4 ms·

Devil's advocate: what is the difference between "social media" and a website very much like this one? When can I look forward to having to give a DNA test to r

Devil's advocate: what is the difference between "social media" and a website very much like this one? When can I look forward to having to give a DNA test to read HN?

Pooge 10mo ago
The main difference in my view is the personalized algorithm that determines what to feed you next. HackerNews has an algorithm but it's not personalized—i.e. everyone sees the same thing.
- AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
  My own website has a bulletin board that offers a personalized list of messages after you login: whatever threads you have not yet read. And so do many other websites of this style. So this cannot be a differentiating aspect.
  - adamnemecek 10mo ago
    They are very different.
  - Workaccount2 10mo ago
    >So this cannot be a differentiating aspect. Now explain that nuance to an 80 yr old law maker who hates the damn email.
    - AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
      For the record, that is exactly my point . I do not want yet another sword of Damocles for websites, even less if it depends on the mood of a clueless judge.
    - seszett 10mo ago
      Not to say that they are technically literate, but the average age of French lawmakers (which are just the members of parliament) is 50 years old. It's actually the same as the average age of voting-age French citizens, so they are quite representative on this regard.
    - potato3732842 10mo ago
      These 80yo lawmakers have kids and grandkids and advisers. They know how social media works. They hate social media because it gives people the power to talk in public about them with near impunity. They want to go back to the old days when if you wrote a letter to the newspaper about potential corruption or wrongdoing among the "more equal animals" you'd get pulled over for a light out whenever you went through that town for the next 20yr.
      - skydhash 10mo ago
        > They hate social media because it gives people the power to talk in public about them with near impunity. If you think you have even near impunity on social media, I have a bridge to sell you. Even a town to go with it.
        potato3732842 10mo ago
        >If you think you have even near impunity on social media, I have a bridge to sell you. Even a town to go with it. I specifically said "near" impunity. If you do something bad enough they'll come after you but even then if your gripes are legitimate that's likely to amplify it. Surely you're not honestly claiming that there is not a significant practical difference between modern internet criticism and the old ways when messaging that could reach the broad public was far thoroughly gated by people and things that had more stake in the power structure.
        skydhash 10mo ago
        I wouldn’t say it was gated. More like it was costly. And people having the means to do so was a very small set and prone to agree with the status quo. But even now, a lot of messages are lost on the internet. And the internet is only decentralized for messages propagation, not for access.
        potato3732842 10mo ago
        Fractionally gated is still gated. At some point a difference in quantity is a difference in quality.
  - andrewinardeer 10mo ago
    Are you also harvesting teens data and selling it to the highest bidder or using it for target advertisements?
    - AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
      Not intentionally - but in the past I did have advertisements to finance it , which I had to stop since that is enough under a lot of jurisprudence to qualify as running a for-profit, which usually means less leniency from judges. So it is advertisements where we should draw the line -- websites with advertisements should require age checks?
      - andrewinardeer 10mo ago
        Why did you cherry pick advertisments from my reply and run with that? It clearly isn't just a singular data point that is a True or False that would include a site in the ban. Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter, do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self harm material and the ability to receive private messages from a 45 year old registered sex offender?" I get your point - "Where is the line in the sand?" and it's a valid point but no need to argue in bad faith.
        AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
        Because it is the ad network that I chose 30 years ago that was doing any of the types of tracking you mention. In fact, all of the ad networks from 30 years ago would be considered as doing "teen tracking" today. I do not know how you can do tracking without doing teen tracking, barring precisely I troducing age verification on every single website. And I also do not know if there is any network out there doing advertisements without tracking -- certainly none of the major local news websites use it. I do think the "wont somebody think of the children" arguments are in bad faith though, and I say this as a father.
        squigz 10mo ago
        > Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter, do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self harm material and the ability to receive private messages from a 45 year old registered sex offender?" If parents are concerned about this, why let them on the Internet? Why not use parental control systems? Why not teach your children healthy sex education, how to deal with their feelings, and to tell old creeps to fuck off?
lm28469 10mo ago
> what is the difference between "social media" and a website very much like this one? Pretty much everything? Not the same intent, not the same usage, not the same business model, not the same users, &c.
- AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
  Frel free to name something concrete. Remember that Reddit has already been targetted by this in Australia.
  - snowpid 10mo ago
    Does HN spread Fake News? Facebook and Youtube do. Do you feel bad after using HN? Insta and Facebook it happens. Does HN collect data to specify marketing? Every other Social Media do. This is hard to define in laws so e.g. the EU chooses to force concrete measures from the social media pages.
    - AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
      > Does HN spread Fake News? Yes? Even newspapers do that. You have never had Gell-Mann when reading something here outside mainstream topics of interest? (e.g. almost anything from outside the US, or health related). Is this really the criteria you want to use to decide whether to require age checks for a website? > the EU chooses to force concrete measures from the social media pages. This just sidesteps the issue of how a website ends up in the list. Today, Reddit. Tomorrow, Discord. Then Github. Eventually, HN.
      - snowpid 10mo ago
        My news is almost outside of the US as I am not American. (wow this should be sent to r/USDefaultism). So let's say like this: I do read a lot outside of "American mainstream media". Most good working journalist try to verify claim and statements. This is the opposite to Fake News, Clickbait and Russian state propaganda spread in Social Media because its their business model.
Alex2037 10mo ago
the services that comply with speech suppression and privacy violation orders will be deemed acceptable, and those who don't won't.
- immibis 10mo ago
  With the caveat that by "speech suppression" you mean "spam suppression" and by "privacy violation orders" you mean "search warrants"
  - Alex2037 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - SauntSolaire 10mo ago
      [flagged]
      - Alex2037 10mo ago
        insisting, against an overwhelming amount of irrefutable evidence to the contrary, that states like Australia and France are benevolent toward their citizens, does indeed make one a bootlicker. was persecuting COVID dissidents "russian spam suppression"? are government-mandated backdoors "search warrants"?
        immibis 10mo ago
        Yeah pretty much. We know Russia was behind a whole lot of the pro-infection movement. Ostriching that fact doesn't make it stop being true. They've been doing stuff like this since the communist days, so they're very good at it now.
        Alex2037 10mo ago
        >We know Russia was behind a whole lot of the pro-infection movement. yes, yes, there was no vaccine skepticism in the West before COVID.
dfxm12 10mo ago
From a definition standpoint, hn is a social media site. From a legislation standpoint, it's not nearly popular (infamous?) enough to legislate (the mentioned sites have had enough negative coverage to manufacturer consent for this invasion of privacy: cyber bullying, destructive challenges, etc.) When it is, and when your local government becomes sufficiently captured by the user surveillance industrial complex, you will need real world verification here.
- grunder_advice 10mo ago
  >hn is a social media site Social media typically implies a website where users are sharing self-created content. If a website with comments counts a social media, than all web2.0 is social media and there's practically no distinction between the web and social media.
  - esperent 10mo ago
    A blog that has a comments section is primarily still a blog, it just has a secondary social media feature attached. In the case of HN, most people are here for the comments section and frequently don't even read the article, so it's primarily a social media site with a news aggregator feature.
astrobe_ 10mo ago
Proper moderation, and - how to say it without sounding elitist? - more mature users.
throw_m239339 10mo ago
None. HN is a social media since it's an online forum. In fact HN runs afoul of many EU regulations already, GDPR, cookie law, ...
astura 10mo ago
This website is social media.
guywithahat 10mo ago
HN is social media, and if you look at the implementation of the Australian law it's more political than anything else. They banned X but did not list BlueSky, which has an ongoing pedophilia problem. This has nothing to do with protecting kids from social media it's just political maneuvering, like banning children from reading the epoch times but not the NYT
- immibis 10mo ago
  Or maybe, as new platforms spring up and start harming children in noticeable quantities, they'll be added to the list?
tzs 10mo ago
To find out what the difference is under this specific draft legislation we'd have to look at its text. I have no idea how to find copies of draft French legislation and I don't read French. To give an idea of how such laws might approach it, the recent New York Law requiring social media sites to display mental health warnings was written to cover sites with addictive feeds. Here's how it defined those: > "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another: > (a) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on information that is not persistently associated with the user or user's device, and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media generated or shared by other users; > (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical information concerning the user's device; > (c) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media, media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision; > (d) the user expressly and unambiguously requested that specific media, media by a specified author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to pursuant to paragraph (c) of this subdivision, be blocked, prioritized or deprioritized for display, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision; > (e) the media are direct and private communications; > (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user; (> g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source; or > (h) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to comply with the provisions of this article and any regulations promulgated pursuant to this article.
hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago
Because there is real observable harm to kids from those websites that there isn’t from HN? It’s like asking why you prevent kids from buying alcohol but don’t stop them from buying fruit juice. There is a lot of writing on what makes “social media” particularly more harmful, and its addictive nature etc, but again, we don’t need to necessarily get into the cause and knowing it’s harmful should be sufficient.
pokstad 10mo ago
Social media has the power to ruin a child’s life by letting them publish self incriminating information. A normal website is a primarily read only interaction. Prohibit child generated content and let kids view websites.

Devil's advocate: what is the difference between "social media" and a website very much like this one? When can I look forward to having to give a DNA test to read HN?

Pooge 10mo ago

The main difference in my view is the personalized algorithm that determines what to feed you next. HackerNews has an algorithm but it's not personalized—i.e. everyone sees the same thing.

AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
My own website has a bulletin board that offers a personalized list of messages after you login: whatever threads you have not yet read. And so do many other websites of this style. So this cannot be a differentiating aspect.
- adamnemecek 10mo ago
  They are very different.
- Workaccount2 10mo ago
  >So this cannot be a differentiating aspect. Now explain that nuance to an 80 yr old law maker who hates the damn email.
  - AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
    For the record, that is exactly my point . I do not want yet another sword of Damocles for websites, even less if it depends on the mood of a clueless judge.
  - seszett 10mo ago
    Not to say that they are technically literate, but the average age of French lawmakers (which are just the members of parliament) is 50 years old. It's actually the same as the average age of voting-age French citizens, so they are quite representative on this regard.
  - potato3732842 10mo ago
    These 80yo lawmakers have kids and grandkids and advisers. They know how social media works. They hate social media because it gives people the power to talk in public about them with near impunity. They want to go back to the old days when if you wrote a letter to the newspaper about potential corruption or wrongdoing among the "more equal animals" you'd get pulled over for a light out whenever you went through that town for the next 20yr.
    - skydhash 10mo ago
      > They hate social media because it gives people the power to talk in public about them with near impunity. If you think you have even near impunity on social media, I have a bridge to sell you. Even a town to go with it.
      - potato3732842 10mo ago
        >If you think you have even near impunity on social media, I have a bridge to sell you. Even a town to go with it. I specifically said "near" impunity. If you do something bad enough they'll come after you but even then if your gripes are legitimate that's likely to amplify it. Surely you're not honestly claiming that there is not a significant practical difference between modern internet criticism and the old ways when messaging that could reach the broad public was far thoroughly gated by people and things that had more stake in the power structure.
        skydhash 10mo ago
        I wouldn’t say it was gated. More like it was costly. And people having the means to do so was a very small set and prone to agree with the status quo. But even now, a lot of messages are lost on the internet. And the internet is only decentralized for messages propagation, not for access.
        potato3732842 10mo ago
        Fractionally gated is still gated. At some point a difference in quantity is a difference in quality.
- andrewinardeer 10mo ago
  Are you also harvesting teens data and selling it to the highest bidder or using it for target advertisements?
  - AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
    Not intentionally - but in the past I did have advertisements to finance it , which I had to stop since that is enough under a lot of jurisprudence to qualify as running a for-profit, which usually means less leniency from judges. So it is advertisements where we should draw the line -- websites with advertisements should require age checks?
    - andrewinardeer 10mo ago
      Why did you cherry pick advertisments from my reply and run with that? It clearly isn't just a singular data point that is a True or False that would include a site in the ban. Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter, do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self harm material and the ability to receive private messages from a 45 year old registered sex offender?" I get your point - "Where is the line in the sand?" and it's a valid point but no need to argue in bad faith.
      - AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
        Because it is the ad network that I chose 30 years ago that was doing any of the types of tracking you mention. In fact, all of the ad networks from 30 years ago would be considered as doing "teen tracking" today. I do not know how you can do tracking without doing teen tracking, barring precisely I troducing age verification on every single website. And I also do not know if there is any network out there doing advertisements without tracking -- certainly none of the major local news websites use it. I do think the "wont somebody think of the children" arguments are in bad faith though, and I say this as a father.
      - squigz 10mo ago
        > Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter, do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self harm material and the ability to receive private messages from a 45 year old registered sex offender?" If parents are concerned about this, why let them on the Internet? Why not use parental control systems? Why not teach your children healthy sex education, how to deal with their feelings, and to tell old creeps to fuck off?

lm28469 10mo ago

> what is the difference between "social media" and a website very much like this one? Pretty much everything? Not the same intent, not the same usage, not the same business model, not the same users, &c.

AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
Frel free to name something concrete. Remember that Reddit has already been targetted by this in Australia.
- snowpid 10mo ago
  Does HN spread Fake News? Facebook and Youtube do. Do you feel bad after using HN? Insta and Facebook it happens. Does HN collect data to specify marketing? Every other Social Media do. This is hard to define in laws so e.g. the EU chooses to force concrete measures from the social media pages.
  - AshamedCaptain 10mo ago
    > Does HN spread Fake News? Yes? Even newspapers do that. You have never had Gell-Mann when reading something here outside mainstream topics of interest? (e.g. almost anything from outside the US, or health related). Is this really the criteria you want to use to decide whether to require age checks for a website? > the EU chooses to force concrete measures from the social media pages. This just sidesteps the issue of how a website ends up in the list. Today, Reddit. Tomorrow, Discord. Then Github. Eventually, HN.
    - snowpid 10mo ago
      My news is almost outside of the US as I am not American. (wow this should be sent to r/USDefaultism). So let's say like this: I do read a lot outside of "American mainstream media". Most good working journalist try to verify claim and statements. This is the opposite to Fake News, Clickbait and Russian state propaganda spread in Social Media because its their business model.

Alex2037 10mo ago

the services that comply with speech suppression and privacy violation orders will be deemed acceptable, and those who don't won't.

immibis 10mo ago
With the caveat that by "speech suppression" you mean "spam suppression" and by "privacy violation orders" you mean "search warrants"
- Alex2037 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - SauntSolaire 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Alex2037 10mo ago
      insisting, against an overwhelming amount of irrefutable evidence to the contrary, that states like Australia and France are benevolent toward their citizens, does indeed make one a bootlicker. was persecuting COVID dissidents "russian spam suppression"? are government-mandated backdoors "search warrants"?
      - immibis 10mo ago
        Yeah pretty much. We know Russia was behind a whole lot of the pro-infection movement. Ostriching that fact doesn't make it stop being true. They've been doing stuff like this since the communist days, so they're very good at it now.
        Alex2037 10mo ago
        >We know Russia was behind a whole lot of the pro-infection movement. yes, yes, there was no vaccine skepticism in the West before COVID.

dfxm12 10mo ago

From a definition standpoint, hn is a social media site. From a legislation standpoint, it's not nearly popular (infamous?) enough to legislate (the mentioned sites have had enough negative coverage to manufacturer consent for this invasion of privacy: cyber bullying, destructive challenges, etc.) When it is, and when your local government becomes sufficiently captured by the user surveillance industrial complex, you will need real world verification here.

grunder_advice 10mo ago
>hn is a social media site Social media typically implies a website where users are sharing self-created content. If a website with comments counts a social media, than all web2.0 is social media and there's practically no distinction between the web and social media.
- esperent 10mo ago
  A blog that has a comments section is primarily still a blog, it just has a secondary social media feature attached. In the case of HN, most people are here for the comments section and frequently don't even read the article, so it's primarily a social media site with a news aggregator feature.

astrobe_ 10mo ago

Proper moderation, and - how to say it without sounding elitist? - more mature users.

throw_m239339 10mo ago

None. HN is a social media since it's an online forum. In fact HN runs afoul of many EU regulations already, GDPR, cookie law, ...

astura 10mo ago

This website is social media.

guywithahat 10mo ago

HN is social media, and if you look at the implementation of the Australian law it's more political than anything else. They banned X but did not list BlueSky, which has an ongoing pedophilia problem. This has nothing to do with protecting kids from social media it's just political maneuvering, like banning children from reading the epoch times but not the NYT

immibis 10mo ago
Or maybe, as new platforms spring up and start harming children in noticeable quantities, they'll be added to the list?

tzs 10mo ago

To find out what the difference is under this specific draft legislation we'd have to look at its text. I have no idea how to find copies of draft French legislation and I don't read French. To give an idea of how such laws might approach it, the recent New York Law requiring social media sites to display mental health warnings was written to cover sites with addictive feeds. Here's how it defined those: > "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another: > (a) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on information that is not persistently associated with the user or user's device, and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media generated or shared by other users; > (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical information concerning the user's device; > (c) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media, media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision; > (d) the user expressly and unambiguously requested that specific media, media by a specified author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to pursuant to paragraph (c) of this subdivision, be blocked, prioritized or deprioritized for display, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision; > (e) the media are direct and private communications; > (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user; (> g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source; or > (h) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to comply with the provisions of this article and any regulations promulgated pursuant to this article.

hshdhdhj4444 10mo ago

Because there is real observable harm to kids from those websites that there isn’t from HN? It’s like asking why you prevent kids from buying alcohol but don’t stop them from buying fruit juice. There is a lot of writing on what makes “social media” particularly more harmful, and its addictive nature etc, but again, we don’t need to necessarily get into the cause and knowing it’s harmful should be sufficient.

pokstad 10mo ago

Social media has the power to ruin a child’s life by letting them publish self incriminating information. A normal website is a primarily read only interaction. Prohibit child generated content and let kids view websites.