A) It’s very unlikely to actually stop kids from accessing social media. VPN’s, purchasing blackmarket accounts that have already been verified, classic fake ID’s (in the age of AI generated images, no less). So they’ll just keep building profiles for them anyway (it’s already known they do this now for people not actually signed up with social media, their trackers are all over the web and it’s easy to build a profile without concerted effort against it). Why do we always think “this time for sure forcing abstinence will work!”? It never does.

B) In addition to not actually stopping building profiles on kids, it now hands them a goldmine of information on adults. Mandates it, even. Data leaks are going to get a lot more “fun”…

It’s not at all comparable. If I go into a library and get a book on fixing cars, the librarian doesn’t follow me around suggesting Joe Rogan.

Most people access their libraries via digital platforms like Libby as well these days. Unless you’re just going full Luddite and we’re just saying no digital access to anything at all.

I don’t see the value in the data being greater than the cost of administrating a patchwork of varied regulations across the globe.

This is a very strange position from someone posting in this community. You don’t think, even assuming no ill intentions, there’s any security risk in allowing big tech to access, and likely store, official identification? Data leaks happen all the time. If you wouldn’t publicly post your identification information, you should see the value in that data.

Easy block.

You may have a more personalized experience, but the front door of Youtube is… nauseating.

Is that really a good reason for banning its use for kids? Again, this is like shutting off library access because the stuff presented at the front is slop… my library presents slop at the front door, I don’t think that should stop kids from going inside.

I’d also point out at least my library doesn’t do any age verification or ID checks either.

Anyway, I cheer for any friction added to these tech companies because they are doing so much harm, so anything to slow them down.

I think this is cutting off your nose to spite your face though when it allows… mandates, rather, a huge collection of data. I’m not so sure big tech is really against this… early iterations of code to verify age were said to not store any data, but auditors found that to not be the case. That was walked back, but I find it very unlikely they won’t just do it again when there’s less scrutiny.

Especially since kids are likely going to just get on through backdoors anyway, we’ve likely done very little to stop data collection on them while handing them most adults on a silver platter. That’s in no way a score for the little guy.

I’m totally on board with fucking tech companies, I just don’t think this does it while simultaneously it fucks us.

I would love to see a platform curated with high quality content.

Nebula. It isn’t perfect, and it needs more creators, but that’s the closest I’ve come.

“Hey mom and dad can I use ‘historyTube’” “Absolutely!”. Easy.

Well, not if it’s banned as social media, that’s the issue.

Traditional Broadcasters have some standards.

Broadcasters did because they had laws restricting their content. Cable very much did not.

Think about the experience of going into a library or bookstore vs. YouTube, the content mix is not comparable.

My experience is that the stuff pushed by most libraries as their hot new items, things to read, general recommendations, are pretty much slop. Romantasy slop is a big genre all its own.

Which isn’t to say people can’t enjoy it, but it really isn’t much better than YouTube slop.

The algorithms , content scale, and access is another world.

Now that, I agree is an issue, but that’s just as true for adults as we’ve seen. I’d have less issue restricting how algorithms are pushed than mandatory ID… it would benefit all of society, not just kids, and it’s actually a positive improvement on privacy since it disincentivizes profile building.

The only real excuse for digital only is DRM free

And cheapness. Steam has always gotten away with this because it’s just plain cheap. Their distribution costs are way, way less per game and it’s easier for them to pass on savings, which I think is a big part of how they can push games for so cheap compared to most phyical media sources.

Using faschist terminology like this waters it down

Or takes the piss out of it. Just depends on your point of view.

Youtube is a massive problem for boys. There may be a couple of educational things on there but it’s adjacent to awful recommended content.

So is it worth losing access to Veritasium, Extra History, Professor Dave Explains, countless sources for learning programming…? This is like banning kids from TV because Jackass exists. It’s always been parents’ job to help guide their kids towards media that is more wholesome and fulfilling rather than tripe.

True of books, too, by the way… the written word isn’t an automatically higher art. Pulp has always been a thing, and anyone who actually does do a lot of reading can confirm there is a lot of tripe out there right now in book form.

Read a book, find a mentor, stay in school.

Learning to use digital content is a big part of school. It isn’t the 70’s anymore. This is like pushing for abstinence only education… it is pretty much proven, from sex ed to drugs, not to work. You need to teach responsible use.

Depends what counts as social media. YouTube could very much be implicated as a social media. Reddit/Lemmy obviously. There’s a ton of legitimately educational material on both platforms. What about Steam? With chat/friends/community function, isn’t that a social media? Where is the line drawn?

How well have these studies accounted for neuro-divergence in kids (something Europe has generally done a pretty poor job accommodating)? What about kids with certain disabilities that put them indoors often if not essentially always? Isn’t the isolation worse for their mental health?

Is there not some point at which you really do just have to depend on parents being parents? I accept that some state involvement is necessary sometimes, but this really feels pretty solidly in the purview of something that should be up to parental judgement.

No, it’s worse. Currently, if anything were to happen to my data, I could redownload it freely. If anything happens to your data with physical media, like the disc getting scratched and damaged, lost, or stolen, you’re just SOL.

Sure, if GOG goes belly up that goes away, but that’s what you’re stuck with in physical media the second you walk out the door with the disc.

GOG has managed to put out DRM free games though on a digital distribution platform. I can have my entire library backed up and it isn’t possible for them to nuke it in any way, as far as I know. It really isn’t a problem inherent to digital downloads, only the way some are trying to do it.

Valve gets away with it because you can get games for dirt cheap there.

I suspect if we were looking at the same image as above except buying Dead Space for $6 like you can on Steam, we’d be seeing a lot less pushback. Part of the excuse they had was physical media having a way bigger distribution cost compared to digital. They’re kind of trying to have their cake and eat it too, here.

And yeah, GOG is DRM free so that’s a pretty big difference.

I’m still a couch and controller gamer primarily, I just use a PC to do it lol. Honestly, with Steam, it’s really easy to just change Steam Big Picture mode as the default shell for Windows, so even if you don’t want to install SteamOS, you can still have the console experience of just turning the machine on and booting right into your games menu.

I’ve been predicting for while we’re going to see two parallel Internets develop, the “new” net running on the old infrastructure that’s basically run by the big guys and a new infrastructure modeled after the old internet that’s decentralized. We’ve been seeing a bunch of different pieces from Fediverse to LoRa communication, Meshtastic, Matrix, increased hobbyist interest in old ways of connecting computers (even saw a guide on how to set up your own dial up ISP for fun), etc. I’m not sure exactly how all those pieces are going to come together, but a locked down internet is only going to increase demand for what was lost in its creation. And its already been trending this way for awhile.

Perhaps, but one could argue it happens so often that the hammer lends itself to hammering this particular nail, and so often devolves into that. The Balkans are this experiment played out, attempting to carve out ethno states, and we’ve seen how that’s gone. Once you start saying things like “this country should only be (or primarily be) for X people”, you almost necessarily have to engage in some degree of genocide (in the wider sense of removing a people and culture that doesn’t fit the paradigm), or apartheid, otherwise the statement ends up a bit vacuous, no?

Israel is, in my view, a very clear example of this; once you’ve decided “this is a Jewish state”, anyone not Jewish by definition become second class citizens.

If we’re just talking general assimilation, that’s more nuanced… I don’t oppose calls for more assimilation, but I think governments have done a very poor job in using more stick than carrot. They tend to not put any effort in helping people integrate, which is, from experience, very difficult. One could argue it isn’t their responsibility, but I think such framings for state action is silly… either the state has an interest in a thing being done or it doesn’t, and in this case I think they very much do. Most immigrants that form insular communities do so not out of any inherent pull to, but because they’re already being somewhat ostracized. In the US, Chinatowns arose as a direct result of ostracization and discrimination.

I do think there is a danger of assimilation programs overzealously wiping out culture… the Sami have faced multiple attempts in the past at trying to stamp out their culture, the US and Australia religiously forced the elimination of many native cultures in the name of assimilation. It is also a fine line to walk. But there is undoubtedly a state interest (and immigrant interest!) in assimilating into society.

I’d argue the binding culture that should be assimilated shouldn’t be things as fuzzy as ethnicity… the culture that binds should be the values of that nation. Which doesn’t really have anything to do with ethnicity.

I guess I’m just skeptical this false impression will work on locals… I’d presume they aren’t hearing from this group from lemmy mainly and likely already have feelings established, no? It just seems to me this wouldn’t be a good forum on which to spread misinformation… strikes me as a lot more likely that a forum known for being pretty left leaning is just latching onto a story that is related to their interest.

Because (at least on lemmy) they spam articles about this, and treat it like some “gotcha” moment that would make the company no longer able to fulfill their purpose.

Because more militant left leaning views are pretty common here. Seems to be the Occam’s Razor answer.

Yes of course, it is to me just clear that it is not about Mullvad. The post are about ÖP.

To what end? Surely locals would have a better idea of exactly where their politics stand… what’s the point in giving a false impression to people from random countries on the Internet?

I still wouldn’t support it and would probably pull my money from someone who is actively promoting it. Often this kind of sentiment is a soft pedaled version of more ugly policies, and I just don’t agree with it in the first place. I think nationalism is generally an ignorant position and the lesson of the 20th century should be that trying to maintain homogeneous states nearly always leads to genocide in the worst cases and apartheid states in the best of times. So this doesn’t assuage me much.

That said, extra context is always welcome.

This is way worse than what Yen did. This guy donated a lot of money to a party that explicitly pushes demigration policies, and if there was any doubt that this was a motivating factor for the donation, he later said he felt those policies were necessary. That’s understandable to not want to give your money to someone who you know is going to go bankroll demigration politics with some of your money.

Yen praised the Republicans at large over an anti trust pick.

I think the other criticisms of Proton’s policy changes are valid, and everyone has different standards for what is enough to divest from a company I guess, but I’ve heard people calling Yen a fascist sympathizer for that statement, and that’s just divorced from reality imo.

On the bright side, if the AMOC shuts down, which early indications seem to say it might be, you’ll also have way colder winters in Europe to balance things out. I guess that should also get the eastern seaboard of the US hotter as well? So fun for everyone!