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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 16th, 2023

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  • I don’t think kids should be “forced” to use social media to connect. I was trying to say that the current reality is that kids rely heavily on the internet for social connection, whether we like it or not, and telling kids to “just stop using it” is not going to help those that are struggling.

    I think there is a need for better government regulation to make social media a healthier place for both kids and adults, but I’m not yet sure what the best implementation of that should look like. Leaving age verification to private companies has already resulted in damaging data breaches and will continue to do so.

    Many people advocate for a social media ban for kids under 16, but the predictably imperfect implementation of that means that some kids can easily bypass facial verification and continue using social media, while others cannot and get excluded. I’m reminded of a quote from this article:

    One parent told the Guardian their 15-year-old daughter was “very distressed” because “all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat”. Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.

    We need a way to regulate social media that is both privacy-preserving and also avoids excluding or isolating kids. Maybe some kind of ban for under 16s is the right path, but at a minimum, it needs secure identity verification provided as a service by the government, where your identifying information is never visible to the private companies running the platforms. Because they will fuck it up or abuse it.

    Maybe instead of a full ban, we should instead ban advertising targeting youth, and ban algorithmic feeds & suggested content for kids. Make it so teens can only see posts from people they follow, in chronological order, so they eventually run out of new things to see and close the app for the day.


  • Presumably because all of her friends do, and if she quits using it, then she’ll be left out of her friends’ group chats on IG and be out of the loop on jokes and memes between her friends. Might seem unimportant to an adult, but devastating for a teenager.

    Your comment is similar to saying “cyberbullying isn’t real, just turn off the PC”. Because getting pushed out of social spaces on the internet leaves kids feeling isolated, and deprives them of access to shared spaces that their friends use to connect with each other.

    One might say “They can just connect in person!” Presumably they do, but the internet is an inescapable part of modern life and that is unlikely to change. We should push for a better internet, rather than telling people to simply stop using it if they’re suffering.








  • I’m honestly not against this. I know a lot of people will be furious with Mozilla about doing anything related to advertising, but as the article says:

    And, for the foreseeable future at least, advertising is a key commercial engine of the internet, and the most efficient way to ensure the majority of content remains free and accessible to as many people as possible.

    We may dislike ads, but the vast majority of internet users are not going to engage with content that requires you to pay up front. Creators and journalists need money to survive, and currently, ad-supported viewing is necessary for that to happen.

    Instead of just hoping that advertising somehow goes away, I’m glad that Mozilla is working on ways for ads to exist without mass individual user tracking. I wish it wasn’t necessary, but wishing won’t change the world.



  • I think it’s worth getting. I liked how they made it so different from the base game, and still managed to create an interesting mystery for you to unravel that gives background to the base game’s story.

    I didn’t like how heavily it leaned into horror though. Horror’s just not really my thing - there was one section in particular that was super stressful for me. But if you can tolerate (or enjoy) the horror elements, then you’ll like the DLC.