The majority of influencers are not in the same geographical regions as their fans. Content is not as regional as it once was. The TikTok algorithm is based on time spent viewing something, and things like search terms and engagement, more than it is about where you are geographically.

The same can be said for Instagram. How you connect with other users on instagram is by following them. It will recommend you new users based on who the people you follow also follow. Where you are does not have really anything to do with how you would engage with your fellow peers. They’ll mostly be asking you directly what your handle is and then following you. Your geography would mostly impact what kinds of new content the algorithm will feed you without any prior data, drawing instead from content that is popular with where you are from and what age you said you are and what gender you said you are.

I think a lot of people in this thread are misunderstanding how people use social media in general. Activating a VPN and creating an account somewhere else will not fundamentally alter how you use the platform. It just adds a very simple very easily accessible bypass measure to using it.

I personally expect that the platforms will make whatever concessions the government is asking for so they dont have to do this. Because teenagers make up such a large part of their userbase that it would be a massive hit financially to lose out on it. But the ban itself would be ineffective in ultimately preventing teenagers from accessing those platforms.

This added context is extremely helpful.

Porn is comparable because of its implementation and circumvention strategy, not because of its substance.

Drinking rates are decreasing, yes, but i disagree that it has anything to do with carding. It has been illegal for minors to drink since… at least the 60s? Earlier? Lol

Free VPNs are abundant and teenagers using instagram are almost certainly entirely unconcerned with their data being stolen. A market gap will come to exist for better free VPNs, advertising revenue being the driving factor.

I dont think that the majority of teenagers on Instagram / Facebook / TikTok are using discord or even aware of what it is. Some of them are definitely but I dont see those platforms as being interchangeable or serving the same functions whatsoever.

You could present literally the same arguments for why teenagers would never drink alcohol. Its against the law for them to purchase right, so its an inconvenience to access, so clearly they would all abandon it as all their friends become unable to access it as well. You could make the same argument for most kinds of bans. There are actually very few things for which imposing barriers to access has ever eliminated its use. Porn is an obvious example as well. Porn bans are essentially meaningless to consumers. They are so trivial to bypass as to be functionally non-existent. The only thing that imposed bans have done is make it difficult for companies to profit off of it. I am essentially ambivalent about that, but it’s a literal direct parallel in this case.

What is likely is that tools for circumventing in simpler faster ways will develop. Installing a VPN is already a single click operation. You dont have to do anything else. Teenagers are not going to abandon social media. Maybe you havent encountered many in the past 2 decades, but social media use is and has been near universal among them since social media came to exist. Like you’re nuts if you think they’re actually going to stop using it haha I dont know what else to say. But yeah maybe youre right. Making stuff against the law totally eliminates it because everyone is so lazy and incompetent they won’t expend any effort to overcome trivial barriers to access things they have built their entire lives around lol

It would absolutely be more effective to use legislation to address the root causes of excessive alcohol consumption than to make blanket bans. I’m not saying that the bans won’t do anything, but they are absolutely not effective on a broad scale. There are so many circumventions that are trivially easy to access that it renders the ban more of a general barrier for entry than an actual prevention of access. Its moreso “how hard are you willing to work to get it” than “you cannot access this”. So harmful alcohol consumption becomes a matter of effort. Addiction is frequently characterized by massive efforts to access substances. Its one of the hallmarks. I’m not arguing for teenage alcohol consumption, just pointing out that it’s only ever been a trivial block and we are very socially aware that it is circumventable and frequently is circumvented by minors.

And alcohol is a physical object that must be acquired. Social media access is not.

You can circumvent this ban from any device at any time. It’s like porn bans. It’s now just a matter of effort. Install VPN, click click done. Youre now able to browse freely as a minor. And again, now youre lying about your age. So all age protections are gone, and you are free to engage with the same content as before but with less actual protections in place. Youve taken an undesirable situation and rendered it into a subversive one, one that requires circumvention by design, and will therefore make the relationship between the user and the platform a dishonest one. This has a lot of consequences. It makes it a lot harder to actually check the age of people using their platforms, cause everyone underage will lie. You won’t be able to prevent them from engaging with grown adults in profoundly harmful ways, for example.

Alcohol and tobacco are (mostly) harmful in all circumstances, yes. Social media is not harmful in all circumstances. Human socialization can be a good thing, but it is impossible for those substances to be good things (except possibly in extremely niche circumstances). If social media platforms were designed to be good for people, then they wouldnt cause the same harm. If they had legal requirements to be moderated, to not spread misinformation, to not promote unhealthy and damaging habits, to stop the spread of hatred and bullying, then they would be significantly less harmful for teenagers and also everyone of all ages. These things would actually make social media better for teenagers. Completely useless age verification actually makes social media WORSE for teenagers. Teenagers are never not going to use social media. Sorry thats just the truth. Entire fields of technology and software design have been developed by teenagers seeking to circumvent age bans throughout history. These bans dont even require any kind of new innovation. They just need to setup a basic VPN. Trivial.

1. Will not work. None of these kinds of bans has ever worked. Is it not a common trope that teenagers can and do drink to excess despite not being legally allowed to purchase alcohol? Are we under some misguided belief that age verification procedures in this manner can or ever have worked effectively to reduce harm on minors?

2. Will have large unintended consequences far beyond social media access for teenagers.

3. Will actually make the internet less safe for teenagers, as they will now be lying about their age and circumventing the systems in place, which renders all existing protections for them ineffective.

4. Is pointlessly age targeted legislation as social media is also bad for adults as well. Its bad because of business practices and lack of ethical considerations in gigantic monolithic international social media corporations. If your end goal is making the internet safer for teenagers, your end result will actually end up being making the internet safer for everyone.

I moreso meant that I think glorifying the labor of working class people in general is a good thing. Not any one particular form of labor, just all forms of labor in general. Of course all people have flaws and are imperfect, I never suggested otherwise.

I’m not a Marxist-Leninist, far from it, but I do appreciate broad strokes the art they made glorifying the labor of the working class. Even though they constantly disrespected workers and acted against their rights, they nominally fostered a culture that glorified the labor done by workers every day. I think that on the whole is a good thing. I think it’s good to show a reverence for workers of all types.

Okay, I agree with that. Your use of the word simp was a bit open to interpretation.

This is a weird take to me. Why should we not idolize and revere workers who do critical labor on which our society depends? I understand objecting to the lack of idolization for other forms of labor. But to say that you dont afford respect and admiration to workers performing any labor is odd.

I’m so glad the foss and self hosting communities have grown so large since covid. SaaS is evil incarnate and I will happily switch to foss alternatives whenever possible.

That would be an understandable mistake if the poster hadnt literally quoted the rule they were breaking.

What community is that?

Providing the general public with convincing text generation has been an absolute unmitigated disaster for humanity.

Nearly every major company in North America is pushing AI. It is literally everywhere. We have long sense crossed the point of no return. The only thing that could meaningfully impact it would be legislation against it. And thats definitely not happening.

Idk why this is treated as though its so inconceivable. Greta is hated by conservatives around the world. Most countries have already condemned Israel. They only care what Trump’s regime thinks. Their prisons are notorious centers of physical emotional and sexual torture. This is relatively mild treatment in comparison to many of the accounts I’ve read. It’s still awful, but if they were going to invent a story about how vile the Israeli prison guards were, this wouldnt be noteworthy in any way. Barely even scratches the surface of the things that happen in those prisons.

Copyright is mind numbingly stupid.

Cw: non-specific discussion of CSA, discussion of dismissal of victims and mental illness

Its worth noting that nothing they demand would help children in any way. Child abuse overwhelmingly happens at home, from family members. To protect more children from abuse the entire system needs to be restructured to actually prioritize child welfare. Better funded better educated households generally correlate with better outcomes for children. I mean abusive parents exist no matter household income of course, but a lot of child abuse and neglect is correlated with parents and family members who are stressed, mentally unwell and struggling to make ends meet. If child and family welfare was actually a priority in any way they would be funding social services and social assistance, as well as ensuring that good public services exist to support people and ensure good, and free, access to mental health care. They don’t do any of these things.

In the context of CSA specifically, believing children who come forward would be a good start. I’ve met a lot of people who weren’t believed when they came forward. Who’s family members actually protected their abusers and consistently dismissed that the abuse was happening at all, even when parts of it were happening in plain sight. Another crucial and extremely important part would be properly educating children about abuse. In order to know that youre being abused you have to understand what is happening to you. Comprehensive and early sex education gives children the language and understanding to explain what’s happening to them. It is legitimately proven to be correlated, poorer sex education correlates with higher rates of abuse and lower reporting.

Republicans oppose both of those things. They actually apply disgusting levels of dismissal to all victims of sexual abuse, child or adult. They entirely dismiss that adult female predators exist and that boys can and do fall victim to them. They treat the whole concept of CSA as something that happens in dark alleys, far away from god fearing nuclear families. But the reality is that sexual abuse in the majority of circumstances happens at home with people who are well known to the victim. Republicans are entirely unconcerned with those victims though, and are only interested in the ones they can exploit to further their white supremacist agenda. Hence they are very likely to dismiss victims of CSA by saying that theyre lying, especially if the perpetrators are politically useful to them.

They also oppose sex education of any kind. Its sickening honestly. They are aware of how important it is. They do not care if more children will suffer silently because of this decision. They’re at best indifferent and at worst see this as a benefit of the policy.

Given all that I stated above, you can see that attacking migrants doesnt do anything to protect child welfare. Nor does attacking queer people. Nor does vigilante style pedophile catchers. Policy change and systemic restructuring is what would help children. Caring about their welfare would help them. Republicans just know that “protect the children” can give them cart blanche to do whatever they want to whoever they want.

Hey, I have a real job!

It largely wasn’t. For all that I have special interest in the city, it was objectively quite bad for many reasons. Not the least of which was the abysmal state of the plumbing and electrical. The place had major sanitation issues. It was also at bad risk of fire and collapse. It had to be torn down.

I believe they offered most of the tenants money to relocate. Kowloon walled city had been built specifically because the space it occupied was in a Grey area with regards to jurisdiction and administration. It was nominally belonging to China, but existed surrounded on all sides by British Hong Kong. The British refused to do anything there besides basic water/electrical/mail. And China couldn’t administrate there because they couldn’t physically reach it. Once Hong Kong was returned to China, there would no longer have been a purpose to Kowloon Walled City. So it was going to be torn down eventually. I know some tenants refused to leave as long as possible, but once water and stuff was turned off they capitulated.

Kowloon walled city was so incredible. I wish I could’ve seen it in person. Ive seen so many pictures and read so much about it. It was even used as a movie set after the tenants were relocated. It was so unique. Not that the concept is unique, slums exist all over the place. It was the confined area, the total lack of any administrative authority, and its incredible density that made it unique. Years ago there were a couple reddit posters who had either lived there or had gone there for school. Contrary to wider media narratives many of the people who were displaced from there actually regarded the city with a degree of fondness. The close proximity promoted a tight knit community.

Ultimately living there would have been likely pretty miserable, especially during the brutal Hong Kong summers. But something about the pictures of the dark alleyways with the distant sunlight barely peeking through the pipes and wires makes for such an interesting environs. It was famously served by only a single postman, and had few if any street addresses and a total lack of organizational structure. So he just sorta knew where everyone was, and how to get around its labyrinthine structure.