What do you think of Texas trying to ban social media accounts for anyone under 18?
By @Royricky09
Robot
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ArishMell · 70-79, M
I can't imagine that being enforceable, and might even be counter-productive by the "forbidden fruit" principle; but I suppose the idea is to stop children reading harmful contents.
"Harmful contents"... No - not just sexual pornography; and their victims include adults as well as children .
Such as material encouraging hatred and division, antisocial "~isms", mysogyny, violence, cruelty; both in self-serving fora and in illicit on-line sales of weapons and drugs.
Material designed by liars to deter sick people from proper medical advice and treatment - even for serious diseases like cancer - or from basic preventative treatment such as vaccinations and simple self-care.
Material encouraging low self-esteem, self-injury, eating disorders from starvation to extreme obesity, "recreational" drug-taking, addictive gambling, even suicide.
What are the mentality and motives behind such contents? They are cowardly, yes, and some rely on very shallow political dogmas, but is the drive really just one of control?
Some of course is nakedly commercial even where vaguely legal. The on-line gambling trade, particularly is utterly shameless and amoral, deliberately and carefully encouraging users to become addicted to the point of bankruptcy.
A better approach might be genuine and workable age-verifying as indeed many people and not only in just one State in just one country do advocate, but I am not sure how it would work short of enforcing subscriptions on the sites. Which might of course drastically cut the number of users - so cutting the incomes of the sites' owners.
The real villains are those owners, the publishers; the handful of very wealthy people who own the huge [anti-]"social media" companies but lack the courage to take responsibility for them, hence encouraging wilfully dangerous material. They should automatically not only "take down" wrongful material but name the originators, close their entire accounts and ban them for life.
"Harmful contents"... No - not just sexual pornography; and their victims include adults as well as children .
Such as material encouraging hatred and division, antisocial "~isms", mysogyny, violence, cruelty; both in self-serving fora and in illicit on-line sales of weapons and drugs.
Material designed by liars to deter sick people from proper medical advice and treatment - even for serious diseases like cancer - or from basic preventative treatment such as vaccinations and simple self-care.
Material encouraging low self-esteem, self-injury, eating disorders from starvation to extreme obesity, "recreational" drug-taking, addictive gambling, even suicide.
What are the mentality and motives behind such contents? They are cowardly, yes, and some rely on very shallow political dogmas, but is the drive really just one of control?
Some of course is nakedly commercial even where vaguely legal. The on-line gambling trade, particularly is utterly shameless and amoral, deliberately and carefully encouraging users to become addicted to the point of bankruptcy.
A better approach might be genuine and workable age-verifying as indeed many people and not only in just one State in just one country do advocate, but I am not sure how it would work short of enforcing subscriptions on the sites. Which might of course drastically cut the number of users - so cutting the incomes of the sites' owners.
The real villains are those owners, the publishers; the handful of very wealthy people who own the huge [anti-]"social media" companies but lack the courage to take responsibility for them, hence encouraging wilfully dangerous material. They should automatically not only "take down" wrongful material but name the originators, close their entire accounts and ban them for life.