Comment by dv_dt
15 hours ago
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.
No, obviously not, and this is a completely glib argument.
Who is suggesting people 'show their papers' to go into a public square?
Literally nobody.
It really demonstrates how bad the analogy is - so much so that it's not even analogy.
The 'social controls' on the 'public square' are limited by a few laws (aka directed violence) but apart from that you can say as you like, kids can as well - it's where parents can be parents.
And - don't have problem with kids in the public square.
We have a very real problem with kids on social media, verifiable, scientific.
Kids are depressed, distracted, they bully each other, they're creeped on, and they're not yet in the business having serious discussions about 'Mein Kampf' - they're kids.
Everything in kids lives is introduced in an 'age appropriate' fashion - literally everything.
Given the toxicity of social media, it's a 'primary concern' for one of those gated things.
This is not even an argument - the only argument is 'the slippery slope'.
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If that’s how you interpreted my post, I can only hypothesis that you didn’t read it. I can’t think of another explanation.
I actually like the traditional public square model: you have anonymity most of the time, but it’s not some absolute shield you can abuse to be an obnoxious prick. The police can intervene, but the intervention happens in the public square too.
People publish entire books anonymously.
Yes, and plenty of people have spoken in the public square anonymously too, because the police didn't feel the need to arrest them.
Publishing a book anonymously in the public square still means someone has to physically manufacture it, distribute it, convince you to read it, and pay for all of this. All these steps are subject to interdiction by the police.
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).
It literally does - and you just admitted it.
The point is that 'even the local library' enacts rules and social conventions - not that they're exhaustively and acutely enforced in all corners.
No 4chan section in the library?
You might wonder why it doesn't have vast array of avant guard adult content, porn or art with really aggressive themes and people calling each other the n-word?
In society we have 'age related' conventions all over the place ... including your Library.
This is the absolute worst of HN, where people dissolve into Reddit-like discussions of bad meatphors and totally out of context hair splitting.
I just can't believe anyone here has any relationship with the reality of children, teaching or parenting whatsoever. It's the same argument made by the 'drugs should be legal and accessible' crowd - completely oblivious to the instantaneous massive health epidemic we'd have with opioids and fentanyl, or the 'anti vaxer' crowd - narrow ideological arguments about expression disconnected from any kind of reality or nuance.
There's a variation of social media that will be fine for the kids, they can be exposed to more into their late teens. Parents that want to opt out, will de facto be allowed to - and there is always a slippery slope with every law.
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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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--> Your local library fought for your right to read literature of some kind.
---> They did not fight for your right to gang up on others and call them the n-word, to spread lies and slander about people, to harass children and expose them to creeps and pedophiles, to inundate children with hyper-targeted advertising, or 'Andrew Tate 'how to beat women' seminars'.
Nobody is pushing for a ban on social media so that the kids will be stopped from reading 'Judy Bloom' stories about a girl's 'first period'.
It's disingenuous to suggest that this has anything to do with the causes your librarians stand for.
Literally the opposite - your librarians are creating essentially 'safe spaces' for kids so they can read and be civil.
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