[Marsymars]

> If you think these imaginary laws would only apply to Facebook and TikTok

We can literally write "these laws apply only apply to Facebook and TikTok" into the laws.

Or base it on sites that have advertising. Products/services that are targeted to minors shouldn't be permitted to have advertisements anyway.

I don't find "We've done a bad job with X so we should abandon X rather than attempting to do X better" to be a compelling argument on its own.

[Aurornis]

> We can literally write "these laws apply only apply to Facebook and TikTok" into the laws.

I don’t find it useful to imagine laws like this. This isn’t what happens in real law making.

I’m talking about real, actual laws that are getting passed.

It’s not going to be perfectly targeted at websites you don’t use while leaving everything you like free, open, and privacy preserving.

It’s really important that we’re being realistic and honest about this. Inviting bad laws into the internet with fantasies about how they’ll be carefully scoped and limited to other websites is not realistic.

[Marsymars]

The DMA designated gatekeepers seems to be pretty well-targeted as a real law that's currently on the books.

It applies solely to Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft.

[Aurornis]

Going by that list, YouTube and GitHub would be impacted. They have social features and primarily host user-generated content.

Imagining that these laws will be precisely written to avoid any services you like is a dangerous fallacy. That's how people rationalize bad laws.

Remember when all of the surveillance laws were only going to target the terrorists? Look how far that drifted.

[tsimionescu]

What would be the point? If the goal is to "protect the children", then banning only 2 companies from providing social media to kids will do nothing after at most a few years - kids will just move on to the new social media that is not yet banned.

Of course, this says nothing about the many kids who will be hurt by being denied access to social media, such as the many gay or trans kids living in conservative families that found some solace in online communities that would accept the real selves they otherwise have to hide.

[Marsymars]

> What would be the point?

Ideal scenario? Meta decides it's not worth operating in my country, geoblocks us, and pulls their apps from the app stores.

I'm sympathetic to the people who get real value from meta platforms, but on balance, I see meta as a massively negative force, and their business model and leadership make it effectively un-fixable.