Texas wants to ban minors from social media, enforce government ID checks

[rcmaehl]

Summary

A bill proposed in Texas would ban Minors from social media, and require site owners to verify age using Government IDs

 

Quotes

Quote

Texas wants to ban social media for Texans under the age of 18. House Bill 896... would require social media users to show two forms of photo identification to verify their age. The bill would also allow parents to demand their children’s accounts be removed and give the Attorney General’s office the ability to enforce any violations. Most social media sites... require users to be 13 but do not ask for proof. A recent survey... found that 38% of tweens... reported using social media in 2021, a 7% jump since 2019. [Texas] compared social media to cigarettes. “Once thought to be perfectly safe for users, social media access to minors has led to remarkable rises in self-harm, suicide, and mental health issues.” “The Texas legislature must act this session to protect children because, thus far, the social media platforms have failed to do so.”

 

My thoughts

While I agree too much social media can be bad for mental health, I'm not sure about entirely outright banning it for kids. At the same time, could you imagine if sites didn't have to worry about age restrictions or other family friendly requirements anymore in an adults only social media landscape? Would this be a revival of sites such as YouTube where some people believe family friendly restrictions have gone too far; or would this be a privacy nightmare that is one data breach away from heavy devastation? ¿Por qué no los dos?

 

Sources

Dallas Morning News

 

Moderator edit ;

https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/88R/billtext/pdf/HB00896I.pdf

[Takumidesh]

How do you enforce this (as a website).
this effectively gatekeeps large portions of a population from having access to free and open information. wikipedia is a social media site, this forum is social media, stack overflow is social media (and the whole stack exchange collection)

Anything where people communicate with each other is social media (or can be interpreted that way in a court) 

As usual politicians lack second order thinking.
this is a bad idea imo.

 

[bmx6454]

While I agree that social media is more or less poison(probably unpopular opinion as usual), I don’t believe it’s the governments place or right to take the place of what should be a parents choice/responsibility.

[Holmes108]

Yeah, that's a tough one. Reasonable on the surface, until you think about it for 2 seconds. Most of us would say yeah, keep kids off FB, Twitter, Tik Tok and Instagram. But like was mentioned above, what constitutes "social media"? It could practically be the whole internet if you wanted it to be. 

 

A big part of me would even like to somehow eliminate/greatly reduce anonymity on the net in general. Maybe not your public facing profile, but maybe have your identity being linked and stored somewhere traceable if need be. But again, how do you enforce this? Who gets to be the gatekeeper of this information? (a big Corp? The government?) Who gets blocked from using the service completely as a result?

 

None if this is as simple as "let's just pass a quick law to fix this". 

 

 

[Takumidesh]

6 minutes ago, Holmes108 said:

A big part of me would even like to somehow eliminate/greatly reduce anonymity on the net in general. Maybe not your public facing profile, but maybe have your identity being linked and stored somewhere traceable if need be. But again, how do you enforce this? Who gets to be the gatekeeper of this information? (a big Corp? The government?) Who gets blocked from using the service completely as a result?

NO! nonononono lol.

While I am fine with having my identity in a forward facing profile. the last thing I want is for that to be required.

the internet should be treated like a water tap. anyone at any point can connect.

'the service' is an amalgamation of computers connected by wires (and radio waves) there is no singular internet and blocking / gatekeeping access is like gatekeeping access to the electricity.

the internet is a concept, not a thing.

[Holmes108]

19 minutes ago, Takumidesh said:

NO! nonononono lol.

While I am fine with having my identity in a forward facing profile. the last thing I want is for that to be required.
 

 

LOL. I agree it's not feasible, but I also think the anonymity aspect is a huge part of everything bad about the internet. 

 

That being said, it's not necessarily entirely the problem. Just the physical separation will always cause many to be assholes, even with their name on their profile. Much like having some glass between you and other drivers can make you a little braver at flipping them off, vs being right in front of their face. 

 

But still, there are some instances where repercussions are really necessary for online actions. It's virtually unsolvable though (short of living in an oppressive dictatorship).

[Poinkachu]

May I suggest IQ Check, Sanity Level check, & Common Sense check instead ?

[Kisai]

59 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Summary

A bill proposed in Texas would ban Minors from social media, and require site owners to verify age using Government IDs

Good luck with that, someone missed the mid-90's "require a credit card to use this site" to verify age.

 

59 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Quotes

 

My thoughts

While I agree too much social media can be bad for mental health, I'm not sure about entirely outright banning it for kids. At the same time, could you imagine if sites didn't have to worry about age restrictions or other family friendly requirements anymore in an adults only social media landscape? Would this be a revival of sites such as YouTube where some people believe family friendly restrictions have gone too far; or would this be a privacy nightmare that is one data breach away from heavy devastation? ¿Por qué no los dos?

 

Sources

Dallas Morning News

 

Lets's start by addressing the elephant in the room. Americans do not have ID. There is no standard ID that can be verified. Services often misuse the SSN number as a form of verification. In Canada, there is no national ID card either, but there are provincial ID cards that are also the medical cards, and are also the drivers license.  For all intents, it's an ID card, but why would you send that to someone to verify? They don't know what you look like. Are we going to resort to AI to match the ID card to a live facial scan? 

 

If you have a passport, that's the only form of ID that all countries have. However, again, we're stuck with the problem that most people who do not travel, do not have one.

 

So how do we solve that? Well that would require an untenable solution of requiring the ISP to be the verification path. Basically upgrading our mobile phones from being communication devices into being "your ID". With the ISP basically doing the verification that says "this device belongs to someone born in (Year/Month)", and kicking the can of verification down to having the website take the subscriber's FQDN and asking the ISP "Is this subscriber an adult?" through a backend process that doesn't involve the user.

 

I just don't see it ever working.

 

Which means that making websites "have to verify" opens up a large privacy problem, and we already do not trust social media to protect our privacy.

[Takumidesh]

11 minutes ago, Kisai said:

So how do we solve that? Well that would require an untenable solution of requiring the ISP to be the verification path. Basically upgrading our mobile phones from being communication devices into being "your ID". With the ISP basically doing the verification that says "this device belongs to someone born in (Year/Month)", and kicking the can of verification down to having the website take the subscriber's FQDN and asking the ISP "Is this subscriber an adult?" through a backend process that doesn't involve the user.

It has already been established in court that IP addresses are not identifiers of a person. There is so much unreliability. it may work for a phone, but now you are saying that you cannot share devices.
 

How do you verify a household connection and who is using what device, everything behind the router is masked already; what about VPNs?

 

The consequences of requiring authentication like this are drastic. (which I know is your point, I am just expanding.)

[ravenshrike]

31 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

May I suggest IQ Check, Sanity Level check, & Common Sense check instead ?

Given that various structures of the brain don't get fully implemented until 18(25 for all of them but long term planning skills aren't that important regarding social media participation) an age check IS all of the above.

[WkdPaul]

Link to the actual bill edited into the OP, please look up the bill before commenting as there are other older 896 bills ...

[Poinkachu]

8 minutes ago, ravenshrike said:

Given that various structures of the brain don't get fully implemented until 18(25 for all of them but long term planning skills aren't that important regarding social media participation) an age check IS all of the above.

Uh, no.

[Mark Kaine]

i think that's a great idea, should be extended to none minors too though,  perhaps!

2 hours ago, Takumidesh said:

How do you enforce this (as a website).
this effectively gatekeeps large portions of a population from having access to free and open misinformation

FTFY? 

 

 

 

2 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

Would this be a revival of sites such as YouTube where some people believe family friendly restrictions have gone too far; or would this be a privacy nightmare that is one data breach away from heavy devastation? 

 

I agree, it would not be so good if every random "social media" website would ask for an official ID (exactly due to privacy/ security concerns obviously)  <-- which btw youtube of all things tried here for a while but since seemed to have stopped doing that...

 

which is why I have been saying since 20 years or so now, there should be something like a "internet passport" with anonymisized personal data, but still easily intendifyable (basically a encrypted number/code) that could be used to access any website and identify users where necessary (so no more passwords and no more anonymous "trolls", because at the point you start breaking laws, you also start not being anonymous anymore since websites or rather government organizations could actually identify the person/  offender easily) 

 

of course there would be concerns with this too, but still... it would be the best solution to a lot of problems we currently have...

 

and people often say it would be too difficult technically... well im not so sure about that,  maybe it would be challenging yes, but not impossible... and security ultimately would rely on a combination of user action and official documents (that proof, that yes,  this "internet passport " indeed belongs to this person...

Basically this wouldn't be much different to a drivers license... that can be faked too.

 

yes this proposal would require a lot of effort and hopefully smart people,  but should have been done *long ago* already anyways.

 

 

ps: of course this would solve a lot more issues than I've mentioned here hopefully (and in theory it wouldn't totally kill "anonymity " either) 

 

oh and also "but government abuse and muh privacy " aren't great counter points, because governments and organizations can already identify people if they really want to, even behind "700 proxies and 29 vpns" lol.

 

Im also not totally convinced this is really a great idea either tbh, but regardless, imo something like this is really needed long-term,  would solve a lot of issues and should have been implemented worldwide (another "problem" i guess) long ago.

 

ps: it was fun in the 90s and early 2000s, but stopped being fun since then and frankly not at last due to "social media" and internet monopolies such as "google".

 

 

[SolarNova]

Dont think this would be a good idea tbh.

Social media isnt a thing like Alcohol ..or driving ...or voting .. nothing about it is inherently 'bad' so long as the content is 'legal'.

Its like saying going out in public and talking to someone about the weather or some other topic should be moderated and require ID checks etc

 

I think the problem is more along the lines of excessive social media usage and excessive importance put on it. For kids, that is something that should be fully under regulation by the parents. Thats just good parenting.

However, i have noticed that the US (and its becoming more common in other countries to) has less importance put on Parents parenting and more of putting other groups in charge of it. such as school, and in this case forcing businesses to control what kids see/do.

 

Whilst its never going to happen, a better idea to solve this issue and many others would be to reintroduce the concept of parents being in charge of parenting, to control what their kids do, and what they see, for parents to actually be responsible for the kids. A radical concept in this age i know, but one that would solve a lot of problems.

 

I also hate the idea of removing more anonymity from the internet. Its already a massive issue with 'big brother' snooping on everything we do. VPNs have become popular for a reason. If you take away anonymity from the 'digital town square' your going to loose a lot of freedom of expression as people become fearful of their opinions being used against them. I disagree with a lot of people about a lot of things but ill always defend their right to have those opinions and talk about them even if I find them horrendously immoral.

[rcmaehl]

1 hour ago, WkdPaul said:

Link to the actual bill edited into the OP, please look up the bill before commenting as there are other older 896 bills ...

OMG THANK YOU FOR THIS. I WAS LOOKING OR IT

[Kilrah]

3 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

OMG THANK YOU FOR THIS. I WAS LOOKING OR IT

It's linked right in the article you listed as source...

[ravenshrike]

1 hour ago, Poinkachu said:

Uh, no.

Uh, yes. 

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-lifespandevelopment/chapter/brain-development-during-adolescence/

For both boys and girls, although your brain may be as large as it will ever be, your brain doesn’t finish developing and maturing until your mid- to late-20s. The front part of the brain, called the prefrontal cortex, is one of the last brain regions to mature. It is the area responsible for planning, prioritizing and controlling impulses.

[Mark Kaine]

42 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

Dont think this would be a good idea tbh.

Social media isnt a thing like Alcohol ..or driving ...or voting .. nothing about it is inherently 'bad'

That's the problem,  it really *is* inherently bad in its current form (dare i say twitter?)

 

44 minutes ago, SolarNova said:

If you take away anonymity

which is why my idea of an "internet passport" would not take this away completely,  you'd still just be "username" amongst other "usernames" it would just make things like "alt accounts" and "bots" a lot more difficult,  which really is huge part of why "social media" is as toxic and full of misinformation as it currently is.

 

And yes, i know my idea of a "encrypted number code" isn't ideal... there would at least also have to be some kind of physical device involved as well...

 

 

i personally just find the idea that everyone can literally be anyone on the internet wild, its not like that outside of the internet,  people are easily intendifyable,  even without knowing their names, etc.

 

 

[rcmaehl]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

It's right in the article you listed as source...

 

I literally downloaded it earlier too...

 

[WkdPaul]

6 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

*snip*

it's all good, shit happens, we just want to make sure people look up the correct bill after all (though I didn't check the article, I found it somewhere else) ; 88R HB 896, since that's the one being discussed here. Just Googling up 896 might send people to another older bill and it could get confusing.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Takumidesh said:

It has already been established in court that IP addresses are not identifiers of a person. There is so much unreliability. it may work for a phone, but now you are saying that you cannot share devices.
 

You need credit to get a post-paid cell phone. A child can not get one. Most social media posting (Twitter, Facebook and Tiktok videos) are done only on phones. That "is" the right solution, but it requires giving ISP's power they shouldn't have which is why it's not a good idea.

 

1 hour ago, Takumidesh said:

How do you verify a household connection and who is using what device, everything behind the router is masked already; what about VPNs?

 

The consequences of requiring authentication like this are drastic. (which I know is your point, I am just expanding.)

Again, you need credit to get a post-paid cell phone. A child can not get one. If the backend eg bigbadsocialmediasite.example.com contacts aol.com and goes "the user with 123-123-123-123.dallas.aol.com wishes to login, are they legally an adult?" You have three possible answers:

1. Yes

2. This is a public, shared, or disposable connection

3. No

 

So for MOBILE devices, only one user, the subscriber to the post-paid account can have that device. To login to the SNS from a desktop, or a device other than the mobile device, you ping the mobile device's app to do the same. We see know this is possible already since Google does it.

 

Prepaid/Burner devices and VPN's, you simply would not be permitted to login with it. If you want to use a burner/VPN because you're reporting in Iran or China or whatever else that might get you in trouble, you probably should not be posting to a public SNS in the first place.

 

Again, this is just talking about the scope creep that would happen by trying to force SNS to check ID. The destruction of privacy, and the ISP or SNS becoming the ultimate censor by giving them too much power.

 

Twitter survives because there is no verification of identity. Facebook does not. And if the ultimate goal is the prevention of consumption of social media, that means the SNS can have no public access without logging in.

 

[DANK_AS_gay]

3 hours ago, Takumidesh said:

wikipedia is a social media site

No it isn't, there isn't a way to communicate directly with other people. I can see forums and other websites being social media, but if encyclopedia britannica isn't social media, then neither is wikipedia.

[Mark Kaine]

12 minutes ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

No it isn't, there isn't a way to communicate directly with other people. I can see forums and other websites being social media, but if encyclopedia britannica isn't social media, then neither is wikipedia.

it's remarkable how many don't have a real grasp what "social media" really is... to me there's a clear divide between something like fb or a forum,  functionally and also practically.  Haven't heard anyone say "Wikipedia" yet though... that's almost funny!

 

one is a microblogging website with minimal moderation etc, the other is a message board with usually clearly defined subjects and typically  a more strict moderation,  where mods are also directly involved in conversations (which makes a *huge* difference) 

 

also message boards are way older than microblogging websites,  which basically started with facebook (i guess??)

the were blogs before that, but that also was completely different and much, much more personal without all the ballast of what is "social media" today.

its also a rather unfortunate thing to call it that, because not at last due to the anonymity and low content filtering,  it's actually highly anti-social, your basically talking or interacting with bots half of the time lol.

 

ps: and yes forums are kinda social,  but they aren't "social media" which as i said is largely something very different in its form and functions. 

[rcmaehl]

11 minutes ago, DANK_AS_gay said:

No it isn't, there isn't a way to communicate directly with other people. I can see forums and other websites being social media, but if encyclopedia britannica isn't social media, then neither is wikipedia.

*blinks in user pages and article talk pages*

[Mark Kaine]

3 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

*blinks in user pages and article talk pages*

... i knew about that... but its yet again not "social media" , its more like poorly made and moderated forums, with barely any accountability (and barely used at all last time i checked?)