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Facebook Should Halt Instagram Kids Plan, Attorneys General Say
- tryonenow 5y agoThe part that bothers me about this is starting data harvesting when users are children. This is an authoritarian regime's wet dream, even moreso than the profiles being built on current adult users.
- dpeck 5y agoSo many comments here seem to ignore the existence of Apples screentime controls for kids. If you haven’t looked recently they’re very solid and gives kids a good way to communicate with restricted list of contacts and otherwise safely use their devices.
- Radle 5y agoThe lawyers sound as if if kids aren't already using the internet. It's fairly obvious that giving children a safe zone is still better than throwing them in the 18+ internet right? Are there any arguments as to why a platform for under 13 y/o would be worse than these demographics using the normal platform?
- nineplay 5y agoThe article doesn't go into detail. I've been happy with messenger kids but for me the problem would be any ability to do likes on posted content. I think one of the big self-esteem killers of facebook is posting content with 3 likes while another kid posts the same content with 30 likes. Also the option of potentially putting up content that mocks other kids. It's somewhat possible with messenger kids but the only information shared is between the few kids on a chat. If 3 kids chatting together make fun of a 4th, that sucks but that 4th kid is never going to see it. If kids Instagram mean everyone in a contact list is going to see the same content, that could be really damaging. I don't know how many people watched "American Vandal", season 2. I don't necessarily recommend it in a vacuum, but it does an amazing job showing how much kids can be devastated by social media. When I was a kid, the popular kids could make fun of me ( and probably did ) but at least it wasn't in my face - or the face of the rest of the school so they could easily join it.
- quadrangle 5y agoIn https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/26-are-the-kids-alright https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/26-are-the-kids-alright interview, I heard the claim that mental health issues for kids are not correlated with internet use or technology but strictly with social media in particular. Kids reading stuff or watching videos or playing games, none of that amounts to a constant numerical score of whether or not their peers "like" them.
- spicyramen 5y agoHave you used Instagram? I get recommendations for buying weapons, porn, escorts, just by reading Premier League comments
- e-clinton 5y agoYea, that says more about you than it does about Instagram.
- DSingularity 5y agoAnd how do you know that this is not the default bet of their recommendation algorithms?
- DSingularity 5y agoWhy do you hate progress? Look at how much progress humans have made in socialization all thanks to the great Zuckerberg! Humans are now closer then ever and living meaningful, happy lives!
- throwaway3699 5y agoOPs point is that kids are exposed to that right now, and no turning back the clock will change that. Creating a safe zone away from alcohol, guns, etc... and adding parental controls is a step in the right direction. I'd prefer kids didn't use Instagram at all though.
- spicyramen 5y agoYou need to see a new big trend for fake profiles that are using big platforms such as sports and music to advertise their products. Has nothing to do with your search preferences
- ipaddr 5y agoIf they are making a separate kids platform why would your adult ads show. You realize that by sharing those ad topics you are probably sharing too much of your interests. I get baby products.. it depends on what you've searched for lately.
- toast0 5y ago> Are there any arguments as to why a platform for under 13 y/o would be worse than these demographics using the normal platform? Without knowing anything about Instagram Kids, more parents might let their children use it if it appears safe for children. If it's not actually safe(r?), then that's more exposure. For example, YouTube Kids is almost the same garbage as YouTube, but the name implies otherwise. Neither flavor should be left unsupervised with children.
- nineplay 5y agoYoutube for kids is fine - at least the Apple TV app. it's carefully curated. They show The Wiggles, Yo Gabba Gabba, Kid's Bop, and some Sesame Street. It may make parents want to run and hide but I'll happily leave my 3 year old in front of it. There are ads, of course, but tolerable ones. Certainly not any worse than what I watched on commercial television back in the day.
- tastyfreeze 5y agoYoutube Kids for the 7-13 group is terrible. Interesting harmless videos (mostly science related) are not available on Youtube Kids. The problem seems to be that the creator needs to label their video as kid friendly or it doesn't have a chance of being available on Youtube Kids. Videos from channels like Cody's Lab, King of Random, Smarter Everyday and similar are not available on Youtube Kids. This wouldn't really be a problem if Youtube allowed parents to mark a channel or videos as OK for their children. But, it is an outright block for children under 13 with no capacity for discretion.
- throwaway3699 5y agoThis comes down to COPPA regulations and the fact that child friendly channels are not allowed to use targeted ads, which really slashes revenue on a site like YouTube. Creators actively avoid it.
- nineplay 5y agoTotally agree, there's a gap there. I block youtube.com completely, only opening it up briefly when there's a school assignment to watch a video which I think is playing with fire. I tried to create a youtube account with whatever checkbox they have that is "please only show safe content". I subscribed to kid's science channels. The garbage that came though was astonishing.
- throwawayay02 5y agoI'd argue advertising this Instagram as a "safe zone" for children while still containing ads and allowing adult predatores to sign in would be much worse. In the normal platform at least they can be disguised as average users that seldom post anything, and there is less pressure to post anything since it's a hostile place to children in the first place.
- CountDrewku 5y agoWell let's take a look at other media targeted towards younger children/tweens. How about Fortnite? They're training to children to be degenerate gamblers by tapping into base impulses of addiction. Any company that does this only does it for purposes of getting them hooked at a young age and hoping to turn them into future coffers. They're not doing it for altruistic reasons. >It's fairly obvious that giving children a safe zone is still better than throwing them in the 18+ internet right? Yes, but this shouldn't be done by a company that's only looking for profit. There's only so much that can be done legally to keep them away from these sorts of things and the rest of it HAS to be done by the parents. Children shouldn't have free reign of the internet and need guidance on what's appropriate and discussion on what they're seeing. I'm probably in the minority but I don't agree with just giving them smart phones/devices that just allow them to be connected to whatever they want 24/7 either.
- fungu 5y agoWhat about fortnite do you believe is "training children to be degenerate gamblers"? To my knowledge there is no "gambling" aspect of the game. Did you just randomly pick fortnite because other games have loot box mechanics and you assumed fortnite did too?
- CountDrewku 5y agoFortnite did have loot boxes until they were sued recently. https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295676/epic-games-fortnite-loot-box-lawsuit-settlement-rocket-league-v-bucks https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/22/22295676/epic-games-fortn.... The ability to buy skins isn't much different really. Just because you know what you're getting doesn't mean there isn't an addictive aspect to purchasing skins etc. especially when they're advertised in a manner to elicit an aggressive "i need this" response. Additionally, the actual game-play is made to be addictive and young children don't have the ability to keep this in check.
- kfrzcode 5y agoNot just a specific game, but gaming culture in general, especially for the Gen-Z market, is steeped in microtransactions. I don't have specific citations but Adam Alter's book _Irresistible_ dives into this and other topics related: https://adamalterauthor.com/irresistible https://adamalterauthor.com/irresistible
- tjpnz 5y agoGiven Facebook's appalling track record with moderation I wouldn't want anyone under 13 (in my own care) near it. And that's before we've even gotten to privacy.
- saddlerustle 5y agoWhat large social media sites do you consider better moderated than Facebook?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nineplay 5y agoI might let my kids on HN - they'd probably learn something useful. Certainly not reddit which one of the worse places on the internet for developing minds. It doesn't get mentioned much in discussions of "damaging social media" because it's anonymous and can't target people personally, but I'd wager that a lot more people have absorbed a lot more damaging content than just about any site I can think of.
- herbst 5y agoDoes it have to be a large site for some reason? I am sure there are hundreds of (likely paid) walled gardens for kids out there where a bunch of them even comes with proper moderation.
- nicoburns 5y agoNot many under 13 years olds I know get unrestricted access to the internet.
- scrame 5y agogood
- blakesterz 5y agoIt's a really short letter, you can read it here: https://www.mass.gov/doc/naag-letter-to-facebook/download https://www.mass.gov/doc/naag-letter-to-facebook/download Signed by attorneys general of Massachusetts, Nebraska, Vermont, Tennessee, Alaska, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Northern Mariana Islands, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming (Also, I was curious and had to look up what the plural is and why for a group like this: It’s tricky, because both “attorney” and “general” are nouns, so it seems perfectly legal to just add the “s” to the second word, and that often happens in news reports. “General” here, though, is an adjective, not a noun; you can think of them as “general attorneys.” So the plural goes on the noun, and the proper form is “attorneys general.”)
- mc32 5y agoThe plural in these legal noun phrases is influenced by French grammar convention (unlike English, adjectives take a plural).
- tempodox 5y agoExactly, analogous to “court-martial” (although in that case, “court-martials” is a valid plural form besides “courts-martial”).
- benrbray 5y agoFor those like wondering, that's 40 states plus DC, PR, Guam, and Northern Mariana. The 10 states that did not sign the letter (either because they declined to sign or weren't asked to) are AL, AZ, AK, CO, FL, GA, IN, ND, PA, WV
- jasongill 5y agoI dislike Facebook as much as any HN poster, but I can say that the Facebook Messenger for Kids app has been... surprisingly good. Kids can't talk to anyone who you don't add as a friend, and your child's friends list is managed by you and new friends must be approved by the parents of both kids. You can see at any time who they have been talking to, you can see all the images that have been sent and received, and there's no advertising. It's basically a walled garden just for your kids group of friends who've been approved by parents and nothing more. Kids can't even start a group chat or video chat with friends who aren't all mutual friends, so there's no way for your child to talk to anyone who you haven't approved. It has stuff that kids like, like little games and filters they can use to play with their friends, which is clearly just to increase engagement (and screen time), but it's actually not nearly as terrible as you'd expect from Facebook (yet). Messenger for Kids has been a godsend during the quarantine due to the fact that the kids want to do video chat but all have different types of devices, and it's nice because it's locked down to only the people you approve. Now, is Instagram for Kids a good idea? We shall see, my guess is "probably not" but at least Messenger for Kids isn't exactly the nightmare you'd think it is based on the name.
- calmworm 5y agoIt’s not completely off-base to compare these “for kids” branded apps to candy cigarettes and big league chew. Not to mention the data collection.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thatguy0900 5y agoI just now connected big league chew to tobacco, I use to buy it all the time from the tee ball concession stands. That's funny.
- throwawayboise 5y agoExactly. It's getting the kids conditioned and addicted to devices just like Pavlov's dogs. Facebook knows exactly what they are doing here.
- scottrogowski 5y agoOften lost underneath the privacy debates is a problem that is just as pernicious - social media is an addictive and harmful product that is being sold to us for money. For both factors, addictiveness and harm, there are large piles of scientific studies. Apart from magnitude of harm, I don't think it's a stretch to think that social media should be grouped together with tobacco as something we want to limit as a society. There might even be an argument on magnitude given that social media causes loneliness and loneliness causes early death https://press.aarp.org/2016-12-07-AARP-Foundation-Draws-Attention-to-Social-Isolation-with-the-Launch-of-Connect2Affect https://press.aarp.org/2016-12-07-AARP-Foundation-Draws-Atte.... While I'm not saying that using facebook reduces your lifespan by 15 years, I think there is cause to assume a real physiological impact. Sure, social media has had its positive impact - every new technology is mixed - but certainly, we need to find common-sense ways to regulate social media to reduce addictiveness and harm.
- stemlord 5y agoMcDonald's, McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut!
- Marinlemaignan 5y agoWhat ?! Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell
- electrondood 5y agoAh, the Big Tobacco playbook: hook 'em while they're young. Facebook can't even effectively police their existing platform, how are they going to keep children safe?
- marketingtech 5y agoBy creating an under-13 product and making active attempts to remove them from the 13+ product, they can push to raise the bar on COPPA and other regulations. Imagine if governments cracked down on Snapchat and TikTok for not doing enough to keep under-13 users off their apps. "Instagram and Messenger are setting such great examples for child safety and data protection, while these other apps are endangering our youth and capturing personal data from underage users. Won't somebody think of the children?"
- pessimizer 5y agoIsn't Instagram that site where people take pictures of themselves, their things, their friends and the places they visit and weave narratives with them in order to make people jealous? Sounds like an awful place for a child.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoSounds like a great opportunity to teach your kids about people’s cognitive biases and how they can take advantage of others, and prevent being taken advantage of by others. Hopefully you can help them model their world such that they don’t fall victim to the feelings others might feel from looking at posed pictures. If they inherently don’t value vanity, then they will be able to prosper (mentally) even though the world around them might not.
- bigmattystyles 5y agoI would not let me kid on there if it ever came to be. But, let's pretend asking FB to not do this works, won't some other entity seize the opportunity. The incentive to pipeline future customers is simply too great? The only effective way is parenting and common sense legislation, just like was done for tobacco and should be done for food and medicine. But I know that when it comes to the internet, legislating is fraught with hazards and unintended consequences.
- splithalf 5y agoI’m reminded of that “bag o glass” SNL routine.
- sjg007 5y agoI actually don't think it's a bad idea as long as parents can be involved and has limited sharing.
- disabled 5y agoI made a post about this about 2 weeks ago on a less popular thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26849275 It is way worse than cigarettes, on so many levels. It is much more profound than one would initially assume. Social media and modern micro targeting advertising, which plays strongly into your individual hopes and fears (to maximize the likelihood of getting a response from you—which is abusive), creates a validation feedback loop commonly seen in Cluster B Personality Disorders. Young people (as in developing minds that have not mentally reached adulthood—occurs around age 25) have been primed and trained to make fake, empty, and unthoughtful posts needlessly (i.e. daily or several times per day) just to gain “likes” (also known as approval) from their peers. They also post to social media so that the algorithm treats them nicer, even if they are unaware of this on an explicit level. Psychologists have been warning about this: how an entire generation of currently developing minds is going to be a lot more narcissistic and a lot less empathetic than previous generations due to this invasive and traumatic long-term exposure. I am luckier than most: as an adult (with a print-related disability) I almost never have to go on websites that serve ads, as I have access to special libraries and news repositories (with breaking news sources) that legitimately keep me endlessly entertained (see this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26829865 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26829865). I also use the paid audio apps Blinkist, Audm, and Curio to augment those databases. I probably have not used YouTube in 6 months, due to the above and I am no Luddite! The only social media account that I have is HN.