Social media age verification is like none of those - social media is the modern public square and age verification is asking everybody to show their papers before participating in free speech in the public. It will have a chilling effect on free speech and will be a tool for authoritarian control
Social media, as we have it today, has nothing to do with a public square.
A public square does not have trolls and bots from across the globe teleporting in and out. A public square does not amplify the most divisive comments and drown out your friends's holiday photos because the former makes the ad space more profitable.
A poor analogy.
The public square has never been properly anonymous. If you start saying things which contravene laws or the rights of others, the police have been able to capture you and unmask your identity, if concealed.
So the solution for criminals in the public is for everybody to show their papers walking into a public square? It is not, we have requirements for police process like warrants and a process for determining the requirements for urgent conditions of arrest.
No, obviously not, and this is a completely glib argument.
Who is suggesting people 'show their papers' to go into a public square?
Literally nobody.
It really demonstrates how bad the analogy is - so much so that it's not even analogy.
The 'social controls' on the 'public square' are limited by a few laws (aka directed violence) but apart from that you can say as you like, kids can as well - it's where parents can be parents.
And - don't have problem with kids in the public square.
We have a very real problem with kids on social media, verifiable, scientific.
Kids are depressed, distracted, they bully each other, they're creeped on, and they're not yet in the business having serious discussions about 'Mein Kampf' - they're kids.
Everything in kids lives is introduced in an 'age appropriate' fashion - literally everything.
Given the toxicity of social media, it's a 'primary concern' for one of those gated things.
This is not even an argument - the only argument is 'the slippery slope'.
The science for age bans on social media is weak at best. There were pretty much terrible studies done during Covid and did not attribute all sorts of uncertainty going on at the same time.
If the point were to improve on the mental health of kids there are countless underfunded public programs. Especially in the US, social support programs like food, healthcare basic and mental, actual physical public spaces for kids, arts in curriculum, etc.
For what it’s worth, as an Australian, and as the operator of an online community, I unreservedly approve of the social media ban enforced by our government.
Conversely, I don’t agree with the way some other countries are going about it. Especially the UK with the abysmal way they have physically policed online speech by adults. Incredibly sad to see police prioritise non-violent “speech crimes” because they’re too scaredy-cat to tackle actual violent crime.
There is a reasonable answer to be found, if we're willing to be inventive. It shouldn’t be beyond the imagination of cryptography experts to design a system where only governments can issue an age identification certificate, which individuals can use to generate verifiable proof of age tokens. But where the tokens can’t be used by the government to identify the individual.
This is hauntingly reminiscent of the gun law argument in US:
The government shouldn't infringe on my right to bear arms, mass shooting is a mental health issue anyways, oh but we can't really fund mental health support because my tax shouldn't go towards helping those who put themselves in that situation. Que the same argument for privacy on the internet.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you can't trust the government, then work towards healing it, restructuring it, overhauling it. Subverting the government is such antisocial behaviour, very criminal like.
If that’s how you interpreted my post, I can only hypothesis that you didn’t read it. I can’t think of another explanation.
I actually like the traditional public square model: you have anonymity most of the time, but it’s not some absolute shield you can abuse to be an obnoxious prick. The police can intervene, but the intervention happens in the public square too.
People publish entire books anonymously.
Yes, and plenty of people have spoken in the public square anonymously too, because the police didn't feel the need to arrest them.
Publishing a book anonymously in the public square still means someone has to physically manufacture it, distribute it, convince you to read it, and pay for all of this. All these steps are subject to interdiction by the police.
Was there ever a public square where children could participate anonymously among adults? (I’m imagining three Dickensian urchins in a trench coat giving a speech in Hyde Park.)
The public square was in communities small enough where townspeople knew each other, and so speech was not anonymous besides those who penned (but not those who distributed) unattributed pamphlets. Moreover, if the speech you were pronouncing was beyond the pale of the community’s values, you could face retribution for it, whether judicial or extra-judicial like tarring and feathering. Even in the nascent USA whose political elite was high on Lockean ideas of natural rights and freedom of speech, the public square was never a free-for-all.
My supposedly modern government has problems with all kinds of speech and this is a lazy excuse. Government needs really hard boundaries and not being able to identify someone who perhaps said something controversial is a pretty good one.
You are right about the public square. That is pretty much what governments want to enforce. To silence everyone not in line, like in medieval towns.
Social media as it has become now is a shitshow where a minority of angry and/or disingenuous posters dominate discourse.
Twitter (X) was never the public square, and now it's little more than a playground for propagandists. The rest of us do well to ignore it, and it seems that even the 'legacy' media are starting to realise the days of breathlessly reporting on tweet-storms weren't great for anyone.
In a recent survey of under sixteen year olds in a place where an under sixteen social media ban exists asked how many of them used social media found that 80% were still using it. Do you actually need a login to consume social media? The answer to that is no. You can doom scroll all you want on sites like Reddit with no account whatsoever.
Your local library has age and ID requirements.
Your local 'town square' has 'some rules'.
Parents are entirely able to overcome any of this if they so choose - including feeding their kids alcohol, guns etc. - and so the freedom does materially exist.
Social Media isn't a place for free expression - it's mostly toxic - like exposing your children to the most vile, inauthentic people.
The more genteel places, frankly, won't have much in the way of age restrictions.
Entire nations are banning social media for kids because it's just not healthy - the teachers want it, the parents want it, the data seems to support it.
I think you're right to be (very concerned) but this is a necessary discussion. As a teacher.
> Your local library has age and ID requirements.
It literally doesn't (at least not if I don't intend to borrow a book and take it home; if I stay there and read, I can do so without any ID. I only need ID to get a library card, and I don't need that to enter and read a book).
It literally does - and you just admitted it.
The point is that 'even the local library' enacts rules and social conventions - not that they're exhaustively and acutely enforced in all corners.
No 4chan section in the library?
You might wonder why it doesn't have vast array of avant guard adult content, porn or art with really aggressive themes and people calling each other the n-word?
In society we have 'age related' conventions all over the place ... including your Library.
This is the absolute worst of HN, where people dissolve into Reddit-like discussions of bad meatphors and totally out of context hair splitting.
I just can't believe anyone here has any relationship with the reality of children, teaching or parenting whatsoever. It's the same argument made by the 'drugs should be legal and accessible' crowd - completely oblivious to the instantaneous massive health epidemic we'd have with opioids and fentanyl, or the 'anti vaxer' crowd - narrow ideological arguments about expression disconnected from any kind of reality or nuance.
There's a variation of social media that will be fine for the kids, they can be exposed to more into their late teens. Parents that want to opt out, will de facto be allowed to - and there is always a slippery slope with every law.
> It literally does - and you just admitted it.
I can be 9 years old and go to the library and read any book they have without showing ID. Whatever your point is, it escapes me.
> The point is that 'even the local library' enacts rules and social conventions - not that they're exhaustively and acutely enforced in all corners.
Then let us do the same thing on the internet. Age verification is not that (at least in the forms being pushed).
> No 4chan section in the library?
No, but there are 4chan-style books I can read there. Anything that isn't outright illegal (Anarchist's cookbook) is pretty darn available there.
> You might wonder why it doesn't have vast array of avant guard adult content, porn or art with really aggressive themes and people calling each other the n-word?
That'd be because it does have books like that. Your point continues to escape me. Maybe my library is really pushing whatever limits.
> I just can't believe anyone here has any relationship with the reality of children, teaching or parenting whatsoever
I've literally been an assistant teacher for about a year. You probably won't believe me though.
> It's the same argument made by the 'drugs should be legal and accessible' crowd
Who I agree with! Funny how that works!
> completely oblivious to the instantaneous massive health epidemic we'd have with opioids and fentanyl
Imagine a world where we can have that regulated, so people know what they're taking, and can see a doctor to get help without getting the police on their back, rather than the unregulated shitshow we have now.
> or the 'anti vaxer' crowd - narrow ideological arguments about expression disconnected from any kind of reality or nuance.
This comparison escapes me too. Anti-vax started with (or at least got a massive growth boost by) Andrew Wakefield, whose paper was based on science so bad and whose research was so heinous he's no longer a doctor. If the 'drugs should be legal and accessible' stance is based on science that bad, I'd love to see it.
"Then let us do the same thing on the internet. Age verification is not that (at least in the forms being pushed)."
So you prefer the internet be censored to be as civil as the library?
'Age appropriate' content is the easiest and most obvious way to do this, particularly because of the effects of social media on young minds.
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"No, but there are 4chan-style books I can read there." (at the library)
Nonsense.
This is 4Chan [1] , and your library does not contain stuff like this.
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"that'd be because it does have books like that."
Again - no - your library contains books in 'avant gard' art that you think is 'avant gard', but it's in the civil sense.
Your library does not contain books or films showing 'rape voyeurism'.
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"Imagine a world where we can have that regulated, so people know what they're taking,"
They do! It's right on the bottle! In exact quantities and 'high quality ingredients'!
It's made by PURDUE PHARMA, dispensed by doctors, and has caused a vicious national epidemic affecting millions of lives - and is the leading cause of death for ages 18-45 !!
It's truly the litmus test of 'common sense' vs. 'naive ideology'
The 'starting point' for 'harm reduction' is a reasonable reaction to ugly, ham fisted authoritarian 'throw them all in jail' traditional approaches - especially those milder things like 'marijuana' etc.
But in the end 'Harm Reduction' is actually a 'Radical Religious Progressive Cult of Ideology' rooted in the belief that 'Policing' and 'Patriarchy' the the 'Justice System' are the source of all harms, completely oblivious to basic human behaviour, mixed in with a bunch of Libertarian nonsense.
It's not unreasonable to posit that in 'some cases' an addict can have 'controlled access' to a substance 'without judgment' to help them stabilize, and find a path off of heroin on etc.
This is the 'polite' argument, but it's completely effete.
In reality that those cases are surprisingly rare, clinical, and extremely expensive to administer and control.
Reality is 'the alley full of zombies'.
Drugs kill substantially more people than guns - in Canada guns kill about 300 vs 7000 overdose deaths / year.
That's ballpark 40K-80K non-lethal overdoses per year. Every human who has had an 'overdose' is in a very distressed state - their lives may never recover. Each of them has family members who are in distress.
The 'world you are imagining' (where Fentanyl is available over the counter in 'whatever dose') is 5-10% of of the population hospitalized for opioid related problems within 6 months, and a collapse of the medical and law enforcement systems, not to mention all of the other knock on effects aka huge spike in small crime, loss of workforce, taxation, child welfare problems etc..
Singapore, which takes a very aggressive and authoritarian 'zero tolerance' approach has less than 1% of the deaths.
Less than 1%.
99% percent of those dying of overdose, ostensibly are dying because we refuse to actually take action.
And - because they have such a dramatically lower rate of addiction they can afford full rehab for the remaining actual addicts - this is the most damning evidence against the 'harm reduction' approach: it engenders so many addicts that even as 'rich nations' , we can't afford to help, whereas if we could 'contain the problem', we could afford to focus more on actual addicts.
The 'world you need to imagine' is one where we actually are able to restrict fentanyl, definitely restrict doctors from handing out entire bottles, and are able to afford actual rehab for those how need it.
Addiction is a social disease: it's a learned behaviour transmitted from one person to another. The most dangerous thing to society, is not a 'guy with a gun' - it's a fentanyl addict who will teach or induce someone around them into 'walking death'. That form of 'transmission' is actually more dangerous than COVID.
We're not going to expose our kids to free drugs, or guns, or porn, or vodka, and neither will our kids not use Social Media until they're old enough to be properly socialized to ingest and understand the impact of it.
Then they grow to be adults and make their own decisions, watch porn ... drink vodka ... just not fentanyl. That's it.
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(Warning, this is a 4-chan like to crude content - only to make a point about what 4chan is)
[1] https://boards.4chan.org/soc/thread/35155514/kik-dick-pic-th...
> So you prefer the internet be censored to be as civil as the library?
Given that I can find books that aren't civil there, sure.
> This is 4Chan [1] , and your library does not contain stuff like this.
Finding dick pics at my local library isn't hard, if you know where to look. Ditto 4chan.
> Your library does not contain books or films showing 'rape voyeurism'.
That'd be because it's illegal. Hence my comment about that.
> It's made by PURDUE PHARMA, dispensed by doctors, and has caused a vicious national epidemic affecting millions of lives - and is the leading cause of death for ages 18-45 !!
I'm glad I don't live in the US, where doctors are lobbied (this doesn't seem like the right word, but you get the idea) to push opiates or whatever other drugs on patients, only to then get away with it. Preventing things like that is also included in 'a world where we can have that regulated'. For instance:
> The 'world you need to imagine' is one where we actually are able to restrict fentanyl, definitely restrict doctors from handing out entire bottles, and are able to afford actual rehab for those how need it.
I agree we should restrict doctors from pushing opioids! And rehab should be state sponsored! That too is harm reduction.
> Singapore, which takes a very aggressive and authoritarian 'zero tolerance' approach has less than 1% of the deaths.
Ah, yes, sterile Singapore. I guess 30 years in prison is better than dying.
I'll refrain from commenting on the rest of your post. Have a good day. I know I won't.
My local librarian did not restrict my books to the kids section when I was a kid. Also librarians have fought civil legal battles to keep reading activities anonymous. Libraries are unlike the restrictions and risks of the proposed legislation being discussed for social media
?
--> Your local library fought for your right to read literature of some kind.
---> They did not fight for your right to gang up on others and call them the n-word, to spread lies and slander about people, to harass children and expose them to creeps and pedophiles, to inundate children with hyper-targeted advertising, or 'Andrew Tate 'how to beat women' seminars'.
Nobody is pushing for a ban on social media so that the kids will be stopped from reading 'Judy Bloom' stories about a girl's 'first period'.
It's disingenuous to suggest that this has anything to do with the causes your librarians stand for.
Literally the opposite - your librarians are creating essentially 'safe spaces' for kids so they can read and be civil.
The past few years have seen attempts to get The Diary of Anne Frank pulled from libraries, along with any mention of LGBT or Black people. What makes you think that this will be used to protect kids from racial, sexual and misogynistic abuse, let alone predatory businesses?
Im not sure of your direction as the age verification legislation also does not address this:
| They did not fight for your right to gang up on others and call them the n-word, to spread lies and slander about people, to harass children and expose them to creeps and pedophiles, to inundate children with hyper-targeted advertising, or 'Andrew Tate 'how to beat women' seminars'.
I think existing laws should be engaged to address pedophiles and incitement of violence in public spaces and social media - no new legislation is really needed. Barring potential victims from a place instead of prosecuting the noxious behavior from the public place seems like an odd approach indeed.
As for libraries - libraries are curated spaces of freedom that are obviously under assault by right wing parties to ban books that support cultural and personal acceptance for other societies as well as out groups like lgbt information, and even basic women's health information. The problem for authoritarians is libraries are too free - not that they are "curated".