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417

Most in Germany want Australia-style social media ban: poll (www.dw.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

96 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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

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[–] [email protected] 80 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (13 children)

This sounds good on paper until you realize that what is considered "social media" is up to whoever happens to hold that position. Even ignoring the fact that it's unenforceable anyway, unless you require a real ID, wish is just straight up worse for all sorts of reasons.

The idea is nice, but actually putting it into law without opening the door to censorship and other side effects is just not plausible.

Edit: also, Everytime you read about a poll like this, ask yourself: what was the question they asked? Did it provide any context? Did it require any understanding of the actual underlying issues and laws? Or was it some variation of "think of the children"?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I think the question was; "how can we protect the kids when obviously their parents have failed?"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

Parent here. Having an extra reason to explain why my son won’t be doing something that some of his friends are is helpful.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

From what I understand of the Australian law, companies are prohibited from requiring a government-issued ID. In practical terms, how can this law be implemented, then? Bypassing a prompt that asks for a birthday is as easy as just lying. Other than requiring an ID, I honestly can't fathom a way this would actually work. I suppose you could require a active credit card number, but that would exclude adults and kids over 16.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

It's Facebook, kids will post pictures of themselves.

now Facebook has to close the accounts that are reported.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Not that hard. When you allow reporting and then removal of their accounts. They may get through but their accounts are removed rapidly.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago

So you want people to report others accounts as being under age? There’s absolutely zero way that could go wrong or has ever gone wrong in history.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago

Lets do it in the US too.

It's not like those republicans in government are gonna use this "kids addicted to social media" as an excuse to enforce ID verifications to go online, right? Think about the children!

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

As an Australian social media isn't the problem, like the internet isnt the problem, its commersialisation thats the problem. The need to grow the custoner base sees outrageous behaviours from corporations like Meta, Google, Apple etal but that's what they're incentivised to do, so that's what happens.

This legilisation won't solve shit. The government and the polotical class forcing citizens to use Facebook or Twitter to get information, they could start there.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I'm 63 and addicted to social media. Checkmate government lackey.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Lots of people believe things not supported by science.

News at 11.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

I mean science does show this generation has very high incidence of anxiety, depression, suicide etc. Not saying social media is all of it, but it's probably a very big cause.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

And even worse: bad polling amplifies the interpretation the pollsters want to see.

In this case, there's no link to or mention of the actual question. Just the in favor/not in favor distribution.

Did they ask "the government should implement laws to ban children" or did it say "rules to prevent children from signing up"?

Did they mention the age limit? Asking any children and teenagers might lead to very different results.

And so on. If you can't find the exact question, polls like this are useless.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Important thing about these laws is that they are for everybody. I would find it interesting if they asked, "Would you be willing to show your ID to go online?". "Would you be okay with the government requiring you to show your ID to go on reddit?"

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

Urgh. This is a tough one. Social media has been a part of asymmetric warfare for at least the past ten years, and I don’t want my kids to be bombarded with propaganda from Russian and Chinese-funded far-right groups like the AfD.

At the same time, I understand how important it is for kids to explore the internet on their own.

If I had the choice, I would ban TikTok and Instagram.

But if that’s not possible – then honestly, ban everything. I will then work something out with my kids myself.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 weeks ago

It used to be valuable to explore the internet but the internet has largely been corrupted by corporate greed.

By and large the experience Young folks have on the Internet is almost entirely through applications meant to abuse and take advantage of their underdeveloped brains. Behavior driven by algorithmic pressure.

This is bad news bears for society.

There isn't a whole lot of exploring to be done for the grand majority of kids on the internet. Instead they will be classified bucketed and used for further financial gain by a select few corporations.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

At the same time, I understand how important it is for kids to explore the internet on their own.

No more though. It's more important that they spend time at the fresh air & play. The internet has become pretty useless outside of wikipedia & social media, and social media has become pretty toxic outside of a few spots (like we can hopefully keep lemmy).

everything is ridden with ads
news websites locked behind paywalls
news websites reporting agenda-driven propaganda
major email providers auto-classify emails from smaller providers as spam (despite correct SPF entries)
every good service that is not decentralized, eventually gets hit by enshittification due reap profits

I would absolutely support a 100% social media ban for all centralized networks (corporation controlled). Because they are used not only to damage the brains of children, but those of adults as well (see Eastern German elections). Only federated chat systems / social media should be allowed. But that's where our fascist overlords have a conflict of interest - they desperately want to see everything we communicate - and chat control (literally, fuck you EU) is not possible in federated networks.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (12 children)

Oh, I have to disagree strongly. Precisely because the internet has gotten worse, it’s even more important for children to learn how to navigate it effectively.

Take my former colleague as an example: a 45-year-old downloading a “better zip tool” from a Russian website full of awful spelling and dubious claims.

Kids need to learn about ad blockers, VPNs, and how to identify fake news. Not teaching them these skills leaves them far more vulnerable to online threats than if they were taught how to handle these issues from an early age. And as many people tell you, the best way to truly learn about something is by doing it yourself.

The internet is only going to become more relevant in the future.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago

Those under 16 will definitely see this as patronising. In a way, they're right. Social media is bad for everybody—not just young people. It needs to be destroyed.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ffs. Don’t copy us germany. The social media ban is not a good policy.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

An even higher percentage — 82% — were "absolutely certain" or "somewhat certain" that social media use is in some way bad for children and teenagers.

What's the percentage of those who are "absolutely certain" or "somewhat certain" that authoritarian adults wanting to control teenagers' lives out of a belief that the former know what's actually best for the latter is "in some way bad" for children and teenagers?

Whatever it is, it certainly includes me.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)

It seems that most in Germany do not understand they'll give even more of their online freedom away for no net gain.

Let's mandate state-sanctioned age verification. Some service may accept this, other won't. First loss. Then, some kids will get around that with complacent parents. Other will be pressured into it. In the end, it won't work as a full ban. So, either turn a blind eye to the whole situation (then why bother in the first place), or make it worse: only one account per ID maybe. Big second loss there. And even if it works, it's ignoring that some sites that would qualify as "social media" are the only communication outlet some people have. Third huge loss.

This will only be a terrible annoyance to everyone, prevent some services from growing or even exist, to the benefit of kids using their parents accounts anyway or VPNing around it. They learned how to do that very quickly for other online content.

Laws and rules that are unenforceable at scale are only useful to pin more faults on people when needed, not to help them.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

It makes me wonder if the result of this ban in Australia will see a rise in forums and chat rooms.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

One can only hope.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago

I'm just waiting until people realise that it won't work.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Banning social media is the easy cowardly thing to do. Are our representatives to afraid to regulate big tech?

Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups. Yes it's hard. Grow the fuck up, put on your big boy underpants and do your fucking job.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups.

There's a lot of nuance here, but in general I agree. Hank (of vlogbrothers and SciShow fame), summed this problem up brilliantly. To paraphrase: social media is engagement based, not quality based. Upvote/like content on all you want, but misinformation, propaganda, rage bait, and doom-scrolling fodder will dominate any platform where the only valued metric is eyeball time.

So, the top-down solution would be to somehow strictly define how for-profit ranked media feeds and news aggregators are allowed to operate. Unintended consequences of such a law aside, I think it's possible to legally define a "well-behaved" social media site, but it won't be easy.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

Libs will do anything but touch the corp :v

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Real question: how is anyone supposed to implement this without eliminating anonymity for those services?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago

German ID already has a feature for this if I remember correctly. You can use it to cryptographically prove your age without revealing your identity. Problem is, no one is trusting that it's really anonymous.

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