Comment by bilsbie
Comment by bilsbie 12 hours ago
Noble goal but it ends up being a defacto internet license. All ages need to show id to use sites and services.
Comment by bilsbie 12 hours ago
Noble goal but it ends up being a defacto internet license. All ages need to show id to use sites and services.
Parents can just do this. It's far more expensive to not do it.
When all the kids in school have a smart phone it’s extremely hard to be the one kid and parents that don’t.
So, so much easier and more effective if they’re just banned for all kids.
I expect more kids will switch to playing more games on their phones with their friends. Whoever thinks the kids will instead put down their phones and starting go out more often has lost touch with reality.
110%.
No website of any kind should require IDV unless banking. It is a tool that will be used for censorship, removal of access to information, destruction of freedom of speech, erosion of privacy, and attacks on political opponents.
We need anonymity, ephemerality, and public square free speech.
Governments should instead regulate what these companies can do. How they advertise. Engagement algorithms. Stop internal efforts to target kids. Etc.
Disallow advertising to kids. Turn off ads on children's accounts if the user is predicted or self reports as a kid. Turn off the algorithm for kids.
This is the obvious solution, but implementing it would be a herculean effort. Not because it's technically difficult, of course.
Consider the incentives of all involved powerful groups.
You have social media giants who want to addict and advertise to users. The hate your solution, obviously. With the ID checks they lose out on their younger users, but they also get cover for even more aggressive behavior as nobody can credibly yell "think of the children!" at them.
Then you have government officials who are nervous about their lack of effective control over modern media. Your solution offers them nothing and loses them points with those powerful business leaders. It opens them up to attack from the right for being "too hard on business and stifling innovation." The ID checks, on the other hand, give them a mechanism and lever to crack down on any sentiment in the public that runs counter to their or their friends' interests. It even polls pretty well with an increasingly large number of paranoid and distrusting voters.
There's no contest at all between the routes before us. Only a huge political upheaval could divert the world from this path. The indicator to look for in a representative is a willingness to champion policy that hurts entrenched political and economic power while providing straightforward utility to average citizens.
Parents should instead regulate what their kids can do.
It's the job of society to help parents otherwise the birth rate will just continue to decline.
Remember that for the first time in history people can choose not to have kids.
What does parents choosing if their kids can use tiktok have to do with the birth rate?
Social media's entire income model is finding out who you are to advertise more accurately. Facebook knows your age down to the day, and if they ask for ID this is them taking even more data.
I am an Australian Instagram user in my 30s. When setting up my profile a few years ago I set the birthday to some fake date near my real age. At no point, including when the ban went live, was I ever asked to prove my age through any means. Nobody I know has either (noting that everyone I've asked is an adult).