| Oh, okay. Well in that case then the answer is no, I don't support any of this. Of course I'm happy to talk about my positions but there is little nuance to my position tbh: I remain entirely unconvinced by the justification for proposed measures and believe that the entire discussion even happening is essentially a framing error. We're all talking about what should be done about this. About what, specifically? And, well, why now? I grew up on the Internet. I've had essentially unfettered and unmonitored access to it since I was maybe 11 or 12. Me and my cohort of classmates often talked about sites like Rotten or Motherless at the lunch table, and certainly age inappropriate content like on Newgrounds and Lord help us, Ebaum's World. Now okay, things have changed. (I'm still quite online for better or worse, so please don't get the idea that I don't see that the modern internet has different child safety concerns than the one I grew up on.) But somehow, the rhetoric is exactly the same as always. It's the same damn thing. No matter how the times change, it's the same "protect the children against the evils of sex and pornography!" Uh huh. I realize not everyone has a universal shared experience, but from my point of view, the problem with kids and inappropriate content isn't just a story of negligent platforms. It is the story of 1. Hormonally unstable kids going through puberty who will often stop at nothing, 2. Platforms that are more or less indifferent and will do whatever gets them money, and 3. People who take on the immense responsibility that parenthood entails then expect the whole of society to take care of them. I don't know what to tell people, I get that this is a terribly uncomfortable fact, but the number one reason why adolescents get involved with porn and sex is because they explicitly are seeking it out and want to be. It is nothing to do with the porn industries or lack of Internet regulation, it's their goddamn bodies. It's absolutely true that I had access to content far more disturbing in all metrics than the old playboys under the mattress of yesteryear. I am not claiming this is ideal or that it should be the case. I'm just saying that it happened and the generation that was there is here right now, and we're fine. But maybe social media is just simply too much. It puts kids at too much risk and they can't handle it. I think we're selling a lot of adolescents very short here without at least giving them a chance to have a bit of freedom, but fine. Let's fix this. How? It's simple. When you are a kid, the first computer and phone or whatever kids get these days, is given to you by a parent. What we can do is make decent parental controls. We don't even need strong identity verification. We just need to be able to provide a way for apps and sites to voluntarily block children. This sounds eerily similar to California AB 1043, and it is. I think that California AB 1043 is also bad for many reasons. Firstly, I know this is going to be expanded in many uncomfortable directions; it doesn't take a genius to make basic extrapolations. Secondly, I feel it is poorly written and confusing; what's an app store? Why does the law require all apps to request and store the age bracket information? What is an app? Does GNU sed now need to, by law, request the age bracket information from systemd and store it somewhere? And no, it isn't acceptable to just try to "do what they mean", it's a badly written bill. We shouldn't accept badly written legislation, but apparently in the past couple years or so the situation that had been ongoing for the past 3 decades or so with the Internet suddenly became extremely urgent to fix Right Now (in a couple of years) so we had to rush out shitty legislation that makes no sense. So while I would love to just have sensible parental controls, nobody is actually really trying to enshrine this into law. It seems like they're mostly concerned about lobbying to push the responsibility elsewhere. So we won't even just get sensible parental controls. We'll get weird parental control like legislation, having to send a live stream of our faces to sketchy companies who pinky swear to not leak it by accident, enter our credit card information into sites that definitely won't get breached, and scan our goddamn government IDs to access basic chat functionality that we already use today, in some cases. Because we can't get a handle on how to stop the 20% of people in the first 20% of their lives from accessing inappropriate content on devices and internet connections that WE FUCKING GAVE THEM! Before we've even attempted to quantify how harmful unfettered Internet access is to adolescents, or hell, how Helpful it is. (It sure was helpful for one of my friends who was gay and could access resources on the internet when his conservative parents were unhelpful. I suppose everyone is allowed to raise their kids how they like, but I can see the duality of how it's also not always the case that the parents know best.) To say that I think this is all beyond farcical is a massive understatement. So I do apologize for maybe seeming a bit dismissive about this issue, but personally I already know it's coming from the wrong place and I don't like engaging with things that I know are coming from the wrong place. I'm not saying you or anyone in particular actually has bad intent by any means, just that I don't believe this entire movement at all. |
There is a seemingly endless lists of victims to crimes happening online. Not only that studies that are coming out in recent years are showing lots and lots of adverse effects against children that grew up with unfiltered access to the modern internet. The internet you grew up in as you probably know is long gone, the iPhone-era internet, with tiktok, instagram, youtube,etc.. is a whole other ballgame. Not only that, people depend on it a lot more, it is not a whole lot different than any other real-life infrastructure, except it was built without any planning around how it impacts those that it affects. When you open a business you need a permit, when you accept or reject customers in a real world business there are laws, even when you simply have a gathering in a public park, above a certain number of people you need a permit. All these laws originated as a result of people getting harmed.
Why? To be frank there are lots of whys. The big-tech companies like Meta and OpenAI are using this valid concern and narrative, so that they can swoop in, save the day and then do some really nasty evil crap (not just profiteering). and like so much else these days, these ghouls win because people like HNers can't be bothered with critical thinking, they're allowed to get away with what they do because the alternative those who can actually solve this present is preservation of the status-quo (I can rant a lot about how this is also how the downfall of America is being orchestrated, but that's a distraction).
> I grew up on the Internet.
That internet is gone, dead, a thing of history. Your experience is invalid. Take some time to see how r/Teachers in subreddit is observing the change in kids these days. The internet you grew up in was young, it was not widely adapted at a global scale, you didn't rely on ebaum's world to function day to day but you'd be hard-pressed to even get vital medical care these days without a smartphone on hand, logging into random sites and installing random apps. Even with porn, it was one thing over a slow connection with not a whole lot of awareness, you have kids even under 12 watching porn on smartphones.
Take a step back and think about this, someone who is unable to consent to sexual activity is partaking in one, and the people that are particpants on the other side of the sexual experience are adults who can consent. Sex is used because it's a lazy of making an argument, but the point remains, it doesn't matter what your anecdotal experience is, many for example say they were fine having sex with their hot teacher in highschool, but we send such teachers to decades in prison for grooming and sexual abuse of a minor. It is the simple fact that society has decided consent is required for certain activities, and age of consent has been established. The means of the interaction is irrelevant, non-consensual participation of certain activities is illegal, and laws must mean something and must be enforced equally.
> Hormonally unstable kids going through puberty who will often stop at nothing
That is irrelevant. If we can stop one kid from interacting with a pedophile or having life-long psychological issues, it's a win. and honestly results are irrelevant here, the means is not a way to justify the ends. the means here exist because it's the law, society has decided it's wrong. If you think kids should watch porn, that's a different story and it would be same as agreeing they should be sleeping with adult prostitutes or get into strip clubs. The internet doesn't change what's happening. Watching a naked stripper in person and watching that same woman do the same thing on a screen are not different types of non-consensual sexual activities.
Your argument about "they'll just want it more" is not correct either. The same argument has been tried with alcohol and cigarettes. Right now the alcohol industry is suffering because Gen-Z don't want to drink, same with smoking. All the efforts to curb those are paying off. Gen-Z are much more prudish and seek out social conservatism because they're seeing the penalty of this reckless disregard to the harms being done to a person's mind.
It used to be boomers and older generations would say "look at me, i grew up being beaten near-death and I turned out ok" too, anecdotal experience doesn't make things right.
> California AB 1043
I don't know much about it, but restricting social media and internet access to kids is happening globally, and for a good reason too.
Just consider one thing in this discussion: it isn't about being a prude, but about actual harm, actual suffering, actual abuse that's happening.
> So while I would love to just have sensible parental controls, nobody is actually really trying to enshrine this into law. It seems like they're mostly concerned about lobbying to push the responsibility elsewhere.
Parents have a responsibility, but so does every member of society. You have a responsiblity to not hand over a child a gun, poison, alcohol, keys to your vehicle,etc.. when you interact with others you are responsible for your part of that interaction. You don't get to flash your private parts at children, and you don't get to do that same thing through a screen either. Being over the internet, again, does not change what's happening. Things being terrible since the dawn of the internet because laws not catching up to tech, doesn't make those terrible things acceptable.
> So I do apologize for maybe seeming a bit dismissive about this issue, but personally I already know it's coming from the wrong place
I don't disagree that this is coming from the wrong place, at least in the US. But the only reason we're talking about it is because the problem it is solving is very real and extremely pressing. It has widespread societal support. As I keep mentioning on HN, there are privacy preserving ways that don't involve 3rd parties or the government tracking what sites you visit. But we're not having that discussion, we're letting Meta and Elon musk solve the problem and destroy what little is left of the good side of the internet. Law makers are not being presented with alternatives. I demand my lawmakers solve this problem one way or the other! it is not ok, if I can stop one vicitm of sex trafficking, one victim of pedos, one person from forming an unhealthy sexual mindset and runing their lives (see all the "looksmaxing" people now for example), it's worth it. I wish I won't have go give up my privacy and what little I cherish about the internet, but I am fine doing only work on a computer and going back to the pre-internet way of doing things if that is the price. But there is no need for that, there is a way everyone arguing in good-faith wins. We can pay anonymously with crypto, and authenticate with fido2/yubikey just fine, homomorphic encryption exists, EMV payment cards already implement a challenge-response authentication, the tech is there to solve this and a whole lot of other things but we're letting Meta solve it with a 3rd party id verification system that involves passports and id cards, and facial recognition, and surveillance instead.
> Because we can't get a handle on how to stop the 20% of people in the first 20% of their lives from accessing inappropriate content on devices and internet connections that WE FUCKING GAVE THEM! Before we've even attempted to quantify how harmful unfettered Internet access is to adolescents, or hell, how Helpful it is.
Harmful content, not merely inappropriate. You can't reasonably prevent access to an internet connected device. To say that parents should do something but not anyone else silly, both parties have a responsibility. if someone interacts with you, you are responsible for how you respond. And it isn't only children, same applies with those that are mentally incapacitated (we just use "but the kids" because it's easier to make the same point). The problem is there, your response being "we shouldn't solve it" is only letting those with bad intentions solve it in a way that benefits their evil intent.
Lastly, don't believe in any movement, the whole idea that you have to be for or against a thing wholesale is severe epidemic. Things get worse and worse because of it. Democracy is dying because of this as well. Find the courage and endurance to keep asking critical questions, keep debating, keep convincing your peers of not just this but so many other topics. Either we are governed by those who appeal to our emotions, or by those who appeal to our reason.