Just chipping in as a climate scientist. Unfortunately children born today being condemned to a life of climate-related misery is a very real possibility.
Misery in the "life is worse than it would have been if we'd gotten a grip on this climate thing" or "life is worse than humans had it pre the industrial revolution. It's so bad one could actually make a case for not having kids for their sake"?
The Climate Change Committee says that without mitigation, climate change will knock 7% off GDP by 2050, compared to what will happen if we don't act. That's a big deal, but it still leaves the UK richer and with higher living standards than it is today.
The IPCC gives a range of scenarios, but in almost all, global GDP continues to increase; the central estimate case now has 2.7 degrees of warming by 2081-2100 (we are already at 1.5), with high scenario of 4.4 degrees - with the previous extreme scenarios of 8.5 now off the table thanks to the amount of renewables being deployed globally, at increasing rates.
Climate change is a massive deal - perhaps the biggest global challenge we face - and the harms it will cause are big enough it's worth spending time to prevent. But living standards in the UK are very likely to continue to increase (albeit slower than if we didn't have climate change), and under all plausible scientific scenarios will remain well above what they currently are in countries such as Poland or Malaysia - or indeed the UK 2-3 decades ago - in none of which one could say most children were being 'condemned to a life of misery'.
It's disappointing to see someone who works in the field scaremongering: the truth is cause enough for action.
I’ve definitely had to become more comfortable with the block function as I’ve gained more followers. Lots of people who are persistently rude or find delight in misrepresenting points of view. I released that I wouldn’t put up with it in person so why should I do so online?
Finishing a piece on the train instead of at my desk clearly has a high typo cost! I'll try not to do that again, but I felt bad this post was already so late.
Neil, they are not as bad as they may seem - if you use these tips! (A 'top tips for not losing money on the stock market' would also focus on the bad side). But fundamentally yes, I see X and BlueSky not as fun sites but as tools, which I use professionally to keep abreast of stuff and to promote my writing, and if I didn't have those objectives I would also stick to Facebook.
I assume "a very strange and unpleasant people" is supposed to be either "a very strange and unpleasant place" or "some very strange and unpleasant people". The current wording sounds like you're talking about a particular nationality or demographic group.
Strong agree to most of this, especially the all-crucial Rule 8.
I would add another rule, in that you should never allow big social media to sound an audible alert or vibrate your phone. Haptic interaction is too intimate for that and even sound is altogether too close to clicker training.
Other advice: follow people, not topics.
And if you don't like what's coming in, one option is to deliberately add incongruous or random content. Even if Rule 8 can't be strictly observed, it's essentially always possible to add sources and adding them is invariably one of the most sensitive signals for the machine learning. I remember Carl Prine used to do this with high fashion and Adam Elkus with anime and stupid cute animal videos.
I don't share your delight at the under-16 ban, because I'm not sure the privacy and free speech implications of requiring everyone's social media account to be tied to their government ID is a price worth paying (plus I don't think it'll solve the problem, as once adults have authenticated and got an account they'll be able to give or sell it to kids).
I think your first point is excellent, but on your second - social media has a strong network effect. If you introduce enough friction that few of your friends are on it, then the incentive to jump through illegal/costly hoops to get on it is low, and you end up trapped in a 'in practice no one is on it, even though in theory they could be' situation.
I think there are two separate points here, (a) 'will it work', and (b) are the downsides worth it?
On the first, when we were young, smoking was banned for under 16s and while some 14 and 15 year olds did smoke, I'm pretty sure more would have done if the age was 13. Teenagers can almost always get round things if they're determined enough, but the aim is to add friction that most don't - the law also sends a strong message to parents and teachers about what is appropriate. With social media, as Neil said, the network effect is also key, and there have been studies that show you get much more beneficial effects if whole groups come off, as if only 1 or 2 people come off the beneficial effects are partially negated by the downsides of being left out of the way your friends are communicating.
On the second, I am less worried about this as the Government can already debank me, which is worse. I also don't think it has to be tied to a government ID: BlueSky has age verification to access direct messages for some reason, and it just took a picture of me (you can also use ID to show it) and this is then deleted after they verify it.
This ties into the Content vs Medium post I wrote. Not only do I think social media is inherently addictive, I am more worried by the main alternative approach to protecting children, which is trying to control content, which in practice means giving governments or tech companies themselves widespread duties to control 'hateful content' or 'misinformation', which we've previously seen used to shut down anti-lockdown or gender critical voices. I think the 'no children on social media' makes this less likely, and am willing to accept the 'need to check ID' as the lesser of two evils.
That is a really good point about the effects of relatively trivial frictions/inconveniences - that's definitely an approach I agree with in other contexts, so thanks for pointing out that I was being inconsistent here. And you're right that the network effects will add to it in this case.
Re your second point, if there were a choice between a heavily censored and ideologically biased social media for everyone or a free one for adults only, then I'd choose the second, but I'm not at all convinced that banning children will, in practice, make governments less likely to censor views they don't like (and if some people's age verification is tied to their ID then that makes it easier to censor them). I'm also not sure I trust the platforms to delete age-verification photos (if nothing else, wouldn't they have to keep them as proof that they did verify ID?)
I use the algorithmic feed on X and I've never seen any bikini pics (unless you count an obviously-photoshopped joke one of Starmer, posted to satirise his inconsistency on the topic) or snuff videos.
What I see on there seems to be a mixture of stuff adjacent to what I'm following anyway, plus some stuff I wouldn't otherwise stumble upon but usually find valuable (e.g. clever jokes and random whimsy, plus some health/career/self-improvement content).
I think X is much better than Facebook in this regard. Facebook makes it much harder to opt out of the algorithmic feed; plus FB's algorithmic feed is not "more stuff along similar lines to what you're already following", but fake product ads, AI slop, poorly-written political rants from people I haven't heard of, and stuff that's somehow compelling in the moment but feels like wasted time shortly afterwards (AITA drama; long rambling anticlimactic "inspirational" stories; videos of people doing artistic projects or acrobatic stunts).
To me the main downside of X is it's addictive and sucks up more of my time than I'd like. (FWIW, I mostly just lurk/read rather than posting.)
I've also never blocked anyone on any platform, IIRC (although I do sometimes mute people on FB who clog up my feed with stuff I'm not interested in).
Thanks for sharing! The algorithmic stuff on Facebook is annoying. Is there a way to switch it off?
I thought one possible upside of the Lib Dem style 'only banning infinite scroll style social media for under 16s' was that it might cause the emergence of 'friends only style' Facebook the way we used to have it in the good old days [imagine an emoji of rose tinted spectacles here].
Very interesting! I find your experience with the algorithmic feed interesting; I had been assuming the people who say they see all this stuff had just been using it, but maybe they are actually just lying / exaggerating (or maybe the algorithm treats them difficulty). I do see using algorithmic feed as something that increases by vulnerability to infohazards, so avoid it as a precaution, but it's nice that your one serves you interesting and useful stuff.
Fully agree on how annoying Facebook is now - I've been tempted to come off many times, except I still enjoy the conversations I have with people there. Even the way it keeps showing me random posts from friends from two weeks before is annoying. I get it has to have ads/paid posts to make money, but I would really like to have a chronological feed back, even if it had ads/slop in it too.
...of course, it's possible that the "stuff adjacent to what I'm following anyway" might be consistently adjacent in the same direction and may be cumulatively nudging me towards the sort of craziness your first paragraph alludes to. I'm trying to apply Outside View to discern whether this is the case.
Just chipping in as a climate scientist. Unfortunately children born today being condemned to a life of climate-related misery is a very real possibility.
Misery in the "life is worse than it would have been if we'd gotten a grip on this climate thing" or "life is worse than humans had it pre the industrial revolution. It's so bad one could actually make a case for not having kids for their sake"?
I'm afraid this simply isn't true.
The Climate Change Committee says that without mitigation, climate change will knock 7% off GDP by 2050, compared to what will happen if we don't act. That's a big deal, but it still leaves the UK richer and with higher living standards than it is today.
The IPCC gives a range of scenarios, but in almost all, global GDP continues to increase; the central estimate case now has 2.7 degrees of warming by 2081-2100 (we are already at 1.5), with high scenario of 4.4 degrees - with the previous extreme scenarios of 8.5 now off the table thanks to the amount of renewables being deployed globally, at increasing rates.
Climate change is a massive deal - perhaps the biggest global challenge we face - and the harms it will cause are big enough it's worth spending time to prevent. But living standards in the UK are very likely to continue to increase (albeit slower than if we didn't have climate change), and under all plausible scientific scenarios will remain well above what they currently are in countries such as Poland or Malaysia - or indeed the UK 2-3 decades ago - in none of which one could say most children were being 'condemned to a life of misery'.
It's disappointing to see someone who works in the field scaremongering: the truth is cause enough for action.
I’ve definitely had to become more comfortable with the block function as I’ve gained more followers. Lots of people who are persistently rude or find delight in misrepresenting points of view. I released that I wouldn’t put up with it in person so why should I do so online?
Absolutely!
Thanks for sharing. X and Bluesky sound awful, I'll stick to Facebook.
Social media can give us an [un]realistic view
orinteracting feels cramped and would like more space.
Is footnote 9 intending to refer to footnote 4, or did some other footnotes get added and mess up your reference?
Point 15 breaks off mid sentence
X and BlueSky are fundamentally a broadcast medium, [not] somewhere where you have a duty to reply to all.
Footnote 10 ends in a comma
Nice fast work fixing all these! But there's still an "amd" that should be "and".
Finishing a piece on the train instead of at my desk clearly has a high typo cost! I'll try not to do that again, but I felt bad this post was already so late.
Neil, they are not as bad as they may seem - if you use these tips! (A 'top tips for not losing money on the stock market' would also focus on the bad side). But fundamentally yes, I see X and BlueSky not as fun sites but as tools, which I use professionally to keep abreast of stuff and to promote my writing, and if I didn't have those objectives I would also stick to Facebook.
I assume "a very strange and unpleasant people" is supposed to be either "a very strange and unpleasant place" or "some very strange and unpleasant people". The current wording sounds like you're talking about a particular nationality or demographic group.
Fixed! Though yes, some of the people the algorithmic feed might show you are indeed strange and unpleasant.
Strong agree to most of this, especially the all-crucial Rule 8.
I would add another rule, in that you should never allow big social media to sound an audible alert or vibrate your phone. Haptic interaction is too intimate for that and even sound is altogether too close to clicker training.
Other advice: follow people, not topics.
And if you don't like what's coming in, one option is to deliberately add incongruous or random content. Even if Rule 8 can't be strictly observed, it's essentially always possible to add sources and adding them is invariably one of the most sensitive signals for the machine learning. I remember Carl Prine used to do this with high fashion and Adam Elkus with anime and stupid cute animal videos.
Very true. I have push notifications turned off for mine.
I like your point on following people, not topics.
I don't share your delight at the under-16 ban, because I'm not sure the privacy and free speech implications of requiring everyone's social media account to be tied to their government ID is a price worth paying (plus I don't think it'll solve the problem, as once adults have authenticated and got an account they'll be able to give or sell it to kids).
I think your first point is excellent, but on your second - social media has a strong network effect. If you introduce enough friction that few of your friends are on it, then the incentive to jump through illegal/costly hoops to get on it is low, and you end up trapped in a 'in practice no one is on it, even though in theory they could be' situation.
I think there are two separate points here, (a) 'will it work', and (b) are the downsides worth it?
On the first, when we were young, smoking was banned for under 16s and while some 14 and 15 year olds did smoke, I'm pretty sure more would have done if the age was 13. Teenagers can almost always get round things if they're determined enough, but the aim is to add friction that most don't - the law also sends a strong message to parents and teachers about what is appropriate. With social media, as Neil said, the network effect is also key, and there have been studies that show you get much more beneficial effects if whole groups come off, as if only 1 or 2 people come off the beneficial effects are partially negated by the downsides of being left out of the way your friends are communicating.
On the second, I am less worried about this as the Government can already debank me, which is worse. I also don't think it has to be tied to a government ID: BlueSky has age verification to access direct messages for some reason, and it just took a picture of me (you can also use ID to show it) and this is then deleted after they verify it.
This ties into the Content vs Medium post I wrote. Not only do I think social media is inherently addictive, I am more worried by the main alternative approach to protecting children, which is trying to control content, which in practice means giving governments or tech companies themselves widespread duties to control 'hateful content' or 'misinformation', which we've previously seen used to shut down anti-lockdown or gender critical voices. I think the 'no children on social media' makes this less likely, and am willing to accept the 'need to check ID' as the lesser of two evils.
That is a really good point about the effects of relatively trivial frictions/inconveniences - that's definitely an approach I agree with in other contexts, so thanks for pointing out that I was being inconsistent here. And you're right that the network effects will add to it in this case.
Re your second point, if there were a choice between a heavily censored and ideologically biased social media for everyone or a free one for adults only, then I'd choose the second, but I'm not at all convinced that banning children will, in practice, make governments less likely to censor views they don't like (and if some people's age verification is tied to their ID then that makes it easier to censor them). I'm also not sure I trust the platforms to delete age-verification photos (if nothing else, wouldn't they have to keep them as proof that they did verify ID?)
I agree with some of this but not all.
I use the algorithmic feed on X and I've never seen any bikini pics (unless you count an obviously-photoshopped joke one of Starmer, posted to satirise his inconsistency on the topic) or snuff videos.
What I see on there seems to be a mixture of stuff adjacent to what I'm following anyway, plus some stuff I wouldn't otherwise stumble upon but usually find valuable (e.g. clever jokes and random whimsy, plus some health/career/self-improvement content).
I think X is much better than Facebook in this regard. Facebook makes it much harder to opt out of the algorithmic feed; plus FB's algorithmic feed is not "more stuff along similar lines to what you're already following", but fake product ads, AI slop, poorly-written political rants from people I haven't heard of, and stuff that's somehow compelling in the moment but feels like wasted time shortly afterwards (AITA drama; long rambling anticlimactic "inspirational" stories; videos of people doing artistic projects or acrobatic stunts).
To me the main downside of X is it's addictive and sucks up more of my time than I'd like. (FWIW, I mostly just lurk/read rather than posting.)
I've also never blocked anyone on any platform, IIRC (although I do sometimes mute people on FB who clog up my feed with stuff I'm not interested in).
Thanks for sharing! The algorithmic stuff on Facebook is annoying. Is there a way to switch it off?
I thought one possible upside of the Lib Dem style 'only banning infinite scroll style social media for under 16s' was that it might cause the emergence of 'friends only style' Facebook the way we used to have it in the good old days [imagine an emoji of rose tinted spectacles here].
Very interesting! I find your experience with the algorithmic feed interesting; I had been assuming the people who say they see all this stuff had just been using it, but maybe they are actually just lying / exaggerating (or maybe the algorithm treats them difficulty). I do see using algorithmic feed as something that increases by vulnerability to infohazards, so avoid it as a precaution, but it's nice that your one serves you interesting and useful stuff.
Fully agree on how annoying Facebook is now - I've been tempted to come off many times, except I still enjoy the conversations I have with people there. Even the way it keeps showing me random posts from friends from two weeks before is annoying. I get it has to have ads/paid posts to make money, but I would really like to have a chronological feed back, even if it had ads/slop in it too.
...of course, it's possible that the "stuff adjacent to what I'm following anyway" might be consistently adjacent in the same direction and may be cumulatively nudging me towards the sort of craziness your first paragraph alludes to. I'm trying to apply Outside View to discern whether this is the case.
Yes: alcohol, gambling, social media. Pleasant diversion in moderation; life destroying in excess.
Relevant announcement today on algorithmic feeds:
"The @xAI team is working on providing For You tabs that are specific to topics.
For example, a “For You AI” that is focused only on artificial intelligence with no political rage bait."
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/2014881720948973907
Interesting! Seems like a good idea.