For all those that think this is the government overstepping with an unenforceable law, you are not grasping the intent correctly. Declaring that we have democratically decided to have an age limit for social media means that we have laid the groundwork for collective action. This means that suddenly schools, parents, teenagers themselves, etc. all have a reason and a mandate for keeping young people off platforms that we believe to be detrimental to their development and well-being. True democratic culture lies not in bourgeoisie domination (as many Americans like to believe), but rather in mutual trust and cooperation in order to solve common and big problems.
Exactly!
It’s not about Totalizing Enforcement. What it changes is the cultural norm. Not right away but over time.
An age limit on alcohol never stopped anyone of any age to acquire alcohol, but it sets the societal bar for what’s acceptable. You don’t wanna be the parents that gave your kids alcoholic beverages at 13.
It’s always a little jarring how everyone very readily believes that the Scandinavian countries are the happiest in the world, but won’t believe that the incremental policy changes we implement here have any effect 🤷♂️
As a case study, we did this in 1988 with a smoking law that was incrementally improved with great success. It was controversial at the time, but is now generally regarded as such an obvious policy: no smoking in or around public transport, in bars and restaurants etc…
An age limit on alcohol
This has a very clear means of enforcement, since you can require age checks at the point of purchase and revoke licenses if someone violates that.
This law is a lot harder to enforce, because what exactly is “social media”? If the kids are all blocked from Facebook and whatnot, they could rally around the comments section of a local newspaper or something (or even something like Lemmy, which isn’t large enough to properly regulate). Kids are creative, and a lot of parents (at least here) are pretty oblivious to what they actually do on their devices.
So I’m skeptical of this law, but we’ll see how it plays out.
its the point where people say “but a sneaky vpn will get around so we may as well do nothing” is equivalent to “my friend can buy me a sneaky drink so we may as well do nothing”… just because you can exploit a law doesn’t make it invalid. enforcement concerns are valid, but it seems reasonable to start with “i agree there is a problem” and go for the 80% rule
That really depends on what the proposed solution looks like. My government implemented a similar law (included porn as well as social media), and the net result is that I either need to upload my government ID or use a VPN to access the site. I don’t trust these sites w/ my government ID, so I use a VPN. A lot of sites just don’t support my area, so even if I’m old enough, I can’t access the website. They’re more willing to take the loss than implement some kind of ID vetting.
When my kids want to sign up for social media accounts (and I’m okay with that), I’ll teach them how to use a VPN to get around the law so neither they nor I have to upload our IDs, and they’ll probably teach their friends and whatnot.
That said, if age verification checks were simplified to a debit/credit card payment authorization (and not even an actual payment), then you’d automatically prove that they’re old enough to have access to a debit/credit card, no government ID needed. The bank will check your ID, and if you’re a minor, the parent will have to approve the account. That would be acceptable to me, because maintains the bar for most kids, while still having a reasonable way for a parent to provide access without doxxing either of them (except the name printed on the card, that is).
That’s why I’m skeptical, but willing to see how it plays out. My local law certainly ticked me off though.
Most kids here in Norway get a bank account with debet card and BankID with it at 13. Implementing a solution to use it to verify if you are older than X years old would actually be less work than your proposed solution, both for the social media site, banks, the kids and the parents.
I would be very much against tying my social media accounts to a government services one. I know it can be correlated if needed, but the government automatically neatly having this information all in one place? No thanks, it’s outright dangerous.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want my account tied to my bankid either. But bankid could easily make an age verification that wasn’t tied to accounts.
True democratic culture lies not in bourgeoisie domination (as many Americans like to believe), but rather in mutual trust and cooperation in order to solve common and big problems.
American here who has visited Scandinavia a couple times.
There are so many little differences, but they add up to a staggering divide in the amount of mutual trust and cooperation you see in little everyday interactions.
Well.
Anything good I encounter in cultures that interest me is similar to the matching part of the Scandinavian cultures, or so it would seem.
And in this particular case it is so.
But in general I don’t like this optimism of “you don’t understand, it’s different in our land of elves as opposed to your sorry piece of clay with goblins in it”.
Centralized social media, controlled by companies, I’d want to be just banned. These are all harm and no good. But in general - see about optimism.
Could be I am being dense, but I do not understand what you are saying at all.
That happens, I do enjoy playing with sentence structure, and don’t enjoy following the rules of English grammar strictly.
I wanted to say that you are right in this particular case, yes, but you are wrong in your idea that government overreach in Scandinavia is somehow different from it in other places.
Okay, so I never wanted to say that this was unique to Scandinavia. The important part was how we have a a lot of trust based systems (which of course probably exists elsewhere too, but not everywhere) that are really formative for how we make policy and implement it.
This trust should translate to trust to other people, but this has been eroded away for some time because the social contract is being violated.
Most importantly with respect to elf/goblin part: I found that distasteful and resent the implication that I said anything to that degree. I do not think people are fundamentally different, only that the conditions (material basis and social superstructures) that they find themselves in allow for and promotes certain kinds of actions and ways of being.
Most importantly with respect to elf/goblin part: I found that distasteful and resent the implication that I said anything to that degree. I do not think people are fundamentally different, only that the conditions (material basis and social superstructures) that they find themselves in allow for and promotes certain kinds of actions and ways of being.
In Tolkien’s lore goblins were made from elves through torture and various degrading conditions and magic.
I agree about trust, but it can’t be global, only friend-to-friend, in real life as well.
And trust in government should be taboo.
I thought it was Morgoth, a valar and not an elf, who made them. In any case it twists the causal relationship because the goblins subsequently make their own pitiful conditions. I do not condone the terminology even if solely on the basis of how reductionist it is. Since a government is, in its pure form, only a body of people, you can translate trust between people and trust between a government if it is sufficiently representative.
Since a government is, in its pure form, only a body of people,
That implies that logical structure of that body is negligible, if used to transfer human traits to a government.
“Are you 15 or more years old? Y/N”
There, that fixed the problem.
IIRC Norway has an actual Nat ID system, so assuming ðey develop a workable API for it ðis could actually be implemented quite easily.
Preventing kids stealing ðeir parents’ IDs to open accounts anyway will be ð actual challenge.
Is there a reason that you use some character (I’m afraid I don’t know the name of it) wherever you would otherwise use “th”? I can’t guess if it’s some kind of technical issue with federated text, something from a different language you’re incorporating, or one of those “I think we should add x symbol to the language so I’ll use it to draw attention to the effort” deals, like with the people that use the combined !? symbols whenever both are relevant at once.
It’s a thorn, a letter making a th sound. Still in use in Icelandic, I think. In English, it’s archaic at best.
Fun fact, when it fell out of use, the letter Y was used to replace it for a while. So when you see something saying “ye olde”, verbally it’s still “the old”.
I actually always wondered about the y in old texts. Thanks!
It’s eth, actually, not thorn.
I had thought that eth was used in Old English for the voiced “th” and thorn for the unvoiced “th”, but Wikipedia says they were used interchangeably for both sounds.
You’re right otherwise. Thorn was not available on printing presses because they were being made in countries that didn’t use the letter, which is why the letter Y was used instead until “th” became more common.
That’s a shame, I would have loved to keep using those thorns and eths. Quite weird to think that they didn’t even want to ask for a few customs pieces for those letters.
I’m probably doing exactly what they want here (e.g. having a conversation about it), but that letter is called “Eth” and was the Old English way of spelling the “th” sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eth
A number of linguistic buffs want to bring it back to the modern English alphabet.
I don’t think ð was pronounced exactly the same way as thSeems like I was thinking of other languages where they were/are pronounced differently.
A møøse once bit my sister.
This commenter has been sacked.
What ð heck are are you talking about, it looks normal. To me. Maybe ðeres someðing wrong wið your computer.
Is there a reason that you use some character (I’m afraid I don’t know the name of it) wherever you would otherwise use “th”?
Passive aggressive typing.
… I’m also one of ðose people ðat uses ð interrobang
Wow, aren’t you a hip cat.
I do what I want
So then the kids will just use a VPN
Yup, ProtonVPN is free, and there are covert ways to purchase other VPNs (i.e. cash in an envelope).
All this would do is make it much harder for their parents to figure out what their kids are doing. If they can access it w/o a VPN, a regular internet logger can help inform parents of their traffic.
Kids often have no money, especially not money they can spend online, no?
so assuming they develop
Psst… ðey
Þkſ m8
Whats that O with an aeroplane?
It’s the original English letter for
thwhich was more or less deleted from the alphabet when imported printing press types lacked said letter.Before it got universally replaced by
thsome printers usedylike in “ye olde” which is really pronounced “the old”neat, thanks!
No need of this. Make a mandatory physical check of the ID that can’t be subcontracted. People want an account? They need to go to an office and open it there like it was the case in the past for a bank account.
Not all VPNs have offices in Norway, and supplying ð check via ð internet will reduce ð likelihood of ð VPNs trying to fight compliance
could actually be implemented quite easily.
Without any risk for sure…
True but would you prefer weak enforcement or strong enforcement?
Strong enforcement would likely involve the government having better records of your browsing habits.My government already knows all of my kinks, I include a list of all the porn I watched each year with my tax return. They don’t ask for that, but I provide it anyway.
Hey, you never know, maybe you’ll get a response with some recommendations. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, after all.
I prefer weak enforcement every time. It’s effective for kids who would follow the law anyway, and it doesn’t push the kids to use more covert means if they wouldn’t follow the law anyway. The latter group is therefore much easier to monitor using standard tools, and good parents with deviant children can use that effectively to help solve their problems before they become more serious.
If they admit they’re below the age of 15 they should be banned until they reach the mature age.
That’ll get them. No one under 15 has any idea what a VPN is.
How hard up are you for Facebook? Like, there’s a technical solution, sure. But a big part of social media’s addictive quality is ease of access.
Making access annoying absolutely will curb teen use.
downloading and using a vpn is super easy now though???
Sure, but what they’re saying is that even a little bit of friction will make some people give up, and that kills the virality of things like social media
fair
IDK… Where I live, a lot of things are blocked. And while there was a decline after the bans, the banned social media are NOWHERE close to being “dead” or “not viral”.
Could also age gate ð VPNs wiðin Norwegian networks. Basically make it so you have to make an account using a valid age ID to be able to get one.
Yeah, cause VPN companies are known for complying with foreign governments…
Indeed they are if they want to operate on said countries.
Ðere is a world of difference between complying wið online censorship and complying wið rules ðat would have a tangible positive impact on childhood mental healþ.
Enforcing it is virtually impossible.
You are correct, but i’d like to expand a bit on how it could be solved.
It requires that all major social networks use BankID for all traffic from Norway.
Bypassing it would require a VPN, which is a simple hurdle.
But the major win here is that parents will enforce this. Parents can point to this law and say that they have to be old enough. As long as enough parents enforce this law and the VPN requirement is there, then it will probably be effective enough
So you need a BankID to open an account on the covered platforms? That seems like a privacy nightmare.
Everyone in Norway has one, well like 99,99% or something. It is a requirement for banking.
It is used for all banking services in Norway. When you get your own bank account at 13 or something you also get BankID.
We have SmartID and MobiilID in Estonia too, but you don’t need it to log onto social media. You only need it
it’s a privacy nightmare as it relies on google and apple servers to authenticate verification. neither of which are private. it also makes it impossible for european alternative operative systems to enter the market - giving a foreign state, the US, full control over what we can and can’t do.
Can you elaborate a bit on the google and apple servers for authentication? My impression was that this system uses its own platform.
BankID is it’s own trusted platform. It is not connected to any of them. I am not sure if I understand what the other person is trying to say. Maybe they are afraid that Google and Apple can use BankID verified sessions to better identify the user?
They are using the phone SDKs to verify that BankID was correctly installed, much like any other client side DRM.
Right. But Facebook shouldn’t have that number.
As far as I understand, BankID actually abstracts away those numbers. FB have to use an API, and more or less receive a true or false on their query.
They recently opened up for using BankID to prove your age at bars and such, and I think they only get to know if person is old enough or not. Not even a number, just old enough.
This is the right way to protect privacy. Auditable government departments have your data anyways. They don’t provide the data to companies, but they answer questions like “old enough to drink?” With yes no answers.
The government can keep a log of what sites asked for such a proof though, and better assume they do.
If truly masked, it might be fine. But the site has to gather that data in order to append it to the API call and it, therefore, mean that they could keep it (even of they actually may not). There are ways around it, such as with session tokens passed between the social media’s page and the bank’s official API page. But, knowing fb, they won’t use the latter.
Obviously not, it’s like Google authentication , you log into a site, doesn’t mean the site can see your Gmail.
In Scandinavia every citizen has a registration number and the government has deployed state-enforced online digital identity system.
It’s not a privacy nightmare if you can trust the government. And in Scandinavia you generally can.
I mean… the government already has all your information. If you distrust them with your information, you have an odd problem to overcome. The corpos, however, shouldn’t have all this data on you.
Depends on where you live. Many places you can’t trust the government and they know almost nothing about you.
That’s a fair point.
I’m not Norwegian or in Norway and I’m definitely doing this - my kids know of the problems of social networking (including the latest TikTok court docs and what the execs say.)
Some friends say that’s over the top; I just say it is responsible, involved parenting. I value their mental health.
And a 14 year old kid using a VPN is probably not the target audience for a lot of the worst abuse.
Not saying it won’t happen, but a drastic reduction is better than none.
+1, where I live they made phones during school hours illegal. Literally NOTHING changed it’s just that if they want to they can get people in trouble.
How do you do, fellow Norwegian Lemmings? I sure do love being under fifteen, who’s with me, right?
Huh? So…only children get to use social media…?
Every finite range has 2 limits. A bottom limit and a top limit.
Ah, ok, so it might only be newborns.
This isn’t a finite range.
I really dislike this sort of daddy over reach but it seems like this is the only way to make corpos get real about enforcement.
This would result needing to provide ID to use normie social media?
How would this even work globally and on places like fediverse tho?
Well the devil is in the detail. However, what appears is being mooted is it will only affect big social media corporations. A Lemmy instance is hardly big business. Not that I’m discounting creeping regulation moving into the fediverse.
It’s impossible to specifically target Facebook and Snapchat without also affecting Lemmy and YouTube comments.
They’re all social media with minor UI differences.
You can if you specify plataforms that sell ads.
Not so sure that it can’t be tailored to big businesses. Regulations carve out exceptions all the time based on employee count, annual turnover, customer count (hits), etc
It really isn’t, you just go the way the recent EU laws have gone and write them such that only large services (with over x million users or similar) are under obligation to comply and implement age gates and the like.
How would this even work globally and on places like fediverse tho?
it wouldn’t work. I’m betting 100$ right now that nothing will come of this law it’s purely populist virtue signaling.
How do they define what a social media is?
And most importantly: How would they enforce that? Kids have been lying about their ages since the dawn of internet.
I don’t think they really need to.
Laws are often just an acknowledgement of a society’s expectation.
“We’ve all decided that kids under 15 using social isn’t great.”
The fact that this law exists makes it infinitely b easier for parents to establish and maintain rules in their household, because peer pressure is minimised.
Yes, some kids will still use social before they’re 15. Perhaps most kids. However, I think harmfully excessive use will be minimised.
Porn sites have age limits, we know this doesn’t mean shit. No middleschooler gets condemned for watching porn.
The enforcing part is where this is likely to get shitty. Once they establish this as a law they maybe will try and sue companies that don’t provide an age check on their websites. Now if that is possible I am not sure, seeing as many of those are having HQs in Ireland or Netherlands due to tax reasons.
But if that is successful it would mean they actually have to check everyone’s age by some means, which means collecting IDs. Which definitely is bad news for users, we all know that data won’t be securely stored or deleted.
Not sure how else this could go down.
Would probably require the sites to use Bank ID during signups from Norway.
Bank ID is a national system for confirming identity.
Sounds dystopian as fuck. Also, they can just pretend they’re not from Norway.
Now Meta not only knows your name and where you live and your darkest secrets but your legal ID too — fun!
Not saying you might be right, but this could be solved with a simple API that returns yes/no for the age check, without providing additional information.
And this is the problem with any age verification online… there’s always some lurking privacy invasion. It’s for your own good.
Since Leisure Suit Larry at least. ;) Since alcohol sales were restricted to adults? Since… ?
I know I have been surfing the hub ever since I was 13
Just like everyone on the internet.
Probably networks where users post personal data in conjunction with chat features. Obviously, Wikipedia is not social media in this regard and neither is a mailing list.
Yeah I want to know if YouTube and any website with comments (eg all news sites) are social media
It will just be the ones they don’t get kickbacks from.
What about Ecommerse site where you can interact with other buyers, talk to the seller and reply to people’s reviews? Isnt that a social media?
No, that’s quite obviously not social media.
You may use it only until you are 15. Alternately, you may choose any 15-year window in your life. Choose wisely.
The wisest choice is no period at all
Get off my Lemmy kids
Governmental overreach. Good luck trying to enforce this shit.
Social media isn’t bad inherently. Addictive algorithms, violation of user privacy, etc. is bad.
Kids should be taught how to make use of social media for good. I was bullied quite a lot as a kid. Social media is what kinda brought me out of it.
Social media told 13 year old me, that it is alright to be gay. Social media is what made me interested in politics. A huge part of who I am today is because of the nice people I met online. Fuck the government for trying to take it away from others like me.
Social media isn’t bad inherently. Addictive algorithms, violation of user privacy, etc. is bad.
Cigarettes aren’t bad for you. It’s just the burning tar and the nicotine.
But social media don’t have to burn tar. They chose to because this way they can get more money, but it’s not an inherent part of the system, it’s an exploitation of it for profit, and can be separated
This. ^
comparing substances to social media is fucking stupid and you should feel bad.
And here you are, spewing bullshit analogies on social media…
found the smoker
Never smoked in my life… sorry to disappoint.
Message boards aren’t social media.
While all of that may be true, it doesn’t necessarily negate the adverse affects social media can also have on young people.
I think you got lucky and found a community that accepted and welcomed you. But a lot of kids aren’t as fortunate, and their experiences with social media are a lot more sinister. Children are more exposed to predators and harassment now than ever before.
I dunno that a full “ban until ___ years old” policy is the cure, either. But it’s a start.
I don’t understand why the knee jerk reaction for everything is just “ban it”.
You want to reduce the exposure of children to predators? Moderate the platforms. We can agree that Reddit n Lemmy’s moderation is a lot better than Instagram’s moderation. Why don’t we start with that???
The biggest way predators do their predatoring is by sliding into ur DMs. You could restrict this by requiring approval for all such new DMs by a parent’s account or something. There r just so many ways that social media can be made safer for kids.
Social media is a digital townsquare. Sure, there r some malicious actors lurking about. Does that mean that kids should just be banned from this townsquare? No. The townsquare should be made safer for kids. There must be some hand-holding for kids in the beginning so that they can learn how to make the best use of this infrastructure in the future.
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Don’t stop at social media. Put that same limit on religion, too.
Are you pointing out how you don’t like this law or are you actually suggesting we ban religion for kids?
People should be of legal age before officially joining a religion.
Agreed
I’m gonna go with what home dude below said. “People should be of legal age before officially joining a religion.”
I’m thinking neither one is really enforceable.
It’s norway, so that’s kinda pointless
You’re right. I was just talking in a broader scope.
Sad to see people here supporting the same kinds of policies that are diametrically opposed to privacy on the internet.
Parental control softwares are always parents failing to take the time to properly educate themselves and their children to the internet, as well as trust issue towards their children, which is bad parenting since it leads children into lying to them and finding alternatives as well as feeling seen “as a child”, bad for teens…
Moreover those softwares are, as I said earlier nearly malwares
Most parents don’t know, don’t care. Social media has been proven to be bad for kids, it’s nothing new, this is a good thing
Social media has been proven to be bad for kids Way too broad statement, which social media, which kids, how “bad”? There’s no scientific statement without those precision, and the broad opposite of your broad statement could as well be “proven” using studies
If this is any guide, maybe there should also be an upper age limit, too.
We shouldn’t blocked the social media, they are pure shit, don’t get me wrong, but we should only educate correctly the people to show them how bad it is
With that logic we should give everyone a nuclear bomb and teach them not to press the button. Let’s see how that works out.
Big tegh companies spend billions on ways to influence your behaviour, making it even difficult for adults to not fall for their traps, let alone kids with still very much underdeveloped brains. Just look at all the stupid things you had done when you were a kid.
My answer was an ideal thing, but it will not happened soon because of the big corporates, they are keeping us for profit. You’re absolutely right that it’s the fault of corporations.
With that logic we should give everyone a nuclear bomb
And in here lies the problem of using bad analogies.
What?! Are you implying the parents should educate their kids better? How dare you!?
I hope they’ve written a very broad definition of social media.
Why does it
incorrectlysay limit in the headlines then correctly say minimum in the first sentence.A minimum is a type of limit.
I like the idea social media is for kids only and adults are banned. If that applies to advertisers and bots too then it could be a winner!
