Amazing how "think of the children" became so prevalent these past few months when we've had all these ongoing attacks on online privacy by governments. We used to laugh at the government when they used this argument, now I see people willingly use it to argue for forced digital identity.
It’s the other way around, 20,30 years ago it didn’t need any explanation to keep hard porn or people being shot in the face out of the reach of minors. Nowadays kids share gruesome videos from the Ukraine battlefield and porn with one another, a whole generation is growing up that thinks strangulation during sex is “quite ok”. And it is platforms like these that constantly try and cross the borders. Sorry lads, if you think protection of minors from this kind of material is censure or old-fashioned, grow up, inform yourself where censure starts and protection of families and kids ends and most of all: DONT get kids. If you think telegram or twitter or Facebook are in business to improve our lives, or to protect us from censure, you obviously have no clue.
30 years ago people were assuming the government is wiretapping their phones. Now you're here begging the government to wiretap the internet because "we need to protect kids". Sure thing, buddy, this is going to all work out just fine. It's not like we're seeing in real time what governments are doing with people who disagree with them and just how much they want something like Palantir to control and cut down all "dissent". But hey, at least kids won't see some scary videos. Oh, you won't see the videos of police beating up immigrants or protestors, but who cares, right? Kids will be safe!
I'm using Lemmy, and since I highly doubt the admins will implement the age control thing, the new laws will make it pretty much illegal. So, either:
They ban it and everyone has to start using a vpn/tor to access it (which would spread the word about it, and many kids would also do it with facebook or twitter or tiktok).
Or they don't bother about small platforms, in which case kids will flock to those smaller platforms, which now have no incentive at all to care about legality of their content. Congrats, it's worse now.
Requiring easier to use parental controls on phones and tablets is the actual way forward. Maybe they could publish a regularly updated list of what they consider "social media not suitable for kids" and make it the default blocklist when activating parental controls on any device.
I'm also not against regulations that punish platforms for knowingly hosting misinformation, spying on users, or other dark patterns. But a ban on social media which doesn't do age checks will not achieve any of that, it has the opposite effect.
You don’t have kids obviously.
Amazing how "think of the children" became so prevalent these past few months when we've had all these ongoing attacks on online privacy by governments. We used to laugh at the government when they used this argument, now I see people willingly use it to argue for forced digital identity.
It’s the other way around, 20,30 years ago it didn’t need any explanation to keep hard porn or people being shot in the face out of the reach of minors. Nowadays kids share gruesome videos from the Ukraine battlefield and porn with one another, a whole generation is growing up that thinks strangulation during sex is “quite ok”. And it is platforms like these that constantly try and cross the borders. Sorry lads, if you think protection of minors from this kind of material is censure or old-fashioned, grow up, inform yourself where censure starts and protection of families and kids ends and most of all: DONT get kids. If you think telegram or twitter or Facebook are in business to improve our lives, or to protect us from censure, you obviously have no clue.
30 years ago people were assuming the government is wiretapping their phones. Now you're here begging the government to wiretap the internet because "we need to protect kids". Sure thing, buddy, this is going to all work out just fine. It's not like we're seeing in real time what governments are doing with people who disagree with them and just how much they want something like Palantir to control and cut down all "dissent". But hey, at least kids won't see some scary videos. Oh, you won't see the videos of police beating up immigrants or protestors, but who cares, right? Kids will be safe!
Here in Europe I’ve never had the feeling the government was wiretapping my phone?
I'm using Lemmy, and since I highly doubt the admins will implement the age control thing, the new laws will make it pretty much illegal. So, either:
Requiring easier to use parental controls on phones and tablets is the actual way forward. Maybe they could publish a regularly updated list of what they consider "social media not suitable for kids" and make it the default blocklist when activating parental controls on any device.
I'm also not against regulations that punish platforms for knowingly hosting misinformation, spying on users, or other dark patterns. But a ban on social media which doesn't do age checks will not achieve any of that, it has the opposite effect.