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France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s
- zug_zug 2mo agoSeems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there. Also all of these companies know from advertising data, and location data, that you are at school, who you are, etc. They would also know that all of your friends are also teenagers. If the law is serious there are many many ways to enforce this without violating privacy.
- wizzwizz4 2mo agoWithout further violating privacy. I would say that the data these companies are already collecting on people (including children, who many believe should be afforded extra protections from such companies) is a major, systematic privacy violation.
- philipwhiuk 2mo ago> Seems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there. How do you prevent kids uploading photos of themselves?
- Cider9986 2mo agoYouTube kids is able to do it. They detect kids in regular YouTube and whether they are the account owner and move them to YouTube kids.
- philipwhiuk 1mo agoI've infrequently seen people incorrectly detected as kids. It's not foolproof.
- skybrian 2mo agoThis could have been an http header. It's hard to identify people, but blocking child-locked devices should be easy, since the devices can be built to cooperate. Then it's up to parents to give their kids child-locked devices and for stores to not sell unlocked devices to kids.
- throwaway27448 2mo agoChild-locked devices can already whitelist/blacklist sites and apps. The issue is not capability. And before anyone blames the parents, parents will always be shitty. They are an impediment to children's health society must work around. I wish we would just pull the plug on ad-based social media altogether. The incentives add up to destroying society.
- forgetfreeman 2mo ago"parents will always be shitty" Maybe cut nontechnicals a little slack? Their adversaries have invested literally billions of dollars in R&D.
- throwaway27448 2mo agoThis isn't a question of technicality....
- adolph 2mo agoOk, what is your stack? Which MDM did you put on your tween's devices? What about the 15 year old who really wants Graphene OS? Do they VPN back to your home network to ensure your DNS and IP block based filtering applies to their mobile usage? Are you caching the teachers' recommended YouTube videos to Plex from the YTDL container or just monitoring their watch list stats of brain rot shorts?
- iamnothere 2mo agoHe’s saying that parents will always allow their kids to see, think, learn, and say things that he believes should be off limits, with government stepping in to decide that.
- graemep 2mo agoThe title is unfortunately edited. The courts have blocked it. The government wants it.
- awithrow 2mo agoThe courts are part of the government no?
- psalaun 2mo agoNo, separation of powers
- awithrow 1mo agoSeparation of powers between the different branches of government.
- tmp10423288442 2mo agoIn Western countries, the judiciary and the executive (which contains the day-to-day operations of the government) generally operate independently and can rule against each other. I'm most familiar with the US, and I think its constitution was the first to encode judicial independence - and constitutional review by the Supreme Court was established early on in US history. But all Western countries these days have had judges rule against executive policy and the executive obey it. The details of how to override a ruling against the executive does differ between countries, and also on whether its considered just an interpretation of law or a constitutional question. Both the US and France have a written constitution that's binding on other branches, while the UK does not.
- ChocolateGod 2mo ago> The details of how to override a ruling against the executive does differ between countries, and also on whether its considered just an interpretation of law or a constitutional question. Both the US and France have a written constitution that's binding on other branches, while the UK does not. Yeh. In the UK, the supreme court can not strike down primary legislation. It can rule executive actions are not following the primary legislation or unwritten constitutional rules, but if parliament passes a law that says oranges are now green, the supreme court is in no position to challenge it.
- dgellow 2mo agoOh that’s interesting. Could that potentially be used as a blocker for Chat Control 2.0 at the European level?
- hk1337 2mo agoWhat I find interesting is that Texas did it with just pornography sites, everyone complains. Then California, which included those that complained by Texas' law, says they're going to do it at the OS level, some people were okay with it but some still opposed it and possibly some others opposed it. Yet, they're still pushing forward with both?
- nomel 2mo agoJust like all the other policies that somehow manage to move at the speed of light across the globe. These politicians are seem to all be influenced by the same thing, with that usually being in opposition to the people that voted for them.
- rabfu 2mo agoFrankly, the proper solution is to ban social media regardless of age. We are already doing it with heroin and other similar substances and clearly social media are pretty bad for everyone and anyone.
- sajithdilshan 2mo agoFunny that you’re saying that in a social media
- rabfu 2mo agoIt's all about politics.
- sajithdilshan 2mo ago[flagged]
- tgv 2mo agoI haven't seen children doomscrolling HN lately, have you? But, whatever it takes. Social media in combination with mobile phones is destroying the latest generations. Add AI in the mix, and we're on the road to Idiocracy.
- Cider9986 2mo agoWhat media? I can't upload photos or videos here.
- josefritzishere 2mo agoThis is the correct response. Privacy is a human right.
- purplerabbit 2mo agoI always find it weird when people declare things “are” rights, as rights are things societies create. “Should be a right” seems like a more appropriate framing
- Kim_Bruning 2mo ago"we hold these thruths to be self evident" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
- worik 2mo agoSlave owning misogynistic violent elitists Yea, nah
- Kim_Bruning 2mo agoSociety advances step by step (or even 2 steps forward, 1 step back). How much are we betting that in 250 years, we'll be considered immoral too?
- worik 1mo agoProbably.
- kergonath 2mo agoThere are. In the constitution, as the court found. There are also reasonable arguments that they are an unavoidable consequence of Human Rights, as described in the declaration of 1789, which is also in the constitution. The right to privacy is also explicitly in the Code Civil since 1970, in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (both are binding to EU member states).
- azhdanova 2mo agoThe court reasoned sensibly: it's wrong to violate the rights of all citizens just to weed out a small group of violators. This is contrary to data protection regulations. The controversial Chat Control law follows the same logic: to find criminals, they propose monitoring everyone. The problem is that any age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system. And such tools rarely remain "just for kids"—they quickly become used for other purposes. The only secure way is to verify not the person's identity, but the device's status (for example, that it's a children's device). This is called age assurance: we confirm age without knowing who exactly is in front of us.
- pmontra 2mo agoOr realize that there is no way to know who is using a device without looking at the device holders for all the time they use the device. It's like ordering alcoholics or cigarettes: the seller looks at you see the white hairs (OK) or see a 16yo face (documents please.) A device registered to an adult can be used by a child. I know, it's a failure of parental control, but how many teenagers managed to get adult magazines in the last 100 years? They will get adult devices too. So there is no way to create a 100% effective system. Kids and teenagers will find workarounds, everybody else will live a worse life.
- UpsideDownRide 2mo agoThis logic is sus. Just because we cannot have a oerfect system doesn't mean we shouldn't have it at all. Like alcohol age limitations, they can be worked around and wont ever be 100 percent perfect but I see regularly teens bouncing off the register at my local store. So the metric should be case by case for each proposed solution. Most of things proposed are no good, but that doesn't mean there is not a sensible solution out there to limit net for teens.
- forgetfreeman 2mo ago1990s: ~%36 of all teens smoked 2020s: >%2 of all teens smoke Kinda suggests that putting limitations in place actually produces results. Crazy innit?
- metalman 2mo agoI love how the french can go from bieng, from bieng, French, to making complete rational sensical descions that they will then stick to but refuse to discuss. Bravo vive la france!
- amazingamazing 2mo agoIt is unclear to me how you can regulate any digital service with respect to any demographic identity without regression to full identity check. Parental controls are not a solution, either. People are free to use any terminal they wish. If you wanted to change that then it again regresses to the same issue.
- owisd 2mo agoA few options: (a) load a digital copy of an existing ID into your OS's wallet app then the wallet app can simply attest to any service that the device is owned by someone over 18 (b) sell single-use tokens in grocery stores that require an ID to purchase like alcohol. token can be used to verify you're 18+ for one site. (c) require that any network-enabled device can only be bought by showing ID to prove 18+ and then when set up can be configured at the OS-level as child-owned so a parent can buy a device and do the initial setup so it's locked in child mode.
- braiamp 1mo agoBy making the thing that is unsafe to use safe to use?
- sixthDot 2mo agoAs french citizen what I can say is: Parliamentary time wasted. During the initial work the deputees that have initiated the project could have figured out that the constitutional court would, in fine, block the text.
- mytailorisrich 2mo agoSometimes they do know but do it anyway (or even for that very reason) because it serves their political interests and then the great bill they were supporting is blocked by someone else, which can be blamed as needed. I think Trump played that game a number of times, for instance.
- kergonath 2mo agoSometimes these things are a prelude to constitutional changes, or at least could be in the minds of the proponents.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- seethishat 2mo agoThe Internet was built for adults. Then, we gave kids tablets and phones. Now, decades later, we have a problem. Kids see things meant for adults. Maybe we need an adult only portion of the Internet and verify identity only on that (like bars do to keep out kids). New TLD maybe? .adult
- ElementW 2mo ago.xxx has been a thing since 2011, .adult and .porn since 2014, and .sex since 2015.
- EmbarrassedHelp 1mo agoMandatory verification is an unacceptable attack on privacy. A device level whitelist of kid safe areas that is disabled by default and enabled by parents is a better idea.
- paulsutter 2mo agoThe right implementation is to have parents mark certain devices as "under 18", and then have those devices perform accordingly. This give parents useful control, and removes the state overreach.
- prmoustache 2mo agoThis is very binary. A 11y old and a 17y old are very different.
- timbit42 1mo agoThe parents can mark accordingly.
- nephihaha 2mo agoLike all those other countries. I'm sure they came up with this idea all by themselves.
- braiamp 2mo ago[dead]
- jdw64 2mo ago[dead]
- shevy-java 2mo agoGood - the lobbyists are losing the war. Now it is time to disband Facebook - companies leveraging lobbyists to try to destroy democracies, must be disbanded.
- cindyllm 2mo ago[dead]
- worik 2mo agoThe moral panic is about harm to children, when the harm to everybody is apparent These companies are vulnerable to regulation because they must sell advertising in every market they operate in. We could make them open their algorithms.
- thrance 1mo agoNit: the constitutional council isn't a court. Its members aren't judges, and include past presidents.