Most in Germany want Australia-style social media ban: poll – DW – 11/30/2024
www.dw.com
A survey has shown that a majority in Germany would support banning social media use for those under 16. This week, Australian lawmakers approved legislation to that effect.

Summary

A YouGov poll revealed that 77% of Germans support banning social media for those under 16, similar to a new Australian law.

The survey found that 82% believe social media harms young people, citing harmful content and addiction.

In Australia, the law fines platforms up to AUD 49.5 million (€30.5M) for allowing under-16s to create accounts, with enforcement trials set before implementation next year. Critics

  • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    22 days ago

    Force these shitters to make their products healthier for all age groups.

    There’s a lot of nuance here, but in general I agree. Hank (of vlogbrothers and SciShow fame), summed this problem up brilliantly. To paraphrase: social media is engagement based, not quality based. Upvote/like content on all you want, but misinformation, propaganda, rage bait, and doom-scrolling fodder will dominate any platform where the only valued metric is eyeball time.

    So, the top-down solution would be to somehow strictly define how for-profit ranked media feeds and news aggregators are allowed to operate. Unintended consequences of such a law aside, I think it’s possible to legally define a “well-behaved” social media site, but it won’t be easy.

    • Paragone@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      22 days ago

      Begin with the “cherry-picking”:

      • Disinformation gets cut out.

      • Fact-checking is protected-speech, not immediately-auto-deleted-because-it-harms-profitable-disinformation.

      • Ideological-prejudice gets cut out.

      • The major racisms: sex/gender racism, skin racism, class racism, & national racism, get stomped.

      • Correct & true journalism ( going to require independent ratings for individuals & organizations & for sub-branches-of-organizations ) gets automatically & consistently boosted.

      You put those in-place, & MASSIVE improvement is inescapable.

      The Problem™??

      Big Tech WON’T TOLERATE anything interfering with their highjacking of the world, with their asserting their claim to monarchic/polyarchic world rule.

      EVER.

      Try linking a Wikipedia article, to fact-check something, on yt…

      Autodeleted!

      Rabies is their means-of-gaining-possession-of-the-world, & NOTHING can be tolerated to interfere with their rabies/means.

      No matter how many humans die, in which circumstances their platforms helped enforce.

      For-profit-corporations are psychopaths, by default…

      So long as we continue maintaining-otherwise, they continue winning…

      until it’s too late.

      ( & we don’t get told when it is too late, either: that’s movie-fantasy plot-point, not reality )

      _ /\ _