Key point: “Ultimately, the fundamental problem with age-gating is that it fails to address any of the root problems with our current online landscape – that is, the extractive business models and pernicious design features of mainstream tech companies. We all exist in a highly commercialised information ecosystem, rife with algorithmically amplified misinformation, scams, harmful content and AI slop. Children are particularly vulnerable to these issues but the reality is that it impacts everyone, even if you’re blissfully absent from Facebook or Instagram.”

No I get what you’re saying, but your understanding of the world as it exists is incorrect, and your values are for oppression and anti-freedom.

Your incorrect understanding of reality: the on-platform tools that exist currently on Facebook are useless. You are powerless through account settings to limit your exposure to content from strangers on your feed, much less your child’s, except by individually blocking accounts as you see them when logged into the account that you want to block from. Even Bluesky, which also has insufficient tools, is slightly better in this regard. But what few on-platform tools you’re offerd only exist to give you the illusion of control over your experience. Greater control is possible but not offered because it’s less profitable. It could be mandated through law.

Your anti-freedom values: making platforms responsible for user content will destroy them or force severe proactive censorship and real identity policies. None of that is conducive to a free and open society. The fediverse could not exist if servers could be held responsible for what users say or do. Most of the Internet couldn’t exist if one rogue or politically unpopular user could land the service they use in court by offending another.

Your last paragraph is complete nonsense. The way to when an arms race is to come in with bigger arms. That’s where the government comes in, not to force its own will but to restrain companies and empower people. The notion that giving people greater control of their experiences can harm them is insane.

Would have been nice if you’d read what I write, but okay.

What Facebook wants is mandatory age checks at the OS level so they can just call an API and avoid all responsibility within their own platform.

What Facebook doesn’t want is users being able to control their own experience of the platform.

By “tools” I generally mean software and options/functionalities offered by that software through the regular user interface that enables one to modify the outputs of that software, and thus one’s user experience. So in this sense Windows 11 is a “tool” that as an operating system enables one to use a computer, but also therefore supplies tools to modify the experience, such as one lets a privileged user prevent non-privileged users from uninstalling software or sharing a printer to the LAN, right? Facebook (a software deployment owned and remotely hosted by Meta) has a tool that allows a person with a Javascript-enabled web browser (also a tool) or Meta’s proprietary application to send a message to a stranger on the internet, or a known person, along with a lot of other things, right?

Now what Windows 11 doesn’t have is a tool that lets me locate my mouse pointer on screen easily, but that’s okay because I can install PowerToys to gain that functionality. I can also install software that modifies the Facebook experience to some degree, but there’s not a lot of that for various reasons, and certainly I can’t find any that sells itself as a child-safety or parental control solution. But that makes sense, right? Because in order to serve that functionality it has to be deployable across all computers the child is using to access that remote service, and it has to be updated to match changes in that service’s software, like your shadow is attached to your feet. No practical at all.

Obviously this is of limited use, and this is why people use tools to modify their experience of social media sites like FB are usually doing so merely for their own comfort and enjoyment, which is valid but not the same purpose as parental control. And the relationship between the remote service and the local software developer is adversarial. This is why there’s plenty of parental control tools to block a website, but none to modify one.

I actually agree that moderation is the solution, but not in the way you mean. FB doesn’t create content, it just facilitates people to share their own (bots too, but set that aside). I don’t think any sane person believes that Meta or lemmy [dot] world or any other platform could continue to exist if it was held responsible for what its users said. Platforms make what efforts they do at regulation to avoid getting DMCAed, to keep themselves advertiser-friendly, and to make their services sufficiently enjoyable to users who those advertisers what their ads to be seen by. That last bit’s important, but even look at the first two, a legal regulation and “regulation” by market forces in the wild, and you can see how these already cause problems. But what platforms like FB don’t give you because they don’t want you to have it is control over your user experience.

FB doesn’t want you to have tools (account options) to moderate your own or your child’s experience on their platform because it would cost them money, both in development costs and opportunity costs. But that’s what’s actually needed to make FB an enjoyable and even child-safe experience. Not broad legal “moderation” demands that no platform could survive without obscenely invasive company-side tools and exploitative labor outsourcing, but functional tools (that yes, would have to be mandated by law because they won’t do it voluntarily) that enable the user to control their own experience. It’s a question of, do you want some underpaid and thrice subcontracted Indian/Nigerian tech workers reading your teen’s sexts with his boyfriend and making judgment calls as to their appropriateness, or do you want the capacity to simply allow communication between those to accounts without monitoring them, but retain the ability to block DMs from unknown accounts so your kid doesn’t get groomed by a stranger? We’re constantly told we have to choose between total system control or the Wild West, but we are only encouraged to consider these possibilities because they’re what’s cheapest for the companies.

I don’t mind paying for things, but it was already ridiculous. This is too much even for me.

This is a solvable problem though. FB could create tools to allow their users to cultivate a better experience, including but not limited to parents and children. It wouldn’t require a war of attrition against automation, or infinite moderators, but allowing people to have deeper control of their experience would reduce the number of ads you could shove in their faces and the amount of profit you could make. They therefore won’t do it voluntarily, and that’s why they should be compelled to provide such functionality by law.

“The design feature changes the state is seeking include “enacting effective age verification, removing predators from the platform, and protecting minors from encrypted communications that shield bad actors”.”

Oh fuck right off.

I’m sorry but this is a bad “think of the children” decision. There are limits to what Meta or any platform can do about bad actors at that size without structural changes.

What might actually help: only show people content from groups and people that they follow, preferably in chronological order, rather than suggesting new groups and pages algorithmically all the time and thereby increasing the likelihood of children interacting with strangers on the Internet.

And improve parental controls for children’s accounts. I’m sure there’s nothing currently giving a “parent” account high level control over a “child” account, but I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong.

But also: require intercompatibility with other platforms and a standardized form of profile data export so people can leave Facebook but stay in touch with the people who still use it.