It blows my mind that parents let their children use these platforms with these safety features.
I just found out yesterday that my cousin lets their 5ish year old have a TikTok account, but they have to allow or deny anyone who follows. How absurd is that. It doesn't block anything about what they view (I assume they relied on this safety feature), and there's no way that vetting who can follow (family and friends) is safe enough. The alternative is my younger cousin not having access to TikTok at five years old. Seems like a completely fine alternative.
I imagine the average person just doesn't think about the potential implications of giving your child a TikTok account at that age.
I know someone similar who gave their kid a phone at age 6. 95% of the time I see them they're on TikTok.
Child safety features are not going to solve this problem. All it takes is one parent giving their kid a phone with an adult account and all that progress is undone. I am convinced it is going to take a cultural shift for any positive change to occur - self-policing and, if necessary, social stigma.
This kind of behavior of giving young children phones will have to be outmoded in a generation or two. Until then, there is going to be a lot of growing pains.
I feel the average person is not equipped to understand the implications. being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years. Even if it is not your "field" we all have a brain and if you like knowledge then you recognize it's useful to know about it.
The average person, especially the below average person, is better off trusting others than their own judgement - since most people know more than them.
You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.
> You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.
This is absolutely true.
> being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years.
People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else.
>People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else.
I don't know about Russia but China social media is no where close to American Social Media. There is generally time limits, content restrictions and other things that make the two not similar.
When people go "Social media is a problem", they are generally referring to western social media where it's profitability over any external harm they are doing.
I have kids. We’re social. Spend a lot of time meeting new parents all the time.
I have never heard of a 5 year old with a TikTok account.
I think your cousin is so far into the outlier end of the parenting tail that nothing they do is going to make any sense in the context of common parenting practices.
Alternative theory: your bubble is small, and you socialize with parents who have similar values to your own. And I'm gonna guess that your income or wealth is in far outlier territory. I've seen kids raised like this; in my generation the concern was kids glued to TVs all day, and some of those kids turned out okay. But in my family, it's the parents who grew up glued to screens who are raising the most screen-addicted kids.
5 years old is crazy, but by the time they are 15-16 it becomes difficult to restrict them from things their peers all do. There needs to be a wider push from all parents or more of a consensus from society that these platforms are dangerous.
You're not going to achieve coordinated, collective action by placing the burden of acting on the individual. It never works.
If collective action has to happen to solve some problem, it needs to either 1. be so strongly incentivized such that it's the only sensible thing for individuals to do, or 2. be mandated top-down and enforced.
You can't just shout "My solution relies on everyone independently doing X!" It never works.
Yes, the platforms need to be regulated more for minors.
But also, prohibition has never been a very effective method with teens.
Just look at how college kids drink when they get to college. The sudden removal of parental restriction has a lot to do with that if you ask me.
I think this is better approached with broad education, and stronger regulations on the platforms themselves.
Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs.
Drinking is down for young adults and teens. My pet theory is that Covid broke the chain of party and drinking culture being passed down. (This is entirely speculative, and based on a single chart I saw.)
The relevance to your point being that removal of parental restrictions don't seem to be doing that anymore.
Education is definitely a good idea, but do note any plan that depends on education gives up the next 5-10 years before results are seen. Works great for societies and countries that think that far ahead.
America in particular has an extra challenge, since Big Tech is based here, and threats to revenue streams will be met with immense opposition.
> Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs.
I would argue that more is being asked now of parents than in previous decades at least. You’re asking every parent to fight multi-billion dollar international addiction platforms on top of working, parenting, etc.
I totally agree with you, and that’s where platform regulation and privacy regulation has been failing parents.
Most people really can’t fathom the amount of data that tech platforms are slurping up, and they can’t fathom the sophistication of the data science that goes on involving their content feeds and data and metadata collection/targeting.
I think the blame is on the parents that allowed a 5 year old to have a TikTok account. No safety feature or regulation can compensate for bad parenting.
I try to be open-minded to other parenting techniques... but I just don't have the brain power to internalize how any remotely self-aware human let's a 5 year old use tik tok. Poor kid.
It's two things. When you step outside the HN bubble, very few people have any idea of the dangers and history of these apps. Also, life is objectively harder for parents these days. Often times, both parents are working, and they're working longer hours and getting paid less than previous generations so a lot of parents just dump their kids in front of screens. I'm not saying that's good. It's objectively bad, but that's the reality.
> Liu also said Texas had established that TikTok's "Restricted Mode" did not work as advertised and exposed minors to content the company said would be filtered out.
I don't use tiktok, can someone explain what the restrict mode was advertised as vs does? If it's like any social media limiter it's perhaps a softer thing (time limit) than a hard thing (ie, designed to put the onus on the user).
> The State’s second argument concerns TikTok’s representations about whether its “Restricted Mode” feature effectively filtered out content that might be inappropriate for minors. TikTok claimed that Restricted Mode “limits the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences” and that users “shouldn’t see mature or complex themes,” such as “profanity,” “sexually suggestive content,” “realistic violence or threatening imagery,” “firearms or weapons in an environment that isn’t appropriate,” “illegal or controlled substances/drugs,” and “explicit references to mature or complex themes that may reflect personal experiences or real-world events that are intended for older audiences.” For years, the State argues, TikTok employees internally
recognized that Restricted Mode was not functioning in the way it was marketed and exposed users to a high volume of content that should have been filtered out.
Whenever I see a list like this, I wonder to myself: "Who gets to decide the list?" Why are we letting companies just decide on their own what's appropriate for "minors?"
You could have, at least back when Trust and Safety roles weren't getting crushed by the AI stick.
Theres tons of research which can be brought to bear, genuine problems and challenges that require deep, thoughtful work, and some of the greatest people you will work with.
It is also absolute madness. There are so many insane, broken things about how safety is provided in the world, that you will feel like you are in a Elizabethan slaughter house, just at species scale. This is all excluding the world of child safety. Adding that to the mix gets you to existential nihilism quite rapidly.
I wonder what counts as a complex theme? Surely that is a euphemism for something, but I can't figure out what it would be and certainly don't trust TikTok to do a good job of deciding what is too complex for the youth's minds.
What Is Restricted Mode?
Restricted Mode limits videos that may not be right for all viewers. It filters out mature or complex themes. Some features like LIVE videos and the Following feed are hidden while it is active
So I can only assume that it did not filter out these things.
IIRC, it's supposed to filter out disturbing or offensive content; any time you report a comment or a video, it suggests enabling it to prevent seeing that sort of thing in the future.
The open internet isn't safe for adults, either. There is some serious misinformation out there, and it's high time we restrict the internet to only high-IQ people. (/sarc)
Is YouTube or Twitch really better? I don't think people are going to go "Oh well, TikTok is gone now, guess I'll finally go read through my backlog of academic papers on quantum theory"
YouTube is has a lot of great educational content. Maybe TikTok is too, I don't use it, but I find most short-form content to be of questionable value.
[edited to change "full" to "has a lot of" because Youtube has plenty of brain-rot too]
Will you ever cease to be baffled, I wonder? All the crazy things people do, and all the crazy stories on the news every single day, your life must be absolute kaleidoscopic madness of noncomprehension.
"kaleidoscopic madness of noncomprehension". Hilarious image. Thank you for this. Not the OP but this actually describes my state sometimes. Darkly, I think the problem is I put too much faith in others.
> TikTok in August agreed to settle three U.S. lawsuits brought by young people who accuse social media companies of designing their platforms to be addictive and harming their mental health.
I am so happy I do not live in US where an idiot harms themself and non-idiot has to pay them.
If we put responsibility for keeping kids safe on companies we will get 2 or 3. The only good option is that parents need to actually parent their kids.
This is soooo true. But unfortunately, whenever you confront a parent with their responsibilities, they immediately lash out with excuses. "How should I know." "There is already sooo much work to do." "In these times ..." All lazy ass excuses by people who obviously have no idea what responsibility they have.
This comment is just a lazy attempt at changing minds. Why don’t you get off your ass and actually institute real change in the world? We’re all waiting. This is your responsibility after all, according to me. From here on out, all unresolved problems are the fault of lynx97 being a lazy slackass. So says me, with the power of a random internet person assigning responsibilities. Consider yourself confronted. I’ll await your excuses.
Government and taxes are the price we pay for having a civilization. If you don't trust your government institutions to do good by you, then you could go live on a deserted island somewhere and see how that works out for you.
It blows my mind that parents let their children use these platforms with these safety features.
I just found out yesterday that my cousin lets their 5ish year old have a TikTok account, but they have to allow or deny anyone who follows. How absurd is that. It doesn't block anything about what they view (I assume they relied on this safety feature), and there's no way that vetting who can follow (family and friends) is safe enough. The alternative is my younger cousin not having access to TikTok at five years old. Seems like a completely fine alternative.
I imagine the average person just doesn't think about the potential implications of giving your child a TikTok account at that age.
I know someone similar who gave their kid a phone at age 6. 95% of the time I see them they're on TikTok.
Child safety features are not going to solve this problem. All it takes is one parent giving their kid a phone with an adult account and all that progress is undone. I am convinced it is going to take a cultural shift for any positive change to occur - self-policing and, if necessary, social stigma.
This kind of behavior of giving young children phones will have to be outmoded in a generation or two. Until then, there is going to be a lot of growing pains.
I feel the average person is not equipped to understand the implications. being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years. Even if it is not your "field" we all have a brain and if you like knowledge then you recognize it's useful to know about it.
The average person, especially the below average person, is better off trusting others than their own judgement - since most people know more than them.
You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.
> You need to talk to your cousin. No one else is going to.
This is absolutely true.
> being educated / intelligent means you have likely picked up some neuroscience knowledge and it has stuck for you over the years.
People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else.
>People in Russia and China have almost 30 percentage points more tertiary education levels than Americans do. Nonetheless social media is even more pervasive and popular in China than anywhere else in the world. Like with the panic about video game fixation, harmful time wasters are almost certainly an effect, not a cause, of something else.
I don't know about Russia but China social media is no where close to American Social Media. There is generally time limits, content restrictions and other things that make the two not similar.
When people go "Social media is a problem", they are generally referring to western social media where it's profitability over any external harm they are doing.
I recall China having instituted limits on gaming for children. I believe there are limits for social media as well.
I have kids. We’re social. Spend a lot of time meeting new parents all the time.
I have never heard of a 5 year old with a TikTok account.
I think your cousin is so far into the outlier end of the parenting tail that nothing they do is going to make any sense in the context of common parenting practices.
Alternative theory: your bubble is small, and you socialize with parents who have similar values to your own. And I'm gonna guess that your income or wealth is in far outlier territory. I've seen kids raised like this; in my generation the concern was kids glued to TVs all day, and some of those kids turned out okay. But in my family, it's the parents who grew up glued to screens who are raising the most screen-addicted kids.
5 years old is crazy, but by the time they are 15-16 it becomes difficult to restrict them from things their peers all do. There needs to be a wider push from all parents or more of a consensus from society that these platforms are dangerous.
You're not going to achieve coordinated, collective action by placing the burden of acting on the individual. It never works.
If collective action has to happen to solve some problem, it needs to either 1. be so strongly incentivized such that it's the only sensible thing for individuals to do, or 2. be mandated top-down and enforced.
You can't just shout "My solution relies on everyone independently doing X!" It never works.
Yes, the platforms need to be regulated more for minors.
But also, prohibition has never been a very effective method with teens.
Just look at how college kids drink when they get to college. The sudden removal of parental restriction has a lot to do with that if you ask me.
I think this is better approached with broad education, and stronger regulations on the platforms themselves.
Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs.
Drinking is down for young adults and teens. My pet theory is that Covid broke the chain of party and drinking culture being passed down. (This is entirely speculative, and based on a single chart I saw.)
The relevance to your point being that removal of parental restrictions don't seem to be doing that anymore.
Education is definitely a good idea, but do note any plan that depends on education gives up the next 5-10 years before results are seen. Works great for societies and countries that think that far ahead.
America in particular has an extra challenge, since Big Tech is based here, and threats to revenue streams will be met with immense opposition.
> Part of the problem is that many parents aren’t educated themselves about what is good and bad for their kids. Examples include things like nutrition, screen time, even simple stuff like when to wean from bottles and keeping suffocation risks out of cribs.
I would argue that more is being asked now of parents than in previous decades at least. You’re asking every parent to fight multi-billion dollar international addiction platforms on top of working, parenting, etc.
I totally agree with you, and that’s where platform regulation and privacy regulation has been failing parents.
Most people really can’t fathom the amount of data that tech platforms are slurping up, and they can’t fathom the sophistication of the data science that goes on involving their content feeds and data and metadata collection/targeting.
I think the blame is on the parents that allowed a 5 year old to have a TikTok account. No safety feature or regulation can compensate for bad parenting.
I try to be open-minded to other parenting techniques... but I just don't have the brain power to internalize how any remotely self-aware human let's a 5 year old use tik tok. Poor kid.
It's two things. When you step outside the HN bubble, very few people have any idea of the dangers and history of these apps. Also, life is objectively harder for parents these days. Often times, both parents are working, and they're working longer hours and getting paid less than previous generations so a lot of parents just dump their kids in front of screens. I'm not saying that's good. It's objectively bad, but that's the reality.
Instead of sueing the platforms, the parents should be subjected to CPS, on a daily basis.
Ah yes, all parents should constantly be monitored by the state for compliance with standards, gotta love small government
Go after the drug dealers ffs
Are you a friend of Larry Ellison by chance? His ideas don't stop at kids.
> Liu also said Texas had established that TikTok's "Restricted Mode" did not work as advertised and exposed minors to content the company said would be filtered out.
I don't use tiktok, can someone explain what the restrict mode was advertised as vs does? If it's like any social media limiter it's perhaps a softer thing (time limit) than a hard thing (ie, designed to put the onus on the user).
> The State’s second argument concerns TikTok’s representations about whether its “Restricted Mode” feature effectively filtered out content that might be inappropriate for minors. TikTok claimed that Restricted Mode “limits the appearance of content that may not be appropriate for all audiences” and that users “shouldn’t see mature or complex themes,” such as “profanity,” “sexually suggestive content,” “realistic violence or threatening imagery,” “firearms or weapons in an environment that isn’t appropriate,” “illegal or controlled substances/drugs,” and “explicit references to mature or complex themes that may reflect personal experiences or real-world events that are intended for older audiences.” For years, the State argues, TikTok employees internally recognized that Restricted Mode was not functioning in the way it was marketed and exposed users to a high volume of content that should have been filtered out.
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/sites/default/files/ima...
Based on their faq: https://www.tiktok.com/support/faq_detail?category=web_accou...
> You shouldn't see mature or complex themes, such as:
> • Profanity
> • Sexually suggestive content
> • Realistic violence or threatening imagery
> • Firearms or weapons in an environment that isn't appropriate
> • Illegal or controlled substances/drugs
> • Explicit references to mature or complex themes that may reflect personal experiences or real-world events that are intended for older audiences
It is clearly described as a content filter. (It also deactivates gifting on live and "following" feed.)
Whenever I see a list like this, I wonder to myself: "Who gets to decide the list?" Why are we letting companies just decide on their own what's appropriate for "minors?"
Because 99% of adult people have other things to do than manually build content filters.
You could have, at least back when Trust and Safety roles weren't getting crushed by the AI stick.
Theres tons of research which can be brought to bear, genuine problems and challenges that require deep, thoughtful work, and some of the greatest people you will work with.
It is also absolute madness. There are so many insane, broken things about how safety is provided in the world, that you will feel like you are in a Elizabethan slaughter house, just at species scale. This is all excluding the world of child safety. Adding that to the mix gets you to existential nihilism quite rapidly.
I wonder what counts as a complex theme? Surely that is a euphemism for something, but I can't figure out what it would be and certainly don't trust TikTok to do a good job of deciding what is too complex for the youth's minds.
I'd guess not-suggestive sexuality-related content, such as sex-ed. Possibly political stuff too?
Curious what they consider an “appropriate environment” for firearms and weapons
I don't know what TikTok thinks, but I could imagine a target shooting sporting event as one such example.
There are multiple Olympic events that use firearms and weapons. Or history tiktok is a thing.
From TikTok:
What Is Restricted Mode? Restricted Mode limits videos that may not be right for all viewers. It filters out mature or complex themes. Some features like LIVE videos and the Following feed are hidden while it is active
So I can only assume that it did not filter out these things.
IIRC, it's supposed to filter out disturbing or offensive content; any time you report a comment or a video, it suggests enabling it to prevent seeing that sort of thing in the future.
TikTok isn't even safe for adults, let alone children.
The open internet isn't safe for adults, either. There is some serious misinformation out there, and it's high time we restrict the internet to only high-IQ people. (/sarc)
I like to think there's a difference between being fed misinformation & braindrot day in, day out and having to look for them yourself.
Is YouTube or Twitch really better? I don't think people are going to go "Oh well, TikTok is gone now, guess I'll finally go read through my backlog of academic papers on quantum theory"
YouTube is has a lot of great educational content. Maybe TikTok is too, I don't use it, but I find most short-form content to be of questionable value.
[edited to change "full" to "has a lot of" because Youtube has plenty of brain-rot too]
Texas judge rules heroin marketed as child safe so parents could get back to doing their own heroin was not child safe after all.
Why would anyone expect a data-funnel to the CCP to be honest? I am baffled that people even use the app.
It’s a data funnel to Larry Ellison and the Trump crime family now.
I feel even worse now.
Tiktok was sold to a US company iirc
...so now the CCP has to pay the middleman Ellison for the same data.
Will you ever cease to be baffled, I wonder? All the crazy things people do, and all the crazy stories on the news every single day, your life must be absolute kaleidoscopic madness of noncomprehension.
"kaleidoscopic madness of noncomprehension". Hilarious image. Thank you for this. Not the OP but this actually describes my state sometimes. Darkly, I think the problem is I put too much faith in others.
> your life must be absolute kaleidoscopic madness of noncomprehension.
Yeah, that is a pretty good way to summarize the state of life based the trajectory of current events.
There is rarely a dull moment on this rock.
> TikTok in August agreed to settle three U.S. lawsuits brought by young people who accuse social media companies of designing their platforms to be addictive and harming their mental health.
I am so happy I do not live in US where an idiot harms themself and non-idiot has to pay them.
What libertarian utopia do you live in?
There's only 3 options for the internet:
1. free for all
2. locked down with ID checked age gates
3. sanitized with no adult content at all
If we put responsibility for keeping kids safe on companies we will get 2 or 3. The only good option is that parents need to actually parent their kids.
What about:
4) Human moderated in smaller communities
5) Self run reputation systems
Plenty of communities exist out there that aren't a free for all, do not perform id checks, have adult content, and are free from children.
This is soooo true. But unfortunately, whenever you confront a parent with their responsibilities, they immediately lash out with excuses. "How should I know." "There is already sooo much work to do." "In these times ..." All lazy ass excuses by people who obviously have no idea what responsibility they have.
This comment is just a lazy attempt at changing minds. Why don’t you get off your ass and actually institute real change in the world? We’re all waiting. This is your responsibility after all, according to me. From here on out, all unresolved problems are the fault of lynx97 being a lazy slackass. So says me, with the power of a random internet person assigning responsibilities. Consider yourself confronted. I’ll await your excuses.
Those are not mutually exclusive. I'll take #1 and #2 combined, thank you very much. #3 is the purview of the advertisers and CC companies.
How long do you think you'll have #1 and #2 before someone in government realizes they can dox people they don't like?
Government and taxes are the price we pay for having a civilization. If you don't trust your government institutions to do good by you, then you could go live on a deserted island somewhere and see how that works out for you.