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- Hacker News
- >particularly harming vulnerable youth and marginalized groups who often find safety in supportive online communities
This is debatable and may actually have a net negative effect on those groups. Not to say that this bill is desirable. Shouldn't they push for stronger/better/flexible parental controls in devices instead? Perhaps offering to set them up in OOTB experiences?
by deburo - What is missing from device parental control?by dgellow
- I'm afraid this reads like "we've not 100% proved that smoking causes cancer, so ..."
Is the science 100% settled? No. Is this the best possible way to regulate this? No. But it's sure better than the current state of things.
"laws such as A.B. 1709, as passed by the legislature, function as a ban on social media use for people under the age of 16"
That's not my reading of the bill, specifically 22683. (a) (2) on https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
"This subdivision does not prohibit a covered platform from permitting a user who is under 16 years of age to create or maintain an account on the covered platform if that user is not provided with any addictive feature"
They just need to take out the endless autoplaying shorts and other features that are, honestly, annoying in the first place. The main thing I would change here is that even adults must be provided with a setting to opt out of addictive features.
Would it destroy TikTok's business model? Maybe; maybe that's even a good thing.
by red_admiral - Your right to make a website with annoying and addictive features is part of your freedom of speech, guaranteed by the first amendment. Can’t ban it, and if the courts were to allow such a ban then it would be a very worrying precedent.
Just ban targeted advertising, under the grounds of regulation of interstate commerce.
by iamnothere - No, sometimes doing something really is worse than doing nothing.by akersten
- > These so-called "addictive features," are in reality the basic tools that online services use to identify what other user-generated content a particular user might want to see.
Are they for real?
Maybe underage kids can use, I dunno, a search box. Looks hard I know, but maybe it will help grow one or two neurons in their head
by raverbashing - The argument is equally strong on the social media is incredibly toxic and damaging to young kids side. We made it all the way to 2011ish without social media. I find the essential access arguments to be very weak. I don't like age restrictions because it can be abused in other ways, but there is absolutely a good reason to kill social media for kids.by zeezer0
- it seems like this whole discussion, both the proposed law and EFFs full throated support for social media giants is getting lost in the weeds.
we used to have a small number of media outlets for structural reasons. and we were concerned enough about their ability to filter what everyone saw that we tried to pass some laws that's weren't very useful or effective
now that the structural barriers are gone, do we see a greater diversity of editorial decision making, a greater number of channels in which to learn about the world. we could easily have a world where every single person could parameterize their own agents or choose from sets of parameters to present customized views on the sea of information available.
instead we see a massive concentration of control. instead of trying to legislate the behavior of a company whose entire profit is based on manipulating the narrative we all see, shouldn't we be promoting alternatives? if we are going to legislate meta instead of picking one little aspect maybe demand instead that some of of the core functions like data and identity be open access?
by convolvatron - I think we as a species underestimated the power of the network effect and scaling.
Most of humanity, especially the non technical wants to go where the people they know are. They also want it to be low friction, at least at first. Once they are there to get them to leave requires a lot of bad will by the site operators. Would things like open access actually push the dial any?
by pixl97 - Yeah, I feel like the actual solution here should be regulating the companies that are allegedly causing the harm, not the victims of said harm. It says a lot about someone if they think the solution to "this giant powerful entity is taking advantage of you" is to restrict you they're than the giant powerful entity that's abusing its power.by saghm
- This whole argument makes me feel old.
This smacks of "satanic messages in metal made my kids kill themselves" and of the PMRC. Of a trailer getting burned down cause kids watched Bevis yell "fire" one too many times.
Our modern society has fucked up kids, and I wont argue that tech isnt an enabler. But the fact that kids ONLY lens into the world independent of their parents is their digital life is PART OF THE PROBLEM.
https://abcnews.com/GMA/Family/mom-arrested-after-son-report...
Go back to the 80's and 90's we had to tell parents to do their job: "I learned it by watching you dad" and "its 10pm do you know where your kids are" ads probably need a modern refresh.
"You have been scrolling for 30 minutes... Do you know what your kids are doing on line" PSA's should probably be a thing. I say this as a parent whos kids were raised with devices, and despise social media, and only use it begrudgingly.
by zer00eyz - This is like telling people to drive better to prevent crashes.
It's considerably more effective to invent/mandate seatbelts, airbags, crumple zones and hopefully in the future some kind of automated magical computer system that takes driving completely out of the hands of meatbags.
by wredcoll - Gavin Newsom the governor who signed the original OS level age-verification law?
- This sounds like a pretty reasonable bill to me. I like the implementation, I think it preserves privacy adequately.
I understand that someday (probably someday soon) some actors will try to ask for a worse version of this, one that doesn't respect privacy. And I remain ready to push back on that. This, though, I think is an adequate compromise.
by zug_zug - All the things this article objects to in banning for children are things I find myself wanting removed from my own experience in social networks in order to make me want to use them at all.by void-star
- The question is if that should be forced upon everyone under 16by dgellow
- Which isn't a contradiction. What you want, and what they're arguing for, is to not have agency taken away from users. You want the ability to turn off features, and they don't want the law enforcing the removal of access to those features for others.by delecti
- I get people want to protect their kids. But I don't agree with age verification.
If people can't figure out parental controls, maybe they can buy a phone plan that has it already set up in advance. We don't need laws for this.
by jakzurr - The California version of "age verification" IS parental controls. There is no actual verification happening. The OS is required to have an age associated with a user, declared, but not proven in any way, at setup. That value is then accessible to handle age gating.
- >cuts young people off from essential information and experiences, particularly harming vulnerable youth and marginalized groups who often find safety in supportive online communities they can't access offline.
>Far from protecting children
so both sides on this are framing that their positions protects children while framing that the opposing side harms children.
by rbtprograms - I agree that this is a very blunt instrument rife with terrible potential, but I don't know what could be done in its stead. The EFF makes excellent points, but in my view the social media algorithms do way more harm than good, especially for minors. What would be the more ideal solution here? Clearly we can't do nothing, and time is of the essence for the current generation.by baggachipz
- Ban targeted advertising
- Studies I read on the topic don’t demonstrate harm, what are you relying upon? Hopefully not Haidt’s bookby dgellow
- So the issue really isn't "social media", it's the blackbox personalized algorithmic feed.
So that is what we should be addressing.
Things like -> no personalized algorithmic feed for minors. The ability to disable algorithmic feed and revert to historical feed from contacts. Giving the user control over suggestions and feed via the requirement that it should be possible to switch to a "third party algorithm provider" or self-host, while still being able to have full access to the contents and social features of the platform.
by bogdanoff_2 - Agreed entirely. They're really glossing over the harm parts. The vibe in this article feels like someone who used the internet in the 90s and 2000s when community was actually a thing. Maybe even early Facebook days when it was college level and newly released to the general public.
What was once genuinely helpful for society is, by and large, now doing more harm than good. So, unless these multibillion dollar companies seriously reform (which would hurt their bottom lines), I don't know what you'd do other than banning the product, much like what we did for cigarettes.
by SecretDreams - Keep the parents in control. The nanny state isn’t a substitute for good parenting.by cm2187
- > Clearly we can't do nothing
On the other hand, let's not fall into the common political trap of: We must do something. X is something. Therefore we must do X.
by ryandrake - I don't agree with your framing at all that we need to do something and it because to be done immediately, so it seems basically impossible to have any sort of reasonable discussion if things seem so dire to you that this seems self-evident rather than needing some further justification. In general I feel like any assertions about the need for something immediately like this should have a fairly high bar for justifying them.by saghm
- > Clearly we can't do nothing,
Why is that so clear? I can think of hundreds of real daily problems I'd rather my legislators be focused on than deciding how old my kids have to be before they're allowed on some website.
I would like affordable groceries and public transport, not whatever this is.
If they really want to "do something" then require an 18+ ID at a cell phone points of sale. That'll be something that won't affect me and actually will temper a ton of underage Internet use. Then they can study the actual effect of that and whether the harms were exaggerated after all.
And, reminder, so no one here loses the plot: this is a backdoor feel good measure lobbied for by big tech to push us into a world with mandatory device attestation so their ad impressions are worth more. They could care less about your kids.
by akersten