3 ms·

The whistleblower allegations and hearings were mostly about the impact facebook products have on kids. I believe some form of expanded COPPA laws for children

by m_ke 5y ago

The whistleblower allegations and hearings were mostly about the impact facebook products have on kids. I believe some form of expanded COPPA laws for children under 16 wouldn't hurt. As someone who blocks Facebook's IP ranges and uses an ad blocker to remove any algorithmic recommendations on other websites I also think it would be great to: 1. Have a law forcing companies to have a way to opt out of algorithmic / personalized recommendations 2. Make any form of 3rd party tracking and user profiling opt in only and force companies that track you to have a way to see what is collected and to disable/delete it at any time. Companies like facebook shouldn't be allowed to track me across the web without my permission. Also I wouldn't be against holding them liable for promoting "harmful" content. As in forcing them to moderate the reach of content that calls for harming someone once it gets enough engagement (ex: 100K views). An example of that would be letting Alex Jones post Sandy Hook conspiracies but only showing them to people if they go to his profile and not displaying them in the feed for other users.

themacguffinman 5y ago
> The whistleblower allegations and hearings were mostly about the impact facebook products have on kids. So where's the strong evidence? Is 15% of teens reporting bad feelings the big headliner? Surveys showing weak correlations with depression? What evidence do you have to even mention Facebook in the same breath as other strictly controlled products? You keep pointing to whistleblower allegations and hearings like that's evidence of anything except perhaps Congress' apparently infinite appetite for political grandstanding and an ex-employee's apparently infinite appetite for authoritarian regulation. Nicotine didn't become a controlled substance because 15% of teen smokers reported feeling bad about themselves or tended to be more depressed on average. The bar should be even higher when you consider that Facebook is a platform for speech which has more protections for good reason. > I believe some form of expanded COPPA laws for children under 16 wouldn't hurt. Yes it would hurt, it would hurt business and it would hurt the choice of children under 16. COPPA is already extremely onerous and in practice amounts to a ban for most services. What's your industry, I wonder? I'm sure there are plenty of laws I can think of that "wouldn't hurt". Unsurprisingly, "wouldn't hurt" is not the standard by which a free society legislates.

by m_ke 5y ago

themacguffinman 5y ago

> The whistleblower allegations and hearings were mostly about the impact facebook products have on kids. So where's the strong evidence? Is 15% of teens reporting bad feelings the big headliner? Surveys showing weak correlations with depression? What evidence do you have to even mention Facebook in the same breath as other strictly controlled products? You keep pointing to whistleblower allegations and hearings like that's evidence of anything except perhaps Congress' apparently infinite appetite for political grandstanding and an ex-employee's apparently infinite appetite for authoritarian regulation. Nicotine didn't become a controlled substance because 15% of teen smokers reported feeling bad about themselves or tended to be more depressed on average. The bar should be even higher when you consider that Facebook is a platform for speech which has more protections for good reason. > I believe some form of expanded COPPA laws for children under 16 wouldn't hurt. Yes it would hurt, it would hurt business and it would hurt the choice of children under 16. COPPA is already extremely onerous and in practice amounts to a ban for most services. What's your industry, I wonder? I'm sure there are plenty of laws I can think of that "wouldn't hurt". Unsurprisingly, "wouldn't hurt" is not the standard by which a free society legislates.