By "social media" we mean any large computer network that allows people to interact in shared communities. The big ones of course are Facebook, Twitter (X), and Instagram, but we can't forget newer platforms like Discord and Slack.
Dedicated video sites are off-topic here and YouTube has its own separate thread
.
What we should discuss in this OTC topic are news items, business operations, and activities by the networks themselves, not specific things posted by users. Those should go into threads appropriate to the subjects of those posts. For example, if an actor tweets about a film, we'd discuss that in the Media forum topic for the film, not here. If Facebook changes its policies, that could be discussed here.
The politics, motives, competency and wider business activities of the owners and leaders of social media companies (e.g. Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg) are also off-topic — except in situations where they are directly making specific policy for the platform.
Talking about a particular Instagram policy change (or a high-profile ban on a specific user) directly announced by Mark Zuckerberg would be acceptable in this thread, speculating about Zuckerberg's wider motivations wouldn't be.
The thread's also not about "dumb thing [public figure] said on [social media platform]". If there isn't a specific thread related to the subject of the statement (e.g. US Politics), then it's probably gossip and not worth talking about.
created back in 2020 that we never opened. Unfortunately, it's a little stale, so bumping it isn't going to work very well, but I would like to restart it. The reason I'm doing so is that the Computer Thread seems to have become the de facto place for this sort of talk, and it's a big tonal clash with talking about computer tech.
The hot topic of the day is Elon Musk's bid to acquire Twitter. We first discussed it in the Computer Thread, starting roughly here, and I am not going to rehash the entire discussion. Instead, I am going to resume from the last post:
CNBC: Twitter is reportedly taking another look at Musk takeover bid
Twitter's board is reportedly meeting with Elon Musk and may seek to negotiate on his buyout offer. Musk claims to have secured $46 billion in funding to buy the company at a valuation of $43 billion and is preparing to make a tender offer to its shareholders.
While the board has passed a poison pill, it could be facing resistance to that from groups of shareholders and will want to talk things out rather than face a hostile takeover. It's also possible that Twitter's stock could crash if the offer fails to go through.
Another possible topic was originally posted here.
Ars Technica: EU to unveil landmark law to force Big Tech to police illegal content
Following on from the recently passed Digital Markets Act, which requires large tech companies to unbundle first-party software from hardware platforms, the proposed Digital Services Act will require medium and large social media platforms and search engines to police hate speech and disinformation while adding additional protections for children against targeted marketing.
It also bans "dark patterns", which manipulate or trick people into clicking on ads or other content. The article doesn't explicitly say what that means, but I assume it includes things like disguising ads to look like parts of a site's user interface, hiding "close" buttons, and such.
For large companies, the requirements would go into effect immediately. For medium companies, they would have a grace period to implement the changes.
Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner, has warned that Big Tech has become “too big to care.”
This phrase, "too big to care", intrigues me. It's an indictment of the idea that these companies have decided that growth and engagement metrics overwhelm any sense of social responsibility.
In my opinion, a law like this would be impossible in the United States, since it would be challenged (likely successfully) on First Amendment grounds.
Edited by Mrph1 on Dec 12th 2023 at 11:24:56 AM
I still have a Twitter account where I log in occasionally so that it doesn't get deleted. I don't really use it anymore in the sense of posting or reacting. But I was never a big user in terms of follower count or interactions. Maybe in terms of time spent on the site, but that was on-and-off too. I moved my "mostly reading, sometimes reposting/commenting, sometimes posting myself" from Twitter (and Reddit) to the fediverse (Mastodon, Lemmy) and arguably to this very forum.
When I log in to Twitter, I see that there are some people of my bubble still around. Some moved to Mastodon, or Bluesky, or tumblr, or have several presences on multiple sites. It isn't really possible to port the whole network to another site, someone does get lost in transition no matter what. But that's also true for the people who are still there, they lose part of their active follower base, too. And yes, some of the people still active on the site are part of marginalized groups and/or into left-leaning politics. Some of them are probably better described as small businesses than people, even if there is just one person behind the account.
I still use Reddit for reading drama posts (r/BestOfRedditorUpdates is my Reality TV), but I haven't posted nor commented nor pm'd anyone since the Reddit protests last summer. Maybe, if there was the right person posting on the Reddit personals subs (r/r4r, r/MakeNewFriendsHere etc.), I would be tempted. Or maybe not.
For now, I have avoided making an account on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp etc., though my current Mastodon instance is federated with Threads. That means that people with a Threads account can follow my account and interact with my posts, and vice versa.
I'm not particularly interested in joining Bluesky. As a regular user who doesn't sell or promote anything, I don't need two sites filling the niche of microblogging. I joined Mastodon first (even if I changed instances twice since). And as far as I understand, the big selling point of Bluesky is that it is run (partly) by (some of the) people behind pre-Musk Twitter, and I was already somewhat disillusioned with Twitter as a platform before Musk even looked in that direction.
"He betrayed the Staaarks" is not the only problem here.
A procrastination in of itself
There is a push in the U.K. emerging to separate the phone market into “child safe phones” (under 16) and “adult phones” (16+), with the technology separator being if the phones are able to install social media apps. This campaign is being led by Esther Ghey, the mother of 16 year Brianna Ghey who was murdered by two transphobic classmates (Brianna being trans). Esther believes that the murderers ability to access harmful and radicalising content online was a contributing factor to their decision to murder Brianna.[1]
Figure of Hourai
-Blinks-
That might just be one of the most pointless ideas that I've heard.
Like, it would do even less to prevent access to social media than extending the existing network traffic level 18+ filters that IIRC most carriers here still have.
Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 11th 2024 at 8:48:21 PM
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A procrastination in of itself
The idea of use the law to stop kids being on social media is also supported by most parents, they seem to not take action individually because they are concerned about the social harm that would come to their child from being the only one of their group not on social media, that social harm is avoided if all kids are forced off social media.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Disasturbator
Its one of those 'we don't want to address the actual issue but doing this makes it look like we' decisons.
New theme music also a box
Figure of Hourai
Okay, but I'm not talking about the goals, I'm saying the idea of how to do it is stupid.
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Like reflections in the glass!
Yeah there are holes in the execution. For starters.
- It doesn't seem to address the other issue with smartphones (addictive gacha games)
- More to the point, what's stopping the kids from just stealing their parent or older sibling's phones instead. Or using a PC to get their Twix fix?
- Social media apps? The most established ones have website versions. All this does is add a step, and while inconvenience is a deterrent, it is far from universal in effectiveness. (Edit got
![[nja]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/user_ninja_2074.png "[nja]")
)
Edited by MorningStar1337 on Apr 11th 2024 at 1:15:24 AM
Figure of Hourai
Or just using a web browser. On the phone.
As I said, it's even less potent than the content filters for porn and stuff that mobile providers have unless you ask them to turn it off... <_>
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A procrastination in of itself
You don’t need a 100% lockout to achieve a huge public health boost, plus a lot of people comply with the law without any enforcing mechanism. Just telling parents to it’s bad parenting to let your kids on social media would probably reduce the problem a lot.
Also I believe that msot social media platforms do not have anywhere near to level of addiction causing technology in their browser versions compared to their app versions, that’s why they try hard to push mobile users to the app rather than the browser.
Edited by Silasw on Apr 11th 2024 at 9:18:37 AM
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Figure of Hourai
Yeah, but "you need to buy a specific limited version of a phone" is making people go out of their way to get this limitation. It still relies on a mass of parents agreeing to lock their children out of it.
Once again, we have network-level content filtering. Why is that not just used instead? Would be much simpler, same goal, same issue with people finding their way around it but at least it's less trivial.
Edited by RainehDaze on Apr 11th 2024 at 9:24:06 AM
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A procrastination in of itself
I do agree that it’s far from the simplest way to do it. The simplest move would be to pass a law banning social media access for under 16s, make it offence for the website if someone under 16 is on there (strict liability starting with fines and ending with business licence revocation) and a cause for referral to social services if a child is found in there. Combine that with a public health campaign of the same scale we have on stuff like smoking, drinking and gambling.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Trans Siberian Anarchestra (it/they)
Legally mandating two different versions of a phone with minor hardware differences is certainly advantageous to phone manufacturers, though.
The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable
Figure of Hourai
Not even hardware. Firmware, at best.
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If someone can make DOOM run on a pregnancy test, then there is no way any law can sufficiently restrict a general purpose computer - especially when the people calling for those laws know barely anything about technology.
In the event that this actually happens, I would give it less than 48 hours before a workaround is discovered.
A procrastination in of itself
So?
People have workarounds to laws against sell alcohol to teenagers, people have workarounds to laws against sell tobacco to teenagers, people have workarounds to teenagers gambling in casinos.
The fact that people can find workarounds is not used to justify the legalisation of any other harmful and addictive substance for children.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
It means that using technological lockouts without actually banning kids from social media is doomed.
We're already having issues with kids and teens not actually knowing how to use computers effectively (anecdotally, but it's an anecdote I've seen rather often at this point). The proposed idea of giving kids 16 and under "child safe phones"... what's that going to look like? A school portal app and Youtube Kids? Computer literacy (and knowing how to vet sources) is already super low.
It's been fun.
A procrastination in of itself
It would presumably also work as a way of making telephone calls…
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Lost in Space
Not sure how social media apps are supposed to teach computer literacy.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
They're not, which is sort of my point. It just feels like overall that we've profoundly failed at teaching kids how to navigate the Internet (as in physically) as well as navigate the Internet (as in healthy skepticism, checking sources, etc). In both cases I feel like restricting the methods by which kids can access the Internet - via proprietary apps or auto-locked features like Youtube Kids and so on - doesn't actually help protect them, because that cedes the entire due diligence over to a single check. If you restrict the Internet to three sites, but none of those sites are actually upholding any kind of fact checking or community oversight, then you're just funneling kids into sites full of bullshit that they don't know enough to second-guess and they don't have the tools, mentally or digitally, to look for other sources.
I admit it's a bit orthogonal to the topic, but it does feel relevant.
Basically, my take on this is that I don't know if "don't expose kids at all until they're 16, then dump them into the same toxic cesspit that the Internet has become along with the rest of us" is the answer. It might help as a stopgap, but the problem is still the toxic cesspit, not the steepness of the ramp kids are falling down into it.
Edited by RedSavant on Apr 11th 2024 at 11:10:35 PM
It's been fun.
Basicly the computer problem of what we have run into in real life.
People are so afraid of kids getting hurt that they have killed every thing kids can do, and ended up actualy making them less healthy as a result.
"Oh damn little timmy might fall down and get hurt better sue this place"
"Wait why do the kids not have play grounds any more and why are they invading Sephora?"
We need to be teaching kids how to avoid getting hurt instead, it helps them substantially more in the long run then putting saftey bumpers on every single corner.
Oh, bother.
It's even worse since we don't really care about kids getting hurt. We just care about being held liable for it.
So we slap on the bumpers and put up signs saying "NO KIDS ALLOWED" so it's not our problem anymore. And if this leads to kids growing up into messed up adults...well, we don't really care about that either.
It's not that we're afraid for the children. We're really afraid for ourselves.
Edited by M84 on Apr 11th 2024 at 10:23:21 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
Either way the resulting problem is the same, the kids never get the experiance and learn, and then end up massively ill prepared for adulthood.
Besides as much as people want to blame parrents for just giving there kid an ipad and calling it a day... humor me for a minute here.
What is there even for kids to do any more besides hang out on social media.
We have killed pretty much every real life place for them to exist and socialize, even the capatalisim based ones which I have seen people on tick tock say that they dont have non-capatalistic spaces but like... no malls are dead too, mcdonalds has killed play places, fuck there was a controversy last summer with Japanese McDonalds baning middleshoolers entirely... even non social kids based things... like most cartoons that aren't aimed at the youngest demographics are gone.
Kids get funneled to the phone and the ipad because it's the only option for them to spend there time other then school left.
So yea, remove kids ability to access social media and like how are they suposed to interact with there friends in this day and age? School where there expected to cram for tests constantly? After school where there are no more businesses catering too or accepting them? Where.
It's an incredibly shortsighted idea that doesnt examine the surrounding context at all.
Edited by Imca on Apr 11th 2024 at 11:41:04 PM
Kids will find a way, kids will always find a way. They'll dig a hole and hang out there if they have to, that's what's great about kids, they try new things.
Never trust anyone who uses "degenerate" as an insult.
It's pretty disgusting business, but as you noted, it's hard for people to leave. Unless Bluesky and other social media sites actually really take off.
Like, I don't get why people would put up with that crap but business and promotional reasons I guess.
I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.