this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
417 points (97.7% liked)

World News

39332 readers
3123 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News !news@lemmy.world

Politics !politics@lemmy.world

World Politics !globalpolitics@lemmy.world


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Summary

A YouGov poll revealed that 77% of Germans support banning social media for those under 16, similar to a new Australian law.

The survey found that 82% believe social media harms young people, citing harmful content and addiction.

In Australia, the law fines platforms up to AUD 49.5 million (€30.5M) for allowing under-16s to create accounts, with enforcement trials set before implementation next year. Critics

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Shard@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Absolutely social media is the problem.

The echo chambers, the propagation of facist ideology, the state sponsored misinformation campaigns, the anti-intellectualism, all made possible by social media. No where else could these banes on modern democracy and society have been so easily bred but on social media.

The networks that do the most damage were specifically engineered that way due to the profit motive rewarding engagement of all sorts above positive connection. Social media is the problem, but it's only that way because of the economic and commercial factors involved. Individuals can always be assholes, but nobody has miserable memories of myspace and MSN online as genocide-facilitating false news propagators, because they weren't specifically designed to make people angry and breathlessly message everyone they know about a perceived problem.

Social media has the capacity to connect disparate groups of people, become a forum for interests, and open the world up to new perspectives and information - the intentional monopolisation of that promise by frankly, evil, multinationals is the root cause of the issue - not the technology itself.

Australia's new law will do fucking nothing, and as many experts have suggested, will probably make the issues worse. Bullying isn't limited to social media, so a child that previously found refuge by connecting with like-minded friends elsewhere or staying in touch when living remote, now gets to be 'saved' by being kicked off the platform and left with only the real-life bullying they endure at school. Counterproductive.

Additionally, if the platforms are such violent cesspools for children, why is it then acceptable for them to continue with their perverse rage-bait designs, so long as the user is over 16? The government should instead be regulating the mechanics and algorithms of the sites to make them safer, more reasonable and positive entities - rather than just giving up on any meaningful regulation and saying that meta is fine, because a 17 year old can get bullied in person instead of a 35 year old having revenge porn posted of them, or a 72 year old falling down a facebook conspiracy rabbit hole is a-ok.

This legislation was half-baked, forced through with little-to-no debate, stands to worsen the stranglehold of monopolised tech. It places the responsibility of parenting onto facebook, twitter, etc. which are the last entities in the damn world that should get to define 'safety' or police responsible usage. It does absolutely nothing to address the serious fundamental problems that pervade our modern, highly concentrated technology ecosystems, and actually gives them a free pass to allow the sites to fester even more (bringing in more profit as people doom-scroll longer, viewing more ads, when their specific fears and annoyances are deliberately tabulated and curated to make them as angry, paranoid, isolated, unhappy, and antagonistic as possible) by saying that it's a foregone conclusion that social media is evil, and we can't fix that, so why even try? /s

If they actually wanted to fix this problem, investing in education and help resources, probing into the design and function of these sites would be the way to do it. We've just scored a massive own goal at Zuckerberg, et. al's benefit, by asking them to police themselves and sacrificing everyone over the age of 16 to the hellscape of media as it is, instead of as it could be.