Aaron Swartz joined the RSS working group when he was 13. At 15 he became a foundational member of Creative Commons. He was working on precursors to markdown at 16.
We should not be locking young people out of our communities and keeping them away from digital tools that can open doors for them, expand their knowledge, sharpen their skills, and help them grow into well-rounded adults.
@arclight @brouhaha @nathandyer Myself as well. At the same time, nuance and empathy are considered harmful (if not dangerous).
It makes me sad.
It was a Friday and I was working when I saw the news that he had died
I cried then and I am now as well
@nathandyer
I agree that we should allow kids access to technology.
But Aaron Schwartz of all people never got to grow into a "well-rounded adult" since he killed himself at 26. That's a rather unfortunate choice of words for that particular example.
We should not be locking young people out of our communities and keeping them away from digital tools that can open doors for them, expand their knowledge, sharpen their skills, and help them grow into well-rounded adults.
Absolutely agree.
I started teaching my daughter digital schools at a very early age.
Her school teachers lacked all competence, they probably still do
Why should they learn anything, they are German state employees, safe jobs for life, despite often useless
@funbaker
Yes, we are all 'full of shit'. That's one of the defining facts of being alive.
As a father, as a teacher and as someone who got to know the internet as an adult, I see the need to keep corporate access out of our children's lives.
No need for intrusive age verification: the usage data tells enough about a person's age. The responsibility should be with the data collector not the user.
@schuga age verification *would be* possible without all that orwellian shit. They just don't want it.
There must be a counterinitiative against such things, not naive praisal.
age verification would be possible without all that orwellian shit. They just don't want it.
Privacy-preserving age verification is impossible with human actors in a human society.
Even the best mathematically-grounded options that have been offered fail in the face of simple corruption.
On those grounds alone, the idea is already garbage. Nevermind all the other issues with it.
I have been using electronic social media since before it had a name. Started on bbs and chat bbs.
Being a quiet shy bullied kid, it opened up a whole new world. Would have loved to had what we have now as a way of communicating, learning and collaboration and creativity.
Happy to have the kids on social media.
This evening has had a sad surprise for me. Now, I am calling for #openSUSE to revert the recently imposed project-wide ban on young people: https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/6PU6JU2IGKDANYNN3KIXDR2UQSVP6JI2/ (Update: Thanks for the overwhelming reactions! Please also consider https://toot.teckids.org/@nik/116550879189375534 .)
I'm sure the psychologists (and you) can work it out in therapy
I don't know why you turn a conversation about an interesting topic into a personal thing.
Are you trying to demonstrate why kids should stay off social media?
@biyokea @schuga @nathandyer I don't think that's worked so far, and I'm cynical enough that I think it will be really hard to directly regulate the people that spend hundreds of millions influencing politicians.
I'm open to evidence in the other direction if you have any examples where politicians have regulated big tech in that way.
“3. Putting hurdles in the way adds motivation to learn or find creative ways how to circumvent them.”
Great. Then I pray that someone will come into your life and neighbourhood and start putting up meaningless hurdles so that you too can be motivated to learn and be creative.
@DavidM_yeg
Don't waste your prayers on me. There are more worthy causes that deserve attention.
All innovation comes from attempts to get over obstacles or to optimise processes.
We're talking about young people. It's okay to encourage them to think and problem solve rather than depriving them of a safe space to practice that skill.
My prayers weren’t for you, they were for the demise of your smug superiority.
I work with children as an educator, there are plenty of challenges in the actual learning, they don’t need extra hurdles to get over, and arguing for such is a symptom of oppressive systems.
ps I will not continue beyond this post, as in my experience people who single me out for ‘side chats’ outside of the thread by eliminating tags are usually bad actors.
Swartz's bandwidth put him in the ether among the digital dragons and not beneath, even at thirteen.
Average kids can surely not compete against digital manipulation any better today.
Which is to say, another kid of Swartz's ability will find a way to be there, wherever there might be, creatively.
Machine learning for profit may have outpaced average kids' defensive skills for good, and most adults soon, too.
Somebody will take Aaron as an example for the opposite: "well, if he hadn't had access as a kid, he'd still ne alive." /s
Yes, my middle name is "Nobody", as in "Nobody could have predicted".
@nathandyer this ❤️ for so many people I know, online communities in the late 90s / early 00s were a way to find your people and learn so many different things.
Maybe instead of shutting kids out, we should make the people at the top of the food chain accountable for their fuck ups in creating tooling and platforms that are addictive ON PURPOSE, where misinformation & abuse are rampant.
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