4 ms·

The world is much more globalized now. Countries are watching each other, political movements can be global. That wasn't the case when drinking laws were enacte

by xg15 6mo ago

The world is much more globalized now. Countries are watching each other, political movements can be global. That wasn't the case when drinking laws were enacted. Also, the object - social networks - is global. Yes, all kinds of societies have had alcohol, but alcoholic beverages don't suddenly become 20% more potent or harmful everywhere at once. With centralized platforms, that can happen.

SoftTalker 6mo ago
Yes I think this is it. News headlines and Tweets and other social media posts mean that trends are much more global than they used to be. "Controlling kids' access to social media" is just trending right now, and that means it's getting attention all over the globe at the same time.
npunt 6mo ago
Totally. Today’s social media is not the same as last years etc. Read Meta’s quarterly reports and they brag about Reels increasing time spent on site by 30% in a year. That’s not even considering the other ill effects like giving kids a firehose of all the worlds problems when they’re not yet equipped to handle that information, which causes them to internalize those things, making them feel like things are fucked, that they’re responsible, etc. It’s psychologically devastating. And so many other things! Let kids be kids.
pessimizer 6mo ago
> The world is much more globalized now. Countries are watching each other, political movements can be global. This is simply not true. The US puts pressure on countries to harmonize their regulations and laws to ours, unless it is to the US's advantage that other countries have different laws than ours. The world didn't suddenly get draconian drug laws through "political movements," it got them through diplomatic and funding pressures. The US often used those laws as excuses for military and intelligence interventions, or to build political organizations in those countries in the guise of antidrug organizations. All countries do things like this, but the US is rich and dangerous enough to do it hardest. The US has decided that it wants everybody tracked at all times, especially online, and when it explains the advantages of this to the elites of other countries, they also like the idea. Smaller European countries have also made it a cottage industry to fanatically push US agendas in places like NATO and the EU, because it gives their little homelands outsized influence (and bags of cash) to operate on behalf of the bully. For some reason, everybody in Europe has to care what e.g. Estonia thinks about something, although Estonia is just saying what the US wants Europe to be doing, and the US is financing Estonian candidates for European positions (and maybe even having Trump lobby against them to give them even more credibility.) This attack on any sort of privacy online is not coming from the churches. There is no lobby group that it pushing it that doesn't get the majority of its funds from any number of governments, which is just government lobbying itself. The way democracy is supposed to work is that the people support something, and they then vote for candidates that will give it to them - but there is no visible constituency lobbying for this other than casual liberal cynics who aren't organized in any way. As a comparison, in 2015 there was like 65-70% popular support for single-payer health care in the US. There were dozens of organized groups supporting it. It even crossed 50% among Republicans for at least a year. Not a hint of anything happened. edit: Also Europe, like Japan, is one of those places that had a really emotionally tough time outlawing pedophilia and child pornography. They certainly don't care this much about the sexual aspect of child safety, at least. What Europe has never been behind on is the censorship of political speech. That is what can excite people.
- 8note 6mo ago
  the US has no laws about social media for u16. australia does, and countries are following suit. the west is led by the people that lead now countries also have single payer or other socialized healthcare, and have not followed the US into its junky private profits on extraordinary public money setup this is not at all convincing. america used to have soft power influence, but its being left behind
Dig1t 6mo ago
>political movements can be global. You are saying exactly what OP is saying but just rephrasing it another way. The more a movement crosses borders, the less likely it is to be based on the needs of any particular country and the more likely it is to be based on the needs of the transnational billionaire class. Drinking age is not the only example, driving age is another good example and also the old TV rating system. What was considered taboo in America was often at the same time considered to be fine in places like Europe, or vice versa. But we never had a coordinated international push for censorship when it came to TV/movies like we are seeing with social media. I can remember how much people used to deride mass surveillance and censorship in places like Russia and China and now here we are very quickly catching up to them in every way.
- Barrin92 6mo ago
  >the less likely it is to be based on the needs of any particular country there has been no such thing in decades. The idea that there are 'organic needs of countries' compared to 'artificial needs of global consumers' in the internet age where digital infrastructure is long post-national is conspiratorial. We're here on HN right now. I'm German, you might statistically I guess be American, but maybe Indian, maybe Chinese, we likely both consume media made in South Korea or Japan so the fact that legislation emerges kind of in tandem isn't "coordinated censorship", it's reflecting a reality of how information flows. Politics, economics, and media consumption is now horizontally intertwined, we don't live in vertical silo countries any more. If you made a digital worldmap and connected each person you'd get something that doesn't look at all like the one on your physical globe and if you don't realize that the distances there are a bit different you're going to think spooky coincidences are happening.
  - Dig1t 6mo ago
    Are there organic movements in Germany, UK, USA, Norway etc of common citizens agitating for social media controls for kids? Are they actually composed of citizens? Are they funded by grassroots organizations? I can tell you that in the USA there are basically no real grassroots efforts to censor social media, at least none with a real footprint that most people have ever heard of. Despite that, there are a lot of politicians making laws to clamp down on social media use. I think most people can intuitively see that the number of people who talk about this as an issue does not at all match the amount of attention that politicians are giving it. All at the same time, in most western countries simultaneously. It just does not pass the smell test. >you're going to think spooky coincidences are happening. Nothing spooky about it, they are not coincidences, we can see that ideas are spreading between powerful politicians and the billionaire oligarchs across borders without any real input of the governed. Laws are being made, we are being given the "think of the children" line, and they are hoping that we will accept it. Just because we can communicate across borders doesn't mean that countries should stop considering the needs of their citizens as their primary objective. The more we allow these efforts to cross borders without any objection or examination, the weaker the power of citizens becomes and the less effective democracy becomes.
redeeman 6mo ago
are you for real suggesting that this is just countries that just so happen to look at eachother than then all go "wow, gotta get that age verification going" ? its blindly obvious that this is an agenda that SOMEONE is pushing EVERYWHERE, one can then speculate who that might be, or for what purpose
- intended 6mo ago
  I am tech policy adjacent, and HN is WILDLY off base when it comes to how the average voter is thinking about tech currently. Yes, all major nations have been looking at this since Australia started with it. There’s been a build up of forces and issues for decades.
  - redeeman 6mo ago
    other countries are also looking at many other things other countries are doing, and somehow doesnt arrive at some kind of semi-census in a very short time of eachother.
    - intended 6mo ago
      I’ve read court opinions from the Indian Supreme Court that reference decisions in other nations. The OSA and DSA came out relatively close to each other. The rollout and follow up has been organic, with many nations are still at the wait and see stage. This consensus has been solidifying for years. Your being unaware of it is perhaps because the topic was uninteresting to you?
  - account42 6mo ago
    The average voter thinks what the media tells them to think. This is not a counterargument to the comment you are replying to.
- ChocolateGod 6mo ago
  It's pushed by child safety charities. It might be hard to imagine due to the echo chamber, but some people do actually support this.
Gud 6mo ago
It is clearly a campaign by the surveillance state profiteers. Palantir and similar corporations are on tour and hand in hand with our bought off representatives are they killing the open internet. Don’t get me wrong, I dislike Facebook and such as much as the rest of the HN crowd, but this not the answer.

by xg15 6mo ago

SoftTalker 6mo ago

Yes I think this is it. News headlines and Tweets and other social media posts mean that trends are much more global than they used to be. "Controlling kids' access to social media" is just trending right now, and that means it's getting attention all over the globe at the same time.

npunt 6mo ago

Totally. Today’s social media is not the same as last years etc. Read Meta’s quarterly reports and they brag about Reels increasing time spent on site by 30% in a year. That’s not even considering the other ill effects like giving kids a firehose of all the worlds problems when they’re not yet equipped to handle that information, which causes them to internalize those things, making them feel like things are fucked, that they’re responsible, etc. It’s psychologically devastating. And so many other things! Let kids be kids.

pessimizer 6mo ago

> The world is much more globalized now. Countries are watching each other, political movements can be global. This is simply not true. The US puts pressure on countries to harmonize their regulations and laws to ours, unless it is to the US's advantage that other countries have different laws than ours. The world didn't suddenly get draconian drug laws through "political movements," it got them through diplomatic and funding pressures. The US often used those laws as excuses for military and intelligence interventions, or to build political organizations in those countries in the guise of antidrug organizations. All countries do things like this, but the US is rich and dangerous enough to do it hardest. The US has decided that it wants everybody tracked at all times, especially online, and when it explains the advantages of this to the elites of other countries, they also like the idea. Smaller European countries have also made it a cottage industry to fanatically push US agendas in places like NATO and the EU, because it gives their little homelands outsized influence (and bags of cash) to operate on behalf of the bully. For some reason, everybody in Europe has to care what e.g. Estonia thinks about something, although Estonia is just saying what the US wants Europe to be doing, and the US is financing Estonian candidates for European positions (and maybe even having Trump lobby against them to give them even more credibility.) This attack on any sort of privacy online is not coming from the churches. There is no lobby group that it pushing it that doesn't get the majority of its funds from any number of governments, which is just government lobbying itself. The way democracy is supposed to work is that the people support something, and they then vote for candidates that will give it to them - but there is no visible constituency lobbying for this other than casual liberal cynics who aren't organized in any way. As a comparison, in 2015 there was like 65-70% popular support for single-payer health care in the US. There were dozens of organized groups supporting it. It even crossed 50% among Republicans for at least a year. Not a hint of anything happened. edit: Also Europe, like Japan, is one of those places that had a really emotionally tough time outlawing pedophilia and child pornography. They certainly don't care this much about the sexual aspect of child safety, at least. What Europe has never been behind on is the censorship of political speech. That is what can excite people.

8note 6mo ago
the US has no laws about social media for u16. australia does, and countries are following suit. the west is led by the people that lead now countries also have single payer or other socialized healthcare, and have not followed the US into its junky private profits on extraordinary public money setup this is not at all convincing. america used to have soft power influence, but its being left behind

Dig1t 6mo ago

>political movements can be global. You are saying exactly what OP is saying but just rephrasing it another way. The more a movement crosses borders, the less likely it is to be based on the needs of any particular country and the more likely it is to be based on the needs of the transnational billionaire class. Drinking age is not the only example, driving age is another good example and also the old TV rating system. What was considered taboo in America was often at the same time considered to be fine in places like Europe, or vice versa. But we never had a coordinated international push for censorship when it came to TV/movies like we are seeing with social media. I can remember how much people used to deride mass surveillance and censorship in places like Russia and China and now here we are very quickly catching up to them in every way.

Barrin92 6mo ago
>the less likely it is to be based on the needs of any particular country there has been no such thing in decades. The idea that there are 'organic needs of countries' compared to 'artificial needs of global consumers' in the internet age where digital infrastructure is long post-national is conspiratorial. We're here on HN right now. I'm German, you might statistically I guess be American, but maybe Indian, maybe Chinese, we likely both consume media made in South Korea or Japan so the fact that legislation emerges kind of in tandem isn't "coordinated censorship", it's reflecting a reality of how information flows. Politics, economics, and media consumption is now horizontally intertwined, we don't live in vertical silo countries any more. If you made a digital worldmap and connected each person you'd get something that doesn't look at all like the one on your physical globe and if you don't realize that the distances there are a bit different you're going to think spooky coincidences are happening.
- Dig1t 6mo ago
  Are there organic movements in Germany, UK, USA, Norway etc of common citizens agitating for social media controls for kids? Are they actually composed of citizens? Are they funded by grassroots organizations? I can tell you that in the USA there are basically no real grassroots efforts to censor social media, at least none with a real footprint that most people have ever heard of. Despite that, there are a lot of politicians making laws to clamp down on social media use. I think most people can intuitively see that the number of people who talk about this as an issue does not at all match the amount of attention that politicians are giving it. All at the same time, in most western countries simultaneously. It just does not pass the smell test. >you're going to think spooky coincidences are happening. Nothing spooky about it, they are not coincidences, we can see that ideas are spreading between powerful politicians and the billionaire oligarchs across borders without any real input of the governed. Laws are being made, we are being given the "think of the children" line, and they are hoping that we will accept it. Just because we can communicate across borders doesn't mean that countries should stop considering the needs of their citizens as their primary objective. The more we allow these efforts to cross borders without any objection or examination, the weaker the power of citizens becomes and the less effective democracy becomes.

redeeman 6mo ago

are you for real suggesting that this is just countries that just so happen to look at eachother than then all go "wow, gotta get that age verification going" ? its blindly obvious that this is an agenda that SOMEONE is pushing EVERYWHERE, one can then speculate who that might be, or for what purpose

intended 6mo ago
I am tech policy adjacent, and HN is WILDLY off base when it comes to how the average voter is thinking about tech currently. Yes, all major nations have been looking at this since Australia started with it. There’s been a build up of forces and issues for decades.
- redeeman 6mo ago
  other countries are also looking at many other things other countries are doing, and somehow doesnt arrive at some kind of semi-census in a very short time of eachother.
  - intended 6mo ago
    I’ve read court opinions from the Indian Supreme Court that reference decisions in other nations. The OSA and DSA came out relatively close to each other. The rollout and follow up has been organic, with many nations are still at the wait and see stage. This consensus has been solidifying for years. Your being unaware of it is perhaps because the topic was uninteresting to you?
- account42 6mo ago
  The average voter thinks what the media tells them to think. This is not a counterargument to the comment you are replying to.
ChocolateGod 6mo ago
It's pushed by child safety charities. It might be hard to imagine due to the echo chamber, but some people do actually support this.

Gud 6mo ago

It is clearly a campaign by the surveillance state profiteers. Palantir and similar corporations are on tour and hand in hand with our bought off representatives are they killing the open internet. Don’t get me wrong, I dislike Facebook and such as much as the rest of the HN crowd, but this not the answer.