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Today I was listening to a Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast (paywalled on Substack, but available with ads on Apple Podcast), with Louise Perry interviewing John Daniel Davidson, and there were a lot of both dubious and interesting things there, but the one that caused an emotional reaction for me was the discussion of "screens," which I've been having with some in person friends, and seeing around Substack lately as well. I don't like the paradigms of the discussion, but have trouble articulating why. Especially when Davidson kept repeating "it rewires their brains" over and over again. My pop neuroscience model is built on a few fluffy books about neuroplasticity from a decade ago, but I thought basically everything required our brains?
There are indeed a lot of things on the internet, and especially social media, that are bad in the way casinos are bad, but calling this "screens" feels like calling slot machines "levers" or something. It's not like I could have accessed the podcast, other than by learning about it online, anyway. Was it more virtuous to listen to Davidson talk than to read him on Substack? Maybe! I was doing work with my hands while I listened.
Jonathan Haidt thinks that children shouldn't be able to post on social media or have smart phones (or internet enabled private devices more generally), and I think that may be reasonable, especially in regards to people posting photos of themselves, sure, everyone should think long and hard about doing that, and usually shouldn't. But at the same time, I don't really trust the enforcers, and do think that the rules wouldn't fall where I would hope.
Louise Perry didn't push back as much as I would have liked against the "demonic, insane, evil" rhetoric in regards to "screens" (by which I think Davidson meant something more like "the unfiltered internet"), but did mention something like that she thinks it's probably alright for her children to watch fairy tales sometimes, but that it's weird and a bit disturbing if they're watching another kid play on Youtube. And I agree that, yes, that's kind of weird, I wouldn't let my children watch that. I didn't let my child watch more than one episode of "Is it Cake," either, because that also seemed a bit weird.
Anyway, is there anyone out there who has an actually useful way of discussing "screens," especially in respect to children, but also in general? If I had more attention to devote to the topic, maybe I'd try reading Heidegger's Simulcrum and Simulation, since at least the title seems like it's heading in an interesting direction.
One big issue with Haidt's stance is the question of effectiveness and the rights we have to give up in order to ban children to begin with. Meaningful age verification by necessity means ID verification, anything else can be easily bypassed.
Maybe it's worth the cost for no one to have anonymity to the sites they use, and for the possibility of everyone's face and identity connected directly to the accounts to leak (like what happened somewhat with Discord recently where they leaked face scans) just to stop children, but it's not free.
And that's still assuming it does stop children. China's attempts to curb childhood gaming has not worked out that well. Because they just used someone else's face/ID as identification. Either by sneaking it, or the parents who are cool with that behavior just allowing them on. Just like how the parents who hand their kids an iPhone already are liable to just make an account for them too when asked.
This is China and they're failing to keep kids from doing what they want. It's not just enough to have facial scans or ID uploads, doing those is sacrificing privacy for little benefit. At least if it worked the sacrifice would have some meaning! But it's not going to be enough, we have to be Mega China to be meaningfully effective, we have to be more invasive than the authoritarian communists because even they are failing.
Is that still worth it? Haidt correctly diagnosed a problem in society and then decided the only solution is nuking everyone's freedom just to fail anyway.
The social media ban isn't really the main goal of organisations like Haidt's. The goal is to get kids off smartphones. That is much easier for parents to do when 'I need Snapchat to talk to all my friends' is no longer true. Even if a social media ban can be bypassed, there's no reason to do so if none of a child's peers are using the platforms. The same is true of school smartphone bans. It's much easier for parents to say 'no you can't have a smartphone' if smartphones are a prohibited item in school.
Worrying about kids' privacy when preventing them from accessing social media is kind of ironic. The kids are already sharing their deepest, darkest secrets with these platforms. We're trying to prevent them giving up their privacy.
It's also worth talking about the actual technology used for age verification. In the UK we have it for porn sites already. 90% of them use third parties like AgeGo which don't require you to upload ID (although you can), they just use age estimation from a face scan, which isn't even saved once the check has been done. It's fine.
It's not kid's privacy, it's adult's privacy at risk. The only meaningful way to have age verification is to have ID verification (and even that isn't actually enough even with China's much more strict ID system). The entire idea of being anonymous on the internet must be destroyed just for a chance that kids might get off the phones.
Parents can do that already anyway! You can simply not give your kid a smartphone if you wish. You can lock it down via various methods if you want to. There's not a bunch of smartphone drug dealers passing out free samples to children.
The parents who just hand their 3 year old a phone to babysit for them are the same parents who are just gonna let their kid scan their face to make the Instagram account. We can see by their choice that they're fine with their kids being online.
Not only is it very easy to bypass (as we saw with people even using video game characters with it) and you could just use your parents/older friends like the kids in China do but it's an obvious lie and Discord already leaked tons of users just a little bit ago. If you seriously believe that they're deleting everything, I got a bridge to sell you if you want.
As I mentioned, the UK manages porn sites perfectly well without mandatory ID verification. It may not be completely impenetrable, but that's fine. Surely you would be happy about this fact, rather than demanding something that you say is bad? You seem to be arguing that a) the current system is insufficiently robust and must be reformed and b) a more robust system would be bad. Why not be happy with our imperfect system?
That is a very naive position. It's technically correct, in the same way that I can technically go and live in the woods. In practice, peer pressure is immensely powerful, and parents find it extremely difficult to tell their kids 'every child in your class has a smartphone, but you can't have one'. Even if successful, it still causes parents a huge amount of stress having to constantly re-fight the battle every day. That is why we have rules around kids smoking and drinking. Technically, we could abolish age restrictions and just say to parents 'it's up to you'. In reality, humans are a social species that work around norms. The free for all status quo simply allows those norms to be set by tech companies, rather than by parents.
And why exactly does Pornhub or AgeGo want a grainy, 3 second video of my face at 2am? Leaving aside the fact that big companies do, in fact, obey the law as a rule, because breaking it is bad for business, you seem to imply that these companies are holding on to data that they have explicitly promised to (and are legally obliged to) delete for the sake of being evil and creepy, in spite of no actual benefit to them.
Oh please I visited the UK three months ago and stayed there for a few weeks, it was a trivial matter to find sites that didn't demand some form of proof. I live in NC where we have similar laws, it is also very easy to get past because I'm not giving my ID to porn sites.
And if I find it really easy, I assume any teenager with decent motivation and a lack of retardation can also do it.
Because it's not a fact, it's a failure. When I say effective I mean effective, not theater. They are easy af to bypass.
Will kids never ask their parents for a smartphone or social media in a world where it takes a facial scan? Seems like a pretty wild claim to me.
Parents who are cool with their kids smoking and drinking let them! They'll buy cigarettes and alcohol for them. It's just not many parents are cool with it.
Then why did the discord leak happen? You could just as easily say the same thing about them, and yet tons of people got their identification revealed anyway. Leaks like this happen constantly with people's data. Your argument is refuted by the real world happenings.
I agree, but the system is new and there's obviously going to be a degree of cat and mouse. If we required perfection for every system we wouldn't have any systems at all.
I'm less concerned about teenagers and more concerned about very small children. 40% of six year olds own a tablet in the UK, and another 40% have access to one. Before the current rules were in place, most of them had access to the infinity of online porn. My eight year old neice doesn't have a smartphone, but kids at her school do and have shown her videos of ISIS beheadings. This concerns me (and approximately every parent). I suspect you don't have kids. I assure you, internet libertarianism becomes much less appealing once you do.
Because Discord used a different third party verification company with a different process.
Ah, older siblings. Where would we be without them? (A better place, perhaps?) Perhaps more interesting is the apparent fact they're able to correctly spell 'beheading', given their typical performance on the more pedestrian spelling tests and the lack of auto-complete.
Kids have been grossing each other out and watching absurd nonsense since forever. Porn is kind of like that [for them] too, for that matter, though I get that women (and their simps) complain about normalizing the concept that women have sex, occasionally on camera- which is naturally/by instinct what they're trying to stamp out. Of course, these women will then turn around and assert that a 7 year old boy willing to play with the dollies is trans and needs immediate medical treatment.
I believe you are incapable of telling the difference between the two. That property affects young adults (and by extension, older adults) more negatively than it does small children, for obvious reasons, but it's fun to do that to them so people see that as a value-add. It's neutral at worst; it's not like they vote.
Or rather, currently the norms are set by reality, not parents. Naturally, parents are very angry and Stressed(tm) out about this.
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"Not perfect" is overselling it too, not even close to effective is the more likely truth. Even if it's already at China levels (doubtful given it's way less strict), then 80% of children still have a means of access without issue.
"Access" sure that is technically true, but how many six year olds care to sit around and watch porn anyway? Tons of them will just be grossed out as little kids tend to do with sexual things. Maybe like 10+ or something will have a meaningful cohort seeking out porn but that's already in the age that just clicking on sites until something works or taking their parents ID from their wallet should be simple and obvious.
I do have a three year old so I don't have much experience with Internet access, but at home I do know there's a very simple fix. Don't let my kid have a phone. The same way I wouldn't let them drink or party. Out of the house I can't control, but if it was say, the early 2000s I also wouldn't be able to stop my kid and his friends going on the computer during a sleepover at a friend's house If they wanted to look up ISIS videos either.
I agree with phones out of school. In fact the mechanism for banning phones is simple, the adult in charge of monitoring them doesn't allow phone use. Simple and easy and any parent can employ it right now if they choose. If they're too weak willed to say no, then they're gonna be too weak willed when they say "mommy can I scan your face for Instagram pweaseeee, all my friends parents do it!"
It's perfectly safe until it's not, in which case it becomes "uh it was just that one". But how do you know in advance which one will be saved and leaked?
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I for one wouldn't be concerned about a six-year-old finding porn because they aren't going to watch infinity of it (unlike twelve-year-olds). My guess is that on opening such a website on accident they're going to think it's weird and gross and close it immediately and maybe, maybe ask their parents a few questions that the parents would prefer not to answer but should be equipped to anyway.
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And there are further ways to avoid giving away your Valid Personal Nomenclature....
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Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the UK system (from my understanding, users have to buy a card from a retailer that validates age, typically in person?), and it has some obvious and well-documented faults. But it’s still not quite as stupid as asking people to upload their photo ID.
That’s presuming you can get the system without getting OFCOM and that whole related mess — the ease of the system for normies may well have made that more palatable politically! — but my guess is that they’re separate results of different political drives.
I haven't heard of that one. Ofcom lists a bunch of acceptable methods here, but none of them involve buying a card from a shop.
Let's go over the acceptable method
Requires your face, thereby identifying you.
Requires banking details, thereby identifying you.
Vague enough that maybe it doesn't require it somehow for the "digital identity wallets" but questionable as to how the digital identity wallets verify it then without identifying you.
Requires your credit card details, thereby identifying you.
requires your email for the purpose of linking it to other things you use your email for like banks and utility, thereby identifying you.
Requires you to have your mobile network confirm you, thereby identifying you.
This is obviously identifying you.
You claimed "without mandatory ID verification", meanwhile every single one includes a form of mandatory identification. And despite that, it still fails as I've outlined in another comment.
Not only is it easy to bypass through the many many many sites that don't bother because they aren't big/based in the UK, but they also have obvious weak points for any non retard child to do.
Stuff like facial age estimation has been bypassed by video game characters and YouTube videos (and perhaps AI videos too), credit card/ID can be bypassed by just grabbing your parents wallet, mobile network operator age just use your parents or a friend's number.
It leaves the "in China 80% of kids are still gaming" problem left unsolved.
That isn't what I said. My exact words were '90% of them use third parties like AgeGo which don't require you to upload ID'. That obviously means uploading e.g. a driving licence, not age estimation through the camera.
Because yes, in order to use age estimation, AgeGo will need a short video clip of my face, which will then be deleted once the verification is complete. If this counts as 'identifying me' then fine, I don't care. It's worth it if it makes it harder for children to watch porn.
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I think that meant a government issued ID document, not the act of identifying.
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Huh. I guess I was thinking of the older MindGeek AgeID system, which seems to have been sunsetted before being broadly implemented. The OfCom list there looks nearly identical to the proposals most American social conservatives (or anti-social-media people) have proposed, when they've considered any detail, with the sole exception of 'phone-based filtering'.
All of them seem to have similar privacy concerns: there's still a single point of data ownership that connects a user's meatspace name to their account(s). The ICO double-pinky-swearing people to safety doesn't really seem that persuasive from a security perspective.
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