Submitted 9 hours ago by remington@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
If headlines were honest: France seeks to prohibit early teenagers from social interaction with peers unless they are good at doing it offline.
If I hadn’t had the Internet in the years before my 15th birthday, this would in my retrospective opinion have amounted to near torture.
Can we finally get politicians who grew up with the Internet into power? How many more years must people the age of Macron be allowed to make these kinds of decisions? 😟😡
I would have died. This is enforced social isolation. We have to help trend circumvent these laws
Whenever this comes up, it feels like a play to harvest people’s data and / or to slip additional laws into place under the guise of “protect the children”.
On one hand I don’t think it’s terrible to try to guide kids more. I think parents should be doing more parenting tbh.
On the other I think it runs the risk of preventing kids from accessing information online, finding safe spaces online, and isolating kids more than they already can be. It also limits things like teaching kids about technology and how to use it safely.
Wouldn’t this just wind up being a de facto ban on the platform we’re using right now? How could Lemmy implement an age verification system? If social media platforms that dont comply with age verification are banned, then by default there goes the fediverse for the most past lol.
How could Lemmy implement an age verification system?
I don’t think that it would matter much. Assuming that the legislation applies to the Threadiverse and doesn’t have some sort of exception, it’d still be effectively unenforceable, because most instances don’t operate in France’s legal jurisdiction.
This is the outcome when you continue voting the same old blokes into power
Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de 8 hours ago
*France seeks to implement mass surveillance online by requesting age verification, but politicians wrap it in “we do it to protect the children” which is bullshit.
Protect your rights to privacy, stand up against such erosion of your rights.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 5 hours ago
“Protect children” bills never protect children
sunbeam60@feddit.uk 5 hours ago
Both could be true at the same time.
I’ve got four kids. I’d love nothing more than ban social media for them until 16. It really is poison for developing minds.
fantasyocean@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 minutes ago
There are these crazy things called “parental controls”. You’ve probably never heard of them, but they’re on nearly every single personal computing device. OR, and hear me out. You could just buy a dumb phone for your kids until they’re sixteen, and if they want to take pictures, buy them an inexpensive digital camera. It would be cheaper overall than buying them an iPhone. But no, that’s probably too difficult for you, so everyone else has to give even more of their personal information if they want to use Facebook Marketplace or whatever.
t3rmit3@beehaw.org 2 hours ago
You can.
You just don’t want to either a) put in the legwork to do so, or b) be the ‘bad guy’ to your kids for doing it, so instead you just want the government to do it for you.
What’s stopping you from setting up pihole and blocking social media sites at home, or turning on parental controls on their phones and blocking the sites and apps?
krooklochurm@lemmy.ca 3 hours ago
I don’t give a flying fuck about your kids or your inability to parent your fucking children.
Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de 5 hours ago
I agree that big tech’s social media is like digital heroin, not only bad for kids.
But it should be up to the parent to protect their kids, you also don’t let them walk the park alone, why should you let them browse the web un-supervised.
There are parental tools to restrict your child’s internet access, those should be applied by the parent.
Not every citizen should be under surveillance by the government under the rouse that they’ll protect your kids, which they won’t.
The real goal here is to detect people who go against the government and block them. While kids & criminals slip through the cracks by finding sketchy un-surveilled sites and messaging channels.
And if you really think your government gives a damn about your kids safety, then I urge you to look in the epstein ph/f-iles
LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
Why would you not just want social media to be better regulated by the law? You can’t seriously believe that your children are going to have no access to social media, even with an age ban, unless you intend to lock them in a room and home school them till they’re 18.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 5 hours ago
That’s propaganda
Greg@lemmy.ca 6 hours ago
Governments already have access to your data and can easily link you to your social media accounts
SineSwiper@discuss.tchncs.de 6 hours ago
This is a rather defeatist take. It’s also wrong.