I'm starting to feel like all of this is just a lost cause.
We campaign against some shitty bill. It fails to pass. Someone brings it up again the next session, and we have to do it all over again. Eventually, people get tired of fighting, and it passes.
Every time I've written to my Senator or Representative about something they support but I don't like, I get a form letter in response that just restates their existing position. I don't get the feeling that anything I do matters. And honestly, I'm doing the bare minimum here. I can't imagine how depressing all this must be for people who engage in actual activism around these issues.
I want to emphasize that rights are not won once. Rights must be continuously fought for. Collectively, society has succeeded in performing an outcry against bills like this, and they've done so for well over a decade at this point. It's important to know that this is what winning looks like.
Actual activism keeps this in mind: winning looks like bad things not passing. It looks like keeping an eye out for societal danger, mobilizing against it, and celebrating once the danger has been defeated-- with the knowledge that they must remain vigilant.
> I want to emphasize that rights are not won once. Rights must be continuously fought for. Collectively, society has succeeded in performing an outcry against bills like this, and they've done so for well over a decade at this point. It's important to know that this is what winning looks like.
That may be, but once in a while it'd be nice to pass something positively affirming specific rights that prevents anyone from easily trying again to take them away. Constitutional amendments are hard to repeal. And some states have passed legislation that says things like "this can't be repealed by the state legislature, only by a vote of the people".
Positively affirming rights are passed, and often passed regularly. But remember we monkey brains are drawn towards the negative. Positive news doesn't make it on the news that often, and even when they are, we forget them way faster than negative news.
Within the fairly recent times, people of certain races could marry. People of certain sexes could marry. Sweeping minimal standards for healthcare have been passed. If you go to the state level, Minnesota for example has been crushing it by guaranteeing abortion access, fertility treatment access, family planning, 12 weeks off for the birth of a child, universal school lunch, legalizing weed, etc.
>
Positively affirming rights are passed, and often passed regularly. But remember we monkey brains are drawn towards the negative. Positive news doesn't make it on the news that often, and even when they are, we forget them way faster than negative news
That's such a cop out. This is not a balancing thing. Since 911, privacy and fundamental rights have been increasingly crushed and no amount of gay marriage offsets that. It's two separate things.
Hell, while things like gay marriage are awesome and expand rights, we seem to be now using identity politics to limit them.
> Positively affirming rights are passed, and often passed regularly.
If a legislature (or government generally) can grant a "right", then it can take it away.
That means it isn't a right, it's a privilege.
Oh, what's that? The government responded to the Will of the People? So, the Will of the People can revoke that "right". OR, a group that you think is abhorrent could get a majority to declare whatever rights they want.
I'm constantly astounded how many people confuse authoritarianism for liberalism.
The problem with mechanisms like that is that they can also be (ab)used for bad stuff.
For example - in my country gay marriage was made explicitly illegal with a constitutional amendment in 2005.
Many other countries could legalise it with a simple majority vote. But we now need either a 2/3 majority or a referendum. Both of which are very unlikely to pass.
> For example - in my country gay marriage was made explicitly illegal with a constitutional amendment in 2005.
Are you referring to the US?
Many US states passed state constitution amendments (some in 2005) to limit legal marriage and its rights/ privileges to heterosexual couples; it wasn't illegal as in a crime, nobody was getting arrested, but folks were being discriminated against by the government.
In 2010, then-President Obama repeated his opposition to same-sex marriage. It wasn't until 2012 and running for re-election that his position "evolved".
Same-sex marriage was not mainstream until very recently, even in supposedly liberal nations.
I just wonder why do people care about others' sex and marriage so much that they would put that in the very constitution. To me this sounds like a constitution amendment to introduce a dedicated paragraph to ban pineapple pizza. I just eat what I want, have sex with whom we mutually want and share my life with whom I trust, how is my personal choice relevant to anybody else? Okay, if they feel so disturbed they could issue a separate law banning anything but how is this so important they need to put it in the definition of a country?
I think it would be more similar to prohibition than pineapple pizza, at least to people who care about it.
Presumably less alcohol/less gay marriage is expected to help save people from the temptation toward grievous sins (at least in Christian settings), and help support the traditional family unit in its duties to raise the next generation (less alcohol = less domestic abuse and financial stupidity / less homosexuality = more straight relationships, more children, and partnerships more likely to follow a traditional division of labor & have a woman to raise the children).
I'm in favor of equal rights to marriage, I just think your comment would badly fail the Ideological Turing Test.
Marriage is a dying concept anyways. With a few exceptions, it appears it is only used to secure relationships where children are involved. And given the declining birth rate and steadily increasing independence of women, marriage is a rather antiquated concept. It will not be missed.
Yup - my country considers gay couples not married - even if they have been married in another country. Even worse - if another country requests that information - my country will also say that they are not married. Because - obviously - they will ask the country that the couple are citizens of not some random 3rd country.
Do they really request that from your country of origin? I thought an apostilled american marriage certificate (which is relatively easy to get, no matter what coutry you are from) usually is enough.
Oh yes, I still remember the few cases where I saw that being put to "good" use. It was always about enabling immigration which would otherwise have failed. Find a woman to do a fake marriage with, pay her for it, and voila, you are in!
Unfortunately getting citizenship anywhere through fake (and even legitimate) marriage has became fairly hard these days. I firmly believe gettin in any country should be (for benefit of the country itself) easy for anybody who is not a thug an can take care of themselves.
> That may be, but once in a while it'd be nice to pass something positively affirming specific rights that prevents anyone from easily trying again to take them away.
For the point of discourse, I'll point out that the "otherside" thinks the exact same thing.
There is a great irony in folks downvoting your comment when the original article is about an attempt to codify positive "rights" which would infringe upon the innate rights of everyone else.
I guess my question would be why we feel like we must live in a society where we have to beg an elite cadre of distant "representatives" to do anything.
I've been consistently reminded my entire life that if we don't do this society will immediately collapse into a steaming pile of anarchism. It leaves me wondering why so many complain about the yoke if they asked for it.
Also, I use the royal "we" here because I certainly feel no affinity to any of the political behemoths in charge. I would much prefer to live in a world where these assholes acted more like consultants than tyrants.
I’m assuming we all have some about of disposable income when I say this, but we could plan lobby trips to DC. With airfare plus hotel, it would cost each person about $1,500 for a visit to congressional offices and a night stay. We could go to congressional offices as teams and have at least one of us from each district show up. It would send the message that, not only do tech people care about data privacy, but that we’re getting increasingly organized. Politicians will take notice and consider more carefully about bills they support.
This is a mystery to me. When the sums of money that change decisions in Washington show up they tend to be small. Rarely even a million. Why can’t be those sums crowdsourced? I have a couple of guesses. 1. This is so low because there is low competition, the amounts will quickly go into billions if challenged. 2. They actually support those causes and will refuse money that comes from the people, not the corporations. 3. Anyone who would try that will be discredited, sued or even eliminated. Money is just a small part of it.
> Every time I've written to my Senator or Representative about something they support but I don't like, I get a form letter in response that just restates their existing position
The funniest (Anecfote not from the USA) is when they state in their response email something that you have first hand experience of being false, such as "this legislation does not ban the right to protest because we've seen protests take place" when, the legislation does give that power and they do prevent them, but allow Corporate approved protests to go on (think protest for something unobtrusive).
I just hope more people realize govs don't have their (the people) interest in mind when pushing increasing authortiarian power for them.
Coming from Hong Kong, I would say we need to keep it going not matter how depressing it is. Or one day, you will even lose the means to fight. That's what happened in Hong Kong.
Our entire political system is corrupt. The only interests that matter are megacorporations, the super wealthy, and the military. Our elections are a sham because candidates aligned against these big interests can not win. Any avenues of electoral participation are theater.
"The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt."
It feels like in the next decade either politicians and CEOs will be dragged into the streets by angry mobs, or a fascist authoritarian tech panopticon will be crystalized and citizens will no longer have the means to make their leaders feel afraid.
Keep in mind most of the things you care about, half the country is against. And you win some and you lose some. So you don’t get your way every time. No one does. But your opponents are just as upset. Because you do win some battles too.
Nowhere near half the people support these extremist policies. The senate doesn’t represent popular opinion by any reasonable margin at all, and it’s harmful to imply that it does.
Elections prove my point. Popular votes are entirely uncorrelated with Senate representation, by design. Same with presidential elections. Compare the voting results of the US house (which is also biased but I won’t dig further into that now because it will devolve into a flame war) to the US senate for empirical evidence.
The offices of President, Representative, and Senator are all ultimately decided by popular votes.
Yes, the President is acshuarry voted in by the Electoral College, but do you know how the Electors in the College decide who to vote for? By reflecting the results of the popular vote in their respective state.
Now, if you are sincerely ignorant of how civics work in the USA, kindly go and educate yourself. It's honestly a really interesting and fun subject.
But, if you are deliberately spreading false information, kindly sod off like the third rate bank clerk that you are and stop inciting conflict.
I live in the EU and I have been in the USA plenty of times and it is a great country with great people. Now.. to the election stuff...
If you (plural - the people) don't like the "electorate college" method, change it. Perhaps it was serving you (plural - the people) 50-100-200 years ago, but now life, lifespan, roads, cities, technology has changed. Humans wrote this system, humans can change it. The quote "what got you here, won't get you there" applies perfectly for many functions that are more than 100 years old.
Every time you got elections in the USA, I am thinking the systems that many/most EU countries have vs what the US has, and it baffles me how the #2 in votes "is assigned the task to solve the country's problems for the next 4 years",
- aka president, pm, and other titles all over the world
- yes aren't supposed to RULE us, they are supposed to SERVE us.
Government is a system. Humans devised it. Humans placed it there. Humans can change it (if humans really-really-really want to and they have to really-really-really want because there are other humans who make a ton of $$$ by the current system and they will fight tooth-and-nail to keep it as it is now)(sorry for the long parentheses).
The framers were quite aware of what they were doing by building a republic instead of a democracy. Tyrannical majorities, especially when it’s a slight majority, are dangerous things. Democracy in general is dangerous. It’s 2 wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for lunch.
The federal government is too big imo and people forget the country was built to be a federation of states which citizens could freely move around to and trade with. I think we would be better served to delegate more power back to the individual states.
The commerce clause has to be the most abused piece of law in this country.
You are making the same mistake as the other guy, which is the mistaken belief that the US federal government represents and is chosen by the people.
No, the US federal government represents and is chosen by the states. This is exemplified in how the US Constitution can be amended by a 3/4ths majority of the states, with each state getting one (yes: 1) vote.
It is the states and their respective governments that represent and are chosen by the people.
The states choose the President, but they can't do it via Congress because of the separation of powers between the branches of our government. So the Electoral College serves to emulate Congress, which is a method of representation that all states will agree on.
Incidentally, Congress can and will choose the President in the very unlikely event that the Electoral College deadlocks and fails to carry out its duty. This is considered a constitutional crisis, however, and it's a situation we all want to avoid.
Personally, I like the Electoral College because it reflects the above described political structure of the United States and the systems necessary to maintain it. The United States really is what it says on the tin, the states hold tremendous power because we are a union of states.
In its current implementation, it all amounts to minority rule that is increasingly radical and suppressing as much opposition votes as possible, because they know they are minority.
Please do not be so condescending when you don’t bring any facts to the conversation. Let me help you: please name the last 5 presidents and tell me how many of them won the popular vote?
For bonus points tell me how many bills have been passed in the House (popular representation) and shut down in the Senate (arbitrary “representation”)?
>Let me help you: please name the last 5 presidents and tell me how many of them won the popular vote?
And how is that relevant, again? The President is elected by the states via the Electoral College, which is designed to emulate Congress (and District of Columbia as if it were a state) because having Congress elect the President is very problematic. The electors in turn refer to the popular votes in their respective states to decide who they vote for (and deviating here is strongly discouraged).
The United States is a federation of states, all federal matters are decided by the states, and the states decide by holding popular votes within their borders. Please go and educate yourself on how the United States of America is politically structured before going off on misguided and ignorant rants to the benefit of no one.
>For bonus points tell me how many bills have been passed in the House (popular representation) and shut down in the Senate (arbitrary “representation”)?
This is by design. The House (aka the Lower House) proportionally represents states by population, while the Senate (aka the Upper House) represents states equally.
This is because the two Houses are responsible for different duties: The House legislates matters concerning finances, among other things, while the Senate legislates matters concerning government appointments and foreign policy (eg: treaties), among other things.
Certain matters should reflect the larger states better, while others should strive to not disenfranchise the smaller states as much, and the duties tasked to the two Houses reflect that practical reality.
Any bills must also pass both Houses in order to become part of the law of the land. This is so larger states cannot exert excessive influence over the smaller states. Remember: The United States is a federation of states, if smaller states are disenfranchised for the sole reason that they are small, there can be no union.
>KOSA was introduced in 2022 but failed to gain traction, and today its authors, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), have reintroduced it with slight modifications.
Or is president somehow related to appointment of senators?
> please name the last 5 presidents and tell me how many of them won the popular vote?
There is no national "popular vote", but rather popular votes plural in each state.
Most states are tilted toward one party or another, which can result in low voter turnouts in those states -- but if there were this mythical national "popular vote", then many folks in those states would vote.
So claims of who "won" or "lost" a national "popular vote" that never happened are entirely partisan nonsense. Stop it.
>Keep in mind most of the things you care about, half the country is against.
That's only true for around 5-10 wedge issues. There are many things where 98+% of the country is either with you or apathetic. The problem is that the other 2% has lobbyists.
That’s simply not true. Politicians are human and like to be liked; they also like to feel good about helping constituents. Lobbying actually works — why else would corporations spend so much money doing it?
Voting is the absolute minimum participation you have in democracy. It works about as well as shooting for a minimum passing grade. Democracies require the people to actually participate, like the word itself implies.
Corporate lobbying = A very nice weekend getaway in a 5-star destination (+1 welcome of course), featuring a few key talks about the issues important to the sponsor and leaving ample free time to explore the luxuries offered by the travel destination
Private citizen lobbying = A letter that needs answering.
Yes, that changed a few weeks back. For several days, you would only see login UI if not logged in[0]. This was then updated to show only the linked tweet with no other context. This was likely changed because Google was starting to limit Twitter content in search results[1].
I would like to know who is paying (or bribing in the US) to push these bills. Seems it is a tracking of children bill that advertising companies would love to have access to.
I am sure it will be private companies that do the tracking. Also I am sure an encryption backdoor will be built into this bill if not already.
As a parent, if you want your young child to be "protected", keep them off line.
I haven't read the bill, but my first thought is that there's always going to be some threat to children, so any time you want to play pork barrel politics, you can trot out some nebulous child-safety bill and append riders to that.
Second thought is that this isn't about private interests (though it's possible). Big Tech moves and grows faster than the government. Arbitrary requirements are one way to papercut a larger entity into submission, like FOSTA/SESTA or 2257-- we'll give ourselves a way to take you down for something.
Case in point:
> The bill holds platforms liable if their designs and services do not “prevent and mitigate” a list of societal ills: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, physical violence, online bullying and harassment, sexual exploitation and abuse, and suicidal behaviors. Additionally, platforms would be responsible for patterns of use that indicate or encourage addiction-like behaviors.
Platforms would be responsible for preventing and mitigating anxiety. Platforms are prohibited from doing anything to incentivize repeat business. This is Obscenity 2.0.
If large platforms were required to interoperate and provide complete open APIs, that would break down their network effect lock-in and ad-based double-sided business model and put us users in power to vote with our feet and wallets to make them do all those things we value. That’s what we should be fighting for: to let market forces do their job properly.
However, existing Big Social would rather prefer that law regulated everything about them—it increases the barrier to entry for honest competitors while Facebooks of this world have enough people and money to throw at those things.
The worst part of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) is the requirement that websites "prevent and mitigate" anxiety and depression in users and viewers under 18 years of age. Here is the exact text from the bill's Section 3(a)(1) which prescribes this restriction:
> SEC. 3. Duty of care.
>> (a) Prevention of harm to minors.—A covered platform shall act in the best interests of a user that the platform knows or reasonably should know is a minor by taking reasonable measures in its design and operation of products and services to prevent and mitigate the following:
>>> (1) Consistent with evidence-informed medical information, the following mental health disorders: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, and suicidal behaviors.
There are many types of content that can trigger anxiety or depression that should not be censored for people under 18, such as political speech and negative/distressing news. (The implications this bill has on political speech and news reporting also raise questions about whether it is constitutional.) People under 18 have a right to be informed just as adults do, even if they don't have the ability to vote to protect that right for themselves.
In the UK, the AVPA - age verification providers association (members include Experian) have been super active on the Online Safety Bill. Curious to know if there's a US involvement , too.
The media seems to have missed this - then again, these laws are their opportunity to stick the boot into Tech, and usually have carve outs and special treatment under these laws, so they're not especially incentivised to rock the boat here.
It's a very good point, I haven't seen a lot of discussion of the role of Experian et al in KOSA.
In the US, it seems like it's mostly being driven by "child-safety" orgs, some of whom are well-intentioned but just don't understand the downsides, some of whom are anti-LGBTQ and appreciate the downsides. But others may well be active behind the scenes.
Really, Experian ? That should give everyone the warm and fuzzies /s
I am sure they are involved in the US with this. In anycase, it is legal for Companies in the US to donate (bribe) anonymously, so I am sure it is not documented anywhere. There has been many attempts to make that illegal, but no luck so far.
> if you want your young child to be "protected", keep them off line.
What about the school playground and mobile phones?
Do you think kids dont share stuff they have seen, online and offline? Can you stop your offline kids from interacting with online kids with devices?
I see loads of people sharing stuff they have on their mobile phone to other people. What that stuff is, I dont know, but Google's "photoshop" facilities built into their camera app, requires the images to be taken off the phone, processed in the cloud and then sent back to the device, so there are a whole host of points at play, like data privacy.
So is the govt late to the party or is the govt saying the tech companies can not be trusted or is it something else?
If you know anything about biology, you'll realise some parents are not really the best educators. When do parents stop being able to help their kids do homework if they get any help from their parents at all?
Is homework a stealth child welfare test and parental intelligence test?
Do people who complain about this bill, display their own subconcious bias?
How much do you read into what is probably one of the most emotive subjects. Does it dig up our own vulnerabilities and fears as a child for all to see?
So many ways to look at this stuff, just what do you read into it?
You're right. My gut reaction was that it should be illegal because it's the government's job to legislate, not the private sector's. But having the private sector write legislation doesn't violate the government's duty. The government fulfills their role by passing it.
While it still seems ripe for conflict of interest, I suppose it's not much worse than could happen if everything was kept internal to the government.
It should be illegal for businesses to write our laws (the lawmakers do not even read them - so your point about govt fulfilling their duty is a thin one). But power doesn’t work that way, this is the result of power acting in its own interest. Solution is to strip this power
> But having the private sector write legislation doesn't violate the government's duty. The government fulfills their role by passing it.
So massive CEO wages are justified then considering its your boss or the boss of the largest company in your line of work helping to write the legislation?
As a parent, I want the responsibility for educating my child on the dangers of the Internet based on my core values. I don't think the government should get involved. We have very different ideas on what is safe or not.
First of all, the "tracking" boogeyman is already loose. I used to work in online advertising in aggregating data.
"The bill holds platforms liable if their designs and services do not “prevent and mitigate” a list of societal ills: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use disorders, physical violence, online bullying and harassment, sexual exploitation and abuse, and suicidal behaviors."
I expect a few sacrificial lambs to be very visibly slaughtered if this passes. I'm calling it now, AP -> NY Times -> MSNBC -> your social media feed -> Hacker News.
"Additionally, platforms would be responsible for patterns of use that indicate or encourage addiction-like behaviors."
I almost want to support it just to see video game studios and developers lose their minds. There are 3rd party companies that process payments for micro transaction where they adjust the amounts shown to the users in real time based on how much they think they can charge you inthatmoment. There are also 3rd party companies offering services to "optimize" stickiness. That's, psychologically profiling you as the user and breaking down your defenses against spending money on the platform or navigating away from their platform. The demonic symphony of complaints would be beautiful in a way. Plus we'll get a hot take from Whoopie Goldberg on The View about it. Probably something negative about Republicans despite the bill being resurrected by both a Republican and Democrat. I'm already lol-ing. Looking forward to it.
Generally I am against government regulation of most media but I think its reached the point where something is needed. Platform algorithms are too good and they absolutely promote doom scrolling, media addiction, suicidal thoughts, poor self image, depression, and a host of other issues. Social media has not been a boon for kids or really anyone except marketers. On top of that video games absolutely target kids to spend money and are addictive. Roblox is built on this, so is Fortnight and similar games.
Lets try regulation and see what happens; something has to change.
Overall this is not a substitute for parents knowing what their kids are doing and regulating their media intake.
This is frustrating to read, and I hope that my reply doesn't come off as too snippy. But it really feels like people will do anything, including throwing away rights to privacy, infringing on free speech, and ignoring the advice of over 100 civil rights advocacy groups -- all just to avoid breaking up a few companies or directly legislating algorithms.
I just do not understand how weakening constitutional rights is on the table for you and so many other people before antitrust is.
It's not even the least invasive compelled speech option! If you've got to target speech, then on one hand we have, "giving the government the power to decide which platforms are liable for what and requiring that teenagers have their speech surveilled online even though multiple government actors involved in the bill are open about the fact that they'd like to use the government to suppress LGBTQ+ speech and consider all LGBTQ+ expression to be harmful for minors", vs "force social media platforms like Facebook to use a timeline rather than displaying algorithmic content."
Both would be compelled speech, but if you absolutely have to compel something the second is a lot less dangerous than the first. Every time these conversations pop up there a few people gesturing wildly at the word "antitrust", and everyone else is saying, "well, we've tried literally everything possible, maybe we're at the point where we really do need to build a surveillance apparatus for every teenager in the US, there's just nothing else we can do."
You don't have to infringe on the rights of every single minor in the country, you can break up abusive companies. It's totally allowed. We've done it before and it was great! Breaking up companies can be a healthy bonding activity for a divided country that's fun for the whole family and brings us all closer together, so just give it a try ;)
Why do you see this as an anti trust issue?
Why would Roblox, fortnite, Twitter, Instagram, etc. be broken up due to anti trust?
I could see maybe forcing FB to drop Instagram, but Instagram would continue in the same way it currently exists. This is not an attack, perhaps I dont fully understand anti trust.
That is a great question to ask. Sorry for a long answer, I'll try to trim it down and just give a couple of thoughts:
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> Why would Roblox, fortnite, Twitter, Instagram, etc. be broken up due to anti trust?
First, it's worth noting that at at least for Fortnite/Instagram in this list we should be talking about Epic/Meta. Perverse incentives with the same company owning both a games publishing platform and games that are featured on that platform might potentially be a part of Fortnite's continued success. There's a ton of debate about physical stores putting their own brands inside of general stores -- for the most part we allow this kind of thing, but we should be very careful about the potential downsides and potential conflicts of interest. I don't think it's unreasonable to at least think about antitrust in those situations.
Where Instagram is concerned, the case is a little bit more clear. Threads would not have had the launch it had if it wasn't a Meta property. It didn't have to start from scratch; it launched with Instagram's userbase. And Instagram/Threads aren't really competitors in the most traditional sense, they're two arms of the same company. The question where Instagram is concerned is not whether Instagram itself is too big, it's whether or not having one company that owns Instagram and Facebook and Oculus and Threads and whatever else Facebook is getting its grubby hands into is too much.
Which leads to:
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> but Instagram would continue in the same way it currently exists
I'm not sure I agree with this. I think that a lot of abusive behaviors online stem from large players shaping what the business models can be, and those business models and attitudes towards moderation and user abuse trickle down into lower players. Instagram is in alignment with Facebook's general views towards privacy, I think the attitudes of Meta as a company really do impact how apps like Instagram are built and run.
In other words, I don't think it's just a coincidence that Instagram's privacy and approach to algorithmic content basically mirrors Facebook. I think it's because they're the same company even if they say they aren't, they're aligned with Meta's goals.
So, let's talk about Roblox then:
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So Roblox isn't a giant company, and it is hecking exploitative. But, does that mean that antitrust isn't relevant to Roblox? I would argue no. Back in 2021 as part of investigations into antitrust with Apple, the DOJ started a probe into whether or not Apple privileged Roblox by allowing it to circumvent app store rules.
Roblox isn't giant, but it's big enough that other large platforms are willing to privilege it. And the antitrust solution there doesn't have to involve breaking up a company (although... we could talk about Apple too if we do want to break up companies :)). It can also mean recognizing how size can allow other giant companies to excuse abusive behavior in existing businesses while suppressing smaller startups that might otherwise compete.
Would Roblox be as popular if it was held to the same strict standards that every other app was held to? The app can get away with things that other competing apps can't get away with, because Apple has so much control over the mobile market and Apple decides where to enforce its rules.
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Getting further away from "break them up", there are also a lot of anticompetitive things that companies do before they become giant behemoths. Facebook/Instagram provided great examples of that -- even early on blocking links to competing websites, using their API to deliberately push out potential threats. These are ways that unethical companies build moats around their businesses and block more ethical alternatives.
So maybe not "break them up", but if another platform pops up, Roblox shouldn't by default be able to just buy that company. If Twitter starts blocking links to other social media companies, that's something that should be regarded as anticompetitive and it's something that we could have a regulatory response to, even if we don't think Twitter is a monopoly.
My feeling is that a lot of sites are able to become giant behemoths by doing anticompetitive stuff that antitrust law should be blocking, and very often they get slaps on the wrist and that's it. The consequence of that policy decision is that only the bad actors manage to survive because they're the only companies willing to pull this kind of garbage.
----
One last thing to cycle around to -- touching again on Roblox and Apple, I want to again push at this idea that monopolistic behavior inside of a market shapes the entire market, not just what the dominant players do. We have an ad-driven Internet where personal data is the defacto currency. We are in an attention economy where optimizing for outrage/depression is literally good business. There are almost standardized policies in the market around how user data is treated and about what rights consumers have when using these platforms -- to the point where Threads can launch without a timeline -- with only an algorithmic view.
And it's tempting to look at those businesses and say "okay, that's terrible, but all the tiny businesses would be the same if they went away, that's just the market and it's how the market would always act". But I don't know that that's true. I think that when you have search monopolies and mobile market monopolies and advertising monopolies who are dictating how the Internet should be monetized, that leads to businesses going down a certain route and it leads to certain businesses thriving and other businesses failing, and it leads to the market focusing on developing one revenue model.
Roblox and Fortnite are huge on mobile, including iOS. And the Apple App Store encourages a subscription model with micropurchases. That is the best app monetization strategy for Apple's profits. It's undeniable that Apple has in many ways defined the mobile games market, they practically invented the modern market for mobile games. And it's not just iOS; Android tends to run in the opposite direction but has also had a huge impact on what kinds of games and apps run on your phone -- Android encourages more advertising and user tracking, and with only one store on Android for the majority of users, developers have learned that certain types of apps (ie, apps with ads) do better on Android. In general, if you want non-exploitative games for kids, a phone isn't the best option. But is that just how the market happened to work out, or is it a consequence of having one dominant revenue model for each phone?
So I think that a lot of the companies that people are the most mad about are kind of giant and are involved in straightforwardly anticompetitive behavior, but I also think that their existence influences what the rest of the market looks like, including sub-markets that they almost entirely control. And also that even ignoring the giant companies, many smaller companies still have a lot of power to lock down competitors and to prevent more ethical alternatives from appearing.
Currently we have corporations with total power to control content. Having a (somewhat) representative system making the decisions may not be great but it is better than what we have now.
> Currently we have corporations with total power to control content.
But see, this is exactly what I'm talking about above:
"The corporations control everything we post."
"Are you going to take away their power?"
"We're going to give them everybody's drivers license and then spy on teenagers. That will help, somehow."
----
Even when you're outright stating the problem as "the companies are too big and have too much power and rival governments in their abilities to control discourse" you're still not jumping to antitrust, you're still jumping towards just giving the government power over speech. But what could possibly be a more straightforward and direct solution to "this company has too much power" than breaking up the company and just making it less powerful?
Just as a general reminder, nobody on HN owes these companies anything. We're not obligated to protect Meta's ability to own Instagram, Threads, Facebook, and a VR platform all at the same time. We're certainly not obligated to throw teenagers under the bus before we throw Facebook under the bus.
But hey, don't like antitrust? Weird, but OK that's fine. If you're extremely worried about Facebook controlling public squares online and you also don't want to break up the company, there are data-portability bills and account-migration bills and API-access bills and privacy bills that we could pass to help fix that problem and what's cool about those bills is that they don't likely violate the 1st Amendment and they don't open the doors up for the government to engage in viewpoint discrimination against marginalized groups.
Look, I'm not going to get into a debate about whether or not Facebook has too much power.
The absurd part is if somebody looks at Facebook and says, "wow, they have way too much power -- I guess the only thing to do is get rid of this constitution here." It's this weirdly additive model of power where the only solution to power abuse is more power. You can't not have a gatekeeper in front of the public square, that's unthinkable -- the only thing you're allowed to do is choose a different gatekeeper to have instead and to make them as powerful as the original gatekeeper. You're not allowed to pass laws directly removing an abusive behavior, you can only empower somebody else to arbitrarily decide what is and isn't abuse.
I'm not going to debate with you about whether Facebook is large enough to be a problem that requires a regulatory response; but I suspect regardless of your views on that both you and I agree that if Facebook does have too much power, requiring age verification online and massively expanding the government's ability to perform targeted censorship is not a rational response to that problem.
I expect they'll aim for a system where people looking to control others will use it as a bludgeon to force their self-righteous moralizing on everyone else.
They could as easily just require phone manufacturers to lock the phones of minors so parents have to approve what sites they can go to and what apps they can use. There already exists software to control PCs.
Instead, they wish to punish everyone online because irresponsible parents can't be arsed to control where their children roam.
I agree something needs to change. I disagree that we should shoot ourselves in the foot and hope that somehow it leads to something we want too.
We can target the problems directly without giving up our fundamental freedoms. If our elected officials were interested in doing that, they would have done it by now. What they are interested in, is restricting your rights. You're advocating for giving up your freedom without actually solving the problems you want addressed.
> Lets try regulation and see what happens; something has to change.
The regulation to try is the passage of strong federal privacy laws. That may serve us better than gifting gov even more power - more ability to usurp our constitutional rights.
I worked at a parental controls company for a number of years here in Utah. There were various high members of the LDS church (whom were connected with our company in different ways) that would be pushing these kinds of things all the time.
Filtering/blocking would depend on the deployment. Lots of potential there tho.
Can you offer any examples of a GA advocating for something that is fairly clearly unconstitutional? Utah has recently passed some boneheaded laws that certainly qualify. A GA advocating for one them would be a sound example.
Would you rather have Chrome permit everyone to visit every phishing site? Not OK to take down C2 or botnets? Like it when a DDOS crushes your favorite website because Akamai and Cloudflare can't blackhole the traffic? Your ISP can't filter SMB ports, so everyone with Windows File Sharing gets pwned?
Perhaps if malicious countries are engaging in cybercrime in your country, you should disconnect them from your countries internet/phone connections. This would get them to behave right quick or suffer the effects of sanctions. It ain't perfect, but it's better than saying "there's nothing we can do, dude".
Be suspicious of any law that both parties want to pass quickly. Media likes to write about “gridlock” and other such obstacles and perhaps it feels frustrating sometimes. And it is. But the other side of it is frustrating to them too. Most of it is trivial in the end.
But when they start quickly agreeing on things you can be sure they’re up to trouble.
It’s infuriating that when they make these bills that they KNOW will rile people up and cause protest, they give them a “won’t you think of the children” name “kids online safety act”… now when you say it’s no good and needs to be modified or fought, you look like an absolute monster who doesn’t care about kids or their online safety.
These acts should be given a number as a title.
The intent of the act or bill should be clearly stated in line 1, and the act or bill itself should be required to ONLY facilitate that intent.
Update: The Senate Judiciary Committee earlier today has voted to advance the bill, which as the EFF post stated, this is a internet censorship bill in disguise and would do irreparable damage to everyone that uses the internet if passed. https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/27/23809876/kosa-coppa-2-chi...
It's a very good idea to get in touch with your Senators and really tell them how you feel about this and tell them where they stand on this potentially internet destroying bill.
Meh, I'm usually overly opinionated on this stuff but hard to form a strong sentiment on this one. On one hand I applaud them wanting to address this, on the other, book authors and in persons stores don't have to do this and I also strongly believe it is a parent's responsibility to protect kids like this.
How about this, thinking of it as if it was a security problem, I would focus on who is the admin, what do they control and where is the protected data/resource and the answer is: the parent, their home and devices, their kids' devices/data. If you think about it, kids can just use sites outside of the US and avoid all this hassle.
So my suggestion would be for these lawmakers to mandate the FTC to come up with apps to monitor undesirable content and notify parents who can the council their kids or restrict access and content as they see fit.
That way, all the privacy/eff people don't have to worry about tech megacorps spending money on this or them having to age verify and hire more staff and lawyers. Kids don't have a right to privacy from their parents, although as they get older and show responsibility and maturity they should get more privacy rights.
The pattern I see here is similar to how schooling is done where the school basically raises kids instead of parents. Hold parents responsible and accountable but give them tools and training to succeed instead of expecting tech companies to do the raising for them.
I will say this though, there is nothing at all more valuable that a parent can give their child than discipline. A close second to that might showing them how to be in a healthy relationship first hand, by being the actual parent and carefully teaching them to be realonsible and then trusting them with rights like privacy and making life changing decisions for themselves.
> So my suggestion would be for these lawmakers to mandate the FTC to come up with apps to monitor undesirable content
And certain people would classify “undesirable content” as publicizing the fact that gay people exist and that there are other ways to prevent teenage pregnancies than abstinence.
Exactly. And more generally, some would classify it as "undesirable" that kids can get access to any information their parents don't want them to have.
Sometimes that's a feature, and can help change someone's life for the better. "Oh, I'm not actually evil and sinful, it turns out my parents are just hyper-religious nuts and now I have sufficient access to understand what more normal and accepting society is like."
(I'm deeply thankful that that was not a problem I had myself. I would like everyone else to have the same opportunity.)
That's the parent's rights to be hyper-religious nuts which in the US is not just parental right but the 1st amendment, the first right anyone gets to have (religion along with freespeech). Indoctrinating kids with whatever wild and extreme view is their right. The only thing they can't do is compromise the safety and wellbeing of their child, if you think belief you don't like qualifies then forget their internet access, have the kids taken from them!
Nazis are raising murderous traitorus kids and religious children is your worry! What an insane world we live in.
Parent's aren't handed their children by society or the state, they brought them into the world and have both rights as well as responsibilities over them. And you don't get to say you have the right to free speech or have beliefs like the one you are holding now and be allowed to raise your kids one way and them try to legislate away the rights of other people to raise their children their own way no matter how vile it is.
This society thing is a two way street.
> I would like everyone else to have the same opportunity.
You don't have the right.
You can discourse with adults and change their views though and provide them the opportunity of your alternate viewpoint.
Influencing other people's minor children is no one's right. Not even the government. No matter how correct your view is. This is what libery looks like, because today you speak from a position of power with your views, tomorrow others get to do the same with your children.
Exigent circumstances aside, it is your civic duty to respect the rights of others and appreciate that right while vocally disagreeing with it.
> it is your civic duty to respect the rights of others
Including minors, whose rights it's most socially acceptable to infringe, and who can't vote so politically they don't matter. It is absolutely reasonable to advocate for those rights and what those rights are, and observe when they're being infringed.
"minor" should not mean an utter lack of ability to learn about other viewpoints. Minor children have rights as well, and I'm arguing that "find out viewpoints other than those of your parents" is not in fact a right that should be restricted until you turn 18.
That isn't a very politically feasible thing to advocate. It is, however, useful to argue the correlates: it's a good thing that children sometimes manage to work around restrictions placed on their access, it's a good thing that such restrictions are not perfectly secure, and it's a bad thing for them to become more difficult to bypass.
I wish all the success in the world to anyone trying to work around restrictions they're under in order to learn when they've been prevented from doing so. And I wish unending failure and disappointment to anyone trying to build systems to control and lock down such access.
> Including minors, whose rights it's most socially acceptable to infringe, and who can't vote so politically they don't matter. It is absolutely reasonable to advocate for those rights and what those rights are, and observe when they're being infringed.
Minors have plenty of human rights as well as legal rights. The only thing you are worried about is your owm ability to indoctrinate other people's children who are not mature enough to see through propaganda, you want to get them as young and naive as possible because you feel 18yr olds are too hard to deceive I guess? Because why else would you insist on infringing on parental rights if your indoctrination is correct?
> "minor" should not mean an utter lack of ability to learn about other viewpoints. Minor children have rights as well, and I'm arguing that "find out viewpoints other than those of your parents" is not in fact a right that should be restricted until you turn 18
That is not a right at all. You are talking about how things should be not what a democratic society agreed is a right. Parents can absolutley prevent their children from learning about harmful ideologies or content. They can even force schools to exclude their kids from sex-ed that isn't inline with their beliefs. They can homeschool them or raise them in the woods isolated from the world. The only alternative viee points children have to learn about are those prescribed in the education system as manadatory because those are skills they need to survive as adults. And even that is very debatable, beyond reading and writing most things are fluid there. You just really don't like the idea that people will raise religious kids. You should know that this is such a basic right that no law can take it away from parents, even I would participate in armed conflict over this.
You have the right to free speech which I am more than willing to respect but you are arguing for freedom of reach here, and not just to anyone but to minors who are members of society explicitly designated as too weak and immature to care and fend for themselves and it is the entire reason people have children, to pass on their ways and themselves. People don't have children just to increase the population. And information and "view points" or even their ability to interact with arbitrary content/people can be considered harmful. TV and movies have to go through rigorous rating specically so that parents can prevents kids from discovering alternative view points.
Think of it this way, it sounds like you want your secular world views indoctrinated to kids, but that also means every religion has the right to indoctrinate your child but not just that every corporate interest, the military, the porn industry, and so much more also must be allowed to indoctrinate your child against your permission. At that point in your ideal world, parents are merely food and shelter providers, nothing more.
> That isn't a very politically feasible thing to advocate. It is, however, useful to argue the correlates: it's a good thing that children sometimes manage to work around restrictions placed on their access, it's a good thing that such restrictions are not perfectly secure, and it's a bad thing for them to become more difficult to bypass.
You are justifying means because you like ends. Kids also kill themselves, get eating disorders and self harm as a result of bypassing these restrictions. It's not a good thing for parents to not be able to protect their children best they can, weaking of that ability is never a good thing. Children should have access to social services and the police though in case their parents are abusive, not just holding unpopular views.
> I wish all the success in the world to anyone trying to work around restrictions they're under in order to learn when they've been prevented from doing so. And I wish unending failure and disappointment to anyone trying to build systems to control and lock down such access.
For adults I agree. For children, absolutley no way! I advocate for the right to be raised protected from alternative view points and indoctrinated by parents. Parents have the right to live isolated from technology and any viewpoints in the woods and homeschool their kids and raise them to be vile nazis or extereme communists so long as they can read and write and are able to leave the family when they are 18.
I highly recommend watching "captain fantastic" which is about a very liberal family raising their kids in the woods, shielded from alternative view points like this.
Ultimately you should recognize that every responsibility and obligation comes with a right. Parents have an obligaion to their children for bringing them into the world and as a result they have many rights over them. But the ability to indoctrinate and regulate their children's viewpoints is not just their right but also an obligation they have to keep them safe both physically and mentally. Children are very easy to influence and indoctrinate, that's why anyone from the gun industry to the porn and tech industry tries to get to them as young as possible to see things their way. And parents have every right to get in the way. And the government doesn't get to decide what content is harmful so parents get to do that.
You seem to be determined to interpret "all people should have access to information" through the lens of people trying to reach or indoctrinate others; if you continue to frame it that way I'll assume it's not in good faith. I am not suggesting that anyone has a "right" to get any particular message to any particular audience; nobody has the right to reach, or to a platform. I am suggesting that people have a right to seek out and learn from information even before they're 18.
> You just really don't like the idea that people will raise religious kids
I was using religion as a placeholder for any of a variety of common groups that try to restrict information.
> it sounds like you want your secular world views
Emphatically not. I don't want to see any particular worldviews pushed. I want kids to be able to read and learn. Whatever worldview they ended up with as a result of that, fine, at least they knew that other worldviews exist and what they say.
The path you're advocating is the path by which we get books being removed from libraries because someone complained about something in it. That path does not lead to better worlds.
And to be clear, I'm not advocating an all-or-nothing change here, just a different balance.
> You are justifying means because you like ends.
Yes, I am. From the most restrictive of environments, I have seen many hopeful stories of ingenuity in passing information by word of mouth about how and where to get less restricted access to information. I'm under no illusions that such channels are exclusively used for positive things, and I hope you're under no illusions that such restrictions are exclusively used to "protect".
I don't particularly expect to convince you. You are free to advocate the contrary. I draw hope from the fact that it's nearly impossible to completely restrict access to information, and I wish people the very worst of luck in trying.
My suggestion is the government doesn't decide what content should be surfaced but and neither shoulf it set what categories content filters use, it simply enforces security of content filtering software, promotes them and legitimizes them more and most importantly, policies what categories and methods they can't use (not the other way around). Using legally protected groups as a category, or using ML or private data to measure browing habits/intent or sharing browing habits to third parties are some examples of what the FTC would prohibit. The rest is up to parents,not the government. That would make everyone happy. Worsr case, social media companies might be forced to cooperate with third party content filtering services to help them identify things like cyberbullying or groomong and notify parents before their kids self-harm (again, final decision or even the decision to collect/use that info is up to parents). Give parents tools instead of expanding surveillance powers and using kids as an excuse is my message, if they are serious about helping kids.
I feel like everyone in tech is engaging in a culture war instead of fighting for what they believe in by using their strength: technical solutions to supposed problems like this and leaving would be government abusers without an excuse.
They are already doing it with NIST CSF and most companies are following that framework because there is no better option. PCI and HIPPA are also a thing, this would be similar.
> And what would be the criteria for “legitimizing” a piece of filtering software that didn’t involve ideology?
It works across various site and content, discloses capability and passes privacy and security requirements. The details of what criteria it uses is not regulated, but what it can't use is. It can include abortion for example or not include it, but it can't include "police services" or "black people" because preventing kids from accessing the police or discriminating protected groups is not legal already. FTC cannot force companies to filter specific content, it will leave it to the market to demand lawful categories parents want to use. Even adults want this.
Neither of those are political or ideological. No one is arguing on any side of the aisle that companies should be able to indiscriminately share medical or financial information.
> It can include abortion
Why can it include abortion? To me and many others, abortion should be no more of a religious argument than whether I can get psuedophredrine to treat sinuses. The government already pressured companies to suppress information early on in Covid that everyone now agrees shouldn’t have been suppressed - that the vaccines were not 100% effective and that you could still spread Covid if vaccinated.
> FTC cannot force companies to filter specific content, it will leave it to the market to demand lawful categories parents want to use. Even adults want this.
And the “market” already has filtering mechanisms that allow parents to filter what their children can see. It’s built into iOS and the carriers offer a service.
Oh please, certain people is parents and I don't care what their views are, they are parents. If you don't like it them take their kids away from them for holding that view. A parent is a parent not the government, schools, society, you or I.
They can forbid them from touching electronics entirely right along some internet content. How do you think it went with books, radio and tv/movies before the internet? Parents were given tools and they used that to police their kids.
And btw, I said the FTC regulates the tools, so why is the FTC allowing stuff you disagree with here? And you do know doing what you said is possible today with plenty of tools right? I believe the domain reputation category is somethinf like "alternative sexuality" there is a category for everything. Every domain older than a few month has dozens of vendors categorizing it.
> Oh please, certain people is parents and I don't care what their views are, they are parents
No one is saying that parents shouldn’t be allowed to let innocent little Johny see two men holding hands because they are afraid it might turn him gay. The issue is giving government that power.
> And btw, I said the FTC regulates the tools, so why is the FTC allowing stuff you disagree with here?
The FTC regulates content categorization for filtering software on the internet???
> The FTC regulates content categorization for filtering software on the internet???
Yes! It can make sure categories can't be harmful things or things banned by law(e.g.: "whites only website") but moreover, they regulate the security, accuracy and content coverage standards for such applications. They don't however get to categorize sites themselves.
> No one is saying that parents shouldn’t be allowed to let innocent little Johny see two men holding hands because they are afraid it might turn him gay. The issue is giving government that power.
The government doesn't get that power, it uses existing powers to regulate contentu filtering apps and educate parents to use them, parents get to have that power, as they should!
Why don't the policy nerds try to think about what a [V-chip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-chip) for social media would look like and try to come up with a more voluntary solution in that style?
> Why don't the policy nerds try to think about what a V-chip for social media would look like and try to come up with a more voluntary solution in that style?
Okay, wow. 1990s is a long way to go to find ineffectual tech.
For a more recent example (of law that was incapable of achieving it's goal), how about fosta/sesta?
Having been a kid who benefited heavily from access to networks (pre-Internet and Internet), and who went to college while still a "kid": no, absolutely not.
Kids are, in fact, humans, and should not be disadvantaged because of their age.
I've seen plenty of stories on HN and elsewhere about particularly clever 10 year olds who found their ability to participate online destroyed because some service provider figured out they're 10 and COPPA came into play.
Human civilization made it all the way to 1990’s without commercial internet. Maybe keeping children off the internet would make them better prepared for society.
Now look at the a mid 50's former housewife trying to find a job. It's a cruel world. Try getting hired as even a secretary if you don't know how to use Office.
Cool. You let your kids on the internet in their 20s and I’ll continue to allow my single digit aged kids on the internet. Nothing wrong with people having different values and parenting methods.
Even though children do have fewer protections from the 1st Amendment, they still are covered by the 1st Amendment in the US. I think it's very likely that a federal ban on children accessing the Internet would not survive 1st Amendment muster.
There are things we can restrict children from accessing and talking about, but it's a lot more narrow than people often suppose and most of that restriction is usually coming from private actors (particularly parents) who aren't bound by the 1st Amendment. Outside of settings like school, the government is generally not as free to impose those restrictions.
We campaign against some shitty bill. It fails to pass. Someone brings it up again the next session, and we have to do it all over again. Eventually, people get tired of fighting, and it passes.
Every time I've written to my Senator or Representative about something they support but I don't like, I get a form letter in response that just restates their existing position. I don't get the feeling that anything I do matters. And honestly, I'm doing the bare minimum here. I can't imagine how depressing all this must be for people who engage in actual activism around these issues.