There are important distinctions politicians and people are glossing over when they talk about banning children from social media. https://open.substack.com/pub/billhulet/p/how-to-disengage-from-propaganda?r=4ot1q2&showWelcomeOnShare=true
Banning anyone under 16" will ban like 99% of anyone from the internet and social media. 16" is notation for 16 inches in the USA, not sure what this notation means in other countries. This is a great example why properly presenting data is important.
Here is the actual study, which has more data, and better graphs.
Why are we linking to substack articles when we can link directly to the study in question?
Is this an AI that can’t understand context and details?
There’s a chart in the article in quotes saying ban social media for anyone under 16. Its a regular sentence in double quotes (a quote at both ends) and clearly does not indicate inches when you consider that the start of that line starts with a double quote. The attendance implies ‘years old’.
Plus basically everyone on earth is taller than 16 inches so almost no one would be banned based on this assertion they assumed was being made.
Is this an AI that reads the first sentence of every comment without reading the rest, and can’t understand context and details?
This is a great example why properly presenting data is important.
People today DON’T read, and that is why your graph/figure game has to be on point.
Why are we linking to substack articles when we can link directly to the study in question?
I have a stem degree. I always want to see the raw data to make my own conclusions, not be spoon fed a narrative that was written by authors with potential bias they are trying to fit to the data. Out of habit, I look at the data before reading, and I just happened to notice the error in the graph. The substack article only presents a single graph from the full study, and there is way more data there in the full study.
16" is notation for 16 inches in the USA
That’s true, but this double quote is paired with the one at the beginning of the phrase.
This is a great example why properly presenting data is important.
Lol what? You made a minor mistake reading a graph and now the whole article is bad for you?
Intentionally ignorant age verification systems.
It is possible to build a government operated an age verification system that does not require the disclosure of personally identifying information to websites NOR your browsing history to the government. But that would require an informed, forward thinking, approach that the Canadian government is just not capable of executing.
In addition to the points others are making about age-gating the Internet and de-pseudonymizing everyone, it’s worth noting that age verification costs money many smaller sites likely don’t have. So this is also an issue of entrenching the worst ever walled gardens, overnight. And we’ve seen from the Discord fiasco that the verification companies can’t be trusted. The one they had that stored data that got breached (instead of just storing confirmation someone is of age) was a company backed by Peter Thiel – a close friend of Epstein for years after his conviction, and someone Epstein directly influenced on politics).
Also, the current sneaky campaign in the US to specifically attack Section 230 to supposedly stop the evil pornographers… is incredibly dangerous. As the EFF points out, it keeps the Internet accessible to all of us as a communication tool. Without it, any one of us can be frivolously sued at any time for any comments or memes or whatever we post online.
I don’t know what specific campaign against Section 239 you are referring to, but it strikes me that it has pretty much been allowed to gut laws against libel, hate speech, truth-in-advertising, election financing, etc, much to the detriment of our society. It may be the case there could be frivolous lawsuits, but if so, I’d suggest the problem there would be the frivolous lawsuits, which could be dealt with without gutting hundreds of years of regulations that tried to curb the worst excesses of publishing. For example, there are anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) laws that have been passed in various jurisdictions. There is also the Fair Dealing provision in the Copyright Act. Both of which are meant to prevent frivolous lawsuits from harming people.
I don’t think the response to wrong-headed attacks on the Internet is to support the status quo. There are an awful lot of very bad things happening on line, and governments need to reign in the worst abuses. But it has to be done by people who know enough to preserve what is good while limiting the bad.
What I’m talking about isn’t an effort to sensibly amend only the aspects of Section 230 that might be making it harder to prosecute perpetrators of harm. If that can be handled equitably, that would be great. The calls from Washington I’m talking about have been for repealing it. Like this bipartisan bill in particular, which seems to be their latest attempt.
From Wikipedia about potential outcomes of repeal:
Online platforms would become more cautious about censoring content if Section 230 were to be repealed, according to Harvard Law Review. Moderation may become overbearing for certain kinds of otherwise-protected speech, particularly for political or controversial subjects.[20] These outcomes could have global implications, particularly as other nations are already increasing their regulation of online speech. For example, Wikipedia relies on editors and needs anonymity to ensure free speech and reduce censorship. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says that Wikipedia could not exist without these protections.[28]
In addition to social protections, the rule may also have economic advantages. In 2017, NERA Economic Consulting estimated that, combined, Section 230 and the DMCA contributed about 425,000 jobs to the United States’ economy that year, representing a total revenue of US$44 billion annually.[29]
