Europe should regulate Big Tech instead of banning kids from social media, Estonia says

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Apprehensive_Emu9240@reddit

The problem with regulation is that it requires someone to lay down the rules of morality that kids are allowed to be exposed to. This is not something you can disentangle from political conviction. A single-party nation, such as China, can do this but it doesn't fit European democracies.

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Freenore@reddit

They're trying to legislate away a problem that can only be solved by the people themselves. The parents themselves will have to realise this, and also have a good of, as you says, morality of what is permissible, and keep their kids away from it.

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dragery@reddit

Regulation doesn't have to mean a morality filter. It could be regulating never-ending scrolling, manicured feeds, algorithm-based sorting- the things that make social media toxic and addictive.

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DeSynthed@reddit

It inevitably becomes a morality filter over time. Once the regulation is in place, it is almost impossible for political movements to not leverage it to push their agenda. See book bans in schools / public libraries.

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Elbaggetto@reddit

How is books a relevant example?

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8_t3mpu5@reddit

im sure there would be quite some easy things that stand out, were there would be no discussion, its this sentiment that stopped us from having any meaningful guardrails at all, they can do everything and dont really get made accountable for any of the damage done, to minors or not

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berryer@reddit

You would think, but just look how things went when they tried to remove a comic featuring a blowjob from school libraries (Gender Queer)

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Acrobatic-Jump1105@reddit

Lol where's the profit in that?

You gotta start kids off early with the expectation that the state controls their behavior and that the state is powerless against the big mean corporations that "nobody can regulate"

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LeGrandLucifer@reddit

They're using kids as an excuse to take away your rights again, stop falling for it. The point of banning kids isn't to protect kids. It's to force people to identify themselves on the internet.

https://i.imgur.com/ca2Q1zP.jpeg

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Krish12703@reddit

I mean google knows who I am.

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lukeskylicker1@reddit

"I will never be able to make the risk of injury/death from driving a car be zero. Therefore, there is no point in me taking personal action in minimizing risk by wearing a seat belt, nor by stopping any potentially malicious actor from cutting my brakes."

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NotAdoctor_but@reddit

I came here to say this. The point is legal mass surveillance, not protecting anyone.

Yes we all know they're already doing it, but there are still barriers which bother them.

They want full control.

Privacy is an essential right, they dilute it and erode it with all these talks, making people numb to what's really happening, so that we wont protest against these abuses.

This is not ok, this is straight up dystopian nightmare.

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Statharas@reddit

Absolutely. If anyone thinks that adding "Are you over 18?" on porn websites worked is an absolute moron who must not serve the public in any way.

At the same time, Europe needs to educate parents and children on the dangers of the internet, and help children and parents build more trusting relationships, because if a child thinks they're doing a bad thing holy hell that erodes this relationship.

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LanaDelHeeey@reddit

Yeah buddy I’m willing to allow a teenager to watch porn if that means I don’t get put through a dystopian databank. I watched porn as a teen. I’m fine. It’s really not worth it.

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kimana1651@reddit

Both.

Social media is designed to be additive. Hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of hours of design, and you expect a 13 year old to complete with that? Addictive harmful things should be banned outright, if not then banned from children.

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eggplantpot@reddit

This should be on the parents. Having to upload your ID to sketchy Palantir backed databases is crazy.

Where does it stop? Some people commit crimes, should we have 100% of our lives recorded with Meta glasses to protect the potential victims?

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YZJay@reddit

If we put all effort in raising a child solely on the parents, we wouldn’t have publicly funded learning programs, children’s parks, age restrictions on alcohol etc, since “it should be rhetorical parents’ responsibility to monitor their children.”

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eggplantpot@reddit

And I agree to that, but you realize the outcome for everyone else on those initiatives arent as bad or intrusive as what they suggest for social media?

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kimana1651@reddit

I guess you are not a smoker then? The rules for smoking and hard drug use are very much intrusive.

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ChillAhriman@reddit

Banning minors from smoking doesn't require a dystopian control system where people lose their anonimity in everyday conversations to a degree that would have made the head of the Stasi continuously scream from pleasure for 20 hours straight.

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kimana1651@reddit

So by banning social media you lose the ability to talk to your wife in your house? Oh wait you don't. You think the internet is back in the early 2000s during its wild west phase. You already don't have anonymity on any social media platform you use. All your data is already processes. Pretending that facebook, or the hackers that breach their security, has your best interest at heart is naive.

If you want anonymous communication there are apps for that.

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LanaDelHeeey@reddit

If you want anonymous communication there are apps for that.

For now. Until they get taken down for non-compliance with age verification laws.

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eggplantpot@reddit

Don’t you see a bit of a difference between your ID being checked by a human once to purchase and uploading your ID to a third party where it stays forever connected to your online footprint and sold to the best bidder, governments included? Or are you being willfully obtuse?

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kimana1651@reddit

So you want a better online ID system? Yeah they already exist and will eventually be pushed out in all western countries.

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YZJay@reddit

Like with most things, there are middle grounds, solutions that are not as invasive as the ones who garner the most clicks.

While the unfortunate reality is that most implementations are rather needlessly invasive and prone to personal security breaches, there are organizations pushing for zero knowledge verification (local user controlled system tells the platform only one thing: Either the user is of age, or not) that has the support from hardware manufacturers, but needs legislative support, and in turn, public support, for these systems to be accepted as forms of age verification.

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eggplantpot@reddit

I’d get behind this but I feel these won’t ever see the support cause the ulterior motive for these measures has nothing to do with protecting children. I’d like to be happily proven wrong though.

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austin_8@reddit

I agree it’s the best answer, but I think you’re right. The people that support ID checks (governments and authoritarians) will want methods that keep the data and the groups that are against ID checks (privacy advocates) won’t trust the government to ensure everything is anonymous no matter what system is used.

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CrabUser@reddit

He doesnt agree with web service able to collect user data. He does not put all the responsibility onto the parent.

Also the risk of exposing kid to bad stub is less dangerous than the risk of leaking user data on the internet.

Kids can be taught but user data that was leaked on the internet cant be reversed.

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halcyon_aporia@reddit

So you're in favour of no age restrictions for buying alcohol and cigarettes?

After all, this should be on the parent.

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SamuelClemmens@reddit

Sure, but it can be both.

Its been fine to say "kids can't gamble because its addictive" and the fact that it was illegal meant companies didn't try to target kids and it wasn't a serious concern if a few kids found a way to gamble (anymore than a few kid stealing beers).

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Mozkozrout@reddit

Exactly. Besides we all know the kids aren't the real reason. It's the Palantír and similar (governments too) who want their surveillance piece of cake.

Did you guys catch the controversy with discord ? And I don't mean how they leaked the IDs

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insite@reddit

It’s a series of problems. But I do believe a lot has to do with our antitrust environment. We have plenty of antitrust laws. It’s our enforcement of them that’s the problem.

You need big corporations to do things that governments can’t do for various reasons. It’s easy to get carried away with them. But when a small number of the same interests connect to too many industries, it’s a slow creep that starts eating your system alive.

Social media CAN be better. It CAN be healthy. If we applied the same rules to social media that we do to TV broadcasts, the problem would diminish quickly.

You may recall Janet Jackson’s boob being reveled during a Super Bowl over a decade ago. TV rules changed practically overnight.

Yes, Americans are too prudish, yet we’re okay with violence everywhere. 🤦🏻‍♂️ But the boob outcry was mostly caused by one organization filing many individual complaints over and over, thus taking advantage of a loophole in our system.

Present day social media is designed to be addictive, but the American work culture also forces parents to be worry 24/7 about work or whether they’re being too strict or not strict enough. It feels like our heads are always spinning with things to worry about.

Americans are inherently distrustful of government. Even there’s a rule we want enforced, if a member of government promotes it, it’s doubly distrusted. When we get upset with a corporation, it’s too easy to shift the narrative away from regulations as part of the solution.

There’s a well-known effect that broadcasting a suicide occurrence makes more suicides likely to happen. It’s easy to connect those same dots to gun rampages. But special interests pour money into news sources to confuse the conversation, so it goes nowhere.

If one parent enforces the rule, and other parents don’t’ It’s basically contraband that more kids will find a way around. But parents won’t band together, because we’re divided by news that is supported by a small number of seemingly disconnected interests that don’t want us to agree.

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eggplantpot@reddit

What’s the controversy? I only hears about the ID leaks and have seen many videos about some of the crazy servers it hosts

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Mozkozrout@reddit

Well a hacker group found some exposed frontend API for discord. Discord uses a persona verification platform. And they were able to see where it connects. And apparently when you verify your age on discord it goes through over 170 different databases, checks if you are in a terrorist database, if you are a politically exposed person, how likely it is that you'll commit a fraud, it also scans your pictures for your face and also stuff in the background and all sorts of other stuff. It also connected to endpoints hosted on us.gov. so umm yeah, dystopian as hell.

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eggplantpot@reddit

Ah great. Yet there are people here arguing that all platforms should have this. Probably some of the same people who criticize china for their social scores.

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serpenta@reddit

Why smoking and drinking is not on the parents? Why isn't gambling?

There will always be some crime. Your analogy is flawed. We don't strive to eliminate SM use, we are trying to lower the impact of an enormous problem that will fuck over our economy and your retirement, in the long run.

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kimchifreeze@reddit

Yeah, because what happens when the kid turns 15? They too will have to upload their ID to sketchy PLTR sites.

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kimana1651@reddit

Online IDs is a problem that has already been solved in places like China. It will eventually be solved in the west as well when they find a solution that matches their culture.

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kimana1651@reddit

This should be on the parents.

So should underage working, drinking, smoking and prostitution? Some things society has decided are too danger or grave to allow parents to decide.

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Dunk546@reddit

"Banned outright" sounds good but it's also impossible.

Just take a look at the war on drugs. Or prostitution. Or slavery.

Banning things doesn't make them go away. It just forces them underground where you can't regulate them.

We could try changing the regulations so that social media companies are legally liable for harm caused on their platform, but I think the main thing to do is educate people as to the harms. That's how we got people to stop smoking, for example.

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A_Witty_Name_@reddit

This is the exact sentiment these governments and companies are hoping for. I'm not going to support the erosion of everyone's freedoms because we need to "protect the children" while their parents do nothing.

I'd like to prepare our children to thrive in a world made for adults, not restrict adults to live in a world made for children.

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kimana1651@reddit

Yeah big companies are really hoping that we regulate them more.

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gnocchiGuili@reddit

Social media is designed to be additive.

Yeah, that’s exactly why we need to regulate them in order not be addictive. We can regulate the algorithm, we can regulate a lot of what makes them addictive today.

Also, 15 yo understand social medias way better than 60+ yo do. It’s just reactionary policy.

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keepthepace@reddit

Big tech's social media is designed to be addictive. Because it relies on advertisement and "engagement".

Fediverse social media is not designed to be addictive.

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variaati0@reddit

Well part of the regulation would be "you shall make social media be not addictive". "You are allowed to use chronological feed and that is it."

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Jokers_friend@reddit

Meta was recently found to be liable for making their platform addictive - a landmark ruling. Legal experts can build on this and develop laws that force social media platforms to develop non-addictive platforms for e.g. kids.

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Rukoo@reddit

Maybe just be better parents. I didn't have a phone until I was 17, and only had it because I was in sports all the time.

Culture today is to blame everyone else for their kids issues. No, its parents that give electronics to their kids because its hard to watch them 24/7.

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Ben-A-Flick@reddit

I think this needs to extend past kids. Facebook caused a genocide in Myanmar because people were not used to social media then with Facebook preloading it onto all smart phones and making it cost no data to use their use instantly skyrocketed. Then if course manipulation occurred and eventually a genocide because most didn't realize that news can be fake or real.

I think we need a complete regulation overhaul for the tech industry in Europe with a yearly committee of experts that recommend changes that get voted on. Make the fines multiple times the profit for ignoring them and start to invest and build out a European equivalent for Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Google over the coming decade. We have the resources to build the tech future we want so why aren't we?

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hiddentalent@reddit

You're simultaneously saying "let's hinder development with bureaucracy and regulation and the constant threat of fines" and "why isn't Europe building the tech future?"

It's really weird to me that Europeans don't see the irony in that. The reason Europe doesn't have many leading tech products is exactly because of your bias for regulating everything.

Building things takes a couple of ingredients: capital, expertise, and infrastructure. Europe has expertise. But capital is going to go where it finds the best opportunities, and most of Europe is certainly is not that. And infrastructure means not just physical stuff but also legal and regulatory stability. You can't make long-term investments if a "committee of experts" is going to change the rules on you once a year. I mean, unless the investment plan includes significant lobbying of those experts, which is just a more inefficient and corrupt version of what we have today.

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Elbaggetto@reddit

Building things along well defined guidelines is often easier. Yes it is more expensive to exploit fewer people. When the bill comes due for those who have, there will be new opportunities on a market hungry for something similar but trustworthy.

There won't be any unpredictable yearly changes. There haven't been in other sectors regulated like this. Public broadcasters in Europe are a great example. They are often too slow even. We are talking about regulations such as: Protections for whistleblowers, when they unveil actual misconduct. The only frequent updates would include things like what counts as serious enough misconduct to warrant violating an NDA.

European bureaucracy has protected American patents. Thank us for that instead of buying Chinese rip-offs.

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