Mitigation of harm really is a different issue.

Theres an idea I can get behind

Stage 3, government setting up their own fediverse suite so the platform actually follows local laws.

Lemmy is literally my only social media.

Not a bad idea. Governments run television programs in many countries too, so why not Internet platforms for their people to communicate on?

But the reason shouldn't be "so the platform actually follows local laws"; I don't want repressive governments to get to censor Internet speech through "local laws".

Or we do neither of those. Billionaires can own social media all they want, idc as long as I don't have to use it.

Of course, "banning teenagers from using social media" (like most other Internet regulations) makes sure that only billionaire-owned social media will be able to comply with those regulations and survive. :/

As if billionaires are the only greedy sociopaths in society. Remember they have thousands of "ordinary" people working for them, willingly and knowingly deciding to aid them in making the world a worse place. Removing the billionaire doesn't guarantee that these people are removed.

Banning billionaires from owning social media, well, that's a given, obviously. But we maybe should ban Dipshit Money People™ from using social media, too. Why are people even following them is what I'll never understand.

Condemned by dbzero in an instant.

Age limits really are weird and ineffective solutions.

Not a high bar.

Can we please have both?

It allows politicians to pretend they're doing something. Real solutions would piss off the people who own them. As the meme implies.

It's the algorithm designed by billionaires that favors dipshits. Get rid of the billionaires -> get rid of the algorithm and the dipshits will disappear into irrelevance

You posted this on social media. Just saying

Yeah thats true, highest level of social media company should be a cooperative.

I also think what could be cool is if people could apply to the state for an access code for social media that is anonymous to companies but indicates the users age and certain criminal background.

I think it is sad but social media has proven to be an effective weapon capable of changing people's opinions for the worse, and leads to worse academic performance.

We need to ban teenagers from social media not for their safety, but because they’re fucking annoying.

That’s why we send them to school all day and on field trips, and to summer camp. And why nobody ever dreams of going to high school again. And why teachers are constantly wanting more and more money. And why we call teachers heroes. Because you are heroes for putting up with teenagers all day.

However, age verification destroys the Internet. That’s why parental controls were invented thirty years ago.

If the government really wants to get kids off the Internet, they have to make parental controls mandatory. And if parents refuse to use them, a death squad is sent to their house, and a bullet is put in the back of the head of the parents.

If that happens then social media will cure cancer and solve world hunger and end all wars. We were almost there before smartphones came along and parents started dropping their kids off here expecting us to babysit them for fucking free.

This comment is the perfect barometer for gauging what percentage of the Fediverse consists of teenagers.

Yeah. It is. I’m not sure why you bothered to say it to be honest.

"I would like to improve society somewhat"

Would love a feature to filter or flag based on account age on a platform.

I don't like the idea of making people verify their ID to use a platform, but I do like the idea of being able to see how long an account is around for, and to potentially filter based on that.

Facebook was best when it was only the students with .edus. Just chilling based on social status or are groups.

then how will billionaires fuck teen children? huh? did you think about that?!

checkmate libtards!

/s (I am disappointed I even have to put this)

The problem is. They’ll do like they did on Reddit and people will make fuck-tons of bot accounts and just let them sit for a few years. Them they sell them.

Notice how the bot accounts are either a few years old with no posts/comments, or they’re brand new.

How else do you propose removing threats to developing minds such as addicting behaviors like gambling? The effects of social media also require a bit of scrutiny, as does the accessibility of unhealthy porn normalization.

I really wish there were a way to reel these things in without giving up privacy and that we could trust those in power to be erring on the side of freedom in their efforts. The digital world is ubiquitous and access to it generally unfettered and young minds aren’t necessarily ready for what they find.

Parenting? Maybe?

Because there's no reason to downvote it unless you're a teenager. Or a billionaire. More likely it's teenagers downvoting it.

Oh 100%! That’s getting harder and harder though as restricting phone access or use until the proper age generally low key ostracizes your child.

Proper parenting goes a long way but the effort required to choose the right hills to fight on is getting harder.

Ahh, okay I took that from a different meaning. Apologies.

Good luck! Maybe start by spreading the word that different social media networks and algorithms work differently and have different effects. So instead of demonizing the whole concept, make people switch to open source, non commercial and federated networks like Lemmy and Mastodon

I don't quite understand why people think Lemmy is social media aside from the fact that it's similar to Reddit which is also not really social media (but likes to think it is), unless the definition of social media is so loose that any two people talking online is considered engaging in social media - in which case, just about everything is social media.

I am of the opinion that link aggregators are not social media. At least not any more than the comments section of a YouTube video or the chat of a call of duty lobby is considered social media.

Look I'm going to need every nearby profile with all the pictures, especially deleted ones. The addresses. So I can shop for my rite of passage.

It's a form of media in which you socialize with others.

Cope, it's a social media. Don't think youre above the users of popular cliche sites.

This is social media

Well, I call them weird because it's not like harmful things suddenly stop being harmful when you turn 18. Why protect children but let adults fuck themselves with harmful and addictive behaviors? It's not like there's some switch being flipped where one's responsibility somehow fundamentally changes. For things with potential harms we should be asking ourselves what responsible engagement looks like at differing ages instead of drawing some arbitrary line in the sand between total ban and free-for-all. If we want social media and porn at all we should regulate good versions of those things.

And teaching people responsible engagement by banning any engagement with it outright is very ineffective. I think we should do the, admittedly much more difficult, work of scaffolded teaching. Engaging with the subject under guidance first before letting adults figure things out themselves. This would require people admitting however that teens like the same fucked up things adults do, which seems very scary to many people.

If that was the case my habits on Lemmy would be different to Reddit but their not.

Social media isn't itself bad, it's the algorithms designed with help of psychologists to maximize addiction that are bad.

Exactly, ban the addictive algorithms and the problem will fix itself and will be better because after completing 18 years you don't magically become immune to it.

That can probably be worked into the filters.

That reminds me that I should sell my Reddit accounts.

No, social media is quite bad in every way.

The only thing I kind of support are community boards like Lemmy and reddit

What exactly do you mean by "habits" and do you mean reddit today or earlier?

Commercial algorithms are optimized for engagement. The longer users stay on the platform, the more money they generate by gathering their data and ad revenue.

Engagement can mean that interesting stuff is shown to you or rage provoking stuff. And also things like infinite scrolling instead of pages...

For a long time, reddit let users choose their algorithms. This alone is a huge difference. Reddit would only show you communities subs you subscribed to (for the most part at least). Again, this doesn't let reddit throw random stuff at you.

When I left reddit, I think there was less opportunity to choose the algorithm and also they showed more stuff you didn't subscribe to. So I don't know about reddit today but I'm pretty sure it went to road to enshitification.

According to enshitification theory, platforms start out very user friendly to get more users and at some point, start to milk their user base. Reddit entered that stage relatively late so it's not the best example.

So again, what do you mean with "habit"? Screentime or the way you interact with the content and other users? There are certainly bad elements of social media that are also true in the feddiverse. The timeline structure leads to an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality where discussions end with one side just forgetting or moving on instead of reaching a conclusion; or the anonymity leads to a bad discussion climate. Be my guest and have these conversations. But denying that billionaire owned platforms actively worsen some mechanisms for users because their goal is money, is ridiculous.

I don't know if you monitor your habits well enough to come to a meaningful conclusion but either way, you are a statistics with sample size one and you took the least bad platform as an example. So good for you I guess.

Reddit sucks now though. I feel like this place is coming into its own.

Reddit leadership sucks, yes, but the communities not so much. At least the ones I hang around (specific games, etc.)

I’m getting hints that you might be reacting a bit overboard on this, id recommend getting your favourite beverage and enjoy cooking a good meal life is too short for sure long replies ❤️

I don't think that I'm "above" users of social media sites, I just disagree about the extent to which Lemmy and similar link aggregator websites should be considered "social media". If we just go by the broad definition, I feel like that encompasses like 3/4ths of the entire internet.

https://blog.rebeltechalliance.org/the-billionaire-mind-virus/ Once people have the Billionaire Mind Virus, they shouldn't be allowed to own anything....