this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2025
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Because the line between "social media" and "talking to other people" is so blurry as to not exist.
Also, and more importantly, the power of these companies is so great in effect youll only enforce that facebook etc. are the only ways of talking to each other that can exist legally and entrench the very problem you want to solve.
For example, is whats app social media?
Defining what is and what isn’t something is exactly what law has to do every single time it gets defined. I’m sure we can work this one out too.
The size of the tech giants cannot be the reason to not attempt regulation. If anything, it’s exactly the reason to regulate.
No im not arguing its hard to define, im arguing that youll have to ban children from whats app. Private minecraft servers (even ones owned and run by the kids) too. If you dont do this you leave a space for the tech giants to bring the targeted ads and then youll have to ban kids from each space as they move in.
Any communication channel will fall to this if you take the approach of banning children from them one by one instead of stopping this behaviour by the tech giants entirely by legislating against targeted advertising directly. These services are just as toxic to adults.
Ah I see what you mean.
I suspect the EU will regulate in the same way it’s done other enforcement; if you are above a certain size, different requirements apply to you.