The age verification debate misses the real point. These commercial algorithms are harmful for everybody.

Using social media has ruined my self-esteem and my relation to being a girl in this world, and nearly every day I feel hatred towards my gender, my appearance, or even teenage boys as a category. The misogyny I see from boys my age online, which is echoed in real life too, has made me grow resentful and bitter towards them, as much as I try to avoid it. As wrong as it is, I persistently find myself considering if there are truly any boys out there who are not misogynistic to some extent, and have even questioned whether I can find love in the future because of this. I understand that boys are victims of harmful content, as well as perpetrators of online misogyny – they’re growing up learning how to do this from the adults who post misogynistic videos first. But even so, I feel such a strong divide now between girls and boys in my generation, especially when the way they talk about us in real life mirrors the way they do on the internet.

That’s fucked up.

That level of misogyny is definitely learned, but it’s not just her age group. I’m floored by (for example) some comments my Dad makes, a “quiet, respectful, classy” type guy who’s never had a Facebook or Insta, who’d you’d never expect to hear insults from. And it’s definitely worse after he watches Fox News… that shit is like a drug.

My school “friends” dropped my jaw, sometimes. They got a lot from their parents, but social media (Faceboook back then) absolutely made it worse.

Even here on Lemmy, the disrespect or casual sexism from commenters sometimes makes me want to throw up. Not that I’m a particularly standup guy or anything, but the longer I live, the more I wonder “the fuck happened to my sex?” I certainly can’t critique this girl for wondering the same thing.

Sexual equality has ceased to exist online. It’s absolutely fine for boys to have sex, but when girls do, they are called worthless and referred to as objects.

This isn't new. I'm a man in my mid 40s and the disparity between how promiscuous men are viewed as compared to promiscuous women has existed for as long as I've been sexually aware, and well before.

Obviously that doesn't make it okay. I also have no idea what the solution might be. There have been a few cultural efforts to normalize the idea of women enjoying and seeking out sex but none of them seem to really reach the people that need to hear it.

I do find it oddly paradoxical that men who make it very clear that they are actively seeking sexual partners would disparage women for being sexually active.

Delete TikTok and Instagram for starters.

I'm a whole cisgendered 30 year old male who games a bit too much, so I try to discourage misogynistic comments when they're made by people in games.

I think there's another layer to the misogyny where any form of "defending" women is seen as white-knighting or simping. You don't even have to be directly referring to comments about a specific person, but you'll still be labeled as a loser who likes women, for some reason.

Subheading:

Objectification, hate, rape threats: the politicians debating online abuse mean well, but to truly understand, they need to see what I see

No, they don't.

I was an early Facebook user. I had an account from 2007-2018. The early years it seemed fun and Fairly innocent. I kept up with friends and saw funny posts. I could curate my feed to be things I wanted to see. When I left Facebook in 2018 it seems like the app was targeting me. Showing me things to rile me up. First I quit the mobile app. I deleted it and used a browser. Then I left Facebook altogether. A year ago I did a similar thing with Instagram. It was no longer a place curated to my interests. It’s horrible. I barely touch it anymore. Even Reddit is not my usual collection of posts that interests me. It’s why I’m on here! Everything is just so polarizing now. I have been able to cut way back and do my own thing. But at 15 friends are your world. Everyone is using the app. Everyone is speaking the speak. It’s so hard for them to disconnect.

I was gonna say unpopular opinion, but maybe not...

disengage from social media. It is not reality. not only that, but it perpetuates itself, and the oligarchy that created it. Go out and meet people in the real world. This is comming from an autistic person with minimal patients for other people. Seriously, ditch social media; it's poison, and when it dies (which it will if people like you leave) these toxic peope you encounter will have to face the real world.

Let me guess the solution before reading the article - some form of weakening to digital privacy.

Yep: "A social media ban for under-16s might prevent young boys seeing endless content that treats women with contempt and hate. Boys at this age are very susceptible to the cool and funny framing of what is, in reality, relentless misogyny. A ban might not fix the problem, but it would help. If society can’t stop it, it can show it disapproves."

Essentially, this article is an argument to introduce online ID, and I disagree with that on a fundamental level.

The soil misogyny has dug it's roots into is the iniquity we created while seeking equity. It was done for the best of reasons, but now we see the price. That's not a problem we can solve easily, and certainly not via creating state spying infrastructure.