If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.
Here’s a recent example from Instagram: “Do y’all females ever tell ur homegirls ‘Sis chill you letting too many dudes hit?’” Essentially, that means: “Women – do you ever tell your girlfriends that they’re whores and need to stop letting so many guys fuck them?” The reel, posted by a 19-year-old man, appeared on my Instagram feed without me wanting to see it, or ever interacting with any other similar content. The comments that followed were pure misogyny. “Women see body count as a leaderboard and they try to outdo each other,” was one of them. Translation: all women are competitively promiscuous.
Consider the use of the word “female” in these posts. It is not a neutral term here, it is a term of abuse. It’s used by teenage boys to degrade us and equate us to animals. Boys are never described as “males”, but girls are always “females” – the equivalent of sows or calves, creatures that are less than human. We’re also “thots” (whores), “community pussy” and “bops”. “Bop” stands for “been over passed” and is a derogatory term used by boys to refer to a girl they’ve decided has been “passed around” or had too much sex. Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects. “When community pussy tries to insult me, I just want to beat that bitch up.” That’s a message I saw on TikTok.
I’m a 15-year-old schoolgirl and like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media, often scrolling through short-form videos on apps such as Instagram or TikTok. All of my friends use those apps, and many spend multiple hours a day on them. I actively try to avoid online misogyny, but I am met with it incessantly whenever I open my mainstream social media apps. It only takes a few minutes before there’s subtle or overt misogyny, such as comment sections on a girl’s post filled with remarks about her body, videos made by men or boys captioned with a degrading joke, and even topics such as domestic violence or rape, trivialised and laughed about.
I don’t understand. Is she posting with her real name and photo? If so, her parents should be in jail. That’s mindless. There are billions of people online and millions of them are going to be unhinged assholes and lunatics. WTF!
What crime have the parents committed?
Letting their kids go on the Internet. Get the brats out of here.
referring to a victim of misogynistic online abuse as a “brat”. vile.
referring to a victim of misogynistic online abuse as a “brat”. vile.
What’s vile are the disgusting piece of shit parents who let their kids go out and get exposed to this. They should be in prison for being horrible, irredeemable human beings who allow this to happen. That’s vile.
Letting their brat run around naked in front of a boar’s head on a stick and then acting all shocked when their kid becomes a victim of misogynistic online abuse. That is beyond vile.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Get your brat out. You are the one responsible for this.
You are the one that is causing your child to be a victim of misogynistic online abuse. You are a negligent parent and you are victimizing your child. Stop it. And quit blaming everyone else for it and belligerently shifting the responsibility. Disgusting.
What the fuck is wrong with you? Get your brat out. You are the one responsible for this.
I’m not the parent, you dickhead, I just think you’re a cunt. Goodbye.
I just think you’re a cunt. Goodbye.
The feeling’s mutual, pal. Except you’re wrong and I’m scientifically correct.
What country are you from, where kids who are 15 are forbidden from free social media apps?
It’s not illegal but it should be and the parents should be the ones responsible. This article is a prime example of why it should be illegal.
Do you have kids? Have you ever tried telling a kid something was important? Did they listen?
This article starts off with a kid saying, “If you’re anything like my parents, you probably wouldn’t even understand most of the content that floods my social media, no matter how hard I try to avoid it.”
So is this kid going online despite being told not to? If so, then what’s the story here? This is like a kid saying “I snuck into a titty bar and you just won’t believe how many titties I saw!” If this is what’s going on, then no, the parents shouldn’t get in trouble. The kid disobeyed the parents.
But if the parents are handing this kid a wad of dollar bills and dropping them off at the titty bar, I think they should be held responsible. Maybe it’s not illegal to force a bunch of strippers to babysit your kid, but maybe it should be.
It’s not illegal to have computers in the same house as teenagers. Many of us grew up in an era where kids needed a computer at home to type out essays (these days they let kids borrow school laptops).
Do you think it’s also a crime to own serrated kitchen knives in the same house as teenagers? Since it’s possible for them to cut people with them?
The article, by Anonymous, does not mention posting, does it? I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
The article is confusing. It implies she’s posting and getting all these comments.
Pedophiles run the republicans in the US who actively protect people like the owner of these platforms…
Is it just me, or does it feel out of place that the author described herself as “a 15-year-old schoolgirl”? I don’t think I’ve ever even heard that term outside of porn, and you wouldn’t describe her counterparts as a “schoolboy”.
Did you hallucinate the word “school” or what? Both the article and post title just say “girl.”
4th paragraph:
I’m a 15-year-old schoolgirl and like most teenagers I spend a fair portion of my spare time on social media, often scrolling through short-form videos on apps such as Instagram or TikTok
She wanted to communicate her gender and her student status concisely, avoiding the word “female.” What word or phrase would be better, taking all those considerations into account?
Boys avoid saying “schoolboy” because there is a weakness/insignificance connotation baked into the term, which would run counter to the machismo/boldness boys are encouraged to strive for.
Someone else suggested that it’s a common regional term, and (apparently) not my region. I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that it’s common and nonsexual in her area. However, around here I would’ve avoided terms and phrases associated with porn/fetish.
As for how it could’ve been written, she had already very clearly established her gender, so she could’ve just said student. But that can also be reasonably inferred from her age, and isn’t really relevant to the rest of the point she was making. The entire clause could’ve been dropped. Start the sentence with “Like most teenagers”.
I presume her goal was to highlight her age and lack of obligations. That would make sense given the following details of her and her peers spending so much time on these apps. The more natural flow (again, my local dialect) would be “15-year-old high-school student”, or possibly “15-year-old girl in high school”. But these are still unnecessary.
I think it’s not that unusual in Australian English and how are you so expert on what terms are in porn?
I went into a bar and there were people drinking alcohol. I went to Lemmy forums and had a nice time. No one told the author that the environment influences the behavior? Has someone convinced the author these platforms aren’t predatory in LITERALLY every single way? Culture fail. Corporate win.
“I want to go out of my way to communicate with literally any random stranger from anywhere on the planet, sorted in a way that shows me the most controversial, sexual, and enraging content first, but also these random strangers should have to behave and talk the way I want that makes me feel comfortable”
???
Like yeah, it would be great if everyone held hands and sang kumbaya and were nice to each other. But you’re choosing to go to the public internet forum that is designed to maximize and amplify the shittiest opinions. Perhaps, stop making that choice?
I know this girl is just a child so this is really a parenting failure. Stop letting your kids communicate with literally any and every random stranger across the globe.
Of course, this article exists as propaganda to push a narrative that the internet requires identity verification so that we can “protect kids” by not needing to do any parenting and instead monitor and track all other individuals on the internet.
Lol you get downv0t but you basically hit it on the dot here
These platforms are built on letting everyone interact with everyone because it drives usage and makes them so much fucking munn-ayh
Government can never ever justify the funds necessary to pay people to oversee all these conversations (and then what?)
The only solution is to choose for platforms that forego max profit
Unpopular opinion: just leave.
You’re not going to make social media any less disgusting by staying there. Just leave it to incels and fascists.
I think the worst place I’ve seen recently was Spanish forocoche. Absolutely brain dead opinions, disgusting comments, depressing levels of stupidity. So I left. I took a look twice, saw how toxic it is and never went back. If you see Instagram is just toxic swamp why still visit it? Look for smaller, less stupid communities.
Just leave Earth?
holy shit these comments
lemmy users stop being individualist-brained, victim-blaming misogynists challenge: IMPOSSIBLE
you don’t stop misogyny by just ignoring it you twats, and hot take, mainstream social media being filled with nothing but privileged assholes being bigots (because all the good people were told to just go somewhere else 😇) is not good, actually!
Yeah. I have a feeling that stopping it is, somehow, not desirable to a portion of the commentors.
Maybe I’m not seeing the victim blaming comments, but I do see a lot of “individual responsibility” posting. It sucks when people do that because they are right, just about the wrong thing. Like, veganism. Definitionally the most moral way to consume food, and one of the healthiest, but does absolutely nothing to disrupt factory farming. Getting off social media is amazing for your mental health. It also does nothing to address the issue; if every Lemmy user dropped Instagram, Meta literally would not even notice. It would do nothing to pressure them to fix their own platform, let alone advance the dismantling of patriarchy. So yes. Drop socials. If anything, women are; most platforms are at best 2:1 men to women. But to see people posting like that is the solution to the systemic issue is disappointing.
The 2:1 ratio of course just degrades the platform further because there’s too few to challenge the misogyny. Like public officials quitting under Trump, you can hardly blame them but it makes the problem worse not better.
You’re not going to save Instagram. The owners do not want you to save it and you do not control it. It was a lost cause before you even knew there was a problem.
Some systemic problems cannot be solved from inside the system.
I am certainly not going to save Instagram, since I never joined. But if you mean it can’t be saved, that might be true as well.
If every female person left Instagram today, what would happen to the misogyny? Would it be starved of fuel or would it escalate and spiral until it explodes in (increased) physical attacks?
And if the women and girls created their own female-positive space, how long before it was brigaded? Judging by everyTwoX post that ever hit R/All, I’m putting the over/under at 6 hours.
Sis, the women were there. They left because of the misogyny that was also still present when there was gender parity. You’re putting the cart before the horse on this one. More women isn’t going to help; it didn’t help in the first place. And lowkey even if your solution worked it would mean subjecting women to misogyny until the dam broke. Unironically your argument is the same lib belief that more women in the workplace would solve sexism on its own.
My solution? Oh I’m not saying the women should have stayed in Instagram! It’s one reason I never joined in the first place. If anything I was wondering if women created a No Boys Allowed WomenSpace totally separate. And still I think it would be brigaded.
I think we agree on the basic evil of societal misogyny. Although as an old woman who has lived through changes, I have seen that having more women in a workplace or field, especially as we start to fill the upper echelons, can help fade certain parts of the misogyny or at least drive it underground.
Women simply prefer spaces where they can control the membership and replies to ensure validation of their beliefs. You’d be surprised by how censorious women spaces can be. Posting replies on their spaces is never egalitarian. And women have no problem brigading either.
or maybe dumbfucks like you just think you’re a lot more egalitarian than you actually are.
The 2:1 ratio of course just degrades the platform
Men and women have different interest. It’s mostly a fantasy to expect 50/50 participation.
Systematic issues aren’t any one person’s responsibility, and those who thing it is, tend to be violent assholes.
All we can do as individuals is be responsible for ourselves. We are not responsible for other people.
However, the parents are responsible for this 15 year old girl. She is not responsible for herself as she is not an adult.
Yeah, “just stop using social media” is an insanely stupid take that misses the point so hard it makes you wonder how someone distorted their perception so hard that they can even react that way.
“Stop using social media” is literally the only real solution because oligarchs will never again risk letting us actually connect with each other. You stay on “social” media and you will just be getting run in circles by engagement algorithms and bots.
You cannot save Facebook, Instagram, X, or Reddit because their owners will not allow you to.
No, it’s not. It might seem impossible for society to improve, but that is the solution, and talking about it without telling people to just avoid certain avenues is the only way to that end.
“Social media” is not society; it’s a series of platforms built by billionaires for the purpose of control.
Filled with people expressing opinions. I don’t understand how this could possibly be controversial or difficult to grasp.
You’re literally pretending social media isn’t real or doesn’t matter as long as you just do the right thing and ignore it instead of addressing the horrible ideas spread on it.
I don’t understand what you’re failing to grasp. You see what you’re allowed to see. They are signal boosting shit heads while suppressing everyone else. If your message begins to spread, they will just pull the platform out from under your feet.
How do you propose to win on billionaire-owned social media when they can just kick your legs out at will the moment you stand too tall for their good? Look at all the Reddit protests that amounted to nothing besides getting moderators booted from their subs, they’re a perfect example of this.
I’m constantly baffled by the amont of misogyny some Lemmy users through around if the topic is even slightly about women.
I don’t have any skin in this fight but sexism is wrong from either side of the isle. I feel bad for kids who grow up with parents like this. I get that its hard for women but its also not easy for young men to navigate this madness.
but what about men???
Dude FUCK OFF!!! It’s okay to bring up men’s issues or whatever if you think they should be discussed more often, but if you’re gonna do that, you should make your own post instead of bitching about it in the replies to a post about the insane shit we have to go through. It’s genuinely fucking crazy, nine times out of ten whenever “muh wHat aBoUT mEn” comes up, it’s in the response to conversations about misogyny, and I’m lowballing here. You’re just derailing the conversation and it’s fucking rude.
How do you propose stopping it?
The people who propose “age gating” social media are essentially advocating the end of Internet anonymity and privacy for us all. After all, you can’t effectively determine one users age or identity without collecting them all.
Is removing digital privacy really something we want to be flirting with? Especially in the era of Palantir, Flock, and the Trump Administration?
Democracy, freedom of speech, and privacy are all related.
Without privacy, one can’t have freedom of speech because bad actors and authoritarians in power can and will silence critics. Without freedom of speech, one can’t live in a democracy, because having the ability to organize and speak out against those in power without fear of persecution is the basis of democracy.
Maybe I’m just more cynical than most, but I don’t see the elimination of all privacy on the Internet as a good solution for something that can otherwise be managed by basic parenting and personal agency.
We are fools if we willingly give the corporate oligarchs that control mainstream social media (and, by extension, Trump) our full real identities in a futile attempt to “think about the children”.
educating men and boys, and actually moderating misogyny (and other bigotries) would be a good start, how many reports of horrific posts end up with “after careful examination by our moderation team, we have found that this post does not violate our community guidelines…”
Requiring large social media platforms to regulate and moderate hateful speech would be a start. Big tech has been largely dropping the ball in this regard.
Cases-in-point, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads), X Corp (the App Formerly Known As Twitter) and Alphabet (YouTube.)
X’s Grok AI has been used to generate millions of sexualised images. Sometimes women get objectified and undressed without their knowledge nor consent by people promoting Grok. Sometimes the victims are minors. The fact that X hasn’t been shut down speaks volumes about how much billionaires have been able to get away with crap that would land anybody else behind bars for a long time.
YouTube… Have you also noticed more hateful content being posted to the platform. This isn’t an example that I think I can link to here, but there is a far-right ragtime musician called Foundring who was previously banned from the platform years ago for hate speech. Either due to ban evasion or his ban being lifted, he came back two years ago and recently started posting piano covers of old vintage ragtime and folk music from the late 18th Century. One of his videos, which contained the word “N*****” in the title (yes, hard-R) got catapulted by the YouTube algorithm and is currently sitting at 1.2 million views. It’s 37 days old and still up.
Is removing digital privacy really something we want to be flirting with?
Digital privacy and anonymous posting are two different things.
I would argue that they’re closely related.
Imagine a circumstance in which you have to use your real ID to sign up for a social media site which happens to be owned by a billionaire oligarch with close ties to an out-of-control fascist authoritarian president with no reservations about pulling whatever string he can to maintain his grip on power, and I think you’ll understand why.
You may know my user name, but really not too much else about me, because of the partial anonymity of having a username which is loosely coupled to my real life identity.
If we lived in a world where we could trust our government or the corporations that control mainstream social media, then maybe it wouldn’t be an issue. We don’t.
Imagine a circumstance in which you have to use your real ID to sign up for a social media site
You’re setting up a false premise. It doesn’t have to be done that way.
I’ve been a social media moderator and it’s an awful, thankless, volunteer job. And I think objectively we kept our community very tightly focused on our narrow topic and civil. But we’d have never gotten to that point without a ton of help from the community itself. We outlined our vision and had clear, reasonable guidelines, so it was very easy to determine if something was against the rules to report.
But this was a special interest subreddit, and it was a constant battle. I made sure that every ruling and interaction I made had thoughtful intent. I had to step down because it was making me legitimately depressed.
I could never fault a moderator for being overwhelmed, especially for a community as chaotic as instagram. For these large, general purpose communities, it’s impossible to police directly. It truly takes the whole community to enforce and report bad behavior.
So no, you shouldn’t blame the victims, but you have to understand it’s a massive systemic problem with no easy solution. The best advice you can give really is “Take care of yourself, and avoid problematic communities.”
you don’t stop misogyny by just ignoring it you twats, and hot take, mainstream social media
Opinions aren’t stopped. They also don’t need to be. Trying to make individualism a put-down is pathetic.
We all have it in our power to ignore or use our voices to promote our messages with as much force as the messages we oppose. That provocative ragebait engages more effectively than constructive dialog reflects a human failing & a need to work on ourselves.
Social media doesn’t need to be good, and we don’t need to keep using it. The beauty of social media is we can be totally irredeemable “twats”, victim-blame up the wazoo, and put out the most infuriating shit conceived until we realize it’s all expression lacking substance & none it matters. It’s only when people start caring too much that we should be concerned for humanity. They need to get a life or something, stop putting so much of themselves on words, images, & sounds on a screen.
You like individualistic solutions, do you? Here’s one: kill yourself. You can do it right now if you want.
Way I see it there are two productive paths to take here:
- Start trying to convince women that privacy does in fact matter. Use examples like the menstruation tracking apps potentially being used to identify abortions to illustrate this point.
- Try to relate to the men here on Lemmy and find a way to cooperate. You’ve got a largely fresh population of men here who don’t actually hate women, but have spent years in education being told they are dangerous rapists waiting to happen, or were treated as defective women by their teachers. They need good male role models and women who will treat them with respect, so that they can climb out of the pit without leaving the better parts of themselves behind.
An utterly unproductive use of your time would be trying to fight misogyny on oligarch-owned platforms. You will never win because they find this content useful, as it divides workers and wastes their time and social energy. Just get out, and help others do it too.
Top three read article btw. Shilled by the same people who will soon have a track of you everywhere you do or go. You won’t even have a permission to fart without paying the fine.
15- y old girl. Most likely written by a 40 y old who can’t understand how parenting works. If you are a failure it doesn’t mean the rest of population now needs to be enforced in id links and checks and give away their right to privacy. Fucking dumbasses
holy shit these comments
Lemmy is no better than reddit and other large platforms broadly when it comes to being an insular community of tech-focused young guys with horrific sexual insecurity.
Despite the wallpaper that it’s supposed to be further left than other sites, just about every online community is going to have a large share of “incel adjacent” shut-ins, as they are the segment most likely to keep a forum or website active. I’ve seen all the same rotten sentiments across Lemmy about women as I’ve seen deep in the trenches of the gender-wars during gamergate, it’s just usually softened with some disclaimer.
a large share of “incel adjacent” shut-ins, as they are the segment most likely to keep a forum or website active
“But not me, I’m different even though I’m here too!”
This user:
Lol proves my point.
I mean this is why I stopped using social media 10 years ago. Bunch of nonsense drivel, everyday.
I’m not victim blaming, this shit shouldn’t happen, but if you are on a platform and that platform has shit moderation and you keep seeing content you don’t like, well, maybe you should leave that platform? I mean this is why we all left reddit, right?
If I walk into a wall once, then it’s an accident. If I keep walking into it, then I’m just stupid.
Genuine question: What do you categorise this comment as, other than you using social media?
I keep falling into the same trap as well, when telling people I quit using “social media” but am very much active on social media platforms - just not the ones controlled by big tech.
Maybe we need a shorthand for “profit-driven algorithm-controlled influencer cesspools” so we can separate it from “non-profit decentralized social media platforms” like Lemmy and Mastodon?
Maybe, but I’ve definitely seen people disagree about what constitutes social media - e.g. some thing youtube is or isn’t, other people lemmy/reddit are or aren’t, it seems pretty inconsistent. Maybe it’s a generational thing?
In this sense, yes to Reddit and YouTube. YouTube may not be very social but it clearly has an algorithm that pushes toxic content/stereotypes.
And im going to say no on Lemmy. Lemmy may be social but there’s no algorithm pushing toxic content. Maybe I’m missing it but there’s seems to be very little toxic content.
You’re saying the criteria for being called “social media” include, “must be toxic” and “must be algorithmically-driven”?
Maybe this is an age thing and language has changed (I’m old in Internet years) but to me, “social” implies the opposite of those things - friendly interaction and organic connection.
It’s called the Social Graph. Platforms that implement a social graph are social media.
The fact that people don’t know this basic, fundamental mechanism is the problem. Even the technologically inclined haven’t been able to make this simple distinction.
People think “social media” means a place for people to be social. That’s not it. Social media is specifically platforms that implement the social graph and/or similar types of algorithms that are designed to manipulate sociological relationships.
Traditional message boards are not social media because there is no algorithm. In the past reddit wasn’t social media because it technically did not have a social graph. It was a simple aggregrator with comment sections. That alone does not make social media. reddit does have a social graph now. That’s when it became social media.
Lemmy doesn’t have social graph algorithms.
The social graph is quite possibly one of the most dangerous inventions the 21st century and nobody talks about it. Yet it rules your entire life. It’s what makes the world turn. It’s what is dictating cultures and societies. It’s what is determining what goes viral. It determines the daily headlines.
This definition of social media is new to me as well, thanks for sharing it. This sort of clarifies a term I really dislike, and which you’ve used: “the algorithm”. It’s always seemed a little murky to me which algorithms it refers to. It’s like saying “don’t eat food with chemicals in it”.
Lemmy does have “an algorithm”, it’s just a relatively simple one based on communities one is subscribed to plus some vote/comment data for the various sort orderings.
Lemmy also absolutely implements a social graph – the data about who has interacted with whom is all stored by the system. It’s not explicitly stored as a graph structure, but then we’re arguing database schemas.
As I understand it, however, you’re saying “social media” arises when the “social graph” data structure is used as an input to “the algorithm”. That seems like a pretty robust definition to me.
One bit of pedantry: user blocks on Lemmy are, by a general definition, a form of social graph, and they do affect what content people see. So Lemmy could technically qualify as social media by the definition I’ve written here. I’m not sure what a more precise definition could be that avoids this technicality.
You have a very restricted definition that doesn’t seem to be common. “Social graph” is not mentioned once on the Wikipedia page of “social media”, nor the Britannica, nor the Cambridge dictionary, nor Merriam Webster. While they are not specialized sources, I think they reflect the common usage of words. By those definitions Lemmy seems to be a social media.
Hey thank you for the term drop! I haven’t heard of “social graph” and it falls into my “feelings” of what social media has been for me(or what I hate about it(algorithms)). I am definitely a “one in ten thousand” today for this.
I don’t consider Lemmy or other message style boards as social media.
We aren’t posting pictures of ourselves or posting updates of our lives on here. We don’t use our real names(or I hope we don’t).
Please define social media for me, because it seems like everyone’s take on it is “a website where you interact with others”, which is way too broad and I would say that applies to the entire internet then, which is a slippery slope.
*Edit, another post linked the “Social Graph” which I think encapsulates what social media is vs. what it is not.
Please define social media for me
I guess my take is anywhere people interact with others in a conversational way, yes. You can see a timeline of posts, you can comment and reply, etc. You can’t do that on 99% of websites or apps. You can’t do it on your banking app or your weather app or your insurance website, etc. The lines blur around things like Wikis where you can chat with people on talk pages.
Limiting “social media” to places you post pictures of yourself rules out most earlier forms of social media before that became a thing, but looking back you wouldn’t say twitter wasn’t. The Wiki link you gave also links to “list of social media websites”, which includes Reddit, as a directly opposing point.
I don’t think it’s clear-cut, and I know different people have different opinions.
Personally I didn’t consider Reddit as social media 10+ years ago, but in the last few years it has definitely become social media, and I would attribute that to the Social Graph concept.
Right now, I don’t consider Lemmy or other link aggregators(Piefed) as social media, same for PeerTube as that is more of an entertainment/video sharing platform that isn’t focused on a social aspect. And I guess Matrix wouldn’t be social media for me either because I see it as a chat platform where you can be social, but the focus isn’t on sharing personal details of yourself. But I would consider Mastodon and PixelFed as social media and their focus is on pure social interactions. Which I guess I don’t know if I consider YouTube to be social media either at that point.
Maybe I’m hyper-fixating on the “media” part of “social media”. But again, I think clear and concise definitions of these types of sites need to be created BEFORE laws are in-place, because it seems that everyone is focusing on whether or not a website or service has “social” functions, which again, is a slippery slope.
Please define social media for me, because it seems like everyone’s take on it is “a website where you interact with others”, which is way too broad and I would say that applies to the entire internet then, which is a slippery slope.
That is effectively the definition from my understanding. Lemmy, Reddit, and similar boards are social media because the content is primarily user-generated.
It probably feels like the entire internet because it’s where many of us are spending most of our time.
Yeah and I don’t accept that definition. Is GitHub social media then? Is the LTT forums social media? Is Wikipedia? Nexus mods? All of these sites contain “user generated content”.
Because I would say none of those sites are social media sites. But all of these loose definitions are being thrown around and next thing you know you’ll need to verify your ID to look at any Wikipedia article.
No. All walls should be padded because we assume everyone is going to walk into them…
Depends if an algorithm is going to pop that wall in front of everyone repeatedly. Ideally, pad the wall, fix the stupid algorithm, and prosecute the creators of both.
So suicide, then? That’s your suggestion?
Keep walking into that wall bud.
That’s not what they said at all.
It’s all random bullshit. Reality is just monkeys on typewriters. You can safely ignore it. Don’t let it ruin your day.
The algorithms in these social media services don’t care about you actually wanting to watch the video or see the content in general, instead they hyperfixate on if you took 0.02 seconds longer before scrolling to the next one compared to the previous scrolls, to determine what should be shown.
For example, if your interests are exclusively in random gadgets and trinkets for example, but then it shows you a video of an onlyfans promotion, you may accidentally pause in confusion, then scroll, unknowingly triggering the algorithm to keep showing you onlyfans promotions despite you not wanting that.
And it’s the same if it’s offensive or triggering, the algorithm decides to keep showing you such content so it can stun you into staying in the app longer.
This is why I’ve decided to outsource my social media use to lemmy and geminispace BBS boards, because sure instagram can be enjoyable a lot of the time, but if you use it excessively, it’s damaging.
Also, pro tip: if you don’t use Insta for a month or so, it decides to show you the best content possible to try getting you hooked again, but once you get to a video which isn’t awfully enjoyable, close it and forget about it for another month. Mileage may vary but it works for me somehow, even if I’m likely to be AuDHD
This isnwhere age verification and restrictions on social media for teens under 16 makes perfect sense to prevent this kind of thing.
Any platform with algorithmically-elevated content needs to be age-gated or regulated into destruction.
Plain and simple.
The age verification debate misses the real point. These commercial algorithms are harmful for everybody.
They’re addiction creating and brainwashing. I have believed for the last ten years that they should be illegal, and all feeds should be sorted chronologically or by popularity
It’s not about age verification, it’s just an excuse for more censorship.
The identity verification debate is the point and it is the only reason this article exists in the first place.
These commercial algorithms are harmful for everybody.
Also true.
It’s a business of outrage. Just say the most vile things you can think of, wait for some people to react to it, no matter how, and watch the algorithm do it’s work. Congratulation you are now an influencer.
From what I’m seeing, the messaging is “we want to protect children, thus age verification”.
To your point, it is identity verification they’re doing.
My point is, age verification isn’t even the right solution to the problem.
This is the most persuasive argument for restricting social media to adult use only that I’ve ever heard. Can’t even imagine how damaging this kind of shit is do a developing mind.
Edit: some places have restricted it to age 16, great- but honestly 18+ would be ideal
“girls and women are subjected to vile behaviour in these public spaces”
so? just ban them from those public spaces
Why don’t you fuck off instead of telling little girls to???
No you fuck off lol
Okay, so tell that to the parents. It is their responsibility.
You can’t solve this problem by restricting access for teenagers. They find a way to circumvent the restrictions as they always found a way to do the things they want, as harmful as they might be. Also toxic behaviour on social media is not a teenager issue but a men issue and should be treated as such.
Beginning to wonder if these attempts to push for age restriction are a concerted effort by organizations like Palantir using children to get people buy into it.
Hard to not make the link after subpoenas were issued to those critical of the US administration on reddit.
Would make it much easier to make people fear speaking out against their government on social media if IDs were required, and the government they are under is actively hostile.
That seems to be the end goal with think of the children being an easy entry point.
Some thoughts:
- Social media encourages a herd mentality.
- Social media can distract you from learning and focusing.
- Social media can feed you disinformation or subject you to bullying.
- This applies doubly for algorithmically steered social media (where information gets pushed at you without your request).
- Algorithmic social media is good at getting engagement (conflict: just another form of engagement).
This is being done to earn someone profit, not to inform people but maybe entertain them a bit - but foremost, because someone buys advertisements on these platforms.
Courses of action:
- deal with the users? (carrot or stick?)
- deal with the companies?
Viability of different courses:
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Users are diverse and numerous. Dealing with them is a lot of work.
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The actions of malicious users may be an offense in some juridiction, but not in another, and being rude is not an offense. Dealing with malicious users individually is feasible only in an environment where the general public is interested in peace of mind and orderly discussion. I have seen and still participate in such places. They are mostly non-profit forums wich a few clear administrators. Lemmy is an experiment in a similar direction. An algorithmically steered social media site run by a for-profit company… no, it does not fit this profile.
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Education of non-malicious users - how to choose a good environment and defend oneself and others in this environment - may be more effective. Users should be informed about what benefits them. They should know that “environment A has effective moderation, while environment B is a troll cave”. They should know that “environemnt A sends you information that you asked, while environment pelts you with rage bait”. Who should educate people about the environments they can choose? Obviously, schools.
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Very large companies have to comply with EU DSA rules. They must show how they have effective moderation, prevent hateful content from propagating, are not harming minors, etc. I would prefer if all large companies were pressed towards effective moderation. It hurts they bottom line, but they must accept this is the price for operating.
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A particularly blunt instrument, recently touted in several countries, is outright banning all underage people form social media. This is highly controversial. To the companies it sends a message: “if you cannot create a safe environment, we will take your future customers away, full stop”. To others, it causes great inconvenience due to age verification, which is problematic. If age verification is in place, using social media for publishing something pseudonymously or anonymously becomes near impossible. I would not like that to happen.
Subheading:
Objectification, hate, rape threats: the politicians debating online abuse mean well, but to truly understand, they need to see what I see
No, they don’t.
