Is there a good reason to put minors in a separate group here, aside from legal aspects or that it just 'feels' like a worse offense to the casual reader?
I ask because a lot of common arguments in this area don't seem to apply here that well. I'm not sure adults and adolescents on average have that much better of an understanding of how technology like this works in general (in terms of what is tracked and what your rights to that data are) - so mentioning that the kid didn't consent doesn't seem to change much, because adults using this technology don't understand what is being done behind the scenes either.
If adults don't understand the technology and kids don't consent, isn't that exactly a scenario where we should at least protect the children, given that its widely accepted in most countries that children can't actually enter commercial relationships on their own?
> If adults don't understand the technology and kids don't consent, isn't that exactly a scenario where we should at least protect the children, given that its widely accepted in most countries that children can't actually enter commercial relationships on their own?
Or more accurately kids can't consent. This is the argument I've used for my kids against family members who had a hard time understanding not plastering them on social media. Basically we told everyone in the family that our kids images, names, DoB, whereabouts and anything else about them should not be posted in any form or fashion. I'd then go on to position it from my kids point of view: what if they don't consent later in life and those posts somehow impact them negatively at that time? Do you [family member] want to take on that you were the only one to choose for them? I am their custodian and doing my due diligence to keep their digital footprint to a minimum until they have the capacity to make those choices on their own behalf. I feel like there are lawsuits all around this that will be cropping up in the next decade which may shy people away from the unfiltered social media perspective many run with today.
OTOH, if you are plastering yourself all over social media and other kids parents are doing the same with their children, not including your child in your posts can feel extremely alienating to them, and make them feel like you do not care about them or want to be seen with them. And when they grow up, they may resent you for not even putting up even one picture of them with you.
The moral of that story is to beware: kids may not always share your values and by doing what you think is best you may be doing harm. They may not understand consent, but they will understand what it looks like when a parent doesn’t give a shit about them.
If you talk to your kids they are surprisingly intelligent and can comprehend this. I do my best to bridge the line of alienation and acceptable use of technology which leverages other forms of inclusion and sharing that doesn't require Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
And to your point, kids don't always share values of the parent which is why they don't have final say. Your implication that a parent that does more to protect their child "doesn't give a shit about them" clearly showcases your agenda and/or unfounded assertion.
While protecting the kids would be nice, it results in a large inconsistency to apply it here, given the level of control we allow parents to have over their kids in many areas. For example, parents have near-complete jurisdiction over the diet of their children and can therefore cause significant health issues at their own discretion (or just due to lack of nutritional knowledge). This is (at least at the current moment) a significantly larger issue for kids than if Amazon has personal data on them or not. Accordingly, it seems strange for us to want the government to intervene with respect to data on children, but not with respect to a child's diet.
I said 'near-complete' in attempt to include edge cases. Most parents definitely make their own decisions as to what to feed their kids rather than letting the government make them, just as they decide what to teach their kids.
GP has a point; the primary health damage of smoking is from long-term use; of drinking, from long-term use, overdose, and mistakes made while intoxicated. 3 packs of cigarettes alone won't hurt anyone, as can be attested by probably a good half of the population of any western country (teenage smoking is a thing).
Your append-only bulletins weren't routinely processed at scale by morally bankrupt third parties with monetary interest to abuse what they find.
Let's say there are 100 kids in a school. You have $2000 dollars and you give fifty of them 3 packs of cigarettes and the other fifty Echo Dots. You follow them fifty years. You predict that the ones with Echo Dots will have worse lives than the ones with the cigarettes?
I just want to make sure I understand your assertion here. It's obvious to me no IRB would allow this study because they'd immediately realize the danger of the cigarettes not because of the Echos that are being presented as this massive risk.
Honestly, hard to say. You make a good point putting it like that; I guess I'm not so sure about relative dangers, mostly because for all its data collection, adtech is currently still quite bad at targeted manipulation of individuals.
I don't expect too many kids in such experiment to get addicted to smoking if they weren't smoking already (really, I'd expect trade to happen, with the usual smokers getting all the cigarettes from other kids, but let's exclude that). Assuming the government doesn't go on a totalitarian frenzy and assuming ad targeting doesn't improve much, I'd expect slightly larger average spending in the homes of kids with Echo Dots.
The risks with data collection increase with how low you think advertisers can go, and whether or not the government would be interested in acquiring and using that data for nefarious purposes. You could say this is arguing hypothetical, but they're not without historical precedents.
> Let's say there are 100 kids in a school. You have $2000 dollars and you give fifty of them 3 packs of cigarettes and the other fifty Echo Dots. You follow them fifty years. You predict that the ones with Echo Dots will have worse lives than the ones with the cigarettes?
Yes. I believe that this social media phenomenon will have even greater negative impact than even tobacco does. And yes, I accept the mountains of research of how dangerous tobacco is. I think this data gathering of everything and everyone will amount to worse than even tobacco.
The trends I'm extrapolating and see, even from 2012-2019, shows me that the voluminous mounds of data we leave is 'toxic'. Things people have said even earlier on have come back to seriously bite people hard. And we're seeing the old power upended for what amounts to mob rule. Except, this mob isn't a group of 30 people, but instead is millions filling the air with hate and bile.
The real toxicity of this data isn't mob rule though. Mob rule is quick and firey, and dies down. It's from long-term data acquisition from sensors we traditionally thought to be innocuous, sales data from credit cards, grocery stores, and similar, vehicle sensors, cheaper health detection checks (but not cheaper health), DNA classification, social media of all types, and more.
Whomever controls all that data can make more informed opinions about people than the people themselves can. The mound of that could be used to determine who gets best health, the best jobs, ability to run for office, who gets loans and for how much, and more. Just controlling the money and who gets the best health treatment then determines longevity.
Now obviously, this data has been collected for some time. However, it's only been since mid 2000's did we regularly carry dumb cell phones. 2012 was that magical year in which full stack smartphones (computers with a range of sensors) were introduced and really 'stuck'. Yes, there was blackberry, windows phone 6, and a few others, but they didn't win like apple/google did.
This data, and the cultures of the USA, I believe will entrench a caste-like system. And data will be the ever-present threat. I know when I was in elementary and middle school, there was always this threat of "it will go on your (booming voice) permanent record". Yeah, sure, but not really. In hindsight, the permanent record is much wider than that; my medical history, my education, my comments that ive said semi-privately on the internet, text messages, google services, my cell phone, etc. I know because of the ACA and pre-existing conditions amendment that my diabetes diagnosis isn't a 'no more insurance forever' sentence. But the rest? I don't see my data being good for me in nearly any way.
I would agree by far that being addicted to nicotine and smoking cigarettes is terrifically deleterious. But I said only 3 packs. Not 4, not 5, or more.
> "My childhood had append-only bulletin boards and I put a lot of stuff in there that I am never going to delete. Guess what? I'm fine. And have been for twenty years."
How many of those had geospacial data, telemetry, chat logs, real names policy, email logs, and more attributed to you?
Kids these days do have all of that. We never did.
And I’d join you! But that is insufficient to dismiss OP’s claim as prima facie invalid. Mental health risks are real. And the chances of getting addicted to nicotine from a couple packs are small enough so as to be, prima facie, comparable to the risks of long-term mental health issues from the use of voice assistants.
We don’t have the data. OP’s claim and implied question are valid.
All right, name your terms. Are you in San Francisco?
I am going to win this bet. Easiest money I ever made. I just want to see if he'll stick to his guns when he has skin in the game. His claim is so patently ridiculous that he'd be throwing money away by taking the bet.
I said I’d join you, not that I’d bet against you. My claim is simply that the counterclaim to yours is valid. Just because I won’t bet for something doesn’t mean it isn’t worth discussing.
The vitriol with which this argument has been met shows, at some level, it’s validity as an item of controversy.
Why? The actuarial effects of 3 packs of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey are virtually negligible. (No clue with cold pills.) The damage is in at the edge (addiction and overdose). The downsides of voice assistants are similar (negligibly bad on average and potentially deadly on the edge cases.)
Put simply, the mental health risks with voice assistants (with respect to a developing mind) is analogous to the health risks from cigarette use. And just like a bottle of whiskey could be someone’s last, voice assistants could e.g. disclose a teenager’s sexual orientation to a violently-inclined and medievally-minded parent.
Data can be extracted and saved for a lifetime, consent or not. And we just entered this always-on digital age around 2012-2013.
We know the dangers of using tobacco. We know the dangers of alcohol. And we know the dangers of cold pills (even if they aren't normally abused).
We have no ideas about the longterm dangers of massive data collections. And I would posit that what we currently know about the abuses of data, that it is more dangerous than the aforementioned things. Most of what we have to look forward to is fiction books and tv shows and movies.
I ask because a lot of common arguments in this area don't seem to apply here that well. I'm not sure adults and adolescents on average have that much better of an understanding of how technology like this works in general (in terms of what is tracked and what your rights to that data are) - so mentioning that the kid didn't consent doesn't seem to change much, because adults using this technology don't understand what is being done behind the scenes either.