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bArray 14 hours ago [-]
Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?
jeroenhd 14 hours ago [-]
Facebook has been documented for sponsoring these bills in the USA.
But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives.
I don't disagree with the principle of a lot of these laws, but many implementations are too flawed to be a mistake.
munksbeer 51 minutes ago [-]
>But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives.
That's not the question. Some group is obviously pushing this agenda globally. Who?
sph 6 hours ago [-]
That Facebook story is an AI generated attempt at astroturf that has gone viral, but we shouldn’t probably continue perpetuating it.
It is not Meta working across the globe because they’re too lazy to implement age verification.
It's still in their interest to offload the responsibility to legislation so they're not held accountable for frying kids brains.
rockskon 5 hours ago [-]
Meta is publicly posting ads in Europe promoting age verification, so yes Meta is a part of the problem.
sph 2 hours ago [-]
What does Meta get out of enacting mass surveillance of the entire Western world (not even for their personal benefit)? That they can avoid spending 6 months implementing ID checks like porn sites have done?
Also can I see an example of those ads? Google isn’t surfacing anything relevant
Telaneo 1 hours ago [-]
This article[1] gives some examples, but annoyingly, no relevant pictures.
> Denmark’s digital affairs minister criticized Meta for an advertising campaign promoting regulations on age checks for social media in an interview with POLITICO.
Do you not understand who is part of the money and power circles? Think about it
monegator 2 hours ago [-]
Meta is actively sponsoring the bills in my country. They go as far as ads on TV and Radio, something that never happened before
drob518 29 minutes ago [-]
It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse. In order to validate kids, they really need to identify everyone. That’s the real play.
kulahan 6 hours ago [-]
A lot of studies came out kinda at the same time showing how harmful it is and people aren’t coming up with alternatives. What else can you do?
wcarss 6 hours ago [-]
Attestation of age should suffice; no one in a building somewhere needs to verify my age. If I tell you to treat me like a minor, you do it. Operating systems and browsers can work together to send this as a header. If you're a concerned parent: set your children's ages in their device accounts.
Done. This alternative solves the whole problem and it's been brought up a million times, but it doesn't matter, because this isn't about protecting children or anything about ages. It's about locking down anonymity, and money for a few interests who want to be the verifiers and craft a future where they hold the keys.
jvvw 25 minutes ago [-]
I don't agree with age verification, but there isn't anywhere 'set your children's ages in their device accounts' that limits their access to inappropriate content and social media.
You can set age in Google Accounts, but they can access pretty much anything when they reach age 13 (which is about the age a lot of these things start to become a real problem) and as a parent you don't have any way to limit that. They don't even need to ask to install new phone apps.
Children also use computers as well as phones and you don't want to stop them using a web browser! You also obviously can't supervise them every moment they are online even if you wanted to.
orthoxerox 5 hours ago [-]
> If you're a concerned parent: set your children's ages in their device accounts.
And if you're a concerned government, make OS vendors support it and make parents criminally responsible for not setting it.
djaro 5 hours ago [-]
The problem is that not all parents are "concerned parents" and children dont deserve to be taken advantage of by trillion dollar corporations for the crime of having bad parents.
kelnos 3 hours ago [-]
That's the classic question of when the state should step in to correct bad parenting, and when it should leave well enough alone. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is one of the "step in" times, but I think the negatives for doing so seem far too costly.
At any rate, with age verification, un-concerned parent will likely just want their kid to shut up, and will verify using their own details to give the kid the (adult) access they want. So I don't think that changes much here.
program_whiz 2 hours ago [-]
What are the negatives for doing so?
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
Forcing literally everyone else on the internet to give up privacy. No kids ever use my devices (there are no kids in my household), but in order to protect the non-existent children who theoretically would use my devices, I'd be forced to share information I don't want to and blindly trust that the process is done in a way that magically doesn't increase the ability to track me across websites.
imhoguy 4 hours ago [-]
These parents will do age check themselves on kids devices. Why? To not be bothered or to elevate the kid in peer group.
No system is going to fix "unresponsble" parents until we end up with a state completely replacing parent like in Brave New World.
oneeyedpigeon 4 hours ago [-]
> The problem is that not all parents are "concerned parents"
Unfortunately, this doesn't address that problem.
bArray 2 hours ago [-]
Our environment contains harms. Vehicles are several tonnes traveling 60+ mph, they make guns look safe. The calculation is a risk-reward one.
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether these "protect the children" laws are worth the internet freedoms they are about to erode. I would argue not.
1. It is not the state's responsibility to raise your children. They should ensure that safety is available, they should have some ability to deal with clear cases of abuse - but otherwise you're on your own. Anybody who thinks they want a nanny state just has to imagine the worst possible government abusing this power.
2. On the basis of providing safety, it would be enough for example for mobile phone OSes to provide parent restrictions (as they currently do). Kids can't afford to buy phones, so it's the parents in almost all cases giving them unfiltered access. If you really really want to ensure that all children have filtered access on phones, just spot check kid's phones and confiscate them if they do not have the locks enabled.
It seems insane to me that so many parents believe they have zero responsibility for their children's access to the internet, despite being the source of that access. I'm sorry, parents need to step up.
infinite_spin 5 hours ago [-]
there are plenty of alternatives if we're willing to shift these costs and responsibility to ISPs, which could separate the internet into two networks, one for children and the other for the rest of us. This is technically just as feasible, and probably cheaper than requiring every website to process (and probably retain) personally identifiable information.. significantly safer too.
But that wouldn't come with baked in surveillance, so "what else can you do" sounds a bit unnerving.
ben_w 1 hours ago [-]
> if we're willing to shift these costs and responsibility to ISPs, which could separate the internet into two networks, one for children and the other for the rest of us. This is technically just as feasible, and probably cheaper than requiring every website to process
It really wouldn't be.
Do that at OSI layer 3, every routed packet would have to have an "was this sent by a kid's device" flag.
Higher levels aren't the ISP's role. Lower levels, you'd need duplicate hardware specifically for kids, which couldn't connect to the adult's internet.
In the real world, we're still arguing about something that was already embarrassingly slow in its roll-out during my degree, and I graduated 20 years ago: IPv6.
_heimdall 1 hours ago [-]
Its reasonable to agree a problem exists and that we don't yet have a solution worth implementing.
Until there's a solution that actually addresses the problem without creating more, we should just try to make sure more people also know the problem exists and try to help equip parents to deal with it as best they can for now.
kerridge0 5 hours ago [-]
I had an idea the other day that children could have some kind of jewellery that they can't remove like a curfew device. Probably impractical but at least it matches - children=limited rights and need protection. Once of age, no need, come of age, can remove.
pibaker 5 hours ago [-]
The idea that the state should get to tag some subset human as undeserving of rights is not something we should let ourselves get accustomed to.
sdoering 5 hours ago [-]
Children already have less rights. Like voting rights missing, the right to buy alcohol (at least here in Germany), not allowed to drive a car, Forced to go to school, not allowed to watch quite a lot of movies - just to name a few, but also special protections. As they can't be held responsible below the age of 14 (so not court cases and prison time for kids <14). Just as one example.
So we already treat kids quite differently from adults. And tht is - imho - fine. Because kids are not just "small grown ups", they are just growing up.
I just do not think, that KYC/age verification is the right way to go - or even feasible in how it is being approached. I am for denying Meta, TikTok and the others the opportunity to exploit kids. But I would rather much have them regulated in a way that just forbidds them their predatory ways overall, then to give them even more data in the form of verified idetities and the knowledge that this account is within a specific age range ad also a "real human being", making that data even more valuable for advertisers.
pibaker 5 hours ago [-]
There is quite a difference between say having to hold a driver's license when driving or having to show the cashier your ID when buying beer, and having something attached to your body, for years, for the crime of simply having been born.
sdoering 4 hours ago [-]
I abhore the idea of having something attached to ones body. I wanted to show, that we already have systems in place that work and do not need such a horrible intrusive way of marking children.
Sorry for being not more clear.
CalRobert 5 hours ago [-]
"Once of age, no need, come of age, can remove."
This seems very naive to me, to be honest.
kerridge0 12 minutes ago [-]
Yes! I was just thinking that - what if they become conditioned.. still I think it's worth considering, as a thought experiment in light of what seems to be happening - you get the same chains when you come of age instead, although they are virtual....
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
If you're concerned with the fact that the government might have misaligned incentives to use a system beyond the originally given intent, I think the actual approaches that are in danger of being implemented should probably be something you focus on more than something that one person on an internet forum casually suggested
doublerabbit 2 hours ago [-]
At this point you might as well make it Battle Royale style. If you're not next to your countability buddy (an adult) when you use the internet, poof.
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
Oh good, there have never been studies coordinated to come out to influence public opinion based on shoddy science before; just ask the tobacco industry
fivetenpen 6 hours ago [-]
The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted.
Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity
ben_w 57 minutes ago [-]
> The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms.
I suspect that depends on subtle phrasing.
If for the sake of argument I presuppose that film classification ratings are necessary to protect children’s mental health, then the un-filtered contents of shock sites and porn sites will have had an impact even in the early years of the internet.
However, the early years of the internet simply had a much smaller proportion of kids online to experience this.
bluebarbet 2 hours ago [-]
This is conspiracism-adjacent and therefore unhelpful IMO. Perhaps people (and therefore politicians) simply believe that it is more feasible to implement end-user ID checks than somehow to put the genie of two decades of social media back in the bottle. I agree that this is not necessarily true but the failure of imagination seems very plausible.
isolli 5 hours ago [-]
It would benefit adults too...
mvdwoord 6 hours ago [-]
Well, I guess there is no other option then. Follow the science.
mike_hearn 2 hours ago [-]
Can you give some examples of such studies? The ones I've seen are all pseudo-scientific or provide very low grade evidence, often nothing more than simple correlations.
The default value assigned to a social study from academia should be zero these days, so there merely being a lot of them doesn't mean anything. You really need some very high quality evidence to justify this kind of huge change.
Anyway, Meta, really? Just to have more of our data? For the absolutely pedestrian explicit purpose of providing more information to advertisers?
This is why I don't buy into conspiracy theories. The truth is typically really boring and predictable - evil corporations will evily corporate.
I half wish for a more exciting villain that would give people a noticeable reason to stand up against - not just annoying people with intrusive ads.
ExoticPearTree 1 hours ago [-]
Too many people expressing themselves on the internet with nothing that can be done against them...
From a government perspective, it is a gold mine to know who's on the internet. For advertisers it is another goldmine - you can target at will without having to figure out first some demographics. An probably there are some angles I don't yet see, but the fact that this is a concentrated effort across the world make my spidey sense tingle.
And who doesn't want to protect the children?
cowboylowrez 45 minutes ago [-]
I agree with this especially as these laws specifically still allow kids to carry smartphones and use them away from parents watchful eye. There is no protection here. Get the kids off of the internet, there is nothing good for them there.
Now as I've thought this through some, I could see where selected networking could be made kid friendly, you know, like a top level dns where you need to prove yourself to be underage or heavily vetted adult with id verification, and this entire tld could be made kid friendly. I don't doubt that most of today's dns infrastructure is probably not up to the job, but a very tight and heavily vetted registry for .kids for example (or maybe better as kids.<country> as laws vary) would solve all of this. Make a subset of the internet kid safe and serve the kids that.
The fact that all these proposed laws still give kids general tcp/ip access at the physical level means we do conclude exactly what my parent commenter says, its not really about the kids, its about the free and unfettered flow of information that must be stopped. In the US, its getting close to illegal to disseminate information but once factual information does indeed become criminal in nature, you need to catch the perps and thus the IDs attached to packets of fact carrying information.
LunicLynx 51 minutes ago [-]
Maybe this is about time. It’s pretty clear that the internet as such is not and never has been for children.
But the way it is done is weird for sure.
But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents or peer pressure the issue that breaks the intent?
Or is your point that the internet should be used by children?
If so how do you propose restricting the harmful content?
From my point of view we are in the digital Middle Ages. We do not yet understand if this global connection is actually being good or bad in the long run. The only thing that starts to crystallize is that it isn’t great for children. Specifically social media, especially especially people gaining access to children on troves to spread ideology.
So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.
engeljohnb 14 minutes ago [-]
> But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents
You make it a burden on the parents, like all parenting always has been.
In my opinion, US culture losing sight of this is part of why our country is spinning down the drain. Combining Ipad kids with "what do you mean my child is failing? Isn't it your job to fix that?" I suspect has lead to a popluace that can't think for themselves.
Being willing to give up your online anonymity to be surveiled online and not only not beliving it's not a problem, but really thinking it's to protect children is another result of this.
spicyusername 38 minutes ago [-]
I don't think it's a given that this can't be partly or mostly policed by parents if they were provided good tools to do so.
As it is all of the parental controls on all devices, apps, and services are extremely lackluster.
So I'd argue legally required, granular, parental controls and empowering parents would be a much better start to resolving this issue compared to blatant government privacy overreach.
like_any_other 28 minutes ago [-]
Nonsense. They've already passed so many laws giving parents easy-to-use tools to manage their kids internet access, and other laws that make unlocking internet access for children that aren't yours just as illegal as buying them alcohol.
It was only after all of that failed, with no measurable effect, that our governments, reluctantly and as a last resort, proposed these privacy-destroying measures. And even then, they respected their citizens' rejection of these proposals [1].
I mean I didn't actually check that this is how it went, but with all the lecturing about "democracy" from our rulers, surely that's how they went about it, right?
>But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents
Why should we aim to do that ? Who give internet-enables device to their children? In most cases, who give pay for their internet access?
> So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.
Defining the problem, and if it exist altogether should be a good start. I'm not even sure the problem is defined, even less it need a solution so badly that we should kill everyone privacy for it.
lbnzuni 38 minutes ago [-]
> But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents
Yea wouldn’t want to have parents be involved and managing what their kids interact with. What?
soulofmischief 23 minutes ago [-]
You're engaging with the wrong argument. "Think of the children" is meant to confuse and diffuse discourse around what is happening. The argument which actually reflects the true intention of your politicians and lobbyists with respect to this issue is an argument of free access to information by anyone, including children.
I was raised in am extremely oppressive and abusive religious household. I would not be who I am today if I didn't have access to opinions outside of those shoved down my throat. I couldn't even listen to radio stations that weren't corporate soft rock or Christian music.
The internet was the only free space I had. Without it, I would certainly have killed myself as a child, rather than continue to submit to violent physical and religious abuse.
If we would stop blindly reacting with short-term thinking to each issue in turn that Corpgov presents us, and actually think deeply about what kind of future we'd like to build for those after us, it becomes radically clear that both the problem and solution as presented to us are actually detrimental in the long term.
LunicLynx 7 minutes ago [-]
I don’t disagree with what you are saying but it isn’t a solution to the problem. And the problem is about the children.
Without trying to offend you, but you are arguing this as: we don’t need to regulate alcohol or drugs because experiences, for everyone, will be better in the end…
dev_l1x_be 4 minutes ago [-]
They read the Epstein files and reacted quickly.
protocolture 6 hours ago [-]
Its Australia.
No joke our politicians subject us to something stupid, and then travel around telling their foreign peers how amazing and genius they are for doing so. They help write the legislation for other countries. Of course they later return and have to deal with the results of their stupidity, but its already been sold.
protocolture 2 hours ago [-]
Just to piss off the downvoters more, here is a link
I don't think people should be down voting this without at least providing some context.
I know Aus and NZ are quite authoritarian when it comes to this stuff - I have seen it directly for myself. I was at the Christchurch Call public engagement meeting [1] when they were planning some of these things.
Feels more like a joint effort given the way the world is going with AI. Likely, everyone who has access to the internet will require a passport to authenticate and access all websites, including AI bots. That way, any illegitimate activity from AI bots can be traced back to individuals.
SturgeonsLaw 6 hours ago [-]
If there was to be a small silver lining out of all this, then a way to verify human comments would be nice.
But it's not worth the privacy impacts and chilling of free speech.
nullbio 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I have no idea what a good solution is that solves what is coming when malicious actors start flooding the web with agents at hyperscale, because that is certainly going to come.
I'm really hoping smart people can figure out a good middleground before the government does something stupid. Because right now, their two cannons are either:
- Ban open-weight/open-source models and self-hosted LLMs
- Require internet passports to access any website and have everything recorded and monitored for signs of abuse that can be tied back to an individual and enforced in real life
What does a good middle-ground look like? I can't think of one. Neither of these outcomes is good and neither of them are enforceable. You ban something for law abiding citizens and only criminals will use it, and if you restrict everything behind internet passports then the criminals will just use the millions of stolen identities they already have access to.
Maybe biometrics that generate short-lived tokens that only the government can tie back to an individual? Like a "biometric session". Still though, you can kiss freedoms goodbye. It's no surprise Sam Altman started Orb so long ago, he obviously saw this one coming.
infinite_spin 5 hours ago [-]
It's also not the responsibilities of internet users to provide a way for websites to verify that comments are human. If they want to make that a part of their commenting process that's a choice they can make without requiring legislation.
kinakomochidayo 5 hours ago [-]
Maybe zk proof of government documents.
ghastmaster 9 hours ago [-]
Politics works that way sometimes. It could be a fad. It could be the culmination of years of the intelligentsia, political, and corporate benefactors finding this to be the right time to move forward.
There has been a lot of propaganda since the mid teens targeting the social and psychological impacts of social media. It is certainly plausible that some group or the aforementioned entities had a big part of this. Regulatory capture is a real thing that makes companies or breaks companies.
This is not the first time media consumption has been labeled and targeted in a negative way and it will not be the last. We as a society have to adapt to changing landscapes.
We shouldn't burn books. We shouldn't ban dungeons and dragons. Video games do not make people in general homicidal. History is repeating itself.
Anecdotally, I have not ran into a single person who has suggested we need to age-gate social media. It is on the politicians mind, but not the lay-person, as far as I can tell.
SidewaysView 8 hours ago [-]
Nothing wrong with burning books if they're bad/problematic/unacceptable books. Get 'em from the library, get 'em from the store. Burn 'em on video. Share it round. Scare the bigots.
ghastmaster 8 hours ago [-]
Your response made me realize the book burning analogy was not appropriate. What I meant to allude to was the historical mentions of people reading all day and not playing outside. Mass production of books led to a cultural change that I have seen reports of it being perceived as anti-social. I admit I had a beer or two before making that comment. I don't understand people's negative reaction to new media. It has been happening for a long time. I repeat. History is repeating itself.
laughing_man 12 hours ago [-]
I would have used the word "suspicious", but yeah.
cultofmetatron 1 hours ago [-]
> There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?
yea, you know who they are, I know who they are and we all knoww what they are tryin to hide. but anyone who spells it out will get downvoted to hell here.
munksbeer 49 minutes ago [-]
I don't know who you're talking about. Am I missing some context here?
underlipton 13 hours ago [-]
Of course. They meet in Davos every year.
zmgsabst 12 hours ago [-]
Also in DC, eg, at the Bilderberg meeting.
Somehow the US ones always fly under the radar: Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Jackson Hole banker meetup, Bohemian Grove, etc.
CommanderData 5 hours ago [-]
Suspicious? Maybe. Benjamin Netanyahuha repeatedly voiced concerns Israel is becoming increasingly unpopular amoung the youth because of social media.
His words: “the most important purchase going on right now (Tiktok)” alleging its control could be “consequential.” [1]
When kids have alternative news your pointless religious wars or fake democratic freedom wars cannot be fought. [2]
[1] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in September "We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged. And the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is TikTok. Number one. Number one.". Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti‑Defamation League, warned last year: “TikTok, if you will, is the 24/7 news channel of so many of our young people, and it’s like Al‑Jazeera on steroids. It’s amplifying and intensifying the antisemitism and the anti‑Zionism with no repercussions.”
[2] "There’s an eighth front," he said, describing a struggle "for the hearts and minds of people, especially young people in the West, and for me especially in the United States.
__MatrixMan__ 12 hours ago [-]
I think it's because they're afraid of what we might ask AI to help us build.
ars 10 hours ago [-]
Why is it weird? Social media has existed for around the same amount of time for all western countries, and people have noticed the harm at around the same time everywhere.
Why do you require some special interest? Ordinary people are seeing the harm and demanding help. Tech companies did themselves no favors by locking down phones and accounts to the point that it's impossible for parents to police and/or check their kids phones.
So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?
winrid 7 hours ago [-]
It's not about the kids.
It's so Facebook can prove to advertisers the views are not bots/AI.
6 hours ago [-]
Amezarak 3 hours ago [-]
I've yet to meet an ordinary person who supports any of this, though they might agree if vaguely prompted about it without detail. They certainly aren't lobbying their politicians about it. This is top down, not bottom up.
> So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?
I'm a parent. Nobody has been blocked from parenting by tech companies.
vlian2088 6 hours ago [-]
>people have noticed the harm at around the same time
the harm being us proles being able to communicate and organize. they don't give a fuck about kids, algorithmic feeds, or Russian/Chinese/other villains of the week disseminating propaganda to other bots in Facebook comments. they care exclusively about regaining some degree of control over the flow of information.
consider this: how many people in Europe would be against the ongoing replacement migration if it was still 1999 and 95% of people were still getting news exclusively from the TV and papers, where most incidents of cultural enrichment would never ever be mentioned? and on the other end of the spectrum, consider this: would the BLM protests of 2020 have the same scale and impact if there was no medium for people to spread the video and organize?
TLDR: Arab spring good, American/European spring bad.
IOT_Apprentice 4 hours ago [-]
Protect them from what? The known associates of trafficking associated with Maxwel & Epstein have not been fully exposed or prosecuted, instead their names are hidden. Nothing is happening. This is an attempt to force identity in all things. It should be stopped.
HDBaseT 10 hours ago [-]
Oh jeez, I wonder who on Earth could be behind this mass push for surveillance?
Hnrobert42 9 hours ago [-]
That's what GP is asking, except without the unhelpful sarcasm.
I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone else?
p0w3n3d 3 hours ago [-]
Tbh I must admit that while I observe my children, any message on social media (especially Whatsapp) attracts so much attention, they are unable to continue with their normal chores. On the other hand I remember myself procrastinating while watching the TV in their age, which no longer happens as we have no TV. The difference is that anything watched on TV was public, you would need to eject your parents from home somehow, now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things.
This procrastination is why my children have 30mins + 1h bonus, if they do their chores, of the phone limit every day. This is done via family link. There is an exemption to music on Spotify, however recently I noticed they are watching (not listening) to podcasts on Spotify too.
But still this is managed by me on our local ecosystem. It's not government thing. That's super creepy when government says (read in your mind or aloud with a sleazy guy's whisper)
"hey, your kids are unsafe, better allow me read all their and yours communication. Ah and please give me your id so I can protect your children more"
bcjdjsndon 3 hours ago [-]
> now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things.
.... Is this trolling? Banning social media won't stop them accessing "horrible things", you'd need to disconnect the internet entirely from them, have you done that?
Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible?
michaelt 16 hours ago [-]
There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Obviously it's difficult to pin a 20-year trend on a single cause. But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones; and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. But it's not possible to prove causality in a way that will silence all objections.
I suspect it's particularly easy to convince politicians that social media is bad for mental health because of their lived experience. Consider the experience of being a professional politician on Twitter.
I find it kind of hilarious that we spent ages trying to make teenagers not hang out in public spaces, not to drink, not to fuck. And now they have finally obliged, we start to take their obedience as a sign of declining mental health.
Maybe kids would be better off if we stopped regulating every facet of their lives under the pretence of safety and make them feel if they make one mistake they will ruin their life because now they can't get into a good college or something.
Aeolun 8 hours ago [-]
> Maybe kids would be better of if we stopped regulating every facet of their lives
I think this has been pretty conclusively proven.
askvictor 9 hours ago [-]
> But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones
I've been pondering recently how much time parents are spending on phones, that, 20 years ago they might have otherwise spent engaging with their kids.
HEmanZ 9 hours ago [-]
Statistically parents spend more time with their kids now than in the 1900s, and the trend seems towards more and more time, especially among fathers.
There’s some “well we have no idea how much is quality time” argument, but just looking across my own families over time the reality is more like modern parents being way more present than their parents.
The issue lies elsewhere. It’s almost a zeitgeist, the direction and evolution of ideas, and less any actual cause. At least that’s how it seems to me.
kelnos 2 hours ago [-]
> Statistically parents spend more time with their kids now than in the 1900s
Is that true? In more "traditional" times, the husband went out to work while the wife stayed home and managed the household and raised the children.
Today more and more families need dual incomes in order to make ends meet.
Either way, I don't think "the 1900s" is a good comparison. Perhaps 1970-2000 or so is reasonable.
Anyway, to counter your anecdote with another: when I was growing up, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she spent a ton of time (very much of it quality) with me. I saw my dad less, of course, but he was reasonably present when he wasn't at work, and I have lots of fond memories of quality time with him.
Nearly all of my friends today who have kids are dual-income. They send their kids to daycare as soon as they're old enough, and then pre-school. The kids do get a lot of socialization with other kids (maybe more than I did in my first few years), but I'm certain they get less time (and probably less quality time) with their parents than I did.
qball 15 hours ago [-]
>Young people are barely living
Yeah, I wonder what caused that?
The most freedom they actually get is on the Internet, that's why they all hang out there.
nonethewiser 11 hours ago [-]
Overprotected in the real world, underprotected online.
HDBaseT 10 hours ago [-]
Kids need private spaces. If we overprotect them in the real world, and overprotect them in the digital world children will fail to explore all sorts of things.
bcjdjsndon 6 hours ago [-]
> almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Sound reasoning lol some really hysterical folk on here.
if you actually believed it were that dangerous you wouldn't be literally on social media posting about this would you?
alt227 5 hours ago [-]
Are you inferring that HN is social media?
bcjdjsndon 3 hours ago [-]
By the legal definition it is. You might mean just Facebook, or just twitter, but it's pretty much any website or application that has a messaging capability, excluding games. You can see the issue with such a wide and vague definition.
Some people are scared of paedos talking to the kids, other people are scared the kids will watch bad videos, or read bad things. They are two distinct issues lumped in under the "social media" banner, and it can be hard to guess which issue a hysterical parent is referring too.
Hn is social media and even has a doomacrollint algorithm but because it's not classically considered to be akin to twitter, tiktok or Facebook it gets away with it
mschuster91 12 hours ago [-]
> There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Yeah. No surprise. The generation of my parents used to run free in the woods. My generation was limited to whatever bicycles offered. And when I have children, I'll probably have to be happy if they can walk to a friend's without some busybody calling the cops on them.
And drinking? Don't get me started on that one - same here. My parents' generation distilled their own spirits (that's banned in Germany these days). My generation had beer. My children? Assuming drinking is still a thing when they're at that age, I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days).
Generally: Third spaces (e.g. libraries, "youth centers") are closing down, others (malls, parks) try everything possible to eliminate youth loitering or, god forbid, making noise. And that's if they can actually afford something. It's ridiculous how expensive basic stuff such as fast food or ice cream has gotten.
In contrast to that, phones are free-ish (well, parents buy them for their kids anyway, and mobile data plans aren't a big deal either).
> and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Bullying always used to be a thing, yes. But that's a legitimate complaint, the mechanics of social media and cameras being ever present have made bullying much more severe in scale. Hell if I were young today, I'd have probably ended up arrested multiple times if there was some video camera rolling around all time.
triceratops 8 hours ago [-]
> I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days).
Nobody, of any age, should drink that much.
jusssi 6 hours ago [-]
Obviously, but the whole argument against the regulation is, if they're not free to find out themselves, they'll turn up worse.
We'll lose some, but the surviving ones will be fitter.
lotu 8 hours ago [-]
Doesn’t imply that the cops should be involved in prevention.
triceratops 7 hours ago [-]
I didn't say they should be. Calling it "routine" is downplaying the seriousness of it though.
mschuster91 4 hours ago [-]
They should not, but getting the cops called on the parents is a few steps too far
nonethewiser 11 hours ago [-]
Is there any evidence social media is improving mental health?
It feels absurd to even ask.
spacebeer 8 hours ago [-]
Forums and Fediverse could do that, if you choose wisely and use it responsibly
fock 1 hours ago [-]
I have not researched this, but I see some 4 to 10 year olds in the family being on the phone every time I see them. Usually they stream "brainrot" on youtube on the tablet while they play roblox on the phone. From time to time there are ads.
In school they still perform ok for what is required there today, but from what happens when you say "oh, wifi doesn't work today in our place" I would argue they behave like addicts... It might be a fun addiction insofar as mental problems are usually not the cause but possibly the result if this runs for years on end.
My pet theory is that these kids will graduate to online-gambling around 12-14 because that's exactly the kind of gameplay they prefer on roblox currently. Even when I was 16 there was a noticable share of classmates gambling online - and this was pre-facebook.
Probably the best way forward would be to make KYC mandatory for large, data-selling public fora like we do with banks. Noone complains there and noone is forced to use platforms.
If you don't want to do KYC (such as on hn or a model train forum) you are liable for any criminal activity you enable (such as pedophiles using your private messages or whatever...).
a34729t 12 hours ago [-]
Hmmmm that's odd, because everybody I know who has worked (or works) at a major social network (or two or three), including me, thinks it is horrible for mental health of everybody involved.
I'd be very curious what kind of "research" NPR is talking about, and who funded it, because it flies in the face of what all of us at these companies have seen.
voxl 10 hours ago [-]
It's a good thing what random people thing is not taken a science these days, oh wait I guess science is on a historic decline as well.
Maybe it's not climate chance, pseudo intellectualism, late stage capitalism, etc. Nah, it's the kids in their group chat or scrolling through tiktok, that's it, that's the reason.
petre 9 hours ago [-]
The tobacco company lobbyists probably applied their whitewashing know how to social media after being done with industrialized foods. They're also likely on Meta's payroll now.
Age checks are part if that. They will just feed the sureveillance capitalism machine and make the problem even worse.
Age checked social media is just like the parlor walls in Fahrenheit 451 and infuencers are Mildred Montag. Just another thing to keep people distracted and neutered.
I remember I used to hang out on IRC during my teens with all kinds of people: jewish lesbians from conservative families and other teens from Scandinavia who got drafted on somewhat right wing warez groups, middle aged goth rockers on music sharing channels. Quite an experience for someone who grew up in a post communist country to interact with so colorful and genuinely interesting people. In contrast to that social media is an entirely fake experience generated with bots, algorithms and AI, just like a techno feudal version of the communist propaganda riddled lalaland that I grew up in. Many a DPRK on steroids, except it herds people into getting enraged and engaged with brands in order to hopelessly buy useless junk instead of submitting to a dear supreme leader. Of course it gets people addicted, because it was designed with that in mind.
paytonjjones 16 hours ago [-]
Yes.
The research is quite confusing. This is because the strongest version of the argument is not "your child uses social media, and that makes them depressed". The strongest version is more like "when a society mass adopts social media, this irrevocably alters the culture in ways that causes massive changes in mental health, most prominently among young girls, including those exposed to the culture who don't even use social media."
This means you get a weird effect where experimental studies of high quality - which are usually the best evidence, are expected by the strong argument to show zero effect.
Correlational studies usually show either a weak effect (stronger in young girls) or no effect (it's extremely rare to see a study showing a positive correlational effect, though).
But even then it's very tricky, as those studies can't exactly be replicated, and we don't know whether changes will actually reverse the cultural artifacts
8note 14 hours ago [-]
but also, you have to distinguish from "society has separately become anti-child"
which also did happen through the nineties and 2000s before social media, but how would you measure the effects of each on their own?
paytonjjones 13 hours ago [-]
As is common in social science, it's really challenging to disentangle this kind of thing. But there are ways you can get at it.
One clever example discussed in the blog I linked:
> We also found five studies that used a similar design applied to the rollout of high-speed internet. It’s hard to have a phone-based childhood when data speeds are very low. So what happened in Spain as fiber optic cables were laid and high-speed internet came to different regions at different times?
The problem is that argument is indistinguishable from the argument "the lack of proof is the proof!"
paytonjjones 14 hours ago [-]
No, I don't think it's the same as an unfalsifiable or circular claim.
Network level effects are still falsifiable, it's just often really challenging to falsify them at scale.
downrightmike 15 hours ago [-]
The world sucks and the kids have no hope. Social media/ internet is to distract everyone from the real world problems
krater23 12 hours ago [-]
Normally we used beer for that, but during covid we've learned a whole generation that going out is danger and staying at the couch is good. And they decided that it's much easier than going out and have stressful situations with other people.
bonesss 2 hours ago [-]
We used to have peer pressure where slightly older slightly tougher kids would call you names if you didn't man up and try some beer.
Now all that peer pressure is distilled online in short, monologue based, video format, unilateral edited transmissions setting beauty, purity, and behavior standards based on claims, and everyone has a permanent digital record, and mass shame campaigns targeted at random individuals are routine.
betadeltic 3 hours ago [-]
A bit of an off-topic, as age checks are not solution to this, it's just the usual "think of the children" narrative.
The kids are fine. The adults that are genuinely worried about the kids need to keep these specific adults out of the kids lives as much as possible.
reactordev 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
amanaplanacanal 13 hours ago [-]
Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence.
Sustained.
loloquwowndueo 13 hours ago [-]
You can’t sustain your own objection, counselor.
helterskelter 13 hours ago [-]
Yeah but if you say "sustained" at the end of your own objection you might really confuse whoever is reading the transcript and get a free appeal.
loloquwowndueo 13 hours ago [-]
lol :) good point
mc32 12 hours ago [-]
But it's not just teenagers, it's also adults who are harmed by overexposure to algorithmically presented content. Obvs we can't restrict adults from legal content but we can legislate against algorythmic content.
The NPR bit sounds like what I'd imagine I could expect from people who are very good at pushing junk food -they've got good science behind flavoring and light addiction (like you don't get withdrawals from not eating doritoes) and the same with social media. they have very good science behind getting people to spend more and more time viewing their content not matter what. So I take that bit on NPR with a grain of salt. In my experience, NPR often presents studies based on small samples for whatever reason. Maybe to go against the grain, maybe to get people to think, who knows...
duxup 17 hours ago [-]
I remember when the advice was to NOT give out your personal information online.
Now it's "present your personal info when demanded or else".
Aeolun 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I remember when I finally had my own address and could stop entering nonsense. Felt like a rite of passage.
kgwxd 16 hours ago [-]
There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised just one of those things simultaneously.
duxup 16 hours ago [-]
I don't know what that means.
mondomondo 15 hours ago [-]
[dead]
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
There has also never been a single point in history when everyone in the planet was over the age of 70, but there are also a lot more people who are over 70 now than 1000 years ago. I don't understand why you think that all fractions between 0 and 1 are equivalent.
bastawhiz 16 hours ago [-]
There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised any one thing at all, ever.
Humorist2290 4 hours ago [-]
In many states, children under some age are prohibited from using firearms. There is substantial evidence to show that firearms pose a real and present harm to individual children and large groups.
An excellent rider to the KIDS act would be to mandate the installation of age (that is, identity) verification to all firearms in order to disable the safety.
bluescrn 4 hours ago [-]
Motor vehicles are very dangerous too, including higher-power e-bikes.
Lock those out too unless you can provide digital ID (and a high enough social credit score) each time you attempt to start them.
pdonis 13 hours ago [-]
Would this website (HN) be a "covered platform" according to the bill?
As far as I can tell, the answer is no, because it doesn't do what's described in Section 201 (E):
"Uses the personal information of the user to advertise, market, or make content recommendations."
Neither does, for example, my bank's website, or someone's personal blog, or many other discussion sites like this one. So from what I can see, while the set of covered platforms is certainly not negligible, it's still a lot smaller than "basically every website on the Internet that anyone cares about". So the title of the EFF article is overstating the case; the thing the bill would require age checks for (in effect, if not by the explicit language of the bill) is not "get online" but something more like "get on social media".
zmgsabst 13 hours ago [-]
Your bank almost certainly uses your personal information to advertise or market to you — and so seems like it would be covered by that definition.
pdonis 11 hours ago [-]
That's true, but the bank also already knows my age.
Also, a bank would not satisfy section 201 (B), (C), or (D), so it wouldn't be a covered platform anyway. (I should have left "bank" out of my original post, I was really thinking more about discussion sites like this one, blogs, etc.)
jolmg 12 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't imply their needing any more information than they'd already have.
1over137 13 hours ago [-]
> …is not "get online" but something more like "get on social media".
Which for ordinary people is the same thing, alas.
9x39 10 hours ago [-]
No, because:
with respect to which more than one-third of the material made available thereon is sexual material harmful to minors; and (C) with respect to which the provider of such platform knowingly makes available the sexual material harmful to minors described in subparagraph (B).
(look for line 19 to see the covered platform)
Of course, it's a delicious web they're trying to weave - pass it now by casting the think of the children spell, amend and reinterpret later to soften the guardrails until everything is in scope and demands commercial ID checks, driving ID check industry software and adoption, until psuedo-anonymity on the web is virtually gone. Or do it with any combination of other bills.
pdonis 10 hours ago [-]
You're looking at section 102 of the bill, which is a different part than the one I was looking at (and that the EFF article is referring to). The bill is a mismash of several different proposed bills all squashed together into one. Title I, which is what you're looking at, is more restrictive about what platforms it applies to than Title II, which contains the section I quoted.
AlienRobot 10 hours ago [-]
You need to be more realist.
"Uses the personal information of the user to advertise"
Is 99.9% of all websites. So long as websites don't sell things, they will be having ads.
This includes Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Imgur, TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, etc. I think even Steam and other game platforms would fall into this category despite the fact they make money selling products. Naturally search engines also fall into this category.
Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm.
It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead. In fact, most people don't want to go through the trouble of maintaining their own blog, dealing with spam, hosting, hacking attempts, software updates, etc., when they can just use tumblr and pin the responsibility on the platform anytime something bad happens.
TurdF3rguson 3 hours ago [-]
You're way underestimating how many boring websites there are. County records websites, tax filing websites, dmv portals, shipping trackers...
pdonis 10 hours ago [-]
> Is 99.9% of all websites.
Not at all. You named eleven. Even if I'm generous and raise that by a couple of orders of magnitude, it's still a miniscule fraction of all websites.
Of course it's close to all big tech platforms, but that's not the same thing. And if one of the results of this whole kerfluffle is to make more people realize that the big tech platforms are not the same as "the Internet" or "the Web", that would be a good thing.
> Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm.
Which makes it even more important to ask the question of whether "exception" websites like this one can continue to survive if this bill becomes law. Sure, HN users are a tiny fraction of all Internet users. But that's supposed to be one of the things the Internet is for--to give even very small communities a place where they can be a community, and not have to worry about all the other crap that's out there, and not have to be micromanaged by politicians and lobbyists and tech giants.
> It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead
Not all blogging platforms use targeted ads. And if this gives more of them an incentive not to, that would be a good thing.
antonvs 12 hours ago [-]
It’s not just “social media”. Any site that’s funded by advertising fits that description.
pdonis 11 hours ago [-]
But there are also other requirements in section 201 for a "covered platform", which advertising-funded sites that aren't "social media" most likely don't meet. For example, a typical personal blog, even if it shows ads, doesn't meet subsection (C), because its primary purpose is not to share user-generated content (e.g., comments by readers)--it's to share the blog author's content.
(HN itself doesn't meet at least one other requirement besides subsection (E): subsection (D), "Uses a design feature to promote user engagement on the platform".)
__MatrixMan__ 12 hours ago [-]
Only if it's targeted.
antonvs 11 hours ago [-]
True, but in practice, the vast majority of advertising-funded sites use targeted advertising, because they use standard ad networks. There are very few ads networks that don’t do targeted ads.
__MatrixMan__ 10 hours ago [-]
Right but if we could kill that business model by making platforms chose between age verification and non-targeted ads, that would be a win right?
That's not so say I'm in favor of age verification, just pointing out the silver lining.
pdonis 10 hours ago [-]
You're assuming that platforms that tried age verification in order to show people targeted ads would lose enough users to make that business model no longer viable. While I would fervently like to believe that's true, I'm not so sure it is. I think there might well be enough people who will hand over their personal identifying info without a second thought in order to continue to use targeted ad-supported platforms, to keep them in business. I hope I'm wrong.
AlienRobot 10 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but you could also kill that business model without any legislation by simply... not visiting those websites.
GeekyBear 15 hours ago [-]
Parents already have the ability to lock down Android or iOS devices for their own children, if they choose to do so.
jtmarl1n 12 hours ago [-]
Parental controls are extremely weak on all the major platforms. Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. they all have them so they can check the box but they are not good and certainly not a solution.
That said, it is better than nothing, but that’s about it.
GeekyBear 10 hours ago [-]
You can control which apps children can install, how much time they are allowed to use those apps a day, decide if they have access to the web, which web sites they can visit, and decide who they are allowed to communicate with.
What features are missing that makes everyone giving up their privacy a better option?
broost3r 9 hours ago [-]
granular control over push notifications would be great
see: recent article about Snap sending pushes to kids during school hours
gib444 4 hours ago [-]
Screen Time let's you turn off notifications.
I have all notifications on my phone off, except for phone calls
LugosFergus 6 hours ago [-]
Parents have the ability to take any phone or pad out of their hands.
simoncion 11 hours ago [-]
> Parental controls are extremely weak on all the major platforms.
So pass laws and enact regulations that require them to be made strong.
Not only does this moot the demands for capture of photo ID, beefing up the parental controls that already exist in every major OS means that -say- adults caring for their dementia-damaged parents can restrict those adults' access to things that could be very dangerous to them and/or their finances. A strictly-age-based "protection" scheme absolutely does not do that.
One might argue that one could "merely" require a "This adult is seriously intellectually damaged. [0] Make sure to protect them from scammers and predators!" flag that can be flipped on by a Registered Caretaker. I humbly suggest that that is information you should never disclose to a company that makes its money by trading in dossiers of its users.
[0] Dear downvoters: I understand that this isn't the PC term for the effects of these sorts of ailments. If you've ever had to watch over and care for someone who gets cored out bad by this shit, it's hard to describe it as anything else.
alt227 5 hours ago [-]
> So pass laws and enact regulations that require them to be made strong.
No, please dont. More regulation is not the answer. Any more restriction which is imposed on kids becomes the thing they focus on getting around.
Just dont buy your kids phones until they are older, and send them outside to play. Thats all the parental restriction you need on phones.
simoncion 4 hours ago [-]
> No, please dont.
Why not? If the parental controls in all the mainstream OSs are effective, difficult to bypass, and don't involve any communications with third-parties beyond communicating the set of prohibited topics/actions/whatever, what's left for busybodies to complain about?
NOTE: I'm not calling you a busybody. I'm calling the people who push for these "age verification" laws with the genuine belief that they're for protecting minors who lack the ability to handle the dangers of the world busybodies.
anjiro 15 hours ago [-]
Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device. And assuming that device parental controls work, which (at least on iOS) they don't [1].
There's a big difference between your kid accessing inappropriate things at a friends house for a few hours a month and having that stuff at his or her fingertips 24/7.
If parents were really concerned about this stuff they'd take the time to set up parental controls, but they don't. Which makes me pretty sure the push for all this isn't coming from parents.
Terr_ 8 hours ago [-]
Also, (b)locking at the device level has a crucial benefit: It brings enforcement into a physical realm where parents can detect and manage exceptions.
If Little Timmy has a phone you don't recognize in his hand, then you know that's a problem.
It also insulates every website from needing to support Orthodox Latverian messianism where male children below the age of 17 lunar years cannot see unclad ankles.
j-bos 12 hours ago [-]
Same applies to alcohol at a friend's house, cigarette's behind the shop, and any other sort of restrictions when away from parents. Ultimately kid's will either take to heart their parent's guidnace or they won't.
the_mitsuhiko 12 hours ago [-]
Those things are still illegal for minors. I find that to be a rather weak argument.
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
They're implemented in a way that people who don't ever buy alcohol or cigarettes get effected by though. I can't feasibly opt out of the entire internet that I use to pay bills, schedule doctors appointments, file taxes, etc. because hypothetical children could use them to access completely unrelated things to those boring parts of my everyday life. The equivalent would be if I got carded every time I stepped out of my house just in case I might decide to buy alcohol later.
archagon 13 hours ago [-]
You can’t patch every hole. Kids will always find a way.
More technological solutions to social problems.
simoncion 11 hours ago [-]
> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device.
Please describe how requiring a government ID in order to use a computer prevents an over-seventeen from presenting their ID to unlock their computer and then handing that computer over to an under-eighteen? An over-seventeen handing over control of their unlocked computer to a visiting under-eighteen seems to me to be an under-eighteen "go[ing somewhere] they could access a non-locked-down device".
The only way I can see to even begin to combat that is to constantly surveil the operator of the computer to attempt to detect when its operator changes. Do you have a superior method?
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
> The only way I can see to even begin to combat that is to constantly surveil the operator of the computer to attempt to detect when its operator changes. Do you have a superior method?
The idea that I should have to figure out a mechanism for other people to police their children in order to use my devices that no child ever has access to for things like paying bills and making doctors appointments without presenting identification is absurd. Minors still drink alcohol all the time, but that would be a pretty shoddy excuse for the government making me flash my ID to leave my house and didn't let me in grocery stores because I couldn't come up with any more effective way to prevent underage drinking.
kelseyfrog 12 hours ago [-]
If we expect the behavior of parents to change we must change their incentives.
Providing access to social media must be met with the same punishment as offering heroin to children. The monopoly on violence must be brought to bear on parents who neglect parental responsibilities.
interloxia 5 hours ago [-]
That's how we end up with stolen generations of kids taken from parents.
It was bad and suggesting state violence for lack of compliance with your world view is bad.
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure the parent comment is not being serious. They're making a point that some solutions are worse than the problem they're trying to solve.
ars 10 hours ago [-]
That's just not true. If you give your kid WhatsApp access because that's how 95% of their peers text each other, then your kid has access to a hidden chat that can only be revealed by typing a secret code in the search bar.
Tell me how a parent is supposed to parent their kid when they can do that? Locking down WhatsApp is no solution because then they can't talk to anyone. (Other countries do not use SMS as much as the US does, it's mostly WhatsApp.)
Say you are sure your kid is being bullied or abused and you want to check their phone. You can't. From the password to encrypted apps kids can hide their communications in ways that are impossible for a parent to check.
Apps do not have "child modes" that disable all the secret stuff, although that would be nice.
saghm 2 hours ago [-]
> If you give your kid WhatsApp access because that's how 95% of their peers text each other, then your kid has access to a hidden chat that can only be revealed by typing a secret code in the search bar.
So the solution to parents deciding to give their kids access to stuff is to make me flash my ID every time I go online on one of my devices that I use in my childless household? And you're confident that there won't be plenty of parents who just put their ID information in for their kids anyhow?
gib444 4 hours ago [-]
I don't have kids but I do wonder if maybe the downsides of WhatsApp etc outweigh the benefits?
Lack of practice with face to face communication, near inability to talk on the phone, less quality connection with people in general, craned necks, myopia, hidden bullying, privacy violations, dependency on a US company etc
And what do you mean by "can't talk to anyone"?
verytrivial 28 minutes ago [-]
I'm finding this really strange. These laws as formulated are just straight-up universal identity checks for all Internet users, not ages checks, right? The end of anonymity and pseudonymity.
Adults somehow feel that they are excluded from showing papers because the laws "target children"?
I mean it is technically possible to prove things using blind attestation etc. but very few of the works social problems have so far been solved by first choosing two large prime numbers, so I don't expect it will help here.
shomp 23 hours ago [-]
call and email your congresspeoples, and tell them not to go through with this
andai 22 hours ago [-]
Isn't it interesting how they're doing it in every anglo country simultaneously? How does that work?
iamnothere 21 hours ago [-]
At global conferences like Davos, where national leaders and policy makers go to schmooze and exchange ideas, this idea has been discussed for years. I’m sure there has been some subsequent cross-border coordination and discussion.
Everyone ignores stuff like this because of people like Alex Jones who make it seem like a lunatic conspiracy theory. But these conferences happen, and they do influence policy. It’s not a “cabal” that issues orders—many participants are national leaders bringing their perspectives (see the link above about Sanchez)—but it does have an impact.
The banal truth is that many different world leaders have talked each other into this after years of discussion on the proper way to “manage” the Internet. They see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed.
ethbr1 21 hours ago [-]
> [World leaders] see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed.
This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web.
It's what the original 90s crypto wars were about: the right of individuals to access strong encryption to preserve the privacy of their communications from the government.
Absent that, pandora's box opens.
Age KYC is just the next fight against encryption and privacy dressed up in "for the children" clothes.
Strong encryption always has (and always will) facilitate criminal and illegal activity. Tough tits.
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies should work within the bounds of individual rights, not adjust them for convenience.
If the price of individual freedom^ is that it's harder to track and prosecute child exploitation, drug distribution, and mass terror attacks, then that's the way it needs to be.
^ "Individual freedom" as distinct from corporate freedom. Fuck non-human legal entities' rights to access encryption, aside from on behalf of their users.
Amezarak 2 hours ago [-]
> This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web.
It's true that some have always seen it this way, but it's become much more salient in the current political context. The average politician 30 years ago was barely aware of what the Internet was - it wasn't a major concern. For a brief period, the prevailing (but not only, as you mention with encryption) attitude was that the information superhighway would make everyone was educated and wise as the managerial class elites. Social media muddled the picture for a while, but the Arab Spring was considered to be an amazing example of this - look, people around the world are going to be Just Like Us!
What really kicked off the current level of enmity politicians have for the Internet was the rise of right-wing populism, especially Trump. This really deeply upset a lot of people, and the only conceivable explanation is that bad actors caused it using the Internet, because good and wise people would only come to the same conclusions as themselves, and democracy is only fit for people who come to those same conclusions. It is certainly not because their policy outcomes caused discontent. Since then they've been throwing everything at the wall to stop free Internet discourse in the belief it will make the bad people go away and restore Public Order.
ethbr1 31 minutes ago [-]
I think the slide towards control rather than freedom on the internet is more subtle than that.
1. Increased centralization (FAANG et al.)
2. Larger tech entities willing (and able) to strike deals with government in exchange for favors
3. All governments always wanting more power over citizens
4. Today
This isn't a left vs right thing, as both sides have come up with kooky internet-control schemes.
It's a 'centralization breeds coercion' thing.
The antidote to that is decentralization (especially breaking up large firms) and an individual right to privacy (including the technical methods to ensure it).
Imagine DeCSS today! Facebook and Google and Microsoft and Apple would get calls, then Anthropic and OpenAI, and the key would be wiped off large portions of the internet.
michaelt 15 hours ago [-]
When nobody's done something before, there are lots of unanswered questions.
Is it even possible? Will businesses my voters like and use a lot just leave my country entirely? Will companies be able to develop privacy-preserving age check infrastructure? Will the press present it as a 'Chinese-style Great Firewall' or be more supportive of it? Will the blocks all be trivial to bypass? Will the large number of porn users in my country form a cohesive voting block? Will a powerful pro-privacy, pro-free-speech lobby emerge to challenge this? And will they be backed by powerful, well-funded US interests like Facebook and Google?
Australia simply showed the world passing this sort of legislation isn't political suicide.
hactually 12 hours ago [-]
kinda. but not really. they just showed a lack of effectiveness and has emboldened other countries to further restrict things like VPNs and roll out ID based net access
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Because the internet is global and the negative effects of the internet are happening everywhere at the same time. Also, politicians look at other countries for ideas.
shevy-java 22 hours ago [-]
Because it is an organized attack. The lobbyists got their orders,
now they pull it through. It is kind of fascinating to see though -
I bet many people don't realise this coordinated attack. To me it
is blatantly easy to notice. I am glad to not be the only one here.
ethbr1 21 hours ago [-]
One cannot use a handwavey "organized" and "coordinated" without a subject. Who specifically do you propose is ordering this?
shomp 20 hours ago [-]
If Facebook, in light of the 2021 "Facebook Papers," believed the legislation inevitable, what kind of legislation would maximize its advantage?
Noteworthily, the legislation moves age verification from individual apps to app-store operators [Apple, Google] which reduces Facebooks legal exposure for inaccurate/incorrect age verifications.
Hizonner 19 hours ago [-]
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braebo 19 hours ago [-]
Globalism + Oligarchy
anigbrowl 17 hours ago [-]
And if they do it anyway? Sure, you can vote them out but it's hard to dislodge incumbents especially over policy choices rather than obvious problems like corruption. Then even after you've ejected them, you need to push their successor into the Sisyphean task of rewriting populist legislation.
Representative democracy is not adequate to the demands of the information age, where the informational asymmetry between individual and state is unprecedented in history. It's time to explore other models like administrative democracy.
echelon 22 hours ago [-]
We do not need to lose our rights to privacy because people want to control what their kids do and see. (I'm not even convinced this is true - this is likely just a convenient lie told by the politicians, because I don't see parents clamoring for this.)
We're below replacement rate, so it's not like most people are even having kids, anyway. Yet we have to give up our freedom for other people to raise little Christian tots (or whatever the motivation for this is billed as)?
I grew up in a Deep South Protestant household. Having access to the unfiltered internet got me interested in STEM. Bumping into occasional shock sites and porn as a preteen did not turn me into a satanist cannibal.
Keeping "Kids Safe" is a LIE.
This is about putting collars on every US citizen.
They'll filter you into groups.
They'll control what loans and jobs you can get.
They'll use this information to blackmail you should you ever run for office or gain wealth or power.
This is a threat to democracy and personal liberty.
Child safety is a LIE.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
When did you grow up? The internet in 2006 and 2026 were nothing alike.
subscribed 17 hours ago [-]
Heh, yeah, kids in 90s and 00s were asked a/s/l from the outset, openly.
That's not happening like this, also because peer and public tolerance for it is nearly nil.
The internet now is much safer.
wyrdcurt 15 hours ago [-]
As a child circa 2000, I remember seeing explicit bestiality porn pop-ups while looking up video game cheat codes. You're right, the internet is much different now, and not in the way you're implying.
echelon 15 hours ago [-]
Oh my God, this.
Kids are safer today.
microgpt 13 hours ago [-]
Safer from shock images? What about the psychological manipulation stuff, you know, the actual dangerous stuff?
If a preteen sees a horse fucking a human they won't even know what that is.
Notice you didn't answer the question btw
4 hours ago [-]
bluefirebrand 21 hours ago [-]
Yeah, the 2026 internet is way safer
ethbr1 21 hours ago [-]
The internet in 1986 and 1996 was nothing like 2006.
2006 is on the other side of the event horizon of "Don't be evil."
giancarlostoro 15 hours ago [-]
Idk about that one chief, maybe 2016 was tamer than that, 2006 was still wild.
ethbr1 14 hours ago [-]
By 2006, you already had Google, Amazon, and Facebook outpacing their competition. Apple was riding iPod success and just about to launch the iPhone.
Imho, that's well into the re-centralization of the internet and tech landscape.
Rewind another 10 years, and I'd call 1996 wild. That's before XMLHttpRequest/AJAX and when a cat could create as impressive of a website as any corporation.
and have your children on the phone telling them to not let companies store and leak their information before they are old enough to consent to this.
If they are asking you to leave a message, have your kids leave the message.
none2585 22 hours ago [-]
Then donate millions in campaign contributions to ensure they actually care at all what you think!
vegetablepotpie 22 hours ago [-]
Coordinated opposition campaigns against misinformed and dangerous legislation has been effective in stopping bad laws [1]. After a website blackout, including a Wikipedia shutdown, lawmakers in Washington decided not to proceed with the Stop Online Privacy Act in 2012.
From your linked Wikipedia articles many corporations including Google were part of that opposite campaign. Exactly the type of people donating untold millions to our legislatures. Had nothing to do with any kind of grassroots pressure.
anigbrowl 17 hours ago [-]
Woohoo, what about this great success (checks notes) 14 years ago?! You think political counterparties don't adapt and refine their tactics?
noosphr 22 hours ago [-]
Money is a poor substitute for people who care.
The only people who think otherwise are terminally online losers who have never organized anything larger than a birthday party.
Maybe in your country but not in the hellhole that is the US.
verisimi 21 hours ago [-]
Are you talking from experience? What legislation have you organised?
mlnj 12 hours ago [-]
> terminally online losers
rsoto2 22 hours ago [-]
Espiallat ($9.5 million) vs Darializa (350k)
Money matters but a popular movement is more powerful still in some places look up DSA
none2585 20 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately "some places" does not include the US federal government.
16 hours ago [-]
aklemm 22 hours ago [-]
It’s quickly being understood as a ploy for mass surveillance.
Terr_ 8 hours ago [-]
And all age-checks will be identity-checks.
Oh, sure, you can imagine a system where they aren't, but is bill isn't going to get us that? Nope! It's going to get us something stupid and ripe for abuse, and the mere presence of what comes next will poison the environment against any better option.
stego-tech 10 hours ago [-]
Once again banging my “there’s already an age check to get online and it’s the adult paying the ISP bill” drum.
Seriously, enough with mandating compliance with the surveillance economy. Build a society where parents can actually take care of their kids instead of hiding a surveillance state behind the guise of “protecting children” and blaming adults who want to preserve privacy or anonymity in the last space it exists within.
throw0101d 22 hours ago [-]
We're approaching forty years of this:
> The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.".[1] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools.
> The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists".[2][3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities.
sometimes it's true. We ruined the brains of a whole generation of people. Should we stop doing that? If so, how?
subscribed 17 hours ago [-]
Which generation of people and with what? Kazaa or porn? I presume the former because the latter is about as old as the civilisations.
microgpt 13 hours ago [-]
infinite scroll dopamine glitch, actually
bluefirebrand 21 hours ago [-]
Can you elaborate on what you think ruined the brains of a generation of young people? Actually, can you even tell us which generation you're referring to so we know what era of the internet you're unhappy with?
preg_match 17 hours ago [-]
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13 hours ago [-]
athrowaway3z 23 hours ago [-]
Targeting the kids is so infuriatingly successful tactics.
It gives the adults the option to be apathetic. In reality, anyone who is a kid now will never know any better.
It just means we're the last generations that had the luxury of a world that remembered what privacy was.
llukas 22 hours ago [-]
You mean targeting with ads, sucking into feeds, making kids harm themselves and making money on this with lip service about corporate responsibility?
Sounds about right.
rsoto2 22 hours ago [-]
you dont need to buy your kid the internet.
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
Yep, they'll get it even if you don't buy it for them
j-bos 12 hours ago [-]
By that logic the subject under advocation is only downside and no upside.
preg_match 17 hours ago [-]
No, they won’t. The schools have internet but they also often don’t even allow phones these days. And those networks block almost everything.
They might still get some content downstream of other kids. However, I doubt a “look at this tiktok” here and there has any harmful effects.
What’s harmful is excessive social media use, especially unmonitored. So, either monitor your kid or do not give them access. It’s perfectly fine to have a family computer in the living room if you’re worried about little Timmy looking up “boobies”. Problem solved, and I saved you some money.
I think a lot of parents do basically nothing and then are unhappy with the results. Yes, if you don’t try, you won’t get your desired result. But you can try stuff out, and you can always pivot if you feel it becomes inconvenient. The reality is we don’t need these complex technological solutions. There are simple, brain-dead solutions like “don’t give your kid a phone for hours on end” or “give your kid a flip phone”.
2 hours ago [-]
rsoto2 15 hours ago [-]
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kakacik 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah but don't expect much sympathy on a forum full of uber rich folks whose very income is directly tied to the same revenue streams you mention.
I love freedom as a general principle, but internet 2026 is a undefendable cesspool of amorality, scams and worse. We are not in the 90s or early 00s anymore, and never will be again that era is gone.
cute_boi 8 hours ago [-]
They will always have reason. If it wasn't kids it will be national security or women....
api 23 hours ago [-]
EDIT: about half to two thirds of the responders didn't catch "I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions." I am not saying I like these solutions. I am trying to explain why they have support among the general public. Many of these responses are the usual "shoot the messenger" response you get online when you point out what the "other side" thinks and why they think it even if you don't necessarily agree. On this issue I think there's a need, but I have yet to see a good proposal to address it.
Once again, the response in places like this pretends everyone is an upper middle class or above tech-savvy nerd.
I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions, which do invade privacy and remove freedom, but the problems are real. These solutions are being pushed because our industry is doing nothing to police itself or provide parents with the tools they need.
In many cases we are doing less than nothing, because the profit motive is to prevent parents from having this control. "Social" media, gambling-adjacent gaming, and other addictionware, which is a huge profit center for our industry, wants to addict kids early. Gotta get those cigarettes into their hands, which means preventing parents from stopping it.
Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds, brainwashed by propaganda and influencer bullshit, and placed on an on-ramp to future gambling addiction via mobile games with engineered "compulsion loops."
Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective.
Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764."
That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so.
I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers.
Only nerds have privacy today and only if they invest the time to police their tech environment. If you're not a nerd there's nothing to lose. You already lost it long ago. We -- our industry -- took it away.
budududuroiu 1 hours ago [-]
The median age of a youth extremists is 19 [1], with the mean being ~20 (study rounded up).
The main issue with this bill is that it requires a huge cost in civic freedoms, with questionable benefits to societal stability. Not only do most youth extremists first offend past the threshold this age verification would catch, this legislation lets big tech off the hook for designing addictive algorithms in the first place, since "there are no kids on the platform anymore, and if there are, they're breaking the law".
You are missing half of the story. This is not “caring legislators punishing big bad tech”. This IS big bad tech. Meta has spent $2B lobbying for this. More than wanting to get kids addicted, Big Tech and the intelligence community wants perfect observability into online activities.
This is a win/win for big tech. If they don’t get age verification, they can keep getting kids addicted to propaganda and consumerism. If they do get age verification, they get to see what everyone in the world thinks and is interested in, all linked to government ID.
Edit: the one outcome big tech does not want is anonymous age verification. This is technologically extremely possible, but that would be a lose/lose for big tech because they would lose kid (aka future consuming adult) addiction AND lose perfect tracking linked to government IDs.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Big Tech, most of all, wants a liability shield for the people it turns into school shooters. Because if Big Tech had to pay for the consequences of its algorithms it would be bankrupt.
api 23 hours ago [-]
I'm telling you why ordinary people support this, and I can tell you they overwhelmingly do... at least those with children.
I'm also aware of what you're talking about. That's called regulatory capture. They know this kind of regulation is coming and want to make sure they're the ones writing it so they can use it to entrench their oligopolies.
My point is that something like this will happen unless we find an alternative. The longer it goes on, the worse the backlash will be.
edot 22 hours ago [-]
There is no technological fix for the issue you raise. The issue being parents not wanting to bother raising their kids, and thus giving the state and corporations control over what they can and can’t do. That’s a cultural issue. No idea how to solve it.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Were you raised solely and exclusively by your parents or did you also, say, attend school?
api 22 hours ago [-]
It's largely a wealth inequality issue.
Rich parents can have nannies, expensive software, or a parent who stays home from work. Poorer parents do not have time or energy to police this stuff or supervise their kids. They're too busy putting food on the table and paying rent or a mortgage.
Avicebron 22 hours ago [-]
Absolutely, it's the system failing and predatory actors seeing a crisis they can exploit.
I was at the laundromat and a woman with kids was complaining across the room about how she only had $700.00 in her account. Note, she had a car, wasn't homeless, but this is actual reality for a huge number of people in the US.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
For me that would be a crisis. I always want to have at least a few thousands and then if something unexpected happens, that other people will go into a small debt for, I will just be able to spend the money and not go into debt. And it's not like it's hard to save up a few thousand dollars in a time frame of years, so I don't understand people who don't.
I think it may be that people grew up accustomed to having everything constantly taken away from them, so they learn not to save stuff.
Avicebron 22 hours ago [-]
> And it's not like it's hard to save up a few thousand dollars in a time frame of years, so I don't understand people who don't.
Seeing this as some sort of moral failing isn't the right way to look at it. It's possible that that this person could have done that, but it's also they they really may not have been able to, low wages, bad environment, health issues, all of these compound until "it's not hard to just" is a gross way to interpret their situation.
pessimizer 22 hours ago [-]
Rich parents can not prevent their children from accessing pornography and social media on the internet, and will also not be able to do so after this legislation.
Pornography is often delivered by people who don't care about US legislation, and social media is carefully left undefined, intentionally confounded with algorithms used to surface content (which people actually do object to at least the opaqueness of.)
I, like most, don't think that the totalitarianism is an unfortunate side-effect of the attempt to protect children online. I think legislation, and legislation like this, will only be successful in increasing surveillance and public manipulation, and that it will have virtually no effect on childrens' consumption of pornography and social media. If you really wanted to protect children, there's better legislation to write and technical solutions to implement.
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
When I was 14 I could just type porn.com into the address bar to see porn. (I remember they had one of those fake customer testimonials - saying basically "wow! this site is so awesome because porn.com is the best address for a porn site" which was very funny. Besides that it was nothing, so next time I googled the word porn).
Should it be that easy or should there be some road blocks? Should I have been able to go into a store at 14 and buy a beer?
pessimizer 22 hours ago [-]
> I'm telling you why ordinary people support this, and I can tell you they overwhelmingly do
This is a claim without backing, and if there were backing to be had, it would constantly be thrown in people's faces by the various administrations that suddenly decided this was a problem that had to be stopped now by any means necessary.
They do not need any public support to implement this, they need opposition to sleep for 5 minutes. It is being advanced by the most unpopular governments in the entire histories of the countries that it is being introduced in.
Your children had access to porn 30 years ago, they will have access to porn after this. There is no actual impetus behind any legal blocking of gambling mechanics in games targeted at children, because they are unbelievably profitable (unlike children as a market for pornography.)
I'm telling you that if you fight invisible enemies, like these campaigners for online age verification (who don't exist), you are fighting a senseless battle.
I'm not dismissing the scenario and your illustration of the mindset of these fictional hoards - if I were concocting a biography and argument for age verification activists, I would come up with the same dynamics and resentments. But it's not real. There are no million-mom marches in DC for age verification on the internet, and certainly not ones so advanced that they've decided that no other method will work: that device/OS/browser level verification of identity is the only way from keeping little Kip from accessing Cambridge Analytics's Russian-Chinese hardcore trans pornography.
They don't exist. Or rather, the bulk of them are Keynesian Beauty Contest judges who have concocted a public opinion that they've followed like lemmings, and only update their vision of public opinion based on new claims from politicians and their PR departments currently pushing the legislation. They don't really believe that age verification is a good solution, but they understand why most people do. I claim that the vast majority of people don't. I'm not even sure I could find a single person to support it in real life if given a 2 minute speech about the obvious and basic privacy and civil liberties implications of such a move, and the many alternative ways to attack the same issue. And governments are prioritizing it, with no hint at all that they will see a reward at the polls. In fact, almost all of the people who are pushing it are unpopular lame ducks who have no ability or no reasonable chance to serve again. They're lining up their next jobs and securing their fortunes.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
It's not the only way. The California way is much better. If we implemented that ten years ago there would be no excuse for ID verification now. But we didn't do that, did we? Instead we pushed for unlimited social media access for everybody, destroying an entire generation and now we're surprised when the chickens come home to roost?
Enough with this "but they can work around it" argument, too. Kids can get adults to buy cigarettes for them, we still ban them from buying cigarettes because it's a very useful roadblock.
tiahura 22 hours ago [-]
big tech wants a safe harbor.
PinkSheep 22 hours ago [-]
This kind of restrictions expects account control to work. For example, parent's account & separate child account on a device. For the same reasons you describe, it will be ineffective: not tech-savvy. Children will use their parent's/grandma's account on TV and phone, one that has long been verified as "adult" despite the Youtube recommendations consisting of 6-13yo content.
If there were an organic push by parents, they would be happy to buy and promote products today, without waiting for legislation to catch up. Where are these local parental control products?
Speaking of social media and Youtubes of the world, why can't I, as account owner/parent, totally blacklist some "recommendations"?
Age verification is not a fit tool for content filtering. Users want the latter, but get switcheroo'd into the former.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
You're assuming the politicians think this will be 100% successful and not, say, 80% successful.
PinkSheep 21 hours ago [-]
I assume ulterior motives for politicians. It's their PR campaigns that do make it seem like it will solve all children's issues, if only we sacrifice a little privacy for their control. One thing that's never mentioned is increased vulnerability when (inevitably) personal data (of children) leaks.
microgpt 21 hours ago [-]
I think politicians treat IDs as public info. Theirs are, and they have access to a lot of databases of all citizens.
throwthrowuknow 23 hours ago [-]
This is just the latest incarnation. They’ve already used the same tactic successfully to remove other freedoms not related to tech. Just compare the stories from older people about their childhood experiences (when they’re being completely open and honest) with the way children are raised now. My own parents did things that would get them on a terrorist watch list nowadays like building explosives and home made mortars or even just walking through town with a shotgun to go down to the creek for duck hunting at the ripe old age of 13 (with no adult supervision).
api 23 hours ago [-]
Personally I find everything you listed here safer than letting a kid have unfiltered unlimited access to TikTok.
You know a gun or a bomb is dangerous, so you'll probably be careful with it. The gun and the bomb are not engineered on purpose to hook you by exploiting your dopamine pathways and get you to shoot yourself or blow yourself up.
EDIT: I'm being a little hyperbolic here, but I'm also talking about aggregate harm and intent to harm. I'm really being hyperbolic to bash what I consider to be the key villain in this story: addiction engineering, a.k.a. "maximizing engagement." This is the root of all evil.
zimpenfish 22 hours ago [-]
> You know a gun or a bomb is dangerous, so you'll probably be careful with it.
The statistics on people killed/injured by their kids accidentally discharging firearms in the US disagree[0]
I’m not a TikTok fan by any means but that really does feels to me like bordering on delusion…
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Why?
stephen_g 9 hours ago [-]
Suggesting a video app is more dangerous than 13 year olds playing unsupervised with actual explosives and real guns...
tbugrara 10 hours ago [-]
Because willingly throwing away your safety from the government and the oligarchs for a tale as old as time, "think of the kids", is irrational to say the least.
pessimizer 22 hours ago [-]
> Personally I find everything you listed here safer than letting a kid have unfiltered unlimited access to TikTok.
This sounds like you have a media addiction. This is the kind of extreme hyperbole that we spent a year or two saturated with when a bunch of states and a bunch of billionaires decided that American people were saying too much on Tiktok about Israel, and something something China evil.
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
A lot of people including a lot of kids do have a media addiction. Should we do something about it? Remember that today's kids will be your caretakers when you're 80.
exceptione 22 hours ago [-]
The logical conclusion is to shutdown Meta, Youtube, TikTok, Twitter to name the biggest offenders. And why on earth would algorithmic manipulation, brain washing and exploitation of adults be allowed via the same platforms?
I am not disagreeing with you, but the conversation to be had is far, far wider than "think of the children!". Part of any deal would have to be: privacy of citizens is not a business model. But then you are facing the full might of Corp Inc, including their legislative powers.
spartacusnacho 22 hours ago [-]
This could be a backdoor to accomplishing just that, which I would welcome
Hizonner 23 hours ago [-]
> Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring.
It is far more common for that child to be targeted by parents, and maybe by people they know in person, especially because of the lousy social environment their parents have pushed them into, and therefore to have limited offline support systems, and you are now trying to take away all they do have.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
that much is true, but there are also online bullying rings. Note that this happens on social media but the opposite - information about being trans - is not only on social media.
Hizonner 22 hours ago [-]
There are a few online bullying rings. A few people get struck by lightning.
... and information isn't really the question. Not that there's actually any good definition for "social media".
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
This is an outrage zone. Leave your rationality at the door please.
2OEH8eoCRo0 22 hours ago [-]
The truth hurts and you're getting downvoted for it.
The public at large have real issues with the current state of the internet and people here don't want to hear it or address it so we get this.
roryirvine 20 hours ago [-]
Exactly. People are genuinely angry that the social media giants seem to have known for years that their products are harmful.
And, more so, that they've had a decade to reduce or mitigate the harms but have consistently (some might think deliberately) failed to do so.
So now we have the sledgehammer of legislation being wielded to do the job instead.
It's not an ideal outcome by any means, but what did people think was going to happen?
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
We could have thoughtfully considered legislation, like the California age act
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
HN is a venture capital place, we are the ones financially benefiting from destroying children's minds so of course we don't want them to put a stop to it.
2OEH8eoCRo0 21 hours ago [-]
Maybe. I see a lot of canned responses to privacy, freedom of speech, "it's not really about protecting children," etc. That might all be true but it doesnt address the problems that people have with the current state of things.
I've said it in other threads but the worst thing you can do is tell people their problems aren't real.
RaiyanYahya 9 hours ago [-]
Anything to protect identities online is valid. I wonder how many apps and websites will have to do or implement age verifications ? And how ?
winrid 7 hours ago [-]
Your ISP will eventually require a new protocol that can hold your digital ID in every packet to access certain content and you'll have to upgrade/migrate your OS if you want to view p0rn etc.
vorticalbox 16 hours ago [-]
Isn’t this already a thing because it requires an adult and a payment method to get a connection to your house.
I’ve already stated who I am when I paid.
alt227 4 hours ago [-]
It really should be as simple as that, which proves all these regulations are really there for something else.
PinkSheep 22 hours ago [-]
btw, what have schools done in the past 2 decades to educate children about content consumption?
whazor 19 hours ago [-]
Banning smart devices from schools seems the way forward.
What kids get to see at home is up to the parents.
giancarlostoro 15 hours ago [-]
I remember when having a phone in school got it confiscated, now I see videos of teens with their phones within class are heavily normalized.
21 hours ago [-]
kakacik 22 hours ago [-]
same thing most parents did, and here we are... don't expect miracles from massively underpaid profession which should be the opposite, literally the way to prepare the future of the nation, or fuck it up
echelon 22 hours ago [-]
Frankly, our liberty and privacy do not deserve to die because of children.
They are going to track everything everyone does, and the next generation will turn that tracking into coercion and control. This is everything we were warned about in 1984.
Kill products that advertise to kids before you kill privacy.
Make it illegal to advertise to children instead of making people submit their state-issued ID.
Fine parents for letting children online instead of tracking adults in databases.
All of this moral hand-wringing is a lie anyway. They do not care about children. If they did, the kids would get $3 school meals for free instead of 30 million of them going into nutritional deficit.
What hurts a kid more - not getting the necessary nutrition, or them being exposed to porn? I know my friends sent me shock sites when I was a preteen - that didn't turn me into a murdering lunatic. Whereas if I hadn't eaten and grown up healthily, perhaps I wouldn't have made it into a stable career.
kakacik 22 hours ago [-]
Look, I'll do my part with my kids (as in no social e-life before 16, which anyway somewhat aligns with various state bans flying all around the world, if there will be peer pressure then so be it new Commodore flip phone looks ideal for that), I know what sort of cancer to young developing defenseless mind screens have. I can see it all around. Child psychologists all agree, but few parents want to hear that.
But its unfair to kids who have shitty weak lazy parents, and screens are like fentanyl to young mind, there is literally nothing more attention-grabbing in the world for them. Their potential lost to... nothing worth mentioning, just empty dopamine kicks one after another. Its a miniscule fringe situation you say? More than half of kids before 2 are exposed to hours of screens (I see similar articles almost daily these days). This is mankind's future, your pensions, the society that will be taking care of you (and trust me you will need it, the only way to avoid that is to die young). But this isn't about selfish take-care-of-me situation, I just care and worry about how subpar lives such addicts have, spread across whole mankind. Compared to life filled with nature, hobbies, passions, physical social interactions.
I've seen it personally many times, I had kids in my early 40s so most of peers are a solid decade ahead. What began as boasting of having 'digital kids' when younger is now just a sad story of hard addictions thats actively avoided in any conversation, after few drinks parents end up 'what should we do when we have bad kids' sort of questions. When I look at given parents the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree, how could it, after all its just genes and parental upbringing that define people's personalities more than anything else.
PinkSheep 21 hours ago [-]
> But its unfair to kids who have shitty weak lazy parents, and screens are like fentanyl to young mind, there is literally nothing more attention-grabbing in the world for them.
As much as I generally agree with your comment, it's not "the screens". It's the entire industry hyperoptimizing every bit out of their social networks/media for attention; gambling mechanics in live-service games. In other words, not a "handful" of apps, but too many of the apps and websites you come across.
You'll surely remember the numerous attempts at edu software/games of the 90s. Instead, the current attention monopolies won and have been perfecting their addiction mechanics for the past 20 years.
nullbio 6 hours ago [-]
This has nothing to do with children and everything to do with AI. And to be fair to them, I don't really know of a better solution for what is coming... As much as I hate it.
How else do we stop the web becoming a wasteland of deceptive AI bots? Do you use the web to research products, look at reviews? Do you use analytics on your website or products to improve them? When we cannot tell the difference between a human and a bot, none of that is useful anymore. Somehow, we need to filter out the noise.
The other concerning issue is that I don't think this will actually work. There's already a large blackmarket for stolen identities, and unscrupulous actors will have no qualms with using them to carry out the blackhat activity they already conduct.
nyanmatt 5 hours ago [-]
If it has nothing to do with children, then why is it named the KIDS Act? Are we being bamboozled? And you are IN SUPPORT OF that? Am I taking crazy pills?
buffer_overlord 4 hours ago [-]
No age checks on bbs
mawadev 5 hours ago [-]
Remember the guy who had an entire island and all his friends literally have had no consequences? You really think the age checks will do what is advertised? Lmao
fivetenpen 6 hours ago [-]
The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted.
Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity
alt227 4 hours ago [-]
> The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health
I dont think thats entirely true. There were always horror stories about kids getting seriously troubled by watching beheadings on rotten dot com, 4chan bullying and suicides have been happening for decades etc. It was just easier to ignore when it was a few young freaks that we could label as reclusive anyway. Now its just compounded more because its mainstream and the entire population engages.
shevy-java 22 hours ago [-]
So, the mafia now reveals its evil face. It wants to censor young people's
way to access information, without conforming to an "age check". This is the
first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else.
This is the biggest attack on personal freedom since decades. It is time to
crush those lobbyists that push for this.
By the way, even ignoring the propaganda by the lobbyists here, at which point
did the "discussion" suddenly become to deny young people access to information?
Because this is implied here. Some people were underage when wikipdia first emerged.
The age sniffing here tries to undermine and revert all of that.
echelon 22 hours ago [-]
> This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else.
This is the threat day one. They get both groups' information.
Next, they'll start to purge information they don't like because it has been corralled off from the rest of the internet.
If they get lucky to trap a politician or billionaire in their net (and they will), they'll use that information to control how they vote or fund interests.
Next, they'll start to clamp down of people in the group they don't like. They'll lose jobs, banking, get extra audits, and have friction applied to their lives and chances of success.
Over time the fundamentalist group embraces government monitoring and control. The youth are brought up on it. The oligarchy use it to remove their enemies.
Within two generations we're living in 1984.
20after4 22 hours ago [-]
We're already living in 1984.
verisimi 20 hours ago [-]
We were already living in 1984 when Orwell/Blair wrote the book.
dzhiurgis 22 hours ago [-]
> mafia
IMO porn and drug mafia is far more likely to be lurking in reddit and here and spreading misinformation. Russian bots help here too.
EGreg 22 hours ago [-]
Oh for goodness’ sake, can’t the government (federal or states) create a service that will simply give out a token when someone has passed the age they want (eg 18), and provably goes through a multipart mixer, or just give you a zero-knowledge proof on the device of your choice, anytime you need?
On a related note, if they will require a specific kind of ID to vote, can’t they just make sure everyone can receive that ID?
Of course they can. They don’t want to. And they pretend like they don’t know how to. What this government is lacking, is a distribution system.
To be fair, they will need digital IDs or NFC chips in IDs since deepfakes can now fake the physical IDs next to your face in real time.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
It can't, because the government doesn't know shit about technology. Someone who knows tech, is close to the government, and isn't corrupt, would have to propose it and explain what this zorro-proof knowy doohicky is. The government knows ID checks because you get checked at bars.
elric 21 hours ago [-]
Never been ID checked at a bar in my life. The whole concept is alien to me.
slantaclaus 18 hours ago [-]
Zorro proof!
newAccount2025 22 hours ago [-]
Horse shit. The government has extremely deep expertise in computer science readily available on their payroll and at their beck and call. They literally have DARPA, for instance.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
The politicians who think this is a good idea are not calling up DARPA just in case DARPA has a better idea.
ekr____ 13 hours ago [-]
Note that the EU is proposing to do this [0]. The ZKP part is a bit of a WIP and there have been some questions about the quality [1].
Dear goverments, if you care about KIDS, provide them a separete internet outside of ICANN with mandatory ID. Let the rest of the people create an anonymous, adult internet with no ID's.
giancarlostoro 15 hours ago [-]
So Tor?
anthk 14 hours ago [-]
No. Separate of ICANN. Their own network. Like Yggdrasil, but ID checked.
frugalmail 14 hours ago [-]
This is something that is the parent's responsibility.
We all know what this is really about. It's not okay to arm the government against it's own Citizens to prevent any sort of criticism, I don't care what side of the isle you're on.
1vuio0pswjnm7 13 hours ago [-]
Maybe www users do not need "platforms" run by third parties, usually in Silicon Vallley, who conduct data collection, surveillance and advertising services as a "business model"
What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms"
No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad
But such argument is total nonsense. It's as if EFF has ties to Silicon Valley
Less use of these third party "platforms" is a huge win for internet privacy and privacy in general
The internet isn't going away. By and large, it's financed by internet subscribers paying monthly bills to telecoms. It's provided by those telecoms in return for those fees. It's not provided by so-called "tech" companies in Silicon Valley running "platforms" offering "free services"
There is no "age check" to open an account for internet service.^1 Yet EFF argues there will be an "age check" to "get online"
Would EFF argue that having internet service does not constitute "being online" and that an "account" with a so-called "tech" company performing data collection, surveillance and ad services is necessary to "be online"^1
If so, that's really quite strange considering the issue we are supposedly debating is internet privacy. The "business model" of these "platforms" and the concept of internet privacy are in direct conflict
The ridiculous arguments EFF is making around age verification seem to be aimed at trying to preserve the Silicon Valley status quo, to protect the surveillance "business model" of Silicon Valley, whilst "minimising" its harmful effects, including the effects of these companies relentlesslly challenging peoples' personal boundaries to the point where "age checks" sound reasonable
The legislation is aimed at certain companies in Silicon Valley conducting data collection, mass surveillance and pushing content at kids to drive ad services revenue. It's not aimed at internet service or anyone's ability to "get online". EFF's opposition looks like support for these companies
1. The California bill specifically excludes telecommunications services and broadband internet service
ComposedPattern 11 hours ago [-]
> What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms." No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad
I would love for people to stop using the evilcorp platforms. But what will actually happen is that normal people will just scan their IDs and continue as before and only weird geeks will refuse. Normal people will continue posting valuable information on YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, etc. and it will become increasingly impossible to access any of it without scanning your ID.
krater23 12 hours ago [-]
Just a story from Germany in early 2000. I had a website and just installed a php script to have a forum on my website and just forgot about it. Today, I could do the same, but I had a 24/7 job to monitor everything someone writes there because it could bring me personally into jail. The same with the comment section of my blog. Thats the reason why this big platforms exist and are used. Because no one other than they want to take the risk. At least in Germany are not much people that want to do that.
paulsutter 15 hours ago [-]
The right way to age-restrict is for parents to configure certain devices as kids devices, and then it would be easy for any service to know if they are communicating with one of those devices.
This gives parents control, and honestly would work great.
kelseyfrog 15 hours ago [-]
The ongoing refusal for parents to parent necessitates a shift in their legal liabilities.
Giving kids access to social media should have the same criminal penalties as giving them heroin. We have to direct the monopoly on violence against parent who neglect their responsibility. We cannot expect parents to resume their obligations without shifting the incentive landscape to make distribution and access to social media as painful as possible. If parents won't parent, we must force their hand.
lebuffon 21 hours ago [-]
I like to look back in history for parallels. In 1912 the USA required that all radio transmitters be licensed. There were classifications established for commercial and amateur stations. So at that time Feds understood the power of giving citizens the ability to communicate with the masses.
Fast forward to the 1990s and politicians were clueless about what the internet was doing or would do in future. So what is the correct response when every citizen has the power to, using the archaic term, "broadcast" to the world.
The genie is out of the bottle and needs to be managed for the common good, which is always going to piss off some individuals. It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this.
verisimi 20 hours ago [-]
> It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this
As others have said, there is a coordinated push to drive this legislation everywhere. There is no fight in nation states. Just capitulation.
subscribed 17 hours ago [-]
You still got CB, FRS, GMRS, LORA, several ISM bands, etc.
There's no big conspiracy here, just a limited amount of the spectrum.
Mountain_Skies 21 hours ago [-]
There's a limited amount of radio spectrum, so it has to be managed. Though technically not unlimited in the strictest sense, internet communications don't have a real limit on how many people can communicate with each other, except limits artificially created.
linzhangrun 11 hours ago [-]
toy story 5
jappgar 22 hours ago [-]
I'll see your "government wants biometric surveillance" conspiracy theory and raise you a "pedofiles want to keep kids on social media" theory.
wizzwizz4 22 hours ago [-]
Age verification makes it easier for the bad guys to identify and groom children without adults finding out. Sting operations are that much harder if you have to convince the surveillance capitalism machine that you're an actual child, not just your target.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Only if the bad guys are the ones you're verifying to, isn't it?
wizzwizz4 22 hours ago [-]
The information leaks: everything causally downstream of the verification is potentially a source of information. Examples include targetted advertising, activity in age-gated communities, etcetera.
Children in adult spaces who do not reveal that they are children are rarely targeted by child abusers; but if children are corralled into "child spaces" (which are functionally ghettos, given how much of society now takes place online), it will be easier to locate and identify them.
Children are far from helpless, when it comes to online threats. For example, when abusive comments are posted on scratch.mit.edu, you will see a flood of warnings and chaff to try to protect other children from the abusive material, while the Scratch Team work through the moderation queue. However, many social media sites are designed to disempower users, so we don't see this kind of thing there: I suspect separating children from adults in those spaces makes children less safe, not more safe.
OutOfHere 22 hours ago [-]
What about services for AI agents? I don't mean services where the agents use a human's account, but one where they use a permissionless or a dedicated account that they self-registered. By politician grade logic, I guess it won't be long before AI agents are mandated to have a separate annual registration, permit, and fee, not that we should agree to any of it.
nullbio 6 hours ago [-]
Yep, it'll either be connected through your own internet passport, or it'll be connected through a separate permit which is tied to your own passport.
In the end the monopolies will be the big winners.
I'm sure the perspective is something like: If we don't do this, the web just gets flooded with bots and nobody ever knows if they're speaking to a human or not. How do you trust reviews, social media posts, advertiser statistics, and so on?
The issue with this approach, though, is that there's such a large blackmarket for stolen identities that all of the actors who already do this sort of activity will be able to continue doing it anyway.
Doesn't really seem like there are any good solutions to be found. Every solution involves some loss of freedoms.
23 hours ago [-]
ghusto 16 hours ago [-]
If you want to stop this instance of "think of the children", build a working and cheap alternative that respects privacy. It is technically possible, so if you feel as strongly about it as your words suggest, do it. Once it's ready, spread awareness through old-media, new-media, politicians, everything and every means.
urbnspacecowboy 13 hours ago [-]
Here's my working and cheap alternative that respects privacy: Don't do it!
Seriously now, if you give in to demanding people, they will just demand more. Appeasement does not work.
Borealid 14 hours ago [-]
I was a bit upset to see vitriolic opposition online to systemd adding a field to store, entirely locally to a Linux system, the user's age.
I think opponents to these bills frame it as current state vs complete, invasive third-party identity verification. That's a very unfortunate framing because, as you say, it would be possible to take the wind out of the identity-verification proponents' sails by implementing better on-device controls.
minitech 15 hours ago [-]
Alternative what? Government?
Avicebron 24 hours ago [-]
Who wants this?
wewewedxfgdf 23 hours ago [-]
All governments in the world, both sides of politics.
It's for the kids, you understand - to protect the kids.
There is no more noble purpose than to protect the kids.
Only a monster would not want to protect the kids.
ivanjermakov 22 hours ago [-]
Kids want it themselves. All popular people want it too. Imagine if we don't do this for the kids? Either this or kids will get hurt. All my friends want it too. One eastern country didn't protect their kids and look where it's at. This is the only way to save kids and we need to act fast! You should rather be against child labor than this.
"kids" is just another word for "people" by the way - everyone is a kid, and everyone is an adult, except for people who die very young. We should not make the mistake of thinking of them as two separate independent categories of people.
They're lobbying FOR it?! I thought this would hinder them along with everyone else
redwall_hp 16 hours ago [-]
1. Don't assume Meta is anything other than a state propaganda and surveillance apparatus.
2. It's onerous for upstarts, so it entrenches Instagram and Facebook.
3. Guaranteed knowledge of who everyone is, and their web browsing activities, furthers their surveillance ends.
4. If you keep people off until they're adults and then throw them in with no guidance, they'll have an even worse time. Which is good for propagandizing.
5. They get to collect biometrics from everyone, even the underaged ones who attempt verification. All the better to build panopticon, along side Clearview and Flock.
6. The Heritage Foundation wants it, and everything else on Project 2025 has been proceeding as planned with lackluster resistance, so why would this be different? (Spoiler: the next part is calling everything they don't like, such as LGBT people being visible or alive, as "harmful" and using these new surveillance tools to deal with that.)
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
They want to know all the children are 18+ to remove liability for what they do to them.
felooboolooomba 22 hours ago [-]
Meta has a long history of breaking the law. I have no doubts Meta will have access to the personal details once you've "verified your age". They'll know WHO you are, as accurately as possible. Can you imagine how much that it worth to Meta, history's largest harvester of personal data? A whole lot more than $2B.
Now, based on their ruthless disregard for the law, do you think they're just going to use it to sell your ads?
hoppp 23 hours ago [-]
They lobby for because then they can collect biometrics from kids and then reject them. So they don't serve underage kids , no fines but they do get data.
baby_souffle 23 hours ago [-]
And it's another non-trivial barrier to entry for any potential upstart that may eventually grow to be a problem for meta
haunter 22 hours ago [-]
> then they can collect biometrics from kids
They will collect it from everyone to prove your age.
The question only that is it worth the gamble by Meta, as in how many people would rather leave the sites (from Whatsapp to Insta to Facebook) than give them their ID
throwawayffffas 22 hours ago [-]
They are facing thousands of lawsuits related to teens and addiction because their harmful site is harmful.
Plus they are lobbying for it to be someone else's problem they are lobbying for device and OS based age verification.
shomp 23 hours ago [-]
If Facebook knows your precise age they can market to you "better."
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Parents who want to raise healthy children.
Politicians who want to track everyone all the time.
The rare few politicians who want it to be easier to raise healthy children.
Tech CEOs who don't want to be liable for harming children's development.
Tech CEOs who want to track everyone all the time.
The rare few tech CEOs who want to improve the world (by not harming children's development) and whose business model doesn't require it or who compete with one that does (e.g. operators of edutainment websites if those even still exist).
App coders who don't want to train a neural network to check IDs themselves.
newsclues 23 hours ago [-]
Anyone who wants to centralize power: so big tech, big government, big corporations, and big dummies who think this is progress
Simulacra 23 hours ago [-]
Government
Avicebron 23 hours ago [-]
We need opt-out clauses in taxes, so we can vote with our wallets if regular voting isn't working..
Normal people that call themselves good names like "moms for actions" drag us into this totalitarian hell.
hackingonempty 23 hours ago [-]
The GOP. This is part of Project 2025. They want to outlaw porn.
> Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should
be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed
as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that
facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
A lot of it would go away if they just stopped consuming it. They consume it at least as much as anybody else. The only difference is the self loathing and belief that they need to be - and are qualified to be - the moral police.
hoppp 23 hours ago [-]
Why not just outlaw sex? If looking at sex is illegal they might as well go all the way.
jdsnape 22 hours ago [-]
Because in their philosophy sex serves a purpose (procreation and the deepening of the marital union).
Anything that doesn’t support those two aims (contraception, abortion, gay marriage, pornography etc.) is therefore immoral but there’s nothing wrong with sex in its ‘proper’ context.
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
Their philosophy is extremely inconsistent. In reality it's emotionally driven. Not sure what specific emotions cause one to think sex is wrong except for reproduction, but a lot of the people who push this sort of thing turn out to be closeted gay homophobes.
jdsnape 20 hours ago [-]
I’m not supporting it, but how is it inconsistent?
I can speak more to the Catholic view than the evangelical, but if you accept the initial premise that there is a creator God then the rest follows fairly naturally (you can look the ‘the theology of the body’ if you want to read more)
microgpt 18 hours ago [-]
If God wanted people to only have sex for reproduction why didn't he design the body so that sex was only for reproduction?
jdsnape 6 hours ago [-]
I didn’t say God only wants people to have sex for reproduction. There are two purposes in this philosophy: reproduction, and the deepening of marital unity
throw9398449 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
hoppp 20 hours ago [-]
What you mean no way to consent?
We can talk or use non-verbal communication.
Marriage is by itself not consent for sex and you can't sue somebody to get them to have sex with you either
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
It's a redpill/misogynist/incel/Tate-style talking point, they have this meme that women just file rape charges against everyone they ever regret having sex with.
cindyllm 18 hours ago [-]
[dead]
mrtksn 23 hours ago [-]
IIRC the onlyfans creators were deemed the desired kind of immigrants. What’s the plan here, lure them in and throw them in jail?
andai 22 hours ago [-]
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GenericDev 9 hours ago [-]
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gunapologist99 23 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't it be great if we could just legislate fixes for everything? /s
This seems to be a result of what people call the uniparty system, but that's not really an accurate term:
This actually embodies what the establishment on both sides of the aisle want: CONTROL
They want this for many different reasons: they have an unbridled lust for power, or perhaps they are willing to burn down fair elections for the good of all mankind, but actually let's be more generous!!
Most likely because they are afraid, unjustly or not:
* of real terrorists that they think, sometimes correctly, are using E2EE
* of children's immature minds having neural pathways being changed by things they're not quite ready for, or perhaps becoming addicted to the very real and powerful nature of porn)
* or, you know, whatever! Maybe they're parents and want to protect their kids and everyone else's kids.
Really, why doesn't actually matter too much.
The fact is that they just don't understand the technology and the FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND FREEDOM, that tension between privacy/human rights/dignity and technological "bad things" that are always in the news.
They get told one simple thing by lobbyists or even well-meaning constituents, and then they form their worldview around it. And THEN they write legislation (or, more likely, get handed ready-made legislation by lobbyists with an axe to grind)
We, the knowledgeable in this area (regardless of our party persuasion -- I'll work on my people, you work on yours!) should start to educate our non-technical legislators. We have to be the trusted voice of reason when it comes to tech, because they're hearing a lot of things from a lot of different voices.
How? By getting involved. Get involved at the LOCAL level, because THOSE people are the ones that serve as the feedramp for national or international politics. After 20 years, your education might percolate upwards to the people who are actually writing new laws. You don't need to be a "crazy" sounding activist or conspiracy theorist: in fact, that works against you (usually). Just be an adult, try to understand what they're trying to accomplish, and explain how they can accomplish it or that it can't be done that way for specific and reasonable reasons.
These are all just my opinions as I see increasing amounts of this sort of legislation being pushed by Meta and other actors. This comment also has a very US-centric bias, so please correct me if you're in another country where things work differently.
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
Anom caught way more E2EE terrorists than any other attack, and it wasn't even an attack on encryption.
gjsman-1000 23 hours ago [-]
Sounds great. What have you done?
gunapologist99 23 hours ago [-]
I've been involved for years. Local politics are actually interesting and fun. Just look up your local party HQ.
Always remember Hanlon's Razor and the Golden Rule (for the other team too)
SE5pc3JhY2lzdA 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Mountain_Skies 21 hours ago [-]
Everything that happened during the pandemic period is an embarrassment most would like to forget. The authoritarians however remember everything and see how little friction there is against them expanding their power, especially if they can wrap it up in a threat.
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
You're distorting pretty hard about what happened there (mister random numbered throwaway account) but even if you weren't, that is not the definition of fascism.
alex_young 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rsoto2 22 hours ago [-]
agreed
microgpt 20 hours ago [-]
Why is it flagged?
enzar 10 hours ago [-]
This would be amazing .
enzar 10 hours ago [-]
Folks saying "kids will find a way" yes but the social norm of them being looked down upon certain online content would make it so they view it less as its not a norm. Kinda how NSFW content is right now, nobody whips that out unless they are in private...
kelseyfrog 9 hours ago [-]
Parents won't parent without a change in incentives.
That's why giving children access to social media must be punished to the same degree as giving children heroin. If it's a parent's responsibility, it must be made a parent's liability. Anything without the full threat of the government's monopoly on violence is just a pretty slogan. We should see access to social media as the neglect that it is.
Grombobulous 9 hours ago [-]
Age restriction puts the burden and punishment on citizens.
Your proposal to punish parents does the same.
How about a solution that puts burden on corporations for once?
yunnpp 9 hours ago [-]
Bingo. And now GP should go look who is behind age verification and ponder why they'd be pushing for this if it didn't benefit them.
paytonjjones 8 hours ago [-]
That's great messaging, but what exactly are you materially proposing that's different?
If you make corporations liable for minors using their product, they're just going to require identity verification to use their product, and we're back to effectively the same proposal, right? Unless I've misunderstood you.
deepsun 8 hours ago [-]
And that's fine. I'm pretty sure my nephew's high school friends will all quit Facebook for once and move to a decentralized platform or even install their own servers. The teenagers can go pretty far and learn advanced stuff if they want to. I bet their minecraft home is more complex.
And I already know their opinion on the age restrictions.
Grombobulous 8 hours ago [-]
I am specifically not proposing any material solution.
It seems like it’s been easy for every corporate-backed actor to come up with solutions that burden everyday citizens.
Now we’re yet again burdened to solve a problem corporations created.
kelseyfrog 9 hours ago [-]
Because corporations don't have children?
Incentivizing parents to parent aligns the obligation, agency, and responsibility. People who don't want that level of responsibility can not have children.
idle_zealot 8 hours ago [-]
I don't know, if the biggest companies in the world were setting up outside schools and in cul-de-sacs and aggressively selling colorful heroin with cartoon mascots my first reaction wouldn't be to blame parents for failing to prevent the childhood heroin addiction epidemic and call for arresting them.
I think it would be more fair and useful to focus enforcement on the parties with power making intentional decisions to make the world a worse place. I guess that makes me anti-agency and anti-responsibility though.
Grombobulous 8 hours ago [-]
Certainly a lot of people do need to approach parenting better.
However, I simultaneously think that a lot of “personal responsibility” culture is very convenient ideology for corporations.
Nothing is ever their fault. Everything is a failing of personal obligation, agency, and responsibility.
A whole bunch of things that make good parenting so difficult are directly the fault of corporations.
There is zero mandatory paid parental leave in the United States. I wonder how much corporate money goes into maintaining that status quo?
kelseyfrog 8 hours ago [-]
A lack of age checks and zero legal liability for giving kids access to social media is the current state. Which is to say a big "Too bad!" to the kids who have access to social media now.
xbar 8 hours ago [-]
Because there are bad parents, all people must give up all anonymity?
You are asking for society to bear the burdens of the people you want to change. That is bad policy.
kelseyfrog 8 hours ago [-]
Parents can still be held legally liable without any online age checks. Expanding criminal neglect to include social media access is in lieu of age verification.
Humorist2290 4 hours ago [-]
This is very "war on drugs" coded, but to extend the metaphor a bit:
Meta here is the heroin cartel. They're a publicly traded company, have offices all over the country, and have mountains of evidence sitting in moderately well secured cabinets. Why should the government go after users when it could more easily go after the producers?
tcoff91 9 hours ago [-]
Comparing Social Media to Heroin seems quite hyperbolic to me as someone who has had people in my life die of opioid addiction.
Social Media isn't even as bad as Tobacco I'd say let alone Heroin.
protocolture 8 hours ago [-]
I hope someone punishes your parents for letting you on here.
macintux 9 hours ago [-]
Since the beginning of the computer age kids have found ways around parental controls. I'm very skeptical that it's a good idea to punish parents for that, especially since the kids are likely more tech-savvy than the parents.
And, in many cases, "parent" singular. Putting a single mom in court, in jail, because she works 2-3 jobs and her kids are more knowledgeable than she is about computers? C'mon.
kelseyfrog 9 hours ago [-]
If this was true, then the "parents should parent" camp doesn't have a valid argument. Practically speaking, if parenting to this level of involvement is not possible, then why do they keep pushing for it as a solution?
protocolture 8 hours ago [-]
Isnt this your position? Why dont you defend it?
dogcatdog 22 hours ago [-]
That sounds like a reasonable aim. Online services should be responsible for implementing age verification checks on content that children shouldn't be accessing, just like vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification.
The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view, shouldn't be done. But I don't see them coming up with any better solutions. Just endless complaints, while soliciting donations to keep generating these endless complaints.
kloop 22 hours ago [-]
There's a big difference here, in the US anyways, neither alcohol nor nicotine have first amendment protections. Basically all content delivered over the US does.
That's a much thornier legal issue
22 hours ago [-]
dogcatdog 22 hours ago [-]
But isn't putting something behind an age gate similar in concept to putting it behind a paywall? The speech is still there, whatever it may be, just has conditions for access.
redwall_hp 16 hours ago [-]
"You can own a printing press, but we'll throw you in jail if you dare to show the printings to anyone."
The first amendment is a two way street. Everyone has an inalienable right to seek and read/view any media, and the government of the United States is forbidden from taking any actions that limit the mass dissemination of media.
The whole context of the amendment is existing governments preventing people from mass printing and distributing political pamphlets. "You can write something, but not distribute it" is entirely antithetical to the point of the amendment.
kloop 22 hours ago [-]
It would probably also be illegal for the government to mandate a paywall.
The issue is not that age gates are illegal, but that the government forcing people to use age gates is illegal.
dogcatdog 22 hours ago [-]
But there are already laws that, for example, restrict children from buying pornographic magazines. These have been found by the Supreme Court to be constitutionally compatible. I don't see why this would be different with similar laws that apply to online services.
kloop 22 hours ago [-]
Generally speaking, things that you sell (the legal term is commercial speech, iirc) is more able to be regulated by the government.
The government can ban the sale of those things to minors, generally. So the category of porn sites that require a credit card and pay gate the content might be regulateable.
But that's not how places like pornhub or xvideos operate
viscountchocula 22 hours ago [-]
What content shouldn't children be accessing? Is the content a 7, 11 or 16 year old shouldn't access different between age brackets? Who makes that determination? Is this access restriction at the whole site level, or per-post? Does safe-harbor apply, or is a site-operator liable for age-inappropriate content it hosts for its clients? On S3, for example, is each object tagged with an age category, or would it have to be a totally separate S3, like GovCloud?
ghusto 16 hours ago [-]
It requires manual moderation. Companies like Facebook, Google, and co. have spent much effort telling you that's impossible. In fact, that is a type of half-truth that is a lie. The full truth is that it's impossible _at their scale_.
Their business models require little to no human moderation, because it simply doesn't scale (for their business to stay profitable).
Personally, my feeling is that if you can't take care of your product, you should go out of business.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Nah, it should be like in California. When you set up an account you should put how old thr user is, and websites should get a header that says whether it's over 18 or not. No ID checks, just good parenting.
failbuffer 22 hours ago [-]
Aims aside, did you even read the article? This will mostly end anonymity online and require heavier policing of content.
A child might see something they shouldn't walking down the street, strolling thru the park, visiting the local zoo, or visiting an ice cream parlor. Should those places be requiring identification and hiring extra security guards to wander around making sure nobody is saying it doing anything politically objectionable?
Let's not accept creeping digital tyranny with self-assuring complacency... call or write (preferably snail mail) your congresspeople!!
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Why can't we talk about the topic that is in front of us instead of making absurd comparisons like hiring security guards to check ID to enter parks?
gustavus 22 hours ago [-]
I hate this analogy because it isn't true. This isn't like a clerk checking your age before you buy booze this is like a clerk taking a photocopy of your ID and a list of everything you bought and then storing those records forever every time you buy alcohol.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
they literally do that though. They don't all just look at your ID any more, some scan it with a scanner or phone and that literally does what you just said. Paying with a card also does it.
dogcatdog 22 hours ago [-]
Most stores already have continuously-recording CCTV, which effectively does that too.
At least online there can be a separation between the age verification provider and the online content provider, so that the latter doesn't learn anything from the former except that the user's age is above or below a specific cut-off point. So it can actually be more privacy-preserving than purchasing age-restricted goods over the counter.
echelon 22 hours ago [-]
> vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification.
You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal.
In time, this will be used to shape what people are "allowed" to think. Porn will gradually be purged from the internet and then go away entirely as the US becomes more fundamentalist and Christian.
Then people who are neither of those things will start to be denied jobs and loans. Politicians that don't fit the mold will stop winning.
This is about turning the US to Christianity. (Read: this is really about controlling the massses and using religious fundamentalism as a tool to do so.)
Technology is the perfect tool for control. Just as we were becoming a liberal/libertarian society and letting people live their lives how they wanted, the wrong people started using technology not as an enabler of free minds, but as an inescapable straitjacket.
You've read 1984, right?
The sensors have been widely deployed. The internet will become your Big Brother. You won't be able to buy, sell, or even move between state lines without being in the good graces of the state.
Be a good citizen and comply.
ekr____ 13 hours ago [-]
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
I don't think this is a good assumption. It's not uncommon for stores to scan your ID when you buy alcohol.
> This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal.
This is not quite how typical systems are structured. Rather, the service provider outsources the age assurance to some third party Age Verification Provider (AVP), which then just returns an age estimate or a yes/no. Commonly, the AVP will have a stated policy that they don't share your identity with the client.
Obviously, you have to trust the AVP to comply with this policy, which is not ideal. There are approaches (e.g., zero-knowledge proofs) that provide some technical privacy protections, but they're not currently in wide use.
Note: this is not an endorsement of age assurance; I'm just trying to clarify the situation.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
Yes you do, if they scan your ID with any technology they're uploading a picture to that company's server. If you use a payment card then your bank and the card network also know.
echelon 15 hours ago [-]
They don't scan my id when I buy alcohol.
microgpt 13 hours ago [-]
Do you use a payment card?
graemep 21 hours ago [-]
> as the US becomes more fundamentalist and Christian.
As Christian I would say "more fundamentalist and less Christian". I am not sure this is religiously based. We have similar things happening in European countries that are not religious. Its a moral panic and "think of the children".
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
My (just turned 18) daughter said a pub in the UK scanned her driving license so they may well be connecting to some database before letting young people buy alcohol. IIRC the EU wants its age verification app to be used for things like this.
This is a time of "first they came for the....".
echelon 19 hours ago [-]
I agree with you. It's less about the religion and more about the control.
Christianity is easy to reach for in the US, especially when there are sects and denominations that align with government-mandated censorship of certain ideologies.
dogcatdog 22 hours ago [-]
Age verification can be done by a third party, so that the online service isn't provided with any details of your identity, just that you passed an age verification check.
But if you're still worried about online pornographers getting a copy of your identity, maybe don't use their websites? It's an easily avoidable risk. Perhaps use your imagination instead, or read an erotic novel bought in cash from a second-hand bookshop, or something like that.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
That third party? Persona.
pessimizer 22 hours ago [-]
Do you hear yourself? You're a guy telling people that if they don't want to be put on a list for reading a book, they should read other books.
> erotic novel bought in cash from a second-hand bookshop
Your confidence that this will remain an option probably means that you aren't aware of the many court battles, lives ruined, and leftover frozen conflicts resulting from attempts to publish novels. Its a confidence you could only have developed since the mid-1960s.
There is absolutely no physical reason why the government couldn't record all of the books you buy, arrest secondhand booksellers that don't keep those lists faithfully, and even sit outside of secondhand booksellers identifying everyone walking into the building and putting them on a list of people who are interested in obtaining books through unorthodox methods.
If everyone had been like you, there wouldn't be erotic novels available from bookstores. Or communist novels, or gay novels, etc.. And through the mails, it would become federal. The government mainly opened mail to search for possible birth control information being sent.
hoppp 23 hours ago [-]
Just put the age verification in the browser already.
Then introduce some new headers the browser sends to servers with some proof that the user was verified and the browser would need a response (like CORS) for it to work.
Aspos 22 hours ago [-]
USB anal probe can be integrated the same way.
hoppp 22 hours ago [-]
Exactly! Websites should be able to tell apart lgbtqa+ people by probing their anus for traces of cum lol
/Sarcasm
cindyllm 22 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Zambyte 22 hours ago [-]
Or we could have UBI and parents could parent their kids without corporations babysitting for them.
braebo 17 hours ago [-]
UBI isn’t enough — they will just raise prices.
We need social programs like social housing, universal healthcare, free education, and universal food stamps. We need to actually use the abundance of resources we have to meet our fundamental needs (shocker I know).
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't corporations still declare war on parents over their kids?
Zambyte 22 hours ago [-]
Parents would have a better chance at fighting back. Both with the time gained to communicate their disapproval, and a better relationship with their kids to be more likely to disapprove of it.
microgpt 22 hours ago [-]
What you describe, but at the OS level, is already the law in California. We got angry about it a few months ago when it passed, do you remember?
ekr____ 13 hours ago [-]
Note that California AB1043 isn't actually age verification; rather it just requires the OS to ask for your age, not check it.
microgpt 13 hours ago [-]
Yes. And that's awesome. Assurance is provided by the fact that only the device owner can set the user's age. If you buy your own just select over 18. If someone else buys it for you, they can select your age or choose to fake it and you need their password to change it.
Crucially, no privacy is violated, but children are still protected. This not only protects children but also disarms any argument that we need to protect the children. It's great actually.
ekr____ 13 hours ago [-]
My sense is that many jurisdictions do not consider this sufficient, as they want to prevent parents from allowing their children to access restricted material (as happens fairly frequently). However, I guess we'll see.
But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives.
I don't disagree with the principle of a lot of these laws, but many implementations are too flawed to be a mistake.
That's not the question. Some group is obviously pushing this agenda globally. Who?
It is not Meta working across the globe because they’re too lazy to implement age verification.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708278
Also can I see an example of those ads? Google isn’t surfacing anything relevant
> Denmark’s digital affairs minister criticized Meta for an advertising campaign promoting regulations on age checks for social media in an interview with POLITICO.
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-digital-minister-sla...
Done. This alternative solves the whole problem and it's been brought up a million times, but it doesn't matter, because this isn't about protecting children or anything about ages. It's about locking down anonymity, and money for a few interests who want to be the verifiers and craft a future where they hold the keys.
You can set age in Google Accounts, but they can access pretty much anything when they reach age 13 (which is about the age a lot of these things start to become a real problem) and as a parent you don't have any way to limit that. They don't even need to ask to install new phone apps.
Children also use computers as well as phones and you don't want to stop them using a web browser! You also obviously can't supervise them every moment they are online even if you wanted to.
And if you're a concerned government, make OS vendors support it and make parents criminally responsible for not setting it.
At any rate, with age verification, un-concerned parent will likely just want their kid to shut up, and will verify using their own details to give the kid the (adult) access they want. So I don't think that changes much here.
No system is going to fix "unresponsble" parents until we end up with a state completely replacing parent like in Brave New World.
Unfortunately, this doesn't address that problem.
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether these "protect the children" laws are worth the internet freedoms they are about to erode. I would argue not.
1. It is not the state's responsibility to raise your children. They should ensure that safety is available, they should have some ability to deal with clear cases of abuse - but otherwise you're on your own. Anybody who thinks they want a nanny state just has to imagine the worst possible government abusing this power.
2. On the basis of providing safety, it would be enough for example for mobile phone OSes to provide parent restrictions (as they currently do). Kids can't afford to buy phones, so it's the parents in almost all cases giving them unfiltered access. If you really really want to ensure that all children have filtered access on phones, just spot check kid's phones and confiscate them if they do not have the locks enabled.
It seems insane to me that so many parents believe they have zero responsibility for their children's access to the internet, despite being the source of that access. I'm sorry, parents need to step up.
But that wouldn't come with baked in surveillance, so "what else can you do" sounds a bit unnerving.
It really wouldn't be.
Do that at OSI layer 3, every routed packet would have to have an "was this sent by a kid's device" flag.
Higher levels aren't the ISP's role. Lower levels, you'd need duplicate hardware specifically for kids, which couldn't connect to the adult's internet.
In the real world, we're still arguing about something that was already embarrassingly slow in its roll-out during my degree, and I graduated 20 years ago: IPv6.
Until there's a solution that actually addresses the problem without creating more, we should just try to make sure more people also know the problem exists and try to help equip parents to deal with it as best they can for now.
So we already treat kids quite differently from adults. And tht is - imho - fine. Because kids are not just "small grown ups", they are just growing up.
I just do not think, that KYC/age verification is the right way to go - or even feasible in how it is being approached. I am for denying Meta, TikTok and the others the opportunity to exploit kids. But I would rather much have them regulated in a way that just forbidds them their predatory ways overall, then to give them even more data in the form of verified idetities and the knowledge that this account is within a specific age range ad also a "real human being", making that data even more valuable for advertisers.
Sorry for being not more clear.
This seems very naive to me, to be honest.
I suspect that depends on subtle phrasing.
If for the sake of argument I presuppose that film classification ratings are necessary to protect children’s mental health, then the un-filtered contents of shock sites and porn sites will have had an impact even in the early years of the internet.
However, the early years of the internet simply had a much smaller proportion of kids online to experience this.
The default value assigned to a social study from academia should be zero these days, so there merely being a lot of them doesn't mean anything. You really need some very high quality evidence to justify this kind of huge change.
Anyway, Meta, really? Just to have more of our data? For the absolutely pedestrian explicit purpose of providing more information to advertisers?
This is why I don't buy into conspiracy theories. The truth is typically really boring and predictable - evil corporations will evily corporate.
I half wish for a more exciting villain that would give people a noticeable reason to stand up against - not just annoying people with intrusive ads.
From a government perspective, it is a gold mine to know who's on the internet. For advertisers it is another goldmine - you can target at will without having to figure out first some demographics. An probably there are some angles I don't yet see, but the fact that this is a concentrated effort across the world make my spidey sense tingle.
And who doesn't want to protect the children?
Now as I've thought this through some, I could see where selected networking could be made kid friendly, you know, like a top level dns where you need to prove yourself to be underage or heavily vetted adult with id verification, and this entire tld could be made kid friendly. I don't doubt that most of today's dns infrastructure is probably not up to the job, but a very tight and heavily vetted registry for .kids for example (or maybe better as kids.<country> as laws vary) would solve all of this. Make a subset of the internet kid safe and serve the kids that.
The fact that all these proposed laws still give kids general tcp/ip access at the physical level means we do conclude exactly what my parent commenter says, its not really about the kids, its about the free and unfettered flow of information that must be stopped. In the US, its getting close to illegal to disseminate information but once factual information does indeed become criminal in nature, you need to catch the perps and thus the IDs attached to packets of fact carrying information.
But the way it is done is weird for sure.
But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents or peer pressure the issue that breaks the intent?
Or is your point that the internet should be used by children?
If so how do you propose restricting the harmful content?
From my point of view we are in the digital Middle Ages. We do not yet understand if this global connection is actually being good or bad in the long run. The only thing that starts to crystallize is that it isn’t great for children. Specifically social media, especially especially people gaining access to children on troves to spread ideology.
So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.
You make it a burden on the parents, like all parenting always has been.
In my opinion, US culture losing sight of this is part of why our country is spinning down the drain. Combining Ipad kids with "what do you mean my child is failing? Isn't it your job to fix that?" I suspect has lead to a popluace that can't think for themselves.
Being willing to give up your online anonymity to be surveiled online and not only not beliving it's not a problem, but really thinking it's to protect children is another result of this.
As it is all of the parental controls on all devices, apps, and services are extremely lackluster.
So I'd argue legally required, granular, parental controls and empowering parents would be a much better start to resolving this issue compared to blatant government privacy overreach.
It was only after all of that failed, with no measurable effect, that our governments, reluctantly and as a last resort, proposed these privacy-destroying measures. And even then, they respected their citizens' rejection of these proposals [1].
I mean I didn't actually check that this is how it went, but with all the lecturing about "democracy" from our rulers, surely that's how they went about it, right?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707719
Why should we aim to do that ? Who give internet-enables device to their children? In most cases, who give pay for their internet access?
> So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.
Defining the problem, and if it exist altogether should be a good start. I'm not even sure the problem is defined, even less it need a solution so badly that we should kill everyone privacy for it.
Yea wouldn’t want to have parents be involved and managing what their kids interact with. What?
I was raised in am extremely oppressive and abusive religious household. I would not be who I am today if I didn't have access to opinions outside of those shoved down my throat. I couldn't even listen to radio stations that weren't corporate soft rock or Christian music.
The internet was the only free space I had. Without it, I would certainly have killed myself as a child, rather than continue to submit to violent physical and religious abuse.
If we would stop blindly reacting with short-term thinking to each issue in turn that Corpgov presents us, and actually think deeply about what kind of future we'd like to build for those after us, it becomes radically clear that both the problem and solution as presented to us are actually detrimental in the long term.
Without trying to offend you, but you are arguing this as: we don’t need to regulate alcohol or drugs because experiences, for everyone, will be better in the end…
No joke our politicians subject us to something stupid, and then travel around telling their foreign peers how amazing and genius they are for doing so. They help write the legislation for other countries. Of course they later return and have to deal with the results of their stupidity, but its already been sold.
https://www.afr.com/technology/australia-takes-social-media-...
I know Aus and NZ are quite authoritarian when it comes to this stuff - I have seen it directly for myself. I was at the Christchurch Call public engagement meeting [1] when they were planning some of these things.
[1] https://www.christchurchcall.org/
But it's not worth the privacy impacts and chilling of free speech.
I'm really hoping smart people can figure out a good middleground before the government does something stupid. Because right now, their two cannons are either:
- Ban open-weight/open-source models and self-hosted LLMs
- Require internet passports to access any website and have everything recorded and monitored for signs of abuse that can be tied back to an individual and enforced in real life
What does a good middle-ground look like? I can't think of one. Neither of these outcomes is good and neither of them are enforceable. You ban something for law abiding citizens and only criminals will use it, and if you restrict everything behind internet passports then the criminals will just use the millions of stolen identities they already have access to.
Maybe biometrics that generate short-lived tokens that only the government can tie back to an individual? Like a "biometric session". Still though, you can kiss freedoms goodbye. It's no surprise Sam Altman started Orb so long ago, he obviously saw this one coming.
There has been a lot of propaganda since the mid teens targeting the social and psychological impacts of social media. It is certainly plausible that some group or the aforementioned entities had a big part of this. Regulatory capture is a real thing that makes companies or breaks companies.
This is not the first time media consumption has been labeled and targeted in a negative way and it will not be the last. We as a society have to adapt to changing landscapes.
We shouldn't burn books. We shouldn't ban dungeons and dragons. Video games do not make people in general homicidal. History is repeating itself.
Anecdotally, I have not ran into a single person who has suggested we need to age-gate social media. It is on the politicians mind, but not the lay-person, as far as I can tell.
yea, you know who they are, I know who they are and we all knoww what they are tryin to hide. but anyone who spells it out will get downvoted to hell here.
Somehow the US ones always fly under the radar: Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Jackson Hole banker meetup, Bohemian Grove, etc.
His words: “the most important purchase going on right now (Tiktok)” alleging its control could be “consequential.” [1]
When kids have alternative news your pointless religious wars or fake democratic freedom wars cannot be fought. [2]
[1] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in September "We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged. And the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is TikTok. Number one. Number one.". Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti‑Defamation League, warned last year: “TikTok, if you will, is the 24/7 news channel of so many of our young people, and it’s like Al‑Jazeera on steroids. It’s amplifying and intensifying the antisemitism and the anti‑Zionism with no repercussions.”
[2] "There’s an eighth front," he said, describing a struggle "for the hearts and minds of people, especially young people in the West, and for me especially in the United States.
Why do you require some special interest? Ordinary people are seeing the harm and demanding help. Tech companies did themselves no favors by locking down phones and accounts to the point that it's impossible for parents to police and/or check their kids phones.
So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?
It's so Facebook can prove to advertisers the views are not bots/AI.
> So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?
I'm a parent. Nobody has been blocked from parenting by tech companies.
the harm being us proles being able to communicate and organize. they don't give a fuck about kids, algorithmic feeds, or Russian/Chinese/other villains of the week disseminating propaganda to other bots in Facebook comments. they care exclusively about regaining some degree of control over the flow of information.
consider this: how many people in Europe would be against the ongoing replacement migration if it was still 1999 and 95% of people were still getting news exclusively from the TV and papers, where most incidents of cultural enrichment would never ever be mentioned? and on the other end of the spectrum, consider this: would the BLM protests of 2020 have the same scale and impact if there was no medium for people to spread the video and organize?
TLDR: Arab spring good, American/European spring bad.
Find your rep on congress.gov, and write them.
Sponsors: Brett Guthrie (R-KY) CoSponsors: Frank Pallone (D-NJ)
Find and write your congress member: https://www.congress.gov/
Guthrie is sponsored by: (Alpahbit is the biggest) https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/brett-guthrie /us_congress/summary?mpid=1048046
Frankie: (AIPAC, Anthropic and Comcast) https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/n00000781/us_congress/s...
Guthrie (4th out of 7): $42k https://www.trackaipac.com/states/kentucky
Pallone (7th out of 10): $241k https://www.trackaipac.com/states/newjersey
This procrastination is why my children have 30mins + 1h bonus, if they do their chores, of the phone limit every day. This is done via family link. There is an exemption to music on Spotify, however recently I noticed they are watching (not listening) to podcasts on Spotify too.
But still this is managed by me on our local ecosystem. It's not government thing. That's super creepy when government says (read in your mind or aloud with a sleazy guy's whisper)
.... Is this trolling? Banning social media won't stop them accessing "horrible things", you'd need to disconnect the internet entirely from them, have you done that?
Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible?
Obviously it's difficult to pin a 20-year trend on a single cause. But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones; and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. But it's not possible to prove causality in a way that will silence all objections.
I suspect it's particularly easy to convince politicians that social media is bad for mental health because of their lived experience. Consider the experience of being a professional politician on Twitter.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications... [2] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/child-adolescent-and-yo...
Maybe kids would be better off if we stopped regulating every facet of their lives under the pretence of safety and make them feel if they make one mistake they will ruin their life because now they can't get into a good college or something.
I think this has been pretty conclusively proven.
I've been pondering recently how much time parents are spending on phones, that, 20 years ago they might have otherwise spent engaging with their kids.
There’s some “well we have no idea how much is quality time” argument, but just looking across my own families over time the reality is more like modern parents being way more present than their parents.
The issue lies elsewhere. It’s almost a zeitgeist, the direction and evolution of ideas, and less any actual cause. At least that’s how it seems to me.
Is that true? In more "traditional" times, the husband went out to work while the wife stayed home and managed the household and raised the children.
Today more and more families need dual incomes in order to make ends meet.
Either way, I don't think "the 1900s" is a good comparison. Perhaps 1970-2000 or so is reasonable.
Anyway, to counter your anecdote with another: when I was growing up, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, and she spent a ton of time (very much of it quality) with me. I saw my dad less, of course, but he was reasonably present when he wasn't at work, and I have lots of fond memories of quality time with him.
Nearly all of my friends today who have kids are dual-income. They send their kids to daycare as soon as they're old enough, and then pre-school. The kids do get a lot of socialization with other kids (maybe more than I did in my first few years), but I'm certain they get less time (and probably less quality time) with their parents than I did.
Yeah, I wonder what caused that?
The most freedom they actually get is on the Internet, that's why they all hang out there.
Sound reasoning lol some really hysterical folk on here.
if you actually believed it were that dangerous you wouldn't be literally on social media posting about this would you?
Some people are scared of paedos talking to the kids, other people are scared the kids will watch bad videos, or read bad things. They are two distinct issues lumped in under the "social media" banner, and it can be hard to guess which issue a hysterical parent is referring too.
Hn is social media and even has a doomacrollint algorithm but because it's not classically considered to be akin to twitter, tiktok or Facebook it gets away with it
Yeah. No surprise. The generation of my parents used to run free in the woods. My generation was limited to whatever bicycles offered. And when I have children, I'll probably have to be happy if they can walk to a friend's without some busybody calling the cops on them.
And drinking? Don't get me started on that one - same here. My parents' generation distilled their own spirits (that's banned in Germany these days). My generation had beer. My children? Assuming drinking is still a thing when they're at that age, I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days).
Generally: Third spaces (e.g. libraries, "youth centers") are closing down, others (malls, parks) try everything possible to eliminate youth loitering or, god forbid, making noise. And that's if they can actually afford something. It's ridiculous how expensive basic stuff such as fast food or ice cream has gotten.
In contrast to that, phones are free-ish (well, parents buy them for their kids anyway, and mobile data plans aren't a big deal either).
> and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Bullying always used to be a thing, yes. But that's a legitimate complaint, the mechanics of social media and cameras being ever present have made bullying much more severe in scale. Hell if I were young today, I'd have probably ended up arrested multiple times if there was some video camera rolling around all time.
Nobody, of any age, should drink that much.
We'll lose some, but the surviving ones will be fitter.
It feels absurd to even ask.
In school they still perform ok for what is required there today, but from what happens when you say "oh, wifi doesn't work today in our place" I would argue they behave like addicts... It might be a fun addiction insofar as mental problems are usually not the cause but possibly the result if this runs for years on end.
My pet theory is that these kids will graduate to online-gambling around 12-14 because that's exactly the kind of gameplay they prefer on roblox currently. Even when I was 16 there was a noticable share of classmates gambling online - and this was pre-facebook.
Probably the best way forward would be to make KYC mandatory for large, data-selling public fora like we do with banks. Noone complains there and noone is forced to use platforms.
If you don't want to do KYC (such as on hn or a model train forum) you are liable for any criminal activity you enable (such as pedophiles using your private messages or whatever...).
I'd be very curious what kind of "research" NPR is talking about, and who funded it, because it flies in the face of what all of us at these companies have seen.
Maybe it's not climate chance, pseudo intellectualism, late stage capitalism, etc. Nah, it's the kids in their group chat or scrolling through tiktok, that's it, that's the reason.
Age checks are part if that. They will just feed the sureveillance capitalism machine and make the problem even worse.
Age checked social media is just like the parlor walls in Fahrenheit 451 and infuencers are Mildred Montag. Just another thing to keep people distracted and neutered.
I remember I used to hang out on IRC during my teens with all kinds of people: jewish lesbians from conservative families and other teens from Scandinavia who got drafted on somewhat right wing warez groups, middle aged goth rockers on music sharing channels. Quite an experience for someone who grew up in a post communist country to interact with so colorful and genuinely interesting people. In contrast to that social media is an entirely fake experience generated with bots, algorithms and AI, just like a techno feudal version of the communist propaganda riddled lalaland that I grew up in. Many a DPRK on steroids, except it herds people into getting enraged and engaged with brands in order to hopelessly buy useless junk instead of submitting to a dear supreme leader. Of course it gets people addicted, because it was designed with that in mind.
The research is quite confusing. This is because the strongest version of the argument is not "your child uses social media, and that makes them depressed". The strongest version is more like "when a society mass adopts social media, this irrevocably alters the culture in ways that causes massive changes in mental health, most prominently among young girls, including those exposed to the culture who don't even use social media."
This means you get a weird effect where experimental studies of high quality - which are usually the best evidence, are expected by the strong argument to show zero effect.
Correlational studies usually show either a weak effect (stronger in young girls) or no effect (it's extremely rare to see a study showing a positive correlational effect, though).
And where you get the most juice is looking at population level introduction of social media studies like those discussed here: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi...
But even then it's very tricky, as those studies can't exactly be replicated, and we don't know whether changes will actually reverse the cultural artifacts
which also did happen through the nineties and 2000s before social media, but how would you measure the effects of each on their own?
One clever example discussed in the blog I linked:
> We also found five studies that used a similar design applied to the rollout of high-speed internet. It’s hard to have a phone-based childhood when data speeds are very low. So what happened in Spain as fiber optic cables were laid and high-speed internet came to different regions at different times?
https://www.afterbabel.com/p/social-media-mental-illness-epi...
Network level effects are still falsifiable, it's just often really challenging to falsify them at scale.
Now all that peer pressure is distilled online in short, monologue based, video format, unilateral edited transmissions setting beauty, purity, and behavior standards based on claims, and everyone has a permanent digital record, and mass shame campaigns targeted at random individuals are routine.
However, there are publicists like Jonathan Haidt who have observed the link between kids mental health and use of social media. (among other things) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation
Sustained.
The NPR bit sounds like what I'd imagine I could expect from people who are very good at pushing junk food -they've got good science behind flavoring and light addiction (like you don't get withdrawals from not eating doritoes) and the same with social media. they have very good science behind getting people to spend more and more time viewing their content not matter what. So I take that bit on NPR with a grain of salt. In my experience, NPR often presents studies based on small samples for whatever reason. Maybe to go against the grain, maybe to get people to think, who knows...
Now it's "present your personal info when demanded or else".
An excellent rider to the KIDS act would be to mandate the installation of age (that is, identity) verification to all firearms in order to disable the safety.
Lock those out too unless you can provide digital ID (and a high enough social credit score) each time you attempt to start them.
As far as I can tell, the answer is no, because it doesn't do what's described in Section 201 (E):
"Uses the personal information of the user to advertise, market, or make content recommendations."
Neither does, for example, my bank's website, or someone's personal blog, or many other discussion sites like this one. So from what I can see, while the set of covered platforms is certainly not negligible, it's still a lot smaller than "basically every website on the Internet that anyone cares about". So the title of the EFF article is overstating the case; the thing the bill would require age checks for (in effect, if not by the explicit language of the bill) is not "get online" but something more like "get on social media".
Also, a bank would not satisfy section 201 (B), (C), or (D), so it wouldn't be a covered platform anyway. (I should have left "bank" out of my original post, I was really thinking more about discussion sites like this one, blogs, etc.)
Which for ordinary people is the same thing, alas.
with respect to which more than one-third of the material made available thereon is sexual material harmful to minors; and (C) with respect to which the provider of such platform knowingly makes available the sexual material harmful to minors described in subparagraph (B).
(look for line 19 to see the covered platform)
Of course, it's a delicious web they're trying to weave - pass it now by casting the think of the children spell, amend and reinterpret later to soften the guardrails until everything is in scope and demands commercial ID checks, driving ID check industry software and adoption, until psuedo-anonymity on the web is virtually gone. Or do it with any combination of other bills.
"Uses the personal information of the user to advertise"
Is 99.9% of all websites. So long as websites don't sell things, they will be having ads.
This includes Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Imgur, TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, etc. I think even Steam and other game platforms would fall into this category despite the fact they make money selling products. Naturally search engines also fall into this category.
Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm.
It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead. In fact, most people don't want to go through the trouble of maintaining their own blog, dealing with spam, hosting, hacking attempts, software updates, etc., when they can just use tumblr and pin the responsibility on the platform anytime something bad happens.
Not at all. You named eleven. Even if I'm generous and raise that by a couple of orders of magnitude, it's still a miniscule fraction of all websites.
Of course it's close to all big tech platforms, but that's not the same thing. And if one of the results of this whole kerfluffle is to make more people realize that the big tech platforms are not the same as "the Internet" or "the Web", that would be a good thing.
> Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm.
Which makes it even more important to ask the question of whether "exception" websites like this one can continue to survive if this bill becomes law. Sure, HN users are a tiny fraction of all Internet users. But that's supposed to be one of the things the Internet is for--to give even very small communities a place where they can be a community, and not have to worry about all the other crap that's out there, and not have to be micromanaged by politicians and lobbyists and tech giants.
> It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead
Not all blogging platforms use targeted ads. And if this gives more of them an incentive not to, that would be a good thing.
(HN itself doesn't meet at least one other requirement besides subsection (E): subsection (D), "Uses a design feature to promote user engagement on the platform".)
That's not so say I'm in favor of age verification, just pointing out the silver lining.
That said, it is better than nothing, but that’s about it.
What features are missing that makes everyone giving up their privacy a better option?
see: recent article about Snap sending pushes to kids during school hours
I have all notifications on my phone off, except for phone calls
So pass laws and enact regulations that require them to be made strong.
Not only does this moot the demands for capture of photo ID, beefing up the parental controls that already exist in every major OS means that -say- adults caring for their dementia-damaged parents can restrict those adults' access to things that could be very dangerous to them and/or their finances. A strictly-age-based "protection" scheme absolutely does not do that.
One might argue that one could "merely" require a "This adult is seriously intellectually damaged. [0] Make sure to protect them from scammers and predators!" flag that can be flipped on by a Registered Caretaker. I humbly suggest that that is information you should never disclose to a company that makes its money by trading in dossiers of its users.
[0] Dear downvoters: I understand that this isn't the PC term for the effects of these sorts of ailments. If you've ever had to watch over and care for someone who gets cored out bad by this shit, it's hard to describe it as anything else.
No, please dont. More regulation is not the answer. Any more restriction which is imposed on kids becomes the thing they focus on getting around.
Just dont buy your kids phones until they are older, and send them outside to play. Thats all the parental restriction you need on phones.
Why not? If the parental controls in all the mainstream OSs are effective, difficult to bypass, and don't involve any communications with third-parties beyond communicating the set of prohibited topics/actions/whatever, what's left for busybodies to complain about?
NOTE: I'm not calling you a busybody. I'm calling the people who push for these "age verification" laws with the genuine belief that they're for protecting minors who lack the ability to handle the dangers of the world busybodies.
1. https://www.macworld.com/article/2305919/apple-parental-cont...
If parents were really concerned about this stuff they'd take the time to set up parental controls, but they don't. Which makes me pretty sure the push for all this isn't coming from parents.
If Little Timmy has a phone you don't recognize in his hand, then you know that's a problem.
It also insulates every website from needing to support Orthodox Latverian messianism where male children below the age of 17 lunar years cannot see unclad ankles.
More technological solutions to social problems.
Please describe how requiring a government ID in order to use a computer prevents an over-seventeen from presenting their ID to unlock their computer and then handing that computer over to an under-eighteen? An over-seventeen handing over control of their unlocked computer to a visiting under-eighteen seems to me to be an under-eighteen "go[ing somewhere] they could access a non-locked-down device".
The only way I can see to even begin to combat that is to constantly surveil the operator of the computer to attempt to detect when its operator changes. Do you have a superior method?
The idea that I should have to figure out a mechanism for other people to police their children in order to use my devices that no child ever has access to for things like paying bills and making doctors appointments without presenting identification is absurd. Minors still drink alcohol all the time, but that would be a pretty shoddy excuse for the government making me flash my ID to leave my house and didn't let me in grocery stores because I couldn't come up with any more effective way to prevent underage drinking.
Providing access to social media must be met with the same punishment as offering heroin to children. The monopoly on violence must be brought to bear on parents who neglect parental responsibilities.
It was bad and suggesting state violence for lack of compliance with your world view is bad.
Tell me how a parent is supposed to parent their kid when they can do that? Locking down WhatsApp is no solution because then they can't talk to anyone. (Other countries do not use SMS as much as the US does, it's mostly WhatsApp.)
Say you are sure your kid is being bullied or abused and you want to check their phone. You can't. From the password to encrypted apps kids can hide their communications in ways that are impossible for a parent to check.
Apps do not have "child modes" that disable all the secret stuff, although that would be nice.
So the solution to parents deciding to give their kids access to stuff is to make me flash my ID every time I go online on one of my devices that I use in my childless household? And you're confident that there won't be plenty of parents who just put their ID information in for their kids anyhow?
Lack of practice with face to face communication, near inability to talk on the phone, less quality connection with people in general, craned necks, myopia, hidden bullying, privacy violations, dependency on a US company etc
And what do you mean by "can't talk to anyone"?
Adults somehow feel that they are excluded from showing papers because the laws "target children"?
I mean it is technically possible to prove things using blind attestation etc. but very few of the works social problems have so far been solved by first choosing two large prime numbers, so I don't expect it will help here.
For instance:
https://idtechwire.com/spains-pm-proposes-mandatory-digital-...
https://www.weforum.org/publications/reimagining-digital-id/
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/01/davos-agenda-digital...
Everyone ignores stuff like this because of people like Alex Jones who make it seem like a lunatic conspiracy theory. But these conferences happen, and they do influence policy. It’s not a “cabal” that issues orders—many participants are national leaders bringing their perspectives (see the link above about Sanchez)—but it does have an impact.
The banal truth is that many different world leaders have talked each other into this after years of discussion on the proper way to “manage” the Internet. They see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed.
This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web.
It's what the original 90s crypto wars were about: the right of individuals to access strong encryption to preserve the privacy of their communications from the government.
Absent that, pandora's box opens.
Age KYC is just the next fight against encryption and privacy dressed up in "for the children" clothes.
Strong encryption always has (and always will) facilitate criminal and illegal activity. Tough tits.
Law enforcement and intelligence agencies should work within the bounds of individual rights, not adjust them for convenience.
If the price of individual freedom^ is that it's harder to track and prosecute child exploitation, drug distribution, and mass terror attacks, then that's the way it needs to be.
^ "Individual freedom" as distinct from corporate freedom. Fuck non-human legal entities' rights to access encryption, aside from on behalf of their users.
It's true that some have always seen it this way, but it's become much more salient in the current political context. The average politician 30 years ago was barely aware of what the Internet was - it wasn't a major concern. For a brief period, the prevailing (but not only, as you mention with encryption) attitude was that the information superhighway would make everyone was educated and wise as the managerial class elites. Social media muddled the picture for a while, but the Arab Spring was considered to be an amazing example of this - look, people around the world are going to be Just Like Us!
What really kicked off the current level of enmity politicians have for the Internet was the rise of right-wing populism, especially Trump. This really deeply upset a lot of people, and the only conceivable explanation is that bad actors caused it using the Internet, because good and wise people would only come to the same conclusions as themselves, and democracy is only fit for people who come to those same conclusions. It is certainly not because their policy outcomes caused discontent. Since then they've been throwing everything at the wall to stop free Internet discourse in the belief it will make the bad people go away and restore Public Order.
It's a 'centralization breeds coercion' thing.
The antidote to that is decentralization (especially breaking up large firms) and an individual right to privacy (including the technical methods to ensure it).
Imagine DeCSS today! Facebook and Google and Microsoft and Apple would get calls, then Anthropic and OpenAI, and the key would be wiped off large portions of the internet.
Is it even possible? Will businesses my voters like and use a lot just leave my country entirely? Will companies be able to develop privacy-preserving age check infrastructure? Will the press present it as a 'Chinese-style Great Firewall' or be more supportive of it? Will the blocks all be trivial to bypass? Will the large number of porn users in my country form a cohesive voting block? Will a powerful pro-privacy, pro-free-speech lobby emerge to challenge this? And will they be backed by powerful, well-funded US interests like Facebook and Google?
Australia simply showed the world passing this sort of legislation isn't political suicide.
Noteworthily, the legislation moves age verification from individual apps to app-store operators [Apple, Google] which reduces Facebooks legal exposure for inaccurate/incorrect age verifications.
Representative democracy is not adequate to the demands of the information age, where the informational asymmetry between individual and state is unprecedented in history. It's time to explore other models like administrative democracy.
We're below replacement rate, so it's not like most people are even having kids, anyway. Yet we have to give up our freedom for other people to raise little Christian tots (or whatever the motivation for this is billed as)?
I grew up in a Deep South Protestant household. Having access to the unfiltered internet got me interested in STEM. Bumping into occasional shock sites and porn as a preteen did not turn me into a satanist cannibal.
Keeping "Kids Safe" is a LIE.
This is about putting collars on every US citizen.
They'll filter you into groups.
They'll control what loans and jobs you can get.
They'll use this information to blackmail you should you ever run for office or gain wealth or power.
This is a threat to democracy and personal liberty.
Child safety is a LIE.
That's not happening like this, also because peer and public tolerance for it is nearly nil.
The internet now is much safer.
Kids are safer today.
If a preteen sees a horse fucking a human they won't even know what that is.
Notice you didn't answer the question btw
2006 is on the other side of the event horizon of "Don't be evil."
Imho, that's well into the re-centralization of the internet and tech landscape.
Rewind another 10 years, and I'd call 1996 wild. That's before XMLHttpRequest/AJAX and when a cat could create as impressive of a website as any corporation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711871
If they are asking you to leave a message, have your kids leave the message.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
The only people who think otherwise are terminally online losers who have never organized anything larger than a birthday party.
seems like a lot more people believe that than the population you are describing
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/09/19/how-american...
Money matters but a popular movement is more powerful still in some places look up DSA
Oh, sure, you can imagine a system where they aren't, but is bill isn't going to get us that? Nope! It's going to get us something stupid and ripe for abuse, and the mere presence of what comes next will poison the environment against any better option.
Seriously, enough with mandating compliance with the surveillance economy. Build a society where parents can actually take care of their kids instead of hiding a surveillance state behind the guise of “protecting children” and blaming adults who want to preserve privacy or anonymity in the last space it exists within.
> The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.".[1] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools.
> The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists".[2][3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
It gives the adults the option to be apathetic. In reality, anyone who is a kid now will never know any better.
It just means we're the last generations that had the luxury of a world that remembered what privacy was.
Sounds about right.
They might still get some content downstream of other kids. However, I doubt a “look at this tiktok” here and there has any harmful effects.
What’s harmful is excessive social media use, especially unmonitored. So, either monitor your kid or do not give them access. It’s perfectly fine to have a family computer in the living room if you’re worried about little Timmy looking up “boobies”. Problem solved, and I saved you some money.
I think a lot of parents do basically nothing and then are unhappy with the results. Yes, if you don’t try, you won’t get your desired result. But you can try stuff out, and you can always pivot if you feel it becomes inconvenient. The reality is we don’t need these complex technological solutions. There are simple, brain-dead solutions like “don’t give your kid a phone for hours on end” or “give your kid a flip phone”.
I love freedom as a general principle, but internet 2026 is a undefendable cesspool of amorality, scams and worse. We are not in the 90s or early 00s anymore, and never will be again that era is gone.
Once again, the response in places like this pretends everyone is an upper middle class or above tech-savvy nerd.
I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions, which do invade privacy and remove freedom, but the problems are real. These solutions are being pushed because our industry is doing nothing to police itself or provide parents with the tools they need.
In many cases we are doing less than nothing, because the profit motive is to prevent parents from having this control. "Social" media, gambling-adjacent gaming, and other addictionware, which is a huge profit center for our industry, wants to addict kids early. Gotta get those cigarettes into their hands, which means preventing parents from stopping it.
Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds, brainwashed by propaganda and influencer bullshit, and placed on an on-ramp to future gambling addiction via mobile games with engineered "compulsion loops."
Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective.
Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764."
That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so.
I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers.
Only nerds have privacy today and only if they invest the time to police their tech environment. If you're not a nerd there's nothing to lose. You already lost it long ago. We -- our industry -- took it away.
The main issue with this bill is that it requires a huge cost in civic freedoms, with questionable benefits to societal stability. Not only do most youth extremists first offend past the threshold this age verification would catch, this legislation lets big tech off the hook for designing addictive algorithms in the first place, since "there are no kids on the platform anymore, and if there are, they're breaking the law".
[1]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2025.2...
This is a win/win for big tech. If they don’t get age verification, they can keep getting kids addicted to propaganda and consumerism. If they do get age verification, they get to see what everyone in the world thinks and is interested in, all linked to government ID.
Edit: the one outcome big tech does not want is anonymous age verification. This is technologically extremely possible, but that would be a lose/lose for big tech because they would lose kid (aka future consuming adult) addiction AND lose perfect tracking linked to government IDs.
I'm also aware of what you're talking about. That's called regulatory capture. They know this kind of regulation is coming and want to make sure they're the ones writing it so they can use it to entrench their oligopolies.
My point is that something like this will happen unless we find an alternative. The longer it goes on, the worse the backlash will be.
Rich parents can have nannies, expensive software, or a parent who stays home from work. Poorer parents do not have time or energy to police this stuff or supervise their kids. They're too busy putting food on the table and paying rent or a mortgage.
I was at the laundromat and a woman with kids was complaining across the room about how she only had $700.00 in her account. Note, she had a car, wasn't homeless, but this is actual reality for a huge number of people in the US.
I think it may be that people grew up accustomed to having everything constantly taken away from them, so they learn not to save stuff.
Seeing this as some sort of moral failing isn't the right way to look at it. It's possible that that this person could have done that, but it's also they they really may not have been able to, low wages, bad environment, health issues, all of these compound until "it's not hard to just" is a gross way to interpret their situation.
Pornography is often delivered by people who don't care about US legislation, and social media is carefully left undefined, intentionally confounded with algorithms used to surface content (which people actually do object to at least the opaqueness of.)
I, like most, don't think that the totalitarianism is an unfortunate side-effect of the attempt to protect children online. I think legislation, and legislation like this, will only be successful in increasing surveillance and public manipulation, and that it will have virtually no effect on childrens' consumption of pornography and social media. If you really wanted to protect children, there's better legislation to write and technical solutions to implement.
Should it be that easy or should there be some road blocks? Should I have been able to go into a store at 14 and buy a beer?
This is a claim without backing, and if there were backing to be had, it would constantly be thrown in people's faces by the various administrations that suddenly decided this was a problem that had to be stopped now by any means necessary.
They do not need any public support to implement this, they need opposition to sleep for 5 minutes. It is being advanced by the most unpopular governments in the entire histories of the countries that it is being introduced in.
Your children had access to porn 30 years ago, they will have access to porn after this. There is no actual impetus behind any legal blocking of gambling mechanics in games targeted at children, because they are unbelievably profitable (unlike children as a market for pornography.)
I'm telling you that if you fight invisible enemies, like these campaigners for online age verification (who don't exist), you are fighting a senseless battle.
I'm not dismissing the scenario and your illustration of the mindset of these fictional hoards - if I were concocting a biography and argument for age verification activists, I would come up with the same dynamics and resentments. But it's not real. There are no million-mom marches in DC for age verification on the internet, and certainly not ones so advanced that they've decided that no other method will work: that device/OS/browser level verification of identity is the only way from keeping little Kip from accessing Cambridge Analytics's Russian-Chinese hardcore trans pornography.
They don't exist. Or rather, the bulk of them are Keynesian Beauty Contest judges who have concocted a public opinion that they've followed like lemmings, and only update their vision of public opinion based on new claims from politicians and their PR departments currently pushing the legislation. They don't really believe that age verification is a good solution, but they understand why most people do. I claim that the vast majority of people don't. I'm not even sure I could find a single person to support it in real life if given a 2 minute speech about the obvious and basic privacy and civil liberties implications of such a move, and the many alternative ways to attack the same issue. And governments are prioritizing it, with no hint at all that they will see a reward at the polls. In fact, almost all of the people who are pushing it are unpopular lame ducks who have no ability or no reasonable chance to serve again. They're lining up their next jobs and securing their fortunes.
Enough with this "but they can work around it" argument, too. Kids can get adults to buy cigarettes for them, we still ban them from buying cigarettes because it's a very useful roadblock.
If there were an organic push by parents, they would be happy to buy and promote products today, without waiting for legislation to catch up. Where are these local parental control products?
Speaking of social media and Youtubes of the world, why can't I, as account owner/parent, totally blacklist some "recommendations"?
Age verification is not a fit tool for content filtering. Users want the latter, but get switcheroo'd into the former.
You know a gun or a bomb is dangerous, so you'll probably be careful with it. The gun and the bomb are not engineered on purpose to hook you by exploiting your dopamine pathways and get you to shoot yourself or blow yourself up.
EDIT: I'm being a little hyperbolic here, but I'm also talking about aggregate harm and intent to harm. I'm really being hyperbolic to bash what I consider to be the key villain in this story: addiction engineering, a.k.a. "maximizing engagement." This is the root of all evil.
The statistics on people killed/injured by their kids accidentally discharging firearms in the US disagree[0]
[0] eg. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/unintentional-shootings... "At least 157 people were killed and 270 were injured last year in unintentional shootings by children" (2024)
This sounds like you have a media addiction. This is the kind of extreme hyperbole that we spent a year or two saturated with when a bunch of states and a bunch of billionaires decided that American people were saying too much on Tiktok about Israel, and something something China evil.
I am not disagreeing with you, but the conversation to be had is far, far wider than "think of the children!". Part of any deal would have to be: privacy of citizens is not a business model. But then you are facing the full might of Corp Inc, including their legislative powers.
It is far more common for that child to be targeted by parents, and maybe by people they know in person, especially because of the lousy social environment their parents have pushed them into, and therefore to have limited offline support systems, and you are now trying to take away all they do have.
... and information isn't really the question. Not that there's actually any good definition for "social media".
The public at large have real issues with the current state of the internet and people here don't want to hear it or address it so we get this.
And, more so, that they've had a decade to reduce or mitigate the harms but have consistently (some might think deliberately) failed to do so.
So now we have the sledgehammer of legislation being wielded to do the job instead.
It's not an ideal outcome by any means, but what did people think was going to happen?
I've said it in other threads but the worst thing you can do is tell people their problems aren't real.
I’ve already stated who I am when I paid.
What kids get to see at home is up to the parents.
They are going to track everything everyone does, and the next generation will turn that tracking into coercion and control. This is everything we were warned about in 1984.
Kill products that advertise to kids before you kill privacy.
Make it illegal to advertise to children instead of making people submit their state-issued ID.
Fine parents for letting children online instead of tracking adults in databases.
All of this moral hand-wringing is a lie anyway. They do not care about children. If they did, the kids would get $3 school meals for free instead of 30 million of them going into nutritional deficit.
What hurts a kid more - not getting the necessary nutrition, or them being exposed to porn? I know my friends sent me shock sites when I was a preteen - that didn't turn me into a murdering lunatic. Whereas if I hadn't eaten and grown up healthily, perhaps I wouldn't have made it into a stable career.
But its unfair to kids who have shitty weak lazy parents, and screens are like fentanyl to young mind, there is literally nothing more attention-grabbing in the world for them. Their potential lost to... nothing worth mentioning, just empty dopamine kicks one after another. Its a miniscule fringe situation you say? More than half of kids before 2 are exposed to hours of screens (I see similar articles almost daily these days). This is mankind's future, your pensions, the society that will be taking care of you (and trust me you will need it, the only way to avoid that is to die young). But this isn't about selfish take-care-of-me situation, I just care and worry about how subpar lives such addicts have, spread across whole mankind. Compared to life filled with nature, hobbies, passions, physical social interactions.
I've seen it personally many times, I had kids in my early 40s so most of peers are a solid decade ahead. What began as boasting of having 'digital kids' when younger is now just a sad story of hard addictions thats actively avoided in any conversation, after few drinks parents end up 'what should we do when we have bad kids' sort of questions. When I look at given parents the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree, how could it, after all its just genes and parental upbringing that define people's personalities more than anything else.
As much as I generally agree with your comment, it's not "the screens". It's the entire industry hyperoptimizing every bit out of their social networks/media for attention; gambling mechanics in live-service games. In other words, not a "handful" of apps, but too many of the apps and websites you come across.
You'll surely remember the numerous attempts at edu software/games of the 90s. Instead, the current attention monopolies won and have been perfecting their addiction mechanics for the past 20 years.
How else do we stop the web becoming a wasteland of deceptive AI bots? Do you use the web to research products, look at reviews? Do you use analytics on your website or products to improve them? When we cannot tell the difference between a human and a bot, none of that is useful anymore. Somehow, we need to filter out the noise.
The other concerning issue is that I don't think this will actually work. There's already a large blackmarket for stolen identities, and unscrupulous actors will have no qualms with using them to carry out the blackhat activity they already conduct.
I dont think thats entirely true. There were always horror stories about kids getting seriously troubled by watching beheadings on rotten dot com, 4chan bullying and suicides have been happening for decades etc. It was just easier to ignore when it was a few young freaks that we could label as reclusive anyway. Now its just compounded more because its mainstream and the entire population engages.
This is the biggest attack on personal freedom since decades. It is time to crush those lobbyists that push for this.
By the way, even ignoring the propaganda by the lobbyists here, at which point did the "discussion" suddenly become to deny young people access to information? Because this is implied here. Some people were underage when wikipdia first emerged. The age sniffing here tries to undermine and revert all of that.
This is the threat day one. They get both groups' information.
Next, they'll start to purge information they don't like because it has been corralled off from the rest of the internet.
If they get lucky to trap a politician or billionaire in their net (and they will), they'll use that information to control how they vote or fund interests.
Next, they'll start to clamp down of people in the group they don't like. They'll lose jobs, banking, get extra audits, and have friction applied to their lives and chances of success.
Over time the fundamentalist group embraces government monitoring and control. The youth are brought up on it. The oligarchy use it to remove their enemies.
Within two generations we're living in 1984.
IMO porn and drug mafia is far more likely to be lurking in reddit and here and spreading misinformation. Russian bots help here too.
On a related note, if they will require a specific kind of ID to vote, can’t they just make sure everyone can receive that ID?
Of course they can. They don’t want to. And they pretend like they don’t know how to. What this government is lacking, is a distribution system.
To be fair, they will need digital IDs or NFC chips in IDs since deepfakes can now fake the physical IDs next to your face in real time.
[0] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/faqs/eu-age-verific...
[1] https://proton.me/blog/eu-age-verification-app-hacked
We all know what this is really about. It's not okay to arm the government against it's own Citizens to prevent any sort of criticism, I don't care what side of the isle you're on.
What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms"
No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad
But such argument is total nonsense. It's as if EFF has ties to Silicon Valley
Less use of these third party "platforms" is a huge win for internet privacy and privacy in general
The internet isn't going away. By and large, it's financed by internet subscribers paying monthly bills to telecoms. It's provided by those telecoms in return for those fees. It's not provided by so-called "tech" companies in Silicon Valley running "platforms" offering "free services"
There is no "age check" to open an account for internet service.^1 Yet EFF argues there will be an "age check" to "get online"
Would EFF argue that having internet service does not constitute "being online" and that an "account" with a so-called "tech" company performing data collection, surveillance and ad services is necessary to "be online"^1
If so, that's really quite strange considering the issue we are supposedly debating is internet privacy. The "business model" of these "platforms" and the concept of internet privacy are in direct conflict
The ridiculous arguments EFF is making around age verification seem to be aimed at trying to preserve the Silicon Valley status quo, to protect the surveillance "business model" of Silicon Valley, whilst "minimising" its harmful effects, including the effects of these companies relentlesslly challenging peoples' personal boundaries to the point where "age checks" sound reasonable
The legislation is aimed at certain companies in Silicon Valley conducting data collection, mass surveillance and pushing content at kids to drive ad services revenue. It's not aimed at internet service or anyone's ability to "get online". EFF's opposition looks like support for these companies
1. The California bill specifically excludes telecommunications services and broadband internet service
I would love for people to stop using the evilcorp platforms. But what will actually happen is that normal people will just scan their IDs and continue as before and only weird geeks will refuse. Normal people will continue posting valuable information on YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, etc. and it will become increasingly impossible to access any of it without scanning your ID.
This gives parents control, and honestly would work great.
Giving kids access to social media should have the same criminal penalties as giving them heroin. We have to direct the monopoly on violence against parent who neglect their responsibility. We cannot expect parents to resume their obligations without shifting the incentive landscape to make distribution and access to social media as painful as possible. If parents won't parent, we must force their hand.
Fast forward to the 1990s and politicians were clueless about what the internet was doing or would do in future. So what is the correct response when every citizen has the power to, using the archaic term, "broadcast" to the world.
The genie is out of the bottle and needs to be managed for the common good, which is always going to piss off some individuals. It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this.
As others have said, there is a coordinated push to drive this legislation everywhere. There is no fight in nation states. Just capitulation.
There's no big conspiracy here, just a limited amount of the spectrum.
Children in adult spaces who do not reveal that they are children are rarely targeted by child abusers; but if children are corralled into "child spaces" (which are functionally ghettos, given how much of society now takes place online), it will be easier to locate and identify them.
Children are far from helpless, when it comes to online threats. For example, when abusive comments are posted on scratch.mit.edu, you will see a flood of warnings and chaff to try to protect other children from the abusive material, while the Scratch Team work through the moderation queue. However, many social media sites are designed to disempower users, so we don't see this kind of thing there: I suspect separating children from adults in those spaces makes children less safe, not more safe.
In the end the monopolies will be the big winners.
I'm sure the perspective is something like: If we don't do this, the web just gets flooded with bots and nobody ever knows if they're speaking to a human or not. How do you trust reviews, social media posts, advertiser statistics, and so on?
The issue with this approach, though, is that there's such a large blackmarket for stolen identities that all of the actors who already do this sort of activity will be able to continue doing it anyway.
Doesn't really seem like there are any good solutions to be found. Every solution involves some loss of freedoms.
Seriously now, if you give in to demanding people, they will just demand more. Appeasement does not work.
I think opponents to these bills frame it as current state vs complete, invasive third-party identity verification. That's a very unfortunate framing because, as you say, it would be possible to take the wind out of the identity-verification proponents' sails by implementing better on-device controls.
It's for the kids, you understand - to protect the kids.
There is no more noble purpose than to protect the kids.
Only a monster would not want to protect the kids.
Tried to collect more logical fallacies here.
[1] - https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Chi...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410870
2. It's onerous for upstarts, so it entrenches Instagram and Facebook.
3. Guaranteed knowledge of who everyone is, and their web browsing activities, furthers their surveillance ends.
4. If you keep people off until they're adults and then throw them in with no guidance, they'll have an even worse time. Which is good for propagandizing.
5. They get to collect biometrics from everyone, even the underaged ones who attempt verification. All the better to build panopticon, along side Clearview and Flock.
6. The Heritage Foundation wants it, and everything else on Project 2025 has been proceeding as planned with lackluster resistance, so why would this be different? (Spoiler: the next part is calling everything they don't like, such as LGBT people being visible or alive, as "harmful" and using these new surveillance tools to deal with that.)
Now, based on their ruthless disregard for the law, do you think they're just going to use it to sell your ads?
They will collect it from everyone to prove your age.
The question only that is it worth the gamble by Meta, as in how many people would rather leave the sites (from Whatsapp to Insta to Facebook) than give them their ID
Plus they are lobbying for it to be someone else's problem they are lobbying for device and OS based age verification.
Politicians who want to track everyone all the time.
The rare few politicians who want it to be easier to raise healthy children.
Tech CEOs who don't want to be liable for harming children's development.
Tech CEOs who want to track everyone all the time.
The rare few tech CEOs who want to improve the world (by not harming children's development) and whose business model doesn't require it or who compete with one that does (e.g. operators of edutainment websites if those even still exist).
App coders who don't want to train a neural network to check IDs themselves.
Watch this "regulate 3d printers because of children" hearing: https://youtu.be/sue88CXzPcQ?t=2285
Normal people that call themselves good names like "moms for actions" drag us into this totalitarian hell.
> Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
https://web.archive.org/web/20241103190346/https://static.pr...
Here is the list of cosponsors in case anyone was curious if their "representative" is on the list https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/s1748/cosponsors
Anything that doesn’t support those two aims (contraception, abortion, gay marriage, pornography etc.) is therefore immoral but there’s nothing wrong with sex in its ‘proper’ context.
I can speak more to the Catholic view than the evangelical, but if you accept the initial premise that there is a creator God then the rest follows fairly naturally (you can look the ‘the theology of the body’ if you want to read more)
Marriage is by itself not consent for sex and you can't sue somebody to get them to have sex with you either
This seems to be a result of what people call the uniparty system, but that's not really an accurate term:
This actually embodies what the establishment on both sides of the aisle want: CONTROL
They want this for many different reasons: they have an unbridled lust for power, or perhaps they are willing to burn down fair elections for the good of all mankind, but actually let's be more generous!!
Most likely because they are afraid, unjustly or not:
* of real terrorists that they think, sometimes correctly, are using E2EE
* of children's immature minds having neural pathways being changed by things they're not quite ready for, or perhaps becoming addicted to the very real and powerful nature of porn)
* or, you know, whatever! Maybe they're parents and want to protect their kids and everyone else's kids.
Really, why doesn't actually matter too much.
The fact is that they just don't understand the technology and the FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND FREEDOM, that tension between privacy/human rights/dignity and technological "bad things" that are always in the news.
They get told one simple thing by lobbyists or even well-meaning constituents, and then they form their worldview around it. And THEN they write legislation (or, more likely, get handed ready-made legislation by lobbyists with an axe to grind)
We, the knowledgeable in this area (regardless of our party persuasion -- I'll work on my people, you work on yours!) should start to educate our non-technical legislators. We have to be the trusted voice of reason when it comes to tech, because they're hearing a lot of things from a lot of different voices.
How? By getting involved. Get involved at the LOCAL level, because THOSE people are the ones that serve as the feedramp for national or international politics. After 20 years, your education might percolate upwards to the people who are actually writing new laws. You don't need to be a "crazy" sounding activist or conspiracy theorist: in fact, that works against you (usually). Just be an adult, try to understand what they're trying to accomplish, and explain how they can accomplish it or that it can't be done that way for specific and reasonable reasons.
These are all just my opinions as I see increasing amounts of this sort of legislation being pushed by Meta and other actors. This comment also has a very US-centric bias, so please correct me if you're in another country where things work differently.
Always remember Hanlon's Razor and the Golden Rule (for the other team too)
That's why giving children access to social media must be punished to the same degree as giving children heroin. If it's a parent's responsibility, it must be made a parent's liability. Anything without the full threat of the government's monopoly on violence is just a pretty slogan. We should see access to social media as the neglect that it is.
Your proposal to punish parents does the same.
How about a solution that puts burden on corporations for once?
If you make corporations liable for minors using their product, they're just going to require identity verification to use their product, and we're back to effectively the same proposal, right? Unless I've misunderstood you.
And I already know their opinion on the age restrictions.
It seems like it’s been easy for every corporate-backed actor to come up with solutions that burden everyday citizens.
Now we’re yet again burdened to solve a problem corporations created.
Incentivizing parents to parent aligns the obligation, agency, and responsibility. People who don't want that level of responsibility can not have children.
I think it would be more fair and useful to focus enforcement on the parties with power making intentional decisions to make the world a worse place. I guess that makes me anti-agency and anti-responsibility though.
However, I simultaneously think that a lot of “personal responsibility” culture is very convenient ideology for corporations.
Nothing is ever their fault. Everything is a failing of personal obligation, agency, and responsibility.
A whole bunch of things that make good parenting so difficult are directly the fault of corporations.
There is zero mandatory paid parental leave in the United States. I wonder how much corporate money goes into maintaining that status quo?
You are asking for society to bear the burdens of the people you want to change. That is bad policy.
Meta here is the heroin cartel. They're a publicly traded company, have offices all over the country, and have mountains of evidence sitting in moderately well secured cabinets. Why should the government go after users when it could more easily go after the producers?
Social Media isn't even as bad as Tobacco I'd say let alone Heroin.
And, in many cases, "parent" singular. Putting a single mom in court, in jail, because she works 2-3 jobs and her kids are more knowledgeable than she is about computers? C'mon.
The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view, shouldn't be done. But I don't see them coming up with any better solutions. Just endless complaints, while soliciting donations to keep generating these endless complaints.
That's a much thornier legal issue
The first amendment is a two way street. Everyone has an inalienable right to seek and read/view any media, and the government of the United States is forbidden from taking any actions that limit the mass dissemination of media.
The whole context of the amendment is existing governments preventing people from mass printing and distributing political pamphlets. "You can write something, but not distribute it" is entirely antithetical to the point of the amendment.
The issue is not that age gates are illegal, but that the government forcing people to use age gates is illegal.
The government can ban the sale of those things to minors, generally. So the category of porn sites that require a credit card and pay gate the content might be regulateable.
But that's not how places like pornhub or xvideos operate
Their business models require little to no human moderation, because it simply doesn't scale (for their business to stay profitable).
Personally, my feeling is that if you can't take care of your product, you should go out of business.
A child might see something they shouldn't walking down the street, strolling thru the park, visiting the local zoo, or visiting an ice cream parlor. Should those places be requiring identification and hiring extra security guards to wander around making sure nobody is saying it doing anything politically objectionable?
Let's not accept creeping digital tyranny with self-assuring complacency... call or write (preferably snail mail) your congresspeople!!
At least online there can be a separation between the age verification provider and the online content provider, so that the latter doesn't learn anything from the former except that the user's age is above or below a specific cut-off point. So it can actually be more privacy-preserving than purchasing age-restricted goods over the counter.
You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal.
In time, this will be used to shape what people are "allowed" to think. Porn will gradually be purged from the internet and then go away entirely as the US becomes more fundamentalist and Christian.
Then people who are neither of those things will start to be denied jobs and loans. Politicians that don't fit the mold will stop winning.
This is about turning the US to Christianity. (Read: this is really about controlling the massses and using religious fundamentalism as a tool to do so.)
Technology is the perfect tool for control. Just as we were becoming a liberal/libertarian society and letting people live their lives how they wanted, the wrong people started using technology not as an enabler of free minds, but as an inescapable straitjacket.
You've read 1984, right?
The sensors have been widely deployed. The internet will become your Big Brother. You won't be able to buy, sell, or even move between state lines without being in the good graces of the state.
Be a good citizen and comply.
I don't think this is a good assumption. It's not uncommon for stores to scan your ID when you buy alcohol.
> This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal.
This is not quite how typical systems are structured. Rather, the service provider outsources the age assurance to some third party Age Verification Provider (AVP), which then just returns an age estimate or a yes/no. Commonly, the AVP will have a stated policy that they don't share your identity with the client.
Obviously, you have to trust the AVP to comply with this policy, which is not ideal. There are approaches (e.g., zero-knowledge proofs) that provide some technical privacy protections, but they're not currently in wide use.
Note: this is not an endorsement of age assurance; I'm just trying to clarify the situation.
Yes you do, if they scan your ID with any technology they're uploading a picture to that company's server. If you use a payment card then your bank and the card network also know.
As Christian I would say "more fundamentalist and less Christian". I am not sure this is religiously based. We have similar things happening in European countries that are not religious. Its a moral panic and "think of the children".
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
My (just turned 18) daughter said a pub in the UK scanned her driving license so they may well be connecting to some database before letting young people buy alcohol. IIRC the EU wants its age verification app to be used for things like this.
This is a time of "first they came for the....".
Christianity is easy to reach for in the US, especially when there are sects and denominations that align with government-mandated censorship of certain ideologies.
But if you're still worried about online pornographers getting a copy of your identity, maybe don't use their websites? It's an easily avoidable risk. Perhaps use your imagination instead, or read an erotic novel bought in cash from a second-hand bookshop, or something like that.
> erotic novel bought in cash from a second-hand bookshop
Your confidence that this will remain an option probably means that you aren't aware of the many court battles, lives ruined, and leftover frozen conflicts resulting from attempts to publish novels. Its a confidence you could only have developed since the mid-1960s.
There is absolutely no physical reason why the government couldn't record all of the books you buy, arrest secondhand booksellers that don't keep those lists faithfully, and even sit outside of secondhand booksellers identifying everyone walking into the building and putting them on a list of people who are interested in obtaining books through unorthodox methods.
If everyone had been like you, there wouldn't be erotic novels available from bookstores. Or communist novels, or gay novels, etc.. And through the mails, it would become federal. The government mainly opened mail to search for possible birth control information being sent.
Then introduce some new headers the browser sends to servers with some proof that the user was verified and the browser would need a response (like CORS) for it to work.
We need social programs like social housing, universal healthcare, free education, and universal food stamps. We need to actually use the abundance of resources we have to meet our fundamental needs (shocker I know).
Crucially, no privacy is violated, but children are still protected. This not only protects children but also disarms any argument that we need to protect the children. It's great actually.