Finland to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with ban on youth social media

Re:Finland to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with ban o... by mike_hearn on Saturday January 31, 2026 @04:13PM (#46840922)

HN lets users opt to automatically lock themselves out after a while (noprocrast). Fortnite and WoW do not. Sounds like one knows they have users with problems, no?

I think the term addiction is way overused in this stuff. If a company makes a product you enjoy using that doesn't mean you can just describe it as addictive and get out of jail free. If there's some chemical in it that messes with your brain, fine, otherwise people need to take ownership of their own choices.

I think the disturbing reality is these countries are wanting to control social media to control the population politically. There was even a Labour MP in the UK who admitted it on television. If it weren't the case they'd just tell concerned parents to turn on the parental controls devices already have, problem solved. Instead they pass laws to end internet anonymity, but only on the big networks, which won't do anything for kids but is an excellent way to control political discontent.

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Re:Finland to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with ban o... by baq on Saturday January 31, 2026 @05:12PM (#46841426)

Parental controls don’t work, they’re too coarse grained and too easy to get past. Source: am a parent.

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Re:Finland to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with ban o... by mike_hearn on Sunday February 01, 2026 @05:51AM (#46845212)

They do work. You may not feel they work perfectly, but government mandated ID verification on social media will work far worse and be far more coarse grained. You don't even have any control with government regulation, so being "coarse grained" isn't even worth discussing because with one-size-fits-all laws imposed by the providers there is no grain.

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Re:Finland to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with ban o... by john01dav on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:48PM (#46842520)

> I think the disturbing reality is these countries are wanting to control social media to control the population politically

The current alternative is that unaccountable private interests control this, so some regulation in this regard seems reasonable to me. However, swapping private control for public control is only barely better.

The best solution that I can think of is ending algorithmic feeds, and having subscription feeds, or maybe user curated feeds, only.

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Re:Finland to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with ban o... by roughly on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:59PM (#46842584)

I think moving algorithmic feeds out of section 230 would do the trick. Once you’re curating the feed, you’re no longer a neutral platform.

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Re:Finland to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with ban o... by traktorn on Sunday February 01, 2026 @07:48AM (#46845872)

This is the best idea I’ve heard in a long time. This would solve so much.

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Re:Finland to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with ban o... by direwolf20 on Tuesday February 03, 2026 @06:56AM (#46869868)

Could already be argued it's not, right? The post is from another user, and the platform isn't liable for hosting it, but the feed is from the platform and the platform can be held liable for it.

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