this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2025
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I wonder why nobody is considering the most obvious solution to all this complication around what is NSFW and what is not: Children shouldn't be on these platforms at all to begin with. They shouldn't be anywhere near social media until age 14. Definitely not free roaming everywhere on the internet.
For us adults, I honestly cannot say whether moderation instigated by a company is better than moderation instigated by the users. The devil is in the details. This place isn't moderated by a company and you'd probably think the moderation here is superior to Meta's.
I understand this sentiment because I had a similar story growing up, but I've had to come to terms that the internet of that era does not exist anymore.
Now we have these corporations who made it their goal to algorithmically trick you into spending more and more time engaged with their website for ad revenue, not caring how angry or misinformed people get in the meantime. It used to be a place we could escape to, but has turned into just another echo chamber/prison and worst of all - we're addicted to it.
I think places like Mastodon and the Fediverse can help bridge this gap, but on the whole, the internet is just not a safe place for developing brains anymore.
I'm with you on this. My childhood church was christo-fascist, and it was my wide wanderings on the web that showed me a different way was possible.
Do you think your classmates found those influences from somewhere outside the internet? At least in Europe, the alt-right has been way more efficient at reaching young people online, especially boys and men.
This is something parents should decide. They should know what kinds of content their kids will be exposed to, and decide when they're ready. This isn't something we should expect platforms or governments to decide.
Some parents will make terrible choices, but I think that's less bad than what's necessary to enforce either a ban or content moderation. I see nothing good coming from that longer term.
Sure that would be a much better situation than the current free-for-all and practically no control possibilities for the parents -- short of never giving them physical access to devices.
Pretty much all social media has a minimum age of 13 in their ToS. So what exactly are you suggesting? Raising it by 1 year?
Actually verifying it and punishing the companies if they let underaged people use it. Alcohol stores are also punished when they sell products to children.
This is a terrible idea, and only makes it 10x easier for surveillance capitalism to track, profile, and propagandize the entire population.
This line of reasoning is basically using "won't someone think of the children" fear mongering to hand over the keys to big brother.
I don't see how that follows. Can you elaborate?
If you have to verify children's identity, you have to verify everyone's identity. This is part of KOSA. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/kids-online-safety-act-continues-threaten-our-rights-online-year-review-2024
Ah, right. It's possible yes that this would make it easier for them, but my understanding of technology is that it was pretty much possible like 10 years ago to track practically everyone who isn't actively doing a countermeasures against it.
And our reaction shouldn't be, "oh well, might as well get something I want too," but that we should stop this tracking through both technological and legal measures.
I personally think this would help, but there's a lot folks online who scream "free speech" when you start talking about verifying age online. And honestly, I don't know a good solution to balance it
Don't try to balance it, not everything needs to be fixed through policy.
Educate parents and kids about the dangers, and what they can do to stay safe. Encourage parents to delay giving their kids access. Encourage use of tools like AI to detect and warn users of bullying, abuse, and scams online. Encourage setting aside time to get away from tech. Set up honeypot accounts to catch the worst offenders.
Using surveillance or bans to solve this problem is like throwing rocks to try to kill a fly, you're going to do way more harm than good, and you probably won't actually solve your problem.