Mainstream Media Tries Blaming Social Media for Exposing Youth to Violence

As the mainstream media scrambles to justify age verification laws, one outlet is arguing that young people are exposed to violence.

https://www.freezenet.ca/mainstream-media-tries-blaming-social-media-for-exposing-youth-to-violence/

#Censorship #News #broadcasting #CTV #journalism #research #SocialMedia #study

The Retro Gaiden website is pushing the boundries of what's visually possible for Mastodon. There are no other servers that look like this.

https://retro-gaiden.com

#Mastodon #Retro #SocialMedia

Study Confirms that Australia’s Age Verification Law Was a Failure

More than 85% of Australian teens that are supposedly "banned" from social media are still using it according to the BMJ.

https://www.freezenet.ca/study-confirms-that-australias-age-verification-law-was-a-failure/

#Censorship #News #AgeVerification #Australia #BritishMedicalJournal #science #SocialMedia #study

Your public social media posts, including deleted ones, may be permanently archived by third-party scraping services and academic datasets. #privacy #socialmedia #archiving #indigoprivacy

RED ALERT! The KIDS Act (H.R.7757) is being teed up for a vote in the House next week! This bill is an omnibus style package which includes horrible bills like the Kids Online Safety Act and the SCREEN Act! Call your Senators and Representatives ASAP!

Reading the latest version of the bill and it seems like House is sticking with their version of KOSA. This will set up a showdown between the House and the Senate as both chambers have dug in their heels regarding their version of KOSA. I doubt either chamber will fully get their way.

#Privacy #FreeSpeech #DigitalRights #Censorship #AgeVerification #KOSA #KidsOnlineSafetyAct #Internet #SocialMedia #UnitedStates #USA #US

Consumer advocates demand Safety by Design for all instead of social media bans

The vzbv investigated Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube: Addiction-promoting mechanisms and dark patterns endanger minors despite the DSA.

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Consumer-advocates-demand-Safety-by-Design-for-all-instead-of-social-media-bans-11341975.html?wt_mc=sm.red.ho.mastodon.mastodon.md_beitraege.md_beitraege&utm_source=mastodon

#DigitalServicesAct #Facebook #Instagram #Netzpolitik #Snapchat #SocialMedia #TikTok #Verbraucherschutz #YouTube #news

Published at #IRRJ: "Beyond Hostility: Detecting Subtle and Overt Forms of Online Conflict with Multi-Objective Learning" by Oliver Warke, Joemon M. Jose, and Jan Breitsohl. #Hostility, #OnlineConflictDetection, #SocialMedia, #BehaviourAnalysis, #KnowledgeDistillation, #Transformers, #NLP

https://irrj.org/article/view/25366

The UK just banned social media for children under 16, effective Spring 2027. Nine in 10 parents backed it. Critics say requiring everyone to prove their age creates new privacy risks. #privacy #socialmedia #uk #children #indigoprivacy

Rock band Sons of Legion can thank the power of social media and music platforms for going viral last year. The independent Nashville-based band embarked on a 50-city sold-out tour and opened for Jelly Roll. Now, band members find themselves fighting AI impersonators, AI romance scammers and rapidly-generating AI music proliferating on the same social networks they owe their success to.
https://flip.it/0ETvIx

#SocialMedia #AI #Music

UK plans to ban social media for under-16s by 2027, covering major platforms like TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and X under new safety rules. 📵
The policy includes mandatory age verification, possible overnight curfews, and stricter limits on livestreaming and stranger contact features. 🔐

🔗 https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/06/uk-to-ban-social-media-for-kids-under-16-may-impose-overnight-curfews/

#TechNews #Europe #EU #UK #SocialMedia #Privacy #OnlineSafety #AgeVerification #DigitalRights #CyberSecurity #Policy #Safety #Kids #Children #Internet #Governance

"This week, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet by announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027.

The UK government continues to falsely characterize this policy as a necessary response to growing concerns about online harms for young people. In reality, much like the Online Safety Act, it will cause more harm than it will prevent.

Users of all ages are burdened with proving their age before accessing content, with social media platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X included in the ban. There remains no reliable, privacy-preserving method of verifying the age of every internet user and methods vary from one platform to the next.

Young people will not simply be protected from being contacted by adults or endlessly scrolling—they’ll also lose access to educational videos on YouTube, local events on Facebook, and potentially cut off from distant friends and family.

Public policy must be effective, proportionate and respectful of fundamental rights. Young people deserve better than a policy built on panic, and all internet users deserve a safe and free internet. A social media ban generates headlines, but it will not solve the problem."

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/uks-new-under-16-social-media-ban-will-cause-more-harm-it-prevents

#UK #SocialMedia #DigitalRights #AgeVerification #Privacy #Censorship

#Meta Lobbies #Congress For Protection From Child-Harm #Lawsuits

Meta has lobbied the U.S. Congress for legal immunity from child-harm claims tied to social media products such as #Instagram , as it faces thousands of lawsuits from young users and their families, according to a source familiar with the matter and proposed legislative language reviewed by Reuters. If adopted by lawmakers and passed into law as part of the #KidsOnlineSafetyAct (#KOSA ) under consideration in the U.S. Senate, such a provision could undermine thousands of lawsuits against Meta and other online platforms over harms to #children.
#socialmedia #security #privacy #childharm

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/06/18/2342227/meta-lobbies-congress-for-protection-from-child-harm-lawsuits?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

The UK plans to ban under-16s from major social media platforms by spring 2027, with age checks that could require more biometric and identity data. 🔒
Australia’s similar ban has seen many teens bypass restrictions, raising questions about privacy and the effectiveness of age-based enforcement. ⚖️

🔗 https://proton.me/blog/uk-social-media-ban-privacy

#TechNews #UK #SocialMedia #Privacy #AgeVerification #OnlineSafety #Proton #DataProtection #Surveillance #DigitalRights #Security #Policy #Technology #Internet #Freedom

The UK’s Teen #SocialMedia #Ban Is Political Theater, Not Child Safety Policy - https://www.techdirt.com/2026/06/16/the-uks-teen-social-media-ban-is-political-theater-not-child-safety-policy/ "
This is not thoughtful policy. This is not considered policy. This is not protecting children. This is a desperate politician with no clue how any of this works announcing nonsense to grab headlines."

Every time I see a commercial on TV I enjoy seeing how many of the 7 tools of propaganda get used. The Ontario government commercials are a lovely source of this. Also the CHIP reverse mortage. And the hearing aid ad. (Their celebrities are so well known they have to subtitle who they are now)

Someone might have fun making a BINGO card for this!

follow along here https://www.elmcommunicationsllc.com/post/the-7-tools-of-propaganda-and-how-to-spot-them

#Propaganda #OnPoli #CriticalThinking #SocialMedia

The government has ignored calls to regulate age verification companies to ensure our sensitive data is protected.

Instead it has expanded ID checks to multiply the risks.

But the actual cause of harms is off the hook – how platforms use our data to monetise our attention.

Sign the petition ⬇️

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/break-big-tech

#stopKillingInternet #StopKillingTheInternet #socialmediaban #socialmedia #ageverification #onlinesafety #privacy #censorship #ukpolitics #ukpol #dataprotection

“Soon it will be virtually impossible to be online in the UK without handing over identity documents or biometric data to unregulated companies.”

The social media ban means EVERY user has to prove they're over 16. This puts millions at risk of their personal data being hacked.

🗣️ ORG's @JamesBaker.

https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366644294/Big-tech-must-introduce-age-checks-to-support-UKs-under-16s-social-media-ban

#stopKillingInternet #StopKillingTheInternet #socialmediaban #socialmedia #ageverification #onlinesafety #privacy #censorship #ukpolitics #ukpol

RE: https://social.openrightsgroup.org/@openrightsgroup/116753407017940135

Paging Simon Harris and pals.

#MastoDaoine #SocialMedia #ChildRights #DigitalRights #Article19

Where Real Online Music Reviews Happen
#musicianresources #MusicianTips #socialnetworking
#SocialMedia https://muz4now.com/2026/where-real-online-music-reviews-happen

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced plans for a social media ban for under-16-year-olds, following in the footsteps of Australia, Canada and Brazil. The embattled leader said: "We’re giving children their childhoods back."

Euronews has the details:
https://flip.it/rfxmq8

#SocialMedia #KeirStarmer #OnlinePrivacy

Dear businesses: If you use X as your primary social media platform, I cannot read what you post without also having an X account. Therefore, I will never see your posts. You’ve also alienated many others who might be interested in what you post.

Almost all of these enshitified, centralized platforms lock you out completely without having an account. Screw that.

The Fediverse is so good that legacy, centralized social media feels like a digital ghetto.

#Fediverse #SocialMedia

Cool cool cool. Good times out here I guess... 😒

"When dozens of #Jewish girls emerged from a storm drain in #Nyack, #NewYork, Wednesday after becoming lost on a #school trip, local officials described the episode as a fortunate ending to a potentially dangerous situation.

On #socialmedia, however, the incident quickly drew a slew of #antisemitic comments.

“They can’t help it. Roaches and rats love the sewers,” wrote one #Facebook user on a post by the #Rockland Daily.

“Those tunnels were promised to them 3,000 years ago,” another user wrote, referencing the common online antisemitic phrase ridiculing the Jewish connection to #Israel.

Many of the comments also referenced the 2024 incident at the #Chabad-#Lubavitch movement’s world headquarters in #CrownHeights, #Brooklyn, in which a group from the movement attempted to dig an unauthorized tunnel beneath the building.

“From the tunnels in Brooklyn to the tunnels in nyack! The black coats never disappoint[...]"

https://www.jta.org/2026/06/11/united-states/after-dozens-of-jewish-girls-get-lost-in-ny-creek-tunnel-antisemitic-comments-follow-online

RE: https://mastodon.social/@fediversereport/116737751838277621

🔥 Must read. @laurenshof finds words for what it going on and about governments, which dont find words for what is going on.

"The world’s first trillionaire is openly saying that he wants to overthrow a foreign government, in plain text, for all the world to see. And the response has been nothing?"

#Belfast #socialmedia #fediforum #savesocial @hakendran

IFTAS boosted

Connected Places » 🌐 2026-06-12
@fediversereport@mastodon.social

New from me:

After Musk helped create the permission structure for this weeks riots in Belfast, the UK government announced "no change" to its policy on X. This non-response is stranger than it looks: Weber defines the state by its exclusive right to use, threaten, and authorize force, and European states are visibly conceding the latter two. That has direct consequences for a movement that pitches open protocols as the path to European sovereignty.

https://connectedplaces.online/reports/fr166-no-change/

"Billionaire Elon Musk’s Grok AI violated Canada’s privacy laws and, at one point, generated more than 6,000 sexual deepfake images per hour, Canada’s privacy commissioner found.

“The investigation has found that X Corp and xAI violated Canada’s federal private sector privacy law by launching the Grok AI-powered image generation tool without implementing appropriate safeguards at the outset,” privacy commissioner Philippe Dufresne said in a press conference in Ottawa Thursday.

“This lack of protection allowed users to create and share sexualized deepfakes largely targeting women and children,” he added.

Dufresne launched an investigation in January to examine the proliferation of sexualized deepfakes created by Grok and shared on the X social media platform.

“According to researchers, Grok was at one point generating well over 6,000 [sexualized] images per hour,” he said, adding that “millions” of sexual deepfakes were created."

https://globalnews.ca/news/11899687/grok-sexual-deepfake-report/

#Canada #AI #GenerativeAI #Grok #DeepFakes #SocialMedia #Twitter

" #Russia has effectively outlawed the public expression of #childfree views. #Women now face heavy fines for discussing a wish not to have #children, or even for candid #socialMedia accounts of difficult #birth s or #postpartum #depression...

The Health Ministry, it added, has introduced mandatory questionnaires for #teenagers; a #girl who indicates she does not currently want children is referred to a psychologist for 'corrective' #counseling"

https://united24media.com/world/russia-revives-soviet-era-controls-to-police-womens-bodies-and-futures-19654

#womensRights

How and Why to Fight Back Against #SocialMedia Bans

Several U.S. states are pushing to ban young people from social media entirely. This marks the latest wave of #censorship bills masquerading as “children’s online safety” measures, with states like #Massachusetts , #Idaho , #Minnesota , #NorthCarolina , #SouthCarolina , #Illinois , and EFF’s home state of #California leading the charge.

Just a few years ago, lawmakers supporting age-gating laws insisted their efforts were narrowly targeted at limiting young people’s access to adult content.
#agegating #ageverification
#privacy

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/how-and-why-fight-back-against-social-media-bans

Polymarket's chief marketing officer, Matthew Modabber, has been using his personal PayPal account to send money to influencers including far-right creator Nick Shirley, anti-trans Fox News contributor Riley Gaines, and progressive commentator Brian Krassenstein. Those creators have gone on to promote Polymarket, without disclaimers to indicate they've been paid. Here's more from @politico.

https://flip.it/EoMkkJ

#Polymarket #SocialMedia #ContentCreators

Mainstream Media is Already Lying About Age Verification

It took one day for the word to get out about a forthcoming age verification bill and the lies are already being published.

https://www.freezenet.ca/mainstream-media-is-already-lying-about-age-verification/

#Censorship #News #Privacy #Security #AgeVerification #Canada #journalism #Media #NationalPost #SocialMedia

#TashaKheiriddin: Carney should be applauded for social media ban
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/tasha-kheiriddin-carney-should-be-applauded-for-social-media-ban

"I believe in personal freedom but also in science, and in protecting kids from harm. And every day, we see more evidence of the damage social media does to children." She has links in the article...

1/3

#SocialMedia
#NationalPost

My own view, is that we should wait a year or two to see how Australia's project of banning children from #SocialMedia works out.

Social media does some good, including for children. It has negative effects too, including for adults. It's tricky to see how we could ban it only for certain groups.

There's no need to rush into drastic measures.

I do completely agree with the last part of the column: "parents could act on their own and buy their kids no phone, or just a “dumbphone”".

3/3

A Canadian government source has told @globeandmail that a social media ban for children under 16 is on its way. It reportedly includes measures on AI chatbots as well as provisions that would allow kids back on social media if platforms make adjustments according to a new digital regulator's standards. Broadly, what do you think of social-media bans for youngsters? Tell us your nuanced views in the comments if you have them. [Gift link]

https://flip.it/RTLkGt

#Canada #Technology #SocialMedia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA_hmtuAPTY

[copypasta]

Did the Algorithm Change Your Decisions? | How Your Feed Was Engineered

Right now, somewhere on the internet, a video is being uploaded.

Within seconds, a system that no one elected, no one audits, and no one fully understands decides whether anyone else will ever see it.

Sometimes, it decides no one should.

And that’s the end of it.

In this episode of Plain Meaning, we examine how the modern internet quietly transformed from a system designed to deliver information… into one that decides what information exists for you at all.

It didn’t happen all at once.

It happened step by step.

Feed by feed.

Platform by platform.

Until nearly everything you see online is filtered through a machine making decisions on your behalf.

We trace how:

• Social media moved from profile pages to infinite feeds
• Facebook’s News Feed shifted from chronological to algorithmic control
• Advertising—not user experience—drove the need to control timing and visibility
• “EdgeRank” introduced the first large-scale automated editorial system
• By 2016, every major platform—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube—had adopted algorithmic feeds
• Recommendation systems replaced direct navigation across the entire internet

But this isn’t just a story about technology.

It’s a story about incentives.

Because once platforms controlled what you saw, they didn’t just control engagement.

They controlled attention.

And once attention became the product, the system began optimizing for something far more powerful than clicks.

We examine what happened next:

• How foreign influence operations exploited algorithmic feeds during the 2016 election
• The role of Cambridge Analytica and its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories in psychological targeting
• The scale and strategy of Russia’s Internet Research Agency
• How fake local news accounts built trust before deploying disinformation
• Why most influence content wasn’t political—but divisive
• How algorithms amplified all of it without distinction

And then we go further.

Because 2016 wasn’t the end of the story.

It was the beginning.

We look at how:

• Algorithmic systems shape not just what you see—but how you think
• Platforms reward emotional, extreme, and addictive content
• Foreign-owned platforms introduce new geopolitical risks
• Systems like ByteDance’s TikTok operate differently across countries
• The same algorithmic architecture can produce completely different realities depending on its objectives

This episode is not about one platform.

It’s not about one political party.

And it’s not about one country.

It’s about the system itself.

Because the algorithm isn’t just recommending content.

It’s acting as an editor.

And most of the time, you don’t even realize it’s there.

By the end of this video, the next time you open a social media app, you’ll understand:

Why your attention isn’t fully yours.

Why the world you see isn’t necessarily the world that exists.

And how to recognize when a machine—not you—is deciding what matters.

#Algorithm #SocialMedia #DigitalMedia #YouTube #Facebook #Instagram #NewsFeed #TikTok #Twitter

[/copypasta]