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Why isn't it enforceable?

State attorney general notices his kid's social media app is giving algorithmic instead of chronological results, subpoenas social networks for number of under-18s in Minnesota, files charges, court sets up enormous fine.

Which part of this process is impossible?




Kids will lie about their age. They already do. You aren't supposed to sign up until you are 13. There are lots of pre-teens on Social Media.

Stopping that would mean a KYC process for every social media signup. I don't think that works either.


From the bill's text, as quoted by the article:

> (b) The social media platform is liable to an individual account holder who received user-generated content through a social media algorithm while the individual account holder was under the age of 18 and was using the individual account holder’s own account, if the social media platform knew or had reason to know that the individual account holder was under the age of 18 and located in Minnesota. [...]

Sounds like they're not requiring unreasonable knowledge of faked ages.


If they only upload videos taken with the selfie cam which look like a minor and seem to have a pre puberty voice and their locations are sometimes in Minnesota would that be enough to warrant: "had reason to know that the individual account holder was under 18 years"?

If so that implies social network will have to scan every video for the age range of participants.


I certainly lied about my age to get my Hotmail account (which dates me fairly well).

I'm sure there are plenty enough kids who accurately represented their age between 13-18 to make this quite enforceable. I probably said I was 13 when I was 12, or something close enough.

Do a PSA campaign telling parents to make sure their kids' social media apps correctly represent their age to keep them safe. Would work well enough.


>Hotmail account (which dates me fairly well).

Well, you might have been a precocious 2-year old Microsoft fan in 2012. So, depending on your timezone, you should be in bed young man! And what do you think you were doing on HN at the young age of 1?


The easiest way to not show non-chronological results to kids lying about their age isn't KYC, it's showing chronological results to everyone.

(or, well, not showing results to anyone)

I'm much less concerned about the issue of identifying kids (if they can't identify kids, all the better, adults get to benefit too) than that they're probably accidentally banning whole categories of useful things like rolling your own search engine.


Yeah wow I would love this. It would finally make social media useful again.

I actually enjoyed seeing what my friends were up to on Facebook until they moved to this algorithmic timeline and it started showing only what they think I'd want to see.

Unfortunately it invariably thinks I want more of the same and that's exactly not what I want.

But I've closed all my accounts and don't think I'll ever go back anyway.


People will always go around rules. The point of rules is to send a clear signal that something is bad or socially unacceptable. In this case it's signaling to the parents that it's desirable that they enforce this rule.


If GDPR is possible, this is also possible.


Because that really worked out well?


doesnt matter that it worked well if it still happened.


I believe it has had an effect.

As an example, I work for a European company whose product tracks people in an indoor space, as a byproduct of its main function.

Our (German) CEO made it clear we were constrained in our product development by GDPR's stipulations around pseudonymous data and data retention.




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