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Finland looks to introduce Australia-style ban on social media

• helsinkiandrew 9mo ago
  The headline is missing an important “looks to”. Politicians and public opinion seem to be in favour. > Finland looks to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with Australia-style ban on social media
• mjevans 9mo ago
  I'm fine with this, as long as they DO NOT require any form of ID or 'age' verification. Instead this should be attacked from the profit side, by banning any form of advertising which might target children. If there's no profit to be made in servicing said demographic and a law requesting at least end user 'agreement' that they are an adult, this should be sufficient.
  • throwup238 9mo ago
    Who decides whether an ad is targeting children or not? I’m not playing devil’s advocate, I’m curious what the SOTA is for ad moderation. I’m sure it’s relatively easy to tell a kid’s toy ad from adult ones like alcohol, but how do you differentiate toy ads targeting parents vs toy ads targeting kids?
    • joe_mamba 9mo ago
      >Who decides whether an ad is targeting children or not? Much simpler than that, you just ban all targeted ads full stop end of story. The ad-funded internet existed in the 90s before ad targeting was a thing. You went on a car forum, you'd get ads about car parts. You went on a PC forum, you'd get ads about PC parts. Pretty simple stuff that didn't need to know your age, gender, political affiliation, ovulation status, etc so it's not like the web will go bust without ad targeting. Targeted ads are exploitative and manipulative, and a crime against humanity, or at least on society.
      • majormajor 9mo ago
        None of that attacks the motivation of FB to look the other way to kids clicking the "I'm an adult" button and pocketing money from advertisers buying un-targeted ads for snacks, clothes, makeup, computers/gaming, and a million other things that are equally as aimed at kids as they are at anyone else. (Remember how many kids bought car magazines before they even had drivers' licenses? Advertising has never been "oh, ads for things adults will buy will be completely boring to children.")
      • qgin 9mo ago
        Honestly this is better than covering half of every website with a cookie banner that very few people understand.
      • bobthepanda 9mo ago
        Ads and media are generally exploitative and manipulative, even if not targeted specifically at anybody. 3 years after the nation of Fiji received its first television broadcasts in 1995, dieting and disordered eating went from unheard of to double digit percentages among teenage girls. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/20/world/study-finds-tv-alters-fiji-girls-view-of-body.html https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/20/world/study-finds-tv-alte... > Before 1995, Dr. Becker said, there was little talk of dieting in Fiji. ''The idea of calories was very foreign to them.'' But in the 1998 survey, 69 percent said that at some time they had been on a diet. In fact, preliminary data suggest more teen-age girls in Fiji diet than their American counterparts.
        • junofan 9mo ago
          I mean as of 2011 over half the native women are obese [1]. I don’t know what to make of it other than that’s a lot. Dr. Anne Becker may be really into preserving traditional Fijian culture or whatever but it sounds like some of the local girls don’t want to anymore. [1]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26201444/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26201444/
          • bobthepanda 9mo ago
    • behringer 9mo ago
      We should ban all ads.
    • ajsnigrutin 9mo ago
      Since platforms know the users age, any ad shown to them should be considered as such. So basically, no ads on underage accounts at all should be the norm.
  • mytailorisrich 9mo ago
    Without age verification this is obviously an unenforceable ban... I think Finland already has schemes for age verification.
    • k__ 9mo ago
      Yeah. Zero knowledge proof and you're good to go.
      • unclad5968 9mo ago
        How would a zero knowledge proof of my age work?
        • MatteoFrigo 9mo ago
          Here is one way: https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/2010 https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/2010 Our (Google) implementation: https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk An independent implementation by the Internet Security Research Group: https://github.com/abetterinternet/zk-cred-longfellow https://github.com/abetterinternet/zk-cred-longfellow Still being developed but already interoperable with ours. European age verification app: https://ageverification.dev/av-doc-technical-specification/docs/architecture-and-technical-specifications/#71-zero-knowledge-proofs https://ageverification.dev/av-doc-technical-specification/d...
      • Aurornis 9mo ago
        That's not how ID checking works, though. A key part of ID verification laws is that you're confirming the ID presented also belongs to the user. They can't just check for "This person currently has an adult ID in their possession" and nothing more, otherwise one kid at school would borrow their older brothers' ID and then use it to register all of their friends' accounts one day.
        • tzs 9mo ago
          You tie it cryptographically to their phone with keys in the phone's hardware security module. This doesn't stop sharing of ID but it makes it much more inconvenient.
  • alkonaut 9mo ago
    Any kind of zero knowledge verification should be ok. But with minors it often goes a long way to just make the law. It’s a good instruction to parents who should be able to control this. Laws on bike helmets for minors are followed nearly 100% not because they are enforced by authorities but because the law gives parents guidance.
    • Mindwipe 9mo ago
      There is no such thing in practice. Anything with zero knowledge is never going to be considered robust enough by a government. Zero knowledge protocols really have no functional revocation mechanism.
      • pydry 9mo ago
        expiry
      • JoshTriplett 9mo ago
        (Without accepting the premise that it should be acceptable to have to provide any kind of proof...) > Zero knowledge protocols really have no functional revocation mechanism. None would be needed, you (sadly) only age in one direction, so valid proof would never become invalid proof.
        • mrob 9mo ago
          >valid proof would never become invalid proof Somebody can give their proof of age to another person.
          • JoshTriplett 9mo ago
            And? Presentation of someone else's valid credentials is not fixable by any privacy-preserving mechanism. You can set an expiration date in order to rotate them, and they can be fast-rotating. In any case, it's a moot point: the correct amount of required identification is zero.
  • dyauspitr 9mo ago
    I disagree, we should have age verification but maybe it can be done in a mostly anonymous way like a central arbiter of identity from the government or something.
    • salawat 9mo ago
      That's exactly the opposite of anonymous. You cannot have anonymity & age verification that actually guarantees anything. It's a contradiction. Either the chain exists, or it doesn't.
      • alkonaut 9mo ago
        Are you saying it would be impossible to have a service where the site (social media, say) would issue some sort of random token and ask me to sign it using a centralized ID service. Then I log in to the centralized id service and use it to sign the random token and bring it back to the service. The centralized service see who I am, but not what I'm proving my age for. The social media or other site see that I have signed their token so would have the appropriate age, but not who I am. What's impossible about this?
        • tzs 9mo ago
          The problem with that is if someone gets a hold of the logs from both the centralized service and the social media site they can compare timestamps and may be able to match them up. Most people will be doing the whole process (site gives token, person gets token signed, person returns token) as quickly as possible which limits the candidates for a match. Worse, if the central service is compromised and wants to make it easier for log matching to identify people they could purposefully introduce delays which would make it easier to distinguish people. Most people will use the same IP address through the verification process which would really make it easy.
          • dyauspitr 9mo ago
            This is no different from VPN providers. Maybe have the central authority keep no logs just like VPN companies. We already have government agencies that do that for instance the agency that handles text to speech phone calls for deaf people. Alternatively use a VPN to sign the token.
  • kuerbel 9mo ago
    Instead of banning social media for teenagers, regulate it in ways that actively reduce addictive design. For example: after 15 minutes of short-form content, show an unskippable timer every third video, displaying today’s, this week’s, and total watch time. The same principle should apply to endless scrolling, make usage visible and interruptible. Base it on actual screen time. This would protect teenagers and benefit adults.
  • yoz-y 9mo ago
    There is still a financial incentive to loop in teenagers that would stay on a platform and spend money there later.
  • Telemakhos 9mo ago
    > If there's no profit to be made in servicing said demographic and a law requesting at least end user 'agreement' that they are an adult, this should be sufficient. Is it still advertising if an "influencer" takes money on the down low to sip a Pepsi not too obviously in the middle of a video? Is it still advertising if an attractive and young person provides news that happens to be colored in a way that supports the narratives of a particular political faction? Is it still advertising if you can't prove that a foreign power encouraged a popular yoga enthusiast or makeup artist to post some whispered ideas that weaken citizens' faith in your institutions? Does that foreign power ever care about profit? Advertising and propaganda love to explore the grey spaces around definitions, so your bans will end up being a whack-a-mole game. Cutting off kids with an ID check is much easier. Implementing age verification the Apple way would even protect privacy by simply registering whether Apple can attest that the user is over or under the age limit, without handing the ID over to third parties.
    • prussia 9mo ago
      There's no profit for the platform. As of now, both the "influencer" and platform are aligned in that they want children to consume more slop. If the platform doesn't have any incentive anymore, maybe most of those "influencers" will fall away, if the algorithm starts deprioritising content geared toward children. As you say, policing the "influencers" is difficult, but at least it is quite easy and simple to target the platform. Better than nothing.
  • quotemstr 9mo ago
    You can tell these proposals are made in bad faith because we can do age verification in an anonymous way using zero-knowledge proofs but regulators demand linkable IDs instead. It's not about protecting the kids. It's about managing the public's information diet. The latter is not a legitimate function of any state.
    • ozgung 9mo ago
      The goal is to ban anonymous internet for everyone. You won't be able to post anything without verifying your id. All these similar efforts in different countries seem coordinated and synchronous, suddenly after 35 years since the advent of the web.
    • sensanaty 9mo ago
      In the Netherlands we already have zero-knowledge ID verification through DigID, I'd be amazed if the Nordics didn't have the same system available to its citizens.
      • sigwinch 9mo ago
        However that’s not anonymous. Ministry of Interior is alerted with your identity each time you use it.
  • throwawayk7h 9mo ago
    Why not device-side headers? Kids' devices should always include a header saying "I'm a kid, don't show me adult content.
• digiown 9mo ago
  I secretly wish it would use a verification scheme that's so invasive/annoying, that even adults would stop using it anyway.
  • bluescrn 9mo ago
    IMHO the main point of these schemes is to make it hard for adults to use social media somewhat-anonyously. So the government can more easily identify those posting 'prohibited speech'. If there was a legitimate drive to protect kids from the worst of the Internet, there'd have been more of a crackdown on porn, gore, etc long before social media became such a big problem. And smartphones would have never been allowed in schools.
    • bamboozled 9mo ago
      What major revolutions or important political shifts have occurred from people anonymously shitposting on Reddit or Facebook ?
      • bluescrn 9mo ago
        The online right talk about 'the great meme war' that led to the 2016 election of Trump. Seems pretty clear that social media is radicalising people at both ends of the political spectrum, and it's not surprising that governments would want to restrict/police it by trying to criminalise 'hate'/'misinformation' and taking away the shield of anonymity.
      • direwolf20 9mo ago
        Donald Trump?
      • JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
        None. Almost by definition, the folks who satisfy themselves waxing online drive complacency away from real action. That doesn’t, however, mean they aren’t self-importantly organized to later support an organized movement.
• Tade0 9mo ago
  I'm eternally grateful that the social media network that I was part of throughout my teenage years abruptly disappeared from the internet, never to come back again. Some say it was a technical failure during migration when the company was trying to pivot to file hosting, but it's impossible to verify. Perhaps these bans are a blessing in disguise and future generations will be happy to not have their most awkward stage of life available forever, to everyone, in detail.
  • beAbU 9mo ago
    Are you referring to MySpace? My highschool band had tracks and videos of live performances in the school hall on there that is forever lost and I'm still bitter about it.
    • joe_mamba 9mo ago
      How is MySpace even comparable to today's social media? AFAIK MySpace wasn't agoritmycally driven to keep you addicted like TikTok or Instagram do. MySpace was just you and your friends from school competing on whose page is the tackiest.
      • Hendrikto 9mo ago
        Yes, very different. A good example of we should not lump all platforms together.
    • Tade0 9mo ago
      I am not referring to MySpace. It was a local-to-my-country social network which was outcompeted by another local-to-my-country social network, which in turn gave way to Facebook. I was aware of the existence of MySpace at the time, but it never had mainstream adoption locally. We also had not one but two mainstream messaging apps and hardly anyone was using MSN. Come to think of it, Facebook killed a lot of that homegrown tech.
      • zppln 9mo ago
• throwaway613746 9mo ago
  I just wish this was possible somehow without essentially making corporate mass-surveillance a requirement.
  • Zigurd 9mo ago
    Horse. Barn. Gone.
    • JoshTriplett 9mo ago
      Only if we give up. Keep fighting surveillance and control mechanisms.
• zhug3 9mo ago
  The phrase "uncontrolled human experiment" is doing interesting rhetorical work here. It frames the status quo as the experiment and regulation as the control—when historically it's been the reverse.
  • barbazoo 9mo ago
    I’d say status quo is before social media as that’s where most childhoods have happened. Targeting children with social media is definitely a new thing and still an experiment since those poor souls that had their lives surveilled by Meta are just coming of age and we’re just learning about the damages.
  • pembrook 9mo ago
    The fact that you're the only one calling this out is quite frankly alarming. It's one of the most authoritarian statements I've ever heard from a western government. And just because its the trendy moral panic of the day, everybody is cheering it on. Anything where we allow people free will is by definition an "uncontrolled human experiment" and the basis of any free society. Should we also end the "uncontrolled human experiment" of allowing people to have private money and make their own purchase decisions? Should we end the "uncontrolled human experiment" of allowing people to select their own romantic partners?
    • Wilder7977 9mo ago
      You mention free will, but it would be an interesting conversation to discuss how much free will there is when people fight, without knowing it, against psychological manipulation, addition creation, all crafted with plenty of money and research. Especially when this people are young ones. Can the behavior still be called free will when you get hooked to mechanisms specifically designed to exploit humans in this way?
      • pembrook 9mo ago
        Your rebuttal is based on the assumption that social media is uniquely manipulative, addictive and designed by a secret evil cabal of geniuses with top hats. This is a media narrative and a popular meme, but it is not reality when looking at the actual studies: [1] Effects of reducing social media use are small and inconsistent: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666560325000714 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266656032... [2] Belief in "Social media addiction" is wholly explained by media framing and not an actual addiction: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-27053-2 [3] No causal link between time spent on social media and mental health harm: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-time-does-not-increase-teenagers-mental-health-problems-study https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jan/14/social-media-t... The idea that social media is uniquely bad is simply the same moral panic that comes up every time we encounter something new. The truth is every person, company and government engages in "psychological manipulation" when trying to get what they want, including the children themselves. Since other children engage in psychological manipulation with each other at school, should we ban schools to protect kids from it? Since the government engages in psychological manipulation with its policies and agendas (all backed by billions of dollars), should we ban government policy-making for children?
• stackbutterflow 9mo ago
  Maybe it's time to start auditing social network platforms and disallow certain practices.
• Aeolun 9mo ago
  Is it really so controversial to ban it entirely? We ban heroin and other hard drugs. I think most people are better off, and have a more nuanced view of reality if the only news they get is local. Or the updates from people they know always in person.
  • para_parolu 9mo ago
    Compare it to marijuanna instead. Then it’s on the same level of controversy.
    • Aeolun 9mo ago
      Marijuanna is the definition of a social drug. Who does that by themselves at home? I may be influenced by mostly encountering it in school environments but still.
  • draw_down 9mo ago
    [dead]
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  • GaryBluto 9mo ago
    Social media is not a hard drug.
    • direwolf20 9mo ago
      What is the definition of a hard drug?
    • Zigurd 9mo ago
      "Hard drug" is a loaded term. Nicotine is more addictive than some "hard drugs." That big VC funded vape maker couldn't stay away from child friendly marketing.
    • fragmede 9mo ago
      It's worse. It's the last thing before going to sleep that the addict uses and it's the first thing they check in the morning before having a thought to themselves. It doesn't run out. Everybody's doing it. People are losing jobs and relationships over it. At least fetty you gotta leave the house to get more. Instagram Reels never make you leave the house.
• drdaeman 9mo ago
  How do they even define “social media”? Do they just ban kids from participating in society using electronic communications? Or maintain a stoplist “here’s what we consider to be social media”? Or what? I mean, sure, prime examples of what is colloquially called “social media” is crapware. I do get the intent. But I wonder what sort of unintended, unplanned, odd and potentially even socially harmful consequences it would possibly have.
  • riffraff 9mo ago
    Australia enacted this through a stoplist, but also appears to require self-assessment by the services themselves. https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/social-media-age-restrictions/which-platforms-are-age-restricted https://www.esafety.gov.au/about-us/industry-regulation/soci...
• hiprob 9mo ago
  Are they going to conduct an uncontrolled human experiment by requiring age checks to use the Internet (read: surveillance capitalism and Orwellian lack of privacy)?
  • robbbbbbbbbbbb 9mo ago
    No, they’ll probably just follow Australia’s lead[1] of: default allow; algorithmic age estimation; account suspend; ID to unblock. Chill. [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo.amp https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyp9d3ddqyo.amp
    • sunaookami 9mo ago
      So yes, you will need to show your ID which will connect to your account and obviously be used to surveil everything you post online. People on HN of all places need to stop being so naive.
      • robbbbbbbbbbbb 9mo ago
        If your theory is that this global push by legislators to introduce age restrictions is actually a secret Trojan horse to harvest government IDs orchestrated by the platform owning capitalists…how do you account for the fact said capitalists have been desperately lobbying against it for years?
    • hiprob 9mo ago
      If it's as flaky as YouTube's age estimation, it's just ID by default.
  • weberer 9mo ago
    I think Surveillance Globalism would be a more apt description. Which is a hundred times scarier since its coming from the government, multiple governments around the world simultaneously, and its about control rather than making money off you.
• Noaidi 9mo ago
  Can we be it for adults now? Seriously, can we? I mean, if it affects a children’s what makes we think it doesn’t affect adults? Alcohol affects children, and it affects adults. If social media affects children, it also affects adults. The big live social media was it was meant to connect people but in truth, it was designed to control people.
  • logicchains 9mo ago
    >The big live social media was it was meant to connect people but in truth, it was designed to control people. This is absurd. People have access to far more information today via decentralised media than they did when information was filtered through a small elite cabal of media company CEOs. Restricting access to information is a means of controlling people, and that's exactly what the governments pushing to ban social media want to do.
    • nephihaha 9mo ago
      Search engines restrict information. You get a very limited selection of information off them nowadays.
  • pxoe 9mo ago
    Why is it that some people are so hell bent on limiting how people communicate? Ironically, this is also seeking to control people.
    • NickC25 9mo ago
      If it was a pure communication platform, we wouldn't be in this situation. Social media as it exists in mainstream life is an advertising platform which happens to have a few methods humans can use to communicate with each other. But that's a bug, not a feature.
• seydor 9mo ago
  Are adults any better? Not sure the ban is a productive way to go about it.
• OsamaJaber 9mo ago
  The real question is enforcement They tried this, and kids just moved to platforms nobody knew existed
  • jimbob45 9mo ago
    Eventually group SMS would still function well for this, no? Shared email lists barring that. This seems like a race to the bottom.
    • OsamaJaber 9mo ago
      Exactly You can ban platforms but you can't ban communication
    • Arainach 9mo ago
      Neither group SMS nor shared email lists have the algorithmic dopamine tweaking that are the root of most of the harm.
  • logicchains 9mo ago
    There's still a double digit percentage of parents that oppose the ban. The only way to make a ban work without parental support is requiring a video camera to be running constantly doing facial verification while the app is running, completely unfeasible.
    • Arainach 9mo ago
      Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Our current laws and enforcement don't prevent 100% of murders or rapes, but that doesn't mean we should remove the laws prohibiting them.
• bilsbie 9mo ago
  Noble goal but it ends up being a defacto internet license. All ages need to show id to use sites and services.
  • echelon 9mo ago
    110%. No website of any kind should require IDV unless banking. It is a tool that will be used for censorship, removal of access to information, destruction of freedom of speech, erosion of privacy, and attacks on political opponents. We need anonymity, ephemerality, and public square free speech. Governments should instead regulate what these companies can do. How they advertise. Engagement algorithms. Stop internal efforts to target kids. Etc. Disallow advertising to kids. Turn off ads on children's accounts if the user is predicted or self reports as a kid. Turn off the algorithm for kids.
    • idle_zealot 9mo ago
      This is the obvious solution, but implementing it would be a herculean effort. Not because it's technically difficult, of course. Consider the incentives of all involved powerful groups. You have social media giants who want to addict and advertise to users. The hate your solution, obviously. With the ID checks they lose out on their younger users, but they also get cover for even more aggressive behavior as nobody can credibly yell "think of the children!" at them. Then you have government officials who are nervous about their lack of effective control over modern media. Your solution offers them nothing and loses them points with those powerful business leaders. It opens them up to attack from the right for being "too hard on business and stifling innovation." The ID checks, on the other hand, give them a mechanism and lever to crack down on any sentiment in the public that runs counter to their or their friends' interests. It even polls pretty well with an increasingly large number of paranoid and distrusting voters. There's no contest at all between the routes before us. Only a huge political upheaval could divert the world from this path. The indicator to look for in a representative is a willingness to champion policy that hurts entrenched political and economic power while providing straightforward utility to average citizens.
    • philipallstar 9mo ago
• verdverm 9mo ago
  How long before the kids use Ai to build their own?
  • rhines 9mo ago
    What matters is content, not communication. They could build a platform to chat with each other, but they could just use WhatsApp or text or email for that. But they can't build a platform with an infinite stream of targeted content (until AI generates content I guess).
    • verdverm 9mo ago
      I hear parents of young children are already sitting their children down in front of AI generated children's content on YouTube
      • bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
        Please show us the channels with the views
• andix 9mo ago
  Modern social media is nothing like social media in early days (myspace, early Facebook and even early Instagram). Back then it was a platform to communicate with friends, and maybe even find new friends to meet up with. Today social media is more like a drug, to keep the user engaged and to push content to them. The content must either be addictive/engaging or paid advertisements. Quality of the content doesn't matter at all. Connecting people to do stuff outside of the virtual world would actually hurt their business model. People turn off their devices and go outside, instead of watching ads. So it's probably fine to just block the big platforms. Forums or messengers (without ads and public channels) are probably fine. Probably even Reddit - which does have an algorithm to show specific content - is not as bad.
  • cheeseface 9mo ago
    Agree on how the platform’s have changed. However, I don’t think Reddit is an exception. Popular is often filled with content that is driven by the feelings of fear and hate. Not something I’d like to continually expose kids or teens to.
    • api 9mo ago
      Smaller subs can still be decent but I agree about popular and larger subs. They’re just brain rot and engagement bait now.
      • rhines 9mo ago
        Yeah that's really the issue with all social media. If you restrict yourself to just checking what friends post on Facebook, or what people you subscribe to post on YouTube, those platforms are pretty healthy too. It's when you go to the infinite content feed that sites become an issue.
      • Aurornis 9mo ago
        I don't know any more. Even the small subs I previously visited for good content have turned into their own little echo chambers, along with a lot of drive-by posts because small subs get recommended in other people's feeds now. In some of the hobby subreddits where I had good discussions in the past it's now just one big echo chamber of people parroting the same information around, whether it's true or not. If you want to participate you either need to toe the line of the accepted brands/methods/techniques or keep your mouth shut. Most of us just get tired and give up
• malklera 9mo ago
  Do parents do not exist? I mean if the parents pass hours looking at their phone, the kids would want to use a phone, maybe making a law is easier than setting an example? Each parent could educate themselves and bloc "harmful" websites from their kids phones, that is what parental control is for.(single, no kids)
• ottah 9mo ago
  Never accept the bullshit false dichotomy of people pushing an agenda. There are many, many ways to solve this issue other than the nuclear option of a ban and doing nothing.
• rendall 9mo ago
  The impression that one might get from this article is that the ban is essentially a done deal, but it’s not. What exists right now is political signaling by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, plus preliminary fact-finding and position papers by ministries and agencies, but no enacted legislation. There’s still a big gap between "government floats an idea with broad public support" and "a legally enforceable, technically workable ban". The Finnish language article about it is much thinner. https://yle.fi/a/74-20204177 https://yle.fi/a/74-20204177
• spicyusername 9mo ago
  Under 15 Heck I'd support banning under 18.
• abdelhousni 9mo ago
  Tiktok was also the wake up call for US and other western countries who found out they lost a part of their youth about the Israeli war on Gaza. Youth thorough the ages always stand against perceived injustice. The oligarchy also want to control that aspect.
• SilverElfin 9mo ago
  Banning youth from communicating is just not appropriate. And forcing adults to give up privacy to discuss things is a huge risk and a path to enabling authoritarianism, like in Trump’s America.
  • causalscience 9mo ago
    [dead]
• duxup 9mo ago
  Rather than really address what is ass about social media, we just "ban" it for folks who we can ban it for. This seems off. Kid's have unlimited time. They'll find something else, likely pretending to be adults and thus even more at risk. Meanwhile everyone else gets an internet license and the government every website tracks you ... This is a classic case of nice idea and the results will be all wrong / not even address the problem.
  • hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 9mo ago
    By creating 'rules' for social media based on what's good and bad instead of banning it altogether you end up creating loopholes instead. Even in the case we instead first discuss what is "ass" we will probably end up having a debate instead of getting anything done for another 10 years. I'm on team, just get shit done.
    • duxup 9mo ago
      What is getting done here? Everyone but kids is still exposed, and likely still kids... Also you now have to have a license for social media, probably the internet eventually.
      • GreenWatermelon 9mo ago
        Not exposing kods to addictive drugs while they're still young and naive lowers their chances of consuming drugs when they're adults. The societies that will allow unchecked access to social media will collapse, just like ehat happened to China during the Opium wars. Everyone but kids still has access to cigarettes, doesn't mean we should allow sale pf tobacco to Minors.
        • duxup 9mo ago
          At best everyone but kids still has unchecked access.
• constantcrying 9mo ago
  This is of course a trend in many western countries. With some, like the UK and Australia, leading the way. At this point I do not think it is reasonable to deny the harm that certain modes of social interactions over the internet have caused. At the same time these bans should not be considered reasonable options. They exist to cover for the decade of inaction of politicians in addressing youth dissatisfaction and dysfunction. A reasonable approach should not assume that the root cause of this dysfunction is youth interacting with social media, but should consider what lead to this in the first place. Apparently most adults seem to be capable of dealing with this situation, if they are not why would this ban, or at least some regulation, not extend to social media for adults. In general I believe that dysfunction in the youth has multiple causes and that overuse of social media is just on part of the puzzle and that unhealthy use of social media is often caused by other problem and used as a coping mechanism. These bans will not be effective and they will be assaults on the free internet, as the bureaucrats establishing the laws are also seeking to control the internet for themselves and will use this as a backdoor.
  • quotemstr 9mo ago
    > At this point I do not think it is reasonable to deny the harm that certain modes of social interactions over the internet have caused Yes, it is reasonable to doubt the purported harms are real, because 1) I've yet to see evidence that the medium is the problem, 2) people keep telling me that they don't need evidence because the harms are obvious, and 3) I have an strong prior, as an American, that anyone preventing people sharing ideas with each other is a villain of history. The furor over youth social media has all the hallmarks of a moral panic, including over-reliance of weak evidence, personal attacks against skeptics, and socially disruptive remedies of dubious efficiency, the collateral damage of which people justify by pointing to harms to children they say, falsely, are obvious and ongoing. I'm not convinced that these social media bans are solving a real problem. The more people breathlessly tell me I'm a bad person for asking for evidence of the alleged harms, the more I think it's a public mania, not a civilizational problem. It really doesn't help that it'd be suspiciously convenient for the worst actors in power if sharing ideas on the internet required ID.
    • 9mo ago
• perfmode 9mo ago
  I miss the days of chatting at home with friends after school on MSN Messenger and ICQ.
• notthemessiah 9mo ago
  People in this thread are celebrating this, though it inevitably means ID-checking and mass surveillance. Australia's ban also exempted Roblox, a platform that exploits children and is a haven for child predators. Also, it's no coincidence that all these social media bans are arriving the same time youth are using social media to spread awareness of Israel's genocide of Palestine.
  • bethekidyouwant 9mo ago
    Have you ever played Roblox?
• m132 9mo ago
  Open Internet dying in front of our very eyes. Let's not forget that social media are just one of the many scapegoats tried over the past decade in hopes of pushing this idea forwards. And while there's no denying that today's social media have gotten destructive, they're still only a scapegoat; no attempt is being made here to bring them back to their original, non-malicious shape. Is the social media hate really so powerful that, channeled carefully, it can overshadow free speech?
  • testing22321 9mo ago
    Has anyone ever argued that children should have full access to the entire internet? Seems like a horribly bad idea.
    • m132 9mo ago
      Will adults be exempt from the invasive age verification?
  • wiseowise 9mo ago
    > no attempt is being made here to bring them back to their original, non-malicious shape. Social networks can revert back to original form any minute, nobody’s stopping them. > Is the social media hate really so powerful that, channeled carefully, it can overshadow free speech? Bots giving platform to schizos and fringe radicals is a freedom of speech?
  • Nursie 9mo ago
    Social media is not the open internet, pretty much by definition. With a few notable, niche exceptions it’s big centralised services entirely in the control of single companies. They’ve long been explicitly targeting human psychology for profit, it’s hardly surprising there’s a backlash. But that doesn’t mean the open internet is dead. In fact the open internet could benefit from the slaying of these centralised monsters.
  • GreenWatermelon 9mo ago
    In what universe are corpo-controlled walled-gardens considered "Open Internet"? > no attempt is being made here to bring them back to their original, non-malicious shape. Because it's impossible unless you ban for-profit social media. Naturally I'd support such a ban.
• Am4TIfIsER0ppos 9mo ago
  Wrong. Ban phones. Would benefit more than just children. The internet must again become something you sit down to use.
  • eimrine 9mo ago
    ban proprietary software, do not let microsoft or apple to "offer deals" to schoolchildren.
  • machomaster 9mo ago
    Not phones. Smart phones.
• cal_dent 9mo ago
  It's all picking up steam. The thing is whatever the implementation may be, the writing is on the wall that social media's are numbered, well at least its in current form. I.m sure there'll be downsides to this but, have to say, I'm happy the de facto position that social media's should be allowed to be the wild west is now seriously being questioned
  • logicchains 9mo ago
    >the writing is on the wall that social media's are numbered, well at least its in current form There's enough of us devs that absolutely fucking hate the idea of governments controlling how people communicate that the next stage of social media will probably be a decentralised system that's extremely difficult to shut down. Unless every government devolves into full on China-style authoritarianism with deep packet inspection, a national firewall and ubiquitous surveillance, there's no way to stop a well designed distributed social media platform. There just hasn't been enough incentive yet for people to build one.
• irusensei 9mo ago
  Seems its just another country coming up with the same convenient excuse to implement KYC to access the internet.
• hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 9mo ago
  Social media really is downhill from here. There is already a lot of bot activity (and I don't mean moltbook) and it will only get worse. This will become closer to truth than conspiracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Internet_theory
• VortexLain 9mo ago
  Social media age restriation is just an anonymity ban in disguise. Governments should focus on regulations knowingly addictive and overly engaging mechanics instead.
• pembrook 9mo ago
  Watching people cheer this on uncritically without thinking through what this actually means in practice (the end of privacy on the internet, forever)...just because of some silly moral panic and people being too lazy to parent their kids...it's just sad. Unfortunately, rationally thinking through 2nd and 3rd order effects is hard. As we see on social media, appeals to emotion drive the highest engagement, and "think of the children" is the ultimate emotional appeal. But hey, with European countries moving to tie all internet activity to their national ID system to "protect the children from social media" and "ban speech we don't like" maybe we can finally get rid of those cookie popups? Making Lambi Toilet Paper jump through bizarre hoops when targeting their toilet paper ads to people seems silly now...given we're voluntarily handing our browser history & permission to access the open web to a much more powerful entity (the government). Consumer goods companies combining your IP address and email address together for the purpose of selling you more toilet bowl cleaner...becomes a bit of a moot point, no?
• donatj 9mo ago
  Do people under the age of sixty even use traditional social media anymore? Do we have actual stats? I am in my late thirties so surely out of touch, but am friends with people in their mid twenties and frankly I don't know anyone who spends any significant time on anything other than TikTok. I guess you could call TikTok "social media", but it wouldn't fit my old person definition. I think pretty much everyone below the age of 60 is aware that Facebook/Instagram/etc is just slop now. You don't even see your friend stuff. You just see slop. I use Facebook primarily for marketplace these days, but when I do scroll my feed, it's all like weird east asian AI slop. Women cutting open impossibly large fruit, fake tartar removal, fake videos of fights. Literally nothing that compels me to stay on the site like I hear people on here talk about.
  • hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 9mo ago
    >I think pretty much everyone below the age of 60 is aware that Facebook/Instagram/etc is just slop now. Sorry, but to me you just revealed you don't speak to many women.
    • donatj 9mo ago
      I'm married with children, work from home, and weeks away from my 40s. So yes. Not a big revelation. I have more than a couple nieces and nephews in their late teens/early 20s though and if you ask them, social media is for old people.
• hn_user_9876 9mo ago
  [dead]
• expedition32 9mo ago
  Its a very dangerous experiment. Remember: we only get ONE childhood. No do overs.
• shevy-java 9mo ago
  Hmmmm. So I do understand some concerns here. On the other hand, I also absolutely hate all forms of censorship. I don't use any of these anti-social media myself (though, perhaps hacker news is declared social media? I also used to use reddit in the past, is that social media? Where are the boundaries of that term definition by the way?), but I still absolutely dislike state actors banning websites. I have no illusion about e. g. Zuckerberg and others here; see the recent news how Facebook tried to "hook" up young kids like a drug addict; Google via Youtube on the "swiping" of videos (that one is hard to resist ... I keep on scrolling down in the hope of finding better videos, fail, and eventually realise how I am wasting my time swiping ...). But even then ... I actually think I dislike censorship more than those anti-social websites that I am not even using anyway. This may be different for younger brains, so it is not that I am not understanding the rational behind. But still ... I can't get myself to want to like censorship either.
  • httpsterio 9mo ago
    I wouldn't call it censorship. We don't allow kids to drink or smoke either, is that censorship? Gate keeping media thats possibly harmful for developing brains, when the users are possibly unable to make an informed decision for themselves, isn't inherently bad.
• causalscience 9mo ago
  [dead]
• zinodaur 9mo ago
  We should ban dynamic feeds that aren't based on explicit user action. E.g., Youtube should only be able to show search results based on search term, not search context. The recommendations should only be videos from channels you have subscribed to. The dangers of algorithmic content are so obvious, and the only way to stop companies from doing this stuff is to legislate against it
  • barbazoo 9mo ago
    Ranking might be deterministic but it’s never free from bias.
    • zinodaur 9mo ago
      i'm sure they can still scramble our brains pretty good by exploiting ranking, but if they aren't allowed to customize it per person (e.g., if the same searches have to return the same results for different people), I think it will be a lot less effective
• cowboylowrez 9mo ago
  The internet should be 18+, no internet for kids, there is literally no need for kids to have internet access and its easy too, treat the devices themselves as contraband. This way you need no age checks for social media because internet itself is 18+.
  • deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
• jimmcslim 9mo ago
  Meanwhile in Australia two teens I am responsible for still have TikTok appearing in their screentime usage and for longer than the time limit I have set for them.
• nephihaha 9mo ago
  Australia, France, soon the UK... All within a few months and they have the chutzpah to suggest they came up with this notion independently.
  • mna_ 9mo ago
    Are they suggesting that they came up with this notion independently? I can't speak for other countries but UK politicians who are for this say they're monitoring the Australian ban closely to see if it works, so it's clear they're not claiming they came up with this notion independently.
    • nephihaha 9mo ago
      What happens in every case is this political party or that party in each country takes the blame for it, and their opposition will pretend to be against it, when in fact it appears to be part of a bigger picture. You're right that reactions are being monitored but this has clearly been discussed somewhere and appears fairly co-ordinated, much like the emergence of digital ID and AI chatbots. It seems to be a common pattern now... Smoking restrictions and car ownership seem to approached in a fairly similar manner across different countries.
• blackqueeriroh 9mo ago
  Welp, let’s just keep screwing over anyone who doesn’t fit society’s mold of who is acceptable. Particularly queer kids, neurodivergent kids, disabled kids, etc.
  • wiseowise 9mo ago
    What does this have to do with social networks ban?
• blackqueeriroh 9mo ago
  As someone who has literally been on the internet since BBSes, the idea that those days were better absolutely is contradicted by my own experience, in which I was victimized and exploited several times because of the lack of any real moderation.
• lovlar 9mo ago
  It’s going to be interesting to see how these types of bans play out. One alternative to bans could perhaps be if the EU created an IdP or something similar, with a fee for each authentication request, and then forced all commercial services within Europe to use it. I’m not sure if the fee should go back to the user or be paid as tax to the government, but either way, it would change the incentives around connecting traffic to you and making profit from it by harvesting data or steering recommendation engines. Because I do think there’s nothing wrong with the government doing this, just like in the physical world. And in some cases, we might prefer cheap authentications… like when posting comments, to avoid trolling/manipulation/bullying. Perhaps when doing “writes” on the internet, if there’s a robust way to identify that type of traffic.
• newzino 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  • thinkingtoilet 9mo ago
    Teens can still talk online. Social media is an obvious poison and we shouldn't give kids access to it.
    • pembrook 9mo ago
      OP writes a thoughtful, evidence-based comment. The mob responds with a 1-sentence emotional meme. Classic moral panic 101. It's impossible to fight feelings with logic unfortunately, which is why many western countries are going to fall into this trap and ultimately kill the idea of digital privacy and the open web forever. This particular moral panic is reaching peak trendiness, and the baptists and the bootleggers are out in full force. Both parties are begging for hamfisted over-reaction from government (the bootleggers and politicians for more nefarious reasons of course).
      • toofy 9mo ago
        > The mob responds with a 1-sentence emotional meme. Classic moral panic 101. it was one person. im writing this comment 1 hour after yours, and still only a single person has responded and you’ve called one person, a mob. you’ve declared one person commenting to be a “moral panic.”
        • pibaker 9mo ago
          [flagged]
        • Lerc 9mo ago
          I shall echo the comment of pibaker with one caveat. >The exact same sentiment is widely observed across this entire website. You do see this sentiment across this website, but this doesn't mean that it is a view held by the majority of people here, the people motivated to act can create the illusion that their opinions are more widely held than they are. A few days ago I posted a comment which, in it's entirety reads >Perhaps things would work out better if people didn't say mean things regardless of who it's about. >You can still criticise without being mean. The comment sits at -4 today, and has one antagonistic response. I don't really think most people disagree with this sentiment. The antagonistic response came from the same one person as the comment in this thread.
• jasonvorhe 9mo ago
  Nice try to force digital IDs onto an entire country.
• phyzix5761 9mo ago
  Does this actually solve the problem? Or is the problem something deeper in the human psyche that keeps us addicted to pleasure and avoiding pain regardless of the moral or psychological repercussions? I have a feeling if you remove one vice people will just replace it for another if the underlying cause is not treated.
• jibal 9mo ago
  Ironically, Finland is where it started because of Nokia.
• danny_codes 9mo ago
  Probably best to just ban it for everyone.
• komali2 9mo ago
  I'm working on an article targeted at a Taiwan audience titled "你不是人類，你是IG代理," "You aren't a human, you're an Instagram agent." I want to reframe how everyone with their phones out at the rave isn't there for themselves, they've been directed to attend by IG so as to acquire training data for IG visual models. IG can't just order humans around like we do for LLMs but it's easy enough to program our sloppy brains: just chemically induce FOMO, show the right ads at the right time, easy, off go your little data acquisition agents to physically film the required data.
  • Minor49er 9mo ago
    I hope you post it to HN once it's ready
• president_zippy 9mo ago
  Enforcement of that law is going to be a certifiable joke. My Chinese classmates back in undergrad in the early 2010s used to use a VPN to access their Facebook accounts when they went home for break. Like anyone else around here in their 30s, I didn't have much trouble bypassing "WebWasher" or its ilk in the 00s either. I have a better proposal to get kids off social media, hear me out: In order to make a teenager stop doing something, all you need to do is show them videos of someone their parents' age doing it. Juxtapose a bunch of 40-somethings doing cringy little "TikTok dances" alongside people young enough to be their classmates, and they'll stop. Make another TikTok Cringe Compilation, but this time add more clips from middle-aged TikTok users. My proposal might be insufficiently sophisticated and too actionable for the members of this community who think themselves to be righteous members of an enlightened class and who seek only to complain about current events to self-affirm their superiority. Nonetheless, I insist that anyone who will listen gives the following proposal consideration for the future of our children, whose FICA taxes shall pay for our retirements.
  • energy123 9mo ago
    This misunderstands the objectives of the law. Perfect enforcement is not the goal. Breaking the network effect for teens is the goal.
    • president_zippy 9mo ago
      I didn't misunderstand anything. Your little "network effect", as you have so pretentiously worded it assumes teenagers are only getting on social media for their classmates, not for all the other users on a social media site. You also assume a little government-made dumpster-tier firewall written by peons making $70k like "WebWasher" is going to stop them. It didn't stop me from opening up goatse, meatspin, or 2G1C, so your argument carries no water. All they need is one classmate similar to most of us here on this site. Someone in their high school who will show them how to use a proxy or a VPN not for cred, not for reward, but just because "fuck it, why not?"
• erichocean 9mo ago
  "Citizens should be free to make their own choices for themselves and their children, especially benign ones about how to socialize and who to socialize with." It's interesting how few governments believe this. Your rulers know what's best for you, and it's not freedom.
  • barbazoo 9mo ago
    We regularly restrict choices of vulnerable people in our society. That’s why kids can’t drive, drink, smoke, etc.
    • erichocean 9mo ago
      Parents can give their kids alcohol and cigarettes, that's fully legal. Driving involves danger to other. We restrict adults from doing things that are a danger to others, it has nothing to do with being "vulnerable."
      • barbazoo 9mo ago
        Is it? Wow. Yeah it’s different then but still the motivation is the same. To protect vulnerable people from doing something that’s either harmful to them or others. Same with social media. If parents want to allow their kids, sure, but sad those poor neglected souls. It might not be a perfect implementation but it will prevent a lot of the real world harm that people are seeing.
• b00ty4breakfast 9mo ago
  I cannot overstate how sympathetic I am to this in theory but the only way this is enforceable is through ID laws that endanger privacy online for everyone.
  • tokioyoyo 9mo ago
    On the bright side, if every big SNS required ID verification, and majority would stop using it, then they would die it. Win for a humanity, no?
• Fervicus 9mo ago
  Quite interesting how these countries are doing this one after another - Australia, France, and now Finland.
• Fervicus 9mo ago
  They intend to normalize requiring ID to use certain websites. How fast will we go from "it's fine as long as they do zero knowledge verification" to most websites on the internet requiring some government ID proof?
• mnsc 9mo ago
  What would help so much would be to force the platform to act in a way to not try to retain the user at every cost. Like YouTube. I would love to have parental settings, "no shorts", "no recommendations on video page". Kids could search and click on the creator to see more. Combine that with blocklists and curated allow lists. Boom, YouTube is not a problem. And kids getting bored of clicking around would be a feature.
• Phenomenit 9mo ago
  They should just ban showing ads to people under 18. That will remove the incentive to produce and feed dopamine garbage to kids with unfinished brains.
  • hgomersall 9mo ago
    There's still the incentive to get them hooked. They'd need to ban any platform for under 18s that increases its revenue from greater "engagement".
• xkbarkar 9mo ago
  Eh. This is pointless. There will always be at least one country that has not rules and everyone will vpn there. Danish minister was about to solve that nut airing ideas of banning vpn ( was of course dropped, most politicians have zero technical skills, not even rudimentary ones). Of course this is all to protect the children. I am unscientifically convinced that the average 12 year old is more technically apt that the entire adult governmental body of north europe. If the will is there, they will circumevent it and the only outcome was another pointless level of buerocracy that is impossible to enforce. target the algorithm instead. Its a more difficult area and harder to design that law and it would require understanding technology, the end result would be targeting the platforms, not the users. Possibly with hundreds of millions in fines and less predatory platform behaviour. This low quality , protect the children yelp regulation set will have no long term effect whatsoever. It is far to easy to circumvent.
• greey2026 9mo ago
  [dead]
• gorgoiler 9mo ago
  Periodically, Amazon gets it in the neck for tax avoidance. While the news cycle plays out, all the other FAANGS Homer-Simpson their way backwards into a hedge to let Bezos take the flack for something for which they are just as guilty. It’s the same with screen time. Apple and Google are surely delighted that the heat is on Meta and TikTok. As long as the pariah is being labelled as “social media” then their reputation goes untouched. They could be doing just as much, if not more, to protect adolescent brains from going rotten. I’d like to see them held to account not so much for doing harm — pretty high framerate OLEDs are harder to treat as boogeymen than evil feed algorithms — but for not doing very much to help, either.
• everdrive 9mo ago
  People are often focused on the harm to kids. I think there is a lot of good evidence there. However, I don't know if people recognize social media as the main driver of the rise of populism and political instability and political extremism.
• alkonaut 9mo ago
  I think trying to argue that the viral/algorithmic addictive short-video feeds are "social media" is a bit of a stretch. If you banned any network that does algorithmic feeds, or that don't have good moderation, then I'd be fine with my teenagers using it. I think the problem is the mind-numbing video scrolling more than any other risk with social media. And I don't think there's a danger to it per se, I think it's just too addictive and distracting.
• glass1122 9mo ago
  [dead]
• whywhywhywhy 9mo ago
  So blatantly coordinated and paid off it’s ridiculous.
• shartshooter 9mo ago
  I’d be open to a version of social media that is not banned and the version looks like this: - a straight linear feed with three tabs, 1) people close to me(default), 2) brands and influencers I choose follow and 3) everything else the algorithm wants me to see(this could be curated and not a linear feed) My ex and I have an agreement in our separation agreement that our children can’t have social media until they’re 16. This is the version of it I’d want for them, if they choose(or feel pressured) to use it
• esarbe 9mo ago
  It's about time. Social Media providers have spent the last 20 years to make everything more toxic, more harmful. They are aware that their products are damaging, but instead of trying to reduce the harm and to come up with some self-regulation ("Oh noes! Then we make less profit from harming teenagers! Impossible! Think for the Shareholders!") they spent all their money lobbying against any form of mitigation. Just shut them all down.
• rstuart4133 9mo ago
  Maybe they are just discussing it but even that leads to buy in, and right now buy in looks a little premature. In Australia this ban is viewed as an experiment - even by the politicians that championed it. My guess is it will take at least a year to figure out it if it is workable. Surely it would be prudent for Finland too let us wear the first mover pain before doing something themselves. Speaking personally, I'd be much happier with it if they rolled out some zero knowledge proof of age infrastructure so the platforms could verify ages without all the PPI age identification currently requires flying around. It would remove a major criticism - government monitoring of consenting adults. Even if that aspect doesn't concern you in Australia had numerous leaks of identify documents in the past few years. Both my wife and I have had to replace our drivers licences due to leaks.
• wartywhoa23 9mo ago
  What makes those of you who advocate for the state control over what children can do on the Internet (which used to be parents' business, prerogative and liability - all implied to be a total failure of parenthood now) so sure that you, grown ass adults, won't be the next target of the police state nanny?
• jackinthehat 9mo ago
  Good shout tbh. Add to that Reddit. Addictive for many. Whatever gets the dopamine hitting.
• mytailorisrich 9mo ago
  "FISTA has taken advantage of the law change, brought in last August, which allows schools to restrict or completely ban the use of mobile phones during school hours." I find it interesting that a law change was needed to allow schools to do this.
  • amelius 9mo ago
    Yeah if in the 80s they had to change a law to prevent children from taking their TV to school, everybody would be scratching their heads.
  • sham1 9mo ago
    Students do have rights - and indeed also property rights - here. Of course, when in class the students could be asked to bring their phones to the front and be given them back afterwards, but without the law, the use of phones couldn't be restricted during breaks etc. Thus the new law which can make the restrictions even more severe during school hours.
    • mytailorisrich 9mo ago
      Of course people have rights... the point is that schools seem not allowed to set their own rules. The school my children went to in the UK has had a no phone policy for many years: phones must be off and kept in the pupils' bags. No need for a law change... I think this is about approach to regulation and flexibility. In general being too restrictive about what is allowed makes things inflexible and poor at adapting.
    • SoftTalker 9mo ago
      Students don't have many rights when it comes to what you can bring to or do at school. We were prohibited from wearing certain styles of clothes, hats, couldn't even chew gum in class. Pretty much anything that could be called disruptive, damaging, or dangerous was banned. I'm not sure how phones ever were considered acceptable in the first place. Even in the pre-smartphone days, SMS was a huge distraction.
      • 9mo ago