@neil @bencurthoys @fullywoolly @mastodonmigration @schmidt_fu @raven667 @sldrant

This isn't about protecting children from Facebook. This is about eradicating healthy nonprofit alternatives to Facebook, such as the Fediverse.

If you'll read the vast majority of these laws, you'll find that they impose compliance costs that only Facebook can afford. No way that's an accident.

Protecting children is the excuse. Controlling public discourse using the Facebook algorithm is the goal.

@neil re the last point specifically:

We have commercialized our society so far that all the hanging-out spaces are becoming enclosed, and are disappearing.

This hits teenagers especially hard, because they usually have the least disposable money. But it’s a pretty horrific way to run a society in general.

@neil I was easily spending 4-6 hrs online chatting with friends from school on AIM, moderating a forum, learning photo manipulation with gnu imp and creating art with it, learning about linux, lots of slashdot, security focus, doing homework... Lots of school activities, had a gf, etc.

I'm with you, I was way more social online. Part of that was how my school bused kids from across the city. But that continued in a large part through undergrad.

It wasn't an exclusive or situation.

@neil

Just replace "online" with "watching TV" and you've captured the moral panic of the two previous generations. And you know what, they were right. 🤷

@neil
The people who have been online 4-6 hours a day back then (mostly at night, because dial-in rates) are nowadays in good part the backbone of our technical world.
And they
- talked to anonymous strangers from the end of the world
- consumed questionable content
- made equally questionable websites ("profiles")
- joined in popularity contests ("social")

Maybe we can get rid of the "screen time" argument for good, and focus on intention and media literacy somewhat...

@neil my view would depend on what they are doing online. Creative stuff = good, 6 hours of doomscrolling = bad.

@neil It's really the same error of thinking as "kids these days spend too much time at the computer!" without really looking into what the kids are doing at the computer, which was generally some combination of expressing themselves, engaging with art, meeting friends, learning programming and commiting cybercrimes, the latter of which being perhaps not unambigiously positive but still under the general header of "learning useful skills", just in a slightly misdirected way.

@neil it also assumes that there are places for them to go...

@neil my problem is when my 15yo spend 5+ hrs on tiktok on a day when she tells me she's studying hard for exams.

@neil when books were new (novel!) then yes, there absolutely was a similar moral panic about how reading too many books was rotting children's brains.