Social Networks Agree to Be Rated On Their Teen Safety Efforts (yahoo.com) 14
Meta, TikTok, Snap and other social neteworks agreed this week to be rated on their teen safety efforts, reports the Los Angeles Times, "amid rising concern about whether the world's largest social media platforms are doing enough to protect the mental health of young people."
The Mental Health Coalition, a collective of organizations focused on destigmatizing mental health issues, said Tuesday that it is launching standards and a new rating system for online platforms. For the Safe Online Standards (S.O.S.) program, an independent panel of global experts will evaluate companies on parameters including safety rules, design, moderation and mental health resources. TikTok, Snap and Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — will be the first companies to be graded. Discord, YouTube, Pinterest, Roblox and Twitch have also agreed to participate, the coalition said in a news release.
"These standards provide the public with a meaningful way to evaluate platform protections and hold companies accountable — and we look forward to more tech companies signing up for the assessments," Antigone Davis, vice president and global head of safety at Meta, said in a statement... The ratings will be color-coded, and companies that perform well on the tests will get a blue shield badge that signals they help reduce harmful content on the platform and their rules are clear. Those that fall short will receive a red rating, indicating they're not reliably blocking harmful content or lack proper rules. Ratings in other colors indicate whether the platforms have partial protection or whether their evaluations haven't been completed yet.
"These standards provide the public with a meaningful way to evaluate platform protections and hold companies accountable — and we look forward to more tech companies signing up for the assessments," Antigone Davis, vice president and global head of safety at Meta, said in a statement... The ratings will be color-coded, and companies that perform well on the tests will get a blue shield badge that signals they help reduce harmful content on the platform and their rules are clear. Those that fall short will receive a red rating, indicating they're not reliably blocking harmful content or lack proper rules. Ratings in other colors indicate whether the platforms have partial protection or whether their evaluations haven't been completed yet.
Wrong Way (Score:2)
We should be rating parents on their child care and taking kids away from bad parents.
Re: Wrong Way (Score:3)
Where do you take them to? Seems like you have half a plan but it sounds more half assed to me.
Rating (Score:2)
Three. I will give them a three.
*Scale to be determined.
Censorship by any other name (Score:2)
"Think about the children" has been a rallying cry for draconian laws, censorship, and erosion of privacy for decades. And that's because it works - it's a legitimate desire to keep kids away from the trash the internet has become.
But the target is wrong - the target needs to be holding the PARENTS responsible for their children's upbringing. Any parent that allowed their child to wander down Skid Row would be arrested for child endangerment - the same should apply to parents who don't restrict their chil
Re: (Score:1)
The goal is to turn the entire population into children so they won't rebel against their masters.
Also to force ID on all social media accounts by demanding everyone prove they're not a teen.
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Also to force ID on all social media accounts by demanding everyone prove they're not a teen.
I feel like trying to make everyone ID on social media for safety reasons is a lost cause because it's not hard to create homespun communication networks now. I've recently been playing around with notification services for my home server's apps, and I had a self-hosted ntfy [ntfy.sh] server running at one point. Every connected device/application is a node on the network, and anything is capable of sending messages that are seen in the topic feed. This isn't designed to be a social networking service, but since you
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"the same should apply to parents who don't restrict their children's access to adult sections of the internet."
As part of the draconian censorship you mentioned, the purpose of pols wanting to restrict kids' access to social media is to control their access to news. Making a precedent of punishing parents because their children got to news deemed inappropriate by the state is no good.
Why do they need to "agree"? (Score:2)
If I want to rate anything online - from a restaurant to a store to a product or service of any kind - I'm free to do so. As long as I don't lie, or commit libel or slander, then the entity I'm reviewing has jack shit to say about it. Why wouldn't the same apply to social media?
I can see companies cooperating with ratings efforts, with failure to do so possibly resulting in a poor rating and/or a note that no rating can be given because the site isn't forthcoming with vital information. But agreeing? That s
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Though I admit that doesn't make sense either. If they already published their stuff, why do they have to hand it over? Also, just because they have policies and procedures does't mean they either actually follow them or follow them in a timely manner.
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It's the age where they can have Sx, do Pron if they like, buy alcohol and a whole pile of other age restricted activities.
Social media on the other hand knows full well that getting children hooked means they will have a life long addict, much like Tobacco.
And the Tobacco industry lied, hid research , bribed officials, etc etc etc to stop and laws that would Impact their profits, or see them being sued.
Todays addiction of choice is the Dopamine hit and the developing brain is m
The mental health of young people (Score:3)