Facebook: the thin edge of the cyber-oppression wedge? Potentially so.

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"Social media giant Facebook is under fire. And today a top executive was in the senate hot seat over a recent report that says Facebook's Instagram app can be toxic for teens. Especially girls." CBS-TV Evening News with Norah O'Donnell 21/09/30

I've never seen a one-sided coin. Surely it is inappropriate for our schoolgirls to be overrun roughshod.

BUT !!

What's the alternative? On this last day of September 2021 CBS reports the United States Senate has already held a hearing about this. A "top executive" from Facebook, questioned in the U.S. senate. Where can that lead? Government regulation of social media content?!

What's the alternative? Unbridled child abuse enshrined for perpetuity by our 1st Amendment?

OK all you Solomon's out there. How you gunna split this baby?

ref:
Sol·o·mon (sŏlə-mən) fl. tenth century BC.
Share:​
King of Israel famous for his wisdom and his architectural projects, including the Temple in Jerusalem.
[Hebrew šəlōmōh, his peace : šālōm, peace; see šlm in the Appendix of Semitic roots + -ōh, his.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
 
Truly government regulating social media content is an alarming prospect. That's why I introduced the topic (& thanks for joining in).

BUT !!

There are reports of affects from such content driving some to extreme, including suicide. This may be particularly an issue affecting minors.

Do we not have responsibility for protecting our children?

"The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away for expedients, and by parts ... the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke
 
Do we not have responsibility for protecting our children? in the street
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we do, and so does Facebook which is why children are not permitted by Facebook to have accounts.
the foregoing not withstanding the primary person with responsibility for protecting children are the parents of children if they permit children to break the T&Cs of Facebook and open an account then that falls on them not Facebook and certainly not senate.

Every person bullied, abused or harassed on Facebook is a volunteer, no one is compelled to have an account, no one is compelled to monitor their account, its not like being bullied, abused or harassed at school where you are compelled to attend or even being bullied, abused or harassed in the street which is extremely difficult to avoid.
 
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." Charles H. Duell: US Patent Office Commissioner 1899 (Charles Holland Duell)
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iirc Duell actually considered closing his own office, for that reason. No need of it if the age of invention was over.

Legislatures have been meeting for centuries. I can't name a year that legislatures around the world decided they'd done their jobs, no need for them to continue.
OF COURSE parents bear ultimate responsibility. But what legally binding responsibility can there be to do the impossible?

The right of a citizen to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon in the ordinary course of life and business is a common right which he has under his right to enjoy life and liberty.... It includes the right in so doing to use the ordinary and usual conveyances of the day; and under existing modes of travel includes the right to drive a horse-drawn carriage or wagon thereon, or to operate an automobile thereon for the usual and ordinary purposes of life and business. It is not a mere privilege, like the privilege of moving a house in the street, operating a business stand in the street, or transporting persons or property for hire along the street, which the city may permit or prohibit at will.
not corroborated, but attributed to: Thompson v. Smith, 154 S.E. 579, 1929

So mm,
isn't that an ideological precedent for social media? Admittedly children might not yet be allowed to drive a car on public roadways. That's a compromise between individual Liberty and public safety. But how is public safety threatened by schoolmates interacting via social media?
"children are not permitted by Facebook to have accounts." mm #4
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I don't participate in such media so sincerely do not know.
I gather it's "Instagram" that's the issue in the U.S.
Might the rules differ between US & UK?

It would seem odd to me that social media operators would be taking the heat on this, if it's actually the parents that are wrong.

mm,
the reason I'm banging the gong on this is the peril of precedent. If government gets a toe in the door -for the sake of the children- where will that lead?

“Well article 1 section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. Beginning in the 1930's progressives used the commerce clause to claim that the government could do virtually anything it wished. It culminated in the case mentioned in the opening post to this thread, Wickard v. Filburn. In that case, Mr. Filburn had grown a few hundred bushels of wheat over his allotment in FDR's disasterous price fixing scheme. The wheat was entirely for Filburn's own consumption but the Supreme Court held that Filburn's fines were Constitutional because the wheat he grew for himself would otherwise have to be procured off of the open market and that affected interstate commerce.
After that there were practically no limits to the scope of government power.” Cincinnatus87
 
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