[ndriscoll]

If they want to centralize and provide recommendations for public video clips posted by anyone in the entire world but can't actually economically do that in a responsible way, then sure I don't have a problem with them being fined into oblivion. I don't see much need for businesses with hundreds of millions of customers to exist (and see plenty of downsides to allowing one company/platform to be that large. Especially a centralized communications platform), and if they can't actually handle that scale, then okay. Maybe their whole premise was a stupid idea. Or maybe they'll need to charge users to cover costs. Or ban children.

[Hizonner]

Well, I'd be happy to see them replaced by decentralized systems, too, and while I'm capable of recognizing that many people value the recommendation services and rendezvous points that those platforms provide, I'd really rather see that done in a way that didn't require big players.

But I don't know why you think that'd be an improvement.

Do you actually think that a fully decentralized, zero profit, no-big-players system for posting and discovering short media (or any kind of media) would put less "sexualized content" in front of teenagers (or anybody else)?

Moderation in such systems is usually opt-in, both because it fits better with the obvious architectures, and because the people who tend to build software like that tend to be pretty fanatical about user choice. So, if they choose to, kids are definitely going to be able to see pretty much anything that the system allows to exist at all... which will probably include tons of stuff that's really hard to find on, say, TikTok.

As for "recommending", I suspect any system that succeeded in putting the content users actually wanted in front of them would give teenagers, and indeed actual children, more "sexualized" content. The companies you're railing against are, in fact, trying to tamp that down, whether or not you believe it, and whether or not you think they're doing enough. A decentralized protocol does not care and will do exactly nothing to disadvantage that content.

Nobody really knows how to do decentralized recommendations (without them being gamed into uselessness), but if somebody did figure out a good way to do it, I'd expect it to be worse, from your point of view, than the platforms. So would a "pull-based" system that relied on search or graph following or communities of interest or whatever.

For a person with the priorities you seem to have, I can't see how decentralized systems would be anything but "out of the frying pan, and into the fire".

[ndriscoll]

Decentralized systems like the web already have a solution: lots of jurisdictions are making it illegal to provide adult content without age gating it. The point is for people to assume the same set of liabilities they would in person instead of the status quo where the web magically means you can do whatever. Then you just set up filters at home (or have ISPs offer following) to block the other jurisdictions. e.g. I lose nothing from simply blocking Russia altogether on my router.