Calling 2026's facebook, instagram, tiktok, xshitter, whatever "social media" is like calling a casino "the 3rd place that you socialise out with your mates".

The original form was referred to as social networking. Social media is the current form with algorithmic broadcasting.

Well we still call them phones, which is a more extreme case of semantic drift.

I'd prefer a ban for the over 65s, who are especially vulnerable.

As with any ban on anything, I would prefer that it start with the people who want it banned. So any advocates against social media and get off social media. Every politician and government employee in Norway should be off it.

In general, if someone comes along and says that someone else's rights should be shrunk, I think they should give up those same rights first.

You can just look at the US congress for how this isn't done as they frequently carve out exceptions for themselves and staffers.

At least this gives kids the chance to be kids and know a life without it before they encounter it.

Many of us grew up in the offline-is-default time, but our cohort will age out. Then we’ll only be left with people who grew up with these technologies shaping their lives and perspectives, who have little sense for the alternative.

The window of time is closing for us in this cohort to use our understanding of what life was like without these technologies to advocate for a healthier environment for kids.

Today it will be <16, tomorrow 18. Doesn't really matter as long as the ball starts rolling.

First it was indoor smoking, now it will be for everyone born after 2008 in the UK.

I would categorize HN as a news aggregator with a comment section, not social media.

On of their main concerns is the social graph created from following/friending.

HN doesn't have this.

Platforms like HN are still vulnerable to astroturfing and bubble effects, but at least the operators aren't optimizing for engagement beyond [what I assume is] a fairly simple up/down ranking system based on user votes and time decay.

Moderation is another question. On HN again I don't really get the sense that there is a lot of censorship. On Reddit, on the other hand, the behavior of moderators and admins is legitimately frightening once you start paying attention.

Overall I would shut it all down forever if I could, but if I had a limited budget I would prioritize Meta's platforms and similar algorithmic infinite-scroll slop feeds. I think all they do is addict people to scrolling and epistemically poison them without giving any real value back.

Great question. Algorithmic recommendations with infinitely scrolling feeds that get fresh, fungible content—i.e. content produced by strangers, not your friends—whenever you visit the platform are are the biggest issues I have with social media. They're designed like slot machines to boost engagement at the cost of, you know, accommodating social connections.

I'm worried that while these bans have good intentions, they might be targeting the wrong things. The direction is right, and I'm glad action is being taken, though.

Hacker news feed is algorithmic

I would consider HN a barebones forum more than social media. It's a bit "I know it when I see it" but the clear differences are things like no media uploading, no mysterious algorithmic feeds (like you allude to) designed with the explicit goal of keeping you on, no "discoverability" like we see on these sites, etc. It's text posts, [edit: essentially] one page, and a simple up/down system with some weighting. You can't even really build an independent community within HN. We're all more or less seeing the same thing at the same time. Everyone's facebook or instagram or whatever is wildly different. It's siloing.

Also, there's no ad servicing going on/major profit element for ycombinator here. Doesn't mean there isn't self-promotion/astro-turfing, and it clearly benefits ycombinator's reputation to have this, but it isn't an ad platform with social aspects like social media.

I can't read the article so don't know if they give enough details on the Norway law to tell, but most of the other countries or states with such laws prohibit specific practices that are very common on social media sites. If you site does those things it is covered. If it does not, it is not covered.

HN is usually not covered.

For example New York's law covers sites with an "addictive feed", and defines "addictive feed" this way:

> "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another:

> (a) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on information that is not persistently associated with the user or user's device, and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media generated or shared by other users;

> (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical information concerning the user's device;

> (c) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media, media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;

> (d) the user expressly and unambiguously requested that specific media, media by a specified author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to pursuant to paragraph (c) of this subdivision, be blocked, prioritized or deprioritized for display, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;

> (e) the media are direct and private communications;

> (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user;

(> g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source; or

> (h) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to comply with the provisions of this article and any regulations promulgated pursuant to this article.

Yes.

[flagged]

Genuine question, how is it different than tobacco, driving, alcohol, all the things we gate by age for what seem to be valid reasons?

The ID laws only apply to social media though. You don't need to give your ID if you don't use those websites. Of course it's also possible that this is just a trojan for other sites asking for ID, but hopefully people see the difference enough that extending this law there wouldn't be popular.

The problem is, the borders upon which you want a child operating in social media are pretty fuzzy. Do you want them working with classmates? sure. Other peers in same school grade? of course; older peers? ...sure; older peers in other districts...maybe?

Then there's all the spoofing and the "age gate" software that inevitably needs to be done to do this.

HN is as close to social media as my 3rd grade talent show was to Michael Jackson's Super Bowl halftime show.

Please. At best HN has a very small subset of the problems in social media, and its positives easily outweigh its negatives. This is a well moderated forum with a lot of bright people and industry experts that a young person could learn from by observing conversation and debate. It bears a great deal of resemblance to historic methods of learning by watching experts interact and debate. Tons of pedagogical value is here for a young person to latch onto.

A most obvious difference besides that is HN isn’t a nonstop feed of short form video appealing to the insecurities of teenagers, using notifications and social feedback loops and the suggestion that you’d be missing out on what your friends are up to if you left.

HN doesn’t even let you follow people and barely lets you know who they are. It’s centered on ideas, not people. HN and social media are almost nothing alike.

I think the user needs the ability to set how their data feed works and not be dependent on the hyper addictive algorithmic feed. And parents need to be able to set that for their kids. 90% of the stuff I see in Facebook is garbage that I don't care for.

There is no fixing social media.

These companies need to do what's best for shareholders, which means do the most addicting and damaging thing. Besides that, we have almost 20 years of evidence of attempting to fix it.

Where it's gotten us is that social media is a tool for the president to broadcast threats of genocide to millions of people. Banning or restricting that kind of platform is not the same as the PATRIOT act.

There are problems with cigarettes, yes. However, these problems exist for children _and_ adults. A reasonable way to tackle this issue would be to make cigarettes safer for everyone, not just to exclude kids. These problems are not solved with an age check ...

You may or may not be acting as an apologist for the sleaziest, worst industry on earth here, but you certainly sound like it, even if it is unintentional. As this is hacker news, P(makes money working for sleazy, terrible companies) is high so you'll have to accept this obvious interpretation.

Look, I actually kind of agree with you, but social media _already has all the PII_ to an extent unparalleled in history. Come on. "We have to wonder what the motivation here is"?

[dead]

> The funniest part of all of it is the "social media" that millennials think they're saving their children from doesn't even exist anymore. All the dominant platforms of today are not based on the social graph. Nobody is getting bullied on their timeline or seeing all the parties they weren't invited to anymore.

I think in recent years the infinite scroll of auto-generated content that bamboozles your brain is considered way worse than seeing the parties you weren't invited to. I think you're the one that's being "millenial" and thinking this is related to cyberbulling or whatever.

> And if its just any website with "social" functions, this one should be included!

This is actually a reasonable take and is being discussed elsewhere -- the "social" tag doesn't really apply any more. "Algorithmic brain-engaging drip feed" would be more apt.

I had the same position before there was this panic. Facebook became popular around 2008 and was cheered on as some boon to society, and I was saying this thing needs to die. Also thought it was ridiculous how many of my middle school classmates had iPhones.

While old style mass media could move in lock step, the lacl of that mechanism seems to just produce a flood of counter narratives to counter narratives. It provides the illusion of being informed but actually being more confused.

As they say, I would rather be uninformed than misinformed.

Maybe maybe not. Counter factuals are easy to dream up but impossible to verify