a dude that likes gaming and tech (especially Linux) aro/ace

  • 17 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: November 6th, 2023

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  • If you don’t understand that the motivation is to target kids with ads and influencer content designed to push products, you’re not going to solve anything.

    I 100% agree that social media companies are incentivized to make their platforms toxic to children, and that people on those platforms are motivated to exploit them, but immoral people existing is not the problem here.

    Kids have to have spaces to communicate with each other in order to develop healthy socialization skills.

    They don’t have to use social media for that though, not only are third spaces alive and well in many places including much of France (and where I live), chat apps are 100% enough for kids to socialize.

    I know that every teen where I live uses instagram to communicate with friends, but only the group/1to1 chats and stories, which are available in chat apps. The main feed(s) never show you things from your friends anyways.

    I feel like you are envisioning “chat apps” to mean “text-only”

    No, when I think of chat apps I think of signal and discord. Both have a ton of social features, the difference is that there isn’t an algorithm that acts as a vector for harmful bullshit or public profiles. Public rooms are still an issue, but from experience being a tween/teen on those platforms, it’s not even close to being as bad. Said bad actors do not exist in anywhere near the same capacity. Imo the harm of public chat rooms falls under the “parents can handle this” umbrella.

    If it was the case that it was just individual actors on the platform causing the harm and not the structure of the platforms incentivizing said harm, then we would see more of this type of thing in real life as well.

    I struggle to think of a more complete solution to the harm caused by social media to children than just banning them.

    I may have misunderstood your thesis though, and in that case please correct me.



  • Most parents either don’t know how to do that, or don’t care enough to stop their kids from using social media, despite how harmful it is for society as a whole, and especially children, and since all their friends are on social media, a child can credibly argue that they need to use it to maintain their social life. If social media is banned for under 16’s, then children would have to communicate with normal chat apps. Also I know from experience that parental controls can easily be bypassed by a dedicated child.

    A propely implemented (as in ZKP verification that gives no information to the service other than the age category) age gate is a good thing in my opinion, because at some point some systemic problems are better served by systemic solutions. We don’t let parents decide if their kids should smoke or drink alchohol either.