Sociology

If You Are Over 16

There is a possible advantage to a restriction on delivering services to those under 16 and that is teaching them to minimise their personal data or masking it completely from data corporations. That can be used when they're adult as well.
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Nurturing children is the responsibility of society as well as parents and any parent understands the feeling of powerlessness because children are in the world. It's why Stranger Danger was messaged at every level, continual broadcasts of 15 seconds of Charlie all empty now because media is ghettoised.

Don't talk to strangers, don't get in a car unless we know about it.

That 'Stranger Danger' messaging should not only be on broadcast media again, but online media or any kind, with a free pass from ad blockers. And they might well be on children's channels but how many parents watch media with their children?

The ghettoisation of all social interaction is a core problem for all societies. It creates both othering and specialness.

That sounds like just an old guy having severe nostalgia but the past was awful in a different way.

There are better things to do than both the past and now. Building new platforms - sorry places - for those that should have higher and more dynamic moderation and content warding, which is not only young people or children.

We used to have sophisticated children's social media. Especially in Europe and Japan, largely destroyed by Facebook as it destroyed most other early products. Hyves was one in Holland, Habbo Hotel was a house and home building platform with social interaction and active moderation. But it means that children have to spend money. Because personal phones are ubiquitous it's harder to have parents directly in control of the spend.

Addiction

My daughter had a significant engagement with Habbo and I paid about a £1 a month on her digital assets. I wouldn't say it was addictive but if people think that placing a ban would prevent addiction then they haven't been taking notice. Anyone may become addicted to anything. part of the education of life is to understand oneself and one's choice of addictions.

From https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/uploads/2026/05/zack-polanski-nigel-farage.jpg?height=800&width=1200&cropped

Populism

You are hard done by, the Past is a better country, just make this mark and there will be Change. The Change is never explicitly described, only its certainty and benefit.

Writing and Managing Text or How I came to love source control.

Previously published* The story of the lost script, the lost manuscript, the proof eaten by the dog are all both stereotypical and common for writers whichever tool they've used to record their words, whether cuneiform, paint, ink, print or electromagnetic bits. For most writers that's been

The Tyranny of Categories

We are perpetually, perhaps even cyclically, possessed by our perception of social discourse now primarily in social media. We compare it unfavourably with how it used to be, before Trump, before Brexit before whatever time; before the Interweb, before Facebook, before Twitter and Reddit. The relative heat, the name calling,

Are you an Aristocrat or a Peasant?

It isn’t a matter of rank or seniority, though it is connected, it is whether you are in the circle, the gang, one of the guys, ‘U’ rather than ‘non-U’. It is a social group as well as authoritative.

Restricting Social Media