Comment by echelon
5 days ago
I'd seen all the shock websites by age 12. Kids love to prank each other.
None of this is a real harm. The real harms are the government being able to put a muzzle on speech, track who says what, and begin to cordon off areas of thought and expression.
You might think it's a win that this is happening, but you won't be the one in charge and you won't have a say how it's used against you.
I don't think it is a win, I'm not sure how you got that from my comment. There should be enough room for nuance to acknowledge that the internet is uniquely unhealthy for young people. I don't find 'I saw all the bad stuff and look how great I turned out' very compelling.
If empirical research showed that some kind of intervention would be helpful, I'd be in favor of it even if it comes at a cost. But I don't think age-gating will prove effective as an intervention. If anyone needs to be reined in, it is tech companies that exploit attention and gather data, and the age-gating controversy is a costly distraction.
Shock sites are materially different to the harm kids do to one another on social media.
> Shock sites are materially different to the harm kids do to one another
This would be the "fixed" version of your comment. The social media bit is irrelevant.
Kids have always been assholes to other kids. I took the school bus a few times, and the older neighborhood kids tried to chase me down, beat me, and piss on me. That was before the internet.
You can't make up for other parents' bad parenting by trying to invent a system to bubble wrap all the kids. You teach your own kids to be strong in the face of adversity, to grow a thick skin, and to stand up for themselves.
Yeah I grew up in the kinda bad part of town taking the bus every day. I got bullied. I never had someone generate pornographic images of me though.
The internet is just society now. it's not something different. You get privacy in your home, but you don't get to go out into public and say things without it being attributed to your identity. The things you say publicly are intrinsically linked with your public identity. Why should online be any different?
Just because you survived it doesn't mean that it's "not real harm." I am sympathetic to privacy concerns, but the downsides also need to be taken seriously and mitigated where it's possible to do so without critically compromising privacy.
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