The general direction has been to let corporate roam free, and use lawsuits as the regulator for when their behavior bumps into externalities.
Of course, as a safeguard corporations will make these lawsuits look as ridiculous and frivolous as possible, argue that people are trigger happy with lawsuits, and from time to time fabricate stories to sway the opinion in the right direction.
An example of a book about this: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo364551...
About nice heart-warming stories of frivolous lawsuits: https://web.archive.org/web/20210124041909/https://www.latim...
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/01/supreme-court-texas...
This is a pretty good law review article from 10 years ago: J. Maria Glover (2012). The Structural Role of Private Enforcement Mechanisms in Public Law. William & Mary Law Review 53:1137–1217. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmlr/vol53/iss4/3. A quote:
> The American regulatory system is unique in that it expressly relies on a diffuse set of regulators, including private parties, rather than on a centralized bureaucracy for the effectuation of its substantive aims. In contrast with more traditional conceptions of private enforcement as an ad hoc supplement to public law, this Article argues that private regulation through litigation is integral to the structure of the modern administrative state. Private litigation and the mechanisms that enable it are not merely add-ons to our regulatory regime, much less are they fundamentally at odds with it.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americans_with_Disabilities_Ac...
This means that if a child is injured on the playground, the insurance company will sue the owner of the playground (the owner could be the city) unless it can be proved that the playground took all care to make it safe.
Relationship to the parent post: lawsuits as a regulatory mechanism.
This isn’t about private health insurance. It’s a much deeper issue or risk tolerance for society.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/24/why-germany-is...
Commercial entities (kindergartens, schools, etc.) present themselves as well equipped by showing they have well equipped playground or other amenities. Those are filled quicker than those not having one and I've seen instances where few commercial entities decided to create a shared commercial playground. Some are pay-to-enter so it's even simpler.
Public ones are more complicated. I know for instance, that where I live there are annual calls for social projects which are voted upon by community and payed for using tax money. There's plethora of them and while budget for the winner projects is limited quite often there are groups trying to push their idea even if it fails and lobby for them. It of course affects local politics and activists which are trying to make various ideas happen.
It's not perfect, and sometimes it fails. Arborists are doing periodical inspections yet there is always room for error. Inspections won't prevent strong wind from breaking branch off) but it usually keeps thing together.
In the German speaking parts of Europe for example if a large apartment building or a whole complex of those is built it might be mandated by law to have a playground within a certain distance.
Health care: It's private in the US, but government-run in most of the EU. Weapons: You can sell weapons in the US because the new owner is expected to be a responsible citizen. In the EU, who you may sell to is strictly controlled by government rules. Drugs: The FDA will let you sell almost literal poison, as long as you mark the ingredients clearly on the box. The EU has much stricter rules for what may be sold to the general public.
In general, US laws are built around the idea that your average citizen is a responsible adult. The EU, on the other hand, is built around the idea that most people need guidance to do the right thing. I dislike the EU system because it limits my freedom. But looking at social media, I feel like the US assumption that most people are responsible adults is simply not true anymore. Maybe by now, we need to treat most people like kids, for their own good ...
Oh and I believe it's absolutely appropriate for parents to sue social media companies if they screw up the age check. What they are doing is akin to putting bottles of poisoned water in a public place. It's just that their poison is psychological. At the very least, we can hold them responsible to keep it out of reach of children who simply don't understand the issues yet.
I argue they never were to begin with, but I still fundamentally disagree with the stance that the government should control private consumption.
>Oh and I believe it's absolutely appropriate for parents to sue social media companies if they screw up the age check
I don't. I see it more as suing a candy store for giving kids cavities. Candy is inherently bad and unnecessary ~~Just like Alcohol, oh wait...~~ But not poisonous ~~alcohol is tho~~.
Teach them moderation. Be it with video games, food, or now social media. There is no activity that is safe for you when done in excess, so better to get that lesson instilled ASAP instead of blaming the rest of the world for your problems. It's a good universal lesson to have since you can't protect kids from every bad factor of the world.
How much innovation comes out of the eu? How many unicorns have they produced vs the rest of the world? How are the economies of European countries looking in terms of growth vs the rest of the world? How is the percent of global gdp for the eu looking over the last few years?
As for "innovation" and "unicorns", the US has done well, but a lot of the best examples have been European immigrants to the US.
When the chips were really down, in the Manhattan Project, who did the US rely on? Overwhelmingly it was Europeans who emigrated to the US: Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, John von Neumann, Leo Szilard, James Franck, Edward Teller, Rudolf Peierls, and Klaus Fuchs. The US would not exist if they hadn't. So let's not get too cocky.
Also, not every useful innovation can be measured in unicorn dollars ;) Facebook has a massive market cap, yet it arguably just makes everyone less happy.
The US is no outlier, in fact it has a lower homeless rate than Germany and Sweden.
I've lived in Europe my entire life and things just got worse regulation wise. Every year it feels more and more like living in a totalitarian regime.
Social media is a tool like any other, the problem is that parents aren't there to educate kids. Oftentimes because both parents are working or because they're single parents.
I’ve been to the Stasi museum; I think they’d have lusted over the surveillance capacity of even just the data analytics in the tracking cookies whose cargo-culted consent [0] popups are merely the most visible consequence.
Being able to read direct messages from or to any person, just by court order? Convincing everyone to take photos of everyone around them continuously, with location and time metadata added automatically by the camera, and having an AI that can recognise specific faces in the entire dataset?
They’d think every charismas came at once.
But the rules and regulations? Not so much. And I’m saying that even though there’s a few specific ones I’m quite unhappy about.
[0] they’re not needed for things strictly necessary for functionality (like this website and GitHub), but if you do need them then you need non-coerced consent so the “no” needs to be as easy to click as the “yes”
And now I can’t edit it, I spot the typo; should be “every Christmas came at once.”
The only thing that the EU has done is make web browsing worse by forcing a damn cookie popup on every damn website.
Alternatively we can admit that there is an issue with the amount of power and influence given to a few companies who have privatized all normal communication, especially for the younger generation. There is a reality of psychological and sociological harm that can’t be mitigated by taking your children fishing and giving them a few stern lectures. Full grown adults can’t even fight being manipulated by these apps.
Companies have not “privatized communication” besides “Facebook is for old people”. Are we going to have the government legislate the algorithms companies use? I bet politicians would love to say that companies must prioritize whatever speech they are in favor of.
And regarding power to a few companies: that's how it's always been.
"Doom scrolling" didn't exist when I was a kid and I'm glad it didn't. I would never have developed a love of computers. The closest thing I had in the 80s was TV. 6 channels, and they all shut down at midnight and displayed a test signal. When they were "on" the content was mostly shit.
Infinite scroll on social media is designed to be addictive. What chance does a 13 year old have when most adults (who have outgrown their teenage desperation for social acceptance) can't control that addiction?
What happens when your kids is sent home from school because they assaulted someone or vandalized the school because it's a new cool thing on TikTok?
Next they're yelling that the you're a bigot based on some obscure heuristic that doesn't even make sense?
Ever tried using logic with someone who is 100% certain you're the bad guy because they've been brainwashed for 8 hours a day on an app?
What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up? For me it was music, slang and haircuts. These days it's self harm, coordinated vandalism, pornified ideas of bodies and sex. I know a lady who has a 16yo daughter who is bulimic... so are her whole clique.
As you mention, we don't let kids drink alcohol at 13.
My kids can call me a bigot and hate me as much as they want, it won't change the fact I am the parent and I decide what's right for them until they're of age.
When I was growing up there was already vandalism, porn, unrealistic body image (bodybuilders for guys, anorexic models for girls), heavy underage drinking and goth cutting themselves.
The only difference in today's world is that we celebrate people with mental illnesses for political purposes.
Teaching your kids what the media say is mostly biased BS and forbidding them from using social media is not too hard.
1. Adults have pretty bad impulse control.
2. But kids or teenagers have even worse impulse control.
3. The prefrontal cortex, in charge of risk evaluation and decision making, matures when you're 25 years old (+/-).
4. These huge companies are built around addiction and getting network effects to set it. They have huge marketing budgets and a lot of money to lobby governments.
What's I'm saying is: good luck getting the average kid to break a habit even many adults can't. And when the human brain, on average, fails ("don't drink and drive!"), we introduce laws to fix that. Personal responsibility only takes us so far, because we're human and fallible.
We have a ton of bans for a ton of stuff in a ton of countries and they seem to work.
The burden on proof is on you to prove they're all wrong.
And why would you want government control over what you can see and say?
The world is more than the US.
> And why would you want government control over what you can see and say?
Because this is not just about me, it's about society as a whole.
And humans can be horrible:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...
Let's just agree to disagree on fundamental philosophical differences here and call it a day.
For example, a government may want to circumvent encryption: if they tried to do this by requiring the SQL tables to be mauve “because that has the most RAM”, that would be ineffective; conversely if they passed a law requiring backdoors in everything, while this would be bad for many reasons, it would definitely have an effect.
>Ever tried using logic with someone who is 100% certain you're the bad guy because they've been brainwashed for 8 hours a day on an app?
it sucks yea. But if it wasn't facebook, it'd be any other form of ad made in the past century. including "news" channels
>What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up?
TV and Video games were the new hotness, but all those were common too. cutting yourself as some perverted idea of "goth culture", body image issues from magazine and mannequins, graffiti, and yes, sex (that's a factor as old as time).
Same shit, different outfit.
Yes because we passed laws, we stopped drug use and alcohol use by children and they aren’t having sex…
> What happens when your kids is sent home from school because they assaulted someone or vandalized the school because it's a new cool thing on TikTok?
Yes because fighting in school and vandalizing property was never a thing before TikTok.
> What was the big "social contagion" when you were growing up?
Yes because before the internet there wasn’t mass hysteria like the Salem witch trials or within my parents lifetime @running all of the Black people out of the city to protect our wome
I hated my parents for forbidding me to do things I wanted; from having a phone to not going to party when I was too young.
I ended up having a phone and partying later on and I eventually came to hate both after a few years.
Now that I grew up, I'm glad they stopped me from entering that world too early, I'm glad I tried and I'm glad I'm done with it.
Edit: perhaps ppl downvoting should ask their local psychologist about boundaries and why they’re important
But now, the government will get it right.
Good parenting is partly about guiding our children to make good choices. This thread is discussing how we do that, and what good choices might look like.
There has always been peer pressure and parents have mostly loss that battle. Even with government intervention.
Imagine your kids play down the street, they’re about to go in an area with a lot of cars and a stranger passing by tells them its dangerous and go to the park ?
Or your kids receive a ton of ads for gambling apps on youtube and you have recourse to make it stop instead of cutting your kids from the only viable video platform outside of tiktok ?
Society is literally dead without children, why can’t it be safer for them in general ?
I watched a documentary about China where they have technology addiction boot camps. I supposed it would be biased toward "see what fascists the Chinese are...locking up kids for gaming too much", but within 5 minutes I changed my mind and could see a very different side.
If parents give their kids smartphones and let them go wild on social media - because they feel unable to help their children against highly addictive behaviours - then they need societal backup and education to be better parents. It's hard enough just clothing and feeding those little ones.
This stuff is destroying the lives of young people. And we made it!
In my opinion, social media (and always-on smartphone culture) is bad for _everyone_ and should be treated as a public health issue like tobacco and alcohol. That way, governments can take a... like you know... _ACTUAL_ _MORAL_ position on it.
Schools can be funded to message kids early and proprietors can feel emboldened to ban people from using technology in places (as in the UK where some pubs and gyms ban phones). We can get doctors and counsellors on board and fund public health awareness.
The _real_ problem is governments are conflicted. They want social media. It's a useful surveillance and control mechanism. And to some degree a suppressant. I wrote a fair bit about here [1]
I personally wouldn’t go that far but agree with your logic. If we come to the conclusion that something is bad for every member of our society, the course of action shouldn’t be to shield children from it but to straight regulate at a seller level.
For lighter approaches, I think there should be higher barriers to pay money virtual goods in game, and dark patterns should have more protection (automatic refunds on proven bad behaviors of an app could be a thing for instance)
You remember that whole “Prohibition” thing don’t you?
On alcohol, I think current policies are decently balanced. There could be more education on its effects and work around the driving part, but we’re in an better place than when there was no gov. intervention at all I think.
If you think government regulations when it comes to alcohol has done anything, you haven’t seen the statistics on underage alcohol use.
You are free as a parent to try to shelter your children from harm.
Also if we really think that video games induce violence, it’s interesting to think about why we want them played by 20+ yo grow ups who can cause actual harm at a non trivial scale.
This is the same “society” that routinely post messages to NextDoor because my son “looks suspicious” walking in our neighborhood in the burbs and walking into our house.
- Use adblock. But even with it I wouldn't let my children use Youtube or Tiktok. They shouldn't be spending that time behind a screen.
I've seen acquaintances use iPads as nannies for their children ("have to do the dishes, here's mum's iPad") and I find that grossly irresponsible. Why would you want your kids to have access to an online video platform anyway? Until they capable of discerning what's worth their time I don't think it's healthy for them to have access. And I have to admit that I'm still having a hard time discerning what's worth my time.
This has truth in it, but in my opinion the pendulum swung way too far on one side. We live in times were the cops will bring back a kid that is found to be playing alone in a park. Or whole services cutting off 13- yo from their platform (yes I know, COPPA and everything) because they can’t be bothered and nobody blames them for that.
A lot of people have I think an ideal of kids raised in a cocoon by their parents until they’re 13 or 18, and by the magic of their age kids can now freely roam and become full member of our society overnight. That’s now how it works, or I’d say that’s a horrible way to raise future members of society.
> They shouldn't be spending that time behind a screen.
A century and half ago, I think people would tell their kids to close their books and play outside. My parents were telling me to turn of my video games and play outside. Current parents are told to shut off screens, keep their kids off the street, and “supervise” them. Or are parents all supposed to hire actual human nannies ?
As a society, do we really want kids ? I think that’s how we’re telling people to not have kids.
No, GDPR requires consent. How it can be obtained is at the site administrator's decision.
The GDPR even states that a lack of action (consent or refusal) cannot block further use of the site/app.
Don't blame the EU for "cookie popups" because the whole situation is the fault of the site owners - they are implementing the requirements incorrectly.
See also the “War on Drugs”.
GitHub doesn’t have one. HackerNews doesn’t have one. The requirement is to get consent for unnecessary data processing, and most of the popups don’t even meet the requirements of GDPR to be non-coercive.
Which it admits directly when you click the cookie banner button labeled “Customise settings”: you are presented with four yes-no toggles, the first of which is labelled “Strictly Necessary” and which can’t be disabled.
IANAL but from what I’ve been told the SO banner isn’t even GDPR compliant because it makes it harder to reject unnecessary cookies than to accept all of them.
That tells me that they don’t know. Making every part of the org prove that they aren’t is very expensive but doesn’t improve the service.
If they apply that as on and everything else in that popup as off, they are in compliance with GDPR without having to show the popup.
Unless that setting is misleading, but then they are not in compliance even despite showing the popup, even if they fix the problem I raised previously.
Very different.
Some would say that the fetus losing its life is a bit harmful.
Are you sure about that? Because not even Doctors are sure about it, but most accept it as a ~acceptable Trade-off.
In the end you kill a future-human, being not against abortion, i would also not take it lightly, and the potentially harmed individual cannot speak for itself.
The novel thing about this law is that, normally, the person bringing a suit has to have been harmed by the person they're suing. If someone burns down your house, you can sue them. I can't, even though a person was harmed by the act. The abortion law allows anyone at all to sue on behalf of an aborted fetus, even though the person bringing the suit was not harmed.
> Eschew flamebait.
To call yourself a "government", at some point you need to take a stand that contains actual values.
One can understand why California would not like to go directly against BigTech as we are in Europe. And any fixed laws will quickly go out of date in a fast world. So more fundamental principles must be addressed. Positive and enabling policies are always better.
Is that really better than letting money hungry lawyers put together class action lawsuits related to actual damages?
I just don’t see how it’s obvious that one is better than the other.
This is a huge loophole in the law and the justice system. Apparently there is some set of laws such that if written the right way, they can be completely and blatantly unconstitutional yet still remain in effect. This is effectively a backdoor around the constitution, and the question right now is: which laws will SCOTUS refuse to stay? And how much damage can we do in the interim period when the law has been challenged but neither overturned nor stayed? How much can we get away with?
The reason why SCOTUS is humoring Texas is because actually stopping their legal shenaniganery requires legislating a whole new tort reform regime from the bench. 'Cause that's the only thing that would really work to stop Texas: ending or severely curtailing "private AG"[2] causes of action in the law. But that also means rolling back a lot of legal liability that corporations otherwise would have for their actions. Balancing this properly would be difficult - it's something that Congress really should be doing, not the Supreme Court... but they never did, so now here we are.
[0] "State actors" means all levels of government plus private corporations acting in the role of a government.
[1] For starters, the 5th Amendment does not apply to civil litigation. If the government wants to throw you in jail for 10 years for making counterfeit Mickey Mouse merch, you are allowed to refuse to testify and the court cannot assume your guilt from a refusal to testify. However, if Disney sued you for $10,000,000 for the same tort, you can be forced to testify against yourself and refusal to do so will result in an "adverse inference" being placed upon you.
[2] Laws which allow private individuals to bring class action lawsuits on behalf of some public interest, in lieu of the US government prosecuting them. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_attorney_general
https://www.dir.ca.gov/Private-Attorneys-General-Act/Private...