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At Meta, Underage Users Were an 'Open Secret,' States Say
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- indexerror 3y agoWell it was an 'Open Secret' outside of Meta as well, wasn't it?
- mdhb 3y agoAdd it to the already overwhelming pile of evidence that self regulation does not work and that external oversight is needed in situations like this.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoIt sure seems like the average person doesn't care that children use Facebook and similar online services. Why should we give more power to state regulators when the public doesn't even want the regulation in the first place?
- wildrhythms 3y agoThe public clearly does care, because there are laws that have been passed to specifically address data collection for underage users: https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-attorney-general-james-senator-gounardes-and-assemblymember-rozic-take-action#:~:text=To%20protect%20children's%20privacy%2C%20the,the%20purpose%20of%20the%20website https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-attorney-ge.... Whether or not those laws do what they're intended to do is another question, but to say the public 'doesn't care', is a baseless assumption to make.
- Manuel_D 3y agoPlenty of laws are passed that the public doesn't care about. Sometimes the public is even opposed to them.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoThe public doesn't pass laws though, our elected representatives do. Without diving down the rabbit hole of how well our current system manages to select for representatives that actually align with voters' views, there isn't a direct link between laws and public sentiment. Parents purposely allowing children to use these services is a much more clear indicator of sentiment, and as mentioned in the article users don't seem to mind allowing their children to use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc.
- mdhb 3y agoWhy should we even consider putting any kind of limitations around what private companies do with the personal data of people too young to consent in any meaningful way isn’t a compelling argument.
- flagrant_taco 3y agoIdelaly we wouldn't have to put limits on companies from the state level at all, users should decide not to use a service if they don't approve of how their data is used. Given that we're no way close to this and the power imbalance is already huge, we should be regulating how every person's data is used regardless of age.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoWhat is required to address the problem is not “oversight” in the abstract, but some form of government ID and age verification in order to use online services. Mark me down as one parent who prefers the situation we have now to the more dystopian one that would create.
- tjpnz 3y agoSo much so that they wanted to create an Instagram for Kids.
- throwaway914 3y agoSo I'm wondering why we don't use AI to determine the likely age of a user from the photos they upload. Obviously there will be false-positives but then you can just ask them to upload a picture of their state ID/drivers license. (I don't participate in social media, beyond HN...) To me this would seem like a great idea. A couple hundred thousand folks who look 13 but are legally 26 who jump through some extra hoops, but several million children who cannot create a Facebook account. The risk to reward seems awesome.
- Arainach 3y agoThere's a lot of money to be made from those users.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoYeah, you can tell you don't use social media by this comment's suggestion, no need to tell us separately.
- theGeatZhopa 3y agoYeah, I also thought there is someone who doesn't know what social media is all about :) Why not suggest folks get some token from the state and use that for identifying them exactly. And also, using clear names would help as one Always can Google up the name and make sure the other end doesn't pretend
- throwaway914 3y agoSocial media was ruined a long time ago. Even here it's a disparate, incomplete conversation. I commented knowing the response I'd get from HN about false positives with AI determining user age. Time to sue Facebook for the market value of every underage user, and the continuing harm of having a public presence from that age forward. Every job lost, every lost opportunity.
- arshxyz 3y agoThe very obvious loophole is that a teen could upload a picture of someone else to get an account made. ...and everyone uploading pictures of their kids would have to keep their drivers license handy.
- SuperNinKenDo 3y agoAll my friends use Facebook and Instagram when they were underage, and I certainly used other social media when I was underage, though not those two. There's nothing secret about this open secret.
- theGeatZhopa 3y agoOf course there are. One can't handle Internet. It handles you. When I was in the age of preteen/teen I got everything I wanted. Everything. Sure, today isn't very different from the past. If some teenager pricks want to use meta, watch Netflix or do some nasty chat & greet chat roulette - they're just do it. We need to teach them how to handle that dickheads they may see and the do's and don'ts. this should be without tabooing.
- zht 3y agowhy call teenagers pricks?
- theGeatZhopa 3y agoBecause Socrates already did this.. :) Since so many have said.. The youths will be the doom for us. Nowadays, the young ones learn less and less, know less than ever.. true true.. but also they use different tools as you and the tools are much better at what you do :) so actually we're accelerating.
- SillyUsername 3y agoIt's a problem they don't care for fixing unless the regulators come.
- fgoesbrrr 3y ago[flagged]
- Barrin92 3y agodoesn't seem like an apt comparison because a lot of religious advocacy groups behind those laws are explicitly stating that they see it as a means to criminalize sex work, payment providers refusing to serve sex workers, and so on. Minors under 13 can't legally sign away personal information without a guardian, they're just violating COPPA which has been in power since before Facebook existed.
- fgoesbrrr 3y agoSounds like one excellent solution is mandatory ID check on all sites which handle personal information, right?
- Barrin92 3y agoIf someone was genuine about protecting data that is certainly much more sound both legally and it terms of its effectiveness than what these porn laws are. Just an excuse to hound a particular profession by interest groups. Case in point, it pretty much has only stopped Pornhub from operating, which ironically had better data security and probably took content moderation more seriously than the thousand malware infested pages a search away. But it makes sense of course if the actual goal was to cause economic damage to the industry.
- hypercube33 3y agoLike...at bars? All it takes is a fake id and away you go
- LargeTomato 3y agoActually the op changed my mind on the issue. It's a great comparison. I also have no sympathy for sex work because it's not real work.
- flypunk 3y agohttps://archive.md/20231125210139/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/25/technology/instagram-meta-children-privacy.html https://archive.md/20231125210139/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
- zer0zzz 3y agoWhatever happened to the Internet where the person on the other end could be a dog? Why is this surprising to anyone and why do so many people even care about changing it? I really would hate to use this stuff if there were mandatory ID verifications all the time, and I think it would take something away from the experience too.
- wodenokoto 3y agoFacebooks value proposition to end user and customers (i.e advertisers) is that you are not a dog. But I partly agree. I prefer talking with anonymous dogs on the internet too and would hate for that to disappear.
- barrysteve 3y agoThat was the point all along. These technologies like surveillance, facebook, phones, ect are all imposing separately.. When you fuse those technologies together, you can track and clamp down on and own men like a farmer owns cattle. The next 'freedom' will likely be using tech to force people out of apathy, pushing them up and off the ground floor with electronic provocation.
- debugnik 3y ago> why do so many people even care about changing it? Because multiple laws could punish them for tracking kids, so they think "anyone could be a kid" threatens their business model.
- mike_hock 3y agoOn that internet, you don't post self-portraits showing your real face every ten minutes. Facebook is the antithesis of the internet and should never have existed.
- toasted-subs 3y agoCreeps me out tbh. I miss the internet with weird usernames and spinning 3d logos as avatars. I understand why it is the way it is but honestly it makes me uncomfortable with the large social media sites. "Socialization" turns into human farming a bit too quickly.
- theshrike79 3y agoWhatsApp has an age limit of 13, but pretty much every kid gets an account when they are old enough to read and write. It's the de-facto way of communication, so parents just lie about the age knowingly. That combined with the fact that it's impossible for a 3rd party to report an underaged user ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- LoganDark 3y agoI don't understand how a company is supposed to combat this. It's just accepting reality that "there will be underage users on our site anyway, and there isn't anything we can do about that, because they will lie". On a case-by-case basis if you find out someone is underage you have to terminate their account, but by and large you just have to accept that these people exist. Many of my online accounts were first registered when I was underage. I'm not eager to let them know that, of course.
- COGlory 3y agoWhole lot of people are not understanding the point. Of course there are kids on the internet. And on Facebook. That's what the article (and lawsuit) are saying. And of course Meta knows it. That is exactly why Meta needs to stop their psychologically manipulative and harmful practices. Identifying who is a kid is not working well enough. Preventing kids from accessing services and being manipulated and harmed is not working well enough. Kids will access these websites, and when they do, it isn't a fair fight. They're taking their developing brains and going up against billion dollar algorithms designed by armies of professional psychologists to manipulate them to maximize "engagement". And unsurprisingly, this is having negative effects. Facebook cannot claim they don't know this - everyone knows this. They need to change how they treat everyone, if they can't exclude kids. Kids are killing themselves because of Facebook. We need to stop this manipulation across the board.
- theknocker 3y ago[dead]
- neuronerdgirl 3y ago> They're taking their developing brains and going up against billion dollar algorithms designed by armies of professional psychologists You WISH they were developed by professional psychologists. They were mostly designed by undergraduate-trained programmers and UX "researchers" who took 2 semesters of basic psychology and learned what the word "heuristic" means and ran with it wholesale. I can tell you first-hand as a psychology PhD I'm basically unhireable for those positions because in training for my actual degree I didn't get the programming skills they require.
- djohnston 3y agoWait till states learn that teenagers say they’re 18 when they visit a porn site. gasp, pearl-clutching intesifies
- cheriot 3y agoThis is better handled by the phone and app store. Expecting every app and website to figure out a user's age makes this more complicated than necessary.