Can we not stay up to date with what is happening without owning a social media account? I think the only thing we are missing is social media trends that change frequently.

Not even close. This will fragment the internet and take power away from surveillance capitalists. A huge amount of people will simply disengage from the Epstein class brainwashing. I'm looking forward to it. The internet used to be way more interesting and fun when it was fragmented.

Require age verification only if you want to get algorithmic recommendations. That way you can still engage in the social internet anonymously as an adult.

The recommendation algorithms give American big tech way too much political sway in Europe and ideally they should be banned entirely, but age verification at least gives the appearance that this is "for the children" and not something with (justifiable) political motivations.

Yeah. Honestly. For platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, mandate chronological feeds of only people you have followed, paginated at like 30.

to prevent young people from having fun, being happy and finding meaning and fulfillment in their lives.

Hasn't virtually every single study ever performed on the subject found a strong, direct link between unhappiness and social media use?

because these are not democratic countries, these countries are the same that gave birth to fascism and pushed for years for the surveillance state you so fondly complain about in china, the same countries that kill people based on metadata, this is the logical conclusion. as always, ewwwrope is filled to the brim with the flowery phrases of rhetoric and not actual praxis on any meaningful thing that could imply the wellbeing of their citizens.

Kinda with you in spirit. How I think about it is... it is harmful for both adults and children. Esp in big-tech co form. FB, IG, TT, X, and w/e. There's a lot of research about it. But the cure can be worse than the disease. What the EU wants to do is not the right answer to address the immense harms of social media to our world.

Both the US and Canada have similar bills on boil. Both are also terrible ideas.

It's just more enshttification that wastes everyone's time.

Adoption is perhaps the impetus needed for common sense to prevail. If everyone keeps spending all their money at a partcular casino, they aren't going to change a thing. But if everyone stopped coming, you can be damn sure they start looking at what they can reform. Nothing improves if people don't start to care about the security of their PII. That's a huge rock.

I don't know where u live but EU brings good things too. Go and ask the Brits who are mourning the departure they voted for 10 years ago. Of course there are a lot of things that could be improved but that is the responsibility of us citizens.

There is a difference between psyops that make you think EU only does bad things and reality. EU has been the most successful peace project in history. It has lifted millions of people out of poverty too. There will always be political tensions and work to be done. We can never rest on our laurels but if you honestly believe what you wrote, then congrats you've been brainwashed by the Epstein class.

So your take is that social media is actually good for kids? Any citation for this?

But how about, say, Lemmy, or other self hosted places

Well... how many Lemmy instances are hosted in the EU, Canada, USA, Australia, UK, ...? They can be threatened under the full power of the state, unless they req ID checks.

OK, you may say, just use one in Tuvalu! But someone below mentioned it. Govs will not think, gosh darn it! I guess we got foiled by those rascally nerds! Pack it up guys, we lost! No, they will double down. They will create national firewalls. VPN bans. Already the UK, and Utah in the USA are pushing for VPN bans. They will make examples of people, to deter the rest.

It's very hard to solve political probs with technical methods.