The "without lawful authority" condition will result in this being vacated upon appeal. Meta isn't a public nuisance any more than Philip Morris. Both are regulated already, both produce addictive products, both are optional.

The level of regulation applied to Meta is very different from Philip Morris.

This dumb lawfare is a safety valve to allow them to continue not to regulate. Just like the under-18 bans are also an excuse not to regulate (and to root everyone's computer.) Somehow the evil algorithms become fine the day people turn 18, so all they have to do to comply is check. It's individuals' responsibility to make it easy for them.

Yes, it's much lower

Are both optional in the same way? Where I live a child has a much harder time getting cigarettes than getting access to Facebook. What's the regulation here that applies to Meta you're thinking of?

Optional != accessible

ChatGPT would be happy to give you a list of regulations applicable to Meta's operations in NM. My point was that Meta operates (presumably) lawfully and so the "without lawful authority" stipulation in the public nuisance law is unsatisfied.

I’m doubtful, I think you’re reading it too much as plain English.

“Lawful” in a legal context means “in accordance with the law”. You are immune to this law if you are operating under authority granted by law. It would be generally understood that the intent is to immunize police officers, ambulances with sirens, highway construction, etc. People granted specific authority over something by law.

Meta has very little lawful authority, and the little they have would only apply to their own property. Even that is severely curtailed relative to private citizens, there are a _ton_ of things you can do as a citizen that you can’t as a business (eg I can refuse to allow Rastafarians into my house if I want, a business cannot).

Phillip Morris is fundamentally different as a product because it lacks network effects. I can start smoking, quit smoking, change brands, nothing outside of me really changes.

Facebook doesn’t have that. I can’t go down the street and switch to Twitter without either convincing everyone else to switch or giving up on them. My mom plans parties as Facebook events. She won’t switch. Ergo I am forced to use Facebook to participate in family events. Phillip Morris lacks that. Family events aren’t suddenly invisible because I smoke Djarums now (although they might avoid me before I start ranting about “the man”).

That’s why Facebook is a nuisance in a way Phillip Morris isn’t. Facebook isn’t nearly as optional for many people, they get roped in by circumstances largely outside their control.

Not to take one side or another but these assertions are wrong on their face:

> Phillip Morris is fundamentally different as a product because it lacks network effects. I can start smoking, quit smoking, change brands, nothing outside of me really changes.

Missing out on the socialization of smoke breaks is a huge cultural pull. And remember all the 90's/00's campaigns highlighting the dangers of peer pressure. Not to mention the plumes of smoke being blown into the air for passerby to inhale - that is not a public nuisance?

> Missing out on the socialization of smoke breaks is a huge cultural pull.

Sure. But the specific claim was that

  Phillip Morris is fundamentally different as a product because it lacks network effects.

While I can imagine a smoke break group that prohibits members that smoke cigarettes from brands other than those owned by Phillip Morris, I expect the number of such groups to be very, very close to zero. In contrast, groups that use Facebook to socialize are very likely to exclude folks who refuse to use Facebook.

It's very easy for the members of a smoke break group to continue to interact fully with a member who switches from Marlboro to American Spirit cigarettes. It's a right pain in the ass for the members of a Facebook group to continue to interact fully with someone who switches from Facebook to X/Twitter.

> Meta isn't a public nuisance

The premise of the article is that they are, as determined by an actual judge, as well as a jury after a full trial where evidence was presented.

Replying “no they aren’t” is utterly free of substance.

These rulings are stupid and if generalized would make doing business impossible. Parents should parent their kids. That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down?

The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun. It has distorted many a young man’s ideas of intimacy and sexual relations.

One third of porn consumers are women. They are hardly immune.

Erotica != porn...

What is the difference between erotica and porn?

I am no expert, however, the former requires and stimulates the imagination, whereas the latter doesn't do that, everything is shown and nothing is left to the imagination.

From my experience of the 'stumbleupon' (a link-sharing site from many years ago), I would describe the saucy pictures women collected/liked as erotica rather than porn. Clearly porn would not make it to Stumbleupon, however, erotica tended to be collected by women rather than men.

This is just anecdotal observation from a few years ago.

Fundamentally, Western culture objectifies women (for profit) whereas other cultures don't necessarily do that, to consider porn as degenerate.

There is also local culture. Compare the boy that has strong women in their life and attends a mixed school with the boy that has older brothers but no sisters, goes to all-boys schools and is exposed to 'DJT locker room talk' (that would not never wash at the mixed school). The former is going to find porn to be cringeful and boring, whereas the latter gets hooked, particularly if they have a weak father figure that is into porn.

In the USA there is an incredible amount of sex and violence in the media. Just because it is all around, American women are going to be 'ambient' consumers of porn, with partners that think that watching porn with their partners is okay. I am not disputing your 'third of consumers' statistic, however, there are parts of the world where women have some 'immunity' to it.

As an aside, we all have our price and I did do some work for Playboy many aeons ago. I thought this would be a career limiting move, however, the Playboy people behind the camera were all women, extremely intelligent and a joy to work with. We didn't have full nudity, with the women in front of the camera being down to earth, friendly and not what I had 'feared'.

Playboy also had the articles, some of which would not be touched by the mainstream media, enabling Playboy to be a platform for whistleblowers, whilst giving some 'plausible deniability' for readers.

> Fundamentally, Western culture objectifies women (for profit) whereas other cultures don't necessarily do that

I don’t know if this is true. I’m fairly certain that all cultures have prostitutes. And porn is more a function of technology and income rather than geography. Lots of exploitation of women in Asia, Africa, and other non-Western cultures.

Of course, this is something that all culture need to work on improving. But understanding reality is a big step to stopping or reducing this objectification.

But they are less violent.

The long tail of women's erotic novels is way worse because there's a lot less laws regulating what you can put in text vs film.

And yet, women dont create whole networks of sexual abuse and overall are less sexually violent.

And they are less likely to create whole ideologies, political parties and movements that rationalize and defend all that abuse.

>And they are less likely to create whole ideologies, political parties and movements that rationalize and defend all that abuse.

Women are less likely to create whole ideologies, political parties and movements as a general baseline.

I'm not sure they do evil shit any less once you account for that.

The topic is specifically sexual abuse, porn vs erotic books.

The commenter tried to play the "erotic romance books are as bad as hard core porn and no one is treating it that way" bullshit.

Women do create political ideologies and movements. They do participate in them too. The topic is specifically who is building and defending sexual abuse networks, who is invested more in defending right to abuse.

> And yet, women dont create whole networks of sexual abuse

That explains why women like Ghislaine Maxwell or Kat Torres don't exist I guess.

The fact the list ends at 2 women who were already named, when the men involved number in the hundreds and are still being protected, kind of ruins your point…

I've got plenty more if you want them. The fact that any exist at all is enough to prove that the statement "women dont create whole networks of sexual abuse" was a lie.

Ghislaine Maxwell was a part od male run male dominanted abuse network. The one which was supported by powerful men in goverment and politicians. Adult women were minority there.

Nice try. But while some women were part of Epstein network, overall it was male network. And pretty ideologically misogynistic at that.

I suspect erotic novels make it more likely for readers to become victims of abuse, if anything.

Size doesn't matter all that much in the modern world. Even toddlers can murder people with a gun. Tiny people can kill very effectively with knives, poisons, cars, etc. The smaller you are the easier it can be to get away with it too.

This is not true. IIRC this factoid comes from the results of surveys asking people whether they had ever been the victims of domestic violence (not necessarily in their current relationships), and it should come as no surprise that relationships comprised of two women have the highest reporting rates of having been subjected to violence over their lifetimes, and relationships of two men the lowest rates. Within-relationship rates of domestic violence for lesbian couples are not higher than for heterosexual couples!

Wow, that's really torturing the data to fit your worldview.

In what aspect is Playboy magazines superior?

it contained significantly less extreme content. There's studies on kids as young as 12 routinely being exposed to sexual violence, practices such as choking or degrading activity in porn and viewing it as so normal that young women report being expected to take part in it. Fetishes and kinks that were reserved for adults are now normalized among teens.

"In an essay published in The Free Press in August, 16-year-old Isabel Hogben described how, by the time she was in 4th grade, she had seen internet porn featuring “simulated incest, bestiality, extreme bondage, sex with unconscious women, gangbangs, sadomasochism and unthinkable physical violence.” This is not an isolated case: A French government task force on equality recently reported that as much as 90% of online pornography features “verbal, physical and sexual violence toward women.”

Playboy wasn't necessarily a beacon of feminism (although sometimes surprisingly it was) but what young people are exposed to is in an entirely different category.

https://archive.ph/CPeNz

> it contained significantly less extreme content

And I think that's understating it. I have not read a Playboy (is it even still in print?) since I was a teenager. At that time, the pictures showed breasts and maybe some pubic hair. Even the more "hardcore" magazines that were generally available such as Penthouse and Hustler were tame compared to even the front-page thumbnails on Pornhub. There were more explicit magazines produced, but you could only get them in "adult" bookstores and if you were under 18 you could not get in, and if you were over 18 there was a certain fear/shame of possibly being seen there that kept most people away.

If you really wanted it you could get hardcore stuff of course, but it was a lot more effort and cost compared to just opening a web browser. It was not something most people had ever really seen, certainly not among young children and teens.

To quote Alito, on Pornhub:

"Is it like the old Playboy magazine? You have essays there by the modern-day equivalent of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr.?"

It also had (has?) articles that were (are?) informative. There are a few photo spreads of naked women. Also some bawdy jokes that appeal to boys of all ages.

Disclaimer: my parents would not have that "birds and bees" conversation with me, so they instead subscribed to Playboy & Penthouse magazines for me.

There’s a single naked woman in it. No hard bum, oral, every cavity sex. Have you ever held a Playboy magazine in your hand?

I guess "superior" is subjective

Yeah, it depends what you like.

> The world would almost assuredly be a better place if 14 year olds were looking at playboy magazines instead of having easy access to every fetish under the sun.

That was the world I grew up in. It was not better, it was just less open.

> The problem is the lack of proper sexual education in schools and open dialogue in society because we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy

The UK has a lot of sex education, no such taboos, and is the home of OnlyFans. Are any of the problems you mention better in the UK than the US?

> Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender kids,

There is no reason this has to be true.

IMO you are too caught up on the religious part of the teaching [ maybe rightfully so ] and less on the actual message.

The reason why this is so important is because of the preservation of the family. It is undeniable that a two parent healthy relationship is best for children regardless of religion. However religion is the proxy that is used to get there.

>The UK has a lot of sex education, no such taboos, and is the home of OnlyFans. Are any of the problems you mention better in the UK than the US?

I don't know, probably.

>There is no reason this has to be true.

The incessant need of moralists and God-botherers to purge society of anything they deem immoral is the reason. You give these people an inch and and a legal pretext and they take a mile.

i consider the negative impact of child exposure to hardcore pornography as outweighing the positives of online sex education and would prefer them both deleted rather than having the former involved

If you ban the latter, the former will proliferate in secret until it becomes the dominant culture.

> it already is the dominant culture. just look at the birth rate, as well reported damage from hardcore sex eg anal fissure rates, as well the existence of the western term gooning.

When I was about 10, playground rumour was that alllllll men who have sex with men end up in hospital for torn anuses ("my mum says so and she's a nurse!"; I did not believe this at the time, but I was 10 and this was 1993, what was I going to say to that?)

If you think the mere "existence of the western term gooning" says much of anything about changes due specifically to internet culture, you've not seen the ancient erotic collections in museums. The internet makes it more difficult to be ignorant of the diversity of the human condition; in the past it was still diverse, but easier to ignore those differences.

What does seem to have actually changed (though even here it is difficult to be certain) is that our exposure to presentations of "perfection" has resulted in reality being dissatisfying: people still want relationships with other people, but reject potential partners who are in real life anything less than 9/10 on a scale of "how hard did you go on an Instagram filter after also going hard on makeup and even then this is scored on a curve from the best that the algorithm decided to show me?"

Despite the UK's better sex education, the country (or at least its leadership) is still disturbingly socially conservative when it comes to sex.

What is the evidence that makes you think so?

Sex education is, outside of some places in Europe, very rare. You'll certainly find such things far and few between in Asia. So not only is it absent in non-Christian nations, but the places where it is present, like Scandiland for ex, tend to be Christian.

Porn, let alone fetish porn, has a big problem because all the actors, including "amateur", are not only 'heavily used' and completely desensitized, but also the sort of people willing to publicly share video of themselves having sex. And so anybody taking any sort of que from there, whatsoever, has no clue what normal sex or normal relations look like.

It doesn't require porn. Most movies, tv shows, rom-coms or dramas, have "unrealistic" depictions of "normal" relationships.

Indeed, IMHO romance on tv did much more to poison relationships than pr0n.

I'm pretty sure most guys know that what they see on pr0n isn't "real."

>Porn, let alone fetish porn, has a big problem because all the actors, including "amateur", are not only 'heavily used' and completely desensitized, but also the sort of people willing to publicly share video of themselves having sex.

Maybe, but none of that is germane to the subject at hand.

It's the responsibility of parents and other adults to keep children away from porn, and to teach them about sex and normal relations. Removing porn doesn't solve that problem because again the problem isn't the porn, it's the fact that porn is serving a role in educating people that society refuses to.

>It's the responsibility of parents and other adults to keep children away from porn

The only way to do that [currently] is legislation. It is impossible otherwise.

“ we're limited by Christian taboos to only ever mentioning abstinence until marriage, so porn becomes the only way men learn about sex and intimacy, and they learn to see their own self worth as a function of their sexual prowess, and women as sexual currency.”

Holy…what the actual…get out of my head. Where can I read more about this idea/how to recover from this type of upbringing? Please?

Therapy and an emotionally mature and patient partner.

I think it's important to make a distinction between actual porn sites and sites that just have people talking about LGBTQ stuff. I'm trans and me and my spouse don't want our kids to watch porn.

Huge blind spot to think that content only affects men’s view of intimacy and sexual relations

Explain that one for the class

Its a common conception but today is your lucky day to articulate it

To be clear, you want me to articulate a point that you fabricated and then attributed to me? I think I’m going to pass, but feel free to continue the discussion with yourself about things I didn’t say.

to clarify, you're suggesting I introduced a strawman argument because your focus on men wasn't mean to exclude anyone else?

that's... interesting. can you instead tell us why you prioritize men's sexuality over others then? or if that's somehow a distortion of what you said too, can you tell us why the focus on men at all?

Psst, he didn’t reply to you. He replied to the person that replied to you.

Good catch, I also wouldn’t have posted if I noticed that

Lol I have never met someone in my adult life in the usa who was strictly for abstinence before marriage. You are extremely overstating the taboo of it here.

I know dozens. I'm sure I've met thousands. I used to be active in a lutheran (LCMS) church. If that's where you form your social network, you're likely to be _primarily_ around people who believe in abstinence before marriage. And if you're non-religious, you'll have a different social network.

America maybe a melting pot, but if you'll let me abuse the metaphor a bit- there's not a lot of stirring going on. There are conservative churches in every city in the US, and this is still a fairly religious country.

LCMS is more conservative as you know, There is a lot of disagreement between ELCA.

I know of many lutheran [cool] pastors who had earrings, pony tails, never preached a single word about strict abstinence. There are many gay members of the Lutheran church and are welcomed.

LCMS and ELCA are practically different religions, IMO. In fact, my pastor at the time had a long angry rant about one of his peers who gave a speech at an event where ELCA pastors also spoke- he said that speaking alongside them gave the false impression that we condone their behavior (ordaining women, accepting gays), which we absolutely did not.

I'm not religious at all anymore. But I value my time as a devout person, it was super educational, and honestly I got a lot out of it. But I wouldn't go back there even for the social aspects.

Sounds like you're extremely limited in your experiences in the US. Maybe you should sit this one out? Your ignorance is not as good as someone else's lived experience.

https://ncac.org/resource/timeline-of-abstinence-only-educat...

Sure, but many schools teach only this. It is the dominant culture by construction, meaning we intentionally made it this way. I only got an abstinence only sex education as a young gay boy. That's dangerous. I had to learn about consent, protection, and HIV on my own as an adult. This is how teens become pregnant and why HIV is still a problem today.

Do you know many religious people? It's pretty common in the evangelical Christian community I grew up in.

You are extremely ignorant.

There are many parts of the US that have legislated away all sex education other than abstinence, despite it having the obvious effect on teen pregnancy (and therefore abortion rates where it is legal!)

There are tens of millions of fundamentalists "christians" in the US.

"I haven't personally seen it so it can't be real" is absolutely a wild take in a place as heterogenous as the US, with 350 million human beings, huge diversity in backgrounds.

Have you even stepped foot in a random Christian church? Or "Christian" church? They are utterly insane, and will have a hundred loyal adherents even in rural towns.

The "christian" cults that were common around northern maine included one that banned Halloween and reading harry potter.

There is, right now in the US, a stupid cult of "Catholics" that insist the church's official policy stances after about 1970 were blasphemy, and that they want to go back to pre Vatican-II policy, which includes such gems as Jewish people as a whole being officially labeled at fault for the crucifixion of Jesus

The US has, in it's history, cultivated up to SIX "Great Awakenings", which were events in US past where millions of dumbasses just started following whoever showed up to give speeches in the park, where multiple modern "Christian" religions spawned, including Mormonism and "Christian Scientists" which were literally a harem of morons who fell over themselves trying to please an insane woman who made up stories of former illness so she could claim she was "Healed". Her lies were mostly stolen from a quack practicing Animal Magnetism.

Go look up Ken Ham and the Answers in Genesis folks. Their absurd Noah's Ark gets a million visitors a year.

Insane fundamentalist christians in the US are so big and powerful that they run an entire parallel economy for all their grifty grievance propaganda, where you can buy shoddily produced ripoffs of popular teen movies that have all the writing removed and replaced with "The government wants to murder us for believing in god", because it's essential they keep their kids indoctrinated in a belief that they are forever victims, so they can justify their absurd acts like voting in a literal pedophile just so they get supreme court justices who will overturn Roe V Wade, and as they show with their refusal to actually educate teens about sex and it's risks, they do not care about reducing abortion or unwanted pregnancies, and instead simply want "Sluts" to be made to suffer, which should be the complete opposite of what Jesus Christ would do, as Jesus made a big show of accepting the literal untouchable class of people like a prostitute and lepers.

About 35% of Americans, 100 million people, will state directly that they believe the earth is less than 10k years old. They explicitly believe that God created us as we exactly are now, that evolution is impossible, and therefore that all of science is in a gigantic conspiracy to mislead you, and therefore all of science must be an agent of Satan himself.

The other two options in this poll were "Humans have evolved over millions of years, but god was involved in this process" and "Humans have evolved over millions of years, but God is not involved".

The first two videos listed on YouTube.com are "FUCK THE SCAMMER! Indian Scammer Opens HIS LITTLE WALLET FOR MY BIG COMPUTER HACK" and "2 Friends Want To Try Benadryl Challenge for the First Time While They're Pissed On Drugs"

Those results are personalized based on your marketing history and surveillance capitalism.

So it really is just a reflection of your proclivities than anything societal.

Why are sites about women's health issues posting porn, exactly?

They aren't, I never said they were.

“Kill all the porn sites and you also kill any site that provides education about sex and gender issues (which society won't,) especially for gay and transgender “*kids*”

What?

Many of the people in the US behind attempts to ban "pornography" also classify anything involving LGBT people, including children, as pornographic. It's about the specific definition of "pornography" as it will be in the law, and that's what will matter.

I think they're saying that religious extremists classify sex education (especially gay or transgender related) as porn and try to use porn laws to get it banned.

I think what they are saying is that porn is often the only way for kids to learn what sex looks like.

How can I parent my kids when every child in the school is a social media addict?

If heroin were commonplace and available in every kid’s pockets would parents be to blame then too?

> How can I parent my kids when every child in the school is a social media addict?

By parenting?

My kids are hyper aware of what social media does, how it works, and how it exploits you. There were lots of conversations about this. There were lots of times that phones got taken away. There was a lot of watching minecraft videos with the kids.

We already did this once before "Its 10pm do you know where your kids are" -- how about some "you have been doom scrolling for 20 minutes, do you know what your kids are doing on their device" ad's! It would go a long way in pointing out where the real responsibility lies.

Yes, actually.

I regularly discuss with my son what he watches and views online. I also share with him what I view. I'm sure that he hides some things from me, but we have a very open channel and he most certainly know what his father approves of and does not approve of.

Furthermore, I fully expect him to cross boundaries and view content that he knows I would not approve of. That's perfectly natural. But while doing so he knows very well that he is overstepping boundaries. That is a critical nuance.

Following this logic in context of GP's hypothetical, your son would end up taking heroin with his classmates covertly because he knows his father doesn't approve of it...

The point that (I think) GP was making is that it's impossible to raise kids in a different world than their peers. If their peers all have phones, your kid gets left out if he doesn't have a phone. If society bans smart-phones for kids under 15, there's nothing to be left out of since none of them have it.

In the general case of weak parents, I agree. In the specific case of covertly trying heroin, I'd say that would likely lead to a preferable outcome than the child thinking that heroin consumption is acceptable in his family.

That's why phone are banned in school in France.

And you can still regulate what your kid does when he's not at school.

Are you helicoptering your children 24/7 when their out of school?

Don't need to. There is parental control and much more interesting things to do. The problem with school is that it's boring and it doesn't tire them enough.

By being an actual fucking parent and not a push over who thinks that because your kids friends are doing heroin it's fine for them to do too. I know it's difficult for you to say no to your children. But it's critical for their well-being. And no you cannot wait until the rest of society decides to criminalize the things you want criminalized before you decide to try to be a parent. The dividing line is the limits you personally set versus those society deems acceptable. I mean how fucking pathetic is this question? Do you just bow to every popular demand? Are you literally the kid who would jump off of a bridge just because your friends did it?

This is the human equivalent of "simply write code with no bugs". If you can't figure out how to write code without bugs, you think you can cause a human being in a complex environment to do exactly what you want against all influences?

How effective are you at controlling anyone in your life, including yourself? If we're really honest, we have a moderate amount of control of ourselves within strict limits (sleep, food, water, temperature, hormones, organ function, etc.). We have little to no actual control of others, we can only try to create incentives / structures to coax behavior we desire.

Posted study in comment below, but actually harsher parenting tends to result in more rebellious behavior.

Maybe a counter point: would you work better for a boss that was up your ass constantly and forcing you to work on stuff you didn't want? I've found I'm more effective when incentives are aligned and my boss is supportive and collaborative. Same works for parenting.

Apologies in advance, but this reads like someone who hasn't actually had kids. Keep in mind that people who have kids still only have a small number, and there is luck involved.

You can't decide that they will eat their vegetables.

You can't decide that they are going to be diligent in doing their homework.

And you can't decide whether they take an interest in what society shows them.

Yes, you can open your mouth, spilling out your years of experience, and you can make incentives like offering dessert when they eat their meals.

But that's all you can really do. If there are posters everywhere telling kids to jump off bridges, what are you to do? Stop your kids from looking at them? Just try to talk to them, explaining how big bridge is just there to get your money?

Anyone who has kids knows that they can't control them. You are very dependent on the rest of society behaving.

Honestly this really just reflects on you and what you're capable of doing. All of my children eat vegetables. My middle daughter decided to become a vegetarian at 14. I can absolutely make sure that they do their homework. Otherwise there will be consequences. It's not been an issue. They are smart and get excellent grades. I can absolutely influence their ability and desire to take interests in things. It starts with taking interest yourself. My wife and I read books like they are going to disappear and my children have followed suit. We required our children to do some sort of extra-curricular activities and if they didn't choose them then we would. They learned pretty quickly to pick out things they are actually interested in doing.

All of these things that are somehow "impossible" for you are just facts about how my children were raised. And no, their success or failure is not up to the lowest common denominator in society. It's up to us as parents to raise them and equip them for the world. Not complain about how the world should change so you don't have to tell your kids "no".

This is a simple n=low issue. You get a kid, and they are not extreme. Most kids will indeed respond to parenting.

Don't you ever think about what would happen if your kid was born with a handicap?

You talk like I'm somehow not reading to my kids, or not telling them to do things that are good for them? Have you ever considered that some people will do what you say, and others will not? Do you really think that given any kid, just parenting will get you the outcome you want?

If you are happy with how your kids are, you are not skilled, you are just lucky.

You are even so lucky that you can have the satisfaction of thinking you are skilled.

Yes. But only when they started taking the bus to school and having extra-curricular activities. They had zero portable screen time until they were double digit ages. When they got their iPads, it was made extremely clear that they were not to be used to avoid social situations. It doesn't come out when people are over. It doesn't come out during dinner. It doesn't come out when we're engaged in a family activity. That of course carried over to their phones.

They have zero issues with phones. They even use social media. Somehow they aren't the mindless zombies everyone else's children seem to be turning into. My daughters are in dance and show choir. My youngest plays flute, saxophone and cello. My middle daughter plays clarinet and violin and is learning on her sister's cello. She has a 4.1 gpa so far in high school and just received an award for it. She was one of seven students to receive it out of a class size of almost 600. Because of her musical accomplishments she was invited to play in the UK with other students from around the state next year. They both play tennis and volleyball and have recently taken up pottery. Both are voracious readers who keep testing my limits at Barnes & Noble.

It's amazing what mature and responsible people children can turn into when that's what you expect from them instead of constantly giving into everything they want. All of those activities are voluntary at this point. We don't force them into any of those things. They know that if they didn't do any activities we would find things to keep them occupied like we did when they were younger. So they do a good job of staying busy themselves choosing the things they want to do but still have plenty of time to chat with friends and play roblox and minecraft and even scroll tiktok when they want. Neither of them have a set bedtime. But they know staying up late won't get them out of getting up in the morning so they manage that themselves as well at this point.

We set expectations around them being responsible and mature and they have delivered and have many privileges as a result of it. They have definitely slipped. They are humans. They have bad days and sometimes bad weeks. And when they stop being responsible, they lose those privileges including their phones. Earlier this year my youngest lost all of her electronics for over a month because she's stubborn and still tests things. It wasn't difficult at all to remove and keep the devices from her until behavior changed. The fact that so many parents on HN find it impossible without legal enforcement on everyone is quite frankly fucking insane. But it also seems to explain things like the literacy crisis. These "parents" cannot even take phones away from their children. No way in hell they are making them read.

I don't know, are parents to blame if their kids end up drunk?

Some are, and some aren't.

I know many parents who manage this fine, I don't see why you can't:

1. You control whether your child has a phone and how much they are allowed to use it (Apple provides all sorts of controls for parents).

2. Every child in the school is not an addict. This is (for lack of a better term) a boomer view of the world.

Sure you can argue the nuances, however this is missing the forest for the trees.

Children don’t grow up in a vacuum. They see how their peers operate, what they talk about, what they are playing with.

Not being able to do that marks you as an outsider.

And when the “toys” we are talking about are phones, video games, and social media, it isn’t just a question of a one off argument or rule.

I have seen a 1 year old, whose parents keep him away from screens and tech, get hypnotized by swiping the screen of an Apple Watch on his aunt’s hand.

SV and Tech had the most money, most people, and the ability to test and scale every idea to figure out what would enrapture adult human brains.

This is not any sort of fair fight. A competition where the old approaches to family and child rearing win against the Tech that has been created.

I agree about being outsiders. Social media (if this is even a well-defined term) is just how people communicate these days. No need for hysteria and banning (I was on Slashdot in the 90s. Was that not social media?).

I think it’s as ignorant to want to ban kids from social media today as it was ignorant to want to ban my generation from video games 30 years ago. The kids at the time thought the adults were clueless people who did not understand technology. Kids today correctly think the same way about adults who are hysterical about social media.

Each parent can decide the time and age boundaries for their kids. But to think a 14 year old is going to accept being excluded from communication with their friends is just laughable.

All popular social media platforms today (snapchat, instagram, facebook) have endless streams of unfiltered short-form media which is designed to addict. I think few people are actually criticizing online communication for kids (though there are concerns about what communities and people they may interact with). The major problem is addicting media which promotes asocial behavior and sucks away the joy and creativity of going through life.

This is a manufactured impression by people who don’t understand these systems and the reality around them. Yes I would have played video games all day as a kid but I had a functional family and friends to engage with. It’s true that if you don’t have functional parents then perhaps all bets are off.

And anyway iPhones provide controls for parents to limit screen time.

A parallel between attitudes about new technologies, does not work when the parallel between the two technologies itself is broken.

I too was on slashdot, back in the early days of 5 digit/6 digit IDs. I’ve since worked in trust and safety, and contributed to research on it, and have played video games enough that it’s the “sport” I prefer.

The evidence and research shows that social media is entirely different than the benign games we grew up with. Zelda, Mario, Golden Eye, Ultima - are not the same as the behavioral skinner boxes that showed up with the advent of FarmVille.

And thats just games - the Skinner box and addictive design philosophy has resulted in direct quotes from people at meta warning their executives that this is going to make life worse for children and teens.

The comparison isn’t between panic about video games. The comparison is about panic about giving kids cigarettes and vapes.

I think you should talk to some real life teenagers to see how hysterical this impression is.

Oh, thats an interesting response. Perhaps something like this?

https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/22/teens-social...

> Still, teens are growing more wary of social media for their peers. Roughly half of teens (48%) say these sites have a mostly negative effect on people their age, up from 32% in 2022. But fewer (14%) think they negatively affect them personally.

What next? Maybe we should wait for the creators of social media tools to be caught on record saying that they did the tests and know it’s harmful?

However I suspect that nothing I say will shift your position.

Yes, because revealed preferences are different. Meta's properties (for example) have billions of users for a reason (me included).

Some people are prone to feeling bad irrespective of social media. One can also espouse the same view about video games (I don't play them anymore for this reason, but certainly did as a child/teenager).

How many Psychologists did Slashdot hire with the explicit task of making slashdot more addictive?

Meta has entire teams.

It's like believing that cigarettes are fine and shouldn't be specially regulated because 50 years ago everyone occasionally smoked a pipe and it wasn't that big a deal, completely ignoring how the two are incomparable, entirely because the industry made it more addictive to be more profitable

Easy. In school, it is the schools responsibility. If they don't act, sue them to pieces.

The schools will learn, and responsibly take care of their students. Once out of school, you are responsible.

Grow a spine, and rip that smartphone out of the hands of your child, and all will be well.

Meta (née Facebook) hired addiction medicine specialists to work on their platform engagement. It wasn't to make teens use their platforms less.

But, to be fair, many companies hire organizational psychologists and other such people to make their products addictive and to understand exactly how to make the most money on you and get the most time from you. Even the rewards program at the grocery store near you is tailored in such a way to maximally please you and keep you shopping there

Many companies got regulated to hell and back, as a result.

There are no meth companies, the cigarette industry is regulated as far as we can take it, opiates and medication is regulated with punitive damages levied (once evidence passes a threshold). Gambling is highly regulated (and prediction markets will be as well, eventually)

I don’t remember off the top of my head, but I believe even reward programs will have regulations surrounding them.

Above all else: What we did with social media, lootboxes and phones, was unprecedented.

The safety people brought up the issues in the firms, and the final decision that had to be taken was to ensure shareholder returns.

Yes, but the social media companies WANT regulation. The absence of it creates a no-win situation where self-regulating cedes grounds to your less scrupulous competitors and not regulating leaves you open to head scratcher lawsuits like this which only apply to your industry and not other industries doing the same thing

By the way there USED to be meth companies, it wasn't even prescription medicine, it was over-the-counter.

> That law is so board - "public morals"? Should every porn site be taken down?

The age-gate / anti-anonymity laws popping up everywhere are because there are enough people who would answer "yes" to that.

This assumes parents aren’t doing their job. As a young kid you don’t have a choice. Social pressure to participate in social media is intense. Either you’re constantly online or you’re out. Though luck being a parent policing this, you’ll only make things worse for your kid and your own. Only a mandated curfew can help.

Yes they should, but guess what they’re doing instead? Scrolling.

Engagement algorithm needs to be made illegal.

Every porn site that makes money off harm to minors? Yes, and sometimes they are taken down.

I’m very interested in the “harm to minors” aspect of porn. I don’t agree or disagree, I truly don’t understand and I’d really enjoy having someone clearly explain it to me.

Where I’m stuck:

When asked, people tend to kind of hand wave and say “distorted view of sex” or similar. But what, specifically? And how does it harm them?

I’ve tried to think through the pieces myself and I can only come up with things that sound too silly to be the reason. Are we worried they’re going to discover a fetish? Is that bad because it doesn’t align with “missionary sex for the purposes of procreation”? Are we afraid they’ll pick up on the caricature representation of sex and break a leg trying to t-bone their girlfriend? Are we afraid they’ll think they need to slap their girlfriends ass far too much, then get broken up with, become a social outcast, and never get into law school? Are we afraid they’ll get overstimulated and bored with sex as a result, quit caring about hygiene and dating, which will inevitably lead to a population decline and the downfall of society?

I honestly couldn’t find anything that didn’t sound as silly as accusing king fu movies of distorting their view of fighting, which would arguably cause more harm when they try to do “crane style” and get their ass kicked.

I’m looking for the action->action link, not the “messes them up” headline.

I think the person above you is referring to CP, which I think is a very different harm than you’re talking about.

For what you’re talking about, I’ve heard a couple of explanations.

The first is one you pointed out, a largely religious objection to non-traditional sex. They find any sort of fetish immoral and worry porn will push children into fetishes as adults.

The second one you missed and I find reasonable, I just don’t see porn bans as the solution.

The theory is that porn will make children aware of more “extreme” or “unusual” varieties of sex, but it doesn’t endow them with the ability to have an open dialogue with a partner about wanting to do that, whether their partner is comfortable with it, etc.

The fear is that young adults will accidentally pressure their partner into sexual acts their partner isn’t comfortable with. They either see it often enough on PornHub they overestimate how normalized actually doing it is, or they’re young enough that discussing sex with their partner is still uncomfortable.

To be clear, this isn’t a puritan stance. It’s not saying that eg BDSM is bad, but that participating in BDSM should be prefaced by a conversation about safe words, boundaries, likes, dislikes, etc. Without the context of having been sexually active, it’s hard to know what parts of PornHub are “normal” and implicitly agreed upon by agreeing to have sex, and what parts really need a separate conversation.

To me the solution is mostly sex ed, though. Open communication solves most of this. The only ones I think would still be a bad idea mostly hinge around control. Eg CNC is probably a bad idea because the lack of control is part of the appeal, but it could also cause someone inexperienced to not speak up and say they aren’t enjoying it.

Maybe I underestimate the younger folks and times have changed, though.

Mmmm…their comment was a response to someone scoffing at “morals” by rhetorically asking if porn sites should be taken offline too. Replying “The CP ones? Yes, and some have been.” would be a wild twist away from the topic and a nuclear level strawman. Their actual reply was fitting if you just consider that normal porn sites have advertising, thus are profiting from kids browsing it too. It seems they took issue with that aspect, layered on top of “kids watching porn is evil.” At least, that’s what I hope because otherwise I absolutely barked up the wrong tree looking for a reasonable explanation of their objection.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your theory. It’s something that I did touch on, but I buried it in terse humor and it’s easy to miss. It was the “ass smack = breakup” part; they do stuff they saw in porn, partner doesn’t like it, {insert contributing failure}, they break up and societal collapse ensues. Whether the addition failure is “won’t stop pressuring” or “communication failure” or something else entirely, it didn’t matter because whatever it is would be the actual problem, as you pointed out.

I also didn’t want to assume they were being specific to niche or extreme interests since the “harm children” agenda never seemed to take narrow aim at them, hence the age gate laws don’t specify “BDSM or other fetishes.” It had been clear to me for years that Playboy was just as “destructive” as ‘Whips & Chains’, which is why I’m confused.

I think this is a general misunderstanding of how common law legal systems work.

The extent to which these are or are not generalized is decided by judges based on the merits of individual cases, and while a written law might sound broad the way it's interpreted is up to the accepted precedence.

I suspect a porn site would be ok because it's clearly labelled, and isn't trying to entice kids to engage with it. However if you're social platform deliberately trying to increase engagement with under 18s, and then promoting sexual content to them...

I think a lot of us probably would agree that pornographic content is generally bad for society. I think the hard part here is actually getting rid of it. I think what will end up happening is it moves to a darker part of the web and is completely unregulated. Just look at what happened in the US with illegal drugs. They didn’t just go away, and now we have less safe drugs pretty much freely available laced with fentanyl and other harmful or deadly substances. I know this isn’t exactly the same situation but we should consider what might happen when making something “illegal”.

> I think a lot of us probably would agree that pornographic content is generally bad for society.

I don’t believe that at all, in fact, I believe the opposite. I think a religious minority forcing a parochial view of morality onto people is bad for society.

> I think a lot of us probably would agree that pornographic content is generally bad for society.

Speak for yourself. The science of it seems to be a mixed bag with definite pros and cons.

You're talking about something that is also intrinsic to humanity. It takes no resources. Good luck with that.

Neither porn nor gore is intrinsic to society

Humans have sex and kill each other and always have. It’s intrinsic to human nature.

Porn and gore were happening for millions of years before we invented language.

You are of course free to not view it. Why do you think that you should decide for others what they should view? How do you know better than they do, what they should or should not be viewing?

As I got older I began to recognize that some things are just bad for society at large.

My refraining from a thing doesn't fix the societal ill the thing causes.

Society has decided they want to do the thing that you say causes an ill. They don’t think it’s an ill. What right do you have to tell them that you know better for their life than they do?

I suspect this view is actually the majority. Chat Control, the Great Firewall, Indian VoIP control, the Spanish Cloudflare ban and so on point to many societies finding that many things are just bad for society at large. We’re all just fighting over what things are just bad for society at large.

In the US, the first amendment exists but in Germany simply displaying the flag of the Nazi party is illegal. The latter have determined that it’s just bad for society at large. In El Salvador, tattoos on a man are just bad for society at large.

It’s true that refraining does not actually solve the problem. Others must be constrained. Sometimes for their own good and other times for the sake of society.

Personally, I like the way the US is setup but what is truly adaptive isn’t clear to me. Perhaps indeed it is good that one is bone sawed because the things one is saying are just bad for society at large and I should support that whether or not I have said those things.

Only time will tell. I just hope I have some place to live that has something like the First Amendment and that has some of the freewheeling life of the US. Maybe I will only have that if I defend it and if I fail to then by its defeat it will have proven its maladaptive nature.

In Germany it’s not just swastikas that are banned. There are people in the German government who decide what is banned and what is not, and the list is a lot more than [ “swastikas” ] and it only gets larger, never smaller.

To use a tired cliche, 'freedom isn't free.' I used to roll my eyes at that, but I have recently become convinced that the only thing holding us back from a total backwards slide on civil rights is a small number of citizens fighting and speaking up.

Even in this thread, you can see any number of people gleefully encouraging censorship and the stripping of our first amendment rights. I don't mind if they end up living in a totalitarian hellhole, but I certainly won't be going quietly with them.

If you don't like free speech, feel free to move to Russia, China, North Korea, etc. But don't drag the rest of free society down with you.

That wouldn't solve his issue, though: all of those countries have gore and porn

Maybe Utah or UAE would be a better fit for this.

I find it amusing that you think that anyone trying to declare themselves an authority does so on a moral basis.

Ah yes, the good old "cigarettes and alcohol should be freely available to kids" lobby logic, like it's the 60s and 70s again.

Cigarettes and alcohol are freely available to kids

They're usually covered by age limit laws and also not "free" as they cost money to purchase. In what sense are they available freely to kids?

"Freely available" doesn't mean they are free of charge, but that they can be obtained at any time with minimal effort.

I don't agree that it's minimal effort for kids to get hold of cigarettes and alcohol, though it's probably not too difficult for older teens to do so.

Not really

Some number of people might make these available to kids, but it's certainly nowhere near "freely"

No, they're not. Not in most of the US and not compared to social media/porn. This is disingenuous.

The average 13 year old in the US cannot easily get a cigarette or a beer. Not impossible of course, but not as easy as porn/instagram.

This comment is stupid and it’s because of people like you that evil organizations like Meta can get away with whatever the fuck they want. Shame on you

Can any lawyer chime in for us laymen? This seems like such a broad law that can be interpreted to allow any punishment against basically anything especially since "public morals" are such a subjective thing.

Laws tend to be written pretty broadly, with the understanding that when you encounter a law that seems like it could be construed in a ridiculous way, it’s the ridiculous construal that is silly and not the law. Judges and juries exist to ensure that silly stuff doesn’t happen, rather than trying to write laws so that they hold up to the most adversarial possible reading.

Is writing a book about being a bank robber going to pass muster as a threat to public morals? Probably no. Is setting up a free cigarette dispenser outside of an elementary school? Probably yes.

Am not a lawyer, but I follow these kinds of things.

Many states have a catch all law like this, probably all of them to some degree. If you google for your state, the charge is usually either “public nuisance” or “disturbing the peace”. They’re virtually all like this, so broad that you violate it just by being alive.

They usually only get used either in plea deals (ie a DUI gets downgraded to disturbing the peace), or on people who are being a pain in the ass but not technically violating any specific laws. Someone having a mental health crisis and screaming at people on the sidewalk might get picked up for it, or a drunk that won’t stop singing at the top of their lungs at 3am.

This is way, way beyond anything I’ve ever seen as far as impact, though. Public nuisance is usually a slap on the wrist charge. A day or two in jail, $100 in fines, something like that.

This is sort of a wild route for the state to go. These laws are super vague, but the penalties are usually so low I think the courts let it go. I suspect now that they’re pushing for a billion dollars in fines the courts will want to take a closer look.

Is there also a sort-of injunction to stop doing x y z? Or is just existing as a social media company a public nuisance?

From the article:

The company must also enact certain safety features such as limiting the amount of time underage users in the state spend on Facebook and Instagram, hiding by default the number of “likes” on photos for such people and disclosing to users there the risks of its platforms.

For users under 18, Meta will eliminate push notifications during night time (10:00 PM to 7:00 AM) on all days; and from 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM on school days during the academic year. They will also limit the usage of Facebook and Instagram to 90 hours per month.

TBH, these restrictions will just push kids to use Snapchat.

> They will also limit the usage of Facebook and Instagram to 90 hours per month.

When you consider that the average person is awake for somewhere between 450 and 500 hours per month, 90 hours still represents ~20% of waking time.

For comparison, a K-12 student spends 110-140 hours per month at school. So this is still a ridiculous amount of time for anyone to be spending on social media, teen or adult.

The problem is, what if one of these apps is being used as a messaging app? Hardly social media if most of your usage is just using it to DM friends/family, a la texting.

Parental controls and occasionally sitting down with kids to review social media content together will still always be the correct approach, but it's hard, and the government can't mandate parents take the correct approach when it's so high-friction.

Lots of messaging apps out there. No need to use one that's connected to a toxic platform.

Because we removed the physical distance barrier to relationships, no reason to artificially close it now.

And this has been shown time and again to be quite detrimental. Yes, you have to disconnect. No, disconnecting for a few hours is not a problem just because "these are messaging apps".

After reading your comment, I am very concerned.

This is a very general law. Saying something is 'injurious to public health, safety, morals, or welfare' is such a broad category.

Let's remember what we started with. It's a website where people chat and share images. Some people found information that caused or exaserbated consitions. If that is injurious to public health, then just about anything is.

I think this is very dangeous and it leads to any business or organization being potentially liable.

Doesn't every bar cause piblic nuisances? How about libraries? I can find all sorts of dangerous information at a library.

I think the real piblic hate is because people lost their minds when Trump won. People blamed Facebook for allowing that to happen (ie allowing free speech).

Will they actually pay the fine..?

> The judge found that Meta’s operation of Facebook and Instagram created a public nuisance which injured public health, safety, and welfare; and burdened public schools, hospitals, and law enforcement.

Hopefully one day this is what people think of when they hear people say "I work for Meta".

It's interesting how people want to tar and feather people for working at... A shitty social media/advertising firm for being in the periphery of morally questionable practices, but are waaaaaaay more lenient when it comes to people who volunteer to work in an imperial military.