Post by @_elena@mastodon.social
Surprising good news from 🇫🇷 !
"France's Constitutional Council strikes down social media ban for under-15s"
"In its decision, the Constitutional Council raised concerns about the possible impact on privacy from instituting an age-verification system for all users."
Wow! I was not expecting this at all.
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@_elena And I'm gonna guess, that's not yet the strongest argument they could have made. If I'm not mistaken, France considers the right to be informed to be a fundamental freedom, which means that cutting people from social networks could infringe on that freedom as long as some government information is only published there.
@_elena France still has some politicians and judges with an actual spine left. Most European states don’t, unfortunately.
@_elena finally someone seeing beyond the ineffective "protect the children" smoke screen and recognizing the broad surveillance/privacy issues.
Well, to be honest, every sane person should see the problems with this "age-verification" bullshit. It IS obvious, isn't it?
Here's the thing: we have destroyed the planet, there's almost no place for kids to go anymore because cars make getting there a very high risk trip and then the "parks" are too small for every kid in the area to be there. There's no more forests for them to explore either. Also it's too hot outside now.
They're online because they're fucking bored and can't go outside. Fic the climate, then the kids will go outside again.
@_elena Increasingly, it seems that the only way to protect children is who are online is to financially punish companies for the damage they are doing to children online. That incentive would improve things a lot, even if it would not be perfect.
The problem here and the discussion here should start at the lack of accountability of the social media big tech companies for the irresponsible content that is hosted. Not with restrictions of users. It is that simple.
@EUCommission are you watching?
We should…
Society cannot allow the manipulation of its citizens by fully untransparant algorithms and methods and by rogue state and other actors on these platforms that are affecting democratic processes and promote instability by spreading lies, propaganda and fake news, because that is what is going on. The social media providing these platforms need to be held accountable to prevent these unacceptable situations. It is that simple. Only then change will come!
I don't see a problem in law with drawing a distinction between genuinely co-operative, non-profit platforms like mastodon - in which individuals are responsible for their own content - and commercial platforms which centrally promote some kinds of posts for profit, by the use of algorithms, advertising, etc.
Legal distinctions like this are common in other areas of law - eg. in the UK a co-operative of producers is taxed differently from an agency acting on behalf of producers - which can be a subtle distinction, requiring fine legal judgement - but which has nevertheless been working pretty well for many years.
This could, in effect, make big commercial social media, porn, etc platforms legally liable for the damage they do, as other publishers are - and therefore immediate improvements to moderation and every other aspect of social and environmental responsibility.
@_elena German news still reports on this like it would only affect kids.
Nobody asks themselves how they know whether a user is an adult or not.
The words 'Constitutional Council' look extremely attractive to UK ears, where we don't even have real democratic elections.
Electoral reform is long overdue in dis-United Kingdom
#ukgovernment outdated, corrupt, selfish and lazy, sits on its hands while Britain burns.
@_elena
I don't know enough about this to have a full opinion. But as a guy who likes privacy, this seems like a horrendous idea. I hope they make it non-horrendous.
I understand where they are coming from with this, but these big tech companies have been told to sort out their practices time and time again, to improve user privacy and safety and have failed. These bans are a result of that failure.
If social media bans can be a force for change, make these platforms better for all users, then that is a good thing.
Even young people have said they get harmful content in their feeds, when they don't want it. So big tech is still failing and replacing human moderators with AI does not seem to be helping the situation.