The UK is turning in the very definition of a nanny and police state under the usual guise of think of the children. And don't get me wrong I'm just all for banning social media entirely.

As a British teen I concerned my parents a lot with my computer usage, with all they had heard about the dangers of over use. But for me that was an outlet in a pretty miserable childhood and turned into my career, I was programming and learning how stuff worked. I don't envy the kids that found an outlet doing something productive only to have a nanny state eventually rip it away from them.

I already do this with my <16. It’s called parenting.

They can use their computer however. That’s fine. It’s the engagement based social media and constant comms via messaging that’s the issue.

I find that she doesn’t actually use it all the time and goes and does other stuff like reading and recently drawing and painting.

Hello yes we would like to invade the privacy of your child in the name of children everywhere

For some reason, conversations on HN and in tech circles are behind the curve when it comes to social media bans.

Most countries are looking at social media bans, and there is a deep groundswell of public opinion against tech today.

Yes, in the 90s, tech was the good guy, but today people are frightened and upset with tech companies.

This would be less of a problem, if governments globally were not tending towards authoritarianism.

Governments are more than happy to appear responsive to voter needs, while also finally getting some form of control over (primarily American) tech firms.

As it stands though - safety is a bad word, enshittification is an actual word, and profit seems to be the final word.

The Techlash is real, but it doesn’t seem to feature in calculations and discussions on HN.

The problem with that is that it just creates a blind spot, and a miscalculation in the energies underlying such drives.

The OSINT report from r/linux got more traction, even if it was riddled with issues, giving birth to the belief that this is all driven by Meta.

A reading of the same data sits comfortably with Meta simply taking advantage of the macro trends to push onerous burdens onto its competitors.

I am sorry for the meta comment, but the blind spot in logic is annoying to me since it results in a mis-estimation of the energies at play here. That in turn means the responses or ideas people have are not calibrated and scaled correctly.

People are going to respond to incentives and instigate for their needs to be met.

My guess is that if tech invested significantly in customer support and safety, being more responsive to user needs, perhaps the underlying anger can be alleviated.

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Anecdotes:

There needs to also be actual signal sharing between safety teams in tech. Same for customer support - Far too many please for help go through slack and WhatsApp.

I know of posts on reddit where people are asking for help reporting and taking down NCII found on Instagram/Threads. ideas.

Half of me worries about the nanny/surveillance state aspect of this.

Half of me wants us to ban it for adults too.