With the approximately zero quality of current administrations the difference between "legitimate" and "legal" has become bewildering and well beyond damaging.
Read the under 16 ban in Australia as ideally their presence on certain social media platforms as being against the law. Parents though very much like the ones that let their under age kids drive on roads despite illegal, will trust those in their judgement will probably be safe, while being able to enforce restrictions of their child if they feel it's robbing their kid of time, self respect or other.
The difference with the ban is unlike back in 2019 when social media were ignoring requests (too hard etc) to remove some of the bad algorithms that were targeting and funnelling teenagers into dark topic areas ... with the change it's on social media to ... well remove targeting algorithms that focus on the 10 to 14 year olds for a start ... else if anything bad outcomes happens - the law I'd imagine will throw the book at them. It also works the other way as well, parents who knowingly permitted their child to engage, won't be rushing off to their lawyers to sue whomever.
The main issue with the ban has been where some people would like to use the under 16 ban as an excuse to do age verification by the most intrusive means as possible - but I could only imagine it only benefits platforms scraping as much PII as they can get.
Content shouldn't target 10 to 14 year olds, sure. But, in practice and mathematically/statistically, I'm not sure what that means. Even if algorithms ignored age completely, there would be statistical correlates.
We should probably ban algorithms suggesting content and ads for dark things for everyone i.e. cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, misleading health content. It is honestly bad for everyone and that's actually the only way to prevent kids from seeing it.
It's not just about ban evasion. It's also about kids seeing this content everywhere.
Yes banning ads for misleading health scams would be a good idea, but banning ads for for those who smoke or drink vying for more market share probably isn't purposeful. I'd agree one of the problems of the modern world are young minds are too often introduced far too early to concepts and behaviours they'd cope with better as young adults, but the world has changed and even in everyday life these are in view one way or another.
As for targeting ... I wish I could find the news item from what I think was around 2018-9 that in particular made me sit up and realise the dissatisfaction with wayward algorithms wasn't merely advertising that was not entirely suitable. IIRC this article after the initial introduction of various incidents where the parents had discovered their child had ended up visiting odd places like self harm topics and content not so desirable, the article then outlined someone or a group of people testing various social media areas with new fake accounts. The damming conclusion was just how quickly the algorithms were determining an age and then funnelling apparently somewhat naive youngsters without much prompting into unexpected topic areas, while the fake accounts which suggested an adult experienced something different.
A search today didn't turn up anything close to what was the real concern I believe that got everyone's real attention here in Australia 2018/19, mostly just benign issues like gambling, advertising for alcohol and other marketing opportunities. [1] [2] [4] [5] The govt at the time did ask the platforms to modify what they were doing but the short answer was too hard and not going to do it.
Muddying the waters are long running calls to control platforms by a few interested parties with concerns, some opting to capitalise any time a particular platform faces criticism. Some of these are legitimate long standing problems like [3] where platforms are expected to have live human moderation keeping a watchful eye over their flock at all time ... while ignoring the platforms are generally trying to balance safety with an expectation of privacy. It's these very things that some apparently very powerful parties use to try and bring an and to anonymous content on the web - every time there's an issue trying to install a real ID gateway - many assume the age gateway will do that.
The problem is might see the solution is to not have such laws in the first place if they are not enforced. But another solution is to give the government more and more and more enforcement power which will, eventually, be used against the people instead of for them. Just as bad is all these enforcement people have to continually justify their pay so the bar for what constitutes an infraction starts dropping in order to keep the prosecution rates up.
Yeah, there’s nothing more objectionable than a law that is not seriously enforced. It need not be perfectly enforced (what law is?), but anything that doesn’t come with real teeth should just be repealed, regardless of the merits
That depends on the purpose of the individual law. Laws against murder must be enforced as much as possible, but the war on drugs has done a lot of unnecessary damage through excessive enforcement - drugs being illegal would still reduce drug use if that was only lightly enforced. The law is not like a segmentation fault.
Maybe I'm misreading their point...but I'd think that OP was being intellectually consistent and saying that the drug laws should be enforced as written for everyone, or repealed and replaced by more sane laws... because of you were to enforce them as written, you'd have 20-30% (wild ass guess) of the country serving prison time.
Yes, laws should be repealed if they’re bad. And I think strict enforcement makes it clearer when laws are bad. I would much rather everyone get the same treatment by the criminal justice system every time they violate the law, so everyone knows the true cost of the law, not just those that are unlucky
If that fulfills the purpose of the law then that’s a better law. Turning the law into a lottery where 1/100k “criminals” is severely punished for a common behavior is not the answer.
As a citizen I should be able to read the law and understand that violations have a likely and proportional consequence. This requires sensible laws. I shouldn’t need to play a guessing game (or consult a lawyer) about which laws are “real” for the average person and which can be ignored.
Alternatively, if the problem with a behavior is that it might bother someone (noise complaints etc), set up a better/more accessible channel for civil disputes. Not everything needs to be a crime.
That is the law. It's not a life sentence for using social media as a child. You say it doesn't need to be a crime, but perhaps you've not been made aware that it already isn't a crime?
You cannot talk about absurd absasing laws and fixate about enforcement. It is excusing satanism. It is diverting attention. It is "if dystopia is to happen, it would be defensible that it be done seriously".
It sounds like maybe the problem is that the law is targeting the wrong people. I don’t think any kids should be arrested for smoking weed. If you want penalties for those who supplied it to them, that would make more sense if it’s considered harmful.
If a kid has a substance use problem, that’s a medical/psychological issue, not a criminal issue.
My kid (with a little help from Claude) ended up creating his own social network just to get around the bans. The name of his network makes his opinion of the bans pretty clear. For his birthday, all he wanted was his domain name and and "merch pens" printed with the domain on it. I suppose I'm proud!
Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You have repeatedly been abrasively personal in comments here. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
Feel free to email me if that is actually the case. I can't see anything that would confirm that.
Edit: I have dug into it. No credential/secret/email leak... the complaint as "leaking PII" is not really substantiated in the dangerous sense. The only real exposure is real first+ (optional) last names (already public-by-design inside the app) being readable by unauthenticated callers. I will let him think through the implications of that instead of helicopter parenting.
The real solution to this has always been education. Teach the kids about social media the way we teach about drugs and sex. It’s in many ways more ubiquitous to many teens than the other two these days.
(Oh and regulate the companies, not what consumers are allowed to do)
The only places that seem to be doing well with teaching about sex are those that are not all too concerned about teenagers having sex. And places that do a good job teaching about drugs seem even rarer
I'm all for teaching about social media. But if that is supposed to have any success it should be more like teaching about politics and literature than like teaching about drugs and sex. Give them literacy, discuss which motives and forces are at play so they can see beyond the obvious and make good decisions
You make it sound simple, but a significant portion of the population doesn't want their children to understand anything about sex or drugs. They want to pretend like those things don't exist and anyone daring to talk about them is "indoctrinating" their child. The solution could be simple. But people suck.
Do we actually know the bans aren’t working? TFA quotes a study in Australia based on self reported use.
In Poland, every now and then they publish self reported results on teenagers’ sex life. It usually turns out something along the lines of, 70% of 12 year olds have had 5+ partners, do not use any protection and took part in at least one orgy.
I can imagine the bans aren’t working but maybe asking teenagers "are you doing the cool banned thing" is not the right way to determine that.
'Social media bans suppress kids’ access to information, including information that’s essential to their development, identity formation, and socialization, especially during adolescence.'
Didn't realize I was so deprived.
But yes, this will never work. I'm inclined to see what happens when kids find nostr and get them out of the algorithmic drip, but I assume everyone gives up before that point.
As much as I hate how Scott Adams ended up, he did have a strip that I use to illustrate the futility of "protecting the kids" that I would tell clients (both business and home):
panel 1:
DILBERT: I'M INVENTING A NEW TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT KIDS FROM SEEING SMUT
ON THE INTERNET.
panel 2:
DOGBERT: SO, YOU'RE PITTING YOUR INTELLIGENCE AGAINST THE COLLECTIVE SEX DRIVE OF ALL THE TEENAGERS WHO OWN COMPUTERS?
panel 3:
DILBERT: WHAT IS YOUR POINT?
DOGBERT: DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU PUT A LITTLE HAT ON A SNOWBALL IT CAN LAST A LONG TIME IN HELL?
If this is the cokamany bullshit Child Safety Act that the AU Gov put in place with the social media ban and age verification shit™ -- I knew this would happens inevitably. The whole thing was stupid as fuck. Not a single one of us that _actually_ work in this industry were consulted to ask whether we _thought_ this was a good idea, no sir. -- Be careful my fellow Aussies, or we end up letting the government build the Great Wall of Australa!
It applies a 'duty of care' to 'online services', which include 'internet carriage services', 'social media', 'relevant electronic services', 'hosting services', 'search engine services', generative AI services, among others. And for encrypted messaging (which would probably come under 'social media' or 'relevant electronic services'), it only excludes 'lawful communications occurring in private solely between consenting adults'.
And the other big thing is it gives approved researchers authority to use sock puppet identities in contravention of any 'agreement, contract or deed', and gives them immunity from civil consequences.
Reliable sources inform me that the government is never going to abuse this act.
I'm sorry, but what I have to say to that is simple this; Parent should teach their children better, teach them virtues, how the world works, protect them from the horrors that exists. Love and nurture them. Not wash their hands and shrug and expect some lousy politicians to protect their children. Geez fuck.
Forgive me for being passionate. But this isn't the way to solve the problem.
Going "entrance forbidden to the libraries and bookstores: they are full of bad texts (and there are people scribbling dumb harmful things on the billboards there)" is not "protecting children".
(With reference to YouTube, chiefly, but not necessarily excluding other repositories. And not to mention the actual intention to block access to encyclopedias.)
I think that depends a lot on the age of the child in question. I absolutely would simply forbid an 8 year old from entering a library or book store with neo nazi writings or aum shinrikyo literature or Ted Kaczynki’s manifesto easily accessible. Trying to provide appropriate context for everything at that age is simply not feasible.
-- You have treated the «8 year old» as a newborn without previous protective formation - so a sad case already;
-- You have defended barring access to all decent libraries and bookstores - which in their hundreds of thousands of volumes do have lots of trash and biased texts. They also contain the good ones.
It's not entrance forbidden to libraries and bookstores though, it's closer to entrance forbidden to bars and casinos. Modern social media is quite low value and quite predatory.
Right now just for you. I clicked on the app and the first thing it displays is a short, of a guy (probably AI) reading a Reddit post about someone's grandpa wanting to be called Bloodfang, overlaid on Subway Surfers. Not the worst content on there but definitely mindless brainrot.
Unbelievable. I do not really know how to reply politely.
I will repeat: go and hunt the wealth that it does contain. It is not a sign of mental development to pick one piece of trash and say that it exhausts the content. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140206
It's not that bad. Hard drives are still about $30 a TB, long-form videos worth preserving are around a GB each in decent quality, so they cost about $0.03 each to preserve in decent quality. It's not free but it's not too expensive either. $0.06 for redundancy, $0.04 if you use erasure coding (e.g. RAID-6).
Reduce that by a factor of 10 if you accept noticeable visual artifacting while still conveying the information - that is, if you believe it's not necessary to preserve every pixel as long as the information content remains. If you're focused on quantity of preservation over quality, you should do this.
Again, you do not seem to be appreciating the context. You are suggesting that cultural preservation and accessibility, that should be a goal of States (good luck nowadays about their goals), and is today in one of its most important cone (video material) in the hands of an enterprise, should be replicated (in its important subsets) by private citizens.
You are forgetting, past scale, legal details (the MIT and Stanford etc., and even the holders of old material, chose to publish their content on YT) and systemic details (Lesics and Asianometry and Alpha Phoenix and Sabine Hossenfelder and Steve Mould and 3blue1brown and Thoisoi and the very many others who are producing content specifically for the platform can do it financially because of visiting users on YT - not on backups), and the absurdity.
Adding more and more techno-ignorant laws will be introduced because politicians want to be seen to be doing something while not disrupting business interests.
If they actually wanted working changes the solution need to hit the money/content cycle of advertisers. here is the start of an idea: make it illegal to show ads unsuitable for children before 2100. we used to have laws like this banning tobacco, alcohol, etc. on TV and radio. They worked to slow the indoctrination. They have not been updated to include prescription drugs, gambling, etc online. This is technically already info used to target, does not require age verification, and actually points the algorithms to content that matches ads that can be shown.
Are these authors bought and paid for by big tech? This assertion, with nothing to back it up and zero mention of the negative side effects, calls the entire article’s legitimacy into doubt for me:
> It’s important for kids to do this online, an arena where they often develop social skills and refine their identities.
Later on they say:
> Rather than attempting to block young people from online services that allow them to access information and engage in age-essential communication
The fact being “social media online” is taken as a given for under 16s is laughable. Kids do not need to socialize like this, they do not need to be online, they can and should go outside. When they turn 16 their brains will be slightly more fully formed and I could go on and on but it seems these authors just want the kids exposed to the algorithms.
Substitute "online" for "on predatory social media", which is what this is actually restricting. Do you really put predatory social media on the same level of importance as basic reading?
YouTube is also predatory. Have you noticed how it now defaults to showing you a short when you first open the app? Maybe make your own video museum that's separate from the slop machine.
There's a different organisation that's bringing great wealth and prosperity to a region in Mexico and also kills random people a lot. Should it be banned because it kills random people or encouraged because it brings wealth and prosperity? Any functioning government would ban it, obviously, despite the wealth and prosperity. If you do a good thing and a bad thing you're still doing the bad thing and get punished for the bad thing.
You are comparing a container which hosts both Intellectual and poor material with mobsters. And implying that a library should be closed because it contains bad literature.
If it's illegal to do X, and you do X and Y, and refuse to stop doing X, then it's inevitable that your Y gets shut down when they shut you down for doing X. To solve this, don't do X.
See also: the internet archive emergency digital lending program.
And when would YT have done something illegal to the point of locking it.
And where is the basicmost consideration for the crucial fact that YT is doing a paramount, invaluable, priceless service to the democratization of knowledge and culture and education worldwide. Because again, if administrations do not notice that, they cannot be considered anything of worth.
-- age verification is there to block access to minors, while obviously, as already stated many times here, minors are ___mandated___ to get cultivated, and that involves looking for those "Jung, Boniface, Fukuyama, Borges, Mead, Stravinsky, Picasso, Dirac, Sanderson (etc.)" on YouTube. If they don't get cultivated they must be either confined where they won't do damage or directly thrown in a ditch - they cannot be an active part of anything.
-- age verification blocks access to all developed people, to all Men, if there is a mechanism involved that does not perfectly defend privacy or other requirements (from dubious equipment to contracts with dubious entities). If anyone peered into the private matters of a Man, especially cultural matters, the response of all Men is the highest full violence. Nobody worth it will ever have access to the museum again, if entrance involves identification or perversion (e.g. smartphones).
-- current administrations seem largely oblivious of the above, which makes them satanic (both perverse and detrimental), strictly structurally inadequate (proposing one-step mental processes instead of full-framed plans), and substantially massively ignorant.
--
Whatever your age and causes, poster, get out of the level you declare with your impressively chosen nickname and as of today, now, cultivate yourself intensively because if you can type or similar you are not a cow, and if you are humanoid you have duties which you are not fulfilling. That implies for you also to spend all the time you otherwise waste on effing YouTube, while it is available: the pointers are there above, proceed from those given (since you stated and showed you have no idea how to search for quality material - start from those written and build on them), start immediately. You cannot be a liability if you partake in societies.
Sorry can you explain that a bit more literally? They must be online at the same level as they must read? I didn’t see any other posts referencing this elsewhere in the page.
I will not post the hundreds of channels I follow on YT for privacy reasons, but you can check yourself (if you never did that): think of some cultural matter of the past or the present, in video form, and it will be on YT.
Already that the MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Yale etc. have an important presence there is telling of the foolishness to block access. Add things like the "Curiosity Show" and Julius Sumner Miller and all daily published new divulgation, and you can see how blocking access to kids and students is near the most stupid idea ever.
Where? See the start of the submitted (which does not mention youtube, but if you follow the news it is there):
> In July, France joined Australia in restricting minors from accessing social media—barring children under 15 from major platforms, before the ban was blocked by the country’s top court on human rights grounds. The UK aims to forbid kids under 16 from accessing Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms in early 2027, and the EU has announced its own plan to prohibit social media for kids under 15
Explain the difference. Because if something declared "Age verification for entrance into cultural venues", my first matter of care is not about the point in the future where the liability would happen - the core liability is already there, proposing the satanic.
The proposal has already happened. You are not understanding what you reply to.
> the core liability is already there, proposing the satanic
We cannot be in a situation in which ___trash___ is making proposals (threats) and our reassurance should be "maybe they will not". The reassurance happens when they are called with their deserved name by a critical mass.
No, it's already legislation in some countries, and advanced preliminary work in others, and declared determination in others again. As more people have noted, you are not checking the contents in this very page.
And your insistence on "not there yet" is again completely bypassing our arguments about the severity of the context.
Sorry, I still cannot tell what is the central thrust of what you’re saying. I’m also having a hard time telling the difference between what is quoted from the article and where you’re quoting yourself looking at that comment that you linked.
My general position is that assuming that children ages of 10 to 16 _need_ to be or _must_ be online to communicate with their peers, without considering the negative impact on developing brains, is intellectually dishonest at best.
No, you misunderstood. Online "for the purpose of communication" was not defended. Online "for the purpose of cultivation" is morally mandatory.
I do not see how there can be a misunderstanding: they blocked and/or are planning to block and/or trying to block access by minors to crucial resources like YouTube. Kids are mandated to read good books, and they are similarly mandated to watch good video material. Do you understand what I mean for "good video material" or would you like me to improvise a list with some examples?
If you are maturing in a place without access to libraries or without access to independent theaters (a dispersed, rural area or under a shoestring or autocratic government) then I will concede this. But if you live in a city that provides these things, then access to YT does not provide an adequate ROI (in terms of the negative consequences it introduces) over a library or regular visits to the art museum
You clearly have no idea about what YouTube contains, to compare it to what can be met in local collections.
And a similar wild comparison is that about the «negative consequences [YouTube would] introduce» - and without even considering the easy circumventions. Which «negative consequences»?!
Everyone knew it when these sort of measures were first discussed here way back when and everyone knew that they would be bypassed as soon as they were implemented.
But politicians, lobbies, and everyone else who gains from this do not care.
> But early lessons from Australia, which enacted a ban in 2024, show that these sorts of age restrictions are easily circumvented. A study published earlier this year found that four in five teens under 16 made their way onto barred platforms.
No offense but did you read the article? if not, maybe go do that.
Why do you infer that if it can be bypassed, it's not working? In a lot of places where it's illegal to smoke weed, people do it anyway - but the law still makes a big difference, because it adds friction and because it doesn't happen in public.
Yeah, either you are a bot or you don't care about reading an article that you are commenting on even after I posted a direct quote from said article in my reply so I am not going to waste time responding to your comments.
Im not surprised, the Plattforms have 0 interest in kids not accessing. If they could make money from this i would bet my left Hand 99.5% of kids would not manage to enter.
FaceID works pretty good. I dont see any law of physics / math forbidding a proper biometric, privacy compliant age filter to work at scale.
> Social media bans suppress kids’ access to information, including information that’s essential to their development, identity formation, and socialization, especially during adolescence.
Indeed children were deprived of their potential for development for all of humanity up until the early 2000s, thank god we finally closed the gap with social media algorithms...
> deprived of their potential for development for all of humanity up until the early 2000s
Exactly: before that age I had to travel a very long distance to reach information collections that were a tiny shard of what is available now from anywhere, anytime, freely, with a few clicks. (The reference is still YouTube.)
Kids in the 90s were growing up in a different world. And that world did have a lot less dissemination of information and experiences. From today's perspective there were vast gaps that were later filled by Tumblr, Reddit and now TikTok
Which is not to say that there aren't major drawbacks too
I suppose Wikipedia needs to go to the dark net for allowing British kids (and adults) to read it freely. One might reckon that reading Wikipedia would be good for kids (and adults), but I suppose the Soviet Uni... err. disagrees. I mean, sarcasm aside, that is the real, fundamental danger here; VPN use has already seen big increases in Australia and the UK, and the dark net is the last place no one should go but may have to. Soon in the EU too, I suppose.
I forgot: I do strongly see that the current horrid mess is due to lack of the diligent calling things with their own names - there are all kinds of bestial players active, which are treated as if normal and not labelled as they deserve. The silence of the Intellectuals has brought to this unjudging world.
> a reference
I realized (after searches in my DBs, which as said do not allow fuzzy searches yet), that the source could have been a piece submitted to HN, and then I realized that it could have been a piece found generically on some newspaper on the web. You can search for "the (female member of cabinet) states that blocking social networks ... not enough: children could look for inappropriate things on wikipedia or look for them on google", and there could have been a mention of "genitals". Similarly I remember keir starmer, on another island far away, stating that "kids should never be able to see pictures of naked people until the age of 16". Look for it on your search systems (keyword based or RAG) on the whole web. If you remember the name of the proponent in au I will look again in my offline sources.
Yes, it is. I don't want to live in a country where everything is illegal but not enforced (until someone in power dislikes you).
With the approximately zero quality of current administrations the difference between "legitimate" and "legal" has become bewildering and well beyond damaging.
Read the under 16 ban in Australia as ideally their presence on certain social media platforms as being against the law. Parents though very much like the ones that let their under age kids drive on roads despite illegal, will trust those in their judgement will probably be safe, while being able to enforce restrictions of their child if they feel it's robbing their kid of time, self respect or other.
The difference with the ban is unlike back in 2019 when social media were ignoring requests (too hard etc) to remove some of the bad algorithms that were targeting and funnelling teenagers into dark topic areas ... with the change it's on social media to ... well remove targeting algorithms that focus on the 10 to 14 year olds for a start ... else if anything bad outcomes happens - the law I'd imagine will throw the book at them. It also works the other way as well, parents who knowingly permitted their child to engage, won't be rushing off to their lawyers to sue whomever.
The main issue with the ban has been where some people would like to use the under 16 ban as an excuse to do age verification by the most intrusive means as possible - but I could only imagine it only benefits platforms scraping as much PII as they can get.
Content shouldn't target 10 to 14 year olds, sure. But, in practice and mathematically/statistically, I'm not sure what that means. Even if algorithms ignored age completely, there would be statistical correlates.
We should probably ban algorithms suggesting content and ads for dark things for everyone i.e. cigarettes, alcohol, gambling, misleading health content. It is honestly bad for everyone and that's actually the only way to prevent kids from seeing it.
It's not just about ban evasion. It's also about kids seeing this content everywhere.
Yes banning ads for misleading health scams would be a good idea, but banning ads for for those who smoke or drink vying for more market share probably isn't purposeful. I'd agree one of the problems of the modern world are young minds are too often introduced far too early to concepts and behaviours they'd cope with better as young adults, but the world has changed and even in everyday life these are in view one way or another.
As for targeting ... I wish I could find the news item from what I think was around 2018-9 that in particular made me sit up and realise the dissatisfaction with wayward algorithms wasn't merely advertising that was not entirely suitable. IIRC this article after the initial introduction of various incidents where the parents had discovered their child had ended up visiting odd places like self harm topics and content not so desirable, the article then outlined someone or a group of people testing various social media areas with new fake accounts. The damming conclusion was just how quickly the algorithms were determining an age and then funnelling apparently somewhat naive youngsters without much prompting into unexpected topic areas, while the fake accounts which suggested an adult experienced something different.
A search today didn't turn up anything close to what was the real concern I believe that got everyone's real attention here in Australia 2018/19, mostly just benign issues like gambling, advertising for alcohol and other marketing opportunities. [1] [2] [4] [5] The govt at the time did ask the platforms to modify what they were doing but the short answer was too hard and not going to do it.
Muddying the waters are long running calls to control platforms by a few interested parties with concerns, some opting to capitalise any time a particular platform faces criticism. Some of these are legitimate long standing problems like [3] where platforms are expected to have live human moderation keeping a watchful eye over their flock at all time ... while ignoring the platforms are generally trying to balance safety with an expectation of privacy. It's these very things that some apparently very powerful parties use to try and bring an and to anonymous content on the web - every time there's an issue trying to install a real ID gateway - many assume the age gateway will do that.
[1] https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social/leaked-docu... (2017)
[2] https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/facebook-targeting-insecure-childr... (2017)
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/03/01/surge-of-... (2019)
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/09/children-... (2019)
[5] https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2020/48/under-the-radar-preda... (2020)
The problem is might see the solution is to not have such laws in the first place if they are not enforced. But another solution is to give the government more and more and more enforcement power which will, eventually, be used against the people instead of for them. Just as bad is all these enforcement people have to continually justify their pay so the bar for what constitutes an infraction starts dropping in order to keep the prosecution rates up.
Yeah, there’s nothing more objectionable than a law that is not seriously enforced. It need not be perfectly enforced (what law is?), but anything that doesn’t come with real teeth should just be repealed, regardless of the merits
> there’s nothing more objectionable than a law that
Wrong laws? Unacceptable laws? Ignorant laws? Absurd laws? Satanic laws?
Unbelievable.
(Edit: sorry, replied twice out of a mistake. I cannot consolidate with the previous reply, which cannot now be edited or deleted.)
That depends on the purpose of the individual law. Laws against murder must be enforced as much as possible, but the war on drugs has done a lot of unnecessary damage through excessive enforcement - drugs being illegal would still reduce drug use if that was only lightly enforced. The law is not like a segmentation fault.
Maybe I'm misreading their point...but I'd think that OP was being intellectually consistent and saying that the drug laws should be enforced as written for everyone, or repealed and replaced by more sane laws... because of you were to enforce them as written, you'd have 20-30% (wild ass guess) of the country serving prison time.
Yes, laws should be repealed if they’re bad. And I think strict enforcement makes it clearer when laws are bad. I would much rather everyone get the same treatment by the criminal justice system every time they violate the law, so everyone knows the true cost of the law, not just those that are unlucky
What if everyone gets the same treatment but the treatment is a wrist slap instead of 20 years in jail?
If that fulfills the purpose of the law then that’s a better law. Turning the law into a lottery where 1/100k “criminals” is severely punished for a common behavior is not the answer.
As a citizen I should be able to read the law and understand that violations have a likely and proportional consequence. This requires sensible laws. I shouldn’t need to play a guessing game (or consult a lawyer) about which laws are “real” for the average person and which can be ignored.
Alternatively, if the problem with a behavior is that it might bother someone (noise complaints etc), set up a better/more accessible channel for civil disputes. Not everything needs to be a crime.
That is the law. It's not a life sentence for using social media as a child. You say it doesn't need to be a crime, but perhaps you've not been made aware that it already isn't a crime?
This was in a minor subthread about drug laws, so I was responding to that.
That’s strict enforcement of a weak punishment. I am entirely in favor of that.
[dead]
You cannot talk about absurd absasing laws and fixate about enforcement. It is excusing satanism. It is diverting attention. It is "if dystopia is to happen, it would be defensible that it be done seriously".
Should young people be surveilled to ensure they don't smoke weed, or is it okay if smoking weed is illegal but some of them do it anyway and hide it?
It sounds like maybe the problem is that the law is targeting the wrong people. I don’t think any kids should be arrested for smoking weed. If you want penalties for those who supplied it to them, that would make more sense if it’s considered harmful.
If a kid has a substance use problem, that’s a medical/psychological issue, not a criminal issue.
There shouldn't be a law dictating how old one must be to smoke weed. That's a parenting decision.
Smoking, drinking, watching adult films. Arguing that adding another to think list leads to "everything" is rather a stretch
My kid (with a little help from Claude) ended up creating his own social network just to get around the bans. The name of his network makes his opinion of the bans pretty clear. For his birthday, all he wanted was his domain name and and "merch pens" printed with the domain on it. I suppose I'm proud!
1. https://idiocy.schappistudios.com
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Could you please stop breaking the site guidelines? You have repeatedly been abrasively personal in comments here. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50130544
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50105875
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50072114
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
> and PII?
Feel free to email me if that is actually the case. I can't see anything that would confirm that.
Edit: I have dug into it. No credential/secret/email leak... the complaint as "leaking PII" is not really substantiated in the dangerous sense. The only real exposure is real first+ (optional) last names (already public-by-design inside the app) being readable by unauthenticated callers. I will let him think through the implications of that instead of helicopter parenting.
The real solution to this has always been education. Teach the kids about social media the way we teach about drugs and sex. It’s in many ways more ubiquitous to many teens than the other two these days.
(Oh and regulate the companies, not what consumers are allowed to do)
The only places that seem to be doing well with teaching about sex are those that are not all too concerned about teenagers having sex. And places that do a good job teaching about drugs seem even rarer
I'm all for teaching about social media. But if that is supposed to have any success it should be more like teaching about politics and literature than like teaching about drugs and sex. Give them literacy, discuss which motives and forces are at play so they can see beyond the obvious and make good decisions
You make it sound simple, but a significant portion of the population doesn't want their children to understand anything about sex or drugs. They want to pretend like those things don't exist and anyone daring to talk about them is "indoctrinating" their child. The solution could be simple. But people suck.
Do we actually know the bans aren’t working? TFA quotes a study in Australia based on self reported use.
In Poland, every now and then they publish self reported results on teenagers’ sex life. It usually turns out something along the lines of, 70% of 12 year olds have had 5+ partners, do not use any protection and took part in at least one orgy.
I can imagine the bans aren’t working but maybe asking teenagers "are you doing the cool banned thing" is not the right way to determine that.
In my life I don't think I've ever answered a survey honestly and I'm nearly 40 years old.
I do not take self reported surveys as accurate and I don't think anyone should. Especially for kids.
'Social media bans suppress kids’ access to information, including information that’s essential to their development, identity formation, and socialization, especially during adolescence.'
Didn't realize I was so deprived.
But yes, this will never work. I'm inclined to see what happens when kids find nostr and get them out of the algorithmic drip, but I assume everyone gives up before that point.
As much as I hate how Scott Adams ended up, he did have a strip that I use to illustrate the futility of "protecting the kids" that I would tell clients (both business and home):
panel 1:
DILBERT: I'M INVENTING A NEW TECHNOLOGY TO PREVENT KIDS FROM SEEING SMUT ON THE INTERNET.
panel 2:
DOGBERT: SO, YOU'RE PITTING YOUR INTELLIGENCE AGAINST THE COLLECTIVE SEX DRIVE OF ALL THE TEENAGERS WHO OWN COMPUTERS?
panel 3:
DILBERT: WHAT IS YOUR POINT?
DOGBERT: DID YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU PUT A LITTLE HAT ON A SNOWBALL IT CAN LAST A LONG TIME IN HELL?
https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1996-01-23
that was always the goal. make it a legal thing the government has to enforce and not facebook.
If this is the cokamany bullshit Child Safety Act that the AU Gov put in place with the social media ban and age verification shit™ -- I knew this would happens inevitably. The whole thing was stupid as fuck. Not a single one of us that _actually_ work in this industry were consulted to ask whether we _thought_ this was a good idea, no sir. -- Be careful my fellow Aussies, or we end up letting the government build the Great Wall of Australa!
We are already going through the "digital duty of care" act now.
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislat...
It applies a 'duty of care' to 'online services', which include 'internet carriage services', 'social media', 'relevant electronic services', 'hosting services', 'search engine services', generative AI services, among others. And for encrypted messaging (which would probably come under 'social media' or 'relevant electronic services'), it only excludes 'lawful communications occurring in private solely between consenting adults'.
And the other big thing is it gives approved researchers authority to use sock puppet identities in contravention of any 'agreement, contract or deed', and gives them immunity from civil consequences.
Reliable sources inform me that the government is never going to abuse this act.
> [au g]ov
The attempt is everywhere - probably not just in the undead "western world".
Can I remind you that the thing out in the australian government uttered something like "a hill to die on"? What were the exact words?
Why are not people outpspoken on the bestiality of those things? To stress the total difference that separates from those things?
I'm sorry, but what I have to say to that is simple this; Parent should teach their children better, teach them virtues, how the world works, protect them from the horrors that exists. Love and nurture them. Not wash their hands and shrug and expect some lousy politicians to protect their children. Geez fuck.
Forgive me for being passionate. But this isn't the way to solve the problem.
> protect their children
Going "entrance forbidden to the libraries and bookstores: they are full of bad texts (and there are people scribbling dumb harmful things on the billboards there)" is not "protecting children".
(With reference to YouTube, chiefly, but not necessarily excluding other repositories. And not to mention the actual intention to block access to encyclopedias.)
I think that depends a lot on the age of the child in question. I absolutely would simply forbid an 8 year old from entering a library or book store with neo nazi writings or aum shinrikyo literature or Ted Kaczynki’s manifesto easily accessible. Trying to provide appropriate context for everything at that age is simply not feasible.
-- You have treated the «8 year old» as a newborn without previous protective formation - so a sad case already;
-- You have defended barring access to all decent libraries and bookstores - which in their hundreds of thousands of volumes do have lots of trash and biased texts. They also contain the good ones.
It's not entrance forbidden to libraries and bookstores though, it's closer to entrance forbidden to bars and casinos. Modern social media is quite low value and quite predatory.
> bars and casinos
YouTube?!?!?!?! When was the last time you checked the wealth it contains?!
Right now just for you. I clicked on the app and the first thing it displays is a short, of a guy (probably AI) reading a Reddit post about someone's grandpa wanting to be called Bloodfang, overlaid on Subway Surfers. Not the worst content on there but definitely mindless brainrot.
Unbelievable. I do not really know how to reply politely.
I will repeat: go and hunt the wealth that it does contain. It is not a sign of mental development to pick one piece of trash and say that it exhausts the content. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140206
Just build a YouTube mirror with only quality content you want to preserve.
Yes, anyone with the required space and redundancy and connectivity could do it.
Moderation...
It's not that bad. Hard drives are still about $30 a TB, long-form videos worth preserving are around a GB each in decent quality, so they cost about $0.03 each to preserve in decent quality. It's not free but it's not too expensive either. $0.06 for redundancy, $0.04 if you use erasure coding (e.g. RAID-6).
Reduce that by a factor of 10 if you accept noticeable visual artifacting while still conveying the information - that is, if you believe it's not necessary to preserve every pixel as long as the information content remains. If you're focused on quantity of preservation over quality, you should do this.
Again, you do not seem to be appreciating the context. You are suggesting that cultural preservation and accessibility, that should be a goal of States (good luck nowadays about their goals), and is today in one of its most important cone (video material) in the hands of an enterprise, should be replicated (in its important subsets) by private citizens.
You are forgetting, past scale, legal details (the MIT and Stanford etc., and even the holders of old material, chose to publish their content on YT) and systemic details (Lesics and Asianometry and Alpha Phoenix and Sabine Hossenfelder and Steve Mould and 3blue1brown and Thoisoi and the very many others who are producing content specifically for the platform can do it financially because of visiting users on YT - not on backups), and the absurdity.
Adding more and more techno-ignorant laws will be introduced because politicians want to be seen to be doing something while not disrupting business interests.
If they actually wanted working changes the solution need to hit the money/content cycle of advertisers. here is the start of an idea: make it illegal to show ads unsuitable for children before 2100. we used to have laws like this banning tobacco, alcohol, etc. on TV and radio. They worked to slow the indoctrination. They have not been updated to include prescription drugs, gambling, etc online. This is technically already info used to target, does not require age verification, and actually points the algorithms to content that matches ads that can be shown.
Are these authors bought and paid for by big tech? This assertion, with nothing to back it up and zero mention of the negative side effects, calls the entire article’s legitimacy into doubt for me:
> It’s important for kids to do this online, an arena where they often develop social skills and refine their identities.
Later on they say:
> Rather than attempting to block young people from online services that allow them to access information and engage in age-essential communication
The fact being “social media online” is taken as a given for under 16s is laughable. Kids do not need to socialize like this, they do not need to be online, they can and should go outside. When they turn 16 their brains will be slightly more fully formed and I could go on and on but it seems these authors just want the kids exposed to the algorithms.
> [kids] do not need to be online
They ___must___ at the same level as they must read. See posts elsewhere in this page.
--
Oh, a sniper. I will be even more clear: either the kids get cultivated, or they are wasted and waste. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140206
Substitute "online" for "on predatory social media", which is what this is actually restricting. Do you really put predatory social media on the same level of importance as basic reading?
There cannot be any mistake: I am talking about access to YouTube, the Video Museum.
Among other severe faults: read the site Guidelines.
YouTube is also predatory. Have you noticed how it now defaults to showing you a short when you first open the app? Maybe make your own video museum that's separate from the slop machine.
> when you first open the app
You are posting on HN, you take it for granted we use "apps"?!
> Maybe make your own video museum that's separate from the slop machine
The states have not done it and they are attacking the imperfect third party-treasure!!!
There's a different organisation that's bringing great wealth and prosperity to a region in Mexico and also kills random people a lot. Should it be banned because it kills random people or encouraged because it brings wealth and prosperity? Any functioning government would ban it, obviously, despite the wealth and prosperity. If you do a good thing and a bad thing you're still doing the bad thing and get punished for the bad thing.
You are comparing a container which hosts both Intellectual and poor material with mobsters. And implying that a library should be closed because it contains bad literature.
Moderation!...
If it's illegal to do X, and you do X and Y, and refuse to stop doing X, then it's inevitable that your Y gets shut down when they shut you down for doing X. To solve this, don't do X.
See also: the internet archive emergency digital lending program.
And when would YT have done something illegal to the point of locking it.
And where is the basicmost consideration for the crucial fact that YT is doing a paramount, invaluable, priceless service to the democratization of knowledge and culture and education worldwide. Because again, if administrations do not notice that, they cannot be considered anything of worth.
Well right now. They're doing the things that it's rightfully illegal to do without age verification so they're being forced to do age verification.
And the whole context remains:
-- age verification is there to block access to minors, while obviously, as already stated many times here, minors are ___mandated___ to get cultivated, and that involves looking for those "Jung, Boniface, Fukuyama, Borges, Mead, Stravinsky, Picasso, Dirac, Sanderson (etc.)" on YouTube. If they don't get cultivated they must be either confined where they won't do damage or directly thrown in a ditch - they cannot be an active part of anything.
-- age verification blocks access to all developed people, to all Men, if there is a mechanism involved that does not perfectly defend privacy or other requirements (from dubious equipment to contracts with dubious entities). If anyone peered into the private matters of a Man, especially cultural matters, the response of all Men is the highest full violence. Nobody worth it will ever have access to the museum again, if entrance involves identification or perversion (e.g. smartphones).
-- current administrations seem largely oblivious of the above, which makes them satanic (both perverse and detrimental), strictly structurally inadequate (proposing one-step mental processes instead of full-framed plans), and substantially massively ignorant.
--
Whatever your age and causes, poster, get out of the level you declare with your impressively chosen nickname and as of today, now, cultivate yourself intensively because if you can type or similar you are not a cow, and if you are humanoid you have duties which you are not fulfilling. That implies for you also to spend all the time you otherwise waste on effing YouTube, while it is available: the pointers are there above, proceed from those given (since you stated and showed you have no idea how to search for quality material - start from those written and build on them), start immediately. You cannot be a liability if you partake in societies.
Sorry can you explain that a bit more literally? They must be online at the same level as they must read? I didn’t see any other posts referencing this elsewhere in the page.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50140206
I will not post the hundreds of channels I follow on YT for privacy reasons, but you can check yourself (if you never did that): think of some cultural matter of the past or the present, in video form, and it will be on YT.
Already that the MIT, Stanford, Caltech, Yale etc. have an important presence there is telling of the foolishness to block access. Add things like the "Curiosity Show" and Julius Sumner Miller and all daily published new divulgation, and you can see how blocking access to kids and students is near the most stupid idea ever.
Nope, they're not blocked from youtube, they simple cannot have accounts. Nor are are providers required to check ID.
> they're not blocked from youtube
Where? See the start of the submitted (which does not mention youtube, but if you follow the news it is there):
> In July, France joined Australia in restricting minors from accessing social media—barring children under 15 from major platforms, before the ban was blocked by the country’s top court on human rights grounds. The UK aims to forbid kids under 16 from accessing Facebook, TikTok, and other platforms in early 2027, and the EU has announced its own plan to prohibit social media for kids under 15
Aims to, or has?
Explain the difference. Because if something declared "Age verification for entrance into cultural venues", my first matter of care is not about the point in the future where the liability would happen - the core liability is already there, proposing the satanic.
Well the difference is that one is actually happening and the other is just talk for the time being.
The proposal has already happened. You are not understanding what you reply to.
> the core liability is already there, proposing the satanic
We cannot be in a situation in which ___trash___ is making proposals (threats) and our reassurance should be "maybe they will not". The reassurance happens when they are called with their deserved name by a critical mass.
> The proposal has already happened.
So it's still just talk?
No, it's already legislation in some countries, and advanced preliminary work in others, and declared determination in others again. As more people have noted, you are not checking the contents in this very page.
And your insistence on "not there yet" is again completely bypassing our arguments about the severity of the context.
Sorry, I still cannot tell what is the central thrust of what you’re saying. I’m also having a hard time telling the difference between what is quoted from the article and where you’re quoting yourself looking at that comment that you linked.
My general position is that assuming that children ages of 10 to 16 _need_ to be or _must_ be online to communicate with their peers, without considering the negative impact on developing brains, is intellectually dishonest at best.
> be online to communicate
No, you misunderstood. Online "for the purpose of communication" was not defended. Online "for the purpose of cultivation" is morally mandatory.
I do not see how there can be a misunderstanding: they blocked and/or are planning to block and/or trying to block access by minors to crucial resources like YouTube. Kids are mandated to read good books, and they are similarly mandated to watch good video material. Do you understand what I mean for "good video material" or would you like me to improvise a list with some examples?
If you are maturing in a place without access to libraries or without access to independent theaters (a dispersed, rural area or under a shoestring or autocratic government) then I will concede this. But if you live in a city that provides these things, then access to YT does not provide an adequate ROI (in terms of the negative consequences it introduces) over a library or regular visits to the art museum
> an adequate ROI
You clearly have no idea about what YouTube contains, to compare it to what can be met in local collections.
And a similar wild comparison is that about the «negative consequences [YouTube would] introduce» - and without even considering the easy circumventions. Which «negative consequences»?!
Of course it doesn't work.
Everyone knew it when these sort of measures were first discussed here way back when and everyone knew that they would be bypassed as soon as they were implemented.
But politicians, lobbies, and everyone else who gains from this do not care.
Why do you infer that it doesn't work?
> But early lessons from Australia, which enacted a ban in 2024, show that these sorts of age restrictions are easily circumvented. A study published earlier this year found that four in five teens under 16 made their way onto barred platforms.
No offense but did you read the article? if not, maybe go do that.
Why do you infer that if it can be bypassed, it's not working? In a lot of places where it's illegal to smoke weed, people do it anyway - but the law still makes a big difference, because it adds friction and because it doesn't happen in public.
Yeah, either you are a bot or you don't care about reading an article that you are commenting on even after I posted a direct quote from said article in my reply so I am not going to waste time responding to your comments.
Good day.
Im not surprised, the Plattforms have 0 interest in kids not accessing. If they could make money from this i would bet my left Hand 99.5% of kids would not manage to enter.
FaceID works pretty good. I dont see any law of physics / math forbidding a proper biometric, privacy compliant age filter to work at scale.
lol the millennial generation has been outsmarting media bans for 30+ years now. Dunno what made anyone expect Gen Z or alpha couldn’t do the same.
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> Social media bans suppress kids’ access to information, including information that’s essential to their development, identity formation, and socialization, especially during adolescence.
Indeed children were deprived of their potential for development for all of humanity up until the early 2000s, thank god we finally closed the gap with social media algorithms...
Is this sponsored by Meta?
> deprived of their potential for development for all of humanity up until the early 2000s
Exactly: before that age I had to travel a very long distance to reach information collections that were a tiny shard of what is available now from anywhere, anytime, freely, with a few clicks. (The reference is still YouTube.)
Kids in the 90s were growing up in a different world. And that world did have a lot less dissemination of information and experiences. From today's perspective there were vast gaps that were later filled by Tumblr, Reddit and now TikTok
Which is not to say that there aren't major drawbacks too
The whole world wasn't on social media back then, so teenagers were not missing out on anything. Also youth crime rates were much higher AFAIK
Plenty of folks on this social media site are only here because they were given un-monitored internet access by negligent parents at a formative age.
I suppose Wikipedia needs to go to the dark net for allowing British kids (and adults) to read it freely. One might reckon that reading Wikipedia would be good for kids (and adults), but I suppose the Soviet Uni... err. disagrees. I mean, sarcasm aside, that is the real, fundamental danger here; VPN use has already seen big increases in Australia and the UK, and the dark net is the last place no one should go but may have to. Soon in the EU too, I suppose.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Wikimedi...
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> Reminder that the beasts in australia also were reported to wanting to block search engines, together with Wikipedia.
“Beasts” eh? Sounds a little hyperbolic. I’m going to need a reference for the search engine and Wikipedia blocking claims.
> “Beasts” eh? Sounds
I forgot: I do strongly see that the current horrid mess is due to lack of the diligent calling things with their own names - there are all kinds of bestial players active, which are treated as if normal and not labelled as they deserve. The silence of the Intellectuals has brought to this unjudging world.
> a reference
I realized (after searches in my DBs, which as said do not allow fuzzy searches yet), that the source could have been a piece submitted to HN, and then I realized that it could have been a piece found generically on some newspaper on the web. You can search for "the (female member of cabinet) states that blocking social networks ... not enough: children could look for inappropriate things on wikipedia or look for them on google", and there could have been a mention of "genitals". Similarly I remember keir starmer, on another island far away, stating that "kids should never be able to see pictures of naked people until the age of 16". Look for it on your search systems (keyword based or RAG) on the whole web. If you remember the name of the proponent in au I will look again in my offline sources.
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