Zoology Manhoe

This just gates communication to an age bracket, doesn't actually change the things about social media which are harmful, and puts the weight of this change on the most marginalized segments of the social media population.

And, if you can believe it, the governor's "counter proposal" is worse. Evan Greer's BlueSky thread covers it pretty well, but a couple of, uh, highlights:

Requires establishing an exact age for every social media user, not just minors, which means uploading IDs (and watch how fast the feds come after THOSE records, suppressing speech & using it to look for more people for ICE to haul off)

Requires a company to shut down a user's account within one hour of request by someone claiming to be a parent (a bonanza for Tumblr-style bully-brigadiers, never mind "what happens when there's a custody dispute? Are we uploading birth certificates now?")

This will be nearly impossible for big companies to deal with, but flat out unworkable for any company that doesn't have basically unlimited money. Goodbye, Tumblr! Goodbye, Pillowfort! Farewell, BlueSky! There will never be another small or startup social media company (unless it's coming from the same 5 people who already own everything) bc this alone will be such a money sink that it'll be impossible

The onus should be on the corporations and the predators who are making the Internet unsafe. It should be on adults — researchers, parents, and educators— to help guide children in best practices.

I sincerely don’t hate some kind of drivers’ license type situation where all users have to learn how to behave online before we throw them a cell phone and cut them loose to throw poop at each other like a bunch of chimpanzees.

But the thing where we let all humanity’s Wild West-style, enshittified predatory impulses (financial and sexual) run amok while we all scream at each other and destroy our attention spans and forget that fucking vaccines are a thing? We are blaming and inconveniencing the wrong people for this.

Grounding Bobby Jo and Billie Jean off their phones “to make them safe” doesn’t teach them how to identify and block the bad stuff, and doesn’t allow them to form connections with friends and community, some of which really do provide incredibly vital support.

I genuinely think — as both an extremely online person and as a mental health provider who works with teenagers, that kids should maybe not have full access to the Internet as early as we’re giving some kids smart phones. Before 12 is almost certainly too early, for example. I like a slow ramp up model where kids start under closer supervision, but I also recognize at the same time and that this can be really hard on parents to put into effect, and often they don’t know either how best to be safe.

We need to agree on best practices, but here’s something we tell parents of younger teens. A flip phone is absolutely a thing if you’re just worried about where your kid is and want them to be able to text you. Especially if someone has difficulty with impulse control, or reading social cues, maybe they don’t need the whole Internet at 12.

But if we’re worried about, for example, sexual predators on the Internet, why don’t we take the sexual predators off the Internet? If we are worried about kids’ sleep schedules and attention spans, which we probably should be, what if we made it financially and logistically feasible for parents to be more closely involved with what their kids are doing.

Or think if we made it possible for kids to go to third spaces in their actual meat suit and touch some fucking grass and make real life friends. I think all these things are very important!!

AND we just perhaps could maybe not cut the kids out of the public sphere where most people are living their lives, only to come back some handful of years later with no skills of how to recognize predatory behavior, for example.

Oh and by the way, for the privilege of keeping you “safe” we’re gonna need your wallet name and your birthdate and a whole bunch of other private information? It tastes like blaming the victim to me. (I’m not sure if the kids are saying the vibes are rancid anymore, but I think the vibes are rancid here.)

I’m still trying to think of how I say this more professionally, in a letter to my representatives.

like I'm seriously losing my mind over here who actually thinks gulls are an eastern hemisphere phenomenon when this is Laridae's global distribution

behold the native range of the Grey-Headed Gull

(dark green is resident, you'll note its along the andes)

behold the range of the brown headed gull

andean gull

dolphin gull

grey gull

laughing gull

franklin's gull

belcher's gull

olrog's gull

kelp gull