[d110af5ccf]

> Lots of people on HN have a strong reaction against any attempt to regulate the internet, from generations of moral panics about new things.

No. That is absolutely not why and betrays precisely the lack of understanding about these things that causes such a response to begin with. Any time you find yourself dismissing widely held concerns you should take a step back and reevaluate if you haven't missed something. Perhaps your life experiences or priorities are different than these people who you encountered who had a "strong reaction"?

At least for myself, the primary reasons for such concerns are the frequency with which new regulations have historically resulted in dysfunction and abuse, proved entirely ineffective at solving the stated problem, or both.

> There are major freedom of speech issues, and there are lots of other technical and policy complications

Right here you acknowledge something which should be cause for very serious concern.

Also I think I'd object to your framing of "a public health crisis comparable to opioids". Much of that appears to be attributable to the side effects of the "war on drugs". At absolute minimum the vast majority of overdoses are clearly due to unreliable product quality which is simply not an issue for things purchased legally.

So really I'd like to avoid a second "war on drugs" type scenario that seeks to solve a social ill via government intervention, ultimately fails and makes the problem far worse in the process, creates various bureaucratic machinations that are incentivized to ensure future funding for themselves rather than outcomes that are actually beneficial to the general public, and erodes civil liberties in the process.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

When did the right for a child to use a social media application become a thing?

[whats_a_quasar]

I didn't dismiss concerns about freedom of speech. I explicitly acknowledged them in paragraph 4. My point is that there is a tradeoff here, and reasonable people can disagree.

That's reasonable a reasonable complaint about how I talked about moral panics. Updated the wording to not say that's the reason for HN's strong reaction. Though I really do think that cultural history is a major factor.

> Also I think I'd object to your framing of "a public health crisis comparable to opioids". Much of that appears to be attributable to the side effects of the "war on drugs". At absolute minimum the vast majority of overdoses are clearly due to unreliable product quality which is simply not an issue for things purchased legally.

I really don't think this is true. The government didn't cause a generation of people to become addicted to Oxytocin. You can argue about the best way to help, and lots of municipalities are trying harm reduction programs, but I don't think you can pin people ODing on fentanyl on the government.

Smoking regulations worked. CFC regulations worked. Automobile safety regulations worked. Sanitary standard regulation worked. Mandatory vaccine campaigns worked. Food and drug safety regulations worked. The clean air act and clean water act mostly worked. Government intervention often goes wrong, but it also often leads to huge increases in well-being. Particularly for addictive things presented to minors.

[rysertio]

There's one single problem. The addictive thing here is a dual use good. Most kids also use social media for keeping up with their classes and stuff. At this point you can miss an exam if you don't check your social media regularly. I don't know how do you go back from this point where social media is an integral part of our lives.

[jen20]

> Most kids also use social media for keeping up with their classes and stuff. At this point you can miss an exam if you don't check your social media regularly.

This was sure as shit not the case when I was at school, and is an abject failure of the school itself if that is true.

It’s not remotely a problem that needs to be accounted for - trivial solutions exist, ranging from putting information like the date and time of exams on a web page, or just giving them out in class and expecting people to be organised enough to show up, or fail - as usual, a “technology” problem can be solved by looking at how a process worked 70 years ago, where, presumably, people could show up for exams without needing a goddamn algorithmic feed to tell them about it.

[xyzzy3000]

Many schools in the UK have specialist apps for this, tied in to the school's data management infrastructure. It definitely is not the case that people require social media accounts to keep up with class timetables, homework schedules or school notices.