US-Republikaner und Demokraten drängen auf ein Social-Media-Verbot für Kinder im australischen Stil

I’d prefer that it be banned for adults.

Edit: I guess I should have added /s, but I am not sure if I am being sarcastic. I think all the internet BS and misinformation is more harmful to society when adults (like those who vote..!) get sucked in. Maybe instead of banning, we turn off the share button and commenting? So the internet is more about media than socializing?

As to be expected, Australia is the “proof of concept”.

Can’t wait for VPN bans and internet ID’s ‘for the kids’

Me, who doesn’t trust the government to actually accurately protect the welfare of its citizens or companies to not be pieces of shit just for money: 

„I guess we’re fucked.“ 

Learn to fucking parent your children.

Bad parenting is the reason the Internet is dying. It’s a fucking joke.

The problem isn’t banning kids, it’s the age verification for adults. It’ll start with social media and seep into EVERY subscription service you have.

Everyone’s identity WILL be compromised and every company will continue to monitize your data with more specificity.

Yeah, dont address problems constructively or rationally, just ban it and silence more people. Great Job. Can’t wait for the next wave of censorship to limit our freedoms.

Party like it’s 1999

These laws are such BS. If social media is so toxic it makes more sense to regulate large social media companies rather than banning kids by way of having every Adult send their ID to random companies to use the internet.

First they could start by open sourcing the recommendation systems for public scrutiny if / when a social media platform gets very large and has millions of users.

Basically all recommendation systems are just built around cosine similarity and Twitter has shown there is massive power in that tech.

So start off with real public oversight just so they KNOW how the levers are being skewed when they use it. Heck there is oversight in the food and drug markets since it directly deals with what people are putting in their body – I’d argue the fact a company can en-mass dictate what they can put in your mind warrants the same level of scrutiny.

If social media became so toxic and polarizing then maybe start by investigating HOW it got so bad – rather than just trying to gatekeep access to it because then you haven’t really fixed the problem at all.

I’ve spent the last two years cataloging backing up and saving any television show movie play and digital book I want. Most of which coming from my own physical library being backed up digitally. If the government thinks I’m ever going to put my ID in the hands of a third-party considering every single day there’s a data breach they have another thing coming. I’m fully prepared to be able to live my life the way it was back in the 90s whether they like it or not. I’ll go back to paying everything in cash or sending a check and if they don’t like that either then frak-em.

Honestly, I don’t see ant reason anyone under 16 needs a social media account, so on it’s face I like this idea.

Of course we all know the actual result will be some dystopian integration that screws everyone in some way.

The devil will be in the details with this type of thing, but in principle I think social media is bad for kids and they shouldn’t be on it. Right now 12 year olds are learning from shitheads like Andrew Tate, they’re getting extremely unrealistic body standards instilled in them, etc.

This comment section is wild. We have watched social media push our societies to greater and greater levels of division and misinformation. Still people defend them. They’re not going to fuck you. They’re going to continue to manipulate you and profit off of you.

If we go by these old relic law-makers, they must see US children as not very bright or teachable and the adults in their life are incapable of teaching them digital literacy. Why would any country need a ban when education at an early age does wonders. This what happens when you give paper crowns to copycats who don’t know what to do with themselves in a democracy. It seems the US is determined to go back to the Stone Age as most of the planet are heading to the future.

„To protect the kids, “ amirite? Also aren’t they hiding the Epstine files, which a lot of politicians happened to be in? This is just mass surveillance wrapped up in some BS righteous act.

Didn’t Australia *just* do this?  Why not wait a year to see the results, effects, and challenges? Maybe commission a study? 

Edit: oh, this is an Australian news source they have an interest in making it seem like other countries are following their lead.

Legislatures and confusing the symptom for the cause. A tale as old as time. This does nothing to treat the many, many root causes of negative effects from social media. All it does is provide another entry point for malicious actors to get at our records.

Sounds like a way to ban opinions government doesn’t like.

I think support for Palestinians scared the elites. They realize social media can bypass the gatekeeping mechanisms that traditional media had.

This is classic “do something” tech policy. You don’t actually keep teens off social media, you just push them into VPNs, burner accounts and sketchier platforms with zero oversight. If you care about harm, regulate design and data practices, don’t LARP as China-lite.