Teen Social Media Bans Risk Strengthening Big Tech's Dominance, Warns Bluesky Exec (cnbc.com) 38
Bluesky's chief operating officer believes teen social media bans "risk entrenching Big Tech's dominance," reports CNBC:
Rose Wang, Bluesky's chief operating officer, told CNBC on the sidelines of SXSW in London on Wednesday that the smaller open-source platform isn't opposed to regulation but that smaller players in the industry should be protected. "I support the protection and the safety of youth... The question that we have then is at what cost? Because essentially what I'm scared of is in the long term, we're headed to a world where there's about three to five platforms, and extreme heavy regulation of those platforms...
"Basically the whole compliance teams of these platforms are 10 times the size of our entire team," Wang said. "So, basically, we're living in a world where it's almost impossible for smaller entrants to come in and build healthier spaces."
The article notes Bluesky had grown to 43 million users as of March, "which is still only around 10% of X's estimated 450 million users. Bluesky has struggled to maintain popularity, and by the end of October last year, it had reportedly seen a 40% drop in daily mobile active users over the past 12 months."
"Basically the whole compliance teams of these platforms are 10 times the size of our entire team," Wang said. "So, basically, we're living in a world where it's almost impossible for smaller entrants to come in and build healthier spaces."
The article notes Bluesky had grown to 43 million users as of March, "which is still only around 10% of X's estimated 450 million users. Bluesky has struggled to maintain popularity, and by the end of October last year, it had reportedly seen a 40% drop in daily mobile active users over the past 12 months."
He's right (Score:5, Interesting)
Removing teenagers from the pool is great for Facebook because it means they don't have to deal with them going to their competitors and then buying those competitors or worse risking a serious antitrust enforcement action that prevents them from doing that and leads to a real competitor.
Meanwhile when the kiddies become adults they're not going to be as uptight about being on the same platform as their parents anymore so they can be easily funneled into Facebook's ecosystem for cheap.
Facebook could collapse almost overnight if people just stopped going to the website. They are painfully aware of that and they take measures to make sure it doesn't happen.
Re:He's right (Score:5, Insightful)
("She's right". Rose Wang is a she.)
That said, BlueSky *is* Big Tech, just hidden by little marketing. Its major investors, for example, are crypto-bros. And if it wasn't, it wouldn't have anything to worry about, as, for example, individual Mastodon instances aren't exactly affected by age verification laws, given most are outside the countries imposing these laws or else know their own users.
Bluesky knows full well it's not operating a real federated service, it intends to remain the main provider of access to the network under its protocol, intends to stay a US corporation, and it'll continue to not be cost efficient for anyone to compete with it, either as a viable commercial entity (what's the point? nobody would switch) or on a hobbyist level.
I just want competition (Score:3, Funny)
But just having a little bit of competition and a little less power at the top would be a good place to start.
And yeah I need to proofread my shit. Then again I mean for fucks sakes I'm posting on a dead forum mostly to scream into the void. I don't actually type any of this crap I'm using text to speech on my phone.
Re: (Score:3)
Interesting and no idea if any of what you say is true. I don't really care. I mod rsilvergun as I see him on a case by case basis and that includes an occasional "I" rating, maybe 5-10%. About 1/2 I don't do anything. If I'm going to mod, there has to be a "there there." The rest is Flame, Troll, and sometimes Funny even if it's not the intent of the post.
Re: (Score:3)
Better tell that to Blacksky, Eurosky, etc.
The vast majority of people stay on the primary PDS, relay, etc namely because Bluesky hasn't proven itself to be some evil overlord pursuing insidious goals. If that were to ever occur, people would just migrate. Unlike with ActivityPub (Mastodon), ATProto allows for true migration. Your content isn't tied and linked to a specific server - it's more like a URL on an arbitrary domain, and you can
Re: (Score:2)
> Better tell that to Blacksky, Eurosky, etc.
I don't need to. BlackSky has already found out the hard way, when some of its members were banned from the entire atmosphere by BlueSky.
> The vast majority of people stay on the primary PDS, relay, etc namely because Bluesky hasn't proven itself to be some evil overlord pursuing insidious goals. If that were to ever occur, people would just migrate.
Yes, because that happened. Who can forget how when Facebook abused its power multiple times how it lost almo
Re: (Score:2)
Corporations have no gender. People speaking on the corporation's behalf should not be afforded the humanity they presume outside the role.
He's disingenuous (Score:2)
If Bluesky was actually serious about what they're saying, then they'd have adopted open standards, like ActivityPub, which was already ratified as the protocol for social networks before Bluesky even was dreamed up by Jack in the first place, as the protocol on which it runs. But no, they invented ATProto for the express purpose of outsourcing their hosting costs to idiots while retaining full moderation control over the whole thing.
Bluesky is part of the same problem they're trying to pin exclusively on
They aren't necessary wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Bluesky isn't wrong on this but let's be honest, the future of the Internet is going to be a locked down shopping mall. Eventually, platforms will be liable for user content and only the largest of the large will have the resources to censor it all so no ones feels get hurt. This will almost certainly kill Slashdot and other small forums.
I have always felt that if government really knew what Internet was back in the 90s, there is zero chance of the general public getting online. Now they see it as a surveillance network (which it is) but they'll still lock it down and continue to centralize it.
Just wait for them to eventually roll out mandatory online ID, thus killing anonymity.
Re:They aren't necessary wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
> the future of the Internet is going to be a locked down shopping mall. Eventually, platforms will be liable for user content and only the largest of the large will have the resources to censor it all so no ones feels get hurt
I think it's entirely possible it'll go in the opposite direction and we'll start seeing a network more similar to that we had in the 1990s. Small independent sites, either operating in jurisdictions outside of the control of the people making these laws, or who know their own users. Too small and remote to actually be worth targeting legally, something that would attract additional attention if they did it.
The Internet, it's said, routes around censorship. For the past 15-20 years or so, we've seen a massive centralization of the Internet, with Facebook replacing blogs, Twitter replacing forums on news sites, Reddit absorbing BBSes, and so on. The affect has been... disastrous, and it's taken a while for everyone to notice, but it's becoming blatantly obvious. Add AI to the mix, with Google now sitting in the way of people accessing your website, rather than being a source of traffic, and the web is dying. There are few incentives to actually publish anything any more.
BUT..
Bluesky's marketing team have, semi-successfully, tried to persuade its users it's a move away from that, and it owes what success its had from people believing it, and it exists in large part because of a revolt against all of that. Oh sure, it's part of the same movement. But the fact it had to market itself as a return to the federated, distributed, web, and that that worked, suggests that a lot more than random moaning Slashdot old timers like me are fed up with it.
There's a real opportunity that hasn't existed in 10-15 years for people to stand up their own BBSes, Mastodon instances, Spacebar instances, and so on. It's going to be a small community that does this, but it's going to have enough momentum to be viable, which wasn't the case 10 years ago when if you said "For my project, I'm putting up a small BBS at phbbs.mydomain.com if you want to discuss it", and find that the entire community was on Reddit instead.
Remember, we don't need to dominate the Internet, we just need enough of us that our community is large enough.
Re: (Score:2)
This thread is supposed to be about wrongs that aren't necessary?
Or perhaps some sarren of the horde of sarrens intended "necessarily"?
Symptoms of something. Would that it would be funny something? Just on my way out the door, but an even less amusing visit than average. Am I diverging from Slashdot or is that just necessary? Necessity was the mother of a better website I hope to find somewhere?
(Irrelevant failed joke of the day, since I always feel the need to go a bit tangential and I already used the on
You reap what you sow. (Score:5, Funny)
Companies wouldn't need massive compliance teams if they didn't pursue every single dark pattern they come across. This is like burglars complaining they need lookouts after being caught too many times.
Re: (Score:1)
Once you separate adult interests from children's interests much of those adult dark patterns become just interactions.
Re: (Score:2)
Companies wouldn't need massive compliance teams
Compliance teams are just the government's full employment promise to liberal arts majors. You can either find them jobs in the administration. Or you could create a bunch of regulations, with reporting requirements. And companies will have to hire the staff to generate the requisite reports. The former salaries come out of the federal or state budgets. The latter cost the government bupkis.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, I get it. "Won't anyone save the children" is now a massive left conspiracy perpetrated by the right.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah. The GOP thinks in multiple dimensions when playing chess.
The GOP wanted to save money on mental health and hospitals. So they got the Democrats to close them down (deinstitutionalizatiion).
Re: (Score:3)
It does seem paradoxical, doesn't it? Sort of like how google and others have spent untold legal fees fighting the requirements of eurozone countries, but will suddenly bend over backwards to meet the strictest requirements of eurozone countries (or Romania for that matter) on age verification.
But it's not by accident, because companies like meta and openAI (not to mention their vampire owners) have a vested interest in around digital wallets and biometric ID. Just watch as our tech giants bail out the Isra
How to fix social media (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue is their monetization strategy - total information based advertising. It requires maximum 'engangement' and maximum coverage.
If you outlaw that system, then they will stop being so very very evil.
Set it up so they can charge a monthly fee and are forbidden from engaging in any advertising more targeted than by location or saving any information except related to their monthly payments. They could still put up ads, just not let people purchase ads for pregnant women under the age of 20.
This will force them to treat their users as customers rather than the product. Suddenly their behavior would change from pushing conspiracies to pushing and helping pedophiles to instead being respectable social media companies (which do not exist today).
The current corporations will either die or totally change.
Re:How to fix social media (Score:5, Insightful)
Nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
I am for free speech but it's that false pretense that a sold service by any corporation is what's causing more harm than good. Every media service has an agenda, to promote themselves. A corporation with a primary responsibility to shareholders is the worst. A hands off attitude in regards to regulating speech gets partisan mobs, then self regulation meaning partisan managed mobs, then an attempt to have a state charge in to impose guidelines. By then a new platform emerges then its back to the beginning o
Re: (Score:3)
Your intrepretation leaves a lot to be desired. The main issue is you do not understand my argument at all.
I am not objecting to the stuff sold, I object to their harvesting procedures. In other words, this is not matter of their agenda. This is instead a matter of harm done in creating the stuff they sell.
In the chemical industry there are rules and regulations about disposing of pollution. In Animal Husbandry there are rules and regulations about humane slaughter and how you deal with sick animals. I
Re: (Score:2)
You ignored the content you were replying to.
It's like you interrupted a conversation about the merits of the VI Nazi Missile to talk about how we should not sway it was the best weapon of WW2 because of the Holocaust.
If you want to reply to someone, reply to them. Otherwise start your own thread.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is their monetization strategy - total information based advertising. It requires maximum 'engangement' and maximum coverage.
If you outlaw that system, then they will stop being so very very evil.
I admire you're extremely naive optimism. It means the world hasn't defeated the hope you were born with. Yet.
Re: (Score:2)
I am old, cancer ridden and cynical. I will die before I lose my optimism.
But not the words 'so very very evil.' That leaves the possibility of them becoming merely very evil, still an improvement over so very very evil.
"Group texts" are a social media of a sort (Score:2)
Ditto any late-1990s-era web-bulletin-board system that had a notifications system.
Teens will find a way to socialize, and they will use media to do it.
Astroturf-sky (Score:4, Insightful)
The little astroturfed platform financed by massively deep pockets full of conflicting interests and radically oppressive political agenda-pushing is saying the line: Wont someone think of the children!!!111111
All social media is like plague-rats, and bsky is neither oh-so-little nor less harmful.
Let it finally disappear into well deserved obscurity from which no financing can save it.
At the end of the day ... (Score:1)
They cannot monetise teenagers, and they are pissed.
The social media bans push them off the various platforms under a false guise of protecting them, all the while polarising their political opinions for their eventual return.
That is one side, the other side, their parents are still churning metrics on their (child) behalf via online shopping, posts on social media, and other measurable traffic.
It is about putting everyone into a convenient little bucket.
meow (Score:1)
course that's true of every capitalist enterprise, by design. They claim their little fiefdoms and defend them, ratcheting up the cost to compete until only a big fish could move in on you. It just makes sense that they do this, which is why they inevitably do.
Don't believe me? Try starting a new telecom company. Or making a new console. Try having a better idea for housing than these leaky crumbling coffins grifters make nowadays. Try improving literally any aspect of society and you'll
Certain types
Teen social media bans are excuse for surveillance (Score:2)
You can like the idea or not, but in practice it mostly means that adults need to identify themselves before being allowed to use social media (with a non-teen experience). This is the death to anonymous internet use and simple to extend to more websites than just social media once it is accepted.
In all honesty (Score:2)
Social Media / Big Tech are only worried about the profit hits they're going to take if a huge chunk of their userbase
vanishes by banning non-adults from their platforms.
The only way we'll ever get rid of this whole " age-verification " idea ( to protect minors . . . . lol right ) is when
Social Media / Big Tech are potentially looking at crazy levels of profit loss due to the mass exodus of non-adult users.
They're ok with it as long as the age verification thing only impacts the adult content industry.
They