First things first: Meta is a terrible company that has spent years making terrible decisions and being terrible at explaining the challenges of social media trust & safety, all while prioritiz…
So, for the “it’s the parents fault” bit I’ll say this. Parents are the arbiters of Internet access in their homes. If that van with “Free Candy” written on it pulled into their driveway and they didn’t call the police or warn their children not to get in the van, yes I would consider them liable.
The fact is, lots of parents do know their children are using social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok etc. A lot of parents are my age and younger (the age where we grew up with the internet and social media in its toddler years if not it’s infancy). A lot of us do know the dangers (and are probably addicted ourselves).
What some of us may lack is the knowledge to use parental controls effectively (and at least some of that is because we do dumb shit like using the same password for everything, or not changing default passwords).
But I also think that some of us (looking at you collective shout and other organizations like it) just want to offload our responsibilities onto these companies so we have someone to blame.
And even though I agree that what these companies are doing is wrong (directly targeting minors, deliberately making their platforms addictive, collecting data on minors etc), and I want them held accountable, I also don’t think ID collection is warranted, and I view this as a way to violate privacy and collect data for surveillance purposes which I believe is wrong to do to people who haven’t done anything illegal.
Even if that weren’t the case, these companies also just cannot be trusted to safeguard the PII data they’re wanting to collect. So as far as I’m concerned the ID verification thing is just not going to work.
I agree with most of that, however the mentality for liability is the same as “well what was she wearing” victim blaming. The parents arent the perpetrators.
I agree that parental knowledge to properly moderate kids usage of the internet is an issue - a skill issue. But that doesnt mean its their fault the kids get addicted to these things and exploited. The ones who openly do not care are a different story, thats child neglent as far as I am concerned.
I agree age verification and ID checks are absolutely not the answer and trying to censor the internet is not the answer. I think the answer more likely lies in holding companies accountable. There are reasons standards exist in many industries - to protect the consumer. As far as I am aware no standards exist when dealing with social media platforms.
So, for the “it’s the parents fault” bit I’ll say this. Parents are the arbiters of Internet access in their homes. If that van with “Free Candy” written on it pulled into their driveway and they didn’t call the police or warn their children not to get in the van, yes I would consider them liable.
The fact is, lots of parents do know their children are using social media like Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok etc. A lot of parents are my age and younger (the age where we grew up with the internet and social media in its toddler years if not it’s infancy). A lot of us do know the dangers (and are probably addicted ourselves).
What some of us may lack is the knowledge to use parental controls effectively (and at least some of that is because we do dumb shit like using the same password for everything, or not changing default passwords).
But I also think that some of us (looking at you collective shout and other organizations like it) just want to offload our responsibilities onto these companies so we have someone to blame.
And even though I agree that what these companies are doing is wrong (directly targeting minors, deliberately making their platforms addictive, collecting data on minors etc), and I want them held accountable, I also don’t think ID collection is warranted, and I view this as a way to violate privacy and collect data for surveillance purposes which I believe is wrong to do to people who haven’t done anything illegal.
Even if that weren’t the case, these companies also just cannot be trusted to safeguard the PII data they’re wanting to collect. So as far as I’m concerned the ID verification thing is just not going to work.
I agree with most of that, however the mentality for liability is the same as “well what was she wearing” victim blaming. The parents arent the perpetrators.
I agree that parental knowledge to properly moderate kids usage of the internet is an issue - a skill issue. But that doesnt mean its their fault the kids get addicted to these things and exploited. The ones who openly do not care are a different story, thats child neglent as far as I am concerned.
I agree age verification and ID checks are absolutely not the answer and trying to censor the internet is not the answer. I think the answer more likely lies in holding companies accountable. There are reasons standards exist in many industries - to protect the consumer. As far as I am aware no standards exist when dealing with social media platforms.