[gherkinnn]

I am against these age bans because I know the mechanisms behind it will be used against everybody.

I am, however, all for banning personalised feeds, data collection, targeted ads, what amounts slot machines, and generally the poison these platforms spew.

What this will look like in practice I don't know. I am neither a lawyer, politician, nor do I work on these systems.

[Zealotux]

>banning personalised feeds

This is just banning social media with one extra step, these apps are virtually useless without personalization and their economy relies on it. I'm all for banning these platforms, we're all hooked on them and we need a hard ban, I know it won't happen but it's the only way.

[Gigachad]

Personalised is too vague of a term. IMO what destroyed social media was ending the chronological friends feed. When social media stopped being photos from your friends and family and started becoming endless content creator posts and ragebait.

Social media should not show any posts from people you haven’t friended.

[avaer]

You could make social media based on anonymous queries without personalization or likes. It wouldn't be useless, it would just be unrecognizable as social media.

[shrubby]

The old social media was at its simplest a chronological feed from the friends, you wanted to see.

If I want to add personalization I could add a algorithm to do that, only so that it promotes my wellbeing.

It really shouldn't be this difficult.

[notahacker]

Yeah, tbh I want more personalization in that I want posts from my friends, not clickbait the algorithm has decided I'm interested in because people who engage with this also engage with that...

[orrito]

Instagram (at least in europe) already provides this feature as they have to. Problem is you need to specifically adjust your feed every time you open the app, which makes it kind of useless against the addictive nature of it.

[shrubby]

Neutral social backend/API and a local client with the algorithm I've customized.

Or something like that.

[petesergeant]

> these apps are virtually useless without personalization

Social media was popular before the algorithmically tuned endless scroll.

[hdgvhicv]

But not profitable. Not at the levels to justify the share price.

[estetlinus]

Personally I would prioritize banning things like smoking, alcohol and meat.

But then again, it’s kinda a free world. You can’t just ban everything. I think an age ban is a good middle road.

[ricodavidson]

Banning smoking in public areas is great, though there is (slight) nuance in how bad smoking is depending on ingredients used. Some organic red wine every now and then depending on the individual can be totally fine and possibly beneficial. People binge drinking is terrible for culture.

But banning meat? That is just completely ridiculous. I would 100% agree that factory farming has to stop, as it's damaging to our environment, our animal friends, and ourselves even. But the reality is that (nearly all) humans need meat to thrive. No need to eat it every single day, but definitely a good idea to eat tons of it in general (including fish). This can and should be done in a more sustainable way: regenerative farming.

And just to point it out: vegetable farming is not a holy grail that could even solve this problem. Many would become weak, ill and possibly unfertile.

[benfortuna]

an age ban for meat would be interesting.. :-) all the rest have them so why not social media which clearly does harm to minors.

[tencentshill]

Facebook became huge because it was essentially a static feed with a good friend-finding algorithm.

[austin-cheney]

I am completely on the fence regarding these age bans. On one hand you are correct, but on the other hand consider that what’s lost is something most of us probably could live without. I am putting both social media and porn into that bucket.

The more I think about it the less and less difference I see between social media and porn.

[camillomiller]

Porn is way more regulated and the addiction to it is not a mental health pandemic like social media addiction

[mantas]

Porn addiction huuge too. It's slightly smaller because of it's nature, but it's definitely a pandemic-level health issue.

[Mwntalhwalth]

I marketed on FB before ads, our first client at the social agency I worked at in 08 was nature made supplements. It was fun and interesting at the beginning, then ads rolled in and I got out of it. It turned into something like the neighborhood swimming pool where everyone was swimming in each other's... I could see it and feel it.

Since about 2012 or so I was dreaming of a simple law or something on the books that banned ads in algorithmic feeds. It would be a really easy way to stop us from getting where we are today. It certainly would have slowed down the walled gardens and shittification of the internet.

I deal with teenagers that are on this stuff now and it's a fight, constantly. They hate hearing me go on about it.

What do yall think of Snapchat b.c we just caved and let my daughter use it.

[ozim]

The worst part are other parents that don't give a shit. You wouldn't have to fight if everyone would keep their kids off socials.

[insane_dreamer]

> I deal with teenagers that are on this stuff now and it's a fight, constantly. They hate hearing me go on about it.

It's an almost daily topic of conversation with my 13 yr old, who doesn't have social media (answering "but why, dad" for the 1000th time). Exhausting.

[broof]

I live with my older in laws and it’s not just affecting the younger generation. The older generation will also happily doom scroll whatever slop the algorithm feeds them. Usually not uplifting stuff…

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Facebook is -literally- old people, screaming at each other.

Younger folks find this horrifying, and no longer use Facebook.

But older folks have more money. It’s just that, traditionally, older folks have been harder to manipulate through advertising, so advertisers generally target younger folks, who are more receptive to the kind of emotional games played by advertisers.

Facebook, however, is a goldmine, because it can affect older folks, like advertisers can affect younger generations.

I feel that the younger generation is much more cynical, and less responsive to media manipulation, than people give them credit for.

As an older person, though, I see my peers being led around like a dog at Westminster. It’s kind of embarrassing, frankly.

[petesergeant]

All for a maximum age for social media usage too

[clydethefrog]

In our liberatarian paradise where everything is ads and poison because of the ruthless aim of maximizing profit, the biggest enemy is heavy regulation from to some other body that is not a for-profit entity, be it a moral and spiritual guidance of a church or lifestyle or a strong government apparatus that is true to it's aim to improve the lives of it's citizens.

[hdgvhicv]

Regulation by powerful for profit companies who spend more on mind control than many countries gdp is ok though right?

Freedom and all that.

[psadauskas]

Libertarianism is just Anarchism, but only for corporations. (Just like Capitalism is just Socialism for the rich.)

[abc123abc123]

This is the way! Age verification will expand, to include ban on VPN:s and eventually into total surveillance, and then we'll be slaves of the state, instead of to social media.

I'd much rathar have social media and not be a slave to the state.

[shevy-java]

Well, one example is the "are you a bot check". If you don't give out your age and let the provider verify that, you are banned from using the internet.

Thse are new "freedoms" we are going to enjoy in a little while.

[tancop]

personalised feeds are great when its actually doing what you (the user) want and not pushing paid ads or political agenda. the whole reason i dont use fediverse apps that much is they built up a culture of "respects your attention" with algorithms that are built to be non addictive. i just need that dopamine rush.

instead we should force these platforms to open source their algorithm and give users choice with a following only feed. or make bluesky/at protocol style federation mandatory to prevent vendor lock in. you decide.

[phyzix5761]

I'm against all those things as well but placing a ban on them is the same mechanism as banning anything. People should have the freedom to do things we disagree with. I haven't used social media (other than HN if it counts as one) for almost 20 years. I think they're toxic and a waste of time. But that doesn't mean other people shouldn't be allowed to use them. If people want to watch brainrot all day its they're life and I have no say in that. This is so my own personal freedom is preserved.

[BigJono]

You can't have freedom if a few people have a microphone that reaches hundreds of millions of people have zero responsibilities for how they use that microphone.

If you actually haven't used social media recently then I get why you'd be confused, because back in the day Facebook had a chronological timeline of people you specifically added in. The way a modern social media recommender algorithms work is completely different. If you, for example, say "I want to hear everything that Bob has to say" by "subscribing" to Bob or whatever, you "might" see when Bob says something, or instead you "might" see Mary's post from the other side of the world that has some strangely aggressive opinions about someone the billionaire platform owner happens to hate.

Social media companies have decided by buddying up to the US administration that they get to decide what everyone around you sees or hears. If a couple of billionaires decide that they don't like phyzix5761 you might just get lynched by an angry mob. That's not gonna do much for your freedom, in-fact it's kind of the opposite.

[gherkinnn]

I also want people to make their own mistakes.

This position fails when these mistakes, in this case social media, purposefully and knowingly override our monkey brains and when widespread adoption of these mistakes allow severe negative outcomes to emerge.

Lastly, it is extremely hard for most people to escape the pull of (ostensibly) social networks and doing so anyway comes with social cost.

[amelius]

A society without rules is not really a society.

[tomasGiden]

It is easy to say that we shouldn't limit what a person is allowed to do. That a person should be allowed to use their free will. That sounds nice because nobody want to be controlled by anyone else. But let's turn it upside down and instead say that we disallow companies from doing certain things.

- Instead of saying that a person may not install unsafe wall sockets, we can say that companies are not allowed to sell unsafe wall sockets. - Instead of saying that a person may not take any job they like, we can say that companies must provide workplace safety. - Instead of saying that people are not allowed to smoke or use social media, we can say that companies are not allowed to sell addictive products.

So it is a question of perspective where both viewpoints are valid.

And of course addictive is a scale from nicotine to deep fried chicken to infinite scroll. And then it is a question about the customer's ability to see through and make rational choices which of course depend on age, knowledge, existing alternatives etc. It is not that easy for a teenager to resist the works of thousands of engineers and data statisticians who are working on increasing retention.

So just saying that it should be allowed because of Free Will is to ignore all the complexities around it.

[phyzix5761]

I wouldn't want my child to access social media but when we say we want to ban all children from accessing these things we're effectively saying we know better than their own parents. Its a sense of superiority that drives these regulatory policies where we believe parents are not knowledgeable or capable enough to make decisions for their own kids.

This is a dangerous mindset and precedent. It means that one day someone else will come along and have the ability to tell us what we can and can't do with our own children. If the next administration thinks it must be mandatory for every child to participate in social media for 4 hours every day now they have the legal and social precedent to impose something like that.

We shouldn't use government to force our own ideas and beliefs on others. Instead, we should set up boundaries that allow each individual to freely choose what they want for themselves and their families as long as it doesn't directly harm the freedoms of others.

[hdgvhicv]

Some platforms are good at giving parents control. Apple is pretty good at this when you’re in their eco system.

To get any type of parental control on Minecraft took me the best part of a day, and I’m presumably more tech savvy than average.

Nintendo, Microsoft, Xbox, ea accounts, none of which I use as an adult. It’s a mess, no wonder many parents just don’t bother.

[josephg]

Yes - Australian here. We started this, somehow.

I agree. I’d much rather if we simply banned personalised algorithmic feeds, for everyone. They’re the new smoking. They’re toxic to mental health and to society more broadly. They’re no good for adults or children - so no need for age checks for any of it.

YouTube and Facebook could still work. Just show the channels I’m subscribed to instead of whatever an AI thinks will drive me toward addiction. Even YouTube’s recommended “watch next” could survive. They’d just have to base the recommendations on what the viewer population as a whole enjoy instead of putting me personally in a bubble.

[netdevphoenix]

The personalised feeds is the whole point of their reason of being. No personalisation no profits. There just isn't a world where these huge companies can exist without personalised feeds. Meta platforms as well as YT would die and you would have instead something like Nebula which you pay for like Netflix but offers content creators content. Most people wouldn't pay for Nebula and so, you are back to the original point. People would put pressure to restore personalised feeds. Everyone supports these bans until they are the target of them.

This isn't a technological problem but a human one. The fundamental problem is that we haven't developed generalisable, scalable and profitable business models on the internet that aren't toxic.

[josephg]

Not true. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were all successful products before they added personalised algorithmic feeds. Facebook just showed you everything by your friends. Twitter showed your follows (like bsky) and YouTube showed your channels.

The personalised algorithmic junk came later. It was never required for the websites to be wildly popular.

[hdgvhicv]

But popular does not mean profitable.

You would go on Facebook for 5 minutes and catch up with your friends. Great.

That’s not much time to shovel adverts. Better to get you engaged with ragebait or cute kittens or whatever keeps you on the site for an hour or 5.

[josephg]

Alright. So? If facebook can’t pull a profit without being a blight on society, they don’t deserve to be in business.

[hdgvhicv]

Sure. But that’s why they do it.

[netdevphoenix]

Successful and profitable are not the same thing.

[Gigachad]

The tech isn’t that expensive or complex. Email didn’t have to add all this junk to be sustainable.

Something like the original Facebook where it’s just posts from your direct friends and no public content would be sustainable. It just wouldn’t make a trillion dollar company.