DeSantis Signs Bill Requiring Parental Consent For Kids Under 16 To Hold Social Media Accounts 151
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just signed into law HB 3 [PDF], a bill that will give parents of teens under 16 more control over their kids' access to social media and require age verification for many websites. From a report: The bill requires social media platforms to prevent kids under 14 from creating accounts, and delete existing ones. It also requires parent or guardian consent for 14- and 15-year-olds to create or maintain social media accounts and mandates that platforms delete social media accounts and personal information for this age group at the teen's or parent's request.
Companies that fail to promptly delete accounts belonging to 14- and 15-year-olds can be sued on behalf of those kids and may owe them up to $10,000 in damages each. A "knowing or reckless" violation could also be considered an unfair or deceptive trade practice, subject to up to $50,000 in civil penalties per violation. The bill also requires many commercial apps and websites to verify their users' ages -- something that introduces a host of privacy concerns. But it does require websites to give users the option of "anonymous age verification," which is defined as verification by a third party that cannot retain identifying information after the task is complete.
Companies that fail to promptly delete accounts belonging to 14- and 15-year-olds can be sued on behalf of those kids and may owe them up to $10,000 in damages each. A "knowing or reckless" violation could also be considered an unfair or deceptive trade practice, subject to up to $50,000 in civil penalties per violation. The bill also requires many commercial apps and websites to verify their users' ages -- something that introduces a host of privacy concerns. But it does require websites to give users the option of "anonymous age verification," which is defined as verification by a third party that cannot retain identifying information after the task is complete.
a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:1)
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The law allows for a social media account with parental consent for 14 and 15-year-olds, 13-year-olds are SOL.
Re:a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Unknown. We need a supreme court weigh in on this IMO.
Internet transactions are inherently Interstate commerce. A state government should have no authority to pass laws requiring a thing like this.
It is inherently an Impediment against free speech to require people identify themselves. People who are Under age 18 still have a first amendment.
Why not? When did we start allowing children under the age of 18 to sign contracts with companies?
My kids can't go out at 14 and buy a gun to target shoot on my property.
My kids can't go get a driver's license at 15 1/2 without parental permission.
My kids can't go get a credit card until they are 18.
I'm all for limited government, but sites like Facebook that harvest data from children under this pseudo-legal "they clicked agree" bullshit is insane.
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Sounds like something parents should be involved in, not government.
Re:a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like something parents should be involved in, not government.
How are parents supposed to be involved in it when their kid goes to a school library, creates a GMail account, signs up for Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc...all without the parent knowing? The social media sites aren't innocent victims here. They knowingly allow children to sign up without verifying parental consent, then use and/all data they can get their hands on...and there's exactly nothing a parent can do about it at the moment, short of chaining their kid to a radiator and denying them digital devices.
Could you imagine if it was a credit card? Oops--sorry, we let your 10-year-old get a credit card and he went to the store and bought $2k worth of candy and sat outside and ate it along with his friends. Better pony up the cash or we're going to put a lien on your house.
Your 13 year old walked into an AT&T store and we signed them up for cell service and gave them a new $1k iPhone. Sorry you found out about it when the bill arrived, but you better pay up because you're responsible for the actions of your child.
You wouldn't stand for that predatory behavior. But if you're ok with it, have your kid give me a call. I'll sell him a year of "consulting services" for $150k and send you the bill.
The age of contract in the US is typically 18. It should be enforced.
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Not very good comparisons to signing up to social media. I don't know of any social media site (I'm sure there may be one or two outliers though) that charge money to use.
At best this would be compared to a location that served underage kids free alcohol and caused an addiction problem among teens but again I don't know of any place that is giving out free alcohol to underage kids.
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You don't know? Facebook in the EU is either pay or give consent to abuse your data.
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Hell...maybe the cigarette companies should take notes on how to hook childre...oh...wait...that's illegal too.
Take notes? Seems to me that cigarette companies could conduct master classes on how to ensnare children as consumers. Remember Joe Camel? [wikipedia.org]
So how is it going to be enforced? (Score:2, Flamebait)
The good news is you can still get around this by using a free VPN. But you can bet your ass that people like DeSantis want to do away with that too.
Anonymity on the Internet is one of the most important features of the internet. I don't see why I should have to give it up because you can't babysit your cro
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In the examples you give, wouldn't the contract simply be invalid and the company lose the money? As in, it would be their fault for not doing a proper check (e.g. credit check) before extending credit to the child?
It's probably not a good idea to have all responsibilities start at 18. Children need to take them on gradually so they can mature and learn with lower risk stuff. Of course, education should also help by giving them the knowledge and emotional maturity to take those responsibilities on.
Re: a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:2)
I was on my own, working at an internet service provider at 14 and turned out okay.
Re:a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The bill also requires many commercial apps and websites to verify their users' ages -- something that introduces a host of privacy concerns. But it does require websites to give users the option of "anonymous age verification," which is defined as verification by a third party that cannot retain identifying information after the task is complete.
I think many people are missing the bigger picture here. In order to comply with the new law all accounts, regardless of age, will have to provide proof of age.
How can you filter out 13yo and restrict 14,15yo users if you don't require every user to provide proof of age? I've seen too many accounts just list "1/1/2001" as their birthdate or just leave that field blank. If I go into a library, create a g-mail account, then create a social media account, how do I prove I'm older than 14yo without uploading some sort of age verification? The only exception I can immediately think of is if you've had the same account for longer than 15 years, they should assume you're older than the required 15yo limit.
This is a "everyone must provide identifying information" bill disguised as a "think of the children" one.
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Yep. People will "just think of the children" all the way until they have no liberty left.
But, hey, at least our children will be coddled and safe in the warm embrace of the state.
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That should be solvable with cryptography.
It is, but why would they implement a solution which preserves anonymity when they want to destroy it?
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Do all you guys to are citing liberty concerns feel the same way about voter ID laws? As in: people shouldn't need to divulge personal information in order to vote?
Divulging personal information like when one registered to vote? :-)
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> Sounds like something parents should be involved in, not government.
Sounds like this bill is letting government put control into parents hands. What am I missing?
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Sounds like something parents should be involved in, not government.
Well since the bill has parent's authorizing the accounts, not the government, it seems that would be the case. Government's involvement here is just making social media listen to parents. Much like government makes companies listen to the FSF regarding GPL'd software. Government is in its lane in both of these examples.
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My kids can't go out at 14 and buy a gun to target shoot on my property.
A gun doesn't care how old the kid is and will still fire just fine regardless of the age of the shooter. This fact has unfortunately lead to some deadly accidents when irresponsible gun owners fail to properly secure their firearms.
My kids can't go get a driver's license at 15 1/2 without parental permission.
While the DMV certainly is going to enforce age restrictions before granting driving privileges, a car does not. My car is a relatively late model EV and so long as the transponder is present and you can reach the brake pedal and the power button at the same time, you can turn
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I can't wait to open up my "free guns in exchange for marketing material" store where I allow kids to sign up...er..."agree" to some TOS and walk away with a gun.
The problem with all these real world analogies is that we all have immediate access to the real world by virtue of it being born into it. Getting on the internet, however, requires an internet capable device and a connection to the internet. Set up an age gateway at either of those locations and it doesn't matter if there are people on the internet giving out guns, as the case may be.
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Oh come on, give up the bullshit "kids will find ways to circumvent a device-side block" excuse. We know kids find ways around things. When I was in middle school it seemed like at least a quarter of my classmates were smokers and it wasn't legal to sell cigarettes to kids in those days either.
Admit it, it's really because you want control over how other parents are allowed to raise their kids. That's why the first version of this bill was even more restrictive. It bothers you that some parents hand the
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On iOS you can restrict things down to the individual app level. You can't even get around it by adding another account to the device. Expecting state laws to apply to the global internet is just idiocy, but a law that says OS vendors such as Google have to fix their parental controls so they actually work properly? That's far more realistic.
Do you really think some porn site in Europe or a social media service in China gives a shit about the laws in Florida?
Re: a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:2)
I think it's a reasonable ask for any websites that already require you to use your real name as your primary identity and where people are prone to harassing IRL from that. E.g. Fecebook. Anything else where pseudonyms are explicitly or implicitly allowed shouldn't have any such requirement.
I think that would make life sufficiently harder for the more toxic social media platforms, e.g. fecebook, without violating any privacy rights that they didn't already have on those platforms.
Re:a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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It is therefore illegal to not only have them agree to terms
Actually you're wrong about this. It's not illegal to have someone agree to terms of an unenforceable contract. In contract law it just means the terms are unenforceable. In the case of personal information, that would mean that any "consent" would be null and void and it's not the nature of the contract that is illegal, it's the act of collecting and using that information without consent.
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So does that mean once they grow older, pass the age of consent, they will be considered as using FB etc without having agreed to any legal terms?
Thats sweet for the future adults I guess.
Re:a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:5, Insightful)
The article misses one of the most significant points on why kids get sucked into social media to begin with and how it all started. There are very few places anymore where kids are allowed to gather on their own without the expectation of some sort of money being spent. There used to be an assortment of different places kids could hang out for free or very very cheaply. They're almost all gone, cost significantly more, or simply require adult supervision.
12yrs old. Has access to maybe $10 cash. Both parents are at work. It's a Tuesday in the summer and they're bored. Aren't allowed to have guests over when parents aren't home. It's free. It's convenient. It's accessible regardless of location. So, what do expect them to do? Where do you want them to go when you haven't given them a real choice? This all started by greedy adults being increasing hostile towards the presence of children. All other problems of social media stem from this main source.
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What did you do as a kid at 12? I spent time with my friends after school. We rode bicycles and played video games. I'm literally not seeing the problem here except the rule that a kid home alone can't have a friend over.
Then again, I grew up as a latchkey kid and had freedom to make some choices of my own. Some parents also didn't work fulltime and were actually home after school. Still, the only rule I really had was finish your homework before playing with your friends. We would go to the community pool
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That's what I also did when I was 12, but I wasn't a minor when social media started taking off. And I was lucky enough to have woods nearby. But a lot of parents aren't like that anymore. They have to know where the kids are via cell phones now. That's just more supervision. Video games are great. But some kids aren't into them. Lots of parents won't let their kid ride a bike to something a few miles away. Especially if they have to ride in the road to get to the destination. Lots of pools now either cost
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It gets worse than that. A lot of places have curfews in place where if some kids are on the road, they will get picked up by Officer Friendly, and now have to deal with juvi.
There are not many places for kids to go, especially in lower class areas, and there is nothing to do. Malls are gone, outside areas are gone, parks have anti-gang enforcement, and any other areas with bans are often habitats for drug addicts who would love to grab a minor for human trafficking.
Problem is that yes, right now, it work
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This is the big one. Even if as a parent you'd happily encourage your kids to go out and be kids away from the Internet, all that's really going to do is get them in trouble (and hopefully not put in serious danger) when some "well meaning" adult decides to call cops on them for being out alone. The intersection between people mad that kids are online, and the people who will absolutely put those same kids in danger for not being leashed to an adult they approve of is very high.
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What did you do as a kid at 12?
That was about the age I started realizing I was different from my peers because videos on TikTok had me questioning my sexuality. Oh right, it was the start of the 90s and we didn't have that back then. So, queer ass younger me kind of just kept to himself and buried his face in the PC his folks had just bought him. I learned how to get online (which at the time meant beep beep beep beep beeeeep screech dial-up BBSes) and it wasn't long before I'd figured out how to set up my own BBS. I subsequently al
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Did you seriously just imply that having an anime obsession hit a speedbump because of flakey broadband is on the same level as facing real-life social ostracism as a LGBTQ+ youth? Yes, it's tough being a teenager. It's even tougher being a gay one, especially in a southern state in the 90s. You legitimately had to worry about being killed [wikipedia.org] for that, but yes, I'm sure that's just like watching the spinning circle animation while a video fails to load.
For the record, I tried growing up straight, white and
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What did you do as a kid at 12?
I might not be the best example. I spent my entire summer at 12 stealing accounts from old people on AOL chat rooms and pirating software.
It was truly the wild west, though, and as a bonus I learned to type extremely fast. Still hit 200WPM routinely on TypeRacer thanks to that summer.
The next summer I got a job working at a nearby computer repair/sales shop, so then I had both money and a ride to a more populated area where I could hang out at arcades or candy shops or whatever was nearby.
By the ti
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What did you do as a kid at 12?
Frog baseball.
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There used to be an assortment of different places kids could hang out for free or very very cheaply
Yes, a large portion of them can be collectively referred to as "outdoors" but parents dont let their kids go there on their own anymore.
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Yep. That, or they now charge money to access in some way.
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Yes, a large portion of them can be collectively referred to as "outdoors" but parents dont let their kids go there on their own anymore.
Outdoors is where the trash pandas are. You're a bad parent if you let your kid play with trash pandas.
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Well, trash pandas, aka raccoons, can be quite viscous. I was glad to have a dog to go outside with my son when he was young.
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Or there is none to speak of in the area.
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Under law any contract with a minor is null and void. Thus a minor can't agree to any TOS or ELU.
This is false. A minor can enter into a contract, agree to a TOS EULA, etc.
In fact, every purchase of goods is legally a contract, and minors do that all the time. A minor can go to the grocery store and buy a dozen eggs with cash.
They are called voidable contracts, because a minor can return what was received void Any contract they entered, unless an adult guardian with the legal capacity to bind signed fo
Re: a bill for parental consent ?! (Score:2)
Under law any contract with a minor is null and void.
There are subtle but important details the claim glosses over.
A minor can disaffirm many types of contracts, but it is an affirmative action with legal consequences. Minors can engage in contracts and receive both the benefits and liabilities, and it happens all the time.
Looking at what they want in the law, probably the most effective way to get it overturned would be for social media networks to directly do exactly what is in the law: close the account and block access to everything ever posted. Geofenc
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And social platforms are already not supposed to retain or sell data from anyone indicating their age is under 18.
I do agree with keeping kids from spending all their free time online or on SNS, but this law won't help any more than the "Are you 18?" prompts on adult sites kept me out of them as a kid. And those freedom-loving red-state anti-government Floridians are definitely going to love if they have to enter some personal information for their kid
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The issue at stake is an inferred result of the Interstate Commerce Clause called the Dormant Commerce Clause [wikipedia.org]. It infers that regulation of the internet from one state to another inherently forcing companies to implement procedures to be compliant, but inadvertently affects commerce between two totally unrelated states, thus imposing an undue burden on other states and
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Don't really agree with you on the ID issue (per se), but this matter would appear to fall into the category of interstate commerce.
How Long Before We Outlaw Republicans? (Score:1)
Then we can outlaw democrats and start this fucking game over.
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I'm all for it, but good luck with that.
civil war 2.0 coming where we chop America into di (Score:1)
civil war 2.0 coming where we chop America into different countries?
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Texas and Florida are free to leave and take their electoral college votes with them. Oh and we'll need them to return all US military property too.
52.3% of California is free to leave, and we'll need them to return all US military property too. The other 47.7% is federal land.
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Revolution requires an army, All military members are beholden to, and trained to follow chain of command. Ultimately, that is POTUS as commander in chief. There would not be enough military support within a State to atte
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All military members are beholden to, and trained to follow chain of command. Ultimately, that is POTUS as commander in chief.
Of course that was the case before our last civil war as well.
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All it would take is a Constitutional Amendment for a State to legally leave, so, basically, as long as 3/4's of the States are fine with a State leaving, it would be legal.
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no, they are not free to leave. "The" Civil war proved States do not have the right to secede
Additionally, the Supreme Court ruled [White, (1869)] that the United States is “an indestructible union” from which no state can secede.
New laws can be passed. Even the Constitution can be amended. Again, the only real solved issue is unilateral secession.
Revolution requires an army, All military members are beholden to, and trained to follow chain of command. Ultimately, that is POTUS as commander in chief.
If only the US military thought of that sort of organization and training prior to the Civil War.
Sure you could have some rednecks and retired beer swilling 2A types, but they wouldn't stand a chance against active duty, well funded, highly trained teams.
LOL. You do realization that some national guard units, especially, air national guard units, are more proficient that some active duty units? It takes years to create competent soldiers and pilots, and many of these experienced personnel transition to the guard to have a more normal family lif
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Oh and we'll need them to return all US military property too.
Nope. National Guard and Air National Guard belong to the state. Also all federal bases are proportionally owned by TX and FL as well. Conceding bases located in TX/FL in their entirely can be adequate compensation for their portion of US bases globally. Then there is the consideration of their "sweat equity". For example securing the national borders of the US, well in the air at least, has been largely performed by FL and TX air national guard for decades.
So I have a question (Score:2)
Ron DeSantis said in 2021 that Social media platforms have morphed into the town square, this when he signed the "stop the censorship" bill.
Does this new bill then mean that there's an age-limit on town squares?
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It'll be interesting to see what mechanism they think the social media companies have for determining if the consent of the parent is actually coming from the parent.
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If you read the summary (lol wha?) it says that a third party website that is directed to not save personal information can be used to verify age. There are already online resources that you can sign up for to help verify who you are and will inform other websites of this information.
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That's great for identifying the non-minors. However, there's still the question of how to verify that the parent of the 14yo who's trying to sign up is actually the person saying it's okay.
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A minor can get a government issued ID from the DMV.
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Still does not connect said minor to their parents.
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Does this new bill then mean that there's an age-limit on town squares?
Only in Florida, and presumably other states implementing the same sort of laws. Now you see another reason why the US government wants to ban TikTok, because a Chinese company can completely ignore this sort of idiocy, at least until we get our own version of the great firewall.
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What we really need are national data protection laws that all companies need to abide by. Maybe this will help push us in that direction.
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> until we get our own version of the great firewall.
Which is really what Florida, or other states that engage in these sorts of shenanigans, should do. It was only a few years ago DeSantis got a bog stick up his ass over an out of state corporation daring to refuse to jump on his anti-LGBT hate train. And here he is now, not just expressing a mere opinion about out-of-his-state entities, but presuming to dictate to them as well.
The Ron DeSantis Rehabilitation Act (Score:2, Insightful)
Ron made the mistake of listening to his cronies, then quickly learned no one outside of Florida has any political interest in him. So now he's back in his state, trying to reassure the elderly voters there that he's ready willing and able to spend lots of time on issues that sound good to them but have no practical effect in the real world.
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Ron didn't make the mistake of listening to his cronies, he already had those stupid ideas and then hired sycophants who agree with him. After that he started to watch his own press releases, he decided to believe them. If he were a tire jack, he'd be self-pumping.
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If he were a tire jack, he'd be self-pumping.
If DeSantis was a tire jack, he'd then at least be a useful tool.
Typical Republican political theater (Score:1, Troll)
And all that money is a drop in the bucket compared to the literal billions being wasted at the Southern border sending army reserves down there for photo ops for governors with presidential aspirations.
One of the tricks with social media is that certain threads attract certain people
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Buy her a tablet (Score:2)
But yeah, it's professionally produced propaganda so it's tough.
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1. Not all vote are equal as the value of a vote varies region by region.
2. You use FPTP that allow lead to us vs them no compromise politics. PR leads parties to have more consideration of other political views.
3. You allow gerrymandering. Electoral boundaries should be set by non-poltical methods based on simple population density.
All that rates the USA as #36, 'Deficient Democracy', by https://www.democracymatrix.co... [democracymatrix.com].
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This is what happens when foreigners with no real knowledge of my country and why things are the way they are stand on their high horse and try to dictate to Americans how inferior we are and if only we obeyed you, everything would be so much better....
I'm an American and agree with the gist of the post to which you're replying. The EC is an outdated mechanism created to perpetuate the institution of slavery and we'd better off if the president was the person who most Americans voted for. The bicameral legislature does enough to give smaller states representation.
Drop the ad hominem attacks. They're generally dickish and weaken your point by tying it to a bunch of irrelevant alleged characteristics of the poster.
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Florida has become one of those places people move to specifically because they like the Republican policies. Maybe not so much this culture war stuff, but the lack of a state income tax, no vehicle inspections, and less restrictive gun ownership laws (but don't go parading around with your gun slung over your shoulder like a guerrilla soldier, that's still illegal here).
Having lived here for most of my life, I'm also thoroughly convinced there's a big of a language barrier issue going on, too. All of the
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Main thing that sucks about Florida is too many people have moved here over the years and the infrastructure really hasn't kept up. If you make the trip from Orlando to Tampa, at most times of day you'll be stuck in horrible traffic from the edge of Orange County all the way out to Davenport.
Wages could be better and homeowner's insurance could be cheaper, but at the end of the day it all probably evens out when you factor in the things that cost less in Florida.
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Yeah, then they cry about having no money for any social services.
Social services in Florida? That's a good one!
It's also a porn site age verification law (Score:2)
Under the guise of "think of the children", this law also sneaks in the same sort of requirements for porn sites to ID check adults that a few other red states have already implemented. I suppose it's going to be a lot of fun explaining to Florida man what a VPN is.
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There are no children in Florida. Florida is a retirement home state. This affects nobody.
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There are no children in Florida. Florida is a retirement home state. This affects nobody.
The old folks get freaky in The Villages.
Bipartisan and scientifically backed (Score:4, Informative)
Biden's surgeon general issued a warning about allowing minors to use social media last year [axios.com].
This is based on a growing bevy of studies whoch are in consensus that social media use has an adverse effect on mental health outcomes in childhood development.
Minors have a limited version of rights and entitlements compared to adults and it's actually fairly consistent: things with a reasonable potential of harm require parental consent (e.g., getting a tattoo) and things with a near guarantee or very adverse potential of harm are not allowed at all (e.g. smoking cigarettes).
At this point, based on the accumulated evidence, the question for social media is not whether it should be directly accessible, but whether it should require parental consent or be completely banned for minors.
Parental consent up to age 16 seems like a rather moderate implementation in that spectrum.
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I was running my own dial-up BBS at the age of 13. Yes, my parents were aware of it because they were the ones paying for the dedicated phone line it required. Ultimately, taking the rights away from parents is the entire problem with this law.
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What part of this law is taking away parental control? This seems more akin to parental empowerment. They have to sign off on their teen getting or keeping an account.
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Smoking is rather bad example because federal law presently doesn't even let adults under 21 smoke. Remind me again which president that happened under?
The minimum age for having an online account is 13 at a federal level. If you believe your kid is too immature for social media at that age, that's should be your call, not the nanny state's.
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Parental consent up to age 16 seems like a rather moderate implementation in that spectrum.
How does someone 'prove' they are the guardian for someone who claims to be 13 years old?
I don't think you understand what is going on here. Effectively, Social Media companies will have complete access to your personal legal data. The entirety of a family will be fully documented within their servers. Once they have that data, they can (assuredly they will) engage in absurdly effective psyop campaigns that lead you to losing your money, your mind, your vote, or any sorts of self-reliance.
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This is based on a growing bevy of studies whoch are in consensus that social media use has an adverse effect on mental health outcomes in childhood development.
Are you sure?
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/... [techdirt.com]
Mr. Governor? (Score:1)
Did you overlook the Thou Shalt Not Compete with Disney Act^H^H^H^HThe Child Online Privacy Protection Act?
You know, the law that permanently disinvited everyone under 13 from the Internet? The law that permanently ceded virtually all the technology invented since about 1994 to an over-18-only web? A web where we can't create anything for children, educational or otherwise, because they are forbidden?
Mr. DeSantis, did you know if a child's teacher collects a student's email address through the Internet wit
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More money for lawyers (Score:1)
Good for Little Shitler! (Score:1)
It shows growth, independent of piles of poop left out in the sun.
Interesting experiment (Score:2)
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If Florida manages to effectively ban social media for school kids, it'd be very interesting to see what happens to their mental well-being & academic performance. Aren't people here even curious?
Not kids, teenagers. Since when have you known teenagers to just roll over and do what they're told?
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There's some incredible irony here (Score:2)
The irony here is that on most things DeSantis is a complete asshat, but on this he's 100% right.
Social media is a dopamine hit machine and like any dopamine hit machine given to teenagers between the ages of 11-6, addiction is an almost inevitable result. This is why people become addicted to social media, video games, cigarettes and alcohol. A dopamine hit loop established at the right age is the key to creating a lifetime customer - something the cigarette companies have known for decades (yes, they re
Orly? (Score:2)
Prove you can provide anonymous verification first (Score:2)
If the States want to do something like this, the first prove you can create a method of anonymous age verification AND protect it by law so that in the event it is somehow breached it can't be used for any sort of warrants or prosecutions down the road.
If you can't do that, then these laws should not stand.
Right. And how are they going to know? (Score:2)
Did the kids creating the account lie about age/birth date? I *certainly* didn't tell FB my real birthday, and no, I'm no 124 years old.
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How about instead we hold parents accountable for providing unrestricted internet access to their kids in the first place? I'd totally be okay with many sorts of device-side restrictions lawmakers want to come up with, because that's where the age gateway belongs. E.g.: an "Are you setting this device up for a child?" prompt.
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Ok so shutdown free library access and make it a crime to have an open WiFi at the mall, airport, etc.
Why not? Most hotels already have passwords set up to keep the riff-raff off the network. You flash your ID to someone who works there and they give you the password. Easy peezy. Libraries have ID cards and the computers could easily be set up to apply restrictions to underage users (or anyone who doesn't want to scan/swipe their library card). Just having machines set up where anyone can walk right in and browse the unfiltered internet wasn't really the greatest idea to begin with.
Or perhaps you truly
Re: Not too terrible (Score:2)
I've been saying for years to my friends that they should restrict their children's access to social.
Despite their failure to do so, I've never been asking for government to step-in. I have no children and do not wish to use an age verification system, third party or otherwise to use these sites. I do not want these third parties to have access to my identification despite them pinky-swearing to delete it afterwards. First social media, then porn sites and whatever will follow that.
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So wait, as long as the kid is seeing liberal stuff, who cares if they are more lonely, anxious or depressed, at least they'll vote Democrat? Most people across the political spectrum and across all ages recognize social media as overall a negative thing. Kids tend to be bit more positive but even they see more negative then positive.
These websites need regulation and it should come from a national stage but if it has to go state by state, it will.
This bill also allows for a 3rd party to do the verification