Florida Braces For Lawsuits Over Law Banning Kids From Social Media (arstechnica.com) 168
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: On Monday, Florida became the first state to ban kids under 14 from social media without parental permission. It appears likely that the law -- considered one of the most restrictive in the US -- will face significant legal challenges, however, before taking effect on January 1. Under HB 3, apps like Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok would need to verify the ages of users, then delete any accounts for users under 14 when parental consent is not granted. Companies that "knowingly or recklessly" fail to block underage users risk fines of up to $10,000 in damages to anyone suing on behalf of child users. They could also be liable for up to $50,000 per violation in civil penalties. [...]
DeSantis' statement noted that "in addition to protecting children from the dangers of social media, HB 3 requires pornographic or sexually explicit websites to use age verification to prevent minors from accessing sites that are inappropriate for children." This suggests that Florida could face a legal challenge from adult sites like Pornhub, which have been suing to block states from requiring an ID to access adult content. Most recently, Pornhub blocked access to its platform in Texas, arguing that such laws "impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech" and fail "strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas's stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors."
According to the Guardian, [Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, who spearheaded the law] expected that social media companies would "sue the second after" HB 3 was signed. So far, no legal challenges have been raised, but Renner seemingly expects that the law's focus on "addictive features such as notification alerts and autoplay videos, rather than on their content" would ensure that the law defeats any constitutional concerns potentially raised by social media companies. "We're going to beat them, and we're never, ever going to stop," Renner vowed.
DeSantis' statement noted that "in addition to protecting children from the dangers of social media, HB 3 requires pornographic or sexually explicit websites to use age verification to prevent minors from accessing sites that are inappropriate for children." This suggests that Florida could face a legal challenge from adult sites like Pornhub, which have been suing to block states from requiring an ID to access adult content. Most recently, Pornhub blocked access to its platform in Texas, arguing that such laws "impinge on the rights of adults to access protected speech" and fail "strict scrutiny by employing the least effective and yet also most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas's stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors."
According to the Guardian, [Florida House Speaker Paul Renner, who spearheaded the law] expected that social media companies would "sue the second after" HB 3 was signed. So far, no legal challenges have been raised, but Renner seemingly expects that the law's focus on "addictive features such as notification alerts and autoplay videos, rather than on their content" would ensure that the law defeats any constitutional concerns potentially raised by social media companies. "We're going to beat them, and we're never, ever going to stop," Renner vowed.
What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Age restrictions exist for a lot of things. Why should social media, a service that can easily become detrimental to an individual, especially a youth or teenager, not be age restricted? Gives the kids a chance to learn about social media, it's addictive qualities, and how to mitigate/deal with the negative consequences of social media.
Re: What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can't institute such age verification without collecting everyone's PII.
Re: What's the problem? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because you can't institute such age verification without collecting everyone's PII.
That's not actually true, though doing it in a privacy-preserving way requires the use of a trusted third party, someone who can essentially say "Yes, I verified that this person meets the requirements."
We are building infrastructure to be able to do this for adults because data oversharing for age verification is a real problem. Right now, to prove your age to buy alcohol you hand over your driver's license, which contains all sorts of info the person checking your age does not need. I'm actually surprised that bartenders tracking young women down at their home addresses to rape them isn't a common occurrence. They don't need your name, address, driving credentials or even birthdate to tell if they can sell you booze. They need two pieces of information: A photo (or something) to verify your association with the official document, and a bit that indicates whether you're over 21 (or whatever).
It is possible to build systems that enable data-minimized verifications; I helped to write the ISO 18013-5 mobile driving license standard which does just that. But deployment is just beginning (a handful of US states support it), and of course 14 year-olds don't generally have driving licenses. Also, binding identity to the document is a tricky but not-insoluble problem for online presentations (not solved by the current version of the standard, but under discussion for the next).
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It might be possible, but the laws don't mandate that sort of thing nor do they have any restrictions on keeping private data.
In the end, it's pretty easy for a kid to just borrow their parent's license to view websites anyways
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It might be possible, but the laws don't mandate that sort of thing nor do they have any restrictions on keeping private data.
I'm not arguing that the law is good, just that age verification doesn't inherently require providing PII.
In the end, it's pretty easy for a kid to just borrow their parent's license to view websites anyways
This is why you need identity binding, meaning a way to verify that the person making the request is the person to whom the identity document was issued. For in-person presentation we do that with manual matching against a photo. Doing it online is harder, but not impossible.
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How would you do it online in a way that's not too burdensome?
Re: What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you can't institute such age verification without collecting everyone's PII.
Translation: You can’t institute an age verification program without taking money out of executive bonus coffers.
Your translation is inaccurate. Since you don't seem to know this, PII is "Personal Identifiable Information [ibm.com]." You are apparently quite naïve about privacy concerns, but you should be aware that having such personal identifiable information floating around the internet is a bad idea. Quoting the Department of Labor [dol.gov]: "The loss of PII can result in substantial harm to individuals, including identity theft or other fraudulent use of the information."
Age verification isn’t a technical challenge today.
Correct. Collecting PII is not the technical challenge. Safeguarding PII is the technical challenge. The easiest way to safeguard PII is to not collect PII in the first place.
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Well then it sure is a good thing this Florida bill has a section that specifically says that age can be verified by a third party website and that website doesn't need to retain the data after verification. This solves both problems.
Re: What's the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well then it sure is a good thing this Florida bill has a section that specifically says that age can be verified by a third party website and that website doesn't need to retain the data after verification. This solves both problems.
As long as your definition of "solves the problem" means "hides the problem".
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Are there penalties for retaining this data?
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Are there penalties for retaining this data?
You're talking about a state where they don't even enforce the federal penalties for driving around in a vehicle with the catalytic converter removed.
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Are there penalties for retaining this data?
You're talking about a state where they don't even enforce the federal penalties for driving around in a vehicle with the catalytic converter removed.
To be fair no state can enforce everything. Pragmatism, political priorities, and cost benefit comes into all of it. I smoked pot when I was a teenager and it was illegal. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
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Yes, adolescents know nothing about sex. /s Why, I recall the time when I was in middle school (that's Jr. High to some folks) and one of my classmates felt the need to express his masculine prowess by exclaiming (in reference to some girl he had the "hots" for) "I'm going to stick it up her so far that she'll have seven babies!" As a side note, it kind of confirmed that I was gay when hearing that actually made me throw up in my mouth a bit and I'm sure I involuntarily made a weird facial expression as a
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Yes, adolescents know nothing about sex. /s Why, I recall the time when I was in middle school (that's Jr. High to some folks) and one of my classmates felt the need to express his masculine prowess by exclaiming (in reference to some girl he had the "hots" for) "I'm going to stick it up her so far that she'll have seven babies!" As a side note, it kind of confirmed that I was gay when hearing that actually made me throw up in my mouth a bit and I'm sure I involuntarily made a weird facial expression as a result.
But yes, please tell us more of your wisdom about how humans who have reached puberty are going to be corrupted by written words in a book relating to things they're already thinking about.
Don't need to be gay to find his statement repulsive! But point otherwise taken. 8^)
I've been around long enough to know that the people who do all the projection have a disturbing tendency to be caught doing the thing they rail against.
There's a darkly humorous thing on Imgur. They post a mug shot of a staunch conservatite, most often a preacher, who has been arrested for allegedly fucking children, of ether sex. The pictures have the name and arrest description, followed by "Not a Trans!
Anti gay
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There is certainly a degree of "those who frequently invoke think of the children probably do a little too much thinking about children" involved in the people who propose such laws. I recall in the earlier days of the debate over the "Don't Say Gay" bill that one of the Florida representatives was actually saying that there are gay teens on TikTok who believe themselves to be celebrities because of their sexuality. My first thought was "why is this old man on TikTok watching videos of gay teenagers?"
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There is certainly a degree of "those who frequently invoke think of the children probably do a little too much thinking about children" involved in the people who propose such laws. I recall in the earlier days of the debate over the "Don't Say Gay" bill that one of the Florida representatives was actually saying that there are gay teens on TikTok who believe themselves to be celebrities because of their sexuality. My first thought was "why is this old man on TikTok watching videos of gay teenagers?"
As I joke around with my friends who are gay when the subject comes up, "These gay bashers think about gay sex a lot more than gays do". So I am sure these crusty creepers do a lot of .. ahem.. research into what they publicly claim is perversion.
But exactly. Understanding that where one puts what part where is not even a choice. No one chooses what turns them on. No kid is going to become gay by watching a tiktok video.
My own preferences are tall slender women with long hair, long legs and nordic good
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Do you really relate 1984 or Animal Farm and kids with pedophilia? Big Brother was not a sex symbol nor were the farm animals and it says something about you if they are to you.
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Do you really relate 1984 or Animal Farm and kids with pedophilia? Big Brother was not a sex symbol nor were the farm animals and it says something about you if they are to you.
Malicious projection.
In other words, I posted about the spread of Identification to outside pR0n and nothing else, and he was busy thinking about... well you read it too! Creepy at best, very disturbing at worst.
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Sometimes I wonder if the idea is to keep kids ignorant to take advantage of them. There's a lot of broken people out there.
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Sometimes I wonder if the idea is to keep kids ignorant to take advantage of them. There's a lot of broken people out there.
I imagine that is part of the problem. I worked with kids for a number of years, where you had to have a background investigation. I'm CEO of a 501c3 now where potential members get a somewhat less intrusive background check.
But yeah, ignorant children can be a prime target. And nothing makes a parent think their child is safe with a man or woman of God that holds strong opinions about gays and all the other things that they hate. Except it doesn't quite turn out that way.
Full disclosure, I had a rel
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Cite any attempts to ban books from adults.... And if you don't think that banning children from reading certain things is appropriate, then you're a pedophile...
The pedophile accusation is more likely to be projection of your own thoughts, because not a thing I wrote had anything to do with pedophilia. It has to do with the fact that registering with a third party does nothing for anonymity, your name is on file, and whatever number they give you is easily traceable to that number. The second thing is that many of the same people are also very interested in literature as well. They demand to ban books from classes - what good is that if the children can see the for
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In February 2024, Jennifer Pippin of Indian River County, Florida demanded the banning (from children) of "In the Night Kitchen", the classic picture book by celebrated author Maurice Sendak (who is best-known for "Where the Wild Things Are"). Because one of the pictures is an undressed child, she called it “pornographic”. Ditto for "Unicorns Are the Worst", which contains an image of an undressed humanoid. Ditto for "Draw Me a Star" by Eric Carle, who is best-known for "The Very Hungry Cater
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Removing the books from libraries at all.
And you have no idea what a pedophile is. Here, let me help: the GOP Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a few years ago took his then-13 yr old daughter to a "Purity Ball" (no, shithead *you* go look that up). Incestuous grooming pedophile.
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They don't need to retain the information that "age verification was requested for Sam Smith on 1/2/24". In order to service the request, they have to always have "Sam Smith => 23yo".
Which Sam Smith are you referring to? There are thousands of them.
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Yeah, they'd probably have to use drivers licenses or some such. How much detail do you want me to go into when reasoning about what data the verifier has to have on hand on a permanent basis?
Re: What's the problem? (Score:2)
They don't need to retain the information
Their legal department says, "Yes, they do." In the event that someone sues because their child saw a boobie without being properly vetted.
And you just know the conservatives are going to spend thousands of hours perusing on-line content, looking for these boobies.
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The safest way to safeguard PII is not to store it.
No, the safest way to safeguard PII is to not collect it in the first place.
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No, it's more that any company doing the verification is not trusted enough to safeguard and not collect and sell the information passed to them.
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Libraries have a very good reason for requesting personal information: you're borrowing something that belongs to the library. If you just let anyone waltz in and take a handful of books with no accountability, you'd find that in fairly short order you'd no longer have any books to lend.
Re: What's the problem? (Score:2)
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You can hang out at the library and read whatever you want, even photocopy it without having to show ID. As a kid, it was easy to get a library card with no ID as well
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Funny how you clowns never objected to Libraries collecting personal information to get a library card....
Calling others a clown whilst making a very disingenuous comparison (coupled with presumptions) is quite ironic.
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Don't you already have to be 13 to have a Facebook account?
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Don't you already have to be 13 to have a Facebook account?
I think that's a restriction imposed by Meta itself. If so, there's a difference between a company doing that on its own platform and the government mandating it. The latter, most likely, falling under the 1st Amendment ...
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No, its a US law that prohibits collecting the information of children under 13 without their parents' consent. However, you just have to have a checkbox asking the user to confirm they are over 13.
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No, its a US law that prohibits collecting the information of children under 13 without their parents' consent. However, you just have to have a checkbox asking the user to confirm they are over 13.
Thanks. That was also in the back of my mind, but couldn't pull it forward.
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The "Are you 21?" prompts on alcohol company webpages are absolutely hilarious. A web page can't get you drunk, and teenagers really don't think they're getting away with anything by looking at pictures of booze. I'm convinced the real reason they ask for your birthday is so they can obtain marketing demographics.
Yes, I realize they're not supposed to be marketing to kids, but alcohol is already so pervasive in our culture it's like expecting kids to be ignorant of the fact that cars exist.
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I don't think you fully appreciate the difference between marketing and "being made aware of". You'd hope the billions of dollars companies spend on both improving their ability to influence decision making, and analyzing the performance of their marketing mandates would clue people in to the fact that the vast majority of advertising is not designed to "make you aware" of a product, let a lone a whole class of products as per your analogy.
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Are you by any chance not an American? This country has the most bizarre relationship with alcohol. We once tried to ban it, that didn't work, and until the smoking age was also raised to the same age as alcohol, it was the only vice you couldn't legally experience until you'd already been an adult for three years.
Pretty much all the marketing alcohol needs is taken care of by the fact that it's practically seen as a right of passage when you're finally old enough to legally buy it. Personally, I found i
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Don't you already have to be 13 to have a Facebook account?
Yes, but that is easy to bypass.
My daughter created her own Facebook account when she was eight.
I only found out about it when she friended me.
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Which is kind of like saying you found out that Starbucks will sell caffeinated drinks to minors, after you let your your underage kid use the car to drive there.
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I was running my own damn dial-up BBS at 13, back in the early 90s. Kids mature at different rates and ultimately it should be up to the parents to decide. That's ostensibly what this bill allows, except if your kid is 13 (in which case the parents probably have to lie about their kids age and break the state law if they feel it is unjust).
Also, lest anyone forgot what WWW stands for, the internet is a world-wide thing. It's a little absurd expecting sites to comply with some absurd patchwork of state re
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It is in no way absurd for a company to learn the laws of the market place they are operating in. In fact, that's called being in business. Florida, as well as the other 49 states, are all individual market places and they have individual laws that must be followed by businesses that wish to sell products and services in their borders.
A great example is California's pork law. We have some pretty hefty animal rights for how we expect pork sold in our state to be raised. If you want to sell pork here, you nee
Re:What's the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
Give it a try. Put up a simple web page. Now ask yourself, are you fully compliant with the laws in Luxembourg? How about Belarus?
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Give it a try. Put up a simple web page. Now ask yourself, are you fully compliant with the laws in Luxembourg? How about Belarus?
So, simplicity might not be lawful in some jurisdictions around the world?
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Hard to say, there's so many national regional and local laws in the world, there's no telling.
Enforcement is the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
That end anonymity on the internet. And that data can easily be abused by law enforcement and the right wing government of Florida (who have shown a penchant for doing so in the past).
Post something Ron DeSantis doesn't like online? Expect to get a visit from his goons [miamiherald.com]
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This small government philosophy sure does call for an awfully big government. Maybe they can get some Evangelicals to do the censorship for free.
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This small government philosophy sure does call for an awfully big government.
"Small government" is a misnomer. If anything it's "small federal government". What the philosophy really desires is that issues are dealt with at the most local level of government possible. One, because that is where citizens have greater control. And two, many problems have some sort of local component so a local solution is best, not a one size fits all federal solution.
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the only way to enforce this is to force you to give up your identity via a state issued Id every time you sign up for any online service.
I think I've actually had a Facebook account long enough that they should be able to figure out I'm an adult that way - my account is nearly 15 years old.
It's cute that you think they care (Score:2, Insightful)
When you get right down to it that's what the Republican party and the right wing are all about. Obedience. Anyone above you on the totem pole gets to tell you what to do and you get to tell anyone below you what to do. Then you keep a powerless minority at the bottom for the next rung up to shit on for fun and to feel bett
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I think you replied to the wrong post. I was mostly just saying that Zuck should be able to figure out I'm one of the olds just by my account creation date. I'll be a bit miffed if I have to otherwise prove that I'm older than 15. Some of my similarly-aged friends already have adult children.
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If you think that's bad, did you know the ISPs in UK are going to start blocking access to porn for everyone? https://www.wired.com/story/po... [wired.com]
Re:It's cute that you think they care (Score:5, Funny)
Are there any studies/statistics that show some positive benefit of porn?
Oh you think incels are insufferable now, just wait until you take away their wankin' material.
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Post something Ron DeSantis doesn't like online?
Yeah, nobody has every done that before under their public name. *rolls eyes*
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Gives the kids a chance to learn about social media, it's addictive qualities, and how to mitigate/deal with the negative consequences of social media.
Sorry, but no. Kids aren’t going to “learn” from warning labels or bans. There’s a reason we call them kids, both literally and legally. Let’s try and remember why we do instead of assuming addictive tech somehow bestowed wisdom.
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Age restrictions exist for a lot of things. Why should social media, a service that can easily become detrimental to an individual, especially a youth or teenager, not be age restricted? Gives the kids a chance to learn about social media, it's addictive qualities, and how to mitigate/deal with the negative consequences of social media.
I think that every page you go to on the internet should require you give your name, address and date of birth.
Then once a week, your spouse, employer and Law enforcement should receive a report of every website you visited during the week.
There is more than just pictures of naked people that can harm children - in order to not harm children we should make the net not only non-anonymous, we must scour it, and protect children from anything we don't want them to see. Pro Trans, Democrat and liberal as
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It also restricts the voice of the youth on political issues. Youth can't vote*, but they can express their opinions, and youth are overwhelmingly liberal until at least age 16
*In a handful of cities, including, yes, you guessed it, SF, youth citizens can vote at 16 in local elections, and public high schools are polling stations, so most youth in those areas have already been voting for 2 years before they leave public schools
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I would engage with your question, but I don't want to waste my time if I'm replying to a child. Please prove that you're an adult first.
Well the Bible isn't illustrated ... (Score:2)
And yet there is no age restriction on reading the Bible with its drunkness, incest, rape, murder, infanticide, and genocide.
Well the Bible didn't have illustrations like the material that inspired other legislation that restricts the material to libraries for adults.
It's also a porn age verification law (Score:3)
In the last discussion people were so hung up on debating on the appropriateness of social media for teenagers that the attached porn site age verification requirements flew entirely under the radar. This is Florida's way of joining Utah and Texas in getting people to search for "What's a VPN?"
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In the last discussion people were so hung up on debating on the appropriateness of social media for teenagers that the attached porn site age verification requirements flew entirely under the radar. This is Florida's way of joining Utah and Texas in getting people to search for "What's a VPN?"
If “parents” are more than willing to hand a 13-year old child a 24/7 hardcore porn surfing device (also known as a “smartphone”) and justify that action under the guise of “safety”, then there’s not much more to say here regarding porn exposure or addiction. Parents are literally enabling that for their own children.
Like a fucking VPN is going to fix the root cause of that problem.
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If “parents” are more than willing to hand a 13-year old child a 24/7 hardcore porn surfing device (also known as a “smartphone”)
They can certainly be configured to not operate as "hardcore porn surfing devices", but that's not good enough to the parents (and probably also some non-parents) who feel their ideas of what is appropriate for teenagers should have the force of law behind it.
Good, some of those models/actresses ... (Score:2)
It's also a porn age verification law
Good, some of those models/actresses should have their ID's checked.
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Why is access to porn so important to you?
If your religion or personal morals tell you "porn is bad", that's for you to follow, not to impose upon the rest of society.
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I've never smoked and personally find it to be a rather repulsive habit. That being said, I fundamentally oppose taking rights away from adults. If you're 18 and want to have a cancer stick, that should be your bad decision to make for yourself.
Likewise, I really don't think it's a good idea for anyone to become an adult entertainer. It's an exploitive industry and long-term career prospects are unlikely. But again, adults should have the right to make their own decisions, for better or worse.
As to the
Yup - logical. /s (Score:2)
Gotta keep those youngsters away from social media during their formative years to keep them from getting information and their own ideas before they're old enough to vote. Though this hardly seems like a good way to win them over.
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Being free from the confines of social networking pressure allows more of something called "talking to other people".
That's a highly YMMV experience. Online was where I got to communicate with people who shared my interests in PCs, gaming, and coding. Real life was where I heard things along the lines of "I'm gonna kick your ass, faggot!"
Marginalized LGBTQ+ adolescents always seem to get overlooked when people say things like "Oh, just make your teens go out and socialize, it'll be good for them!"
Ok (Score:2)
And those companies can just ignore the fines. Florida has no power to actually compel any of those companies to pay any of those fines. Just like Texas doesn't have the power to compel xHamster to pay their dumb porn fines.
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In general, ignoring Florida's idiocy is a good idea even if you're not a social media company.
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Except when that idiocy spreads, and it does seem to be spreading
eh (Score:2, Flamebait)
Getting kids off of social media is good for them, but it shouldn't be paired with Florida running it's already-pitiful educational system into the ground. The politicians doing this are purely doing it because they can't control social media the way they can the school systems.
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LOL ... only for those that can afford private school. I will ultimately make the public schools with less money and only for the poor. So, yeah that is a great idea...
An educated populous is important for the US to retain it's tech industry. If the government were smart they would be making schooling cheap and easy to obtain.
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"A decent private school costs anywhere from $2500-8000/year."
Are you on crack?!
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what a dystopia
Legal standing ... (Score:2)
If parents want to add their children to some class action suit to fight this, I suspect that they'd be the ones who would grant their kids permission to use social media anyway.
states rights (Score:2)
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Yes because providing government IDs to random companies on the internet is perfectly OK. What could go wrong?
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Let's not spread fear and doubt on this. There are already websites online offer age verification and this is in the actual bill that these kinds of services may be used. So you can sign up to ONE site, get your stuff verified and that site will tell the rest of the Internet for you. This was in the summary of the other article posted about this same topic on the front page.
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It means all Florida social media users would have to provide some form of identification that indicates their age. Not just kids. It's the only way they can comply with a law this draconian. I believe the law is well meaning but in true Florida fashion it fails in execution.
This is similar to laws requiring backdoors into encryption implementations for law enforcement. By making it easier for law enforcement you make it monumentally easier for criminals as well. In this case, it means companies who've mad
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Commerce Clause -if the transaction crosses state lines, then regulation is a Federal matter.
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States rights go both ways. Facebook is a California company. So are many other social media sites, actually. Does Florida even have ANY?
So if we go ahead and go all in on state's rights, DeSantis would have no right to stick his nose in Facebook's business, California would tell him to go pound sand, and if he still wanted to "stick it to those social media luburls in commiefornia" he could damn well go full CCP and build his own great firewall. Actually, that sounds like a perfectly cromulent idea to
Similar to existing Federal law (Score:3)
According to COPPA, which has been federal law for 10 years
After July 1, 2013, operators must:[42]
* Post a clear and comprehensive online privacy policy describing their information practices for personal information collected online from persons under age 13;
* Make reasonable efforts (taking into account available technology) to provide direct notice to parents of the operator's practices with regard to the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information from persons under 13, including notice of any material change to such practices to which the parents have previously consented;
* Obtain verifiable parental consent, with limited exceptions, prior to any collection, use, and/or disclosure of personal information from persons under age 13;
* Provide a reasonable means for a parent to review the personal information collected from their child and to refuse to permit its further use or maintenance;
courts may fine violators of COPPA up to $50,120 in civil penalties for each violation
Any legal challenged are almost certainly going to be a waste of money given this law is hardly any different in reach or impact than the existing federal law. Effectively all social media sites are already required to meet the same consent requirements. The only difference will be that they will check for a birthday a couple years less recent than they were already doing.
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Federal law is 13, Florida's idiotic law is 14 or 15 with parent's permission, otherwise 16+.
The really annoying part though, is the attached porn site age verification requirements, which will lead to the same situation as Utah and Texas.
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Counting down for the first test case of someone using a VPN in Florida to skirt the law, and the provider being held in for that. The only solution will be to demand that kind of intrusive identification across the country.
Understand the objective here - if they can't get federal action against social media, they'll compel it via other means. These people are far from dumb.
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For this law, you have to prove you are you and then "approve" another account for your kid.
So really all this does is grab my information to block my kid from using social media for 2 more years.
And I guess also grab my kids information when they are 16 if I didn't approve.
So sounds a lot more like we want to know who is using all this social media.
trading morality for freedom (Score:2)
The problem isn't restricting kids under 14, many people are likely for that in concept. The problem is rather requiring an adult to prove that they are an adult (or over 13) and doing that in an inherently trackable way.
Yes, restrictions exist for other things, but most of those are in-person purchases where the verification is human eye visual and not stored in some database so your purchases can be tracked. Plus other apparent filters made by a person, is this bearded man under 14? unlikely.
The other a
I'm just glad to hear Fl has no other problems (Score:2)
What they really need now is to send their national guard to the Texas boarder for a few billion dollars a year.
Republican Insanity (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember when Hillary Clinton's book, "It Takes A Village" caused a stir among Republicans because she suggested that the government had a role to play in raising children?
And now, it turns out Republicans - with only the vaguest notions of "harm" as their basis - are attempting to do just what Hillary suggested. To take the reins of parenthood away from parents and substitute them with the state.
As a parent, I don't want the state parenting my children, because if Republicans have told us anything - and we believe them - the government can't do anything right. That's why we don't have universal healthcare or a social safety net. Now, the folks who have incessantly told us they can't fix social security now tell us we can trust them to raise our children.
I understand if you don't want your child on social media - and that's a decision you as a parent should make. But I shouldn't have to expose myself to a risk of identity theft so my child can use social media with my supervision. No (competent) parent has ever needed the state's help to keep their children off social media, and passing a law which will require public tax dollars to enforce and monitor is just ludicrous. The party of "small government" has completely lost the plot in Florida. Nobody asked for this - not conservatives, who believe in smaller government, not progressives, who don't believe in Republican anything, and not even Trump voters, who will believe anything except that government censorship is a good idea.
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Make Florida like Texas ... (Score:2)
... where this age verification shit caused pornhub to geofence the whole goddam state.
Interestingly, as people from Texas saw the geo-block, searches for "VPN," rose exponentially.
Hey, we solved that years ago! (Score:2)
My letter to the editor, as published in the Globe and Miil]
Back in the 1990s the nerd community was challenged to make the entire world-wide web safe for children. We introduced the same kind of parental controls that cable television used. Parents could block their kids from visiting all pages with age-unsuitable content.
When I looked, we still had parental controls on phones, chromebooks and web browsers, and the claimed usage was around 81%.
But the new legislation requires the sites at the other e
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> Don't live in Florida.
Well that sure makes it easy. It's not like Florida would ever try to assert its laws over any out-of-state entity like a social media company in California, right? RIGHT???