4 ms·
We need to stop this helicopter civilization bullshit. We're building 1984 to protect from god knows what imaginary harms. Stop putting plastic wrap around pe
by echelon 4mo ago
We need to stop this helicopter civilization bullshit.
We're building 1984 to protect from god knows what imaginary harms.
Stop putting plastic wrap around people's freedoms, liberty, and right to privacy.
- countcol 4mo ago[flagged]
- echelon 4mo agoI'd seen all the shock websites by age 12. Kids love to prank each other. None of this is a real harm. The real harms are the government being able to put a muzzle on speech, track who says what, and begin to cordon off areas of thought and expression. You might think it's a win that this is happening, but you won't be the one in charge and you won't have a say how it's used against you.
- doginasuit 4mo agoI don't think it is a win, I'm not sure how you got that from my comment. There should be enough room for nuance to acknowledge that the internet is uniquely unhealthy for young people. I don't find 'I saw all the bad stuff and look how great I turned out' very compelling. If empirical research showed that some kind of intervention would be helpful, I'd be in favor of it even if it comes at a cost. But I don't think age-gating will prove effective as an intervention. If anyone needs to be reined in, it is tech companies that exploit attention and gather data, and the age-gating controversy is a costly distraction.
- denkmoon 4mo agoShock sites are materially different to the harm kids do to one another on social media.
- echelon 4mo ago> Shock sites are materially different to the harm kids do to one another This would be the "fixed" version of your comment. The social media bit is irrelevant. Kids have always been assholes to other kids. I took the school bus a few times, and the older neighborhood kids tried to chase me down, beat me, and piss on me. That was before the internet. You can't make up for other parents' bad parenting by trying to invent a system to bubble wrap all the kids. You teach your own kids to be strong in the face of adversity, to grow a thick skin, and to stand up for themselves.
- fwipsy 4mo agoJust because you survived it doesn't mean that it's "not real harm." I am sympathetic to privacy concerns, but the downsides also need to be taken seriously and mitigated where it's possible to do so without critically compromising privacy.
- echelon 4mo agoWhen privacy disappears, liberty soon follows. You are cheerleading the erosion of our freedom for a harm that you can't even quantify. Tax and fine Meta for selling to kids and the social media targeting them will disappear. That is the correct solution, and it is so ridiculously easy to implement. Instead we have insiders and lobbyists crawling out of the woodwork to suggest we place tracking of everyone's identities onto every internet ingress. That makes these companies even wealthier, but -- much worse -- it gives the government and people in power a new noose to hang us. One that they'll never give up once they obtain it. We'll have to sign in with social credits by the time I retire, and they'll revoke your access for wrongthink and send minders to your location to reeducate you. Think that's not real? It's happening right now in other countries. It is real, and it's coming if you help them pass the laws. STOP TRYING TO FORCE ID VERIFICATION OF ONLINE ACTIVITY. If you do this, you're the enemy of freedom.
- denkmoon 4mo agoYeah I grew up in the kinda bad part of town taking the bus every day. I got bullied. I never had someone generate pornographic images of me though. The internet is just society now. it's not something different. You get privacy in your home, but you don't get to go out into public and say things without it being attributed to your identity. The things you say publicly are intrinsically linked with your public identity. Why should online be any different?
- smilekzs 4mo agoThe legal guardian is responsible for gatekeeping what their minor sees or does not see.
- Gigachad 4mo agoThe harms of smartphones and social media are about as far from imaginary as it could get. The data is screaming at us. We will look back at handing kids phones with instagram like giving kids cigarettes and think wtf were we doing.
- AngryData 4mo agoAnd I find that harm to be far less than the harm caused by identifying everybody all the time and censoring topics to people based on government provided tokens.
- kelseyfrog 4mo agoTherapy and meditation is an effective remedy for this kind of suffering.
- brigandish 4mo agoA dystopian state?
- echelon 4mo agoAre you sure it's just kids? In dealing with the ills of social media, you do what you do with every other negative externality - you tax it. At least the parts of it you don't like. Designing privacy, freedom, and liberty destroying mechanisms is not the way. Big social wants these regulations to pass so that they can get better identity tracking for ads targeting. To them it doesn't matter if the tech ushers in 1984. It makes them more money.
- Gigachad 4mo agoIt's definitely not just kids. Social media is a lot like meth, we should at a bare minimum stop giving it to kids as soon as possible. And then come to realise it's bad for everyone and should be wound back.
- 4mo ago
- Balinares 4mo agoI have a hunch that the Epstein class is getting increasingly upset about the kids encountering ideas about what ought to be done about the Epstein class, and mostly are keen to see the next generation molded back into good little subservient laborers. It really isn't about the well-being of the kids.
- PeterStuer 4mo ago"We" are building 1984 to make sure "We" stay in power of our EU Animal Farm.
- krige 4mo agoEU? It's mostly happening elsewhere though. See: Australia. See: California. See: KIDS act. See: KOSA. Sounds like denial or tunnel vision.
- PeterStuer 4mo agoHave you read the DSA?