[quotemstr]

This site is social media. Should under 15s be prevented discussing developers in the tech industry?

No? On what grounds? HN uses opaque feed ranking algorithms. It's run by a for-profit US tech company. It uses dark patterns (e.g. shadowbans and unwired "flag" links) that prompt users to engage under false pretenses.

It even has advertisements. The horror!

Yet nobody serious says HN is harmful to the fledging minor technologist.

I've yet to see a logical rule allowing minors to access HN but prohibiting their scrolling Instagram. Every demarcation scheme I've seen is some variant of "big company bad", which is a ridiculous standard for a law intended to prevent the harms that the "structure* of a medium (as opposed to the identity of its owners) produces.

In a nation of laws, an act is allowed or prohibited based on the nature of the act itself. Actors don't get special privileges based on who they are.

[Nursie]

> This site is social media.

Is it?

If so then I would say the term "social media" has more or less lost all meaning.

To me HN is more like an old-school forum - it has a focus and it has a mod team to keep the rails on the discussion and keep the topics vaguely on topic.

[quotemstr]

My point is that it's hard to define social media in a way that excludes HN but includes the services that the activist sort thinks are disrespecting the gods of the city and corrupting the youth. Laws must be rooted in conduct, not identy.

[Nursie]

I'm not convinced it's that hard. I've pointed out a few ways that it differs significantly.

There are others major differences like the lack of infinite doomscrolling, or the personalised feed to optimise engagement.

To the wider point that maybe we should be preventing kids from accessing classes of things rather than particular services - yeah probably, but it's much easier to manage a blocklist starting with the worst offenders, and that might be a good enough start down the path of harm reduction.

[graykey31]

Start with classic conditioning that’s implemented in every large social media platform and go from there.

Or go in reverse, look at research into correlation between mental health issues and social media use and extrapolate contributing factors, from those extract the features

Should give a starting point for nailing down the definition.

[Mordisquitos]

Let us assume that:

    1. On average, it is a net negative for under 15s to participate in Instagram, TikTok, Xitter, YouTube, Snapchat, etc  
    2. On average, it is a net positive for under 15s to participate in HN, old-school forums, and the like.
    3. It is not possible to legally differentiate services referred to in points 1 & 2, so a ban must be all-or-nothing. 

Under those assumptions, the question becomes whether the overall net positive of allowing under-15s to participate in HN and old-school forums outweighs the overall net negative of allowing under-15s to participate in Instagram, TikTok, etc.

Given the relative number of under-15s participating in each category of services, do you think that is the case?