Sewell Setzer was a happy child - before he fell in love with a chatbot and took his own life at 14. His mother has now filed a lawsuit against the most powerful company in the world.
Okay. But by what mechanism would these things be enforced without encroaching on the privacy and freedoms of adults? It’s the same problems as policing porn or violent media. No one wants the government looking over their shoulder.
Instead I’m just doing 2 examples and keep it shallow :
Th is case: A 14yo should not have completely unsupervised access to an ai chat bot - it needs to be by family/child account, same as for e.g. Fortnite. Also, given the nature of the matter and looking at the article: if the chat turns ’disturbing’ the parent needs to be made aware. (Etc etc)
Another case is TikTok: honestly, I’d just ban it together with shorts and reels. IMO this rots the brains of the younger generation. I’m not even sure there is a healthy way of consuming this type of content.
For the AI one to restrict it from children you have to determine the age of the person accessing it. How do you do that and still allow them to maintain anonymity? You would need some identification to do that reliably which means for the adults using it this site now has a database of whatever ID you had to send them to verify. Or if it’s using a credit card or some government hosted verification then those entities have a database of what sites you’re using tied to your name.
For banning short form content. How do you quantify what counts? Is it just the length of the video? You’re going to be throwing out a lot of very useful videos along with the brain rot if you use that. I could point you to several craftsman channels that produce very informative shorts. If it’s case by case who is the judge? What are the criteria?
For the AI one to restrict it from children you have to determine the age of the person accessing it. How do you do that and still allow them to maintain anonymity?
Could be a layered approach. First off you could require it by terms of service and nagging during registration. Anonymous as you only require 2 email-adresses - easy to circumvent due to the same reasons. Due to tech illiteracy of most parents this is probably catching only a minority of cases.
You could enforce id as adult using a 3rd party service - e.g. Google, Apple, government ID, credit card. This would be equal to most current systems in place that I am aware of. As you correctly point out this will have the authenticating entity have a list of the services you use. Hence I’d prefer it to be a government ID over any commercial service. To most people this is also just one more service as they may use Apple, Google, Steam, Epic, etc. pp. Heck, most people (excluding me) use Whatsapp, so they don’t give a fuck about data privacy.
On top of that: We are talking about an AI service that collects and analyzes your data. The chatbot impersonates a friend or (as in the present case) a lover. Before you even typed the 1st sentence they have your email, IP, IP - Geolocation, time zone, preferred language. They probably logged in using an app on a stock Android ROM, so they also know your GPS location, WiFi, cell information, local Temperature, etc. pp. Then they start chatting and divulge even more information. What I’m trying to explain is that the AI company potentially has way more info on you than just the credit card and name. On top of that there is zero control messing with the mental health of children.
For banning short form content. How do you quantify what counts?
First off I’d ban platforms like TikTok entirely. They are effectively damaging society. The mixed content platforms are a more difficult matter - it’s a complex problem.
I could point you to several craftsman channels that produce very informative shorts.
Please do. I don’t know any and I don’t believe 1-2 min videos have any value besides short term endorphine kicks - I’m willing to educate myself though
For banning short form content. How do you quantify what counts?
Looking at shorts on Youtube and Reels on Insta it is more complicated than just banning the categories on each platform. Yes video length is a factor. Also bringing back / requiring public downvote scores will help. Both measures should improve the current situation greatly. Lastly you can use tools already in place but not really used such as the auto recognition and community reporting tools of the platforms - I mean they have them but they don’t use them. E.g. Facebook and Xitter continuously break German hate speech laws without facing consequences.
Ok, these channels also have the normal length videos covering topics of interest. The shorts seem to be rather a byproduct. How do you personally use them? Do you search for a specific activity or is that part of doom-scrolling shorts?
I don’t really try to consume shorts but YouTube presents them regardless of if you’re looking for them or not. I don’t even search out woodworking or gardening, I usually look for specific “how to disassemble things” videos or guides for video games but the algorithm always seems to get there sooner or later. Sometimes something will catch my eye and I’ll watch it which is how I discovered these guys. I don’t really doomscroll on shorts and if I start it’s usually only 2-3 videos before I hit something stupid that snaps me out of it but I’ve literally never watched https://www.youtube.com/@WorkshopCompanion full videos or seen one of them on my dashboard but their shorts are insanely dense with information. They’re my ideal YouTube “how to” video. If all content creators where like that we’d be living in the futuristic part of that one meme. My point was not all short form content is bad.
Okay. But by what mechanism would these things be enforced without encroaching on the privacy and freedoms of adults? It’s the same problems as policing porn or violent media. No one wants the government looking over their shoulder.
What exactly do you mean by ‘these things’?
How is this exactly encroaching on the privacy and freedoms of adults?
How is that the same as policing porn or violent media?
Be specific.
For the AI one to restrict it from children you have to determine the age of the person accessing it. How do you do that and still allow them to maintain anonymity? You would need some identification to do that reliably which means for the adults using it this site now has a database of whatever ID you had to send them to verify. Or if it’s using a credit card or some government hosted verification then those entities have a database of what sites you’re using tied to your name.
For banning short form content. How do you quantify what counts? Is it just the length of the video? You’re going to be throwing out a lot of very useful videos along with the brain rot if you use that. I could point you to several craftsman channels that produce very informative shorts. If it’s case by case who is the judge? What are the criteria?
Could be a layered approach. First off you could require it by terms of service and nagging during registration. Anonymous as you only require 2 email-adresses - easy to circumvent due to the same reasons. Due to tech illiteracy of most parents this is probably catching only a minority of cases.
You could enforce id as adult using a 3rd party service - e.g. Google, Apple, government ID, credit card. This would be equal to most current systems in place that I am aware of. As you correctly point out this will have the authenticating entity have a list of the services you use. Hence I’d prefer it to be a government ID over any commercial service. To most people this is also just one more service as they may use Apple, Google, Steam, Epic, etc. pp. Heck, most people (excluding me) use Whatsapp, so they don’t give a fuck about data privacy.
On top of that: We are talking about an AI service that collects and analyzes your data. The chatbot impersonates a friend or (as in the present case) a lover. Before you even typed the 1st sentence they have your email, IP, IP - Geolocation, time zone, preferred language. They probably logged in using an app on a stock Android ROM, so they also know your GPS location, WiFi, cell information, local Temperature, etc. pp. Then they start chatting and divulge even more information. What I’m trying to explain is that the AI company potentially has way more info on you than just the credit card and name. On top of that there is zero control messing with the mental health of children.
First off I’d ban platforms like TikTok entirely. They are effectively damaging society. The mixed content platforms are a more difficult matter - it’s a complex problem.
Please do. I don’t know any and I don’t believe 1-2 min videos have any value besides short term endorphine kicks - I’m willing to educate myself though
Looking at shorts on Youtube and Reels on Insta it is more complicated than just banning the categories on each platform. Yes video length is a factor. Also bringing back / requiring public downvote scores will help. Both measures should improve the current situation greatly. Lastly you can use tools already in place but not really used such as the auto recognition and community reporting tools of the platforms - I mean they have them but they don’t use them. E.g. Facebook and Xitter continuously break German hate speech laws without facing consequences.
Here’s a few that have been coming up for me lately.
https://www.youtube.com/@WorkshopCompanion/shorts
https://www.youtube.com/@RexKrueger/shorts
https://www.youtube.com/@GrowVeg/shorts
Ok, these channels also have the normal length videos covering topics of interest. The shorts seem to be rather a byproduct. How do you personally use them? Do you search for a specific activity or is that part of doom-scrolling shorts?
I don’t really try to consume shorts but YouTube presents them regardless of if you’re looking for them or not. I don’t even search out woodworking or gardening, I usually look for specific “how to disassemble things” videos or guides for video games but the algorithm always seems to get there sooner or later. Sometimes something will catch my eye and I’ll watch it which is how I discovered these guys. I don’t really doomscroll on shorts and if I start it’s usually only 2-3 videos before I hit something stupid that snaps me out of it but I’ve literally never watched https://www.youtube.com/@WorkshopCompanion full videos or seen one of them on my dashboard but their shorts are insanely dense with information. They’re my ideal YouTube “how to” video. If all content creators where like that we’d be living in the futuristic part of that one meme. My point was not all short form content is bad.