@sarahjamielewis

I remember the hassles and obstacles I had to overcome to be allowed into the district, then city and uni libraries. Dragging parents to the principal and so on. Fortunately parents knew better and finally I had access to books I wanted to read. It made me who I am today.

Then, having seen and a bit partaking in the internet coming to being a thing, becoming a resource, a booster, and now being remade into a pulp saddens me – for all that kids who no longer have libraries with physical books, and whom digital ones are being taken away by politicians in terror of the possibility of mass revolt of the serfs.

The age gating needs no surveillance, but surveillance is the goal, children are just a pretext.

@sarahjamielewis I think that the current internet still has places where you can get positive learning and growing, including in mainsteam social media. The old forums were better spaces for that, more collective and horizontal perhaps, but also they could be hostile spaces with a toxic culture. And for years, conservative politicians have been pushing for anti-internet bills. The question is why they are starting to be successful now.

@sarahjamielewis I hate to think where I would I be, today, without the tiny trickle of USENET news my little 486 SysV box with no IP stack could fetch over a second-hand 19.2kbps PEP modem at 2 AM, when I was 14 years old.

@sarahjamielewis Let’s see how this gets implemented. The burden of proof is on the services, instead of the people to prove themselves of appropriate age, so in theory it’s possibly good. However, we know what lobbying can do. And it could lead to regulatory capture, where no other internet services beside facebook or whatever, can ever be deemed safe for children because only they can muster the resources to fill every requirement. 🤔

@sarahjamielewis E l'internet di una volta era meno ordinato e controllato. Si fa tanto casino per le giovani menti, quando il problema è a monte, ossia la mancanza di interesse da parte dei genitori. Per dire: i media di intrattenimento sono classificati per età, genere e contenuto, eppure pochi seguono quelle segnalazioni. Chi è lo stronzo se tuo figlio sta giocando un titolo con un bollino PEGI 18 grosso quanto una casa?

@sarahjamielewis
>But it is not the responsibility of society to contort the web into absurd shapes so some can avoid parenting.
How would you get parents to parent?
How would you ensure they have the ability to?
Mine tried to control my online time and keep me from the dark corners of the net. They blocked my laptop's MAC address from connecting to the WIFi. I changed it to a random one. They implemented a whitelist. I spoofed the printer's. At that point they gave up.

@sarahjamielewis there are a fair few kids who don't have parents able to give guidance on starting safe online, for any of a number of reasons.

I also had formative experiences at that age, and I am who I am because of it, but I'd probably be a better person if I had seen fewer unsolicited dick pics and horrific photos of dead people.

At the time I thought it was fine, and that I was becoming more sophisticated and worldly, now I realise that I was seeing an extremely distorted view and it impacted me deeply in ways that it has taken years to unpack.

I will happily accept the parts of this proposed legislation that requires social media companies to reduce or eliminate algorithmic timelines, endless scrolling, functioning visibility restrictions and other controls that benefit everyone.

I actually think that such legislation would be widely popular, and would eliminate like 80% of the harmful effects of mainstream social media without any of the catastrophic impacts of forcing identity verification everywhere.

@sarahjamielewis Keep children out of internet is obvious solution than keeping child predator out of internet. Can't wait for Government to tell people sit at home to be safe 🤡