The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
<comicbookguy>Well actually, nicotine has been found to have some antipsychotic properties, though obviously you don't need to use the most toxic delivery method.</comicbookguy>
You can find some positives in just about anything of you look desperately enough.
This isn't an actual argument against the point being made about the problem with social media being how it's run. And given that there are people alive today because of the lifeline social media gave them, the reflexive attitude of "social media is inherently evil and bad and harmful" really needs to die in a fire.
The antipsychotic properties of nicotine have likely saved lives, too. Smoking is also a great way to meet people and can be a major catalyst to your success and having a loving family.
The thing is that we need to find ways to get the good parts without the horrible parts.
And to be clear, I was saying that for the most part…this forum does that.
It can be a lifeline for people in need, it can be a way for people to reach beyond their local and possibly repressive communities to find others like them, it can be a social outlet (though not a complete one), all while having almost none of the “horrible parts” of modern social media.
But of course it also has tons of limitations and doesn’t scale well. So suggesting “old school forums” as the solution to modern social media is a bit like suggesting homesteading as a solution to overly processed groceries.
Still worth acknowledging (back to the post that started this) that while the PA Forums are at a very technical level “online social media” they are also in many ways about the healthiest form it can possibly take. To the point that “but you’re on social media right now!” as a gotcha isn’t quite fair.
Or am I way off base?
Not to entirely suck up, but if social media had the level and quality of moderation that the PA Forums have, I think the Western world would literally be a different place than it is now. Trump would never have been a presidential candidate, COVID lies would not have killed millions, etc.
Given the poster-to-mod ratio and the way PA D&D Forums burn through them, just Facebook alone would need to employ the entire population of Rhode Island pretty much every year to have the same level and quality of moderation.
And some of those Rhode Islanders SUCK (looks around to see if any Rhode Island forumers take the bait).
Well if other social media platforms had the quality of moderation that these forums have, that could potentially slow down the burnout rate. Part of the issue is that so many places; especially, well known ones, do such a shit job at moderation, that the assholes get it into their heads that they are allowed to be giant pieces of shit in all corners of the internet. That means that any decent moderation is going to get a shit ton of push back from people that absolutely refuse to be moderated.
Proper moderation just about everywhere, particularly on the well known platforms, would cement a major cultural mores that actively discourage people form being giant jackasses on the internet. So moderators would have to deal with less bullshit. Obviously, it won't get rid of all the bullshit because you will always have privileged assholes that feel they can do whatever they want online, without any consequences, that the mods will have to deal with. Also all the gross shit that fuck awful people post online, that isn't readily available to the public.
Well if other social media platforms had the quality of moderation that these forums have, that could potentially slow down the burnout rate. Part of the issue is that so many places; especially, well known ones, do such a shit job at moderation, that the assholes get it into their heads that they are allowed to be giant pieces of shit in all corners of the internet. That means that any decent moderation is going to get a shit ton of push back from people that absolutely refuse to be moderated.
Proper moderation just about everywhere, particularly on the well known platforms, would cement a major cultural mores that actively discourage people form being giant jackasses on the internet. So moderators would have to deal with less bullshit. Obviously, it won't get rid of all the bullshit because you will always have privileged assholes that feel they can do whatever they want online, without any consequences, that the mods will have to deal with. Also all the gross shit that fuck awful people post online, that isn't readily available to the public.
No, it wouldn't. A big chunk of the burnout rate on large sites is things like "endless flood of child porn, gore, and other horrible shit." in order to remove it they end up seeing it a lot. It's legit a trauma hazard.
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited October 16
There is a whole mountain of devices which are banned for citizens in general to possess and minors specifically, banning smart phones for minors is, practically, no different than banning minors from having tobacco or alcohol products. And the bottleneck introduced by having to circumvent that law would be considerable; kids would simply never have the same amount of access to smartphones while underage as they do now, just as the barriers to tobacco and alcohol have made those items far from ubiquitous in the daily lives of most children. Yes, there would be some who would have the means and motivation to circumvent it, but they would be a small percentage of the current minor population. You've gotta know somebody to get the ID, fake the ID far enough to get a credit card so you can get your own account, fake it far enough to get the phone, and then manage to keep all that hidden from the parents. Don't forget the at least hundreds of dollars involved, which is itself a big barrier to a kid under 15. There doesn't even need to be some prohibitive penalty involved; simply confiscating illicit smartphones, which are pricey, would be fine since it means even a determined kid has to somehow secretly gather together hundreds of dollars to start the process all over again.
And most of the reason I consider something like a law against under-15 kids having smartphones is it just cuts right past the whole "what is social media?" issue and removes permanent unlimited access as an option. Sure, kids can still go on a computer and use social media stuff, but that's a whole different ball of wax from having the access in their pocket. It's also something sleazy companies can't bypass by changing how their social media service is constructed or anything like that. And seeing as human children have managed to reach adulthood just fine without a smartphone for, let's see... the last two hundred thousand years or so, lack of access to one is not going to suddenly result in wildly non-functional kids.
Further, it is not at all very young kids who have the presence of mind or judgement to understand how fucked a situation is (such as when cop brutality is involved) to know to record it or at all worth making those kids an ongoing target of various kinds of predators just so they might, in one out of tens of thousands of kids, be able to record one bad cop situation. It does happen, but it's dang rare compared to the number of videos I've seen about those situations from kids in their upper teens and, immensely more common, outright adults. And there would still be kids with camera phones, they would just be older kids who have had more time to mature and be less of a target to the elements that definitively, factually, regularly predate on them.
Because most of the argument I'm seeing against regulating social media access by minors is "it's hard so don't even try to do it". No. This is powerful shit and parts of it seriously harm children. It does have good aspects as well, but those good aspects go hand-in-hand with people being decent and understanding to treat each other decently. Instant around-the-clock access to social media is not a panacea of wisdom for children any more than it is for adults and they are factually far more susceptible to the hazards. And while I don't hold that my notions on the subject are in any way the solutions, there is an absolute and hurried need to do something to shield kids from the absolute torrent of mathematically-perfected trash sent their way under the current circumstances. Social media isn't inherently bad, but it is hazardous enough that kids should not have unlimited easy access everywhere they go, whatever form that takes and even if it takes us some time to get it right. Far better to have some failed attempts before success than just let things go as-is and twiddle our thumbs and go "well, it's just too hard to enforce this so the kids can just deal with how much harm comes their way."
I think you are seriously undervaluing the extent to which smart phones are just a required part of life and will only become more so. Paying for shit with cash is dying fast. Why bother with physical pamphlets when you can just put up a QR code and bam. Even public services are increasingly focusing more on app or web experiences. And flip phones are not a solution because text communication is rapidly replacing actual phone calls as the primary method of communication.
HamHamJ on
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Are you being serious? I leave my phone at home like 99% of the time. You can do almost anything without a smartphone.
+2
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited October 16
Marijuana is a terrible comparison to make. Marijuana grows almost anywhere, it's small, it's lightweight, it's cheap as shit, and processing weed into something usable is extremely easy. You can't grow smartphones, the ones kids want are expensive as hell, and sourcing that is not going to be something like a kid selling shit out of a locker. Yes, it can be sourced via grey or black market means, but that's expensive shit and it's a lot harder for a kid to drop a grand on a stolen smartphone than a little bag of pot. Heck, it's probably easier to legally buy a temporary burner phone, which is linked to your ID without some circuitous efforts, than it is to illegally buy weed at this point. Trying to get a black market smartphone would be more like trying to get a PS5 when they were hard to get. What kid is going to have a grand or two to pay some black market upcharge for smartphone? Who are they even going to know at school with a ready supply of black market smart phones? Which is also why I don't think anything harsher than confiscation would be needed; if it took six months for a kid to sneak enough money and find the contact to get a smartphone and they lose the thing, they aren't going to be eager to repeat the process.
The inability to define "social media" is also not an issue to me. I have no problem with expending the effort as a society to construct a meaningful definition for the idea as something that can be regulated and enforced. What I'm not doing is saying "it's too fuzzy and hard and limited phone access is too mean to kids so we shouldn't even bother with the attempt". We absolutely can define this shit, it just needs a better and more productive attitude to make the effort. Even then, the regulation should be on companies and not people like you keep assuming. If some kid manages to trick the system, whatever. But if a company makes it easy to bypass the ID system or whatever check they have? You burn their ass for it. Make the predatory companies feeding off the information of kids develop the technology or else be penalized for it. I suggest something like a smartphone ban for minors only as a stopgap to developing something useful and effective, which we can absolutely do.
As for giving your kid a locked-down smartphone, that is a far more useless effort than what I propose. If a device simply doesn't have the hardware for a feature, it can't be unlocked. And while getting a black market smartphone would be a real barrier, I would be surprised if it took a semi-determined kid more than a few days to find somebody who could bypass a software feature like that. It's effectively impossible to secure a device via software if somebody has physical access to it. It really will just come down to whether or not the kid wants to bother with unlocking the phone.
I think you are seriously undervaluing the extent to which smart phones are just a required part of life and will only become more so. Paying for shit with cash is dying fast. Why bother with physical pamphlets when you can just put up a QR code and bam. Even public services are increasingly focusing more on app or web experiences. And flip phones are not a solution because text communication is rapidly replacing actual phone calls as the primary method of communication.
Capitalism will just have to suck up the terrible, terrible burden of continuing to make physical items instead of squeezing that last little extra profit-earning bit of efficiency into everything. The switch to smartphone everything is not a good thing and there are a lot of things where physical access should be mandated by law. "Because it's getting common" is a really shitty reason to lock homeless people out of things like public transportation and simply being able to buy food because they don't have a smartphone to pay and nobody is taking cash. Companies wanting us to use smartphones for everything is the real motivation for smartphones trying to replace everything and, honestly, fuck companies for wanting that shit.
And c'mon, fuckin' Blackberries solved the keyboard-on-a-phone thing like 25 years ago and there's been a million non-smart-phones that included keyboards, that's not even a real issue. Just because we're talking about phones with minimized features does not mean rewinding way the hell back to T9 texting, that's just a ridiculous assumption. A physical keyboard isn't even a necessity, you just need a very very low-end touchscreen-designed phone so it can use touchscreen buttons like everything else. It's no challenge to make it too low-end to run anything but basic tools like texting or calls, either.
As for having a video camera as the reason to give a minor a smartphone because of being worried about cops, the potential threat of smartphone camera to kids from criminals, scammers, and other kids is just ludicrously higher than a cop. Everybody knows about that kid or two or six at their school where their life was ruined by cyber-bullying or leaked photos or videos, but I went to more than dozen school in as many cities and never even talked to a cop until I was old enough to drive. I entirely support the notion of teaching kids to be wary of cops, but cops are simply nowhere near the persistent level of actual threat to kids that smartphone access presents.
And we can begin useful definitions of social media right here. A couple basic items could include any service which shares user-made content, any service which uses algorithm to distribute said content, and any service which openly allows any user to directly address any other user. There, three easy spots to start from and detail.
Anyway, just start with the schools. No smartphones are allowed at school. Banning specific items from school is very much within easy cultural bounds and it's well understood how that works and how to implement it. Pretty sure this is already happening and it could become a top-down push for more districts to implement such policies. The school system also gives an easy outreach to parents to discourage them from allowing their kids to have unrestricted phone access.
Seems to me that keeping kids away from a device is infinitely more possible than remote age verification.
My god dude you're acting like this is the first time in history that a law has forbidden a minor from doing or having something. What the fuck are you talking about?
"Rigorously define all implementation details and edge cases for me, right now in this thread, do it!" like no man. This isn't an unprecedented idea. It's almost banal how many laws along these lines already exist.
+9
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Anyway, just start with the schools. No smartphones are allowed at school. Banning specific items from school is very much within easy cultural bounds and it's well understood how that works and how to implement it. Pretty sure this is already happening and it could become a top-down push for more districts to implement such policies. The school system also gives an easy outreach to parents to discourage them from allowing their kids to have unrestricted phone access.
Seems to me that keeping kids away from a device is infinitely more possible than remote age verification.
I know kids seem to hate it, but I'm entirely supportive of this wave of total bans on smartphone access during school hours (though they seem to have brief limited periods of access during the day, which is fine) to the point of making the kids place the phones in a physical locking device. It's a straightforward solution which makes the secured device the responsibility of students (thus removing the possibility of fuckery from authority figures) and removes the devices as an option for easy cheating and whatnot, which is one of my major concerns of the impacts of smartphones on kids. I've seen stuff with kids fighting the devices and claiming they can easily break them but so what? If it's just you and one other kid with your phone out in class, a teacher is going to see that shit real quick and now there's no cover for it anymore so you just get busted.
The approach doesn't solve the social media issue, but it does strongly curtail the times and ways kids can get in trouble with said phones or otherwise cause major harm to their education.
Bringing banned materials to school is just part of growing up.
Parents give kids phones for a variety of reasons, including for safety and health and little things like catching the bus or finding their friend's house after school. Just removing them is not going to happen. You might be able to get parents to install specific software, but chances are that becomes a spying nightmare.
My god dude you're acting like this is the first time in history that a law has forbidden a minor from doing or having something. What the fuck are you talking about?
"Rigorously define all implementation details and edge cases for me, right now in this thread, do it!" like no man. This isn't an unprecedented idea. It's almost banal how many laws along these lines already exist.
Great, so this should be no biggy to outline how you plan on this law to work and who will be enforcing it.
See, I do actually know how other, similar laws work and as a result I'm immensely curious what the imagined mechanisms if they are indeed meant to be similar are going to be. And you know, the expected outcome since all those laws have a fairly long history of what they actually wind up doing a lot of the time.
The fact you don't actually want to discuss it rather speaks volumes of how you know it would sound.
EDIT: Like let's start with a very simple question here -
What's the punishment, who's enforcing it?
Coz it's weird to propose making something illegal but having no idea how you intend to enforce it.
How what would sound? Again, what the fuck are you talking about, nobody is gonna come to your house and arrest you for letting your kid use your phone. How about like, when you sign up for a phone plan, the device for your kids can't include have data included? How about stores are not allowed to sell smartphones to minors?
Oh and ya know, if the carriers refuse to implement those restrictions to family plans, then uh, the FBI can assassinate the CEO of AT&T until they comply. Because "ViOlEnCe Of tHe StAtE".
Like, it doesn't matter that sufficiently motivated individuals can circumvent the law, or that adults can falsify the records to get their kids the phones anyway. Make them commit to that. It's just discouragement.
I know you are just griping about this because you personally want to get your kid a whole ass smartphone for some reason, so I'm not playing this game any further. Get your kid a phone if you want, nobody here can actually stop you.
I wonder if we're just at the point where we want to argue about things? I mean there's no possible way you can truly believe that social media is a good thing, right? Even ignoring the random side bar discussion on ruining sleep patterns.
You're on social media right now.
I'd disagree with that, at least as far as the definition we're generally using in discussing the topic and issues at hand.
Forums like this predate the idea of "social media" and lack most of its worst...which is to say most harmful...features. This forum is heavily moderated (sometimes, arguably, excessively so). This forum's user base is tiny, and D&D in particular even tinier. This forum has effectively no "algorithmic" functions, the threads on the front page are presented in chronological order of last post and within each thread the conversation is presented entirely chronologically. When you reach the end of a thread, that's it...this forum makes no attempt whatsoever to "suggest" additional content to you and keep you on the platform. It's on you to decide if there's anything else you want to go discuss, or just go on with your life for the day.
That isn't to say that there aren't some harmful aspects of it...I have found myself engaging with this forum somewhat unhealthily once smartphones became a thing and you homps were in my pocket all day every day. At the same time, it's incredibly easy to tag a few conversations you want to engage in, read them to completion, reply to specific individual commenters and comments and then walk away when you're done with that day's conversation. This is a digital space, but functions much more like a pub of sorts (including that "heavy moderation" thing...pubs kick out assholes) than anything we tend to refer to as "social media."
It is in some technical senses "social media," but it's about as healthy a form as that can take I'd say. It bears little to no resemblance to Twitter, Facebook, or even the best Reddit sub.
Like, the worst I can say about this forum on the "social media" front is that many of our conversations will include links to and content from other more mainstream "social media."
Have I occasionally went light on sleep or neglected some necessary tasks in my real life because I was arguing with some silly goose on here (or being said goose)? Of course. But that's arguably little different than staying up watching TV, or playing video games, or whatever. Again, the lack of infinite scroll, a constant content feed, and a never-ending parade of completely random voices* is a pretty big difference.
* - Obviously most of us are very much pseudo-anonymous here, but also many of us have been kicking around here for decades. I have met up with people from here in real life. Compare to the never-ending rotating stream of randos on even the smaller Reddit subs, it's night and day. Like I can say I wanna "lime something for truth" (or salmon for vicious lies!) and half of you know what I'm talking about...and that predates Facebook by half a decade.
Up thread we have people throwing around the term "legally disallowed.." implying they want to write laws. And the point is: "what is social media" is a rather pressingly relevant concern once you say that's what you're going to do.
It is not even remotely clear that this forum isn't social media. Certainly the idea that it's a healthy place is...I'm going to see, questionable depending on who you are and it's not the only forum on the internet. For example, 4chan is basically just terrible forum software but no one here would think it's a good place.
Rinse and repeat for everything and then imagine trying to write something where the power of violence of the state is now going to be aimed at offenders.
In Australia right now the government is working through some idea of banning children from social media, and it's fairly obvious no one has actually thought through how to do it. Because of course it's been decided this means mandatory age verification...which means mandatory user identification for everyone, which functionally means monitoring browser habits more invasively (something Australia already logs and shouldn't be).
And in a practical sense we can ask: who are we going to punish about this? How hard is it to generate a spoofed ID if you want to get onto a platform these days? Not hard to look middle aged if you need to.. So when a 13 year old uploads a fake drivers license, who's responsible? And that matters because under existing laws (which no one is proposing to edit), the 13 year old is guilty of forging official documents. The most likely outcome - which will simply be tested in court - is going to be to punish the 13 year old for a federal crime, and failing that, their parents.
...does any of that sound like we're achieving a positive result for young people?
And is this even a good idea, considering the alternative would be "teenagers simply connect to something which isn't under Australia's jurisdiction at all, and has no vested interest in behaving?".
EDIT: Like if we consider the suggestion of "legally ban 15 year olds from having smartphones" you may as well just read that as "let's give the police even more power to harass people about suspicion of possessing an illegal device while underage, or aim the apparatus of law at their parents...you know, while also eliminating the one tool that has been most used to hold them to account".
I'm willing to bet that Australia will attempt to push everyone into Mygovid/now MyID, to provide a centralized government controlled identification register for all Australian citizens, that would somehow be able to provide age verification to websites/apps without leaking data to everyone who asks for it nicely.
... Which would also imply that people with no id can't social media.
And in adult oriented social media, Reuters did a four part expose on OnlyFans and the abuses it allows:
*Part 1, about how abuser use OnlyFans to make money on nonconsensual content.
*Part 2, discussing how predators are using OnlyFans to go after children.
*Part 3, where it's shown that a large amount of OnlyFans' success is built on selling a fantasy of contact that too often turns into "pig butchering".
*Part 4, in which the collateral damage of OnlyFans' success is discussed - deepfakes, public acts, and more.
It's worth a read, and is shocking and terrifying.
Well if other social media platforms had the quality of moderation that these forums have, that could potentially slow down the burnout rate. Part of the issue is that so many places; especially, well known ones, do such a shit job at moderation, that the assholes get it into their heads that they are allowed to be giant pieces of shit in all corners of the internet. That means that any decent moderation is going to get a shit ton of push back from people that absolutely refuse to be moderated.
Proper moderation just about everywhere, particularly on the well known platforms, would cement a major cultural mores that actively discourage people form being giant jackasses on the internet. So moderators would have to deal with less bullshit. Obviously, it won't get rid of all the bullshit because you will always have privileged assholes that feel they can do whatever they want online, without any consequences, that the mods will have to deal with. Also all the gross shit that fuck awful people post online, that isn't readily available to the public.
No, it wouldn't. A big chunk of the burnout rate on large sites is things like "endless flood of child porn, gore, and other horrible shit." in order to remove it they end up seeing it a lot. It's legit a trauma hazard.
For this portion of her education, Chloe will have to moderate a Facebook post in front of her fellow trainees. When it’s her turn, she walks to the front of the room, where a monitor displays a video that has been posted to the world’s largest social network. None of the trainees have seen it before, Chloe included. She presses play.
The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed. She knows that section 13 of the Facebook community standards prohibits videos that depict the murder of one or more people. When Chloe explains this to the class, she hears her voice shaking.
Returning to her seat, Chloe feels an overpowering urge to sob. Another trainee has gone up to review the next post, but Chloe cannot concentrate. She leaves the room, and begins to cry so hard that she has trouble breathing.
This is what being a moderator on a social media site involves.
Well if other social media platforms had the quality of moderation that these forums have, that could potentially slow down the burnout rate. Part of the issue is that so many places; especially, well known ones, do such a shit job at moderation, that the assholes get it into their heads that they are allowed to be giant pieces of shit in all corners of the internet. That means that any decent moderation is going to get a shit ton of push back from people that absolutely refuse to be moderated.
Proper moderation just about everywhere, particularly on the well known platforms, would cement a major cultural mores that actively discourage people form being giant jackasses on the internet. So moderators would have to deal with less bullshit. Obviously, it won't get rid of all the bullshit because you will always have privileged assholes that feel they can do whatever they want online, without any consequences, that the mods will have to deal with. Also all the gross shit that fuck awful people post online, that isn't readily available to the public.
No, it wouldn't. A big chunk of the burnout rate on large sites is things like "endless flood of child porn, gore, and other horrible shit." in order to remove it they end up seeing it a lot. It's legit a trauma hazard.
For this portion of her education, Chloe will have to moderate a Facebook post in front of her fellow trainees. When it’s her turn, she walks to the front of the room, where a monitor displays a video that has been posted to the world’s largest social network. None of the trainees have seen it before, Chloe included. She presses play.
The video depicts a man being murdered. Someone is stabbing him, dozens of times, while he screams and begs for his life. Chloe’s job is to tell the room whether this post should be removed. She knows that section 13 of the Facebook community standards prohibits videos that depict the murder of one or more people. When Chloe explains this to the class, she hears her voice shaking.
Returning to her seat, Chloe feels an overpowering urge to sob. Another trainee has gone up to review the next post, but Chloe cannot concentrate. She leaves the room, and begins to cry so hard that she has trouble breathing.
This is what being a moderator on a social media site involves.
Not the worst part, but one of the dumbest:
The fourth source is perhaps the most problematic: Facebook’s own internal tools for distributing information. While official policy changes typically arrive every other Wednesday, incremental guidance about developing issues is distributed on a near-daily basis. Often, this guidance is posted to Workplace, the enterprise version of Facebook that the company introduced in 2016. Like Facebook itself, Workplace has an algorithmic News Feed that displays posts based on engagement. During a breaking news event, such as a mass shooting, managers will often post conflicting information about how to moderate individual pieces of content, which then appear out of chronological order on Workplace. Six current and former employees told me that they had made moderation mistakes based on seeing an outdated post at the top of their feed. At times, it feels as if Facebook’s own product is working against them. The irony is not lost on the moderators.
+5
Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
edited October 16
What sense-addled moron decided to make the work-version of Facebook use an algorithmic feed? Like, it's shit and I hate it in Facebook, it's dumb and toxic as hell, but there is at least an in-house use case sense to argue that Facebook is a consumer product and having an algorithmic feed based on engagement is providing consumers more highly desirable content, that engagement equals interest and they are maximizing user interest and enjoyment. I know what horseshit that all is, and so does everyone else, but a work-facing product has a whole different use-case, audience, and design goals than a consumer-facing product. It boggles the mind that anyone would think that's the best way to organize information in any setting, but in a work setting? The purpose of an algorithmic feed is to boost engagement and get likes and clicks for purposes of revenue and retention from the designers end, but an enterprise version of the software doesn't need those things, so why the fuck would you put the same system in to the enterprise version of the software!?
Lord_Asmodeus on
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
If I buy my son a smartphone, did I break the law?
If my son is caught with a smartphone is he breaking the law?
What's the punishment, who's enforcing it?
If my son is caught with my smartphone then did we both break the law by inadequately securing the device?
What counts as a smartphone?
Is a phone without internet access still a smart phone?
Is any sort of slate style portable device, say like the later model iPods which had wifi, a smartphone?
What about a eBook reader like a Kindle, which has a web browser, internet access and a cellular connection potentially?
Is it illegal for an under-15 to have a smartphone in public, or also at home? What requirements are there to secure access?
Are online sellers now required to verify the age of people purchasing smartphones?
Smartphones generally already need verification from the account holder to be activated. Require state issued-ID to sell burner phones and then this issue is taken care of. Besides, to engage in online sales you generally need a credit or debit card which most children don't have.
You're making mountains out of molehills here while also making the most bizarre comparisons of electronic devices to weed. Weed doesn't need an FCC-regulated network to work as intended. Classifying a smartphone and restricting minors' access to it is entirely doable. It's just that it would lose a whole lot of interested parties money by shrinking the social media and phone sales markets.
Sleep problems were just one issue in a very large list. It does not follow that all of the problems are at home.
The problems at home are just another part of the larger social problems that also shows up at school and in various other places people interact.
0
MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited October 16
Don't look at me I don't want to ban smartphones from kids, I want to heavily regulate what companies are allowed to do on them in line with the research on addiction and deleterious effects of the things. I also want to promote education on responsible usage of the things, as the way they're generally used now (completely freely, with no restrictions whatsoever, always have it in your pocket 24/7, notifications on by default) is absolute dogshit.
They're too useful and have too many pros to ban.
No credible researcher want to ban them. All of them want to promote responsible usage following best practice guidelines for minimising their harms. For example, the actual researchers are speaking up against the proposed social media ban in Australia because a blanket ban is a stupid idea and doesn't fix anything.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Banning them from schools is gaining a lot of steam. Outright bans would require more government regulation and so more momentum then we currently see.
+1
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
edited October 16
Smart phones are not ubiquitous for children. My niece and nephew remain confined to dumb phones when away from home and they are fully capable of going through their daily lives.
Banning them in schools would be the best start. They do not need to be on the grid 24/7 and if you ask any teacher that's been on the job since like 2009 they'll tell you that the increase in phones are a huge problem. They create a ton of distractions that are harmful to the learning environment and students (understandably) use them to cheat constantly.
I feel it is important to point out that we are not asking children to go back to the stone age here. Smart phones didn't even become ubiquitous among adults until 2014-2015. Kids had iPads, various XBoxes, and all sorts of gadgets by then but they largely didn't have iPhones because they didn't need them and they still don't.
Smartphones are only ubiquitous because we want them to be. They're not ubiquitous in the same way weed is. A kid can't grow a smartphone in his closet. I can't find some smartphones growing in a ditch behind my neighbor's fence. If we wanted to restrict children's access to the devices, and importantly the subscription networks they require in order to function, it would be much more doable than restricting substance sales to minors.
And, you know, yeah, whatever system we devised, if we wanted to devise such a system, would be less than 100% effective. This is unavoidable. Who cares?
+2
daveNYCWhy universe hate Waspinator?Registered Userregular
Smartphones are only ubiquitous because we want them to be. They're not ubiquitous in the same way weed is. A kid can't grow a smartphone in his closet. I can't find some smartphones growing in a ditch behind my neighbor's fence. If we wanted to restrict children's access to the devices, and importantly the subscription networks they require in order to function, it would be much more doable than restricting substance sales to minors.
And, you know, yeah, whatever system we devised, if we wanted to devise such a system, would be less than 100% effective. This is unavoidable. Who cares?
A collective action Chinpokomon problem unfortunately:
Gerald Brofloski: You see son, fads come and go. And this "Chinpokomon" is nothing more than a fad. You don't have to be a part of it. In fact, you can make an even stronger statement by saying to your peers, "I'm not going to be a part of this fad because I'm an individual." Do you understand?
Kyle: Yes, yes I do, Dad. Now let me tell you how it works in the real world. In the real world, I can either get a Chinpokomon, or be the only kid without one, which singles me out, and causes the other kids to make fun of me and kick my ass.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
but there's been no collective action against pokemon
also, those cards are more or less banned in schools around me (not because of the cards or content but because of the myriad of problems middle schoolers get into with them)
but there's been no collective action against pokemon
also, those cards are more or less banned in schools around me (not because of the cards or content but because of the myriad of problems middle schoolers get into with them)
Doing something about smartphones is the collective action problem because of the peer pressure to have the same shiny new toys that your classmates have.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Pretty sure you can get a phone that only dials 911, the numbers of the parents and a emergency first contact or two. Really, that is all most kids need; especially, those from K-6. It might make a little more sense if they start doing after school programs or after school work, when they are old enough.
Personally, I don't think the having a kid carrying a smartphone around 24/7 is necessary or healthy. They do not need a portable means of accessing the internet and they really shouldn't have that during school hours. That's just asking for trouble, even from kids that don't have ADHD. Either they are going to be distracted and not getting the value they should out of school and that just gives more ammo to anti-public education fuckers. Really troublesome kids will also try using that shit to cheat on tests, which does no favor those those cheating, but rather hurts them and is rather unfair for those that try to be honest in some situations (best example, is if there is something finite and the top scorers get that thing).
I"ll also note that there are businesses, where the employees do not get to keep their smartphone on site. Either they are given walkie talkies or they are given a lobotomized smart phone that can't take photos or video and can't go online. I'd be perfectly fine with schools banning smartphones and telling parents they can either get one of those dumb phones with limited options or just deal with the idea that little Timmy's phone will be sitting in a box that he can't access during school hours.
Hell, where I live there have been issues of people's snot-nosed kids, that don't want to be in school, texting their hysterical dip shit parents the moment they see an extra cop pull into the school parking lot. This of course leads to the stupid shit of "OMG, fucking school didn't tell me that there was an incident and little Timmy is in danger because the schools always lie about these things!" When fuck all has happened and sometimes there was even an extra cop pulling into the parking lot, but little Timmy thought he saw one and thought he had a great excuse to get out of school.
I would think the issue with banning them in schools is a lot of parents want, or at least are fine with, their kids having smartphones and the problem becomes what do you do with them and is the school liable if it gets stolen and so on.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Kids undergoing peer pressure to have shiny toys aren't the ones who would be deciding on legal regulations on their shiny toys, though. And they're not the ones with the purchasing power to buy them.
Again, yeah, kids also undergo peer pressure to obtain other regulated materials. The obstacles present to prevent that aren't perfectly effective, but they're also not nothing (and it's way easier to convince a stranger to buy you beer than to sign you up for a year long AT&T contract attached to a $500 phone).
Smartphones are only ubiquitous because we want them to be. They're not ubiquitous in the same way weed is. A kid can't grow a smartphone in his closet. I can't find some smartphones growing in a ditch behind my neighbor's fence. If we wanted to restrict children's access to the devices, and importantly the subscription networks they require in order to function, it would be much more doable than restricting substance sales to minors.
And, you know, yeah, whatever system we devised, if we wanted to devise such a system, would be less than 100% effective. This is unavoidable. Who cares?
A collective action Chinpokomon problem unfortunately:
Gerald Brofloski: You see son, fads come and go. And this "Chinpokomon" is nothing more than a fad. You don't have to be a part of it. In fact, you can make an even stronger statement by saying to your peers, "I'm not going to be a part of this fad because I'm an individual." Do you understand?
Kyle: Yes, yes I do, Dad. Now let me tell you how it works in the real world. In the real world, I can either get a Chinpokomon, or be the only kid without one, which singles me out, and causes the other kids to make fun of me and kick my ass.
This is actually part of what we've found looking into smartphone use in schools. You have to actually ban them because the network effects means kids will all feel like they have to have one, regardless of what how they actually feel about it.
Posts
And some of those Rhode Islanders SUCK (looks around to see if any Rhode Island forumers take the bait).
Proper moderation just about everywhere, particularly on the well known platforms, would cement a major cultural mores that actively discourage people form being giant jackasses on the internet. So moderators would have to deal with less bullshit. Obviously, it won't get rid of all the bullshit because you will always have privileged assholes that feel they can do whatever they want online, without any consequences, that the mods will have to deal with. Also all the gross shit that fuck awful people post online, that isn't readily available to the public.
No, it wouldn't. A big chunk of the burnout rate on large sites is things like "endless flood of child porn, gore, and other horrible shit." in order to remove it they end up seeing it a lot. It's legit a trauma hazard.
And most of the reason I consider something like a law against under-15 kids having smartphones is it just cuts right past the whole "what is social media?" issue and removes permanent unlimited access as an option. Sure, kids can still go on a computer and use social media stuff, but that's a whole different ball of wax from having the access in their pocket. It's also something sleazy companies can't bypass by changing how their social media service is constructed or anything like that. And seeing as human children have managed to reach adulthood just fine without a smartphone for, let's see... the last two hundred thousand years or so, lack of access to one is not going to suddenly result in wildly non-functional kids.
Further, it is not at all very young kids who have the presence of mind or judgement to understand how fucked a situation is (such as when cop brutality is involved) to know to record it or at all worth making those kids an ongoing target of various kinds of predators just so they might, in one out of tens of thousands of kids, be able to record one bad cop situation. It does happen, but it's dang rare compared to the number of videos I've seen about those situations from kids in their upper teens and, immensely more common, outright adults. And there would still be kids with camera phones, they would just be older kids who have had more time to mature and be less of a target to the elements that definitively, factually, regularly predate on them.
Because most of the argument I'm seeing against regulating social media access by minors is "it's hard so don't even try to do it". No. This is powerful shit and parts of it seriously harm children. It does have good aspects as well, but those good aspects go hand-in-hand with people being decent and understanding to treat each other decently. Instant around-the-clock access to social media is not a panacea of wisdom for children any more than it is for adults and they are factually far more susceptible to the hazards. And while I don't hold that my notions on the subject are in any way the solutions, there is an absolute and hurried need to do something to shield kids from the absolute torrent of mathematically-perfected trash sent their way under the current circumstances. Social media isn't inherently bad, but it is hazardous enough that kids should not have unlimited easy access everywhere they go, whatever form that takes and even if it takes us some time to get it right. Far better to have some failed attempts before success than just let things go as-is and twiddle our thumbs and go "well, it's just too hard to enforce this so the kids can just deal with how much harm comes their way."
The inability to define "social media" is also not an issue to me. I have no problem with expending the effort as a society to construct a meaningful definition for the idea as something that can be regulated and enforced. What I'm not doing is saying "it's too fuzzy and hard and limited phone access is too mean to kids so we shouldn't even bother with the attempt". We absolutely can define this shit, it just needs a better and more productive attitude to make the effort. Even then, the regulation should be on companies and not people like you keep assuming. If some kid manages to trick the system, whatever. But if a company makes it easy to bypass the ID system or whatever check they have? You burn their ass for it. Make the predatory companies feeding off the information of kids develop the technology or else be penalized for it. I suggest something like a smartphone ban for minors only as a stopgap to developing something useful and effective, which we can absolutely do.
As for giving your kid a locked-down smartphone, that is a far more useless effort than what I propose. If a device simply doesn't have the hardware for a feature, it can't be unlocked. And while getting a black market smartphone would be a real barrier, I would be surprised if it took a semi-determined kid more than a few days to find somebody who could bypass a software feature like that. It's effectively impossible to secure a device via software if somebody has physical access to it. It really will just come down to whether or not the kid wants to bother with unlocking the phone. Capitalism will just have to suck up the terrible, terrible burden of continuing to make physical items instead of squeezing that last little extra profit-earning bit of efficiency into everything. The switch to smartphone everything is not a good thing and there are a lot of things where physical access should be mandated by law. "Because it's getting common" is a really shitty reason to lock homeless people out of things like public transportation and simply being able to buy food because they don't have a smartphone to pay and nobody is taking cash. Companies wanting us to use smartphones for everything is the real motivation for smartphones trying to replace everything and, honestly, fuck companies for wanting that shit.
And c'mon, fuckin' Blackberries solved the keyboard-on-a-phone thing like 25 years ago and there's been a million non-smart-phones that included keyboards, that's not even a real issue. Just because we're talking about phones with minimized features does not mean rewinding way the hell back to T9 texting, that's just a ridiculous assumption. A physical keyboard isn't even a necessity, you just need a very very low-end touchscreen-designed phone so it can use touchscreen buttons like everything else. It's no challenge to make it too low-end to run anything but basic tools like texting or calls, either.
As for having a video camera as the reason to give a minor a smartphone because of being worried about cops, the potential threat of smartphone camera to kids from criminals, scammers, and other kids is just ludicrously higher than a cop. Everybody knows about that kid or two or six at their school where their life was ruined by cyber-bullying or leaked photos or videos, but I went to more than dozen school in as many cities and never even talked to a cop until I was old enough to drive. I entirely support the notion of teaching kids to be wary of cops, but cops are simply nowhere near the persistent level of actual threat to kids that smartphone access presents.
And we can begin useful definitions of social media right here. A couple basic items could include any service which shares user-made content, any service which uses algorithm to distribute said content, and any service which openly allows any user to directly address any other user. There, three easy spots to start from and detail.
Seems to me that keeping kids away from a device is infinitely more possible than remote age verification.
"Rigorously define all implementation details and edge cases for me, right now in this thread, do it!" like no man. This isn't an unprecedented idea. It's almost banal how many laws along these lines already exist.
I know kids seem to hate it, but I'm entirely supportive of this wave of total bans on smartphone access during school hours (though they seem to have brief limited periods of access during the day, which is fine) to the point of making the kids place the phones in a physical locking device. It's a straightforward solution which makes the secured device the responsibility of students (thus removing the possibility of fuckery from authority figures) and removes the devices as an option for easy cheating and whatnot, which is one of my major concerns of the impacts of smartphones on kids. I've seen stuff with kids fighting the devices and claiming they can easily break them but so what? If it's just you and one other kid with your phone out in class, a teacher is going to see that shit real quick and now there's no cover for it anymore so you just get busted.
The approach doesn't solve the social media issue, but it does strongly curtail the times and ways kids can get in trouble with said phones or otherwise cause major harm to their education.
Parents give kids phones for a variety of reasons, including for safety and health and little things like catching the bus or finding their friend's house after school. Just removing them is not going to happen. You might be able to get parents to install specific software, but chances are that becomes a spying nightmare.
How what would sound? Again, what the fuck are you talking about, nobody is gonna come to your house and arrest you for letting your kid use your phone. How about like, when you sign up for a phone plan, the device for your kids can't include have data included? How about stores are not allowed to sell smartphones to minors?
Oh and ya know, if the carriers refuse to implement those restrictions to family plans, then uh, the FBI can assassinate the CEO of AT&T until they comply. Because "ViOlEnCe Of tHe StAtE".
Like, it doesn't matter that sufficiently motivated individuals can circumvent the law, or that adults can falsify the records to get their kids the phones anyway. Make them commit to that. It's just discouragement.
I know you are just griping about this because you personally want to get your kid a whole ass smartphone for some reason, so I'm not playing this game any further. Get your kid a phone if you want, nobody here can actually stop you.
I'm willing to bet that Australia will attempt to push everyone into Mygovid/now MyID, to provide a centralized government controlled identification register for all Australian citizens, that would somehow be able to provide age verification to websites/apps without leaking data to everyone who asks for it nicely.
... Which would also imply that people with no id can't social media.
*Part 1, about how abuser use OnlyFans to make money on nonconsensual content.
*Part 2, discussing how predators are using OnlyFans to go after children.
*Part 3, where it's shown that a large amount of OnlyFans' success is built on selling a fantasy of contact that too often turns into "pig butchering".
*Part 4, in which the collateral damage of OnlyFans' success is discussed - deepfakes, public acts, and more.
It's worth a read, and is shocking and terrifying.
eg -
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona This is what being a moderator on a social media site involves.
Not the worst part, but one of the dumbest:
Smartphones generally already need verification from the account holder to be activated. Require state issued-ID to sell burner phones and then this issue is taken care of. Besides, to engage in online sales you generally need a credit or debit card which most children don't have.
You're making mountains out of molehills here while also making the most bizarre comparisons of electronic devices to weed. Weed doesn't need an FCC-regulated network to work as intended. Classifying a smartphone and restricting minors' access to it is entirely doable. It's just that it would lose a whole lot of interested parties money by shrinking the social media and phone sales markets.
The problems at home are just another part of the larger social problems that also shows up at school and in various other places people interact.
They're too useful and have too many pros to ban.
No credible researcher want to ban them. All of them want to promote responsible usage following best practice guidelines for minimising their harms. For example, the actual researchers are speaking up against the proposed social media ban in Australia because a blanket ban is a stupid idea and doesn't fix anything.
Banning them in schools would be the best start. They do not need to be on the grid 24/7 and if you ask any teacher that's been on the job since like 2009 they'll tell you that the increase in phones are a huge problem. They create a ton of distractions that are harmful to the learning environment and students (understandably) use them to cheat constantly.
I feel it is important to point out that we are not asking children to go back to the stone age here. Smart phones didn't even become ubiquitous among adults until 2014-2015. Kids had iPads, various XBoxes, and all sorts of gadgets by then but they largely didn't have iPhones because they didn't need them and they still don't.
And, you know, yeah, whatever system we devised, if we wanted to devise such a system, would be less than 100% effective. This is unavoidable. Who cares?
A collective action Chinpokomon problem unfortunately:
also, those cards are more or less banned in schools around me (not because of the cards or content but because of the myriad of problems middle schoolers get into with them)
Doing something about smartphones is the collective action problem because of the peer pressure to have the same shiny new toys that your classmates have.
Personally, I don't think the having a kid carrying a smartphone around 24/7 is necessary or healthy. They do not need a portable means of accessing the internet and they really shouldn't have that during school hours. That's just asking for trouble, even from kids that don't have ADHD. Either they are going to be distracted and not getting the value they should out of school and that just gives more ammo to anti-public education fuckers. Really troublesome kids will also try using that shit to cheat on tests, which does no favor those those cheating, but rather hurts them and is rather unfair for those that try to be honest in some situations (best example, is if there is something finite and the top scorers get that thing).
I"ll also note that there are businesses, where the employees do not get to keep their smartphone on site. Either they are given walkie talkies or they are given a lobotomized smart phone that can't take photos or video and can't go online. I'd be perfectly fine with schools banning smartphones and telling parents they can either get one of those dumb phones with limited options or just deal with the idea that little Timmy's phone will be sitting in a box that he can't access during school hours.
Hell, where I live there have been issues of people's snot-nosed kids, that don't want to be in school, texting their hysterical dip shit parents the moment they see an extra cop pull into the school parking lot. This of course leads to the stupid shit of "OMG, fucking school didn't tell me that there was an incident and little Timmy is in danger because the schools always lie about these things!" When fuck all has happened and sometimes there was even an extra cop pulling into the parking lot, but little Timmy thought he saw one and thought he had a great excuse to get out of school.
Again, yeah, kids also undergo peer pressure to obtain other regulated materials. The obstacles present to prevent that aren't perfectly effective, but they're also not nothing (and it's way easier to convince a stranger to buy you beer than to sign you up for a year long AT&T contract attached to a $500 phone).
This is actually part of what we've found looking into smartphone use in schools. You have to actually ban them because the network effects means kids will all feel like they have to have one, regardless of what how they actually feel about it.