Exactly, it is defined in the GDPR law that declining should be as easy and accessible as accepting. So all of those companies with dark patterns are breaking the law.
It's hard to put my thoughts into words. Those who are tired of social media are those that are not addicted to the never-ending dopamine injections (i.e. doomscrolling).
I don't have kids yet but I hope "social" media will be banned until at least 18 years old before they're born.
The human brain is wired to be lazy; it's much easier to doomscroll and get your dopamine than spend 40 hours reading a book. We want to be fit but we don't take the time to exercise; we want the candy but don't tolerate any effort to get it whatsoever.
It's always been the case during history but our ancestors didn't have access to those kinds of addicting tools.
It's an anecdote but I have long hair and there's a period where you cannot get a good haircut (too long to have a "short" haircut and too short to have a "long" haircut); I know some people who couldn't put up with the few months it takes to grow into a good-looking style and cut their hair back to short. Life is not Instagram, you cannot change something instantly. Everything that is worth the "candy" takes time. A hell of a lot of time. Of which we're losing track.
Very badly worded but maybe it resonated with some of you.
My own website has a bulletin board that offers a personalized list of messages after you login: whatever threads you have not yet read. And so do many other websites of this style. So this cannot be a differentiating aspect.
Not intentionally - but in the past I did have advertisements to finance it , which I had to stop since that is enough under a lot of jurisprudence to qualify as running a for-profit, which usually means less leniency from judges.
So it is advertisements where we should draw the line -- websites with advertisements should require age checks?
Why did you cherry pick advertisments from my reply and run with that?
It clearly isn't just a singular data point that is a True or False that would include a site in the ban.
Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter, do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self harm material and the ability to receive private messages from a 45 year old registered sex offender?"
I get your point - "Where is the line in the sand?" and it's a valid point but no need to argue in bad faith.
> Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter, do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self harm material and the ability to receive private messages from a 45 year old registered sex offender?"
If parents are concerned about this, why let them on the Internet? Why not use parental control systems? Why not teach your children healthy sex education, how to deal with their feelings, and to tell old creeps to fuck off?
Because it is the ad network that I chose 30 years ago that was doing any of the types of tracking you mention. In fact, all of the ad networks from 30 years ago would be considered as doing "teen tracking" today. I do not know how you can do tracking without doing teen tracking, barring precisely I troducing age verification on every single website. And I also do not know if there is any network out there doing advertisements without tracking -- certainly none of the major local news websites use it.
I do think the "wont somebody think of the children" arguments are in bad faith though, and I say this as a father.
These 80yo lawmakers have kids and grandkids and advisers. They know how social media works.
They hate social media because it gives people the power to talk in public about them with near impunity. They want to go back to the old days when if you wrote a letter to the newspaper about potential corruption or wrongdoing among the "more equal animals" you'd get pulled over for a light out whenever you went through that town for the next 20yr.
>If you think you have even near impunity on social media, I have a bridge to sell you. Even a town to go with it.
I specifically said "near" impunity. If you do something bad enough they'll come after you but even then if your gripes are legitimate that's likely to amplify it.
Surely you're not honestly claiming that there is not a significant practical difference between modern internet criticism and the old ways when messaging that could reach the broad public was far thoroughly gated by people and things that had more stake in the power structure.
I wouldn’t say it was gated. More like it was costly. And people having the means to do so was a very small set and prone to agree with the status quo.
But even now, a lot of messages are lost on the internet. And the internet is only decentralized for messages propagation, not for access.
For the record, that is exactly my point . I do not want yet another sword of Damocles for websites, even less if it depends on the mood of a clueless judge.
We live in such a capitalistic world by now, that most people’s happiness is, if they want it or not, tied to money. And I think society is moving further towards this.
Having kids would be a large financial burden and given my projection, would mean I wouldn’t be able to guarantee a decent living and the mental stability, because kids are brutal and societal pressures are very hard to free yourself from.
I grew up very poor and only very recently I was able to get out of debt i racked up just to survive (and sheer ignorance/living above my means, because I had nothing to lose and no perspective). I would hate myself of putting a child in that position myself.
If money wouldn’t be such a dominant force in current society, I’d very much consider having children.
>We live in such a capitalistic world by now, that most people’s happiness is, if they want it or not, tied to money.
This is how people feel, but that feeling has to be wrong. We know from history that people lived with much less and they were much more mentally stable than we are today. To be fair, if everyone is poor, it's probably very different than just you being poor in a rich society.
social media means people have realized how poor they are relatively. otherwise we are not in a substantially more capitalist world in the west and people are only more affluent than in the past.
obviously social media cannot explain everything about fertility, but i suspect it explains a significant portion of modern economic discontent among the professional/middle+ classes
I tend to disagree, I think a lot more in our society has changed due to the commodification of basically everything combined with the capitalist tendencies to pervert and corrupt anything, as there is no limit to greed. I think the housing market, food pricing and many more aspects of live have started to outpace the average workers wage to a point where it’s hard to be optimistic about a brighter future. The dream of ownership, a car, a family has gotten significantly more expensive in relation to incomes. At least from the POV of an European
Do you mean poor countries? I believe fertility is most closely related to education of women. If they have other options, many choose not to have a dozen kids like our ancestors. It's both hard on their bodies, and they typically get stuck with almost all the domestic and child care duties.
I know this is an anecdote and very subjective but I've really never discovered something that I loved with a recommendation algorithm.
Whether it be videos, music, livestreams, books... Everything that I've considered a "10/10" has been recommended by a human or a non-personalized algorithm—such as "Most popular". Whether that's a direct recommendation by a friend, a comment on HackerNews, someone that I already follow that mentioned the thing in question.
My RSS client fetches my YouTube "subscriptions" and it's been years since I've been on the homepage.
I’ve had some great recommendations from YouTube. For example the video below, called “The Squirrel and the Peanut”, which by just adding some well chosen classical music to some found footage of a squirrel getting a peanut turns it into a moving story of overcoming your fears told in a mere 1:32.
I agree that the algorithm isn't always the best. Interestingly however I occasionally get "legendary pulls" (I think that's a gatcha term?) on youtube - a 1990s stop motion video of some legendary niche Japanese animator, or some other 8+ years old video in 240p that's absolutely amazing.
But "fortunately" for me, on my main account, my feed is 80%+ decent stuff - science channels, AOPA safety videos - stuff like that. But my other account has absolutely terrible suggestions on the algorithm, so it probably varies a ton on how much and what you watch.
> Everything that I've considered a "10/10" has been recommended by a human
Have you ever found a 10/10 on your own?
If so it's possible you were recommended that by an algorithm but you just didn't register it, because a human recommendation is more of a memorable event.
If I've ever did, it's after having been recommended something. For example if someone sends me a song and then I go to the "most popular" songs from that same artist. Sometimes I would stumble upon something I like even more than the recommendation.
For example if it's a genre that interests me I would search "[genre] mix" on YouTube. In which case it's usually mixed by a human.
Granted I have very specific tastes in music and 98% of the time I listen to things I've already listened to hundreds of times... I sometimes try the song radio but it's not to discover a "banger".
As much as I dislike Spotify, I've definitely discovered some 10/10 tracks or artists that I would've been unlikely to have found out about otherwise. I don't know how well it still works these days since I switched to Qobuz years ago (which is great in everything except personal recommendations), but Spotify's algorithms, especially for Discover Weekly, used to be amazing. There was an article about all the kinds of stuff they do, and it included things like recommending less frequently played tracks with acoustic similarities to your favourites, and tracks presented on music blogs that also featured music you like. The stuff the engineers got to play around with there before the service started getting enshittified, basically.
Luxury watches are analog. Maybe people 50 years from now won't even know if the clock is telling the time correctly and will just wear the watch to show off...
The future is now. I personally know someone who does that. It's a fancy watch that only gets worn sometimes. And it's an automatic so it needs to be moved for it to keep running. So when they wear it every few days it is completely out of sync and they can't be bothered to adjust the time.
It is purely an accessory and completely useless for telling the time.
No judgment, but it just seems silly.
Apparently the correct way to solve it is to store the watch in a cradle that keeps it moving perpetually.
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