this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Well this is terrifying. It really seems like there is little to no regulation protecting kids online these days.
That's what parents are for.
Only to a certain extent. What can they do against so many changes in the tech world. Just look at whatsapp that just introduced AI in their chat. There is a point when tech giants should just be strictly regulated for the interest of the public
Be involved in their kids' lives? Tech isn't the problem here, any more than it could have been TV, drugs, rock and roll, video games, D&D, or organized religion. Kids get into some dumb shit, just because it's the hot new thing doesn't make it any different.
Lol be involved in kids lives? 🤣 I will guess you’re not a parent but yes, blaming the parents is not really nice especially in the circumstances above.
But I think you bring a very good point here about drugs, it’s not possible to shield your kid from everything even drugs. But the way things are going using a kid using drug may be less dangerous than a kid using the phone.
Especially because most people don’t encourage kids to use drugs, while is the opposite with phones
Or how about parents regulate their children, so that we don't have government nannies telling full grown adults what they're allowed to do with chatbots?
It’s not about regulating what full grown adults do with chat bots it’s about regulating what corporations do with their products.
You don't see how one leads directly to the other? Full grown adults are the users of those corporations' products. If the corporations aren't allowed to put certain features in those products then that's the same as prohibiting their users from using those features.
Imagine if there was a government regulation that prohibited the sale of cars with red paint on them. They're not prohibiting an individual person from owning a car with red paint, they're not prohibiting individuals from painting their own cars red, but don't you think that'll make it a lot harder for individuals to get red cars if they want them?
Well, yes but stuff like chatbots, social media should be way better regulated.
Right now we see the equivalent of people selling drugs and guns freely in the streets (including to toddlers) and expect the parents to regulate all that.
Society is being actively eroded, while governments are fecklessly watching it happen.
Regulated how?
I’d have to write 2 PhD thesis’s about this to answer this one question properly.
Instead I’m just doing 2 examples and keep it shallow :
Th is case: A 14yo should not have completely unsupervised access to an ai chat bot - it needs to be by family/child account, same as for e.g. Fortnite. Also, given the nature of the matter and looking at the article: if the chat turns ’disturbing’ the parent needs to be made aware. (Etc etc)
Another case is TikTok: honestly, I’d just ban it together with shorts and reels. IMO this rots the brains of the younger generation. I’m not even sure there is a healthy way of consuming this type of content.
Okay. But by what mechanism would these things be enforced without encroaching on the privacy and freedoms of adults? It's the same problems as policing porn or violent media. No one wants the government looking over their shoulder.
What exactly do you mean by ‘these things’?
How is this exactly encroaching on the privacy and freedoms of adults?
How is that the same as policing porn or violent media?
Be specific.
For the AI one to restrict it from children you have to determine the age of the person accessing it. How do you do that and still allow them to maintain anonymity? You would need some identification to do that reliably which means for the adults using it this site now has a database of whatever ID you had to send them to verify. Or if it's using a credit card or some government hosted verification then those entities have a database of what sites you're using tied to your name.
For banning short form content. How do you quantify what counts? Is it just the length of the video? You're going to be throwing out a lot of very useful videos along with the brain rot if you use that. I could point you to several craftsman channels that produce very informative shorts. If it's case by case who is the judge? What are the criteria?
Could be a layered approach. First off you could require it by terms of service and nagging during registration. Anonymous as you only require 2 email-adresses - easy to circumvent due to the same reasons. Due to tech illiteracy of most parents this is probably catching only a minority of cases.
You could enforce id as adult using a 3rd party service - e.g. Google, Apple, government ID, credit card. This would be equal to most current systems in place that I am aware of. As you correctly point out this will have the authenticating entity have a list of the services you use. Hence I'd prefer it to be a government ID over any commercial service. To most people this is also just one more service as they may use Apple, Google, Steam, Epic, etc. pp. Heck, most people (excluding me) use Whatsapp, so they don't give a fuck about data privacy.
On top of that: We are talking about an AI service that collects and analyzes your data. The chatbot impersonates a friend or (as in the present case) a lover. Before you even typed the 1st sentence they have your email, IP, IP - Geolocation, time zone, preferred language. They probably logged in using an app on a stock Android ROM, so they also know your GPS location, WiFi, cell information, local Temperature, etc. pp. Then they start chatting and divulge even more information. What I'm trying to explain is that the AI company potentially has way more info on you than just the credit card and name. On top of that there is zero control messing with the mental health of children.
First off I'd ban platforms like TikTok entirely. They are effectively damaging society. The mixed content platforms are a more difficult matter - it's a complex problem.
Please do. I don't know any and I don't believe 1-2 min videos have any value besides short term endorphine kicks - I'm willing to educate myself though
Looking at shorts on Youtube and Reels on Insta it is more complicated than just banning the categories on each platform. Yes video length is a factor. Also bringing back / requiring public downvote scores will help. Both measures should improve the current situation greatly. Lastly you can use tools already in place but not really used such as the auto recognition and community reporting tools of the platforms - I mean they have them but they don't use them. E.g. Facebook and Xitter continuously break German hate speech laws without facing consequences.
Here's a few that have been coming up for me lately.
https://www.youtube.com/@WorkshopCompanion/shorts
https://www.youtube.com/@RexKrueger/shorts
https://www.youtube.com/@GrowVeg/shorts
Ok, these channels also have the normal length videos covering topics of interest. The shorts seem to be rather a byproduct. How do you personally use them? Do you search for a specific activity or is that part of doom-scrolling shorts?
I don't really try to consume shorts but YouTube presents them regardless of if you're looking for them or not. I don't even search out woodworking or gardening, I usually look for specific "how to disassemble things" videos or guides for video games but the algorithm always seems to get there sooner or later. Sometimes something will catch my eye and I'll watch it which is how I discovered these guys. I don't really doomscroll on shorts and if I start it's usually only 2-3 videos before I hit something stupid that snaps me out of it but I've literally never watched https://www.youtube.com/@WorkshopCompanion full videos or seen one of them on my dashboard but their shorts are insanely dense with information. They're my ideal YouTube "how to" video. If all content creators where like that we'd be living in the futuristic part of that one meme. My point was not all short form content is bad.
Sorry, I’m trying to understand your use case and it is still unclear to me. Did you ever seek out a short video to use as a how to?
In practice I don't know if I've ever had a relevant short come up when I was trying to find how to do a specific thing. Usually if I need help with something it's more complicated than a short would allow for. I have seen "How to" shorts for all kinds of stuff come across my feed though that were pretty good. So if one came up when I was looking for how to do something I would watch it. That quick, concise format is exactly what I want usually when I'm trying to figure out how to do something. It skips all the "Hi I'm xxxx, welcome to my channel, blah blah blah" shit that the longer videos have. My main point was that not all this content is worthless brainrot stuff. Regardless of if it's useful to you or me in particular someone else may find it valuable.
Right, shift the blame to the parents. Not the corporations targeting young kids and teenagers. No, the parents are supposed to watch their children and all of their devices 24/7. Growing up will soon feel like the Truman show. Privacy for children and teenagers? Hell no, parents need to be scared constantly because their kids could encounter something online which might make them suicidal because corporations don’t need to have any ethics or moral and they are surely not responsible for what their product causes.
Where do we go from here?
Cars that aren’t working correctly and could cause accidents? The driver is responsible!
Food which is contaminated and could cause death. The one eating it is responsible!
Welcome to the lovely new world where profit is everything and a human life is worth nothing.
Because all the laws that were pushed in the last twenty-five years for protecting children weren't actually about protecting children
They're all about increased conservative control over other people's kids
And adults too. When you combine "the law says you can't offer this service to children or we'll destroy you" with "there's no way to reliably tell if the people we're offering this service to are children" the result is "guess we can't offer this service to anyone."
True. They start with the kids because they have no rights then expand once they have the foothold. We need to push back