150
Fighting the smartphone ‘invasion’: the French village that voted to ban scrolling in public
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
150 points (95.7% liked)
News
23230 readers
3544 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Oh for fuck's sake, they aren't banning smartphones.
They can't ban smartphones.
It is not an enforceable ordinance.
Read the article.
"voted yes in a referendum to restrict smartphone use in public, banning adults and children from scrolling on their devices while walking down the street, while sitting with others on a park bench, while in shops, cafes or eating in restaurants and while parents wait for their children in front of the school gates."
unless i misread what is wrote in that paragraph, they basically said banning adults and children from scrolling on their devices in basically any public area. it even goes on to say if someone is lost and normally would use the mapping software to find their way they are told basically to ask someone else. at the end of the day it's basically banning their usage in public. i mean if they are claiming to only "restrict smarphone use in public" but then turn around and basically say that anything that a normal person would use them for is banned, then it basically is banned in public.
as you said "it is not an enforceable ordinance" but to me there is little difference.. it's basically just splitting hairs. the people in the area are basically saying don't use the phone in public. what is the realistic end result if i went to that town and used my phone in public. what is the honest reaction of the public towards me going to be? friendly? .. no not likely.
most likely it would be quite unfriendly.
which basically would make me put my phone away.
end result? effectively i have a choice get treated poorly (but get to use my phone in public) or not use my phone and then have a more pleasant stay. realistically the phone is basically banned in public.
on a side note: it should be mentioned, i have no problem on the public having a vote and deciding how they want their town to be run. if they want to pass that sort of thing and it is in a large enough majority then go for it. i'm not objecting to their actions. it's their town.
The public in the town didn't want people using their phones in public to begin with, which is why they voted for it. Do you think they would be more friendly if there was no ordinance? All this does is put something they already didn't want on the books but it can never be enforced. You would be treated in an unfriendly manner either way.
I mean do you really think people in this town were okay with public phone use and then someone said, "hey, let's put an unenforceable ban in place!" and the town said, "this will solve the problem! Now we can be rude to people who use phones in public!"
Just FYI, there are plenty of places in this world where people will be unfriendly to you if you use your phone in public. The difference here is you'll have a warning about it.
I guess you'd prefer to not have that warning?
If your end conclusion is that "I'd prefer to not have a warning " then I think you missed my point. I'm not opposed to the vote they took. I honestly don't care how they voted. Even if they somehow made it an actual law I still really wouldn't care either way. It's their town. I was only disagreeing with your statement that they weren't banning anything.
Personally I think a lot more things should be decided by purely popular vote. I honestly should make a post about a constitutional amendment I would like put through in the US. Just no idea of where to post it. (And actually have anyone see it.)
Being rude to people if they use a phone is not banning it. A ban has legal backing. They cannot legally confiscate your phone no matter how long you stand right in the center of town staring down at it.
And if someone took the phone out of your hand, they would be in legal trouble for stealing.
This is simply not a ban.
Read the article? Well, that's against my human rights of building half assed opinions based on misleading article titles and clickbait.