- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Under-16s will be banned from using social media, Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced.
Starmer says social media is making children unhappy, making it easier for bullies to abuse children, and is “designed to be addictive”. A ban would give children more time, security, and more freedom to grow up - as well as more opportunities, he adds.
“That is all any parent wants. They want to know that Britain will be better for their children, that they will get a fair chance,” the PM says in a speech in Downing Street.
Starmer adds that the government is “not prepared to compromise” on the safety and happiness of children - and that includes in the regulation and enforcement of this ban. He says the government has listened to and learned from countries like Australia, where a similar ban has already been introduced.
It’s insane that they’ll say it’s designed to be addictive, and then just let the company keep doing that. Like maybe go after the entity producing the addictive substance directly then?
All social media is designed to be addictive, though. It’s their entire business model.
Lemmy and the whole Fediverse is social media. What do you think social media is?
Lemmy is addicting naturally, not being fed slop via an algorithm.
That’s the problem with this panic. Everybody is using a different definition of social media. You and the other guy don’t hate social media, you hate Meta, X, and TikTok. And the government hates that too but also defines the Fediverse and forums in general, plus video games and anywhere else you might talk to another human being as social media as well.
So if you’re on a social media site like Lemmy or Piefed and you’re complaining about how evil and addictive social media is, the government is going to read that and think “My god! This poor person is in trouble! They’re screaming for my help! I must pass a law to ban Lemmy and liberate Derpgon from they’re horrible addiction to the Fediverse! That’s what Derpgon wants!”
I’d sadly probably find a different addiction.
Its a webforum, not a social media.
Social media is places that revolve around shit in your real life no one cares about. Facebook, Instagram,Tiktok,Etc.
Reddit and the Fediverse are listed in the Wikipedia article about social media as social media:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
Social media is media where people can socialize.
First of all, Don’t blatantly lie about the very thing you are linking to. It is not listed as social media.
They simply say some people (mostly idiots) refer to it as social media.
So thats already points on you for intentionally and willfully misrepresenting information.
Also the entire article is bunk cause it calls Mozilla and Minecraft social media. Which is stupid. Because Mozilla is a fucking company that makes a browser, and Minecraft is a goddamn game.
Second of all, You can wrongly refer to something as social media all you want.
I can write Fuck You on a brick and throw it through your window, and just because I
Call it Macaronirefer to it as social media, doesnt magically make it social media.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media#Decentralization_and_open_standards
“While the dominant social media platforms are not interoperable, open source protocols such as ActivityPub have been adopted by platforms such as Mastodon, GNU social, Diaspora, and Friendica. They operate as a loose federation of mostly volunteer-operated servers, called the Fediverse.”
The problem isn’t me wrongly referring to Lemmy and Reddit and other forums as social media. The problem is pretty much the entire world doing it. So until that gets fixed, it’s probably best not to call for the destruction of social media.
Just cause lots of people call something X, doesnt mean its X.
Otherwise Trump would be a literal god. And web forums would actually be social media.
My point is that if everyone is grabbing their pitchforks and planning to kill all the Lilliputians in town and they all wrongly think you’re a Lilliputian, you want to address that first before joining the mob because they’re coming for you too.
and a large part of that is the up/down vote systems, and other gamifications of human interaction.
And they’ve spread out of social media into many other website types.
All it does is extremify human interaction and is a major component in why we’re at the point we are right now with right wing extremism and fascism on the rise.
Get rid of these systems, and let people just communicate with eachother without having to appeal to a hive mind to tell people who gave up thinking if somethings good or bad based on votes/reactions/etc
I think it’s insane because social media is addictive because being social and communicating with fellow human beings is addictive. That’s what you and me are doing here and why we find it so pleasurable. That is not a bad thing.
It’s a bizarre lesson to drill into our children’s brains that this is a negative thing. I assume they don’t really know what social media is and see it as distinct, more like the one way communication of comic books, rock n roll, and other media moral panics, and they assume children will too. But what will happen to the next generation is that they will see all forms of human interaction as horribly addictive, amoral, and unhealthy.
The algorithm is the problem
The engagement-based algorithmic feed is the problem. Kids being able to talk to strangers is also an issue, but that isn’t because of addiction, and I personally think public chats should just be opt-in with the expectation that the parents will actually do their job and teach their children not to talk to strangers.