Welcome to today’s edition of “Paul asks you to hold the follow thoughts simultaneously, despite their being in tension.”
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3. Control is a key concept here. I don’t want corporations controlling kids, but I’m not keen on regulators doing that any more than absolutely necessary — or even parents! (And yes, I am a parent.) The goal of raising healthy kids should be for them to develop healthy autonomy.
True, we don’t let toddlers wander onto the freeway so they can learn for themselves why that’s bad — but if control has a place in caring for kids, it should be carefully circumscribed, and always pointed in the direction of autonomy. Beware authoritarian tendencies in the nurturing of children.
4. Philosophy of child-rearing aside, cries of “We must protect the children from [large, nebulous social threat]!!!” almost always become Trojan Horses, even if they don’t start out that way. The track record of such movements is just •terrible•. My alarm bells go off at that even if I agree that the topic at hand is in fact a problem.
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4. Philosophy of child-rearing aside, cries of “We must protect the children from [large, nebulous social threat]!!!” almost always become Trojan Horses, even if they don’t start out that way. The track record of such movements is just •terrible•. My alarm bells go off at that even if I agree that the topic at hand is in fact a problem.
5. Online spaces, including social media, are especially important in connecting kids who feel isolated with others who are like them. This has long been especially true for kids who are any and every variety of queer, and especially especially for trans kids. These kids may have no avenues in their own lives to even •acknowledge• their identity, much less find •support• for it. Sometimes online community can save lives.
Awareness of this puts 3 and 4 in a harsh and unfavorable light.
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5. Online spaces, including social media, are especially important in connecting kids who feel isolated with others who are like them. This has long been especially true for kids who are any and every variety of queer, and especially especially for trans kids. These kids may have no avenues in their own lives to even •acknowledge• their identity, much less find •support• for it. Sometimes online community can save lives.
Awareness of this puts 3 and 4 in a harsh and unfavorable light.
6. Further damning items 3 and 4, centralizing technological control is dangerous; systems like those propped up by the current age verification mania are the infrastructure of an authoritarian panopticon regardless of their putative purpose.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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6. Further damning items 3 and 4, centralizing technological control is dangerous; systems like those propped up by the current age verification mania are the infrastructure of an authoritarian panopticon regardless of their putative purpose.
And yet for all this, item 1 is still true.
I’m not arguing for some specific answer to that; I’m just arguing that whatever we do, we need to hold items 2-6 in mind while we do it.
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Welcome to today’s edition of “Paul asks you to hold the follow thoughts simultaneously, despite their being in tension.”
1. Social media in its popular form is socially toxic and psychologically dangerous — probably for everyone, certainly for children and adolescents. The evidence on this is compelling, and in my view is not just moral panic reified as research. It’s probably a bad idea for kids / teens to be using it. (And again…maybe all of us.)
It’s also, imo, absurd to think that a date on a calendar all of a sudden makes someone impervious to the dangers of social media.
If you want to protect anyone, then protect everyone.
And keep an eye on what social network giants are spending their lobbying money on - a lot goes to age-gating proposals as “solutions”.
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And yet for all this, item 1 is still true.
I’m not arguing for some specific answer to that; I’m just arguing that whatever we do, we need to hold items 2-6 in mind while we do it.
I guess I •will• gesture in a specific direction, however:
Item 2 (“it’s toxic by design, for profit”) points in the direction of some very different answers than the ones currently making their way through legislatures, regulatory bodies, school, and parenting circles.
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I guess I •will• gesture in a specific direction, however:
Item 2 (“it’s toxic by design, for profit”) points in the direction of some very different answers than the ones currently making their way through legislatures, regulatory bodies, school, and parenting circles.
@inthehands still mourning Cohost, though it had some of its own issues
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It’s also, imo, absurd to think that a date on a calendar all of a sudden makes someone impervious to the dangers of social media.
If you want to protect anyone, then protect everyone.
And keep an eye on what social network giants are spending their lobbying money on - a lot goes to age-gating proposals as “solutions”.
@maya_b
There are some solid enough cognitive development arguments to make about age-based guidance for a variety of things, but…yeah, there’s no magic line, and age-gating is certainly not a solution to my item 2, which I think is the real heart of so much of the problem. -
@Fishercat
That and similar, sure; the broader principle here is “let’s protect them from the things we do that hurt all of us, so maybe they don’t keep doing them quite so much” -
6. Further damning items 3 and 4, centralizing technological control is dangerous; systems like those propped up by the current age verification mania are the infrastructure of an authoritarian panopticon regardless of their putative purpose.
@inthehands
Yes. Just look at Meta lobbying for the age verification bills. Surveillance capitalism coopting the state to force individuals to follow Meta's desire for single universal online identity. -
2. This danger / toxicity is not a necessary, intrinsic property of social media; it happened by •design•. Social interaction doesn’t suddenly become a new kind of psychologically toxic just because it happens on a screen. That happens when huge amounts of investment money pour into exploiting the human vulnerability of humans, weaponizing our own psychology to turn our social needs into a money pump, sucking us dry for profit. It’s a business model in the same category as casinos and diet pills.
@inthehands #HenryFarrell and #CosmaShalizi may disagree. (I haven't read this article yet..)
"Bias, Skew and Search Engines Suffice to Explain Online Toxicity"
https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/bias-skew-and-search-engines-are-sufficient-to-explain-online-toxicity/
https://bactra.org/notebooks/actually-dr-internet.html -
I guess I •will• gesture in a specific direction, however:
Item 2 (“it’s toxic by design, for profit”) points in the direction of some very different answers than the ones currently making their way through legislatures, regulatory bodies, school, and parenting circles.
@inthehands Estonia’s government recently came out and said something along these lines: the problem is not that social media is specifically bad for minors, and age gating is not going to fix it. The things that make it bad for minors make it nas for *everyone* and they are deliberate, fixable, design choices that can be prohibited by law.
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@inthehands Estonia’s government recently came out and said something along these lines: the problem is not that social media is specifically bad for minors, and age gating is not going to fix it. The things that make it bad for minors make it nas for *everyone* and they are deliberate, fixable, design choices that can be prohibited by law.
@MisuseCase
I would be interested to learn more! -
I guess I •will• gesture in a specific direction, however:
Item 2 (“it’s toxic by design, for profit”) points in the direction of some very different answers than the ones currently making their way through legislatures, regulatory bodies, school, and parenting circles.
@inthehands Honestly, it should be clear that this is not an inherent fact of 'socializing online' to most of us in the 'were online before 2007 or so' age range?
Not that there weren't toxic communities and dangers then - I def got into some sketchy shit as a kid spending a lot of time online in the early 00's - but... unholy fuck has it gotten worse since shit like facebook crushed all the forums and shifted everything to their centralized corporate hellscapes. -
@inthehands Honestly, it should be clear that this is not an inherent fact of 'socializing online' to most of us in the 'were online before 2007 or so' age range?
Not that there weren't toxic communities and dangers then - I def got into some sketchy shit as a kid spending a lot of time online in the early 00's - but... unholy fuck has it gotten worse since shit like facebook crushed all the forums and shifted everything to their centralized corporate hellscapes.@inthehands Not that 'forums' specifically are the answer - but, self-managed independent communities go a long way for keeping things less horrible.
Decentralized services & options (masto, xmpp, IRC, etc.) tend to be a lot less toxic and miserable,
And from the side of like... keeping people (kid or otherwise) safe - having them able to report issues and have something be *actually fucking done about it, by a member of the community* does more than regulations and ID-scans ever could. -
@maya_b
There are some solid enough cognitive development arguments to make about age-based guidance for a variety of things, but…yeah, there’s no magic line, and age-gating is certainly not a solution to my item 2, which I think is the real heart of so much of the problem.absolutely.
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