Yes, 'The Algorithm' REALLY IS Like That

[delericho]

Fair enough; I can see the internal consistency in your position. As long as you understand that these personal definitions aren't shared by the majority of people and are not going to be conducive to clear communication on the topic.

Indeed. What will matter is how the relevant lawmakers choose to define it. Or, if they don't, how the relevant judges do so.

 

[Xenolith234]

I think a big thing that makes social media social media now is infinite scrolling. There’s sentiments shared from the creators of infinite scrolling of how they wish they’d never made it because they didn’t realize the ramifications and ethics of what they’d done.

 

[delericho]

Age verification already exists in law for UK for some sites. It’s a legal mandate. You can say that it’s possible with effort to get around that but it’s still a worthy requirement.

I wouldn't hold the UK's implementation of this up as anything other than an object lesson.

 

[TheSword]

I wouldn't hold the UK's implementation of this up as anything other than an object lesson.

The direction is good and the demand for age restriction is sound. It’s for companies to implement it. They need to act accordingly to comply.

The perfect is to enemy of the good. It’s a good thing that access to harmful adult content not be trivially easy if not ubiquitous.

I’m always fascinated how the tech bros show incredible ingenuity when finding new ways of making money out of people, or making their tech addictive. But any call for regulation or control is met with cries of ‘impossible’. It’s not for the regulators to work out how. It’s for them to say what the acceptable standard is and then the tech bros have to meet it.

Good on Australia for leading the way. I suspect Europe will soon follow.

 

[Cergorach]

You now get to live in a bubble created for you by a program used to make money off you.

This is exactly how news papers worked, run by humans, at the time quite profitable. And while we might now live in bubbles, we also did so in the past. We've seen similar things from radio, TV, news channels. When you look at the news reporting from newspapers, radio and television (news channels), there were already extreme bubbles people were living in. Both by country and factions within countries. I looked at the Gulf War reporting at the time it happened, it was extreme! As this was the early '90s, that was before the world wide web even opened for the public, people were dialing in BBS at the time, at best via ISDN...

And if you think people were united at the time, you have the wrong impression. People were just as unaccepting of others as now, just about different subjects. The major difference between then and now is that previously only those with power were heard and now everyone can be heard, and that is not always an improvement as we're finding out now...

I have no issue with age restrictions, I just want to make sure that lawmakers first implement the infrastructure to enforce those restrictions before enforcing new laws.

 

[MGibster]

I’m not a US Consitutional Scholar but you stop kids under 16 being able to do other things that are protected for adults under the constitution? So there are some fundamental rights that are curtailed for minors for safety reasons. You don’t let a 12 year old buy a gun right? Or get married?

I was specifically referring to preventing organizations from having social media accounts as likely being unconstitutional. We have a fundamental right to form organizations and communicate through those organizations here in the US.

Children also have rights here in the United States. You’ll need a pretty compelling argument for a law banning minors under a certain age from using social media.

 

[TheSword]

I was specifically referring to preventing organizations from having social media accounts as likely being unconstitutional. We have a fundamental right to form organizations and communicate through those organizations here in the US.

Children also have rights here in the United States. You’ll need a pretty compelling argument for a law banning minors under a certain age from using social media.

No problem with folks associating. You just shouldn’t be able to post social media anonymously. I have to post sometimes on the work account. It replaces my actual details with the work details to anonymize them. They just need to take that step out.

Yeah. I think the argument is compelling. Anxiety, depression, bullying, addiction, unhealthy sexual exposure, grooming, suicide, radicalization, toxic masculinity, fraud. Social media fails pretty much every safeguarding test. How many more harms need to be identifying before it becomes compelling.

A work friend’s 14 year old son, was blackmailed because a girl on social media that he had been talking to him that claimed to know him through kids at his school. The account was a fake and they then sent him explicit images threatening to tell the police and his family/friends that he was looking at underage pornography. They then threatened to use AI to generate pornographic images of him. Unless he sent them money. Luckily he had a good relationship with his parents and showed them the messages and they called the police. This was widespread and just one case where I know the people involved.

 

[TheSword]

I have no issue with age restrictions, I just want to make sure that lawmakers first implement the infrastructure to enforce those restrictions before enforcing new laws.

Why does the method have to come before the requirement? That makes no sense. There is no reason to develop systems responsibly if someone external has to come along with a solution to the problem you just invented.

Set the requirement. Give a fair implementation period. Then enforce.
Time and time again it’s been shown that this works, no matter how many times organizations squeal about it being impossible.

Better still. If basic standards of ethics were imposed then tech bros would have to develop with those in mind.