6 ms·

Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of s

by indymike 10mo ago

Father of five here, and founder of a social media marketing company (exited). Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. The three big things: 1. State level actors and well funded not for profits are fighting an information war to influence our kids. And they are very good at it. Down to having troll farms to talk one on one. Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. The solution is be open and talk about it with your kids. 2. Criminals are even better at social than state level actors. They are smooth. And they are on platforms you wouldn't expect - like games. And criminals aren't all about fraud. They sell drugs, they try to physically steal in real life from your kids,they'll try to get your kids to do something embarrasing and blackmail them with it, and even can be human traffickers. Again, the solution is be open and talk about it with your kids - and make sure they know it's ok to ask, and it's especially ok if you think I shouldn't share this with Dad or they person is saying not to show your parents. 3. Sexual predators are even better at social than the criminals. The difference is that the predators can't hide behind national borders so they are very careful. Same solution as $#2, but this one is really tough because when your kids come to you about it, they may have shared something with the predator that the predator is using to extort them into hooking up. Don't attack or blame your kid, focus on making sure the predator never gets to them I do not believe for a minute that social media was good for my kids as they grew up, but I'm not sure that you can even begin to fix it the way AU is trying to - regulating speech, association using prohibition is dipping a colander in the river to filter the silt.

gertlex 10mo ago
Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk about. Something else is needed. I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Security Now podcast about this for a long while now)
- indymike 10mo ago
  "Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead. Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
  - lovich 10mo ago
    Hard disagree on anonymous speech. Individual humans should have free speech but that is divorced from anonymous speech. With anonymous speech you don’t even know if you’re talking to a person or a program. If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?
    - Doxin 10mo ago
      While what you're saying sounds like a reasonable enough stance on the face of it, keep in mind that this would deeply fuck over closeted queer folks among other marginalized groups.
      - lovich 10mo ago
        It would. Currently they and everyone else are getting deeply fucked because the signal to noise ratio on the internet has been obliterated and everyone is being manipulated all the time by misinformation from humans lying to bots. I think the trade off for a lack of anonymity is worth it. This is crass and old but the penny arcade guys identified this decades ago https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theo...
        Doxin 10mo ago
        I agree misinformation is a big problem. Possibly the biggest problem of our time, right next to global warming. But as it stands now, as a queer person, you can find a spot on the internet with like-minded people. Even when closeted. Hell when closeted it's the only place you can find like-minded people. If we require people identify themselves online you drive all closeted queer people away, into solitude, into feeling no one will ever understand them. That's not worth the price of admission. We need a better solution than that.
basisword 10mo ago
>> Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. I'm not sure I agree with this. Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media. The damage done by social media is 100x greater than any good that came from it and the lives of adults have been affected by on it a societal level at least as much as the danger to kids. It isn't possible, but if social media was suddenly completely unavailable I think the world would get a lot better in a very short period of time.
- lurk2 10mo ago
  > Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media. Watching 18 year old kids getting drone striked every other day has done more for the anti-war movement than a hundred years of post-WW1 globalist utopianism. The only demographic of war hawks you find online anymore are psychotics and boomers, both being unfit for military service. This is the fundamental reason why western countries are turning on social. The TikTok ban had less to do with Chinese influence campaigns and more to do with it being a platform where Israeli war crimes were openly discussed without being hindered by shadow algorithms. You’re seeing Zionists like Larry Ellison make plays in the media space for the same reason; military-aged white men are going off the plantation, and Zionists feel threatened by it. That is literally all these bans are intended to remedy.
  - eimrine 10mo ago
    I am from Ukraine. Tell me anything you know about drone striked humans. For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked. What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking? Post some dislikes, duh?
    - lurk2 10mo ago
      > For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked. I’ve seen more than one begging for his life getting blown up by a grenade dropped out of the sky. The killers then post videos glorifying these executions complete with music and motion graphics. > What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking? I haven’t done anything, and that’s the point; there is nothing that will compel me to treat my fellow man in the way I have seen men treated in this footage.
phantasmish 10mo ago
I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. That's plenty. Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd let my kids hang out unsupervised, and the amount of time I intend to spend watching (supervising) them scrolling Insta or TikTok on anything like a regular basis is zero, and the likelihood of their choosing that as a thing they want to do if I'm otherwise available to do something fun with them is also probably somewhere around zero, which means... no social, since it ain't happening supervised. Like I also wouldn't take them to a bad part of town and leave them there for hours. Why would I do the digital equivalent? Even if we talk about it afterward... why? Maybe occasionally as a "here's how to spot shit" lesson but not enough that they'd need an account or anything.
- indymike 10mo ago
  > I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone? The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized. It is part of "being responsible for yourself". My parents taught me how to be safe in a bad neighborhood because sometimes you have to go there. They taught me how to pick good friends who wouldn't do bad things to me. They taught me how to spot the precursors to bad things. They let me hang out unsupervised. Because they taught me how to be responsible for myself. Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely.
  - phantasmish 10mo ago
    > A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone? But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime. > Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely. No reason to involve any serious amount of time browsing feeds of shit in that. I don't make them roll around in poison ivy, either. Absofuckinglutely not more than once. Exactly how much exposure to something of approaching-zero value and significant harm do they need? I'm going with "just enough to notice it's one of those so they can run the other way". [EDIT] To put all my cards on the table, I think an extremely reasonable middle ground for Internet targeted ad networks and content-promoting algo-feed social networks would be to saddle them with an appropriate amount of liability for content they promote, which amount would surely be enough to put them all out of business. I see their feeds as the Internet equivalents of a crack house. I'm not gonna send my kids there—I'd rather see them gone, period. I will tell my kids what they are, and how and why such places might hurt them, in hopes they stay away. But I don't think some kind of "exposure therapy" or something is appropriate. The correct, moderate use of social media feeds is to avoid them entirely.
polalavik 10mo ago
I really really hate the term "troll farm" it completely minimizes nation state level propaganda machines down to something that sounds like its just one big internet joke for gags. The cutesy 'fun' language of 'troll farm' itself deflects accountability from what are coordinated psychological operations. It makes it sound like some rambunctious kids in basements having a little weekend fun.
- Gigachad 10mo ago
  It was very illuminating though obvious when recently Twitter started showing account country of origin and all of the MAGA political accounts pretending to be American get revealed as run out of Nigeria and Russia. The scale of the operations is immense now.
  - eps 10mo ago
    > run out of Nigeria and Russia ... and India. Wasn't expecting that at all.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
jancsika 10mo ago
> Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your strongest example here.
- le-mark 10mo ago
  There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot. Now the current administration makes an endless stream of fantasies and lies which go almost entirely unchallenged.
  - jancsika 10mo ago
    > There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot. Cable and network news did not question that narrative, aside from the exception I mentioned. Read David Barstow's Pulitzer-winning stories in NYT-- cable news shows even had retired generals pushing for war without disclosing all kinds of conflicts of interest. Edit: I should add that in reality there were protests with record numbers of people during the buildup to the Iraq War, and there were many articulate arguments against the war by all kinds of people. However, that was not the narrative presented in Network/Cable News.
- mkoubaa 10mo ago
  The average adult has a carefully curated understanding of the world based on a completely false narrative but nobody clutches their pearls about that
- concinds 10mo ago
  I'm guessing they mean Gaza, and that the author is pro-Israel. Which really undermines their point.
uplifter 10mo ago
Is this really an attempt to regulate children's speech or association any more than denying kids entry to a pub?. I don't think the framers of this law are even worried about what kids are saying or who they associate with, as long as it isn't the criminals, sexual predators and state actors you mention. Frankly if kids were visiting a physical hang-out where they could expect to be attacked by such people, any and every responsible guardian would order them to never go there.
mxfh 10mo ago
Seriously, the biggest and most prevalent danger to kids online, is unregulated marketing directed towards them building unhealthy habits and potential loss of self worth due to unreachable ideals potrayed in advertising. Not any of the three points you bring up there. Those superpredator bogeymans you make up here, have to actively seek you out and have a limited budget in comparison. State actors are after everyone, not kids primarily. In the current state of thing I would have no qualms just shutting down X, Facebook, YouTube Shorts and TikTok live for starters for all.
eimrine 10mo ago
It is OK if your kids "and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative." I bet that if I would meet you, I would unleash multiple similar cases to you personally for less than 1 hour. I am almost sure I can ask such kind of questions that would reveal your kids giving better (less brainwashed) result than you do.

gertlex 10mo ago

Am I wrong in feeling like the solution you outline is only applicable to an individual's kids? But at the societal level, it clearly seems we can't depend on enough parents to do what you talk about. Something else is needed. I don't have answers to give. Certainly not a fan of the government approach of "everyone must prove their age online now", which I believe is how the AU law is done. (casual listening to Security Now podcast about this for a long while now)

indymike 10mo ago
"Everyone must prove their age online now" creates a trail of identity that kills anonymous speech dead. Anonymous speech is very important to maintaining freedoms... such as freedom of speech and freedom of association.
- lovich 10mo ago
  Hard disagree on anonymous speech. Individual humans should have free speech but that is divorced from anonymous speech. With anonymous speech you don’t even know if you’re talking to a person or a program. If you want to say something, then say it with your identity. You don’t get to be anonymous when saying something to my face so why should it be allowed across a screen?
  - Doxin 10mo ago
    While what you're saying sounds like a reasonable enough stance on the face of it, keep in mind that this would deeply fuck over closeted queer folks among other marginalized groups.
    - lovich 10mo ago
      It would. Currently they and everyone else are getting deeply fucked because the signal to noise ratio on the internet has been obliterated and everyone is being manipulated all the time by misinformation from humans lying to bots. I think the trade off for a lack of anonymity is worth it. This is crass and old but the penny arcade guys identified this decades ago https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theory https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/greater-internet-fuckwad-theo...
      - Doxin 10mo ago
        I agree misinformation is a big problem. Possibly the biggest problem of our time, right next to global warming. But as it stands now, as a queer person, you can find a spot on the internet with like-minded people. Even when closeted. Hell when closeted it's the only place you can find like-minded people. If we require people identify themselves online you drive all closeted queer people away, into solitude, into feeling no one will ever understand them. That's not worth the price of admission. We need a better solution than that.

basisword 10mo ago

>> Our kids are up against problems we didn't have during the great expansion of social. I'm not sure I agree with this. Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media. The damage done by social media is 100x greater than any good that came from it and the lives of adults have been affected by on it a societal level at least as much as the danger to kids. It isn't possible, but if social media was suddenly completely unavailable I think the world would get a lot better in a very short period of time.

lurk2 10mo ago
> Our societies globally have become hugely polarised and are manipulated daily because of social media. Watching 18 year old kids getting drone striked every other day has done more for the anti-war movement than a hundred years of post-WW1 globalist utopianism. The only demographic of war hawks you find online anymore are psychotics and boomers, both being unfit for military service. This is the fundamental reason why western countries are turning on social. The TikTok ban had less to do with Chinese influence campaigns and more to do with it being a platform where Israeli war crimes were openly discussed without being hindered by shadow algorithms. You’re seeing Zionists like Larry Ellison make plays in the media space for the same reason; military-aged white men are going off the plantation, and Zionists feel threatened by it. That is literally all these bans are intended to remedy.
- eimrine 10mo ago
  I am from Ukraine. Tell me anything you know about drone striked humans. For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked. What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking? Post some dislikes, duh?
  - lurk2 10mo ago
    > For you it is just pictures from Internets happening far far away, you never know why do they find themself being drone striked. I’ve seen more than one begging for his life getting blown up by a grenade dropped out of the sky. The killers then post videos glorifying these executions complete with music and motion graphics. > What anti-war actions have you done to prevent the end your life by drone striking? I haven’t done anything, and that’s the point; there is nothing that will compel me to treat my fellow man in the way I have seen men treated in this footage.

phantasmish 10mo ago

I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, if it's at all possible to avoid it. I'm gonna continue to run with "no social media", which has worked so far. They can message people they actually know IRL, somewhere without a feed full of crap from people they don't know. That's plenty. Like I can't think of any analogous place in physical space I'd let my kids hang out unsupervised, and the amount of time I intend to spend watching (supervising) them scrolling Insta or TikTok on anything like a regular basis is zero, and the likelihood of their choosing that as a thing they want to do if I'm otherwise available to do something fun with them is also probably somewhere around zero, which means... no social, since it ain't happening supervised. Like I also wouldn't take them to a bad part of town and leave them there for hours. Why would I do the digital equivalent? Even if we talk about it afterward... why? Maybe occasionally as a "here's how to spot shit" lesson but not enough that they'd need an account or anything.

indymike 10mo ago
> I'm not sure why a person would want to let their kids hang out any place where that stuff you report is common, A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone? The best move is to teach your children how to not be victimized. It is part of "being responsible for yourself". My parents taught me how to be safe in a bad neighborhood because sometimes you have to go there. They taught me how to pick good friends who wouldn't do bad things to me. They taught me how to spot the precursors to bad things. They let me hang out unsupervised. Because they taught me how to be responsible for myself. Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely.
- phantasmish 10mo ago
  > A great percentage of serious crimes (from rape to fraud) are committed by family and friends of the victims. Should we not leave our children with our family alone? But I'm pretty sure that like 50+% of interactions with family aren't crime. > Why not teach your kids how to navigate the internet safely. No reason to involve any serious amount of time browsing feeds of shit in that. I don't make them roll around in poison ivy, either. Absofuckinglutely not more than once. Exactly how much exposure to something of approaching-zero value and significant harm do they need? I'm going with "just enough to notice it's one of those so they can run the other way". [EDIT] To put all my cards on the table, I think an extremely reasonable middle ground for Internet targeted ad networks and content-promoting algo-feed social networks would be to saddle them with an appropriate amount of liability for content they promote, which amount would surely be enough to put them all out of business. I see their feeds as the Internet equivalents of a crack house. I'm not gonna send my kids there—I'd rather see them gone, period. I will tell my kids what they are, and how and why such places might hurt them, in hopes they stay away. But I don't think some kind of "exposure therapy" or something is appropriate. The correct, moderate use of social media feeds is to avoid them entirely.

polalavik 10mo ago

I really really hate the term "troll farm" it completely minimizes nation state level propaganda machines down to something that sounds like its just one big internet joke for gags. The cutesy 'fun' language of 'troll farm' itself deflects accountability from what are coordinated psychological operations. It makes it sound like some rambunctious kids in basements having a little weekend fun.

Gigachad 10mo ago
It was very illuminating though obvious when recently Twitter started showing account country of origin and all of the MAGA political accounts pretending to be American get revealed as run out of Nigeria and Russia. The scale of the operations is immense now.
- eps 10mo ago
  > run out of Nigeria and Russia ... and India. Wasn't expecting that at all.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

jancsika 10mo ago

> Every time something new happens in the world, my younger kids ask me about what they saw on Tik-Tok and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative. As someone who remembers the near lack of anti-war voices on network/cable news in the lead-up to the Iraq War (Donahue on MSNBC being the lone example), I'd like to get more details on your strongest example here.

le-mark 10mo ago
There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot. Now the current administration makes an endless stream of fantasies and lies which go almost entirely unchallenged.
- jancsika 10mo ago
  > There wasn’t much but the mostly fabricated WMD narrative was questioned a lot. Cable and network news did not question that narrative, aside from the exception I mentioned. Read David Barstow's Pulitzer-winning stories in NYT-- cable news shows even had retired generals pushing for war without disclosing all kinds of conflicts of interest. Edit: I should add that in reality there were protests with record numbers of people during the buildup to the Iraq War, and there were many articulate arguments against the war by all kinds of people. However, that was not the narrative presented in Network/Cable News.
mkoubaa 10mo ago
The average adult has a carefully curated understanding of the world based on a completely false narrative but nobody clutches their pearls about that
concinds 10mo ago
I'm guessing they mean Gaza, and that the author is pro-Israel. Which really undermines their point.

uplifter 10mo ago

Is this really an attempt to regulate children's speech or association any more than denying kids entry to a pub?. I don't think the framers of this law are even worried about what kids are saying or who they associate with, as long as it isn't the criminals, sexual predators and state actors you mention. Frankly if kids were visiting a physical hang-out where they could expect to be attacked by such people, any and every responsible guardian would order them to never go there.

mxfh 10mo ago

Seriously, the biggest and most prevalent danger to kids online, is unregulated marketing directed towards them building unhealthy habits and potential loss of self worth due to unreachable ideals potrayed in advertising. Not any of the three points you bring up there. Those superpredator bogeymans you make up here, have to actively seek you out and have a limited budget in comparison. State actors are after everyone, not kids primarily. In the current state of thing I would have no qualms just shutting down X, Facebook, YouTube Shorts and TikTok live for starters for all.

eimrine 10mo ago

It is OK if your kids "and their initial understanding is shaped by a well funded actor, and is often completely a false narrative." I bet that if I would meet you, I would unleash multiple similar cases to you personally for less than 1 hour. I am almost sure I can ask such kind of questions that would reveal your kids giving better (less brainwashed) result than you do.