> I am a 15-year-old girl.
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@PjpB @neil @rpbook As someone who first came online at 13, and made some lifelong friends (leading to family) early on, I take great exception to the characterization of online friends not being real friends.
Your experience of the Internet clearly does not align with mine (and others, hi Russell!), so please refrain from telling others how they should experience life — your way is not The Way.
And ha ha, sorry @neil if that felt like I was ignoring your functional +1; I felt like it went without saying when I wrote it but while I was already replying to your toot, I'd tagged @rpbook in on my reply because I wanted to include them in the continued discussion but didn't want to reply to their toot directly (as if I was calling them out), and then after the fact it felt rude to exclude you.
Because, you know, I consider you a friend. Weird, right?
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And ha ha, sorry @neil if that felt like I was ignoring your functional +1; I felt like it went without saying when I wrote it but while I was already replying to your toot, I'd tagged @rpbook in on my reply because I wanted to include them in the continued discussion but didn't want to reply to their toot directly (as if I was calling them out), and then after the fact it felt rude to exclude you.
Because, you know, I consider you a friend. Weird, right?
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> Men won’t fix this because it’s not broken for men
Some men might make no effort.
Some men may intentionally fight to keep the status quo.
Neither is really the audience of my toot (even if they might also benefit from it).
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This doesn't address any of the issues from the article in The Guardian. All those problems existed online on usenet and irc. Long before any company even considered making money from social interactions on the Internet.
Facebook, Twitter, et al are bad companies, but banning them is not going to fix any of the underlying issues.
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> I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day
The examples included here are horrible. Not just the sex-shaming, but that too.
I'm far from convinced that a social media ban is the answer, but the comment is still well worth reading - especially by men.
@neil It is truly awful online for anyone with a remotely feminine profile
I've had a lot of crap online over the years & I'm not a teen & never shared photos or anything personal
The problem with bans for under 16s is that this stuff still exists for everyone & delaying exposure to it until 16 doesn't solve the problem
The problem is govts won't make platforms stop feeding & promoting toxic content
Many platforms have removed their harassment protections
The article is essential reading
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> I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day
The examples included here are horrible. Not just the sex-shaming, but that too.
I'm far from convinced that a social media ban is the answer, but the comment is still well worth reading - especially by men.
@neil i'll be honest, this article is written as if it were in support of the under-16 UK ban.
All the way at the end of the article:
A social media ban for under-16s might prevent young boys seeing endless content that treats women with contempt and hate.
With a link in there discussing the ban.
The writing was also... well, not teenage like? So prim and proper. Not at all how I used to write, nor anyone I knew...
"The writer is an anonymous teenage web user" is a mighty fine cover for someone wanting to push the under-16 ban...
"Do it for the kids! Ah LGBTQ+ content? No that's not allowed for under 16s"
Target the adults perpetrating the hate, before targeting the kids...
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This doesn't address any of the issues from the article in The Guardian. All those problems existed online on usenet and irc. Long before any company even considered making money from social interactions on the Internet.
Facebook, Twitter, et al are bad companies, but banning them is not going to fix any of the underlying issues.
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@passwordsarehard4 @cy That's okay - we don't have to agree!
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@neil
Important article. I highly recommend the "Men who hate women" book by Laura Bates.
It shows how the hate towards women is not accidental, but the result of an highly organized political project that uses it to gain power. No ban on social media would accomplish anything unless that machine is stopped.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Who_Hate_Women_(Bates_book)
"You hate women, don't you? Of course you do. They've done you so wrong. That's why you need to put ME in power." - basically every patriarch ever
CC: @neil@mastodon.neilzone.co.uk -
@CordiallyChloe @osma @neil yes, for whatever the real problems of social media there are also a bunch of things that aren’t problems with social media, that it’s nevertheless blamed for.
The Brianna Ghey case always comes to mind here: it’s been framed retroactively by her mother as a social media problem and used to argue in favour of a ban. But she wasn’t bullied online: she was bullied and murdered by people who she knew in person. Social media was in fact a safe place for her, where she found support. (It’s becoming increasingly clear that the ‘problem’ her mother perceives with social media is that it ‘turned her trans’.)
And that’s a more general pattern, I think, though not as extreme in most cases: a lot of LGBTQ young people have found support that way when they wouldn’t have been able to do so pre-internet. Age-restricting access to social media — and to LGBTQ-oriented content more broadly — seems directly harmful in those cases.
And then again for example that Guardian piece. It sounds awful — but I don’t think an age limit is the answer. Is misogyny towards adult women supposed to be okay? Either mandate that social media companies address the problem effectively, or ban them entirely — a ban for under-16s is just for the sake of looking like they’re doing something without it actually being meaningfully effective.
(Edit: to be clear I don’t think a social media ban would be positive overall, or even that it’s a workable concept — how do you define social media? — but it would at least make more sense than an age limit.)
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> I am a 15-year-old girl. Let me show you the vile misogyny that confronts me on social media every day
The examples included here are horrible. Not just the sex-shaming, but that too.
I'm far from convinced that a social media ban is the answer, but the comment is still well worth reading - especially by men.
@neil there need to be social media bans, I’m just not convinced it’s the 15-year-old girl who should be receiving them in this story.
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@CordiallyChloe @osma @neil yes, for whatever the real problems of social media there are also a bunch of things that aren’t problems with social media, that it’s nevertheless blamed for.
The Brianna Ghey case always comes to mind here: it’s been framed retroactively by her mother as a social media problem and used to argue in favour of a ban. But she wasn’t bullied online: she was bullied and murdered by people who she knew in person. Social media was in fact a safe place for her, where she found support. (It’s becoming increasingly clear that the ‘problem’ her mother perceives with social media is that it ‘turned her trans’.)
And that’s a more general pattern, I think, though not as extreme in most cases: a lot of LGBTQ young people have found support that way when they wouldn’t have been able to do so pre-internet. Age-restricting access to social media — and to LGBTQ-oriented content more broadly — seems directly harmful in those cases.
And then again for example that Guardian piece. It sounds awful — but I don’t think an age limit is the answer. Is misogyny towards adult women supposed to be okay? Either mandate that social media companies address the problem effectively, or ban them entirely — a ban for under-16s is just for the sake of looking like they’re doing something without it actually being meaningfully effective.
(Edit: to be clear I don’t think a social media ban would be positive overall, or even that it’s a workable concept — how do you define social media? — but it would at least make more sense than an age limit.)
To be clear, while this article is focused on teen girls, this is the stuff every minority sees on social media as well.
I'm trans. I have to actually relegate myself to only small corners of the internet because everywhere else feels so unsafe.
Meta no longer considers slurs and harassment of trans people as "against their policies." So any Meta platform is insufferable for me now.
Twitter actually encourages harassment of trans people and made the word "cis" a bannable offense.
And if I stray too far from the queer spaces of Reddit, I'll get called a man and doxxed pretty quickly.
I've been doxxed while using Insta in the past simply for existing as a trans person.
But the algorithm is the problem here. It's force feeding hate to kids and teaching them that it's good to hate. Monetizing hate is the issue and is what should be regulated.
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I grew up long before the Web, before most people could even dream of using a computer. In my experience, groups of men or boys behave much worse than mixed-sex groups, and straight men who've never been in a serious, loving relationship behave much worse than those who have. It takes a woman to civilise a man. It certainly did for me.
I'm not saying that's fair or reasonable, or that it should rightfully fall on women to do that work. I'm not saying that women owe us that. But I've not found anything else that works. I can tell a young man that women are people, not objects, that they're equal in value to us, but it won't change his attitude, merely his behaviour in front of me (if even that).
Social media doesn't cause misogyny: it just amplifies and legitimises bad attitudes that already exist. A social media ban would insulate girls from misogyny, but it wouldn't change boys' bad attitudes, and all the bad stuff would be there, waiting for girls when they turned 16.
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@CordiallyChloe @osma @neil Ban capitalist social media(*) and everyone migrates to the fediverse or what comes next.
(*) defined as all the aspects that make it profitable
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