The youth tend to be much less absolutists for free speech and don't value anonymity as much as the elders of the internet(!), at least that's my observation. They are much more familiar with people who are into all these things for the profits and don't idealise the WWW as the old folks used to. My guess is that they were born in already corrupt world where online professionals were doing everything for money and dirty tricks like rage baiting and astroturfing were already the norm and as a result they don't have a grand mission fantasy about the internet. Also, because they were born in an already online world they don't see the disturbances of trolls as disturbances in their online persona that is a toy for their real persona, they see trolls as trouble makers to their real persona which is fused with their online persona.

Back in the day of forums personal banning wasn't a thing, we had to see everything until someone did something bad enough to be deplatformed from the forum. In the current social media, you can just block people you don't like, you don't have to endure their "content".

The censorship is built-in in modern platforms. I prefer the old ways personally but in the old days the profile of the people was different.

The irony is that youth are simulatenously the biggest consumers of (new) social media, and the staunchest haters [EDIT: this is directly contradicted by the research article I found below…]. I can’t find the source so take it with a grain of salt, but I’ve read that something like 80% of TikTok users under some age think they’d be happier if it didn’t exist and/or wish it didn’t exist.

I don’t think this is really an issue of censorship to a lot of people (though that may be how it shakes out in the government) but rather of control over their digital environment and sanity.

EDIT: I don’t think this is what I’m remembering, but it has concrete numbers somewhat lower than I thought (48% of teens think social media harms people their age, but only 14% think it harms them personally) https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2025/04/22/teens-social...

I assume people in government, at some level, are weighting constituent inputs by taxes paid. Which keeps it upright. :)

Interesting, that you equal social media regulation = pro censorship. Btw every age group over 30 has a majority to imitate Australian model in Germany. Even lower 30 there is only a small relative majority against it. So no, your hypothesis for Germany is wrong. https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/social-media-verbot-deuts...

Maybe we should listen to those that have more experience and perspective of living without social media as they can see the difference of having/not having it more clearly?

I think they might also mean surveillance tech, like plate readers and facial recognition.

Not just social media. Amazon misusing is monopoly powers is also smack in the middle of the target.

changed it. Thanks.

> They conclude with: Voters for far-right parties are frequently less likely to support banning of political advertising on social media

Maybe the issue here is that many political options have social media and underground marketing as their only option due to heavy bias and censorship on European traditional media.

Even the term used here "far right" is an euphemism for opinions not approved by governing European regimes.

Somehow the modern right are the most opposed to government intervention these days, so I would expect them to be the majority in opposition to almost any proposed regulation or legislation, regardless of the contents.

There are plenty of "easy money working from home" scams where the victim/patsy is a regular person duped into criminal activities like mail forwarding packages bought with stolen credit cards. I wonder if the same ecosystem would crop up around such an identity scheme.

It should be regulated similar to online gambling in the UK (so barely, but it is a start).

The key being age verification. Under 18, or maybe 16 accounts have: Mandatory blackout periods (after 9pm most account functions stop working, parents could set this more aggressively if they cared about the child's studies). Interaction limits like time spent on feeds, type of content that will appear in feeds, number of friends, visibility of comments ect. Only one account allowed and enforcement taken seriously.

Over 16/18s should have the option to "time themselves out" for a chosen period with their account going into a limited mode where feeds no longer work . Similar to the option problem gamblers have where gambling sites are supposed to stop them playing if they block themselves. Maybe when someone needs to focus for exams or a work commitment.

Sure kids will try and get round limits, but I think when you have investment in a main account it would be something you would want to keep, so the threat of loosing it would be real.

> we should shut down the current crop of social media but that isn't going to happen anytime soon

If you concede in your first sentence, obviously not.

It’s happened in Australia. It’s building in America. And I think there are enough European countries

Yeah, the EU isn't quite authoritarian enough for the UK anymore.

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A good start would be government officials and institutions to stop relying on and promoting (on) them. Ministers in office shouldn't be using them to communicate with their constituents. Public service broadcasters shouldn't be publishing on them.

Then it would be great of the population follows.

But it is certainly not the role of government to decide what foreign communications services their citizens can access.

Autoritarian censorship is not a democratic tool even if other apparently democratic countries are doing it.

Turn the sentence around with platforms like Reddit and see how ridiculous this sounds. Censorship will not defend democracy.

Any democracy should. Good lemma, seems to implement the more general principle of Paradox of Tolerance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

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Please don't post in the flamewar style to HN. This is against the site guidelines in so many ways I can't bring myself to list them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We ban accounts that post like this, regardless of how right they are or feel they are, so it would be good if you'd review the rules and stick to them.

> as the European Union (and former EU states like the UK) are transparently run like banana republics whose barely-elected bureaucrats run them like their own little ramshackle empire for their personal enrichment

Bold Statement. I wonder though, could you offer examples of places in the world today where it is being done otherwise?

This doesn't add anything to the discussion.

Also someone whose name is Earl (norsk-germanic for King) and King.. you seem to be hell bent on an anti-european slant.. whilst having a pretty European name.

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Social media makes teens suicidal. The companies know, but burry it. People defend those companies on the internet.

For what it's worth, I'm European, and I disagree with the US on many things, but I'm not gonna dismiss all Americans' point of view because of that, regardless of how bad I think the country does things. Even the most horrible practices, can have small helpful ideas, that you can cherry-pick. But, no one is forcing you to do so, just like no one can really force us off the internet either.

> the freedom of speech, the right to privacy, obscenity, or indeed anything of import online

That's funny - the EU has better digital laws protecting the average Joe than the US could ever muster in the current climate... GDPR, DMA, etc. You decry 'censorship' and 'barely-elected bureaucrats' while the US is controlled by the billionaire class.

If you don't care, why do you comment? Recent actions show the US government cares. And it might be good to know how people would act on the actions. (Also check your assumption about other countries.)

> run them like their own little ramshackle empire for their personal enrichment

If you are from the US, I’m laughing my butt off, the irony is not lost on me.

OK?

Let me guess, you only see freedom of speech from the perspective of those who speak and not of those who don’t dare to speak because of online harassment. Strangely enough their freedom of speech doesn’t seem to matter for people who justify things like hate speech under the label of free speech.

In a society freedoms are compromises. Absolute freedoms means all for some and nothing for the rest. The EU at least tries a balance. Countries like the US don’t seem to care and seem to favor the strongest or even sociopaths.

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You need different slippery slopes as they're two different visions of a future (or rather past in Orwell's case)