I’m asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what’s the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone’s privacy?
Make chronological feeds mandatory. Accounts you follow shall not be filtered nor censored and posts of accounts you have not followed should not be shown. Algorithmic feeds are allowed but should be opt-in inside the settings.
And also schools teaching and parents parenting.
Chronology is only one part of this, although I think it is the right foot forward.
We also need:
The parents point is true, but more generally I think it needs to be that “people” need to be held responsible and accountable for their actions both as adults and children, and to enable this they need to be taught critical thinking skills as well as given the tools to make this happen. Common sense isn’t common, it’s instilled.
Mandatory? So Lemmy/Piefed should be forced to only list by /new/?
Yeah, no. Let me rephrase “make personalized algorithms opt in”?