Comment by bluegatty
16 hours ago
No, we have any number of social constructs around 'age and responsibility' - driving, alcohol, pubs, porn, excessive violence and so much more.
It's bereft to suggest that we wouldn't nominally have those in the digital world.
And, people are concerned about nth order effects, it's a huge point of debate.
Yes - there is a huge slippery slope argument to be made, but it's an argument ... to be made. There are all sorts of ways of doing this.
Social media age verification is like none of those - social media is the modern public square and age verification is asking everybody to show their papers before participating in free speech in the public. It will have a chilling effect on free speech and will be a tool for authoritarian control
Social media, as we have it today, has nothing to do with a public square.
A public square does not have trolls and bots from across the globe teleporting in and out. A public square does not amplify the most divisive comments and drown out your friends's holiday photos because the former makes the ad space more profitable.
A poor analogy.
The public square has never been properly anonymous. If you start saying things which contravene laws or the rights of others, the police have been able to capture you and unmask your identity, if concealed.
So the solution for criminals in the public is for everybody to show their papers walking into a public square? It is not, we have requirements for police process like warrants and a process for determining the requirements for urgent conditions of arrest.
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People publish entire books anonymously.
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Was there ever a public square where children could participate anonymously among adults? (I’m imagining three Dickensian urchins in a trench coat giving a speech in Hyde Park.)
The public square was in communities small enough where townspeople knew each other, and so speech was not anonymous besides those who penned (but not those who distributed) unattributed pamphlets. Moreover, if the speech you were pronouncing was beyond the pale of the community’s values, you could face retribution for it, whether judicial or extra-judicial like tarring and feathering. Even in the nascent USA whose political elite was high on Lockean ideas of natural rights and freedom of speech, the public square was never a free-for-all.
My supposedly modern government has problems with all kinds of speech and this is a lazy excuse. Government needs really hard boundaries and not being able to identify someone who perhaps said something controversial is a pretty good one.
You are right about the public square. That is pretty much what governments want to enforce. To silence everyone not in line, like in medieval towns.
Social media as it has become now is a shitshow where a minority of angry and/or disingenuous posters dominate discourse.
Twitter (X) was never the public square, and now it's little more than a playground for propagandists. The rest of us do well to ignore it, and it seems that even the 'legacy' media are starting to realise the days of breathlessly reporting on tweet-storms weren't great for anyone.
In a recent survey of under sixteen year olds in a place where an under sixteen social media ban exists asked how many of them used social media found that 80% were still using it. Do you actually need a login to consume social media? The answer to that is no. You can doom scroll all you want on sites like Reddit with no account whatsoever.
Your local library has age and ID requirements.
Your local 'town square' has 'some rules'.
Parents are entirely able to overcome any of this if they so choose - including feeding their kids alcohol, guns etc. - and so the freedom does materially exist.
Social Media isn't a place for free expression - it's mostly toxic - like exposing your children to the most vile, inauthentic people.
The more genteel places, frankly, won't have much in the way of age restrictions.
Entire nations are banning social media for kids because it's just not healthy - the teachers want it, the parents want it, the data seems to support it.
I think you're right to be (very concerned) but this is a necessary discussion. As a teacher.
> Your local library has age and ID requirements.
It literally doesn't (at least not if I don't intend to borrow a book and take it home; if I stay there and read, I can do so without any ID. I only need ID to get a library card, and I don't need that to enter and read a book).
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My local librarian did not restrict my books to the kids section when I was a kid. Also librarians have fought civil legal battles to keep reading activities anonymous. Libraries are unlike the restrictions and risks of the proposed legislation being discussed for social media
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