonymous?
| Of course people will try to unmask you, but I'm
| contrasting it in a world where you can't even attempt
| it.
| vxNsr wrote:
| But what's the benefit if any time you actually espouse
| an unpopular opinion you will be unmasked.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| The sponsors of this bill are likely less worried about
| the 17yr olds who can hack around the restrictions.
| They're more worried about 12 and 13yr olds who are
| attempting suicide and experiencing mental health crises
| at a rate that far exceeds any previous time.
| hra5th wrote:
| I would be surprised if bugzilla.mozzila.org has over 5
| million users
| prh8 wrote:
| So kids are just going to replace all of that with more
| porn? Utah is already the biggest consumer of it
| seandoe wrote:
| Utahn with two young kids, yes please!!
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| But that's not what would happen:
|
| > _Utah has become the first US state to require social
| media firms get parental consent for children to use their
| apps and verify users are at least 18._
|
| > _The bills also impose a social media curfew that blocks
| children 's access between 22:30 and 06:30, unless adjusted
| by their parents._
|
| So there would very much be something you could do about
| it, and your kids would find out.
|
| You're still the quote-unquote bad guys. You still have to,
| gasp, parent.
| vasco wrote:
| > we don't have to be the bad guys taking it away
|
| You not wanting to explain something to your kids and
| enforce limits based on said explanations isn't a reason to
| make a law.
| sircastor wrote:
| It's a narrow win. If people can't post to their sites,
| they're going to start thinking about going to Colorado
| rather than Utah for their skiing. The so-called "Silicon
| slopes" are going to thin out as large companies question
| what the legislature is going to arbitrarily decide to
| screw with next. Tourism dollars and high tech jobs are a
| hefty price.
|
| As an aside, I lived in Utah for many years and I generally
| thought people preferred to not have the government
| dictating what was allowed and not allowed.
| throwaway-blaze wrote:
| Willing to bet most of the Utahns you lived around are
| more worried about the impact of these services on their
| kids than on government overreach. They can't figure out
| a non-governmental way to fix the issue.
| fludlight wrote:
| You realize these companies will quiet-fire all employees
| residing in Utah and never hire there again? That this will
| place massive negative pressure on all software salaries in
| Utah? Possibly on all software salaries outside of deep
| blue states?
| veec_cas_tant wrote:
| Hopefully this is hyperbole. Seems a bit extreme to hope
| the government legislates away industries because you don't
| want to handle the parenting yourself.
| arpowers wrote:
| Social media, crypto, gambling and the cigarette
| industries should be legislated away. Yes.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Social media, crypto, gambling and the cigarette
| industries should be legislated away. Yes.
|
| Ironically posted on a social media site (Hacker News has
| the characteristics of "Social Media Site" under this
| definition).
|
| Reddit would also be gone.
|
| It's funny to read all the comments from people who think
| "social media" just means "sites I don't like"
| chudmeister wrote:
| [dead]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >Reddit would also be gone.
|
| Don't threaten me with a good time.
| mvnuweucxqokii wrote:
| I'm always very unimpressed by this kind of
| argumentation. There's a clear difference in kind between
| Hackernews, Reddit, Instagram, and TikTok. Sure, they all
| feature user-submitted content, but to pretend that there
| is any meaningful similarity beyond that seems silly.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| In the eyes of the law, they are essentially the same.
| komali2 wrote:
| > There's a clear difference in kind
|
| Is there? Is there to your 80 year old senator and their
| constituents that think the internet is a series of
| tubes. You know, the constituents that actually vote?
|
| Does it matter how well you explain it anyway? Modern
| political language lacks definition by design. Do street
| interviews and ask Americans what socialism is. Then ask
| them what they'd call the government giving banks money.
| Then ask them how many times in the last 20 years the
| government has given banks money.
|
| My argument is that we should just not let the
| governments pass these kinds of laws because it opens the
| door to using these laws to arbitrarily block whatever
| website they can vaguely hand wave as "social media" or
| whatever they pick.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I'm always very unimpressed by people who believe that
| politicians have the intellectual capacity to
| differentiate between HN and Reddit.
|
| They don't, especially when they're throwing their weight
| around after screaming about internet boogeymen for
| years.
|
| Go watch the Tiktok hearings. They were losing their
| minds because filters could track your eyes and your cell
| phone could use the internal wifi network in order to
| access the internet.
| acover wrote:
| You have to show id to buy cigarettes. How hard is it to
| id people before account creation?
| veec_cas_tant wrote:
| The quote was "Call their bluff - don't make your service
| available in Utah.", it didn't mention ID.
| Aachen wrote:
| You can ban social media as a parent today and damage
| your child's social life.
|
| If it's banned for every child equally, they will have to
| meet up irl or call each other like in the 80s or
| whatever. Whatever the alternative, it shifts the dynamic
| and doesn't isolate your child.
|
| Regulations for kids is not simply about bad parenting
| but can be about prisoner's dilemma-like situations where
| everyone needs to work together for a good outcome and,
| unless a decent percentage gets on board at more or less
| the same time, it's counterproductive for individuals.
| tstrimple wrote:
| We should also enforce strict school dress codes so
| students don't have to see other students wearing new
| shoes and feel pressured to update their wardrobe right?
| Kids shouldn't be able to talk about family vacations
| because it might make other students jealous and hurt
| their mental health. We need to ban these books because
| it might make kids feel bad about themselves. Where do
| these ridiculous steps end?
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I would love it if you would state what you think the
| viewpoint opposite yours is and then try to defend it,
| then explain why that defense is wrong.
|
| > legislates away industries because you don't want to
| handle the parenting yourself.
|
| What are your thoughts on pharmaceutical/heroin
| legislation? What are your thoughts on making it illegal
| to advertise unhealthy food to kids? How do you feel
| about the idea of product placement in children's TV
| shows? How do you feel about letting pharmaceutical
| companies directly market to children?
|
| You look at parenting as black and white. Good parents
| would prevent their kids from doing bad things. Bad
| parents can't prevent their kids from doing bad things.
| "If a kid does something bad then it is because they have
| bad parents."
|
| The reality is that parents are just one element of the
| childs environment and that their choice to do bad things
| can be fit to a bell curve based on the complete set of
| environmental factors for which parenting is one element.
|
| Holding parenting ability constant, the government could
| make changes that would improve outcomes for some set of
| children.
| komali2 wrote:
| > What are your thoughts on pharmaceutical/heroin
| legislation?
|
| The USA government already makes the incorrect decision
| regarding these substances by criminalizing them, banning
| them, and throwing users in prison. Evidence shows that
| legalizing these substances and providing addiction care
| and universal healthcare, as well as tackling
| homelessness with empathetic solutions (literally just
| give them housing, it's that simple), is the so far most
| effective method to reduce usage of these substances.
|
| Thus the highly retributive, reactionary USA government,
| or its local manifestations, can't be trusted to make
| these kinds of laws well.
|
| Great, it banned tik tok for the kids. It passed a
| morality law. You know, fox news isn't really news, and
| some have suggested to that it provides a direct path to
| radicalization that leads to political violence. We
| should probably ban that, too. Don't worry, if you want
| to watch it, you can unlock it by applying at the local
| Office of Moral Wellbeing, just provide a photocopy of
| your photo ID and proof of address for them to file. That
| way if Fox changes channel registration, they have a list
| of all the people that watch it, so they can send someone
| to let you know the channel number changed.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I agree with the first half.
|
| TikTok is a national security issue and a reciprocity
| issue and for that reason it was a bad choice of example.
|
| You can look at other social media as a morality problem.
| I could see why someone would think of it that way, but
| we are literally quite governed by our neurotransmitters,
| and these companies literally have "engagement" (read:
| addiction) engineers. There are literally addiction
| engineers working on creating the state of addiction.
| Engineers working on figuring out how to get people to
| spend the maximum amount of time possible on the apps.
|
| At some point it becomes a health issue. Stimulus is
| stimulus. Dopamine dysfunction is real.
|
| What's the difference between scrolling an infinite feed
| for 10 hours and feeling good on an opium den couch for
| 10 hours? I am not saying that's a perfect comparison,
| but I don't think it's as simple as morality. These
| social media apps cause real biological response and
| there are engineers literally working on manipulating
| those responses.
| komali2 wrote:
| I agree with you that social media is a social toxin.
| Kind of like alcohol or heroin.
|
| The solution for all three I think is the same. Don't
| allow the government to pass laws criminalizing these
| things, because that has bad outcomes. It's a lot easier
| to say "the government isn't allowed to restrict bodily
| autonomy" than it is to for example try to write into law
| the 800 different specific exact scenarios where society
| thinks abortion is ok. In this case, "the government
| isn't allowed to pass laws restricting access to
| information" or something along those lines.
|
| Certainly we should allow our government to offer
| alternatives, information on the negative effects of a
| toxin, treatments, and use our governments to ensure good
| social safety nets that prevent people falling into toxin
| abuse as their only escape.
|
| I'm talking about the problems of using the State to
| enforce whatever given values or ideals. The State is at
| best completely imperfect, at worst, it's fascist and
| trying to kill you and people like you. Don't let it get
| to that point, don't let it ban what it today defines as
| "social media."
|
| There are better ways to protect society from these
| harmful things. Mostly I think solutions around good
| public education.
| [deleted]
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I don't think criminalizing is the right approach. I
| think taxing them for usage that exceeds a reasonable
| amount of time might be a reasonable policy. I think it
| would be ok to 100% tax any advertising profit gained
| after 1 hour of use. I suppose that creates a conflict of
| interest because then the government directly benefits
| from over-use which is its own hazard. I think the most
| American approach would be to codify that Facebook (or
| other social media) is directly liable for medical
| treatment related to social media use creating a feedback
| mechanism that disincentivizes bad behavior.
|
| I don't know what to do, but I do think social media is
| becoming a cancer, and I do think we need treatment. I
| don't now what the treatment is.
|
| I think you're saying the treatment can be worse than the
| disease, and I agree.
|
| > I'm talking about the problems of using the State to
| enforce whatever given values or ideals.
|
| I think we probably agree on a lot politically, but this
| is where I think I take a hard turn.
|
| Somewhere bad faith behavior must be discouraged.
| Education is one place that happens, the legal system is
| another place. Education is only a first line defense
| against bad faith.
|
| In the game theory of daily life, defectors and defection
| cannot be a winning strategy otherwise society will turn
| from a high trust society into a low trust society.
| Consensus will be abandoned in favor of dominance. To be
| honest, I think we are already to that point.
|
| Human rights are an example of an ideal that the state
| must enforce. Contractual obligations are an ideal a
| state must enforce. Rule of law is an ideal that a state
| must enforce. Property rights are an ideal states must
| enforce.
|
| Where it becomes less clear is the Fox News case you
| stated because Fox News is actively trying to destroy the
| idea of rule of law.
|
| I don't know how to deal with that.
|
| Do you think that's a problem? Should nothing be done?
| watwut wrote:
| > I would love it if you would state what you think the
| viewpoint opposite yours is and then try to defend it,
| then explain why that defense is wrong.
|
| Ok, this would be opposite: I want absolute access to my
| 17 years old kids account. I want read all their messages
| with their friends and I do not want them to have any
| privacy, because I want to fully control them.
|
| Second part of the opposite: I dont want to talk with my
| kids about social dynamic in their peer group. I do not
| want to talk with them about beauty standards, realistic
| or not. I do not want to help them navigate peer
| relationships and I do not care about my kids thoughts.
| My idea of solving these issues is to cut their access to
| communication methods.
|
| I am not about to defend either.
|
| > What are your thoughts on pharmaceutical/heroin
| legislation?
|
| I am actually fine with whole bunch of regulations and
| law. Really, this dichotomy where if you dont like one
| law you need to hate all of them is ridiculous. It
| veec_cas_tant wrote:
| > I would love it if you would state what you think the
| viewpoint opposite yours is and then try to defend it,
| then explain why that defense is wrong.
|
| Sorry, I don't know what this means.
|
| > What are your thoughts on pharmaceutical/heroin
| legislation? What are your thoughts on making it illegal
| to advertise unhealthy food to kids? How do you feel
| about the idea of product placement in children's TV
| shows? How do you feel about letting pharmaceutical
| companies directly market to children?
|
| The comment this chain is replying to was about tech
| companies not offering their services at all in Utah. I'd
| think, for the most part, I'd be against most regulations
| that basically say "to protect the children, we will ban
| X for everyone". I'm sure there are exceptions though.
|
| > ...rest of the comment
|
| I agree, the government can act to improve the outcomes
| for children and I didn't state anything to the contrary.
| Rather, I believe that gleefully accepting or cheering on
| a ban of all technology, for both adults and children,
| that the government might believe causes harm to children
| is quite unfortunate.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > Sorry, I don't know what this means.
|
| You called something hyperbole. You said you had a hard
| time imagining someone in good faith wishing that the
| government would legislate away an industry so that they
| don't have to "parent."
|
| So I asked: What do you think the person
| you are responding too's position is? What do you
| think is the best defense for that position? What
| do you think that position is wrong despite what you see
| as its best defense?
|
| I think the tobacco industry is an obvious industry to
| make reference to. I think now days most people who don't
| smoke would be happy to see it regulated away and I think
| it would be an extremely fringe position to think the
| tobacco industry should be able to advertise to kids
| today.
|
| > I'd be against most regulations that basically say "to
| protect the children, we will ban X for everyone". I'm
| sure there are exceptions though.
|
| Just because we don't know the full extent of how bad
| Facebook is now, doesn't mean it isn't bad.
|
| How bad do you think we thought smoking, opiates, or
| other problems were before we decided they were bad?
|
| We saw the correlation with harm of tobacco, investigated
| more deeply, then regulated their wide spread use
| particularly use by children.
|
| _Facebook is modern day tobacco._
|
| I am much less black and white about this than you might
| expect, because I am generally pro letting people do what
| they want with their bodies. After the age of 25 (when a
| person's prefrontal cortex is fully developed) there are
| few good arguments for preventing a net tax payer from
| doing what they want to their bodies or time. If someone
| can be told they are old enough to die (or kill) for
| their country, that's another factor that makes limiting
| their freedom to make bad decisions a hard argument.
|
| > that the government might believe causes harm to
| children is quite unfortunate.
|
| When you say "the government" that is entirely jaded.
| There is more nuance than us (the oppressed) and them
| (the government). Replace the government with "my fellow
| neighbors," and I think it harms the anti-government
| righteousness a bit.
|
| The context of the original conversation was clearly not
| about banning Facebook, but about not being sad if they
| went away. Telling facebook it can't do business in utah
| if it serves children and Facebook deciding to not do any
| business in Utah as a result is not banning Facebook.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I hope that corporations more frequently put less
| relevant jurisdictions in their place and remind
| representatives that they are in competition with other
| jurisdictions and this overrides their public service
| ideas.
|
| So I'm more of a fan of seeing that. Not the actual
| outcome.
|
| Would make more people choose more collaborative
| solutions faster.
| mvnuweucxqokii wrote:
| Honestly if social media companies pulled out of Utah, I
| could see tens of thousands of families choosing to move
| to Utah for that reason alone.
| archgoon wrote:
| [dead]
| bparsons wrote:
| You could say the same thing about cigarette and alcohol sales.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Those have been solved by requiring ID. Personally, I find
| online storage of my ID to be a lot less acceptable than a
| bored teenager giving it a 2 second glance while I'm picking
| up beer.
| kxrm wrote:
| Why not require an ID to own a smart phone? Seems far more
| realistic to set up regulation around smart phone ownership
| than to require businesses outside of your state to check
| IDs.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Which are illegal to minors.
| MBCook wrote:
| ID checks are far easier in person than over the internet.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Credit card.
| somethingreen wrote:
| Just use BankID/GovID/whatever verified OAuth service and
| request a single age/date of birth data point once. No need to
| authenticate or store anything.
| wrineha2 wrote:
| > What do they do exactly, start collecting government IDs from
| us before every visit?
|
| That's the idea actually.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| Submit thumb for verification.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| That is precisely the solution. Tech platforms are far more
| culpable than parents in this matter. If that means your
| startup idea no longer scales - good riddance.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > If that means your startup idea no longer scales - good
| riddance.
|
| And if that means no startup can possibly compete against the
| existing players in the industry that have the bandwidth and
| resources to implement the regulation?
| ShamelessC wrote:
| > And if that means no startup can possibly compete against
| the existing players in the industry that have the
| bandwidth and resources to implement the regulation?
|
| I think starting a tech startup under a VC model is a high-
| risk, high-reward setup and that your idea should be strong
| enough to withstand regulations such as this, yeah. There
| has been a lot of false innovation lately and it has soured
| my view on the model.
|
| I think it also hurts the incumbents, even though they get
| a moat of sorts. But only a moat around "tracking teenagers
| for advertising data".
| raincole wrote:
| After reading this thread I realized that's exactly what
| people (in this thread) want.
|
| They want "the old internet" back, whatever it means. Of
| course it means no more startup. Startups change things and
| we don't want that! We want the exact internet from 1998.
| BigJono wrote:
| I don't know why they want the "old internet" in a thread
| talking about protecting children lol.
|
| When I was 13 I was playing CS 1.6 on dedicated servers
| with a small number of strangers that were like 30, I was
| also on I don't even know how many random forums with
| small numbers of users.
|
| It's like a 13 year old hanging out at some random
| adult's house vs walking around a mall.
|
| I can't see how a bill limiting access to websites with
| more than 5M users is going to reduce paedophilia.
| ars wrote:
| > it puts the burden of enforcement on tech platforms rather
| than the kids' parents
|
| What else do you expect? When tech companies make phones secure
| enough for the NSA, every app has passwords, and most apps have
| disappearing messages, how exactly do you expect parents to
| monitor what their kids are doing?
|
| All the "parental monitoring" apps do is check how much _time_
| kids are using the phone. They give _zero_ info on what the
| kids are actually doing.
|
| So tell me, you want to put the onus on the parents? OK, then
| require any app used by kids to make all messages available to
| parents, and forbid disappearing messages.
|
| You don't want to do that? Well, then don't say: "parents you
| watch them".
|
| You can't simultaneously make something someone else's
| responsibility, and also make it impossible for them to do it.
| MarkSweep wrote:
| I'm not really sure if I disagree with you, but in the past
| we're parents really able to see everything their children
| were doing? Like telephones did not record conversations,
| they were effectively "disappearing messages".
|
| I guess the argument would be technology enables children to
| do secret stuff without any of the obvious signs, like
| sneaking out in the middle of the night?
| watwut wrote:
| Of course they were not able to see everything kids do.
| They were not able to track kids movements via app either.
| Parents have huge amount of control that was impossible in
| the past now.
|
| They also lost some control, if you lived in ideologically
| segregated community, kids had no way to learn about ideas
| from outside. That was destroyed by internet. Your Utah
| Mormon kid can read pre LBGT materials now.
| ars wrote:
| Telephones did not record, but they did have a log of
| incoming and outgoing numbers. So it was possible to check
| if a child was suddenly talking to someone new.
|
| > I guess the argument would be technology enables children
| to do secret stuff without any of the obvious signs, like
| sneaking out in the middle of the night?
|
| Yes, it was rather obvious when a teen was behaving
| secretive, or there were middle of the night calls.
|
| Privacy is important, but if your teen was suddenly
| displaying secretive behavior you could tell.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| That's all fine for 12-year-olds but becomes absurd
| authoritarianism for high schoolers.
| boolemancer wrote:
| You don't have to give your kids a phone...
| ars wrote:
| Yes you do. You can't live in the modern world without a
| phone.
|
| Try it if you don't believe me. You can't even ride the bus
| without a phone because bus stops no longer display
| schedules and routes.
|
| Want to go trampoline jumping? It's impossible without a
| phone because they want you to sign a waver in advance
| using your phone.
|
| Pay Phones are no longer a thing. The "phone behind the
| counter" in restaurants and shops is no longer a thing.
|
| Even grade school children are staring to have trouble
| navigating the world without a phone.
| wincy wrote:
| We got our six year old daughter an Apple Watch with cell
| service. I think that's allowed her a lot of freedom
| since she can walk to her friends house without crazy
| people calling CPS on us (totally happened before). She
| just met another girl with the same watch and now they
| are best friends.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| Okay? The bus stops near me growing up didn't have signs
| on them either. We just knew the timetable, or went and
| waited for it.
| kxrm wrote:
| This, I think it would far more realistic to ban the type
| of devices a child can purchase or own then push this
| burden to "social media companies" on the internet.
| [deleted]
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Absurd objection. Tech platforms are obviously the only ones
| capable of moderating their users at an application level.
|
| Should we remove content filters on YouTube and ask parents to
| filter content instead?
| japhib wrote:
| For exactly this reason, there is no way this law will stand in
| court
| sacnoradhq wrote:
| Utah's political system, and by virtue, judiciary, is run by
| LDS. Don't consider anything rational will necessarily
| prevail when powered by magical thinking.
| siquick wrote:
| > The bills also impose a social media curfew that blocks
| children's access between 22:30 and 06:30, unless adjusted by
| their parents.
|
| The main bill is a possibly a bit overreaching but I'm fully in
| favour of this part. There's a huge problem where I live with
| kids just not going to school and many of those same kids are
| staying up until 1am each night doom scrolling or watching
| YouTube.
| sneak wrote:
| [flagged]
| ashton314 wrote:
| > Now I'm more successful (and better educated) than almost
| everyone I grew up with
|
| You realize you might be something of an outlier, right? Most
| teenagers are dramatically sleep-deprived, more so than teens
| of your generation. Your experience won't generalize.
|
| > This law is just religious fundamentalist tradlife
| censorship dressed up in the moral panic of the moment.
|
| Really?
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Considering we have compulsory schooling in the US through
| age 18 (generally), I don't think this is making the point
| you think it is.
| kortilla wrote:
| How would you know you're better educated? Seems like
| precisely the type of thing you can't judge about yourself
| very well and the Dunning-Kruger effect doesn't bode well for
| you either.
| doublejosh wrote:
| Seems appropriate to bring up the gross the age of consent issues
| in the US...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_...
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Isn't this against the first amendment?
| ttyprintk wrote:
| The Governor promised, "there will be lawsuits".
| staunton wrote:
| The way to solve social media is to ban advertising. There, I
| said it.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
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