You could present literally the same arguments for why teenagers would never drink alcohol. Its against the law for them to purchase right, so its an inconvenience to access, so clearly they would all abandon it as all their friends become unable to access it as well. You could make the same argument for most kinds of bans. There are actually very few things for which imposing barriers to access has ever eliminated its use. Porn is an obvious example as well. Porn bans are essentially meaningless to consumers. They are so trivial to bypass as to be functionally non-existent. The only thing that imposed bans have done is make it difficult for companies to profit off of it. I am essentially ambivalent about that, but it’s a literal direct parallel in this case.

What is likely is that tools for circumventing in simpler faster ways will develop. Installing a VPN is already a single click operation. You dont have to do anything else. Teenagers are not going to abandon social media. Maybe you havent encountered many in the past 2 decades, but social media use is and has been near universal among them since social media came to exist. Like you’re nuts if you think they’re actually going to stop using it haha I dont know what else to say. But yeah maybe youre right. Making stuff against the law totally eliminates it because everyone is so lazy and incompetent they won’t expend any effort to overcome trivial barriers to access things they have built their entire lives around lol

It would absolutely be more effective to use legislation to address the root causes of excessive alcohol consumption than to make blanket bans. I’m not saying that the bans won’t do anything, but they are absolutely not effective on a broad scale. There are so many circumventions that are trivially easy to access that it renders the ban more of a general barrier for entry than an actual prevention of access. Its moreso “how hard are you willing to work to get it” than “you cannot access this”. So harmful alcohol consumption becomes a matter of effort. Addiction is frequently characterized by massive efforts to access substances. Its one of the hallmarks. I’m not arguing for teenage alcohol consumption, just pointing out that it’s only ever been a trivial block and we are very socially aware that it is circumventable and frequently is circumvented by minors.

And alcohol is a physical object that must be acquired. Social media access is not.

You can circumvent this ban from any device at any time. It’s like porn bans. It’s now just a matter of effort. Install VPN, click click done. Youre now able to browse freely as a minor. And again, now youre lying about your age. So all age protections are gone, and you are free to engage with the same content as before but with less actual protections in place. Youve taken an undesirable situation and rendered it into a subversive one, one that requires circumvention by design, and will therefore make the relationship between the user and the platform a dishonest one. This has a lot of consequences. It makes it a lot harder to actually check the age of people using their platforms, cause everyone underage will lie. You won’t be able to prevent them from engaging with grown adults in profoundly harmful ways, for example.

Alcohol and tobacco are (mostly) harmful in all circumstances, yes. Social media is not harmful in all circumstances. Human socialization can be a good thing, but it is impossible for those substances to be good things (except possibly in extremely niche circumstances). If social media platforms were designed to be good for people, then they wouldnt cause the same harm. If they had legal requirements to be moderated, to not spread misinformation, to not promote unhealthy and damaging habits, to stop the spread of hatred and bullying, then they would be significantly less harmful for teenagers and also everyone of all ages. These things would actually make social media better for teenagers. Completely useless age verification actually makes social media WORSE for teenagers. Teenagers are never not going to use social media. Sorry thats just the truth. Entire fields of technology and software design have been developed by teenagers seeking to circumvent age bans throughout history. These bans dont even require any kind of new innovation. They just need to setup a basic VPN. Trivial.

1. Will not work. None of these kinds of bans has ever worked. Is it not a common trope that teenagers can and do drink to excess despite not being legally allowed to purchase alcohol? Are we under some misguided belief that age verification procedures in this manner can or ever have worked effectively to reduce harm on minors?

2. Will have large unintended consequences far beyond social media access for teenagers.

3. Will actually make the internet less safe for teenagers, as they will now be lying about their age and circumventing the systems in place, which renders all existing protections for them ineffective.

4. Is pointlessly age targeted legislation as social media is also bad for adults as well. Its bad because of business practices and lack of ethical considerations in gigantic monolithic international social media corporations. If your end goal is making the internet safer for teenagers, your end result will actually end up being making the internet safer for everyone.

I’m so glad the foss and self hosting communities have grown so large since covid. SaaS is evil incarnate and I will happily switch to foss alternatives whenever possible.

Providing the general public with convincing text generation has been an absolute unmitigated disaster for humanity.

Yuuuup. The state and capitalists collude against the working class. Neither one nor the other can ever be trusted to put the interests of workers first, though they will each make empty promises to do so. Then they will privilege the ruling class every time.

I despise that I have to use this OS at work. I would never run windows on my own computer again. Its just insanity. Next they’ll require a credit card to make a Microsoft account.

Of course she deserved better treatment. So did Sophie Scholl. It’s just very odd to act like this is not a believable thing that Israel, famed mass murderers of children, would do.

Israel hasn’t devolved, the state was founded on acts of colonialist genocide. This is what the state of Israel has always been.

Where did i say it was okay? It is abhorrent. I said that if they were going to invent a story about her graphic torture, this abuse is comparatively minor compared with other accounts from Israeli prisons.

Idk why this is treated as though its so inconceivable. Greta is hated by conservatives around the world. Most countries have already condemned Israel. They only care what Trump’s regime thinks. Their prisons are notorious centers of physical emotional and sexual torture. This is relatively mild treatment in comparison to many of the accounts I’ve read. It’s still awful, but if they were going to invent a story about how vile the Israeli prison guards were, this wouldnt be noteworthy in any way. Barely even scratches the surface of the things that happen in those prisons.

Makes sense. Crazy what they can get away with.

Not directly related to post but. The steam sale prices are honestly ridiculous. Barely even discounted. Like 30% off games that are over 5 years old.

I agree that collective action is our strongest pressure against them and it does work.

I do not think a boycott itself is likely to reverse Apple’s removal of the app. I also think it makes more sense for the app to become available from a web browser, or some other avenue that circumvents the need for Apple’s approval in the first place.

I also believe that collective action in this circumstance is better spent on ICE itself, which would be more effective (its the reason the US government wants Apple to remove the app in the first place) and more direct to fascist power.

I’m not sure why you’re taking such an aggressive / dismissive tone towards me. Did your comment really warrant a breakdown of possible forms of collective action? It never really seemed you were interested in a nuanced discussion in the first place.

I think collective action in this circumstance is better spent on directly obstructing ICE operations. The developers of the app would be better served by making their project accessible in browser, and self hosted so as to prevent further attempts to make it inaccessible. Group collective action should be focused on demonstration and obstruction of the root of the problem, ICE itself. How you go about the depends a lot on when/where but there are a lot of ways to obstruct their operations.

Ive never personally spent money on any kind of Apple device. I would certainly encourage others not to as well, a thing I was already doing. But I think focusing on Apple as the root problem here is a mistake in the first place.

There are a lot of other ways to apply pressure besides boycotts.

?

I dont understand why recommending other forms of collective action makes me cynical.

I wasnt gatekeeping it. Just pointing out how ultimately ineffective it is in creating meaningful change.

Can you show me where I said to do nothing? Or is boycotting the only form of collective action you’re aware of?

Yes, as opposed to spending money at another capitalist institution that will inevitably do the same thing, which is somehow not a subservient take.

There are a lot of other ways to apply pressure besides boycotts. I dont think a boycott would ever work against Apple over this.

Jimmy Kimmel made Disney a lot of money. They had to choose between pressure from the US government, and losing a popular source of revenue along with the vast amount of liberals who swore them off. Jimmy Kimmel was not a real institutional threat to the US government. So the US government did not have a very strong incentive to continuously push for him being taken down, and Disney had a lot of incentive to keep him around.

An app that targets fascists makes Apple no money. The US government faces the loss (or rendering ineffective) of their fascist police force. Both sides therefore face a huge amount of pressure to have the app taken down. It would have to be a gigantic part of their profit margin to warrant any pushback from Apple. I’d be very, very surprised to hear that this change is ever overturned through a boycott.