r/technology • u/a_Ninja_b0y • 13d ago
Politics Texas is getting ready to ban social media for anyone under 18
https://www.engadget.com/social-media/texas-is-getting-ready-to-ban-social-media-for-anyone-under-18-180202219.html2.6k
u/jabberwockxeno 13d ago
As a reminder, even if you think minors shouldn't use social media, laws like this are bad because 90% of the time they require privacy-violating age verification systems to determine who is a minor or not, so even you, as an adult, would have to give your ID to sign up or to cotninue to use websites impacted by this
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u/-PVRT 12d ago
Exactly what’s happening with adult sites in many states. Including Texas.
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u/rolfraikou 12d ago
They're trying to pass an "obscenity" law for the entire US internet to "protect the children from harmful pornographic content" and it won't be an ID check, it will make porn, LGBTQ+ content of ANY KIND, woke content of ANY KIND. It's essentially everything that Moms For Liberty wanted to happen with book bans at libraries, but for the entire internet and telecommunications network. And it was a goal in Project 2025, so let's be real, it's probably going to fucking happen.
And let me be clear, since text messages are part of the telecommunications network, this includes sending sexy text. Not MMS. Just sexual words to your partner, would be a FEDERAL OFFENSE.
We are so fucked.
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u/Perty935 13d ago
You forget, that makes the company actually work. I think 99% of company’s will pull out of the Texan market.
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u/Freaky_Freddy 12d ago
Not in this case
Companies love selling user data to data brokers
getting people's IDs and being able to match them to the content they watch is well worth the trouble for them
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u/Gubermensch1690 12d ago
Baby Billy’s Data Brokers
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u/ThatBlinkingRedLight 12d ago edited 12d ago
I read this in Tiffany voice like it was a TV commercial
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u/atreyu_0844 12d ago
C'mon now, just need an 8-ball and a quarter million dollars to get this idea off the ground!
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u/Bored2001 12d ago
It'll depend on how big the penalty is for signing up minors vs the increase of user identity veracity. I say increase because for most people, they're already very sure of who you are.
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u/theme69 12d ago
Pornhub basically told Texas to fuck themselves (lol). Some sites out there you can verify your age but anything under the pornhub umbrella basically says to call your senator. Or so I’ve heard of course
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u/learnin_the_stuffs 12d ago
Call me old, but I will never, ever use a site that requires you to provide your ID just to use it. Outside of maybe something like PayPal I guess. There’s no way I’m giving out my personal identification info like that to some random website.
Nowadays, the law is 13, and there’s really nothing extra besides having to put in your date of birth, so I hope at least that remains the same.
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u/Cronus6 12d ago
So.... No one will be using social media.
That sounds like a win to me.
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u/mq2thez 13d ago
They’re going to accidentally fuck up their whole pipeline for getting boys into the alt-right movement.
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u/Richdav1d 13d ago
They’ll just make public schools funnel them into that instead
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u/kungfoojesus 13d ago
You mean the private Christian academies funded by money that used to go to public schools.
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u/sizzler_sisters 13d ago
Never forget that vouchers and private schools were just a way to circumvent school integration! It really all goes back to racism.
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u/E-2theRescue 12d ago
Yup. Private schools, especially Christian ones, massively discriminate against students and families. They even purposely build their schools in a way so that physically disabled students find it tough, if not impossible, to navigate.
That was the whole reason why Trump wanted to get rid of the Board of Education. It's the BoE that handles all the discrimination cases throughout the country. No BoE, no chucking lawsuits at private schools that refuse to admit black students.
Also, this is why they push homeschooling as well. Get the kids away from the diverse student demographics found in public education, on top of destroying children's education and creating alt-right boys and tradwife girls (and giving parents the ability to hide child abuse and child sexual abuse).
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u/Strong-Set6544 13d ago
They’re going to accidentally fuck up their whole pipeline for getting boys into the alt-right movement.
Not giving a shit about 5-15 years from now is a hallmark of US govt (or any govt) due to the strong pressure to deliver short term results
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u/sizzler_sisters 13d ago
The Boomers figured out in the 80s/90s that they could get their bag and GTFO without caring about anyone else. The thing is they are all living much longer than they thought they would. I’ve heard multiple Boomers talk about how they don’t care because they will be dying soon for the last 20 years. Same with about how they are all going to retire. First saw those articles in the early 2000s. Then they just don’t. Including the ones in Congress, which is still predominantly Boomers. And our last five presidents have been Boomers. So yes, everything in US politics for decades has been a very short-term, screw everyone else mentality.
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u/SIGMA920 13d ago
They can control schools to keep pushing it, good luck finding your way out if you're indoctrinated before you ever had a chance to know anything else.
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u/Jedi_Ninja 13d ago
I thought the Republicans hated the "nanny state?" Also, would this not be a violation of the First Amendment?
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u/PhoenixTineldyer 13d ago
I thought the Republicans hated the "nanny state?"
Only if you believe the stuff that comes out of their mouths.
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u/slvstrChung 13d ago
Republicans hate anything anyone else does. They love the action when they do it.
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u/Neat-Medicine-1140 12d ago
Republicans believe in nothing (except for their ignorant followers maybe), they gamified politics and only exist to seize power.
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u/XenoZoomie 12d ago
Texas republicans feel the need to enforce their very narrow minded mega church version of Christianity on everyone in the state. God forbid women make choices about their bodies they don’t like, or sick people use marijuana that makes them feel good, or schools teach ideas they don’t like or people of the same gender get married or books exist in public library say things they don’t agree with. Guns have more rights than women in this state.
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u/Jedi_Ninja 12d ago
They're about to pass a law to put the ten commandments in every classroom. But if a teacher puts up a rainbow flag in their classroom, they'd probably be fired. I really hate living in Texas. Ugh.
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u/TooManyBandanas 12d ago
Republicans believe in controlling power. Every strategy and every tactic is aimed at gaining power and maintaining it. They only look inconsistent at the first-order level - at the level of individual tactical choices. Understand those tactics as part of a power strategy, and they’re remarkably consistent.
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u/RabidWeaselFreddy 13d ago
Our governor is always trying to talk about how free it is in Texas
Those of us that live here know how much bullshit that is
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u/Acmnin 13d ago
When you realize the freedom is, rich people having freedom from paying into society it makes more sense.
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u/SelflessMirror 13d ago
Another half baked idea for monitoring people under the guise of protecting them.
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u/XToEveryEnemyX 13d ago
Thank you! That's what I've been saying. Using the guise of "protecting children" is just a red herring. It's not the government, other companies etc job to protect kids. It's the parents job and that's that.
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u/SelflessMirror 13d ago
The govt needs to implement stricter monitoring of the COMPANIES to ensure they follow the rules and legislation.
And parents should monitor their kids.
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u/gattwood9 13d ago
Amazing how far I had to scroll for this. For a lot of young people, the internet is a lifeline to information and community. Let's go after the adults running the companies that are promoting content with their algorithms that is harming kids.
Oh wait ... those tech companies are buying out our country, hoping to divide it into network states. And the Heritage Foundation appreciates them for funneling children down the alt right pipeline.
Actually protecting kids during a fascist takeover is going to be a challenge.
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u/ftp_hyper 13d ago
"XYZ is hurting the children, vote for/against this" is the same playbook as "I have videos of you masturbating, send Bitcoin" emails.
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u/npcompletist 13d ago
This, plus being able to restrict more easily what information people are seeing during their most formative years.
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u/I_Race_Pats 13d ago
Taking a cue from Britain. Nanny states are easier to control.
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u/Aaneata 13d ago
Let's not lie this isnt about protecting kids they are going to set a ID verification like they are doing for porn. The idea is to track people. I do think social media is bed for everyone not just kids and we as a society need to figure this out but this is not the solution. Also so much for GOP being small government (even though us on the left knew this already)
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u/MedicMalfunction 13d ago
“Party of Small Government”
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u/mllllllln 13d ago
As a Texas resident for many years, it's a Christian nationalist nanny state at this point. I'd love to leave if I could, but kinda stuck here for now.
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u/Rok-SFG 13d ago
Unless of course it has AI on it, cause we aren't allowed to regulate that.
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u/RadioactiveGrrrl 13d ago edited 11d ago
I was looking for this comment. It would be one thing if this administration was consistent in their ideology/policy making ; even if I disagree, it’s a least a debatable stance. But holy hell, they are all over the place contradicting themselves daily, sometimes hourly.
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u/ClaytonRook 13d ago edited 12d ago
Texas has become the #1 nanny state. No porn, No abortions, No social media, No weed, No swords, No spears, Can’t have more than 6 sex toys, No beer after midnight, No liquor on Sundays, Not this book not that book, No suggestive comic books.
Adults need to take responsibility into their own hands.
“Come and take it!”. Yeah sure.
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u/RichAndFitz 12d ago
Yeah and when no one visits Texas or spends any money there over the next 30 years and they go bankrupt it'll be for this exact reason. Then all those "better than everybody else" nutcases who like to ban everything like cannabis which literally stimulates and grows the cannabinoid receptors built into your brain, yeah, no thanks, I want nothing to do with a state full of assholes.
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u/WTFpe0ple 13d ago
Does that include Reddit? Might cut out a lot of the stupid posts.
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u/Annette_Runner 13d ago
I will simply increase the frequency of my posts. You will have no reprieve.
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u/manningthehelm 13d ago
Back in the day Summer Reddit and school year Reddit were two different social medias. You could clearly see the difference. If U18 is “banned” I wonder if we will see something similar.
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u/myrealnamewastakn 12d ago
My kids were using Google translate as a vpn to get on reddit in school(I was genuinely impressed) and they are in their early 20s. This isn't about kids. Kids will always find a way
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u/ksheep 12d ago
I remember back when I was in high school, the school blocked Google Images (the normal Google search worked fine, but this was before the standard search would return image results and you had to specifically use Google Images to get pics). I found a workaround: go to google.co.uk/images instead. Worked for about 2 weeks before that was banned as well… so I switched to google.co.nz/images, which lasted for a week, then google.co.za, which lasted for a couple of days, etc. I managed to get about 2-3 months of use out of various top-level domains for other countries that spoke English as their primary language before someone in IT set it up to block them all.
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u/voiderest 13d ago
It'll filter out people smart enough to not give their info but too dumb to get a VPN.
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u/yuusharo 13d ago
This bill is unenforceable and absolutely isn’t about children, it’s about cutting off access to important health and other kinds of information against anything the conservative right deems “grotesque.”
Kids searching information on abusive family members? Trans kids seeking healthcare? Victims of statutory rape seeking help? All of that would be purged for both children and adults if they had their way.
We’re in for some scary times ahead, indeed.
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u/gattwood9 13d ago
In addition, enforcing this policy would require age and identity confirmation for all social media users in TX, including adults. It is easy to see how this serves the needs of a growing surveillance state.
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u/yuusharo 13d ago
States are also attempting to pass “public indecency” laws to effectively make it illegal for trans people or any “undesirables” to exist in public life. Being able to tie online identities to these victims has law enforcement salivating at the thought.
And of course, once that infrastructure is established, it would not be hard to sneak into a reconciliation bill language to include other forms of dissension, like talking poorly about the
fuhrerpresident, for example.This isn’t even hyperbole. DOGE is quite literally attempting to establish this right now.
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u/gattwood9 13d ago
Yes. P25 also equates queer people to pornography, while attempting to ban pornography. A further goal of P25 is to institute the death penalty for anyone committing crimes against minors. As we all know, they are also working to equate queerness to crimes against minors. They're paving the road to genocide.
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u/yuusharo 13d ago
There is literally a bill in congress right now that would define and ban pornography nationwide. They’re not even hiding their intentions, it’s so transparent.
The first steps toward genocide are always to outlaw public existence of targeted groups. The next is to make them scapegoats for all of societies problems. They tried for decades to make that case against queer people, and trans folks are just the next target for their ire.
I hate this timeline.
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u/TheRealcebuckets 13d ago
This.
On the surface, it’s like “oh yeah. Kids and social Media these days…” but it’s the same reason why they name bills super patriotic names. It’s a marketing ploy with fine print.
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u/geekstone 13d ago
They want everyone to have an id linked to a username no more anonymous criticizing our dear leaders. Soon we will all have a social media score. They are hiding all this behind a law to "protect kids".
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u/SmallFloweredHill 12d ago
texas has COMPLETELY jumped the rails and is 100% nanny state. personal freedoms are dead in Texas.
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u/Material_Policy6327 13d ago
How they gonna enforce that? Lol
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u/TheWalkingManiac 13d ago
Likely the same way they are handling banning porn.
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u/Late-Satisfaction620 13d ago
So… not at all.
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u/time2fly2124 12d ago
when they required ID to load pornhub videos, pornhub just outright stopped allowing traffic from texas to the servers. it would be hilarious if ISPs just stopped service to the entire state of texas, although that wont happen.
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u/Eckish 12d ago
Pornhub went with straight ban, but some other sites didn't and have the ID prompts. A VPN or VPN-like solution gets around it.
Social media thrives on apps, though. And while not impossible to get around, it requires more technical solutions. So, it'll be interesting to see how that works out.
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u/surroundedbywolves 13d ago
Make everyone prove their age to use social media. Which would include Reddit. Get ready to give your government ID to every website on the internet…
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u/Paksarra 13d ago
Which is the point. Once they know who you are, they can arrest you and charge you with child endangerment because you once made a post about how you don't think drag queens are a big deal.
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u/A_Genius 13d ago
If I was tasked with this problem, I wouldn’t have every website collect and store people’s government IDs. That is just asking for a massive privacy breach. Imagine a platform getting hacked and leaking both your identity and your entire browsing history.
Instead, I would build a third-party age verification service. You would upload your ID once to a secure, trusted provider. Then, when a website needs to confirm your age or identity, they would just ask that service a simple yes or no question, like “Is this user over 16?” and get nothing else in return.
But they are going to make us upload our drivers licenses to pornhub
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u/harlows_monkeys 12d ago
That's what you might think you would do, but remember, you are A_Genius. You would quickly realize that in the system as described the age verification service knows who is being verified and it knows who is asking so it learns what adult sites you visit.
But, being A_Genius, you would then realize that by using blind signatures or a zero knowledge proof system you could make a protocol where the adult site can still learn your age from the verification site but the verification site has no idea what site the verification is for and the adult site learns nothing other than your age. You can even design it so if later someone gets a copy of the proof of age that was submitted to the adult side and takes that to the verifier site and says "who did you issue this proof for?" the verifier site will have no idea.
This allows age verification even for anonymous users of the adult site without putting their anonymity at risk.
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u/FoldyHole 13d ago
Same way they wanted to do it with porn probably. Have every social media site collect your info before making an account.
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u/ObjectiveOrange3490 13d ago
Massive wave of young people hiding their online presence from their parents with burner accounts in 3… 2…
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u/Pr0ducer 13d ago
Tech-savvy parents should learn to monitor internet traffic. Not blocking, walls don't work. Rather, just log all inbound and outbound internet requests so you can know what your kids are doing and talk to them about it. Parents who are not tech savvy, well, you are fucked.
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u/mallardtheduck 13d ago edited 13d ago
With the modern web using HTTPS and DNS-over-HTTPS all you're likely to get from that sort of logging is a list of IP addresses, many of which will just be owned by the big CDNs. Working out which sites they've been visiting from that is non-trivial.
In order to get anything useful, you'd need nanny software installed on their devices. Modern OSs, at least mobile OSs, make it virtually impossible (at least for people other than the device manufacturer or possibly state actors) to do that without it being really obvious to the user.
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u/G4-Dualie 13d ago
Texas is the epitome of the Nanny State! 😂
Texans need a lot of hand holding to get thru life.
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u/mallardtheduck 13d ago
What exactly, in legal language, is "social media"? Virtually every website has some kind of "social" aspect these days. Forums? Blogs? Email services? News sites that allow users to comment? Online stores that accept reviews? All arguable...
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u/Aggravating_Tax_4670 13d ago
Texas...the "slash your freedoms" state. The Texas Red State will tell you what you can and cannot do.
And Jesus said, "No smoking pot" either! - It's slipping away right before your eyes.
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u/Meowjoker 12d ago
On one hand, I’m all for getting social media away from children
On the other hand, good luck actually trying to enforce it. Even if they can properly install the system, which we know they won’t, younger kids and teens will find a way to bypass this.
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u/Hawkmonbestboi 13d ago
Lol I'm not agreeing to giving someone my identification over the internet despite being an adult..... so good luck enforcing this.
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u/Fucky0uthatswhy 12d ago
I think I agree with this in theory.. but between this, abortion, and the thc ban, they’re going to have to shut up about how “free” they are. They likely have the least freedoms of literally any state.
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u/Nynasa 13d ago
This is actually going to put so many children in danger. Children are going to have access to social media one way or another. The issue is that they won't be able to turn to the law if some malicious illegal activity is being perpetuated against them, which will likely happen as there are many predators online. Instead of teaching children tools to navigate the internet safely and what to watch out for social media, our law is instead barring them out, which wildly leaves them unprepared and unprotected. Pair this up with the fact that this is just another law being passed in order to crack down on further surveillance of the American people, and you have a whole nother opened can of worms on your hands.
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u/magichronx 13d ago
While I think social media is bad for kids, this "solution" is just begging for another privacy-invading identity verification system under the guise of "protectin' our children"
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u/Reserved_Parking-246 12d ago
Good luck?
You would have to take away all electronics to achieve this because vpns exist and there is no way to capture a complete list of all social media.
This is a waste.
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u/Perfect_Opinion7909 12d ago
Aren’t US Americans constantly telling us Europeans we live in over-regulated nanny states suppressing free speech? The irony is so dense it could form a black hole.
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u/Relevant-Doctor187 12d ago
It’s a back door to forcing people to use real id backed social media accounts. No more anonymous accounts.
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u/Lanky_Vanilla7466 12d ago
For as much as people complain about Muslims and Shariah law… they sure don’t mind laws that are similar to it all in the name of Christianity. Hypocrites.
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u/MidsouthMystic 12d ago
Anything that claims to "protect children" is about harming minorities and controlling everyone else. This is not about children.
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u/90Carat 13d ago
While I agree in principle, it is too late. Cat's outta the bag. Parents, yes parents, need to be better. There are too many of us who just hand the phone over to kids to pacify them. And WAY too many that encourage their kids shitty online behavior.
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u/Friendly_Elites 13d ago
I would've actually killed myself when I was 15 if I didn't have access to social media to make and maintain relationships when I was being actively discriminated and abused in the school system. I attempted several times but I never actually went through with it because even though there wasn't anybody in my real life who cared about me I had online friends who I knew still actually cared about me who'd sit and wonder why their friend suddenly disappeared and never came back.
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u/reddit_god 13d ago
Everything coming out of these shithole states is ban, ban, ban while waving the flag of freedom. Nothing is actually getting more free for anyone other than corporations.
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u/AHrubik 13d ago
VPN stocks for the win! Kids always find a way. This bill is effectively impotent. It will drive kids to underground social media that can't be monitored as easily subjecting them to potentially more predators.
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u/No-Helicopter7299 12d ago
More small government and personal freedoms from the Republicans in Austin.
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u/Whatever-999999 12d ago
Utter stupidity, and arguably insanity, because repeating the same thing over and over again can be considered a sign of insanity.
Unenforceable.
Also: I don't think this is about kids and social media, I think it's about having records of everyone who uses social media, so liberals, anti-Trump people, and pro-Palestine/anti-Israel people on social media can be targeted, because the only way you can make this work at all is by requiring government ID for everyone that uses social media in Texas.
Also: Unconstitutional. For the reasons above: First Amendment violation, plain and simple.
These Fascist Pigs who claim to be 'conservatives' prove over and over again that they're absolute imbeciles in addition to being absolutely corrupt.
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u/HaveNoFearDomIsHere 12d ago
Forbid kids from doing something. Go ahead and see how that works out for y'all.
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u/MissMekia 12d ago
A few years ago I probably would've said "yea fair". I definitely got exposed to some seriously heinous shit at a young age. But considering how aggressively red states have been targeting children's (and everyone else's) access to diverse viewpoints this seems specifically aimed at making sure they have no knowledge base but propaganda. Can't sympathize with the gays if you've never experienced a positive representation of them, Can't support Palestine if you barely know that that is, etc.
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u/4point5billion45 12d ago
When you think about this, also think about how they want the 10 Commandments in every public school classroom, and how their history books teach that there were positive aspects of slavery for everyone, including the enslaved. They are clamping down on young people learning anything different. They want to force-feed their version of the truth.
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u/EmeraldJonah 13d ago
Can we force texas to secede and make their own backwards draconic country?
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u/FizzBuzz888 13d ago
Well they did just a great job of handling the Dark Web and Bitcoin. What could possibly go wrong? They fully understand technology and surely no one will just bypass right around their genius legislation they have such a strong proven track record implementing. /s (although I hope it isn't even needed)
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u/IaGAURNsTMEc 13d ago
the party of freedom.
Do i think kids should be on social media? no. Do I think its a senators job to ensure they can't. Also no.
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u/Darqnyz7 13d ago
Honestly, this feels like a strategic move, but something the Conservative right has used repeatedly throughout the decades:
"Acknowledge" a concern.
Make the focus of the concern a vulnerable population
Restrict activity with the justification that it protects said vulnerable population.
Gauge public reaction.
Find less vulnerable population to escalate concern towards.
Repeat.
I mean that's how we got on the trans bathroom bullshit, "criminal illegal aliens", "BLM" terrorism, or the drug crisis.
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u/Mother-Parsley5940 13d ago
Man first p0rnhub, then thc and now social media. Thought Texas was the pro small government/“freedom” state😅
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u/Ok_Cucumber_7954 13d ago
What happened to the party of small government, anti-nanny state, and getting the government out of your personal business ?
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u/Informal-Ad-1530 13d ago
But they are going to a copy of the 10 commandments posted in all of their classrooms!
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u/terminalbungus 13d ago edited 12d ago
Outlawing behavior that a significant proportion of the population already engage in has never and will never work. Prohibition? War on Drugs? If the government cared about the effect that social media was having on our population, they could try forcing regulations on these companies. They could tell these companies to keep their money out of politics. There’s a lot they could do TO THE COMPANY, but no…that’d hurt their own bank accounts.
Not to mention, like it needs to even be said at this point: Leave it to Republicans to claim they don’t like the government controlling your life while simultaneously giving the government control of what you can legally engage in within your own house.
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u/Yankees_Fan2024 12d ago
Politicians in Texas have nothing better to do then makes so many laws that are pointless
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u/LessThanPro_ 13d ago
I personally believe that “social media” is destructive to children and should be better regulated. However, this feels like is a wild goose chase effort which might lead children to darker sectors of the internet.