Social Media Apps Will Have To Shield Children From Dangerous Stunts (theguardian.com) 62
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Social media firms will be ordered to protect children from encountering dangerous stunts and challenges on their platforms under changes to the online safety bill. The legislation will explicitly refer to content that "encourages, promotes or provides instructions for a challenge or stunt highly likely to result in serious injury" as the type of material that under-18s should be protected from. The bill will also require social media companies to proactively prevent children from seeing the highest risk forms of content, such as material encouraging suicide and self-harm. Tech firms could be required to use age-checking measures to prevent under-18s from seeing such material.
In another change to the legislation, which is expected to become law this year, social media platforms will have to introduce tougher age-checking measures to prevent children from accessing pornography -- bringing them in line with the bill's measures for mainstream sites such as Pornhub. Services that publish or allow pornography on their sites will be required to introduce "highly effective" age-checking measures such as age estimation tools that estimate someone's age from a selfie. Other amendments include requiring the communications watchdog Ofcom to produce guidance for tech firms on protecting women and girls online. Ofcom, which will oversee implementation of the act once it comes into force, will be required to consult with the domestic abuse commissioner and victims commissioner when producing the guidance, in order to ensure it reflects the voices of victims.
The updated bill will also criminalize the sharing of deepfake intimate images in England and Wales. In a further change it will require platforms to ask adult users if they wish to avoid content that promotes self-harm or eating disorders or racist content. Once the law comes into force breaches will carry a punishment of a fine of £18m or up to 10% of global turnover. In the most extreme cases, Ofcom will be able to block platforms.
In another change to the legislation, which is expected to become law this year, social media platforms will have to introduce tougher age-checking measures to prevent children from accessing pornography -- bringing them in line with the bill's measures for mainstream sites such as Pornhub. Services that publish or allow pornography on their sites will be required to introduce "highly effective" age-checking measures such as age estimation tools that estimate someone's age from a selfie. Other amendments include requiring the communications watchdog Ofcom to produce guidance for tech firms on protecting women and girls online. Ofcom, which will oversee implementation of the act once it comes into force, will be required to consult with the domestic abuse commissioner and victims commissioner when producing the guidance, in order to ensure it reflects the voices of victims.
The updated bill will also criminalize the sharing of deepfake intimate images in England and Wales. In a further change it will require platforms to ask adult users if they wish to avoid content that promotes self-harm or eating disorders or racist content. Once the law comes into force breaches will carry a punishment of a fine of £18m or up to 10% of global turnover. In the most extreme cases, Ofcom will be able to block platforms.
needs an rule that moderators can not be on Quotas (Score:2)
needs an rule that moderators can not be on Quotas and flagged content has some forum of appeal rights as well.
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Why are you never worried about pervs going after children?
There something concerned parents need to know?
Let's call it what it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
This is almost entirely a problem with "TikTok challenges." Note that TikTok in China does not allow these sorts of things to be done because the Chinese government would rain down felony charges on the executives and influencers who do things like encourage teens to try Tide pods, contaminate food at grocery stores by licking it and stealing Hyundais/Kias.
To some degree, it's already prosecutable, and it shows a real weakness in American law enforcement that state and federal law enforcement aren't regularly hunting down some of these "TikTok challenge" influencers and prosecuting them.
Re:Let's call it what it is... (Score:4, Insightful)
The comment is still relevant because many of these idiocies become popular first in USA; if they were prosecuted in USA as they, should, they would have less opportunity to propagate to UK and other places.
Re:Let's call it what it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The comment is still relevant because many of these idiocies become popular first in USA; if they were prosecuted in USA as they, should, they would have less opportunity to propagate to UK and other places.
I think you underestimate the world.
Stop blaming others for your lack of self discipline. These laws are about making people feel like they are doing something when they are ignoring their responsibilities. Trying to stop minors from accessing pornography by passing laws and expecting someone else will look after your children hasn't worked before there was an Internet. Why do you think it will work now?
Assuming that the future generation is less creative than previous generations and can't think up dangerous activities all by themselves just shows your ignorance. This is the same as parents who think their kids are angles and the only reason they get into trouble is because of their friends. Wake up.
I think society is insane. Time and time we implement the same mistakes that don't work. We know what works. Supervision of children by their parents. We know what doesn't work. Supervision of children by others.
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Hell yeah! And why do we stop children from going into casinos, drug dispensaries, tattoo parlours, & sex shops?
I know you're being sarcastic but I think you're near a real point. What's the boundary between "dangerous" and "something I don't approve of but am willing to let you make bad choices"?
Personally, I don't like tattoos. I don't find them attractive. I'm also unwilling to ban them--it's your skin. However, they're not without risk: you can get an infection if you go to a parlor which isn't scrupulous about sanitizing the equipment. Does showing off my new tattoo count as encouraging youth to do something dan
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Yes we ban children from certain places but it doesn't stop them. We ban them from casinos but they still gamble. We ban them from drug dispensaries but they still get high. We ban them from purchasing cigarettes but they still smoke. We ban them from sex shops but they still have sex and get pregnant or VD. We are very good at passing laws but terrible at enforcing them.
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The prefect does not have to be the enemy of the good. Not having children constantly bombarded with bad ideas and dangerous substances is good even if they occasional still get access to these things.
By your logic because kids still get hold of cigarettes some times we just go ahead and let people go back to putting monitored vending machines in front of every gas, grocery, convenience, bar, etc.
This the problem with the internet at present. There are no even remotely effective controls. Sure once in a wh
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You make it sound as a tech issue when it's a legal Issue.
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The comment is still relevant because many of these idiocies become popular first in USA; if they were prosecuted in USA as they, should, they would have less opportunity to propagate to UK and other places.
The evil of the USA apparently lives rent free in your head.
Why not geoblock the USA, or better yet, stop using the internet? Perhaps make your own British only internet, where you can make it really safe, and have a ministry of the internet that has to approve every word, every picture and video. Make all porn illegal, make using a webcam on the user mandatory at all times, have full identity and logging sent to a British Ministry of the Internet of all internet activities.
The problem with all of thi
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The evil of the USA apparently lives rent free in your head.
I don't consider USA evil, it's just that it's a large country so plenty of things start there, in particularly internet things. Me stopping using internet does not make the situation better for the other people.
The problem with all of this is what constitutes dangerous content?
I expect the unclear cases will be sorted out by courts.
Is anything that might cause arousal Pr0n?
People who professionally do the movie rating for theatre movie-goers have managed to decide on these details for decades. Sometimes there is an ambiguous case, but overall it works.
Re:Let's call it what it is... (Score:5, Interesting)
ALL countries should make social media access restricted to 18yrs and older.
That way, kids can have time back to being kids IN PERSON.....and these corporations can no longer "accidentally" gather metrics on minors.
Win Win...
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Re:Let's call it what it is... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's called age appropriate behavior...
We have age restrictions like this on porn, alcohol and cigarettes among other things.
Social media has been show to harm children in studies...and should be gated off as best as possible as adult behavior.
Children are not adults...adults have full freedom to make adult decisions and take part in adult activities....
Children do not.
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This is almost entirely a problem with "TikTok challenges." Note that TikTok in China does not allow these sorts of things to be done because the Chinese government would rain down felony charges on the executives and influencers who do things like encourage teens to try Tide pods, contaminate food at grocery stores by licking it and stealing Hyundais/Kias.
To some degree, it's already prosecutable, and it shows a real weakness in American law enforcement that state and federal law enforcement aren't regularly hunting down some of these "TikTok challenge" influencers and prosecuting them.
Freedom of speech (or expression) was so important to the Founding Fathers of the USA that it is explicitly protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
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The freedom of expression doesn't mean you get to commit crimes without consequence.
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The freedom of expression doesn't mean you get to commit crimes without consequence.
In the USA it's not a crime to encourage someone else to do something stupid (such as eat laundry detergent pods). It's not even against the law to publish instructions on how to do something illegal (eg. bomb making instructions in the Anarchist's Bible). Freedom of expression does not mean freedom from consequences, though.
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In the USA it's not a crime to encourage someone else to do something stupid
That's not entirely accurate. Incitement, for example.
Think of it as evolution in action (Score:3)
Because that's what it is.
Parents, do your job, don't ask other people to do it for you.
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Ya, because kids would NEVER find a way to evade parental directives, presuming they are even living with their parents...or parent.
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Ya, because kids would NEVER find a way to evade parental directives, presuming they are even living with their parents...or parent.
I think the best option is to geoblock the British isles, and make using a VPN in them a criminal offense.
In this way, we can block whatever content the English think of next as they think of the children.
Re:Think of it as evolution in action (Score:5, Interesting)
Because that's what it is.
Parents, do your job, don't ask other people to do it for you.
I truly have some sympathy for your position. But I'm also aware of how effective television advertising was back in the day at subverting parents' teachings and discipline. Even if the tube was turned off at home, kids would watch it at friends' houses. Restricting social interactions to thwart that would have been worse than letting them watch TV.
Today, societal pressures make it damned hard to deny children their smartphones. Control over what the phone can access seems both difficult to implement and easy to bypass. Sure, parents need to take some responsibility - but AFAICT it's our entire corporation-serving consumerist culture that needs to wake up and pull the plug on the shit factories which suck money out of our pockets, time out of our lives, and life out of our children.
Re: Think of it as evolution in action (Score:2)
I was 10 when I watched nightmare on elm street part 3 at a friend's house.
The scar from watching horror movies that young stayed with me for over a decade.
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>. I also think it's unreasonable to ask parents to fully comprehend the impact of social media algorithms.
If your child isn't old enough to be able to spot and ignore stupid things on the Internet, they shouldn't be on the Internet unsupervised.
Just like with television for the previous generation, you shouldn't be slacking and letting a bit of technology keep your kid busy without knowing what that's doing to your kid and making sure they're insulated from any harmful stuff.
As for the after school prog
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they shouldn't be on the Internet unsupervised
We can't keep drugs and smartphones out of prisons. What makes you think parents can keep them away from a determined child?
In many ways, children are like prisoners. They have limited freedom, a ton of free time, and they're very resourceful. Even if you live off-grid in a cabin in the woods without electricity, I can guarantee that your teen, or even your tween, will find a way to get online.
de-anonymisation of the net (Score:5, Insightful)
They want to make providing services for children so onerous and detrimental to services for adults, that social media and other providers will be forced to implement strict ID checking and quite possibly real name policies in order to keep the adults and the kids separate.
No more being able to insult the great and the good online without them knowing exactly who you are.
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^^ This ^^
The only way they can put such measures into place is by forcing everyone to provide an ID of some sort to prove they are an adult.
As an adult, I have reservations about random websites having ( and more importantly storing ) sensitive personal information.
The only way I would consider it is if something like HIPPA was applied to -everyone- who stores SPI of their customers. The fines for
violating those rules are expensive and may actually force the website owners to actually put some real effort
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Why would "they" want that? What's the end goal?
It's hilarious watching you anti-government nuts freak out about privacy when for years you've happily let multiple multinational corporations track everything you do online just so you can share stupid memes with people who barely know.
You crackpots have been crowing about how the evil government is going to force you to validate your identity with every site you use online since the 90's and absolutely nothing like that has happened. What does that tell yo
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forcing everyone to provide an ID of some sort to prove they are an adult
But children can't be forced to provide 'personal information'. I presume that this includes any sort of identification. When I created my Google account, I put my age down as 14 years old. So I won't get flooded with annoying ads and offers (can't enter into a contract, so sure, I'll click "Agree"). A few things are prohibited to me. But for those, I have an adult account. If I want to remain anonymous, I'm a kid again.
Hello delicious human children! (Score:5, Funny)
My name is Ttarmek the Greater Troll!
I encourage all human children to do the "touch a greater troll challenge!" if you complete it you'll go viral and gain the approval of hundreds of thousands of strangers!! All you need to do is make a video saying you're doing the greater troll challenge and everyone else is too scared. Then search for trolls under bridges or in icy mountain top caverns!
When you find a troll you need to sneak up on it until you're very close and shout "Troll Troll Troll you don't scare me!" (Be very loud!) this will stun the troll for 20 minutes and allow you and your friends to get the best videos for your bebos, tic-tacs, myspace, aols and all of those other cool places and then you can scurry along to safety without being eaten and everyone will think you are so cool! No cap! No cap! #YOLO
The jealous lesser troll! (Score:1)
I troll freely here on Slashdot and though I post anything I want I manage to maintain high karma as I tell pathetic humans that I'll eat their children! Imagine that! Humans don't care about their own children as long as I'm occasionally funny! It's really that easy!
Must be very frustrating to have to continuously register new accounts and see me here scoring 5s despite nonstop eating foolish adventurers.
Of course I've told you multiple times that it's important to consider your audience when trolling.
What about (Score:2)
cunning stunts?
garbage summary of garbage article (Score:2)
Even TFA doesn't say where this is happening. Presumably the UK, from context?
The Guardian has gone down the shithole, it's the perfect source for Slashdot stories
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STUPID laws (Score:4, Insightful)
How did ANY of us survive the 70s-80s while watching the bombardment of carnage and abuse in entertainment ? I don't think I can possibly count how many times I saw anvils getting dropped on heads, dynamite blowing people and various furries up, characters falling hundreds of feet to create craters in the ground, etc.
Funny, I don't remember ever having the urge to drop an anvil on anyone's head? I never saw it IRL either... wow, how's that possible?
Oh wait I forgot, my parents taught me common sense! Maybe THAT would be a good idea instead of trying to protect the children from entertainment? Parents teaching their kids how to be responsible adults with common sense... why can't we focus on encouraging THAT instead if this waste of time?
I think right now what I need is to find a table to flip...
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball (Score:3)
(Reading this comment may kill you. Please consult a Reading Safety expert prior to reading this, to scan it for unescaped neurolinguistic imperatives.)
It was inevitable. Desiccant packets say "do not eat." My bike helmet visor's directions is a list of paragraphs all of which contain something like "... failure to .. may result in serious bodily injury or death." Stupid people have always searched for ways to hurt themselves, and over the last century or so, our society decided that putting warning labels on everything was the solution. Now people are allowed to kill themselves, but can't say we didn't warn them. Obligation fulfilled. And as a result, we're all allowed to handle sharp objects instead of them being banned.
You may disagree, but you'll be fighting a tradition that is older than you are.
13-year-old skateboarder lands first 720 (Score:3)
Arisa Trew: 13-year-old skateboarder lands first female 720 in a competition
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/wo... [bbc.com]
Wait, wait, don't watch it, this is way too dangerous
next viral (Score:2)
Up next: police say children are doing "The Encryption Challenge" ....
Impossible to create new Social Networks today... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the sort of legislation that makes it impossible to create competitors to incumbent social media platforms.
In 2004 I created a UGC video sharing service, Vidiac.com that white labeled video sharing websites Like streetFire.net, and 4,000 other speciality video sharing websites which were popular pre-youTube.
Back then we made a content moderation service so that site owners could keep content relevant to their site and remove the inevitable porn that would be uploaded. We had a small team of 3 Founder/developers and eventually grew to small team of 10 making a modest profit on 8Mmau after about $300K in friends and family funding.
There is NO WAY you could make a web business like that today. You would spend 5 times as much funding just building the moderation system to be compliant with all the government oversight and you would likely need full time people just rejecting content and reporting misbehavior to the FBI, never mind having budget for development.
YouTube as a site hasn't evolved a bit in basic UI/UX since it was acquired by Google and the only major new video service to come since has been TikTok. I'm convinced that all this authoritarian police state legislation has destroyed the evolution and improvement we used to see in UI/UX in the early 2000s. It has also entrenched the existing incumbent sites and there is little need for competition as there is nothing "next" for the user population to migrate to.
When I see government getting involved into moderating the content of websites I just shake my head now at how high the barrier to entry has become to innovate.
Not as Good as Holding Social Media Responsibe (Score:2)
"Encourages" and "Promotes" needs to be defined (Score:2)
Will this include ... (Score:2)
Can we classify... (Score:1)
The whole tranny dick-chopping and breast removal, as well as the forced sterilization of kids as a "dangerous stunt"?
Next - Plywood industry (Score:2)
Skateboard and bicycle ramps are putting our children at risk.