Social Media ban for children

[NotASlayer]

No, it is part of the law here now. The social media sites have to make sure, by law, they keep children off them by verifying the age of users. I said it was a dumb law when it was suggested but everyone was like oh it wont matter it wont affect you. I cant access reddit until I give them my face or other forms of id. The most ridiculous part is, that I can still read reddit, I just cant post on it, at all, until they have my personal details to verify my age.

I think that is FAR more dangerous to children especially because they are consuming content without engaging with the content and figuring out their own thoughts about the topics. They are literally being fed without a say. Its a stupid way to police the place.

It will take the average internet-raised child approximately 10 seconds to get around this...

 

[November]

It will take the average internet-raised child approximately 10 seconds to get around this...

Yes, the news says they are using photos of adults, or face filters to get around the verification. I dont like reddit enough to do it. I get downvoted more often than not anyway. Especially when I thought bad bunny was an actual bunny and that Jojo Siwa was a girl child. Downvoted in the hundreds lol. No wonder the search engines are getting stupider when it draws from that place.

 

[sk]

Can't help thinking that all these new laws are more about the possibility to track people online than protecting children.
It will be a great tool for any upcoming government that want to suppress unwanted opinions.

We have gone from it being considered a serious crime to read someone's mail to demanding the ability to read peoples conversations in a depressingly short time.

/SK

 

[November]

Reddit is full of copy cats! I have been posting on a big brother forum. I went to check the reddit for bits I missed today, and there are multiple posts of mine, word for word, taken from the forum. Other people are copying my forum posts for upvotes! I don't know if they are bots or children.

I don't really care because I think that I am hilarious and I'm glad other people see it in the end. And the forum has timestamps that proves I was funny first.

 

[NotASlayer]

Reddit is full of copy cats! I have been posting on a big brother forum. I went to check the reddit for bits I missed today, and there are multiple posts of mine, word for word, taken from the forum. Other people are copying my forum posts for upvotes! I don't know if they are bots or children.

Bots. It seems to be a major issue on Reddit.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

Machiavelli gets a bad rap because he is thought to have written a manual for people who want to abuse other people, but in reality, he was trying to make sense of the differences between ordinary people and people who ascended to power. It was obvious that the people who had power were not the "best" people or "nice" people and he was curious about what allowed them to gain power even where everyone was against them. His conclusions favoured the stoic way of life. In no particular order:

1. Do not reply immediately to any jabs taken at you.
2. Do not explain things to people who are committed to misunderstanding you.
3. Never beg for attention.
4. Never consider other people to be above you in value.
5. Never let emotions cloud your judgement or dictate your actions.
6. Never appear to be flustered by anyone else's comments.
7. Silence is often the greatest response.
8. Do not play by the rules you were taught by society or your parents as their rules were designed to keep you obedient.
9. Walk away from toxic people and do not allow them access to your time.
10. Treat your time and attention as currency and do not spend it on people who don't deserve it.
11. Set boundaries, enforce them and punish anyone who violates them.

This is how you become effective but of course, parents would never teach this kind of mental armour to their children because they benefit from their children being pliable and compliant. School systems would never want this, either. If you want children who can withstand the warfare on social media, you have to turn them into stoic and Machiavellian children.

Age limits are going to be faked. A profile on a VPN is almost impossible to verify. And some children are using Tor, the dark web browser. Cutting children off from social media is the wrong way to handle the problem

 

[Moptop]

Age limits are going to be faked. A profile on a VPN is almost impossible to verify. And some children are using Tor, the dark web browser. Cutting children off from social media is the wrong way to handle the problem

You are correct. Instead of cutting off children's' access to social media sites, the sites themselves should be shut down and removed from the web, and especially from cell phones. In face all cell phones should be promptly dropped into a shredder and ground up. 🤬

 

[NotASlayer]

In face all cell phones should be promptly dropped into a shredder and ground up. 🤬

At which point I lose access to every single one of my bank and credit card accounts. No, I am not happy that I now need a phone to use any digital banking. The last three accounts that didn't require a phone at all, not even to log in, on Friday went to app only.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

I am not on any social media because I know about the excesses that go on there and also the time it takes to go through everything of interest. I do not favour destroying social media and it could be worthwhile if people were more Machiavellian and stoic. If this were the case, people would not be able to get a rise out of other people because opinions would not be treated fighting words and the discourse would be more civil.

Destroying social media also runs into a freedom of speech issue and the purchase of Twitter and the firing of most of its mods was a good move as certain conservative opinions were deleted without reason. Facebook had its problems as well - it was a banning offense to say that COVID 19 came from a virology lab in Wuhan whereas the record shows that this is the most likely origin. Mods were horrified by Trump calling COVID 19 the "Wuhan flu" but most diseases were named for locations. Ebola is a river in the Congo. Zika is a forest in Uganda. Marburg is a city in Germany. Hanta is named after the Hantan river in Korea. Lime is a county in Connecticut. So why not the Wuhan flu? But social media is international and various countries threatened them with blockage if they voiced unapproved opinions.

I support having sites that discuss opinions that would not be subject to sanctions of various sorts such as hate laws that once penalized support for Palestine. There were similar laws in Canada that allowed discussion in school of topics that would be subject to hate laws in any setting other than a classroom. If some guy is a Nazi, don't ban his speech, let him expose what he believes so we know what an idiot we are dealing with.

 

[Joan the Vampire Slayer]

If I had kids, to be honest, I don't think I'd let them use social until they were like at least fourteen years old. Online bullying is a very real threat, as well as young girls being targeted online by predators, and not to mention deep fake AI images circulated...kids are not mature enough to know how to handle these very real threats.

 

[Moptop]

Destroying social media also runs into a freedom of speech issue

I couldn't agree with you more!!! Unfortunately this has gotten way out of hand before we realized the dangers we were subjecting our kids to before these things were implemented. It's going to be a monumental task to even make a dent in trying to clean up the mess.
Can we find a way not to step on anyone's rights while doing it is anyone's guess. It's not going to be easy but we have to start somewhere. My banning children from all social media statements is definitely a "knee jerk reaction" and I'm sure there has to be an less aggressive action we can take.

 

[DeepBlueJoy]

The real upshot of (attempting) banning media or phones or tech from certain categories is that EVERYONE will have to give their information out in order to weed out the undesired group... and significant numbers of undesirables have ways of figuring their way around rules. (fake ids anyone?) so... the nannies collect all my personal information; they get hacked, my personal info gets misused and I end up with serious stolen identity issues the rule makers won't be helping me with.

I am all for child protection. I'm not for removal of freedom of everyone in order to attempt to police the unpolice-able.

If there are life-threatening issues (potentially unsafe drivers if there were no licensing of vehicles, for example) and someone like the DMV wants to manage who gets to drive... i can live with that.

If the lawmakers want to parent 'on behalf of' the parents who aren't watching their kids? (especially if they plan to farm out enforcement to thousands of private companies with a million different approaches to access management and/or data protection? That won't end well.

For one thing, it won't work.

I have watched people unlock their phones and hand them to toddlers. Anything to shut up the noisy 'brat' that you don't want to take time to give attention to. I wish the ability to breed came with parental impulses installed. Unless you are forced tech providers et it up to leave a camera on to monitor who is actually using the device, you can't control who actually has access if you're not in the room with them. Even facial rec can be hacked if you are determined enough. There is a limit of how many resources it's practical to use to monitor things.

There's always going to be a subsection of parents/guardians who won't parent, guardian or guide. And the laws will do ZERO to prevent their kids from accessing things they should not see or interact with because their parents will make sure they have access and later on, set things up to allow it. The same way such parents don't make it hard for their kids to get into the medicine or liquor cabinets.

Good parents will manage access to tech. they won't do it perfectly, but they will work at it, and they will educate their kids about the dangers they can face when they go on alone. The other kind of parent? Other than preventing them from breeding (which is a whole level of horribles beyond the laws we're mentioning) controlling them is impossible.

I don't want to give up my freedom to look at or interact with tech that is meant for grown ups because some poor parent doesn't give a fig.

 

[NotASlayer]

The real upshot of (attempting) banning media or phones or tech from certain categories is that EVERYONE will have to give their information out in order to weed out the undesired group... and significant numbers of undesirables have ways of figuring their way around rules. (fake ids anyone?) so... the nannies collect all my personal information; they get hacked, my personal info gets misused and I end up with serious stolen identity issues the rule makers won't be helping me with.

I am all for child protection. I'm not for removal of freedom of everyone in order to attempt to police the unpolice-able.

If there are life-threatening issues (potentially unsafe drivers if there were no licensing of vehicles, for example) and someone like the DMV wants to manage who gets to drive... i can live with that.

If the lawmakers want to parent 'on behalf of' the parents who aren't watching their kids? (especially if they plan to farm out enforcement to thousands of private companies with a million different approaches to access management and/or data protection? That won't end well.

For one thing, it won't work.

I have watched people unlock their phones and hand them to toddlers. Anything to shut up the noisy 'brat' that you don't want to take time to give attention to. I wish the ability to breed came with parental impulses installed. Unless you are forced tech providers et it up to leave a camera on to monitor who is actually using the device, you can't control who actually has access if you're not in the room with them. Even facial rec can be hacked if you are determined enough. There is a limit of how many resources it's practical to use to monitor things.

There's always going to be a subsection of parents/guardians who won't parent, guardian or guide. And the laws will do ZERO to prevent their kids from accessing things they should not see or interact with because their parents will make sure they have access and later on, set things up to allow it. The same way such parents don't make it hard for their kids to get into the medicine or liquor cabinets.

Good parents will manage access to tech. they won't do it perfectly, but they will work at it, and they will educate their kids about the dangers they can face when they go on alone. The other kind of parent? Other than preventing them from breeding (which is a whole level of horribles beyond the laws we're mentioning) controlling them is impossible.

I don't want to give up my freedom to look at or interact with tech that is meant for grown ups because some poor parent doesn't give a fig.

I think it is unlikely there will be many different private companies; I think there will be a handful of specialist ones (assuming this continues). Does this mean it will be safe to give them our personal info? Nope.

It is even worse with the AIs people are developing and over which they have increasingly less control. Those things can find a weak spot and go through a security flaw like a welding torch through butter in a fraction of a second. If companies have this sort of information, one or more of them will lose it at some point. Scandals where companies get hacked and lose private data are very, very common. What, are we supposed to believe that they will be any different with this? Were they just not trying before?

 

[DeepBlueJoy]

I think it is unlikely there will be many different private companies; I think there will be a handful of specialist ones (assuming this continues). Does this mean it will be safe to give them our personal info? Nope.

It is even worse with the AIs people are developing and over which they have increasingly less control. Those things can find a weak spot and go through a security flaw like a welding torch through butter in a fraction of a second. If companies have this sort of information, one or more of them will lose it at some point. Scandals where companies get hacked and lose private data are very, very common. What, are we supposed to believe that they will be any different with this? Were they just not trying before?

Nods. Just as every website has a different security protocol and different ways of proving you are not a bot (all of which must be purchased, subscribed to or developed in-house) - a site owner will have to hire something to vet or prevent kids signing up - some will hire the best, some will hire whatever they can afford. Some of these agents will be competent, some not. Some clients will be hackable. Some will be written by crooks or will try to be free by monetizing users.

Every site handles all aspects of secure entry differently and they are already very much a mixed bag. Involve child related stuff and financially valuable identity documents, and the hysterical manic panic that always goes on when kids are involved and decision common sense will fly out of the window.