France's top court blocks social media ban for under-15s

What is “harmful behavior” when it comes to words? You may have your own definition, but I guarantee that you can’t get a supermajority to agree with it.

(There are some basic things like fraud and such that are already illegal.)

Most people don’t actually want to ban “harmful” speech except for the speech of their political enemies.

Here's a better fix: If a parent continuously allows their child to go to a known unsafe place, they are negligent and should no longer be a parent. The exception is if the operator of said unsafe place specifically enticed children. I haven't been following closely but weren't there internal emails showing Facebook was specifically trying to addict and hook teens? That's definitely wrong and a bad thing Facebook did, and they should be held accountable for sure.

However, if my platform says on the outside that it's for 18+, identifies itself as such using machine-readable signals, and I don't take specific action to entice children into the service, it's your failure to parent if they access it, and you should shoulder most or all the liability for it.

The slipperly slope here to avoid is this: do you really want to adopt a model where the state is the one who "owns" your child (except financially, of course, you still have to pay everything) and can unilaterally do things to you and your child in the same of child safety without your input or consent? This exists currently to some extent, it can get much worse.

A government body may review a service and determine it is addictive and radicalizing. This is fine, and helpful. Even requiring the service to display a warning is OK. Then, parents who ignore the clear warning and repeatedly fail to control their children from accessing it should lose parental rights.

> and radicalize

It always beautiful how single-word choices like this can reveal the actual intent behind seemingly "reasonable" words.

1990s: ~%36 of all teens smoked

2020s: >%2 of all teens smoke

Kinda suggests that putting limitations in place actually produces results. Crazy innit?

This logic is sus. Just because we cannot have a oerfect system doesn't mean we shouldn't have it at all. Like alcohol age limitations, they can be worked around and wont ever be 100 percent perfect but I see regularly teens bouncing off the register at my local store.

So the metric should be case by case for each proposed solution. Most of things proposed are no good, but that doesn't mean there is not a sensible solution out there to limit net for teens.

No source but a possible counter-example: SIM card carries the date-of-birth of the user (because, really, part of the problem is that you cannot supervise what a kid does with their phone 24/7), age-restricted websites have a flag in their HTTP headers, browser get age from SIM card through the OS. Same goes with app stores etc.

Like copy-protection there's always a way to circumvent it, the name of the game is to make it difficult enough. And for parents, to make it very easy to set-up.

XKEYSCORE, the UK system brought in to allow warrantless surveillance for national security purposes and child abuse prevention, ended up being used for such minor offences as catching people dumping rubbish in other people's bin, or parents lying about their child's address to get into a better school district. In the United States, the same system was used for low-level offences like cannabis possession.

Source for this ever not being the case?

If you don't verify identity it's easy to fake.

Is that the "don't put my website into Google Safe search because it's porn" header?

Maybe we need a "it's not for kids but it's not porn either" header.

There's a reason why nobody is giving the parents those tools.

And it's the same reason why everybody keeps pushing the stupidier, most obnoxious and invasive tools to "protect the children".

Parents generally have their own children's best interests in mind. If you personally have kids, feel free to delegate responsibility to someone else, since you believe that you're shitty to your own child. But you do not get to decide how to parent other people's children.

I don't think passively assuming you'll end up on the relevant lists is going to do it for websites that need to keep kids out for whatever reason.

> parents will always be shitty. They are an impediment to children's health society must work around.

The health of kids with parents is infinitely better than those without. Just saying

> And before anyone blames the parents, parents will always be shitty. They are an impediment to children's health society must work around.

...huh? This is completely backwards. We should be making laws that punish parents for failing to parent properly. Not laws that punish everyone.

If we pass a law that children under a certain age may not use social media, then giving your child a non-child-locked device should be treated the same way we treat giving your child alcohol or cigarettes.

> And before anyone blames the parents, parents will always be shitty. They are an impediment to children's health society must work around.

Zuckerberg was not a parent when he conceived of Facebook and "society" as a whole is pushing social media on kids, not parents.

"parents will always be shitty"

Maybe cut nontechnicals a little slack? Their adversaries have invested literally billions of dollars in R&D.

Cultural tangent: in France, "the government" is the group of ministries (or departments in the US), part of the executive branch. So, the judiciary is not part of the government, and the National Assembly and the Senate (legislative branch) are not either. The head of state is not part of the government either, which is how you can get headlines about disagreements between the President and the Government. It’s quite different from how things are managed in the US. My understanding is that it is somewhat similar in the UK, which would be relevant in a BBC story.

In Western countries, the judiciary and the executive (which contains the day-to-day operations of the government) generally operate independently and can rule against each other. I'm most familiar with the US, and I think its constitution was the first to encode judicial independence - and constitutional review by the Supreme Court was established early on in US history. But all Western countries these days have had judges rule against executive policy and the executive obey it.

The details of how to override a ruling against the executive does differ between countries, and also on whether its considered just an interpretation of law or a constitutional question. Both the US and France have a written constitution that's binding on other branches, while the UK does not.

I checked your profile and you are cofounder of a company with branches all around Europe. At least the countries in the EU should have separation of powers, and the judicial (the courts) are independent from the government and there is a parliament which is more or less independent from the government too. Of course the government is usually backed by the majority of the parliament so the two of them often act together. The courts apply the law, whatever it is, but if the parliament or the government or the president (for presidential democracies) do something against the law or the constitution (or equivalent chart), there is at least a court that can undo that legislation and send it back for an overhaul. This is what happened in France.

No, separation of powers

YouTube kids is able to do it. They detect kids in regular YouTube and whether they are the account owner and move them to YouTube kids.

"we hold these thruths to be self evident"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law

There are. In the constitution, as the court found. There are also reasonable arguments that they are an unavoidable consequence of Human Rights, as described in the declaration of 1789, which is also in the constitution.

The right to privacy is also explicitly in the Code Civil since 1970, in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (both are binding to EU member states).

That’s a simplistic view of rights, and ignores other conceptions of rights like natural rights.

Rights are inalienable. You don't grant them by law. You get them when you're born.

We won't ban any of all these things because there are people with political power that make fortunes out of them. Whether that's alcohol, social media, tobacco or otherwise.

We will not go for the proper solution, not because it's not the proper solution but because powerful people won't allow it.

If you do look at the things we have indeed banned, you will find that they are mostly coming from outside our countries. It's not cut and dry, but it's very geopolitical pretty often.

What media? I can't upload photos or videos here.

I haven't seen children doomscrolling HN lately, have you?

But, whatever it takes. Social media in combination with mobile phones is destroying the latest generations. Add AI in the mix, and we're on the road to Idiocracy.

It's all about politics.