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Anyone voting for this is clearly not fit to hold their position. Aside from the stupidity of thinking this is enforceable, it's hamfisted and misguided. When

Anyone voting for this is clearly not fit to hold their position. Aside from the stupidity of thinking this is enforceable, it's hamfisted and misguided. When they propose such open-ended legislation there should be an ability for an outside party to make every single one of them fill out a survey of "Would this be allowed/disallowed under the new law?" with a bunch of examples. If the people who voted for it don't have consistency in their answers within some percentage (something like 95% must answer identically) then the bill is rejected since they clearly have no idea what they are talking about.

encoderer 5y ago
Yes it’s hard to imagine who would enforce this and how. But the reason it’s being discussed is that social media like instagram and TikTok is toxic to teenagers. Something does need to be done, society is not enslaved to the aims of mid grade social media product managers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
manicdee 5y ago
Yet here I am deliberately avoiding the features that Minnesota wants to ban. There is nothing hamfisted and misguided about this, the point is simply to ban the social media equivalent of casinos where the entire point of certain features is to stop you leaving by distracting you from the rest of your life.
- thethirdone 5y ago
  Do you think HN would be banned for minors according to this law? I think it would, and I don't think HNs algorithm for ranking is abusive or toxic at all.
  - pokstad 5y ago
    I think minors joining social media or forums should require parent permission. There’s too many weirdos out there, and too much self harm from sharing too much information.
    - Mezzie 5y ago
      This is already allowed for under-13s, but almost no site/service actually allows for that. I imagine this would have similar results with it being a functional ban and the kids just all signing up as '18 year olds'.
  - warning26 5y ago
    This is a valid point -- HN's algorithm is one of the few that is good at discouraging flamewars without being explicitly chronological.
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      Eh, I think credit for that goes to dang and the community. Flamewars definitely start up now and then but moderation stamps many out.
  - manicdee 5y ago
    Minors would end up seeing the same “sort by new” version of the site that everyone who sorts by new instead of hot/rising/popular/etc will see.
jaywalk 5y ago
You're expecting our politicians to actually understand the laws they vote on? That's just insane. What's next? Banning bills that are thousands of pages long and include countless things that are entirely unrelated to the actual topic of the bill? Come on.
- joshstrange 5y ago
  I know, I know, it's a crazy concept. I just get so frustrated seeing people pass bills on subjects that they have zero knowledge or can't even explain how it would be enforced. It would also be a nice resource to the layman, "Here are a list of examples/scenarios that would/would not run afoul of this law".
- dvtrn 5y ago
  I mean Ron Wyden of Oregon stands out by a country mile when it comes to actually trying to grok and pass common sense tech laws. Ain’t enough Ron Wyden’s out there sadly.
colechristensen 5y ago
Why would it be difficult to enforce? >In addition to other damages, the PRA authorizes statutory damages of $1k per violation, capped at $100k per account holder per calendar year. There are 1.3 million under 18 in MN, some percentage of those have social media accounts, let's just guess 500k, so a maximum statutory fine for non-compliance of $50 billion per year per social network. All sorts of ways to adjust that down but still a substantial motivation to turn on the "chronological only in Minnesota" feature. Or are you assuming a state court can't fine a social network? It makes me wish Republicans were a little more sane so I could justify voting for some of them in Minnesota.
- filoleg 5y ago
  > Or are you assuming a state court can't fine a social network? Social network: ok, we are blocking users from that jurisdiction from being able to access our product to comply with recently instated state legislation, please don't use a VPN to do so wink wink. Plenty of people (yes, even those who aren't the most technologically advanced average users) have been using VPNs for a similar purpose to access Netflix shows available in other regions since a long time ago, so I can easily imagine people doing the same to access TikTok. See the existing "you gotta be 13 or older to create an account" registration requirement on many platforms, which exists to comply with the law. Sure, it is enforceable in a sense that the government can go after any company that explicitly allows kids under 13 to register and flaunts this law. But it is utterly unenforceable in practice, because what is the government gonna do about kids lying about their age when creating an account? Nothing, aside from legally mandating identity verification and linking it to every account you create. But that's not the route I would ever want the world to take, not even mentioning that there will be ways around that too anyway (and the potential side effects of such id-linking mandate would be much more disastrous than the original problem).
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    You're imagining that a social network would be willing to geofence off an entire state in order to not comply with a fairly straightforward to implement regulation. Doesn't sound like something which would be honoring the fiduciary duty to investors required by leadership, leaving all that money on the table, or something that wouldn't be worth the calculus of cutting off an entire state to avoid losing a portion of revenue for part of the population.
basisword 5y ago
>> When they propose such open-ended legislation there should be an ability for an outside party to make every single one of them fill out a survey of "Would this be allowed/disallowed under the new law?" You claim the lawmakers are too stupid to understand how tech works, but you're completely failing to understand how the law works. It's rarely (if ever) black and white. It's the job of the courts to interpret and decide what is allowed/disallowed under the law.
- djbebs 5y ago
  The fact that it's not black and white is the problem. Above all law should be predictable a priori
cdot2 5y ago
This is true of basically all laws. You just noticed in this case because it's an area where you're familiar.

encoderer 5y ago

Yes it’s hard to imagine who would enforce this and how. But the reason it’s being discussed is that social media like instagram and TikTok is toxic to teenagers. Something does need to be done, society is not enslaved to the aims of mid grade social media product managers.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

manicdee 5y ago

Yet here I am deliberately avoiding the features that Minnesota wants to ban. There is nothing hamfisted and misguided about this, the point is simply to ban the social media equivalent of casinos where the entire point of certain features is to stop you leaving by distracting you from the rest of your life.

thethirdone 5y ago
Do you think HN would be banned for minors according to this law? I think it would, and I don't think HNs algorithm for ranking is abusive or toxic at all.
- pokstad 5y ago
  I think minors joining social media or forums should require parent permission. There’s too many weirdos out there, and too much self harm from sharing too much information.
  - Mezzie 5y ago
    This is already allowed for under-13s, but almost no site/service actually allows for that. I imagine this would have similar results with it being a functional ban and the kids just all signing up as '18 year olds'.
- warning26 5y ago
  This is a valid point -- HN's algorithm is one of the few that is good at discouraging flamewars without being explicitly chronological.
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    Eh, I think credit for that goes to dang and the community. Flamewars definitely start up now and then but moderation stamps many out.
- manicdee 5y ago
  Minors would end up seeing the same “sort by new” version of the site that everyone who sorts by new instead of hot/rising/popular/etc will see.

jaywalk 5y ago

You're expecting our politicians to actually understand the laws they vote on? That's just insane. What's next? Banning bills that are thousands of pages long and include countless things that are entirely unrelated to the actual topic of the bill? Come on.

joshstrange 5y ago
I know, I know, it's a crazy concept. I just get so frustrated seeing people pass bills on subjects that they have zero knowledge or can't even explain how it would be enforced. It would also be a nice resource to the layman, "Here are a list of examples/scenarios that would/would not run afoul of this law".
dvtrn 5y ago
I mean Ron Wyden of Oregon stands out by a country mile when it comes to actually trying to grok and pass common sense tech laws. Ain’t enough Ron Wyden’s out there sadly.

colechristensen 5y ago

Why would it be difficult to enforce? >In addition to other damages, the PRA authorizes statutory damages of $1k per violation, capped at $100k per account holder per calendar year. There are 1.3 million under 18 in MN, some percentage of those have social media accounts, let's just guess 500k, so a maximum statutory fine for non-compliance of $50 billion per year per social network. All sorts of ways to adjust that down but still a substantial motivation to turn on the "chronological only in Minnesota" feature. Or are you assuming a state court can't fine a social network? It makes me wish Republicans were a little more sane so I could justify voting for some of them in Minnesota.

filoleg 5y ago
> Or are you assuming a state court can't fine a social network? Social network: ok, we are blocking users from that jurisdiction from being able to access our product to comply with recently instated state legislation, please don't use a VPN to do so wink wink. Plenty of people (yes, even those who aren't the most technologically advanced average users) have been using VPNs for a similar purpose to access Netflix shows available in other regions since a long time ago, so I can easily imagine people doing the same to access TikTok. See the existing "you gotta be 13 or older to create an account" registration requirement on many platforms, which exists to comply with the law. Sure, it is enforceable in a sense that the government can go after any company that explicitly allows kids under 13 to register and flaunts this law. But it is utterly unenforceable in practice, because what is the government gonna do about kids lying about their age when creating an account? Nothing, aside from legally mandating identity verification and linking it to every account you create. But that's not the route I would ever want the world to take, not even mentioning that there will be ways around that too anyway (and the potential side effects of such id-linking mandate would be much more disastrous than the original problem).
- colechristensen 5y ago
  You're imagining that a social network would be willing to geofence off an entire state in order to not comply with a fairly straightforward to implement regulation. Doesn't sound like something which would be honoring the fiduciary duty to investors required by leadership, leaving all that money on the table, or something that wouldn't be worth the calculus of cutting off an entire state to avoid losing a portion of revenue for part of the population.

basisword 5y ago

>> When they propose such open-ended legislation there should be an ability for an outside party to make every single one of them fill out a survey of "Would this be allowed/disallowed under the new law?" You claim the lawmakers are too stupid to understand how tech works, but you're completely failing to understand how the law works. It's rarely (if ever) black and white. It's the job of the courts to interpret and decide what is allowed/disallowed under the law.

djbebs 5y ago
The fact that it's not black and white is the problem. Above all law should be predictable a priori

cdot2 5y ago

This is true of basically all laws. You just noticed in this case because it's an area where you're familiar.