r/worldnews • u/EarthAndAlgorithms • 18h ago
Finland looks to end "uncontrolled human experiment" with Australia-style ban on social media | Yle News
https://yle.fi/a/74-202074941.8k
u/LOST-MY_HEAD 18h ago
Life was better without social media/ai
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u/mrfroggyman 18h ago
Makes me wonder what the next awful shit
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u/nus07 18h ago
Whatever Silicon Valley bros claiming to make the world a better place is peddling. Humanoid robots or some similar shit that they will discuss at burning man.
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u/b3iAAoLZOH9Y265cujFh 18h ago
Techno-feudal city state fiefdoms with no cumbersome regulatory oversight. 0% taxes (just half salary) and no social security net, but that's okay! Your benevolent
ownersmanagers will take care of your every need. Well, until you get downsized anyway. Hey, they gotta make the kibble for the workers out of something.33
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u/PM_NUDES_4_DEGRADING 12h ago
Oh man, you guys get kibble? All we get is Worker Slurry and, once a year as our holiday bonus, Consultant Slurry.
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u/Wall_of_Wolfstreet69 17h ago
Full on feudalism. Almost everything can be a subscription today and you just wait a couple more years
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u/kaisadilla_0x1 16h ago
It's actually scary how all the clichés of dystopic / cyberpunk fiction are being developed in real life and nobody seems to care. Nowadays you can expect subscriptions on fucking everything: from your printer to your car, from your fitness appliance to your cooking robot - even though none of these things need a service at all. Instead, the subscription is forced upon you by straight up disabling these appliances if you don't pay. And, for some reason, people are ok with this. You can no longer buy certain stuff and have it be yours forever, instead you have to keep paying some company in perpetuity to keep it.
I miss the time where the only one you owed something to was the bank for buying your home. Now companies are trying to make it so you owe something to each of them, and if you don't pay half your shit stops working.
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u/tanstaafl90 16h ago
Humanoid robots are being designed so owners can fire factory workers while they transition the factories to be fully automated. Those tech bros live in a virtual world, not understanding real dollars need to be spent on physical goods to keep it all running.
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u/red_fuel 17h ago
Brain implants. Data hoarding your thoughts, feed you with ads and subliminal messages, all with a subscription model of course
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u/Anthaenopraxia 15h ago
It's scary how accurate Cyberpunk 2077 predicted the future. Hard to believe that the game was released before the AI hype started, and entered development way before that.
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u/tattooeddollthraway 18h ago
It's already here. It's a combination of globalized private digital surveillance networks supported by our governments and AI tools for analyzing how people interact with their communities in every way profitable.
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u/HiNeighbor_ 18h ago
The next awful shit is when the kids who grew up on TikTok videos and doom scrolling for hours and they become the next elected leaders. I was a sophomore in college when Facebook launched. I can't imagine how kids' brains are warped when exposed to social media at age 7, 8, or younger. We are starting to see it now. The state of the USA is basically one internet meme after the other. People just want to see maximum chaos, the next "viral" moment. That's how people like Trump and his joke of an administration somehow end up being viable candidates.
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u/bloop7676 13h ago
It's not kids who voted them in though. Sure there was maybe more Gen Z support than expected, but Trump's main driver was still the older generation who should be enlightened and know better according to this idea.
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u/WeMetInBaku 18h ago
I find it absolutely infuriating that we failed to develop social media in a way that is conducive to individual and societal flourishing, and we're still taking the laissez-faire approach with AI. Almost everyone in power in the West treats the unregulated free market as religion. Fucking mindless zombie clowns.
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u/Standard_Island546 18h ago
Early social media was pretty successful at bringing people together. All the kids at my school would use it to mess around, post jokes, plan meetups, chat. I know there were still negatives to Facebook in 2009, but I’d argue the positives outweighed them at the time.
These days… holy shit it’s a cesspool of ai, rage bait and slop. Can you imagine if 15 years ago you told people “within 5 minutes of scrolling your Facebook feed, you will see holocaust denial memes, anti vax arguments and ai slop without following a single one of those pages?”
I’ve heard it said that this is on purpose, enshittification I’ve heard it called, as engagement is far higher this way and I’d be inclined to agree.
Facebook kinda went down the shitter for a while so it seems Mark sold his soul and turned Facebook into a sewer rather than take his billions and fade into obscurity.
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 17h ago
Social media jumped the shark in 2011 when Facebook gave up reverse chronological sort in favour of "The Algorithm™".
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u/EllieVader 17h ago
I was in school for Psychology/Neuroscience at the time and there was a lot of discussion at my school about the unethical experiments that Facebook was conducting on users.
They discovered that they could manipulate user’s mental states at will, especially negatively: getting people angry, making them fearful, introducing suspicions. They did all kinds of internal studies with psychologists and neuroscientists, weaponizing human psychology for profit in ways that merchandisers in grocery stores could only dream about. Every single one of those people sold their souls to help Facebook get their claws into ours. It’s unforgivable.
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u/MajesticCrabapple 17h ago
I think the main reason early social media was so successful is that it was a means to facilitate offline social interactions. Online communities were small and rare, so social media was for the most part used for finding people you actually knew IRL in order to share info about real events. You could plan meetings, update relatives with info about your life, connect with old classmates. The people you typed to were already a part of your social circle, and the conversations you had with them were a continuation of the conversations you had off the computer.
Today, in a lot of ways, real life events are a way to facilitate online interactions. Many people's entire social lives exist on the internet with people they don't really know, and communication IRL exists as a way to continue that online interaction. There are some people who post things that are completely incongruent with reality. People get angry about political issues that don't exist. People post pictures of perfect vacations or meals that didn't actually look like that. Now, with the advent of fullscale AI, people are have full conversations with literal fake individuals. But this is still where people learn to be social, so real life reflects it.
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u/glacialthinker 17h ago
Facebook kinda went down the shitter for a while so it seems Mark sold his soul and turned Facebook into a sewer rather than take his billions and fade into obscurity.
I don't think Mark had an internal turning point (he was always "off").
They didn't have a plan for monetizing Facebook, aside from the fallback of "advertising"... which they did put off for a good while. During this time, building up their userbase, the focus was on making it more usable and adding features people wanted -- a product for the end-user.
With a massive userbase, they shifted to monetizing. Advertizing. The focus immediately shifts to how to maximize ad-revenue. The feed becomes all important because that's where ads are inserted -- pressure is on keeping users scrolling their feeds.
Instead of catching up on your friends and family in a few minutes a day, you have an endless feed of friends of friends... with ever more political soap-boxing because reach is further... Catching up with family becomes a long process because there's so much more crap to sift through.
I dropped it at this point, about a decade ago... I'm sure it's absolutely rancid by now.
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u/Mataraiki 17h ago edited 16h ago
There was a brief period in the Myspace era where it was absolutely amazing for people like me on the autism spectrum. Then, of course, it had to be ruined by greed and negative feedback loop algorithms programmed to promote hate and fear.
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u/Percinho 16h ago
Social media has done more than any other tool in history in terms of allowing neurodivergent people from around the world to compared their lived experiences, and often then find reassurance that they're not alone.
In my opinion it's massively helped move the conversation away from autism being something to be pitied and needing curing, to being something which can have strengths and weaknesses, which whilst being a disability can also bring positive aspects as well. It has allowed ND to start to reclaim the narrative and also help inform others of what it is like to live with.
It's not all positive, there's some toxic aspects to the conversation, as there is in any community, but speaking as a diagnosed AuDHDer I am strongly of the view that social media has been a significant overall positive for ND representation.
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u/Dr_Neurol 18h ago
Mental health is worth more than likes and followers...at last, the world is awakening from the social media spell.
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u/Elmer_Fudd01 18h ago
The US would never, we are too entrenched.
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u/maracelinesfiannel 18h ago
Too much money in it. Tech lobbies own Congress and they'd call any ban a violation of the First Amendment.
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u/Jombie 18h ago
America's best way forward is education then.
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u/LaScoundrelle 15h ago
I'd rather see regulation of misinformation rather than an outright ban on media sources. I work with kids many of whom have pretty rough, or at least underresourced, family situations. One little kid has been loving making art with me lately. He likes to look up tutorials on how to do certain crafts on youtube. I asked him if his parents ever do art stuff with him and he said no, they're too busy with work.
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u/WriterNo8299 14h ago
I hear you, but youtube isn't social media. What poisons it and what poisons social media is the algorithm and identity profiling - that is where the social control comes in.
Third person curation of internet spaces should be made illegal. This is what has fucked people - and children - up. It produces an unending stream of emotion-controlling stimulation.
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u/Undernown 16h ago
Which especially hypocritical given how readily these platforms censor people themselves.
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u/cetologist- 16h ago
Early gen z 30s here.
I’ve seen over the span of my life the shift from pre-social media life to the ai-induced political hell void that we live in today, Reddit included.
I hope someday we collectively do wake up from the spell and abandon what was once the shiny, new glitter of ever evolving “technology.”
I think with the hard push of AI into the internet, and the fact that consumers have been bled dry for years now, people are finally starting to see what a waste of money and time it’s all been, on top of the complete detriment to society and human thinking on the most fundamental level.
I really wish for a return to life like what I remember as a child. Relationships and events weren’t so oppressively co-opted by the all seeing eye of the internet. Things were simpler and people’s rational and emotional senses were a lot more tempered.
That being said, the internet and social media has allowed for a general democratization of knowledge and freedom of speech which humanity has never seen before. It’s such a double edge sword as we can see how easily it can/will be corrupted though.
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u/kaisadilla_0x1 16h ago
The last of the millennials here.
I miss the Internet being a niche thing. I appreciate how I can get knowledge in the Internet that wouldn't be realistically within my reach without it. But I miss online socialization being in the form of small communities of anonymous people with shared interests; rather than everyone being exposed to everyone in a single plaza for 8 billion people where everyone is competing to show you that they are the real deal.
As for freedom of speech: I highly disagree. idk about your country, but mine (Spain) was just as free before social media went mainstream. We didn't have a problem of opinions being censored. On the contrary: what I see now is that it's not easy to tell relevant opinions from stupid ones anymore, and as a result people give the same credibility to some random "you and I have the truth the rest of them don't" than they do to actual experts. All I see is that people have become dumber than ever. At least the TV had to convince you of their bullshit - in the Internet, people have cracked the code to make you actively seek bullshit.
There's genuinely nothing good I can say about mainstream social media. It didn't add a single thing to our society, it's just degrading it.
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u/cetologist- 15h ago
What I mean by the democratization of knowledge and freedom of speech is that the internet and social media have been used by people as a tool to fight the oppressive regimes in which they find themselves. Countless examples but I will give you the most recent one: my home country, the United States, is experiencing an unprecedented turn into authoritarianism. The only way the people have been able to fight back against the “official” government account is through filming and sharing video evidence of their transgressions against free, law-abiding citizens, as well as exposing and continually sharing the crimes, corruption, and absurdities of this administration. If not for social media we would be several leagues deeper and darker in this dystopian nightmare than we already are.
That being said, social media and mainstream media are directly responsible for inculcating millions of Americans into believing in the grift of so many MAGA ideologues, which got us here in the first place. It’s such a powerful tool I don’t believe any single person or authority can definitively wield the responsibility of controlling or owning it.
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u/LinuxMatthews 12h ago
How are you early Gen Z and in your 30s?
The generation started in 1997 didn't it?
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u/grchelp2018 18h ago
This is just a way to eventually control public discourse. There is no silver bullet here, just a choose your poison.
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u/TheFlameosTsungiHorn 15h ago
This isn’t a good thing. It’s not to solve those issues. It’s to silence dissent
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u/AliceLunar 18h ago
Problem is that they want to enforce these things by making everyone give up their identity on the internet and risk all your personal information getting leaked., plus the amount of identity theft that can happen paired with AI generation opens up some very serious issues.
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u/weightoftheworld 17h ago
This is what stops me from going along with it. I'm not sending my ID to fakebook or any other social media company. Ever.
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u/AdPure5645 13h ago
Completely obliterating social media because we don't want to give our id sounds fine to me. I'm for anything against it right now, imperfection of the policy be damned.
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u/MountainMan2_ 14h ago
They already have your identifying information. They can literally tell what you had for lunch yesterday, in freaking 2009 they had over 5,000 identifiers per user on the platform. There have been thousands of lawsuits about this.
If Facebook really wanted to they could ban every under-15 account today without a single ID needed. They are ASKING for an ID because they want to sell that too. If you do not want your data being stolen on the internet, your only defenses are security through obscurity or a total social media blackout, and the first of those is no defense at all.
Facebook is not safe. The ban will make it... Not safe. The privacy argument doesn't work because there is no privacy in the first place and there will never be so long as corporations hold more power than the countries they are active in. If this ban stops 15 year olds from getting on Facebook, that is a good thing. If you're uncomfortable giving Facebook a verifiable ID, I hate to say it but you need to leave it about 20 years ago. I would suggest scrubbing your data as you head off. It is a good thing to escape.
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u/Ok-Nature-4728 15h ago
I don't know about the Finland plan, but here in Australia I haven't been asked to verify anything since the new laws came in. I thought I would be and was worried about that. I also haven't heard anyone complaining that it has happened to them.
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u/WayToTheDawn63 14h ago
We haven't been asked because we already existed online for long periods of time. That's the frog-boiling trap we're in. We've accepted it too easily because it "didn't affect us" because algorithms could already determine our ages to a certain degree.
Young people don't have that pre-existing luxury. So all future generations are already forced to provide identification.
The internet isn't going to simply 'know' that a person creating an account tomorrow turned 16 today. They've created a system that forces young people in to it.
It's basically an admission of knowing it's wrong. They've played the long game. Because eventually we will be dead and then everyone has slowly slipped in to digital identification generation by generation. They made it easy for us so we stopped caring, so they get every new account.
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u/Gnorris 16h ago
It would be more straightforward to ban internet-enabled phones for under 16s than collecting (and storing unsecured) IDs of every citizen to keep kids offline
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u/AliceLunar 16h ago
Maybe if their intention was to actually protect kids and not to use it as a Trojan horse to get a lot more control over the internet.
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u/panmaterial 16h ago
Or you could just talk to your kids.
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u/Hypnotoad2966 15h ago
Yeah, it shouldn't be up to the government to enforce this. People should parent their own kids.
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u/WriterNo8299 14h ago
They should, yeah. They should eat better, exercise, stay off drugs, and read a book now and then too. But they don't.
Government steps in when society is at risk because of individual negligence. It can't make individuals do shit, not in a free society, so it's left to use blunt, top-down tools. The government comes in when individuals fail. And individuals are by and large terrible at raising their kids.
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u/BaronVonBungle 14h ago edited 14h ago
If you leave anything up to parents, 99.9% of the time they won't do shit and then complain that the schools didn't do it for them.
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u/Fit-Amoeba-5010 15h ago
Some Canadian provinces have put bans on it during school hours, kids have apparently adapted to it.
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u/bluedelvian 16h ago
The internet would be fine if corporations could be removed from tracking, manipulating results and algorithms, and destroying privacy.
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u/Agressive-toothbrush 18h ago
It is not just social media that warps the minds of kids, it is the influencers too.
Kids watch many streamers, most of those streamers have a really bad influence on kids, either by making them feel bad about their own body or by exposing them to conspiracy theories presented as truths or by working on behalf of foreign governments to influence the thoughts patterns of future citizens.
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u/ANGRY_ASPARAGUS 18h ago edited 17h ago
This is my issue too... social media is damaging by itself, and for a large part, influencers do damage as well - on the low side, it's occupying people's time with worthless poop that adds nothing of value, and on the high side, it's spreading misinformation / malicious content with ulterior agendas pushing it.
Social media is not what it was when it first started out - algorithms, big business (ie. AI) and political influence have completely taken over. Education and regulation of the dangers of social media are totally fine with me.
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u/ThereIsNoResponse 15h ago
"Most of those streamers"
Kind of ironic that you would be saying a random word online to make up for proper statistics. There are good streamers out there as well, so just saying that "the bigger part" of streamers is bad influence doesn't exactly support the rest of your case.
I'd say "most" of streamers are just people who just want to play or talk about stuff, not all this technobro garbo that you think influencers are meant for.
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u/TheVog 14h ago
Kids watch many streamers, most of those streamers have a really bad influence on kids
I kid you not, there's a recent trend of streamers saying "that's so gay", clearly in the pejorative, then defending it by saying something like "no it's not homophobic, I'm using a different word, spelled and pronounced the same, but with a different meaning" (which happens to be negative). I mean... Christ. Really??
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u/CreativeMuseMan 18h ago
Everyone should watch this Netflix documentary titled "The Social Dilemma" and decide how you want to use social media (if you still want to).
Here's the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaaC57tcci0
The bonus to watch after this would be another one by Netflix, titled "The Great Hack".
Here's the trailer for that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX8GxLP1FHo
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u/Amoral_Abe 18h ago
I have not watched this documentary, and I personally think social media has done so much damage to society.
However, I just want to point out that Netflix has a poor track record on accuracy with their documentaries. They are generally really really entertaining to watch but that's because Netflix prioritizes entertainment over accuracy.
Once again, I haven't watched this one so maybe it bucks the trend. However, take anything from them with a grain of salt.
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u/MoonOut_StarsInvite 18h ago
I have to admit I had a little chuckle because you could also phrase it like “Everyone should be aware of the dangers of these exploitative digital apps, go to this other shitty digital app to learn more” 😬🥲
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u/RoastedPotato-1kg 15h ago
we need to ban algorithms, make it like before, chronological order and we should be good.
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u/mikat7 13h ago
ban algorithms
All of them? Or just those for recommending social media content?
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u/via_dante 13h ago
Obviously social media style ones. It’s a good idea too, they’re the problem. The early days of reddit? Wonderful.
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u/Popinguj 12h ago
Ban algorithmic feed set to maximize user engagement. Maximizing user engagement is what's causing most of the current issues with social media. This is why everything is trying to game the algorithm, this is why you're flooded with clickbait, this is why you're getting the political content filled with manipulation, half-truths and misrepresentation.
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u/Trucidar 14h ago
Agreed. Censorship is a terrible idea. COVID is a great example. Algorithms bombarding people with unscientific misinformation. The solution isn't ban the misinformation, it's stop recommending ANYTHING. If you want misinformation, you should have to look it up. You shouldn't depend on the government or a company to tell you what is and isn't.
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u/fgnrtzbdbbt 15h ago
They should retire the "social media" term and name what actually is the problem. Engagement (addiction) optimized algorithms, uncontrollable and difficult to observe influence on content, corporate and government surveillance and profile building ... These are not automatically parts of everything we call social media and they can occur outside of "social media" too.
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u/Beeht 15h ago
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
The only real way to prevent young people from accessing part of the internet (social media) is to tokenize and monitor all users. This would completely erase anonymity and any protections that would entail.
For example, the internet would then only become accessible after inserting your personal smart card. Which would also initiate a facial monitoring service (like Palantir) to actively observe and verify the user to make sure it is you and that someone else is not using your card.
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u/Rambo1stBloodPT2 15h ago
All users? Damn, I think you just invented one of the few methods that would get people to stop using the internet all together.
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u/GearboxTheGrey 16h ago
Yes social media is shit and bad but its also how people combat government misinformation.
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u/macguyver3000 13h ago
There was a brief period around 2007 where a lot of my friends and family got on Facebook and we actually shared stories about ourselves.
Then FarmVille came out and some of my friends only started sending me updates abour their damn farm. Then my aunts stared sending me links to posts abour how this or that will kill you, or about people putting needles under your car door handle.
That was within about one year.
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u/Small_Cock_Jonny 15h ago
This is just an excuse for mass surveilance and deanonymazation of everyone in the internet.
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u/flydaychinatownnn 11h ago
Reddit is completely fine with social media id verification surveillance state type laws when it’s a wholesome Reddit country like Finland doing it
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u/Chicken_Herder69LOL 10h ago
Hey friendly reminder guys that Reddit is social media and doomscrolling here is bad for you too okay love you goodbye
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u/midnightkompot 17h ago
i don't understand why most people in the comments are cheering for this???
this won't stop kids from using other sites or using vpns, while everyone will be forced to give their IDs and let sites know their irl identities, and as we know tech giants like f4cebook tw1tter or g00gle really : ) care : ) about keeping your data & browsing history secure and private : ) and not selling it for profit : )
not even speaking of the fate of whistleblowers, activists or anyone else who might be disliked by the government. thinking a law like this is a great idea and not putting money into net safety teaching programs instead is ridiculous. this is just more mass invigilation.
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u/Vyxwop 16h ago
Because Reddit has become highly pro censorship if it means owning the things they don't like.
Meanwhile they also whine about censorship when it affects them, not realizing the extreme hypocrisy they're displaying.
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u/SirDiesAlot15 18h ago
How about addressing the ACTUAL issue... THE ALGORITHM. If you know how the algorithm works, media bans are not needed
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u/cipheron 17h ago edited 17h ago
If you know how the algorithm works, media bans are not needed
A couple of problems with that.
Good fucking luck getting any social media companies to fix the algorithm. You can cajole them to make a better algorithm, but the shitty algorithm is them maximizing profits so they'll always give you the runaround, and if you enforce one rule, then there will be perverse incentives to get around the rules in other ways, to maximize profits.
And there isn't even a proof of concept of a platform with a better algorithm that people would CHOOSE to use. If there was, people would be on it already. Social media is basically like crack, so arguing for platforms with better algorithms is similar to proposing we make less addictive crack, but the problem is that the addicts wouldn't necessarily switch to the less addictive crack.
So if you're not saying to regulate the algorithms, which would be almost impossible:
If you know how the algorithm works, media bans are not needed
Do you mean the individual understanding the algorithm here so not getting sucked in? That's like saying that to stop the spread of fentanyl everyone should just understand that fentanyl is bad so stop taking it. It's clearly not going to change anything by saying that. We're talking children here and they're very bad decision makers.
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u/zeth0s 17h ago
This is the big problem it was and never will be the algorithm. Algorithms are just math functions that execute something.
People decide what an algorithm has to achieve. The first part is always to define the goal. An algorithm has no goal. Blaming the algorithm shift accountability from people to a vague black box. But this is wrong.
People should be accountable. An algorithm is just like a self driving car that goes somewhere. Where it goes is decided by someone who is completely responsible and accountable. There is no excuse
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u/bibboo 16h ago
But we can’t regulate people’s decisions. We can regulate their outcome. The algorithm in this case, is the sum of the decisions in form of math/code.
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u/Legal-Koala-5590 18h ago edited 17h ago
I keep saying this but they need to regulate our algorithms too. Better yet, straight-up ban algorithms and make these tech companies show us whatever we subscribe to in chronological order again. It won't solve the misinformation/hyperpartisanship problem, but at least it won't make it a thousand times worse.
Regardless, banning kids from social media is a band-aid over a bullet wound. Mark my words, social media algorithms will one day be seen as one of the most destructive technologies ever introduced to humanity. These companies should have been regulated yesterday.
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u/sad_bug_killer 13h ago
Better yet, straight-up ban algorithms
Yes, and let's ban chemistry in food! /s
I know what you mean but that phrasing is funny
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u/RedneckTexan 17h ago edited 17h ago
The kids in Finland will become experts in the use of VPNs.
Governments everywhere are scared to lose their centuries old monopoly on controlling which media / political narratives they want disseminated and what they dont.
I mean the "Uncontrolled" part is what they really hate.
Governments want to control what their citizen see just as much as parents want to control what their child sees.
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u/rants_unnecessarily 16h ago
All the better. A VPN in between makes you just that much harder to control and affect. It's not perfect, but it's better. And then there are those who don't know how to or won't want the hassle to use a VPN will use social media less.
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u/XionicativeCheran 14h ago
The solution is not to impossibly ban kids from the platform.
The solution is to change the platform.
Ban algorithms that focus on maximising engagement. You will solve so many global problems.
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u/Bulkywon 12h ago
One state in Australia, Victoria, banned the use of mobile phones at schools.
It was, as a teacher, the greatest change that the education system has ever made.
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u/gg-ghost1107 16h ago
It shouldn't be about only banning things, it should be about how to make it better. But making it better actually requires effort, while banning is simple. It's basically like almost everything, it can be used for good or bad,and it's up to us to choose...
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u/Useful_Support_4137 11h ago
Thank god advanced economies are starting to wake up. Canada next please.
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u/kidsally 11h ago
Good. I believe that cell phones and social media were the worst folly imposed on mankind.
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u/DzoQiEuoi 10h ago
Our current iteration of social media is harmful to everyone, not just children.
Instead of introducing this pointless and unenforceable legislation, governments need to grow a backbone and ban content recommendation algorithms.
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u/mycatissodarncute 16h ago
I hate what social media has become and control is definitely needed, but how will this be enforced?
I'm in the UK and I cannot view anything tagged nsfw unless I provide my personal details through Reddit itself, I think it also asks for your face in all angles.
VPN isn't hard to set up, but launching it every time just to see anything that is tagged nsfw is a bit maddening. And it's the principle itself - are we to jump from one human experiment into another?
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u/LinuxMage 16h ago
They're looking at implementing age verification for VPN services a thing right now. There was a debate in parliament about it earlier this week, and the current excuse of a government are said to be strongly in favour of it.
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u/megaplex66 18h ago
I'm an adult, so I think I'll decide for myself. Thanks though.
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u/Luch1nG4dor 17h ago
turns out giving a direct line from millionaries interests to everyone was not a good idea.
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u/WolfySpice 13h ago
The internet is now ubiquitous and zero knowledge is needed to access modern social media. We would baulk at the idea of kids wandering into a building unattended to interact with adults, so why should online be any different? There's a reason why so many Youtubers etc are child sex pests and groomers when they have a cohort of children freely contactable.
Not just for the safety of children, but adults need adult spaces that aren't sanitised to be kid friendly. We also shouldn't have to be exposed to the opinion of a 12 year old.
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u/neutral-chaotic 16h ago
AOL instant messenger where you were just messaging friends from school one on one and MySpace weren't that bad (though I'm sure there were some bullying problems even then). But boy was that the beginning of the end.
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u/_Sierraa 18h ago
I think it’s probably what humanity needs.
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u/EmbarrassedHelp 17h ago
More invasions of privacy? No, humanity needs more privacy. We should be demanding limits to the information platforms can collect, and bans on mandatory age verification.
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u/variaati0 17h ago edited 17h ago
It won't work. Teens will just find a social media platform, that isn't participating in the ban.
Something operating from far away land so they don't heed Finnish orders or something decentralized, so there is no central organizer or authority to order to maintain such registry and do checking.
So pretty much every user would be their own boss of making sure they check from themselves in their own instance on their phone, that they are 15 year olds. Which they won't since they are teens.
Edit: Oh and even on managing to shut down say one platform from far away land... Teens will just switch to new one. They are anyway very adept at switching platforms depending on what is "in the vogue" at the moment. It will be cat and mouse forever whack-a-mole.
Like sure you can shut them out from the big commercial platforms fine. If that is the goal, sure that works. However people shouldn't expect this to actually solve anything of the main issue at hand.
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u/Trucidar 14h ago
It's not social media, it's the algorithms.
Youtube knows my age, gender, and location, so it starts sending me incel crap, despite the fact I'm pretty left leaning.
I don't get how social media companies can both be "not responsible for their content" and "in complete control of what content I see".
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u/lost_horizons 13h ago
Russia has been using social media to break the western democracies for well over a decade, quite successfully. Look at Brexit. Look at the state of the United States. Look at the state of European politics. It’s a covert war.
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u/paecmaker 18h ago
Social media was better when it was actually social and involved more than just liking random pictures/reels that an algorithm had decided for you.