> rather than being penalized

The problem is, currently doing any kind of content filtering, as in making illegal stuff hard to find, and having a moderated semi walled garden, plays right into the noisy fuckers brigade.

If I were to design a TV programme which is aimed at 11-16 year olds, where I just play soft porn every 15 seconds, offer guides on how to do financial scams, and encourage the children to hide away from their parents as they watch. it would be banned instantly, regardless of how much "good" content I put in there.

People would say it's irresponsible to expose kids of that age to such things.

Yet, here we have social media doing just the same.

The reason why we make it illegal to beat kids, sell them smokes, drugs, booze and generally treat them like shit, is because we want well rounded functioning kids who are able to live a long an illustrious life as part of society.

Giving them a device that feeds them war, porn, rage bait, and huge lies, all for the profit of a few hundred people in america seems somewhat misguided.

In the same way it's better that adults are the recipients of the harms of smoking, drinking or gambling. It's still not desirable, but societies have settled upon thresholds for when people have some capacity to take responsibility for their choices.

Not saying those thresholds are always right and should definitely apply in this case, but it surely isn't an alien or non-obvious concept.

Adults love 'garbage'. How do you define that?

There is also the problem that making platforms responsible for policing user-generated content 1) gives them unwanted political power and 2) creates immense barriers to entry in the field, which is also very undesireable.

I don't want Mark Zuckerberg, or the government, deciding what's garbage. If they can empower the user to filter this stuff out on their own accord, that's great.

The second problem is that the medium itself is garbage. Algorithmic feeds strongly encourage clickbait and sensationalism. Removing content does nothing to change the dynamic.

I don't think we've shown that that cleanup is possible.

Whenever platforms have taken even the smallest steps in that direction, the right-wing authoritarian political parties freak out and blackmail them into stopping, or in the case of Musk simply buy them out outright.

There's hardly any parallel between the type of political content (or corn) that was available on TV in the 90s, and what's found in today's social media. It's not political commentary, it's a constant stream of pure, unfiltered manipulation, lies, brainwashing, prejudice and antisocial behaviour.

Small things I want to add or say:

- It's not young adults, it's 15 and under. Personally I would classify 17-20something as young adult (it's a bit subjective isn't it).

- The younger children don't really care about politics honestly. Curious if you have an age that you're ok with only ensuring irl politics for children? I think age to vote is a much bigger concern for me here in terms of civil liberties.

- Parents can still make that choice for their child (unclear how this will work to me yet, to be fair).

- I've become convinced no one really practises 'politics' online. People barely even debate anymore. They argue, they perform activism, they aggitate, its what gets attention (thanks to social media). I'm worried people think this is normal, it's not- political discourse used to be much more productive. I remember when fallacies were actually brought up logically on the internet and people actually cared about the accusation.

- I did explicit rp with adults as 7 year old on MSN chatrooms back in the day :')

Social media is full of extremist and untrue content of all types. Antivax or free birth content are just two small examples of viral content that is untrue and kills people. It has a very negative effect on adults, and adults at least have brains that are fully-developed.

Exposing kids to the firehose of misinformation on social media just poisons their brains. Political agitation is mostly political misinformation. Even among the causes online that I agree with, most of the content online is deeply biased, one-sided or inaccurate.

Oh hey it's my favorite Romanian stupidpol poster. Didn't think I would run into you here.

If your children are being exposed to sexual and violent content in the real world, that is called an "Adverse Childhood Experience" and it is predictive of everything from poor adult earnings to heart disease: https://www.cdc.gov/aces/about/index.html

I think you're taking things to an extreme.

Let's make some distinctions first.

On the one hand, you have violence and pornography, and also other crude content. There is nothing good about exposing children to these. It does not contribute to their growth or to their maturity as human beings and it is ridiculous to think it could. On the contrary, this content will cause psychological harm, causing distortions in their emotions, in their habituated appetites, in their self-understanding, and their understanding of normal relations. When deviance like that is tolerated, it shifts the Overton window. Children observe this tolerance and roll it into their sense of normality. Individuals suffer. The quality of society degrades substantially.

On the other hand, we have political agitation. This one is more difficult to define and handle, especially in a liberal democratic society. There are examples of obvious political agitation, of course, but children should generally not be exposed to political agitation at all, except as a subject matter at an age appropriate level and in an appropriate pedagogic setting. Children don't have the intellectual or emotional maturity to examine such material in the wild on their own where they would be at the mercy of unscrupulous adult manipulators who couldn't care less about the well-being of children. (Ask yourself what kind of person would want to involve children in their political agitation to begin with.)

So, there's a big difference between common sense things like these and coddling children. We want to prepare children for life, not teach them adaptation to depravity. You throw them into the filth of social and psychological pathology. Neither violence nor pornography should be normalized even in the adult world - it is harmful to the adults who consume it as well - so the idea that we should prepare children for life in some violent and twisted pornland is preposterous. Nobody has to put up with that garbage, and the law should be making sure they don't.

> and since when are kids supposed to be protected from politics? We used to call that "civics class".

The whole "don't talk about politics" is so toxic IMHO.

Sure you might not want to ruin your dinner with the family members you see a single day every year. But otherwise, making it sound like a taboo could be widening the tribalization and anchor the feeling deeper into people's identity. Let the people talk about what they care about, including when that affects who the next president is.

>I feel like you haven't really been listening to the arguments against these types of age-verification-for-websites laws.

Or maybe I just have a different conclusion to you? Because I do care, I do try to listen to the arguments. I'm no stranger to advocacy for civil liberties, they are important to me. I think all else being equal, freedom should be valued more over harm prevention. So if I'm for these laws, consider that a sign of how bad these sites have become, not how uninformed I am.

> I mean, there's some similarities, of course. But I think there are some very stark differences.

Yep of course it's not a 1:1, I agree. I don't mean to imply that people saying the same arguments today are wrong simply because people in the past were, but it does make me think more about it when I spot the same rhetoric.

Often both sides have very reasonable concerns, as an example, the question isn't "should we have all or no freedom" Either extreme creates issues, yet both sides have valid arguments worth our time considering. We settle somewhere in the middle.

Here's one vox pop with the introduction of breathalizers in UK (1967): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_tqQYmgMQg

The ban is being enacted by the Australian Labor Party, which the Murdoch media is certainly not friendly with. If it ends up favouring Murdoch, it won’t have been deliberate.

The traditional outlets you are referring to are now worse because of social media.

I bet you Sky news gets more views through social media than TV broadcast these days! Many of their hosts are all over X, spreading misinformation. They are downstream from social media now, not seperate from it I suspect.

Murdoch benefits from the political agitation that the landscape of social media provides.

I do agree on making platforms moderate themselves. This legsliation helps do this by creating a discussion about the harms, enforcing a culture of harm (this is not for all ages, not default for everyone). Saying to the companies: "Hey, if you don't want to be regulated, clean up your platform so it's safer". Will that happen? no idea, but if it doesn't, no children is still a good goal (it's how you get there that has the contention).

The original comment suggests that the policy is politically motivated. The commenter replied with other reasons for the policy other than political agitation. I think its a valid response.

I also don't buy the implied claim from the original commenter that age-limits are paternalistic/suppressive with regard to political thought/speech. Large tech platforms control political thought/speech on a regular basis, a lot of which is executed by state actors. Even in the absence of devious actors, algorithms are editorial by nature; they are not neutral infrastructure by any means.

> 1: "I get the feeling this has nothing to do with preventing harms"

> 2: "heres the harms and why I think we should prevent them"

Not trying to be rude here colordrops but I think you're being a too obtuse here, especially when the original person's comment was basically just "I don't trust them" (which is totally fair), I would rather engage in a good faith discussion of our opinions.

> This may be true

Do you think it's true?

I thought you were making this up, as it sounds too ridiculous to be true. But no, it's a real thing.

The key to his success seems, at a glance, to be raising his media profile by taking controversial positions (which I suspect he may not sincerely hold) that guarantee news coverage. Similar to how populist politicians in the UK game the BBC's "balance" policy by always taking a contrarian position to any given topic to secure an interview or place on a discussion panel.

moral panics are useful for creating authoritarian states. If a moral panic is not presently available, in 2025 it may be easier it's ever been before to cultivate one.

My son is 15. My talk to him went something like this: There's a lot of porn and nasty things that you can't unsee, so be careful what you look at. Also, those extortion gangs target teenage boys, so if some girl is suddenly hot for you online, come see me immediately so we can troll the ever loving fuck out of them. I think it went pretty well. We like doing things as a family, but more like the Addams family...

Remarkably, Youtube's logged out experience will still be completely available to all age groups. And an a Australian HN user mentioned that one 14-year old had another (presumably older looking) 14-year old do the "video selfie" for her to verify her account on one the sites. So I'm not sure the fight will go away, but it may be slightly more tractable.

It will normalize people thinking that uploading their state-issued ID to whatever contractor is validating accounts is safe and normal.

Most people probably agree something needs to be done at scale. Banning kids sounds neither effective nor long term beneficial though, and at the core of it seems to deflect from solving deeper issues.

It looks like they're "doing something" while nothing really changes or potentially gets worse. Trying to regulate Meta/YouTube from there has IMHO become harder, as kids are on paper supposed to be out of the picture.

Interesting, my experience is completely opposite; I'm not losing to them at all.

Honest conversations with your kids from an early age are key.

> It's very unfortunate. As a parent, I feel like it requires regulation at the national level because I can't win against Meta (FB, Insta), Google (Youtube), Snapchat and TikTok.

Sorry, but this just isn't the case. I have children very much in the target age here, and they only have a passing understand of what social media even is due to us explaining how unhealthy it is to them.

It's unfortunate you feel incapable of achieving the same, but abdicating your responsibility as a parent to the state isn't the answer.

you could if you just whitelisted the apps you wanted your kids to use

That's a bad analogy, more like :

Printing Press <=> The Internet

but

Social Media <=> Some specific forms of (mostly centralized) publishing

> its forcing kids with no credit cards to download free and malware ridden ones

It very much is not.

> Its not good faith because its already broken by vpn.

One does not follow from the other.

We make speeding illegal even though even the most affordable cars can trivially bypass all speed restrictions. It doesn't mean that the efforts to curb speeding are in bad faith just because it is still possible to bypass speed reduction rules.

[dead]

> We just need it to be hard enough that most kids won't do it.

Silly though that sounds, it might work. Because it's social pressure from other kids to be online that drives many kids into being constantly on Instagram and Snapchat. If you're not online, you don't know what's going on. The big social networks monetize FOMO.

If a sizable fraction of kids aren't on social media, that's not where it's happening any more. The pressure goes away. Or goes elsewhere.

Maybe. I think it's overall a rightward shift, only in urban cores is it accelerating a leftward shift. To the extent that it is motivating marginal voters to vote (which I think it is), it is also benefitting the right. It's also breaking down ethnic voting patterns in a way that benefits the right, I think.

People in power just want total control of the narrative and they don't want you to find out the truth about anything. Look at Walz in MN--he's like the ultimate Jedi "nothing to see here" mind trick with his wholesome grandfatherly persona, which is furthest from the actual reality of who and what he is. They all just want to force you into their reality and they hate it when you don't go there.

It's almost as if a country's population need more than 2 parties to express themselves.

Every political party ON THE PLANET has always had to manage internal factions, it doesn't matter if you're talking the Soviet Communist Party, the Democrats, the Republicans, The Tea party faction.

There's absolutely nothing new about parties having internal divisions. Even the fact that at the moment everything is so partisan is nothing new, history has shown that several times over the past century that politics has followed a penudulum that swings from partisan extremes, back to centrist moderates, and then back to the extremes.

> I think what's killing Dems is that they don't understand the medium.

Generally agree, but

> Him and Trump had a grand old time at the whitehouse

Yeah, but that wasn't entirely positively received, despite his earlier social media success. Him buddying up with Trump was a huuuuge turn off for me.

> Newsom has been trolling lately and his approval ratings are only going up.

Newsom's content is also a huge turn off for me, and I am not convinced that his supposed approval ratings are not simply more CTR type machinations from the DNC. Maybe there's some segment of the population that genuinely wants whatever the hell Newsom is pushing content-wise, I certainly don't have #s on my side. Mamdani's efforts - Trump buddying aside - were much better.

> Dems being a million years old is killing the dems.

Yes, but I think age is simply a proxy for a number of other highly correlated behaviors and positions. Most progressives can name a couple of >70yo dems for whom these complaints do not apply.

Mandani did really well in NYC which is entirely consistent with the social media helping the left in urban cores but hurting elsewhere.

I think it is structural about the medium because it elevates the profile of relatively rare things like crime or ‘wokeness gone amok’ that dems are losing on. Similarly, with regards to ICE, it is helping dems by also raising the profile of rare incidents. But on net I think this sort of coverage hurts dems more than it helps.

I think the solution is banning accepting compensation for third party advertising.

Social media is not good for adults either. Being able to choose your vices is one of the privileges we give to adults.

When I was 18 the legal drinking age had just been reduced to 18. That only lasted a couple of years. I don't think I'd vote for lowering it to that age again actually.

Isn't treating it as a health issue the opposite of "puritanical moralizing"? No one suggested placing a Scarlet S around their necks.

It really isn't a bad thing for kids to be told they can't do something occasionally. It kind of helps prepare them for being an adult where it happens all the time.

Any of it? You can't get behind cigarette bans for kids?

Social media has caused at least two genocides so far, and their data centers and AI slop are helping drive us towards an earth incapable of supporting human life.

So what you are describing is just the base case.

Suppressing the evidence of it doesn't make it not so: https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/meta-project-mercury-sh...

The ban is on having an account. Tiktok video is publicly viewable.

No, it’s that he will spend hours doom scrolling whatever they feed to him.. I’ve tried to lead him down a path of watching more educational stuff on YouTube but he will just end up doom scrolling shorts.. I’m trying to figure out ways to enable him access but not have him waste hours with shorts.. I know there must be short form content that’s good but I’ve not seen any evidence watching over his shoulder.. I block shorts on YouTube for myself even.. at this point the best I can think of is allowing access in short windows of time with longer chunks of blocked access.. if anyone has ideas I’d love to hear them.

You assume that banning usage was the first step instead of the last step.

I'm not OP, but I'm guessing they started with talking to the kid, or more intermediate steps.

> Are you concerned at all about your son's ability to cope independently from oversight and control?

Kids aren't fully independent for good reason, and a very hard part of parenting is deciding how much independence to give them vs. sheltering them from the parts of the world that will hurt them. If a kid comes home with drugs or hardcore porn it is completely reasonable to confiscate them with no regard for independence and control. Is TikTok the same as heroin? No. But it is provably harmful in any number of ways that young brains do not have the tools to handle, and the benefits are arguably non-existent for most. With other things like sports, we know that there is the possibility of getting hurt, but that can be mitigated and the benefits far outweigh the risks.

I'm actually glad to read about a parent taking responsibility. There's nothing important about Tiktok that won't wait until the child is 16/18.

Serious question: Do you now have, or have you ever had, children to raise?

I'm not saying you're wrong but I'm still unconvinced. I think it is a very obvious backdoor to forcing online ID without having to call it an ID law.

The Australian government isn’t banning books. It’s banning access to harmful content for people under 16.

One morning I logged into Reddit and saw a video of Charlie Kirk get his head blown off. I didn’t want to see that, but for some reason it wasn’t taken down yet. I’m really glad my 12 year old daughter didn’t have to see that…

Luckily this is much less the case in Australia - or pretty much any developed country.

It's still somewhat the case, but the propaganda in schools outside of the USA is much less than the propaganda on social media.

America has been subject to a thirty-year propaganda war by foreign actors.

Information in America is free as in speech, not free as in beer: money talks louder than truth. That has let billionaires unravel the stabilizing features adopted after the Great Depression that kept capitalism limping along for an extra century.

The nanny-state control freaks used "think of the children" so often over the years that it became a meme, and yet here we are. What a workhorse!

> Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained...

Ask a woman in a liquor store whether her anonymity is maintained by this scenario...?

The current liquor store approach for buying liquor is hazardous for a good chunk of people and we need to acknowledge that - even if acquiring a token somewhat ameliorates the compounded risk from presenting ID multiple times

So many of these internet ban proposals feel like someone creates a single cartoon scenario that captures ~2% of the use cases, and happily charges ahead to a proposed solution as though they've sufficiently thought about the people affected and the harms involved.

The government still knows your identity in this scenario, so it's a pretty limited form of anonymity (i.e. only suitable for activities the government isn't hostile to)

The government then knows all the services you use. No bueno.

There are better ways to do this including zk proofs, but you gotta work against people mass reselling them. Could do some rate limited tokens minted from a proof maybe.

Some concerns: - government gets a list of every website that requests your age - every website has to register with the government to initiate age verification checks

Which pretty much puts an end to any notion of an open internet. But maybe a system I prefer to one where a bunch of random startups have my age verification biometrics .

Would zero knowledge proofs work here? I'm not enough of a cryptography nerd so I don't know if it would be a practical use-case.

You fix it with better culture. You don't throw away your principles and liberties because "bad things are happening to children, quick, burn the system down!"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

in 2025 politics is inextricably related to everything