Comment on France seeks to ban social media for children under 15
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 1 week agoIm not sure what youre arguing here? its possible to control access well as a parent, but so much easier if the state gorce everyone on the internet to provide id in order to prevent teenagers talking to eavh other?
You yourself csn tsrget what you think is harmful but a law will hit everything and everyone, and like i implied in the driveby abiut roblox still might not actually block something you find unacceptable.
This is just the wrong approach to achieve the goal.
Youre on lemmy! This is like the one place people will decry facebook, x, reddit, insta etc. But what your arguing for will end up with them as the only services that can navigate existing legally, and children will still work around blocks because they simply dont care about consequences for lying about their age.
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 1 week ago
Our democracy regulates a lot of things that it (we) believe to be harmful to children: Cigarettes, gambling (also online), pornography, violence in media, alcohol etc etc.
Why is social media any different?
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 1 week ago
Because the line between “social media” and “talking to other people” is so blurry as to not exist.
Also, and more importantly, the power of these companies is so great in effect youll only enforce that facebook etc. are the only ways of talking to each other that van exist legally and entrench the very problem you want to solve.
For example, is whats app social media?
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 1 week ago
Defining what is and what isn’t something is exactly what law has to do every single time it gets defined. I’m sure we can work this one out too.
The size of the tech giants cannot be the reason to not attempt regulation. If anything, it’s exactly the reason to regulate.
FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 1 week ago
No im not arguing its hard to define, im arguing that youll have to ban children from whats app. Private minecraft servers (even ones owned and run by the kids) too. If you dont do this you leave a space for the tech giants to bring the targeted ads and then youll have to ban kids from each space as they move in.
Any communication channel will fall to this if you take the approach of banning children from them one by one instead of stopping this behaviour by the tech giants entirely by legislating against targeted advertising directly. These services are just as toxic to adults.
fantasyocean@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Who said that there can’t be regulations? The argument that we’re making here is that a ban that requires users to give out more information to companies that have a horrible track record in protecting user information is a bad form of regulation. I for one would be extremely happy if there were tighter and more severe penalties for advertising to children. Removing the profit incentive for any of these companies to have children on the platform at all.
Legally requiring human review for things like YouTube Kids (which nobody should be using anyway, especially when the PBS kids exists) and having a harsh penalty if an Elsa gate scenario happens again, like it ever stopped but still.
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 1 week ago
There’s nothing in the EU age verification structure that requires you to hand more information to the places where you need to verify your age. In fact the system expressly prevents it.
fantasyocean@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Right, and while I understand what you’re saying. The article is talking about the French legislature trying to introduce a social media ban, not a blanket ban by EU. That would be a different topic. Now I may just be a simple American, but it is my understanding that Nations within the union still have a sovereign right to create their own laws and set their own agendas. Now if you’re saying that the French president and French Parliament do not have the legal authority to go through with an Australian style age verification ban, then that’s good news.
Regardless, as stated in the article, the French president is calling on Parliament to start debating a ban, and in this discussion, I think most people are just talking about what those bands look like in the rest of the world.