Comment on UK police chiefs call for ban on social media for under-16s
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’m not against this. I genuinely believe social media is damaging to young people. Well… I believe it’s damaging to us all, but if adults want to then it’s their choice.
However, I don’t see how this could be realistically enforced.
The idea in Australia is to place the responsibility on the social media companies.
The government isnt filtering traffic or enforcing behaviour. It is fining companies if they don’t implement a form of age verification that is compliant with privacy laws.
We can’t even make these companies pay tax and obey other laws so I am not very optimistic but at least it raises awareness of the problem.
problem here is as follows:
how would you verify the age of someone without government id?
the answer very simple: you can’t.
there is no (reliable) way to verify ID without government involvement, period.
“but it’s the companies responsibility!”
well, how are they going to verify anyone’s age?
that’s right! by checking some form of government ID (passport, drivers license, etc.)
how would they know wether an ID is legit or not? by comparing to a government database.
so it’s the government checking either way.
theoretically you could implement a hash-based system that’s secure by comparing only hashed values against a government API without ever actually saving user information anywhere, similar to how “login with google/apple/facebook” and so forth work, but i doubt there’s any government willing to spend the cash on such a system.
because that would actually work and could be made in privacy respecting way.
but because surveillance is the goal of any government trying to implement bullshit like this, it won’t ever be done this way…
remember: it’s always mass surveillance. never about “the kids”, or “the crime”, or whatever straw-man-of-the-week they pull out their ass at any given time.
It looks like it will be handled by third party verification services in Australia. You will likely provide some form of ID with age which is likely to be government id and the service will check it then inform the social media company you pass. The legislation doesn’t allow direct government involvement in running the verification service and the verification companies have to conform to privacy laws.
It is certainly a flawed system. If kids want to access things they will and there is potential for abuse. However when considering harm mitigation you need to look at the whole population.
A lot of the more extreme libertarian views on the Internet originate in the US where their “freedoms” of speech and firearms have obviously just been a distraction while they were robbed blind. They couldn’t even protect their school kids from mass shootings because of they put ideology and theoretical bullshit before survival of their families. I used to buy into the Internet libertarian stuff in a huge way in the days of IRC and Usenet before the mega rich tech bros moved in and turned the Internet into a shitshow. Now I want to burn it down. Anything to keep these nonses away from our kids is good with me.
requiring third party services is still problematic; i seriously do not trust any third party services to handle data as critical as ID.
having that leaked isn’t like having your passwords or nudes leaked…it can seriously ruin entire lives!
I’d honestly rather have the government directly involved than some fuck-off “we’re in it for the money”, “how cheap can we go before we start leaking” company…
that said, i completely agree with the rest of what you said!
only i think that age restrictions is the wrong solution for the problem at hand, because it doesn’t actually solve the problem.
the problem isn’t (just) “kids have access to social media too early”, the problem is “social media has become manipulative cesspool designed to brainwash entire populations”!
age verification doesn’t solve issues like election interference, rising violence, privacy violations, misinformation, disinformation, etc, etc.
what does solve most, if not all, of those problems is properly regulating social media companies!
and it starts with forcing those companies to have open source, verified algorithms, to prevent them from being able to claim “they’re committed to X”, while blatantly ignoring any and all regulation.
the real problem is that just about nobody actually knows how exactly the massive social media platforms serve content, and how little control users have over their own algorithms.
solve that problem, and kids can be online just fine again! just like you and i were!
it is possible to return to a better internet, but that requires actually solving the root of the problem(s) at hand, instead of getting distracted with things like age verification, which, again, is just mass surveillance by a different name.
It’s damaging because the Internet evolved in the conditions of governments not doing their job at catching criminals, but at the same time taking upon themselves rights and responsibilities they shouldn’t have. The former made it impractical to use more cozy and personal spaces, like personal webpages with guestbooks and such, and the latter put upon webmasters the responsibilities of law enforcement which law enforcement should fulfill itself. It’s as if home owners were responsible for a crime happening on their property, and the police wouldn’t help when called, it would instead arrest them for not preventing it.
Law enforcement doesn’t need more rights, it had all it needed 20 years ago, even 30 years ago. It needs to fulfill its responsibilities.
Those jerks both want to avoid actually working and to censor what you can say. Fuck them.
By age checking everybody connecting to social media
Which would require submitting personal information, like IDs, to social media organizations. You could do it better (i.e. through a disinterested third party or the government), but how likely is that to actually happen?
I’m against it mostly on privacy grounds, but also on free speech grounds. Parents should be the ones deciding this, not governments.
But what qualifies as social media? We can all probably agree that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, etc. count, but what about say Discord or WhatsApp? How about browsing older forums (like open ones where you don’t need an account to read them)? What about news articles or blogs with a comment section? Is a wiki social media? Depending on how you define it, the majority of the internet could be considered social media.
Plus there are plenty of sites that just won’t ever bother to try to comply. For example, I live in one of the more stupid states in the US that has required age verification for porn sites, PornHub has complied by just blocking their site in the state with a notice that they won’t implement a system like that for privacy reasons. But they and their sister sites are the only ones I’ve seen that have bothered to make any changes. The same will inevitably happen with social media. You’re just going to push kids to shadier corners of the internet that don’t care about laws, and they’re gonna end up radicalized by nazis, or taken advantage of in worse ways.
The whole problem is parents who don’t want to be parents and tell their kids they can’t have a smartphone. And I get that the dumbphone market is kinda limited, and that some parents just don’t care what their kids are exposed to. But trying to fix this problem by changing the internet is never going to work. The only way to fix the problem is to have a spine and make appropriate changes IRL - like banning smartphones for underaged kids in school, or show your full distopian side and prosecute parents who let their kids use social media.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
I’m absolutely against this.
As do I. I still am against the government making these decisions, especially for kids as old as 16. At 16, kids should be curious about what the government is hiding, and access to information should absolutely be available. However, it should also be under the direction of parents, at least until they leave the house.
Parents should be the ones regulating this, not the government. Some kids are mature enough to handle things like social media at 16, perhaps younger, while others aren’t. Parents should be on the hook for allowing their kids access to things that could be damaging, but could also be an incredibly useful tool.
I say this as a parent. I want to be the one who decides what my kids should and should not access, and I will peacefully ignore this law and use a VPN or whatever I need to in order to evade this ban. I don’t know what that looks like in the UK, but I’m absolutely going to do this in my area once my kid hits their first block (my US state implemented age requirements for SM, and if my kids hit that, I’ll teach them to use a VPN).
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 6 days ago
This is for under-16s.
And why specifically be against the government protecting kids’ safety in this way? They already do it in countless other ways, from rules about how you’re allowed to discipline children, medication standards, age ratings, restrictions on public drinking, preventing driving, preventing gun ownership, etc.
Why shouldn’t the government make any decisions for this aspect of children’s safety, but all others are ok?
This is for under-16s. Under-16s are not 16. They are under 16.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Hence why I said “as old as.” Someone who is 15.5 is basically 16, yet they fall under the rule.
Because they’re not protecting their safety, they’re using it as an excuse to pass regressive policy. Kids under 16 will be struggling with a number of things, from gender identity to abusive parents, and social media can be the best way to get the sense of community they need.
The closest example you gave is gun ownership, but that goes back to cigarettes and alcohol. The restriction should be about consent (i.e. do they understand the hazards and responsibilities associated w/ the product), and kids can’t legally consent until they’re adults. Social media doesn’t exactly fall under that umbrella, you don’t need to consent to interact w/ social media.
But gun ownership is also interesting in another way: ID requirements are often stored when you purchase a gun (e.g. to run a background check or something), just like it would need to be for social media. I trust gun stores a lot more than social media companies because they don’t stand to profit from misusing your ID information.
Due to the privacy concerns and relative lack of risk to the public (meaning, a kid having access to a SM account won’t hurt others in anywhere near the same way as them having a car or gun), I just don’t see it being justifiable. This just sounds like conservative wankery to “protect the kids” while the real intent is attacking LGBT kids and allowing SM companies to hoover up data. And no, I don’t trust digital privacy laws to be all that effective here, since they’re only fined when they get caught, and it’s pretty easy to avoid getting caught.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 6 days ago
There has to be a cutoff somewhere, otherwise you fall into the trap of “well 15.5 is basically 16, so 15.5 is fine. And 15 is basically 15.5 so that must be fine too. And I guess 14.5 is basically 15 so…”
Kids would be safer and mentally better off with less access to social media.
All those bullet points you listed are wrong. The state has laws surrounding what you can and can’t do. So laws do have a say.
You say disciplining children is up to the parents, but the reality is you can’t just do what you want. If your idea of disciplinary action to your child is starving them, the state will rightly intervene. Because the state has laws to protect children.
Privacy concerns are legitimate. “We shouldn’t have laws to protect kids in this way, for some arbitrary reason I haven’t explained” is not.
Children should have safeguards. Parents are not always aware, technical enough to prevent, or caring enough to prevent kids from being damaged by social media (and boy does social media mess kids up). It is not my position that children of those parents should have to suffer unnecessarily.
swelter_spark@reddthat.com 5 days ago
I agree completely. The healthiest our online ecosystem has ever been was when parents were required, and empowered, to make decisions for their own children about appropriate internet usage.