A letter I sent my senators, please consider similar.

[RZehr]

Rather than banning TikTok, make it illegal for young people under the age of at least 18-21 to produce content for social media of any sort.

Looking at other's content isn't a big thing. But to produce content requires a bit of maturity and introspection beyond the average middle-schooler or even high schooler. The tragedies and strife caused by online interactions by immature individuals hidden behind a shield of distance from the immediate interaction- if not outright anonymity- are well known.

I wish you would also sponsor a bill that would put pornography behind an ".XXX" domain. It's been discussed before, but I think this is a fight and a cause worth fighting for, however long and however hard.

I never saw "hardcore" porn until I was nearly 30 years old, now every 12-year-old has seen things that I couldn't have imagined at the time I was exposed to the VHS tape at a friend's house. No little kid, or even a young adult, should have that sick garbage available to them until they are 18-21.

Please consider this. I'm also writing Senator Warnock, and my Congressional representative as well. I beg of you for the sake of the sanity of future generations to work for the rest of your life if need be to enact these changes.

"Influencers" who urge kids to run away from home, and engage in sexual activities should be prosecuted under the full extent of the law. Whether they directly interact with children or not.

Please work to make the digital world a place that's more than a dark cesspool of violence, lust, self-indulgence, and despair, and make it into the potential great library of the human race.

Thank you sir.

I think the intention and motivation is good. I like the last line's beginning... "make the digital world a place that's...." But, how do you propose this is done (practical / technologically speaking) and how do you think it could be enforced? Even if every single person in gov today - all parties, all positions supported the same thing you propose here... Have you thought through those questions?

The place to start is with the vision. We don’t necessarily even have to think about, let alone offer, exact specifics. There are professionals for that. A random Senator also would have exact solutions. The starting point, is the “want to”. Once the right people have the want to, the implementation can follow.
To demand a complete blueprint, start to finish, from the plebes before the powerful lift a finger, is a beautiful derailment tactic.

[Ken]

The place to start is with the vision. We don’t necessarily even have to think about, let alone offer, exact specifics. There are professionals for that. A random Senator also would have exact solutions. The starting point, is the “want to”. Once the right people have the want to, the implementation can follow.

To demand a complete blueprint, start to finish, from the plebes before the powerful lift a finger, is a beautiful derailment tactic.

I think we can start with the things that we know we can regulate. Such as the algorithms that social media companies use to suck in teens. They are noxious and harmful. For example, a girl who searches on "anorexia" is going to be led down an algorithm-driven rabbit hole of pro-anorexia sites. Someone who searches on COVID vaccine side effects is going to be led down an anti-vax rabbit hole. And a teen who searches on trans topics is going to be led down that rabbit hole. Congress can most definitely require social media companies to take apart, disclose, and allow people to opt out of their algorithms. This might mean that TikTok has to turn into a pay subscription site, but so be it. They will squeal like stuck pigs. But that is something that Congress can actually regulate.

Second is data privacy. If you are engaged in social media and wondering what the product being sold is. Wonder no longer. It is you. You and your data are the product. This is the same thing for teens. The EU is taking a much harder approach on data privacy and we could be doing the same thing here.

Third is filtering. We already have pretty sophisticated filtering tools. Parents can indeed filter their children's internet use, both at the WiFi level Systems like Google Nest WiFi routers allow parents to filter and regulate devices and access. And cell phone companies have the same capability for phone apps and phone data. But Congress could certainly make it easier to do, and perhaps require that filtering be the default option on children and teen accounts such that the parent has to actively disable it if they don't want it. So if you buy your child a new iPhone it comes pre-filtered and you as a parent have to actively unlock the restricted content for your child.

[Josh]

It should simply be illegal to distribute pornography to minors without age verification. Age verification is possible - tobacco companies do it. You can’t get on a tobacco website and download coupons without submitting a fair bit of personal info to verify your age. And online banking does it too.

Ken, you bring up all kinds of irrelevant topics that have nothing to do with the fact that pornographers currently push their filth with no attempt to prevent children from accessing it and no consequences for them when it happens.

[RZehr]

A random Senator also would not have exact solutions.

Typo

[Outsider]

Rather than banning TikTok, make it illegal for young people under the age of at least 18-21 to produce content for social media of any sort.

Such an idea would be blatantly unconstitutional. The right to free expression under the First Amendment doesn't kick in at age 18 or 21.

You're not banning their right to free expression. You're banning them from an adult space- like a bar, or a smoking lounge, etc. If a 15-year-old can't go to express himself in a nudie bar, is his free expression being compromised? Even soldiers under the age of 18- who are expected to lay down and die for our corporatist overlords on a whim- aren't allowed to be in bars.

It's a recognized precedent that young adults and children shouldn't be allowed in some spaces.

[Outsider]

Congress has passed many laws, and so have states like Texas, banning pornography for anyone under 18.

The courts keep overturning such laws, claiming they make it too hard for adults to anonymously view pornography.

I realize that Josh. The ".XXX" domain scheme was proposed back in the late 90's-early-2000's. It's still a fight worth fighting, and a hill worth dying on. IMHO.

[Outsider]

A very robust age verification system for Facebook or TikTok and other social media would require that such companies collect and maintain a lot of private information on users such as drivers license or passport information since you would have to verify your identity every time you use the platform. If TikTok has the drivers license information of every user that becomes an enormous security problem and would be an irresistible target for hackers and identity thieves.

You mean exactly like your apple.id, your Amazon account, your federal government accounts, your state government accounts? Come on Ken, you're making an exceptional case out of something that's as common as mud.

And would require all the different jurisdictions that issue IDs to allow big tech companies free access to their databases. Otherwise, how would TikTok know whether or not you gave them a fake ID. Or someone else's ID. How does TikTok know whether or not user #52034 is a 35 year old mom, or a 13 year old who took a cell phone pic of their mom's driver's license in order to open a TikTok account?

As much as I dislike government bureaucracies, it could be one digital ID provider to rule them all, one provider to find them. It could be handled along with your state ID and could even be anonymized on the public side.

More likely, the Federal government would have to set up some sort of new national ID card with digital and biometric features (facial ID, retinal scans, fingerprints, etc.) all stored in Federal databases and then allow big tech companies to interface with such information in order to do age verifications.

Take the budget from the DHS and NSA snoops.

[Outsider]

I think the intention and motivation is good. I like the last line's beginning... "make the digital world a place that's...." But, how do you propose this is done (practical / technologically speaking) and how do you think it could be enforced? Even if every single person in gov today - all parties, all positions supported the same thing you propose here... Have you thought through those questions?

Take a look at my response to Ken. I think we already have the tools to do this without much problem.

[Ken]

A very robust age verification system for Facebook or TikTok and other social media would require that such companies collect and maintain a lot of private information on users such as drivers license or passport information since you would have to verify your identity every time you use the platform. If TikTok has the drivers license information of every user that becomes an enormous security problem and would be an irresistible target for hackers and identity thieves.

You mean exactly like your apple.id, your Amazon account, your federal government accounts, your state government accounts? Come on Ken, you're making an exceptional case out of something that's as common as mud.

Amazon doesn't know my age, and neither does Apple. Neither of them verify my identity. They know I have a valid credit card on file to pay for purchases and downloads and that's all they need to know. I mean they probably know by now just through the endless data collection that both sites do. But there isn't any formal age verification by Apple or Amazon.

You can go right now and create a new Apple ID or Amazon account without any age verification. You just need a valid email address or phone number. Go ahead and try it. Here's apple. https://support.apple.com/en-us/108647

There are literally hundreds if not thousands of social media forums and web sites used by teens. Many of them overseas. How do you propose doing age verification for all of them? Are you going to demand that they all collect copies of your drivers license and such and keep them on file for hackers to feast on? And how does that even verify ID anyway? Any kid can obtain a digital copy of a fake driver's licenses. Are you going to demand that a social media site based in say Moldova or Uzbekistan have unlimited access to the driver's license databases of all 50 states to do age verification?

Explain it to me like I'm stupid (which I probably am) how you would expect a foreign company like TikTok to do any kind of robust age verification of American teenagers who are signing up for accounts. What is the step-by-step process? What information are you going to ask them to collect and verify? How are they going to verify it?

Now I don't for a moment deny that it is possible to actually do online age verification. It is. But it is also very data intrusive and means that they are collecting a lot of personal information on you in the process. Driver's license numbers, social security numbers, access to your credit reports, biometric information, and so forth. And everything you provide to some web site in the process of age verification can then be turned around and used to hijack your identity.

Because remember. If you impose an age verification requirement on any web site. You are by definition imposing it for ALL users, not just teens.

[temporal1]

It’s one of the most important battles.

Made exponentially worse now that porn is available, relabeled, and increasingly required as part of gov ed, and included in school libraries and in sections of libraries labeled for minors.

How can courtrooms justify prosecuting a predator-neighbor for sharing porn with your children when school teachers are free to share, if not required to share with children+teens? THE LINES ARE BLURRED.

2024 / “Gov. Inslee signs controversial LGBTQ school curriculum bill into law”
https://www.chronline.com/stories/gov-i ... law,336884

Has anyone not seen videos of parents protesting graphic books at school board meetings across the country, where parents are NOT allowed to present graphic pages or read materials - deemed “age apprpriate” for children? Parents are STOPPED from reading out loud. “o, the nerve!”

“Age appropriate” is laughable.
Children do NOT keep info to themselves, often, they use younger children to act out/experiment. A recipe for disaster.
Please, stop insulting the public’s intelligence.

But remember, this isn't actually happening. Don't believe your lying eyes.