Another band-aid to cover up the real problem --- privacy invasion driven by personalized advertising.
Just make personalized advertising illegal and this will become a non-issue.
I know lots of people think they can't live without it --- but they are wrong. TV and radio existed and prospered for decades without it --- and the internet can too.
Meta and their lobbyists have been pounding advertising in the DC media market on TV, radio, and the Washington Post under all their brands about how they now support the government trying to mandate parents rights to limit access. First it was Instagram branded, but I've seen ads for their other brands lately as well.
It started when the Surgeon General released the report on the effects of social media usage on adolescent health [0].
Meta and their lobbyists have been pounding advertising in the DC media market on TV, radio, and the Washington Post under all their brands about how they now support the government trying to mandate parents rights to limit access.
Yes. Ever wonder why?
Because this will further destroy *all* privacy on the internet. The only way to prove you're not a kid is to fully identify yourself. The only alternative is to not use social media --- goodbye HN.
Metas official position even internally is that people LIKE getting personalized ads. Can you even imagine? That’s the koolaid they told us. When ATT dropped they complained to people and regulators that now people will have to get regular ads and they love getting personalized ads. The company needs to be banned
Feels like there has been a noticeable shift globally these past few years in favor of burdening websites to protect kids online. Makes me wonder: has the internet really gotten worse, or is something else going on here?
I'll reply with a bunch of anecdotes, so please bear with me.
A few trends over the last two decades:
* targeted monetization of everything under the sun
* a total shift towards a subscription economy for nearly everything digital.
* a near total shift towards mobile content consumption devices especially for younger consumers (tablets and phones)
has likely resulted in the following:
* low quality algorithmically driven junk food content (tiktok, instagram reels, the garbage people post to advice subreddits)
* startups j-curving for usage and leaning into advertising as their only viable business case
* Google scraping your inbox for ad keywords in the mid 2000s and beyond, Microsoft injecting ads into Windows 10 and 11, etc.
Perhaps worse:
* Generation Alpha and later Gen Z kids having relatively diminished technical literacy compared to elder Gen Z and Millenials (absolutely anecdotal. I'm citing three teacher friends frustrated that kids navigate their way around computers more poorly with each passing year)
* subconscious mass influence of behavior patterns (foreign election interference, your trip to your local McDonald's, sneaker hype culture)
Practically the only thing that hasn't actually gotten worse online, regardless of our own diverse opinions about it, is Wikipedia. It's a for-profit warzone of competing interests making competing edits, but it's an example of what can happen when the constant growth/profit/exit-motive isn't there.
Many of the hobbyist sites running on sites like vbulletin or invision are gone; we use subreddits for those now. And people don't even bother with those, more and more people just post meme gifs in the comments of reels, sitting there scrolling through with their thumbs rather than contributing something new and unique.
I have a kid that's in middle school and last year there was about a 2 month stretch of multiple daily fights that were driven by views on TikTok by 6th graders, so around age 11.
It started out small. Maybe a kid would start something in the hall while his friends pulled out their phones, recorded it and posted it to TikTok. Then they realized if they start a larger fight on the way to lunch they'd get more views because kids had their phones at lunch. Once that leveled off they realized that fights in class got even more views because it involved a teacher. It got to the point where my kid would walk outside to go to their next class because the halls were just filled with kids trying to do anything to get views on TikTok.
The larger issue were the second and third order effects this caused. Kids started refusing to go to school because of the fights and attendance problems soared. Multiple classes were constantly disrupted. Due to the layout of the school most of the hallways are narrow so it was near impossible to get to class on time.
It took the spring break and major intervention from the administration, staff, and students to finally have the fad die out. It still flared up from time to time in the spring, but never as bad as the winter.
This year it's now about how funky of a combination of socks and crocs you can post to Instagram.
Tech Illiteracy is definitely a problem with kids. Even if they do have a real computer, school might entirely be web based. Google classroom, google drive, google office. No one learns what they don’t use.
That being said, I’m a senior developer now and I didn’t really touch a command line until junior year of college. I guess we all learn what we need to learn and if a kid really wants to learn how a computer works he or she will.
> Many of the hobbyist sites running on sites like vbulletin or invision are gone; we use subreddits for those now. And people don't even bother with those, more and more people just post meme gifs in the comments of reels, sitting there scrolling through with their thumbs rather than contributing something new and unique.
Gen Z's rampant tech illiterate is likely a cause not a consequence of this. Most of the independent forums were probably run by teens and college students. They aged out of it, shut their forums down and weren't replaced by a new generation. Then Reddit filled the void to become a profitable corporation that will probably exit via IPO in the near future.
Another cause of this is the collapse of the middle class due to wage growth failing to keep up with inflation. If you can't even afford housing, health care, transportation and food then you're going to be obsessed with "side hustles" to try and make some extra money rather than actually living. Running a forum or writing a freeware game because you actually believe in it is a luxury that people can no longer afford in this "booming" (if you're a millionaire or work a McJob) economy.
It's make sense to me 20-30 years ago access to computers and internet was not easy so could be controlled a bit by parents. Today Parents can try to control their own childrens devices but reality is most children run circles around their parents when it comes to tech. Yes we the tech enthusiast might not be fooled by our children but not the case for the large portion of the population.
Most of us don't like it or won't agree but the days of the internet being the wild west will slowly be over it will be converted to a regulated internet as the powers that be/people in power don't like it when they can't control.
You can expect a kid to be online before they turn into teenager. At least to some extent. Moderation of that through parents is horrible (it's clise to surveillance / watch every step of your child).
It's just that first consumption age went down and audience widened.
Overall I think the internet has become safer, especially through the required handling of content complaints. It's just that the usage went into a direction that needs more safeguards.
I'm surprised to see people speaking positively of safeguards here. Normally the HN line is that the onus fit these things should be entirely on the parents and it's an attack on freedom to have an hindrance to a child viewing and doing whatever they want online.
If you have Paramount+ there was a South Park special, "South Park (Not Suitable For Children)", released there a couple of days ago that covers (excellently and hilariously) some of this.
How would this even work? Web sites politely ask everyone if they're under 18 and then turn on these behaviors?
Without some sort of strong notion of online identity, I just don't see how any of this is meaningfully implementable. And I really don't think anyone wants the equivalent of a driver license for using the Internet.
“Among proposed rules…turn off targeted advertising by default… prohibit sending push notifications …Surveillance in schools would be further restricted, so that data is only collected for educational purposes […] stop companies from retaining children's data forever…”
The title is poorly worded, which can be traced back to the FTC's owm wording as quoted in the article. It makes it sound like the FTC is trying to make websites responsible for things that would be parents' responsibility. But strictly speaking, it is literally correct, as it is shifting (much of) the _burden_ of doing so.
The reforms actually mostly look really good to me.
Unsure why this comment was flagged. I took a look at the proposed changes in the press release and it seems like things HN would support. Is it because the rules are centered around kids? Yea I'd like the same rules applied to my demographic, but this seems like a good step forward.
I don't understand either. I'd be happy for somebody to comment and point out something I've missed. But voting and flagging seems to pass for productive discourse here these days.
Storing minors biometric data forever is pretty clearly evil. There really shouldn't be a debate here. Yet some businesses are out there monetizing evil.
Readit News
Just make personalized advertising illegal and this will become a non-issue.
I know lots of people think they can't live without it --- but they are wrong. TV and radio existed and prospered for decades without it --- and the internet can too.
It started when the Surgeon General released the report on the effects of social media usage on adolescent health [0].
[0] https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/priorities/youth-mental-h...
Yes. Ever wonder why?
Because this will further destroy *all* privacy on the internet. The only way to prove you're not a kid is to fully identify yourself. The only alternative is to not use social media --- goodbye HN.
A few trends over the last two decades:
* targeted monetization of everything under the sun
* a total shift towards a subscription economy for nearly everything digital.
* a near total shift towards mobile content consumption devices especially for younger consumers (tablets and phones)
has likely resulted in the following:
* low quality algorithmically driven junk food content (tiktok, instagram reels, the garbage people post to advice subreddits)
* startups j-curving for usage and leaning into advertising as their only viable business case
* Google scraping your inbox for ad keywords in the mid 2000s and beyond, Microsoft injecting ads into Windows 10 and 11, etc.
Perhaps worse:
* Generation Alpha and later Gen Z kids having relatively diminished technical literacy compared to elder Gen Z and Millenials (absolutely anecdotal. I'm citing three teacher friends frustrated that kids navigate their way around computers more poorly with each passing year)
* subconscious mass influence of behavior patterns (foreign election interference, your trip to your local McDonald's, sneaker hype culture)
Practically the only thing that hasn't actually gotten worse online, regardless of our own diverse opinions about it, is Wikipedia. It's a for-profit warzone of competing interests making competing edits, but it's an example of what can happen when the constant growth/profit/exit-motive isn't there.
Many of the hobbyist sites running on sites like vbulletin or invision are gone; we use subreddits for those now. And people don't even bother with those, more and more people just post meme gifs in the comments of reels, sitting there scrolling through with their thumbs rather than contributing something new and unique.
It started out small. Maybe a kid would start something in the hall while his friends pulled out their phones, recorded it and posted it to TikTok. Then they realized if they start a larger fight on the way to lunch they'd get more views because kids had their phones at lunch. Once that leveled off they realized that fights in class got even more views because it involved a teacher. It got to the point where my kid would walk outside to go to their next class because the halls were just filled with kids trying to do anything to get views on TikTok.
The larger issue were the second and third order effects this caused. Kids started refusing to go to school because of the fights and attendance problems soared. Multiple classes were constantly disrupted. Due to the layout of the school most of the hallways are narrow so it was near impossible to get to class on time.
It took the spring break and major intervention from the administration, staff, and students to finally have the fad die out. It still flared up from time to time in the spring, but never as bad as the winter.
This year it's now about how funky of a combination of socks and crocs you can post to Instagram.
That being said, I’m a senior developer now and I didn’t really touch a command line until junior year of college. I guess we all learn what we need to learn and if a kid really wants to learn how a computer works he or she will.
Gen Z's rampant tech illiterate is likely a cause not a consequence of this. Most of the independent forums were probably run by teens and college students. They aged out of it, shut their forums down and weren't replaced by a new generation. Then Reddit filled the void to become a profitable corporation that will probably exit via IPO in the near future.
Another cause of this is the collapse of the middle class due to wage growth failing to keep up with inflation. If you can't even afford housing, health care, transportation and food then you're going to be obsessed with "side hustles" to try and make some extra money rather than actually living. Running a forum or writing a freeware game because you actually believe in it is a luxury that people can no longer afford in this "booming" (if you're a millionaire or work a McJob) economy.
Most of us don't like it or won't agree but the days of the internet being the wild west will slowly be over it will be converted to a regulated internet as the powers that be/people in power don't like it when they can't control.
It's just that first consumption age went down and audience widened.
Overall I think the internet has become safer, especially through the required handling of content complaints. It's just that the usage went into a direction that needs more safeguards.
China drafts new rules proposing restrictions on online gaming (December 22, 2023)
https://apnews.com/article/china-tencent-netease-video-games...
Without some sort of strong notion of online identity, I just don't see how any of this is meaningfully implementable. And I really don't think anyone wants the equivalent of a driver license for using the Internet.
“Among proposed rules…turn off targeted advertising by default… prohibit sending push notifications …Surveillance in schools would be further restricted, so that data is only collected for educational purposes […] stop companies from retaining children's data forever…”
Ah. I want those protections too. Sheesh.
The reforms actually mostly look really good to me.
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