“Meta has agreed to make massive transformations that will reduce the risk of harm from its platforms — and will do it within months,” he added.
California Attorney General] Bonta’s office also said Meta had agreed to a default time limit of two hours for users under 18 and a nighttime block between midnight and 6am, both of which can only be lifted by a parent; default night and schooltime notification blocks; a ban on displaying the numbers of “likes” or reactions to posts made by minors; a ban on cosmetic surgery image filters for minors; and an option for young users to have a “non-personalized feed” that is not run by an algorithm targeting them with content.
But while we have all heard of under-21 year old college students acquiring fake ID to get into bars, surely this won’t happen with under 18 year olds and Meta?
I recall a thread in the last couple of years about that same sort of issue. It was some new law someplace that demanded that websites somehow know who’s a minor and who’s not, then adapt the content accordingly.
Absent a national ID issued at birth, and a way to definitively connect the human claiming to be citizen # 1234567890 with that ID it’s logically imposible to reliably comply w the law. Not to mention what about kids from other countries with different ID systems?
Many countries ban minors from social media; the obvious problems, as already noted in e.g. the report from Australia’s research, is that there is not a foolproof way to do this, and especially without handing over personal information to third-party “age-assurance companies” who do who-the-fuck-knows-what.
I assume the giant corporation cares about performative safety measures, and that whether the target customers can actually be restricted isn’t their goal. They set restrictions, and if people work around them, those people have violated the terms of service and are asserted to be no different from drivers who speed on the freeway.
You mean, like the library book bans that everyone got mad about? Or the claimed reason for blocking porn sites in multiple states, requiring ID that adults won’t want to give?
Not that I would ever let any kid I am responsible for tell you that they are underage. That’s unsafe for so many reasons. Both because they will collect that data and use it to target them (even if they have to be sneaky) and because that’s a beacon to predators.
That’s the unstated assumption here: that parents will let these orgs know about their kids. You really think that will apply to kids whose parents already didn’t care to monitor their social media use?
This part is interesting; I don’t remember hearing of a clause like this before:
Some of the provisions in the settlement are triggered to tighten if YouTube, TikTok and Snap agree to similar steps. For instance, the two-hour default on-app time for minors would drop to one hour. The amount Meta pays ratchets up if others join the framework as well, an apparent move to cushion the competitive blow if they don’t.
But is Meta required to present the choice that way? Could it be “You’re not allowed to view this cool content unless you’re 13. Now fill out this form to tell us how old you are.”?
I was addressing the point that it’s dangerous for someone underaged to tell social media that they are because then their data will be collected.
The current situation is that underage kids sign up to social media, ignore the age requirements, and all of their data is collected with no restrictions, as if they were an adult.
The net effect of this law, and the similar OS age verification law, is that most parents won’t bother and those kids won’t see a change. Some parents will bother and those kids will get an improvement.
It becomes a tradeoff on making tech companies implement a bunch stuff for the benefit of a subset of kids. When did we decide to care if tech companies have to do extra work?
I feel like there is a steady stream of hate for tech companies, social media, and AI. Then when governments try to address part of the issues, there is a steady stream of criticisms about the approach.