Hopefully society continues to develop healthy norms with regard to this sort of technology. Collectively it's taken us a while, but I think people generally are starting to get the picture. Smartphones are bad in a wide variety of ways, but even when people miss some of the nuance I think we can make progress regarding the minimization of their usage.
Here in MA there is a 'bell to bell' phone ban bill in the works. I'm very happy we're letting kids be kids again. There is no need for a phone during the school day.
And just to show how (US) universal this idea is becoming, a Texas law banning cellphones went into effect at the start of the school year.
This happened at the same time a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms would have went into effect but was temporarily blocked while it works it's way through the courts [0]
I praise you for not defaulting to US-defaultism, which is quite common on HN, but this really seems to be universal. There are also regulations like this in Scandinavia, France, Germany is talking about it.
California just got strict about this, too. I have found a dramatic increase in the amount of interpersonal talking that's happening in school as a result, which is great!
Australia banned phones in schools 1-2 years ago and it's been widely recognised as a huge success. I think banning social media like facebook/tiktok/etc for kids would be a huge benefit as well. Leaving just IM/group chats for kids to directly talk to each other without scrolling a feed of ragebait and ai slop.
I'm expecting a kiddo this winter and my use of devices+my likely future kid's relationship with tech has really been on my mind. The fact that people are thinking through this and actually working on it puts me slightly more at ease.
You probably won't have much to worry about until you have to decide whether screen time for your kid (at age 3-4) is a reasonable trade-off for you and your partner to have peaceful time to yourselves. Then it'll rear it's head again, after lulling you into complacency, when the kid is middle school age and all their friends have smartphones. Then you have to decide whether the convenience factor (for you) of your kid having a device is worth the trade-off of... them having a device.
Fwiw, my older two are 14 & 16 and we still use device control software on their phones and laptops. The younger of the two complains a bit periodically but the older one just accepts that it's the way it is and gets on with his life [most of the time].
I personally advise you not to let your young kid get into e-gaming. Things like Fortnite, Roblox and Minecraft are gateways to increased device usage, and the benefits are (again, imho) not remotely worth it nor irreplaceable by much healthier alternatives.
Fun tidbit: my 8yo has a Kindle Fire and we've let her have Netflix & Disney+ installed on it. She also uses the Kindle & Libby apps to read voraciously, and Khan Academy for math. When she watches streaming media, though, she frequently watches it on mute with subtitles. That shocked me to see, and I asked her about it. She's 100% cool with that and appreciate the "privacy" of being able to watch things without other people meddling in her business. Shrug.
Banning a 16 year old from minecraft is so far beyond reasonable imo. I'd agree with not giving young kids ipads and walking away. But what sounds like a blanket ban on gaming is absurd.
Parents have always wanted time for themselves. There are Americans alive today who will tell you that they used to play outside from dusk to dawn and only saw their parents at dinner.
Serious question (I don't have kids of my own): before smartphones and tablets and the ubiquity of laptops and computers, what did parents do to get some peaceful time to themselves?
It's hard to believe that parents were only able to achieve this during the past 15-20 years.
(When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, I spent plenty of time outdoors with my friends in the neighborhood, and also inside, in front of my Nintendo, either with friends or without. Not sure how much peace my parents got, but I assume it was non-zero.)
What era are you talking about? Later than the 90s had computers and game consoles. Before that it was going outside and digging holes, throwing stones.
Same thing they do now: Get a nanny, ask the grandparents, playdates, ... Putting kids in front of a device is lazy, and unfortunately, most of us are lazy.
> When she watches streaming media, though, she frequently watches it on mute with subtitles. That shocked me to see, and I asked her about it. She's 100% cool with that and appreciate the "privacy" of being able to watch things without other people meddling in her business. Shrug.
I do this myself from time to time (and I do it more often if I didn't have bluetooth earbuds), that seems like a perfectly sensible thing to be concerned about.
Yeah, being restricted by laws passed by random adults about what things you can and cannot do during school hours - such as being at school itself - is certainly characteristic of being a kid.
I don't think it's actually possible for a parent and community to safely and sanely raise a human child without some amount of coercion the kid doesn't want in the moment, so I don't advocate for this. Still, it is important to acknowledge that being coerced by people more powerful than you who think they know better than you do about what is good for you is unpleasant in and of itself, and society should try to minimize doing this to children to the extent possible.
Inane appeals to tradition are boring as fuck and completely useless. We should continue to circumcise infant males because we did it for decades (centuries?) and got by just fine! This says nothing about whether kids having access to cellphones is worthwhile and everything about how garbage your argument against them is.
People "roll coal" it because it is kinda amusing to do it, and it is a middle finger towards people they perceive to be preachy.
I accidentally "rolled coal" in my 90s Landrover because I was in totally the wrong gear going up a steep hill. It was amusing in the way of "oh shit! I kinda just blew a load of black smoke in the driver face behind me".
Yes, people do all sorts of nasty and cruel things because they think it's kinda amusing. That doesn't justify the behavior.
The act of riding a bicycle in and of itself is not "preachy". That happens. "six bicyclists training for a road race were run over by a 16-year-old who was rolling coal", at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal .
Rolling coal nearly always implies deliberate intent, not coincidental timing. Some examples from state laws listed at that same Wikipedia page: "knowing release of soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions", "with the intent", "may not knowingly or intentionally cause", "intentionally release significant quantities of soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions"
Your reply is exactly the preachy response that causes people to be defiant and resentful.
> Yes, people do all sorts of nasty and cruel things because they think it's kinda amusing. That doesn't justify the behavior.
Blowing a bit of soot up in the air isn't in itself cruel. It is just a bit naughty. Now doing it in someone's face like I've seen in videos deliberately is not very nice and can be dangerous. I think it should go without saying that I don't condone anti-social and dangerous behaviour.
> The act of riding a bicycle in and of itself is not "preachy". That happens. "six bicyclists training for a road race were run over by a 16-year-old who was rolling coal", at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal .
Who said anything about riding a bicycle is preachy? BTW, I am a cyclist that spent 3 months out of work because of a hit and run accident that left me with a permanent weakness in my right shoulder as a result. The reason I don't spend a lot of time with other cyclists, is because everything started to become a political issue against drivers, a lot of my fellow cyclists are preachy. I heard people saying that owning a pet was akin to slavery and other such nonsense. As someone that enjoys both driving and cycling, it left a bad taste in my mouth.
BTW, In the story he caused a collision while rolling coal. The issue was dangerous driving. Not blowing some soot up into the air itself.
> Rolling coal nearly always implies deliberate intent, not coincidental timing.
In my case it was, it was because I was stuck in the wrong gear. My vehicle is currently in a garage being repaired for that very issue now (clutch is worn). It was funny in the sense of "OMG that is embarassing".
Define "preachy". Are you sure you aren't the one preaching the fun of burning coal and annoying people under the banner of "can't you take a joke"?
> Who said anything about riding a bicycle is preachy?
People burn coal while passing cyclists. Why? You yourself say that not all cyclists are preachy.
> In my case it was
Your accidental and short release of dark exhaust caused by driving an old vehicle does not fit the definition of burning coal. City busses where I lived in the 1980s emitted a lot of exhaust. That was simply bad emissions control, not rolling coal.
> Define "preachy". Are you sure you aren't the one preaching the fun of burning coal and annoying people under the banner of "can't you take a joke"?
What are you on about? I prefaced my post quite clearly. This is nonsense.
> People burn coal while passing cyclists. Why? You yourself say that not all cyclists are preachy.
Because there is a perception that cyclists are like this. Whether it is true or not doesn't matter. If a group of people don't police the most extreme members you are defined by those members.
BTW mountain bikers/bmx don't generally have the same poor perception IME as many other cyclists because generally the attitude is generally different.
> Your accidental and short release of dark exhaust caused by driving an old vehicle does not fit the definition of burning coal. City busses where I lived in the 1980s emitted a lot of exhaust. That was simply bad emissions control, not rolling coal.
Other than it not being deliberate it was "rolling coal". To get the black soot you need to just have poor combustion of a diesel.
This was what was happening because I had to push the throttle to the limit so the engine didn't stall. For all intents and purposes it is exactly the same thing as there was incomplete combustion of diesel and therefore lots of black smoke coming from my exhaust.
> I reiterate my earlier comment about it being childish. "You look like someone I should hate, so I am going to fuck with you in particular."
I agree. However if the most vocal members of the group come off preachy, self entitled etc. at best people are going to be ambivalent towards you and at worst straight off hostile.
> Oh the irony in these same people being quite fond of claiming it's everyone else that's the emotional snowflake.
It is often pot and kettle. I am not in the US and don't care about stupid culture war bs. I see both as equally ridiculous.
> No. Rolling coal requires injecting vastly more fuel and making the mixture far richer than even the worst possible factory tune.
This is exactly what happened. Someone has messed with the fuel pump (before I owned it) and/or the throttle cable isn't adjusted properly.
So all intents and purposes the effect was the same. That is why the vehicle is in the garage. I don't like having a vehicle that isn't running properly.
Earlier you wrote it was "because I was in totally the wrong gear going up a steep hill".
Now it's "Someone has messed with the fuel pump (before I owned it) and/or the throttle cable isn't adjusted properly."
Here's NJ's law:
> No person shall retrofit any diesel-powered vehicle with any device, smoke stack (i.e., hood stack or bed stack), or other equipment which enhances the vehicle's capacity to emit soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions, or shall purposely release significant quantities of soot, smoke, or other particulate emissions into the air and onto roadways and other vehicles while operating the vehicle, colloquially referred to as "coal rolling."
Did you purposely release significant quantities of soot? According to your own words, that was not your intent.
Therefore under NJ law you were not rolling coal, even though the visible effect is the same. The law is based on your intent and purpose.
Yes, In some people minds that is the case. Do you think that is a big own on me? I agree, those guys shouldn't be doing that because they look like idiots.
However at the same time I understand the attitude. The fact that I understand an attitude doesn't mean I condone it.
Whether it is true or not doesn't matter. If motorists don't police the most extreme members then motorists are defined by those members.
You don't condone it but you think calling it nasty behavior is preachy. Sounds like you are so afraid of being vocal and preachy that the most you can do is say “tisk, tisk” - hardly effective policing.
The only offering that possibly might have been compelling enough to charge for was Messenger if it existed in a vacuum, but there were already numerous services offering much the same for free (e.g. MSN, ICQ, AIM), and when others realized that is what the people actually wanted, many more immediately threw their hat in the ring (e.g. iMessage). There would have been no practical hope of it making it as a paid service.
assuming they were able to acquire customers and dominate the world with that business model, would that have prevented them from doing algorithmic feeds and promoting clickbait and poisoning politics and the rest?
sure, people would have been able to cancel their monthly facebook subscriptions if they didn't like that stuff. but we can effectively do that now just by not using it.
> Just 15 years ago the outlook of social media was much more optimistic.
Those who forget Usenet are doomed to repeat it, I suppose.
> It was all bullshit of course
Or, more likely, what was dreamed of ended up being incorrect. Like we learn every time we try social media, people don't actually want to be social online. That takes work and the vast majority of people don't want to spend their free time doing work. They want to sit back, relax, and be entertained by the professionals.
As before, businesses can only survive if they give others exactly what they want, which doesn't necessarily overlap with what is good for them. A fast food burger isn't good for you, but it is a good business to be in because it is something many people want. Arguably small communities like HN with exceptionally motivated people can make it work to some extent, but that is not something that captures the masses.
It's not coincidence that those who tried to make a go of social media ~15 years ago have all turned into what are little more than TV channels with a small mix of newspaper instead. That is where the want is actually found at the moment. Social media didn't work in the 1980s, the 2010s, and it won't work in the 2080s either. It's is not something that appeals to humans (generally speaking).
Can you provide an example of where facebook tried to do what most people would consider good that also required any >1% kind of sacrifice or risk on their part?
My impression is their moto was win at any cost and ask forgiveness later (not because we mean that either but because it will reduce the legal penalties and make us look like normal humans.) In some ways watching Mark reminds me of the infamous cigarette cartel testifying.
> Can you provide an example of where facebook tried to do what most people would consider good
They gave the social media thing an honest try for a short period of time. And it even came with a lot of fanfare initially as people used it as the "internet's telephone book" to catch up with those they lost touch with.
But once initial pleasantries were exchanged, people soon realized why they lost touch in the first place, and most everyone started to see that continually posting pictures of their cat is a stupid use of time. And so, Facebook and the like recognized that nobody truly wanted social media, gave up on the idea, and quickly pivoted into something else entirely.
Social media is a great idea in some kind of theoretical way — I can see why you bought into the idea — but you can't run a business on great theoretical ideas. You can't even run a distributed public service without profit motive on great theoretical ideas, as demonstrated by Usenet. You have to actually serve what people actually want, which isn't necessarily (perhaps not even often) what is good for them.
> Like we learn every time we try social media, people don't actually want to be social online. That takes work and the vast majority of people don't want to spend their free time doing work. They want to sit back, relax, and be entertained by the professionals.
That's not it at all. Facebook shifted because they wanted you to spend more time on their website and serve you more ads. And once you've seen all your posts from your friends you'd be done and close facebook.
Which is why the posts from the friends are now completely gone, replaced by… stuff.
> Facebook shifted because they wanted you to spend more time on their website and serve you more ads.
Right. A service that isn't used is pointless. Usenet didn't serve ads or even try to make money, but also didn't get used, and was also deemed unworthy of attention. I mean technically it is still running out there in some corner of the internet, but when was the last time you used it? I bet 90% of HN users have never used it even once, and that's a technical crowd who are the most likely to use it. Your school crossing guard will have never heard of it.
> Which is why the posts from the friends are now completely gone
That's not exactly true. There is a secondary newsfeed that is limited to just your friends' posts, under the "Friends" tab. But let's be honest: Nobody (other than a few, let say odd, characters) post anything, so it's always empty. This is no doubt why you claim that it doesn't even exist. You're not wrong in practice, even though it is technically there.
This is the problem with social media. They learned pretty quickly that it doesn't work — the same hard lesson Usenet learned decades prior — which is why they had to pivot away from it. If you don't give people exactly what they want, you're not going to go anywhere. Plain and simple.
This is the same logic that has parents buying games like GTA for their prepubescent children and being dumbfounded that the kids are exposed to violent images.
While we can definitely point the blame at tech companies that manipulate algorithms, engage in dark patterns, etc, it's ultimately up to the consumer to consume judiciously and moderate their own well being. Nobody ever asked Apple or Google to "deliver what's best" for society. What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults.
America has an entire political party who runs a party line that unregulated businesses will naturally do what's "best" because of "free market mumble mumble". They even sometimes outright insist that "best" in that context means "best for humans and society", and that any attempt to constrain that will be Communism and cause all of society to collapse.
>What's best for society is a collection of rational, intelligent, and accountable adults.
That same party insists that you should be able to choose to enroll your child in a school that does nothing but teach weird christian doctrines, and outright lies like "Evolution is controversial" or "Continental drift is not proven" or "The USA is a Christian country". They demonstrably want to be able to direct my tax dollars to these institutions, based on their choice.
Everyone should spend time checking out what the tens of millions of self reported fundamentalist "Christian" americans pay money for. There is an entire alternative media economy and it is horrifying. It exists to reinforce tons of outright false and delusional narratives, like an imagined persecution complex against christians.
If you think those tens of millions of Americans don't have power or sway in this country, they are literally the reason why visa and mastercard keep shutting down porn businesses (the higher fraud claim is just false and probably a lie, ask me how I know!) and the current House majority leader is their guy, as well as Trump's previous VP, as well as maybe technically JD Vance, as well as like Joe Rogan, who insists that AI is the second coming of christ because it doesn't have a mother, just like christ. Not joking, that is a real thing that Joe Rogan has made millions of dollars saying to over 20 million people. Oh, and at least one Supreme Court Justice.
Our business is one of the most straightforward ways to turn a stolen credit card into usable money for a fraudster. I know what our fraud rates are. At no point has any payment processor cared at all about a payment flow with high fraud. At most, they will charge us a tiny bit more money to service those transactions.
Credit Card companies do not care about chargebacks, as long as you don't substantially hurt consumer goodwill. They get their money back from the merchant, and every successful chargeback is a reminder to consumers of how credit cards will protect you. A false chargeback would also be unlikely to harm consumer confidence in that protection, since the consumer knows they weren't defrauded.
We know Ashley Madison had millions of paying subscribers. The idea that porn websites have "Higher fraud rates" entirely comes from the unstated assumption that porn consumers will chargeback their payment, and this claim is not justified. Consumers do not make a habit of making false chargeback claims, it just isn't substantiated in the data. We also have substantial evidence that lots of people want to genuinely pay for porn, and will pay significant amounts.
If 1 out of every 5 people who paid for pornhub tried to do a chargeback, that would not be a payment stream the credit card processor would be bothered by.
Meanwhile, the facts on the ground are that there is a fundamentalist religious organization formerly known as Media Matters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_on_Sexual_Expl... who have been working since at least the Nixon administration to ban things like sex toys from sale, to ban sex education, to stop same sex marriage legalization, to prevent the decriminalization of sex work. They were part of LBJ's commission on obscenity and pornography. They asked Reagan to ban pornography in 1983. They are significantly responsible for the large media blitz in 2020 that demonstrated that pornhub had a genuine problem with things like revenge porn and underage porn that lead to pornhub deleting 90% of their content, which frankly is a good thing, but they are demonstrably and openly not out to help sex workers or keep porn safe, but rather to kill it. Their official stance is that porn is a public health crisis. They were one of the principle supporters behind FOSTA, a bill that most sex workers insisted would make their jobs less safe.
Why is there a popular, trite, completely unsubstantiated narrative that is super popular on places like reddit for how porn companies lost the ability to take payments despite open and direct and admitted actions by an organization that has openly worked for decades to ban porn who helped sue porn companies? Gee, I wonder why.
Meanwhile, two months ago, the stepson of the chairman of that very organization was charged for child porn, so you know, the standard religious right style of "We have to protect the children" while literally abusing children.
Notably, the recent spat with getting some really, uh, """Niche""" adult oriented games off steam was not (at least, publicly, but this is not an accusation) done by them, but an unaffiliated Australian organization that has a better track record of doing what they claim. Steam also is still selling lots of porn games.
