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(repost) - Let's limit children's use of social media and screens. - Great! Let's do it. - We need to identify who is 18+, so here's your digital ID for

by alecco 11mo ago

(repost) - Let's limit children's use of social media and screens. - Great! Let's do it. - We need to identify who is 18+, so here's your digital ID for everything. And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job. - WTF! - That "WTF" just cost you 100 social credits. UK, EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and next USA. It's amazing how coordinated it is. They are using dog-whistles like CSAM, immigration, crime, and now children's wellbeing.

jmathai 11mo ago
I don't have the solution. But it seems like a problem which needs to be addressed and regulation isn't a crazy place to look. As a parent, it feels like I'm constantly battling with Meta, Tiktok and Google over my childrens' development and we have very different goals.
- lapcat 11mo ago
  Why not just take away their phone?
  - phantasmish 11mo ago
    iPhones have excellent parental controls (by the abysmal standards of consumer software more broadly). You can just not allow insta and such, or set time limits on them per-day (30 minutes, say). I assume Android has something similar. You can set the Web to allowlist-only. Kids can send requests to bypass limits, sends the request right to your own Apple devices, easy to yay or nay it. It’s damn good. Phones are among the easiest devices to manage.
    - lapcat 11mo ago
      > iPhones have excellent parental controls If those work, sure, although kids tend to be pretty clever about getting around parental controls and are sometimes quite a bit more technically sophisticated than their parents.
      - phantasmish 11mo ago
        It ain’t the ‘90s and this ain’t Windows 95 with bypassable-by-accident OS account logins and half-assed website blocking made by the lowest bidder. Getting past app installation restrictions and time limits on iOS would be… challenging. It sucks as a parent because you get this from both ends: “parent better! (Putting in tons of work that our parents didn’t have to)” and also “lol what are you doing restricting kids on computers is impossible, give up you idiot”. (And on some platforms it is, for practical purposes, impossible—looking at you, Linux, not just because it’s a powerful open platform but because its permissions and capabilities system is decades behind the state-of-the-art and tools for sensibly managing any of that on a scale smaller than “fleet of servers” and in the context of user-session applications are nonexistent)
        lapcat 11mo ago
        > It sucks as a parent because you get this from both ends: “parent better! (Putting in tons of work that our parents didn’t have to)” and also “lol what are you doing restricting kids on computers is impossible, give up you idiot”. I didn't claim that it's impossible, merely that it's difficult sometimes, as you also implied ("putting in tons of work"). The advantage of physically consfiscating phones is that it's a low tech, brute force method available even to the least technically sophisticated parents.
        jmathai 11mo ago
        heh...see my comment above about bypassing screen time limits on ios by simply deleting and reinstalling the app.
        hellojesus 11mo ago
        To that extent can't kids just pop in a live USB and get a totally ephemeral and open os? I'd push the implementation to the router and force root certs on devices and have all clients run through your proxy or drop the packets. That way even live usbs will not get network access. Have some separate, hugely locked down network for kids' friends. Maybe put a separate honeypot network up with some iot devices on it with wifi and a weak password, and let the kids have some freedom once they figure out how to deauth and grab the bash upon reconnections. Idk. I'm some years away from this problem myself,but someone recommended this in another thread recently. https://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/SslBump https://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/SslBump
    - jmathai 11mo ago
      Found out last year that simply deleting an app and reinstalling it will reset time limits.
      - phantasmish 11mo ago
        App deletion and installation were among the first things I disabled :-)
  - jmathai 11mo ago
    I'm not sure if you're asking as a parent or an observer of parents. But it's not such a clear option given how entrenched we've made devices into children's lives. My son's cross country team communicates via GroupMe and it's very difficult for him to stay up-to-date with the web version from a laptop. My daughter's friend group communicates via snapchat. This doesn't mean parents have to allow everything. My daughter doesn't have Snapchat, for example. But there are definite tradeoffs like her being left out of many conversations and slowly getting excluded from friend groups as a result. It's too much unnecessary complexity added to parenting and the motivation being profit by mega corps is why I suggest regulation is a valid place to start looking.
    - lapcat 11mo ago
      > I'm not sure if you're asking as a parent or an observer of parents. But it's not such a clear option given how entrenched we've made devices into children's lives. It doesn't have to be a 24 hour a day ban. A kid could be limited to an hour a day or phone use or something like that. > It's too much unnecessary complexity added to parenting and the motivation being profit by mega corps is why I suggest regulation is a valid place to start looking. The inevitable result would seem to be that all adults, parents or not, would be forced to present their identification online to use the internet. I think that's too much personal freedom to sacrifice, regardless of how noble the goal.
      - jmathai 11mo ago
        > It doesn't have to be a 24 hour a day ban. Limits help, for sure. But it's like setting limits for addictive products like "one cigarette a day". It's better than a pack a day but the impact addictive products have on kids don't stop once their limit is up. > I think that's too much personal freedom to sacrifice That's why I started by saying I don't have the solution. Regulation and fines for companies that target kids feels plausible. While not exactly the same, we curbed teen cigarette use by imposing marketing restrictions and issuing fines to tobacco companies (and drastically reduced adult smoking too for that matter). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_Un...
- phantasmish 11mo ago
  Lack of something like SSO and centrally-managed permissions for families is a huge pain in the ass. Minecraft is notably insane due to this. I don’t know how normies get their kids playing online with it (ours is locked down to just-with-friends, and we gatekeep the friend list), I thought it was hard as a techie. Cross-platform play (outside of X-Box, I suppose) requires creating and carefully-massaging permissions on two overlapping but unrelated systems, both the account on the console itself and a Microsoft account (and their UI for managing this is, in modern Microsoft fashion, entirely nutty). Then, if anything goes wrong, the error messages are careful never to tell you which account’s settings blocked an action, so you get to guess. Fun! (Getting “classic” Java Minecraft working, just with a local server, was even harder) Your options are to go all-in on one or two ecosystems; to take on just a fuckload of work getting it all set up nicely and maintaining that with a half-dozen accounts per kid or whatever; or to give up. Then schools send chromebooks home with less-restrictive settings than I’d use if I were managing it and no way for me to tighten those, and a kid stays up all night playing shovelware free Web games before we realize we need to account for those devices before bed time. Thanks for the extra work, assholes.
  - sethammons 11mo ago
    sso for the family :mindblown:. Tie this in with a real ID validation tool, and then integrating systems only know "is/is not allowed" and the parents can mind all the kid's stuff.
dilawar 11mo ago
Can't zero knowledge proof solve this problem? Submit a zkp that you are over 18 to the website that requires it. The proof need not be tied to the identity of the user. I personally don't think self-regulation works. It's harmful so the next best option is the government regulating it.
- mikkupikku 11mo ago
  Doesn't matter if they can, because that's not how any of the shot callers want it done.
  - lern_too_spel 11mo ago
    That is in fact how it is being done in the US and the EU.
- carry_bit 11mo ago
  Problem? That's the intended result.
- bootsmann 11mo ago
  This is how the eu standard for digital ID works already, the above post is uninformed fearmongering.
  - Lapsa 11mo ago
    reminder - you have been mind read. whole this privacy talk is ridiculous
    - aftbit 10mo ago
      tell me more fellow traveler - who has read my mind, and how?
tgv 11mo ago
It's bloody obvious how damaging social media, especially on mobile devices, is to everyone's mental state. Check out what teachers have to say about the attention span of the current generation pupils. But no, your access to whatever it is you're addicted to is more important. Anyway, the government can already take away your bank account. No need for them to introduce such a complex scheme.
- TitaRusell 11mo ago
  Pretty much every doctor agrees alcohol is bad for developing brains. But science doesn't always win against society.
  - pfyra 11mo ago
    Is there any place without an age limit for alcohol?
    - graemep 11mo ago
      In terms of private consumption, effectively so. The UK limit for consumption at home is five. I have no idea how even that can be enforced.
- riskable 11mo ago
  Yes, but damaging adults is OK. It's only children that must not be damaged.
  - barbazoo 11mo ago
    Adults are expected to think for themselves. Kids need help because they don’t have the experience yet.
    - epolanski 11mo ago
      If society and parents ban you from something and they do it themselves then the ban has virtually no effect.
boringg 11mo ago
Why are you lumping Canada into that group? Only UK and AUS are doing the digital ID.
- alecco 11mo ago
  https://www.biometricupdate.com/202508/canada-adopts-national-digital-identity-standard-to-advance-trust-interoperability https://www.biometricupdate.com/202508/canada-adopts-nationa... https://www.todayville.com/canada-moves-forward-with-digital-identification-for-federal-benefits-seekers/ https://www.todayville.com/canada-moves-forward-with-digital... https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/FINA/Brief/BR11976963/br-external/DigitalIDAndAuthenticationCouncilOfCanada-e.pdf https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/FINA/Brief/B... "Oct 7, 2022 — Recommendation 1: That the government drive economic growth by prioritizing and investing in the government's digital identity mandate."
  - boringg 11mo ago
    If your making the slippery slope argument sure I can agree there is a risk. However its saying digital validation for federal benefits - I mean given the amount of fraud in the US social security system of recent years it seems like having some kind of protection is important to not waste our tax payers benefit. And if you cross the border you are immediately in a digital system in the US. That said this isn't saying digital identity for websites similar to what AUS is proposing.
jack_tripper 11mo ago
> It's amazing how coordinated it is. It's not really "amazing" at all, when you consider that the working class in those countries has finally woken up to the fact that their biggest present day issues, like housing unaffordability and low purchasing power, have been caused by the intentional fiscal policies of their governments over the last 30+ years, instead of the usual boogeymen (Xi Jinping, Putin, Covid, immigrants, etc). And now after 20+ years of constantly vote hopping between left and right, hoping "this time it will be better than last time" but in practice it always ended up worse, the people are trying to hold them accountable for it, so the elite are switching tactics now that the ye olde reliable tactic of gaslighting the people doesn't work anymore. If the carrot doesn't work anymore, time to move over to using the stick to keep the peasants in line.
- barbazoo 11mo ago
  There’s no evidence about this being coordinated is there?
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    What?
    - barbazoo 11mo ago
      Coordinated
      - jack_tripper 11mo ago
        When you put all the points on a graph and they form a line, what more "evidence" do you need? Your request for evidence reminds me when the 3 telco operators in my country raised their prices simultaneously on the same day, and the nation's anti cartel watchdog said they found no evidence of price fixing lol Just because the system is corrupt, incompetent or ineffective at finding evidence, doesn't mean there isn't collusion going on.
Aunche 11mo ago
> And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job. When has this happened in the countries you listed?
- pjc50 11mo ago
  The Canada trucker COVID protests are the standard example.
  - azernik 11mo ago
    They did a bit more than "criticize the government".
  - DaSHacka 11mo ago
    Man, just imagine the pushback if Trump did something like that now. The word "facist" would be in the headlines for months. "Oh, but it was 'our team' so it's different." whatever
  - Aunche 11mo ago
    That has nothing to do with online identification. Do you believe that those operating a vehicle that can easily kill people shouldn't require registration to prevent this from happening again? Also, that a was few dozen truckers who were actively blocking major highways, and the banking ban lasted less than a week for most people. Several orders of magnitude more people get arbitrarily unbanked for less. I had a credit card and bank account permanently banned while traveling and they refused to give me an explanation.
retsibsi 11mo ago
> And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job. We could have a real conversation about tradeoffs (and maybe this one isn't worth it!) but not if you just assume/pretend the worst-case scenario is real. I'm Australian and I'll happily bet that N years from now I'll still be able to criticize the government without being debanked or sacked. If we do ever fall to authoritarianism, I doubt this will have been a crucial step; it's already easy for the government to deanonymize most posters if it wants to, and an evil future government that wanted to go further could probably just... do it, regardless of precedent.
- jajuuka 11mo ago
  Governments never give up power. They will only take more. So considerations on what power should be given over should be done carefully instead of having knee jerk reactions based on "think of the children".
  - retsibsi 11mo ago
    It's my impression that the shift from 'basically normal government' to 'authoritarian nightmare', when it happens, tends to happen quite abruptly rather than via the ratchet effect/frog-boiling. And there seem to be plenty of examples of democracies that have remained basically normal despite decades' worth of policies that libertarian-leaning observers would decry as the thin end of the wedge. I'm open to being convinced that the risk of a policy like this clearly outweighs its benefits, but I think I need a specific causal pathway and/or historical precedent rather than general arguments.
    - jajuuka 11mo ago
      The US is kind of an obvious example of this ratchet effect. The powers that have been given to the executive over the course of decades and consistent moving to the right for decades has led us to where we are now. Similar cases in Russia and China where more power is handed over to a centralized leadership role over time. I'm not a libertarian or follow the thin end of the wedge belief system. It's a simple observation that governments operate under the idea of growth of power. That is not to say an absence of government or reduction of government is good or better. But to recognize our role in maintain the social contract with the government. Abdicating that role entirely does not improve your life. The only benefit of this legislation is that VPN's will get a bump in revenue, the web becomes more unusable and critical information gets stored at third parties who become high value targets for hacking. Not to mention these data brokers can easily turn around and begin to monetize this data. I'm not a privacy nut by any measure, but this seems like the most obvious major hit to personal data privacy. Instead of addressing the problem that is being claimed to be resolved, it's just lining another corporations pockets who will sell your data. We've seen this story play out many many times already. but you think this time will be different? I don't think so.
everdrive 11mo ago
This is probably controversial, but this reason I would much rather things like social media and pornography be outright banned rather than age-gated.
- frm88 11mo ago
  That would have severe economical impact, so nobody dares to go there which is why all these salami tactic solutions are being thrown around. Personally, I think your suggestion has merit, since we can observe that not only children's mental health is severely impacted. Another advantage I see with this is that clear lines allow for clear enforcement that would then get a lot less expensive. I mean, the overabundance of malicious ads should also go into this pot. Another idea would be to put social media companies under strict rules and compel them to install human moderators to enforce them, think dang or tomhow. Edit: it works on HN (rule wise and moderation wise), so it could work on other platforms, too. Of course that would be expensive for the companies, but frankly, the companies are causing the current upset, so why not place the cost with the ones causing it instead of impacting everyone and even socialising the fallout like lawsuits.
- AngryData 11mo ago
  That may sound nice offhand but blanket bans like that on things that have widespread appeal have never been helpful because eventually you gotta start arresting people, and likely a lot of people, in which case the solution ends up far more harmful than the problem.
barbazoo 11mo ago
Children’s welbeeing being a dog whistle? You should go out and talk to real parents and teachers in the real world.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
biophysboy 11mo ago
This is a speculative, intuitive reflex meant to derail an argument.
insane_dreamer 11mo ago
Meh, the gov can do this already. The effect of social media on our kids is a bigger evil at this point.
mvdtnz 11mo ago
Sorry what do you think is happening in New Zealand?
CamperBob2 11mo ago
Also Rahm Emanuel: "Let's take Second Amendment rights away from everybody on the no-fly list." [1,2] 1: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/rahm-emanuel-hey-lets-strip-gun-owners-of-due-process-rights/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/rahm-emanuel-hey-lets... 2: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/816qf/rahm_emanuel_says_if_you_are_on_no_fly_list_you/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/816qf/rahm_eman...
- pjc50 11mo ago
  The harm from guns is far, far clearer, and they are far less essential or relevant to daily life, especially for young adults. Also the US is basically the only country which sees lethality as a "right".
  - CamperBob2 11mo ago
    The harm from unaccountable governments who treat their constitutions like suggestions is far greater still, though. It's not about the guns, it's about the list. If you're an American who's not outraged by Emanuel's statement -- on guns or on social media for that matter -- it's because you feel privilege that you may not actually possess. On that subject, it's certainly a strange time to argue for government's role as the holder of a monopoly on the tools of violence, isn't it? The human consequences of this misguided philosophy ran well into eight figures in the 20th century alone. In any case... say what you will about the US, we won't shoot you at the border for trying to leave.
    - ben_w 11mo ago
      > On that subject, it's certainly a strange time to argue for government's role as the holder of a monopoly on the tools of violence, isn't it? The human consequences of this misguided philosophy ran well into eight figures in the 20th century alone. Sounds like you think the argument people are making is that it ought to have the monopoly? I think the argument is that whoever doesn't have that monopoly, can't call themselves a government… at least not for very long. Reason being, not having a monopoly necessarily requires someone else is doing violence and cannot be stopped by the so-called government, which means the so-called government is weak and at risk of being taken over, perhaps by the people doing the violence, perhaps by a outside "peacekeeping" force.
someNameIG 11mo ago
An an Australian, the social media ban legislation specifically requires than non-ID methods be available (it specifically says that also included digital ID).
duxup 11mo ago
Also in the meantime kids find their way to other sites / work around and they claim to be adults so now ... NO PROTECTIONS for the kids ... Completely the opposite of what you would hope.
stephenr 11mo ago
I would suggest that anyone who says modern social media isn't damaging to people in general, but particularly young people, either (a) has never used it; or (b) is being deliberately disingenuous. From that point I would view social media essentially like alcohol. As an adult you can choose to (ab)use it if you wish, but it's arguably the government's responsibility to protect children at large from social dangers like this. It's absolutely a thing that people are asked to prove their age to buy alcohol, or even to enter a licensed venue that serves alcohol. I don't think I've ever heard anyone except underage teenagers complain about the invasion of privacy to hand over your ID for beer/etc. Does the implementation around safe proof of age need work? Probably. Does that mean the whole thing is a not-so-subtle attempt to fire you for swearing? I don't fucking think so mate. People are already fired for saying stupid shit on social media, they're already debanked for being out-and-proud White Supremacists. Given the current political situation in the USA and how it got there, if you have any illusions of a continuing democracy, you should be champing at the bit for anything which reduces social media use.
- graemep 11mo ago
  > It's absolutely a thing that people are asked to prove their age to buy alcohol, or even to enter a licensed venue that serves alcohol. I don't think I've ever heard anyone except underage teenagers complain about the invasion of privacy to hand over your ID for beer/etc. If they reported verifying my ID to the government every time I bought a drink I would complain about invasion of privacy.
ForHackernews 11mo ago
We already ban children under 13. I think that's a good thing and the age limit should be 16 or 17. The rest of your comment is a non sequitur.
- zarzavat 11mo ago
  It's a good thing that children under the age of 12 don't know how to use checkboxes!
  - ForHackernews 11mo ago
    Luckily the Australian law is written such that tech companies can't get away with a checkbox.
rayiner 11mo ago
Better to just heavily tax social media like we tax other harmful things like cigarettes. Heavily tax advertising while we're at it, too.
- sethammons 11mo ago
  can you describe how this tax would work?
  - rayiner 11mo ago
    Collect the tax on social media companies per monthly active user.
atonse 11mo ago
We like to pretend that this is something new. Before free porn on the internet, what did people do? - They bought porn from stores (no anonymity) - They rented porn from hotel rooms - They paid for it on pay per view channels (how many kids growing up in the 90s remember watching the fuzzy scrambled Spice channel and trying to make out a boob somewhere in the garbled picture?) - They went to movie theaters for porn! I've never actually seen this but have read about it. NONE of those actions are anonymous. They're even documented and associated with real identities. If you're telling me that somehow adding some kind of verifiable age gates to things like porn (and social media) will lead to authoritarianism, we don't have to theorize. We ran this experiment already. And nobody had issues with it, realistically. We're still running this experiment. If you try to watch an R rated movie in a theater, they will likely ask you for ID if you're clearly under 17. They used to do that to me growing up. The current state of "Kids can access all this without any protection at any time" is abnormal. It's NOT normal. We can all have a reasonable conversation here without always bringing in the authoritarianism boogeyman.
- jolmg 11mo ago
  A store that asks for ID before letting someone buy a porn mag will have an employee check with their own eyes and then return the ID. By the time the person is out the door, any record of who they were is basically gone. The record is just in the fading short-term memory of the employee. If they turned right around that instant and went back into the building, they're basically as anonymous as they were the first time. If they interrogated everyone affiliated with the store, including the owner, nobody would know the home address of the person even though it was on the ID. The anonymity is even larger if you let a few days pass. Nobody will ever remember you for having bought that magazine or for having ever entered that store for that matter. They'll likely be different employees. With online services, the identity would be tied to your account forever. A government would have the ability to review every passing comment you've made in your entire lifetime and know exactly who you are, who your family is, where you live, where you work, what your bank accounts are, etc.
  - Terr_ 11mo ago
    Right, the practical privacy outcomes are dramatically different when the digital panopticon is up and running. The expectation of privacy from random unaffiliated humans seeing me pass on the sidewalk is very different from being stalked by a drone swarm that follows me and whatever vehicle I'm in.
ben_w 11mo ago
> And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job. The USA seems to be doing the "if you ever criticize the government [there will be consequences]" part before the rest of them? > It's amazing how coordinated it is. It looks coordinated to you? Then why is the USA threatening tariffs etc. for the rest of us doing these things, even when they're going further?
sschueller 11mo ago
Can we stop pretending Google and Apple don't already know exactly (probably down to the month) how old a phone user is? Digital ID is not required...

by alecco 11mo ago

jmathai 11mo ago

I don't have the solution. But it seems like a problem which needs to be addressed and regulation isn't a crazy place to look. As a parent, it feels like I'm constantly battling with Meta, Tiktok and Google over my childrens' development and we have very different goals.

lapcat 11mo ago
Why not just take away their phone?
- phantasmish 11mo ago
  iPhones have excellent parental controls (by the abysmal standards of consumer software more broadly). You can just not allow insta and such, or set time limits on them per-day (30 minutes, say). I assume Android has something similar. You can set the Web to allowlist-only. Kids can send requests to bypass limits, sends the request right to your own Apple devices, easy to yay or nay it. It’s damn good. Phones are among the easiest devices to manage.
  - lapcat 11mo ago
    > iPhones have excellent parental controls If those work, sure, although kids tend to be pretty clever about getting around parental controls and are sometimes quite a bit more technically sophisticated than their parents.
    - phantasmish 11mo ago
      It ain’t the ‘90s and this ain’t Windows 95 with bypassable-by-accident OS account logins and half-assed website blocking made by the lowest bidder. Getting past app installation restrictions and time limits on iOS would be… challenging. It sucks as a parent because you get this from both ends: “parent better! (Putting in tons of work that our parents didn’t have to)” and also “lol what are you doing restricting kids on computers is impossible, give up you idiot”. (And on some platforms it is, for practical purposes, impossible—looking at you, Linux, not just because it’s a powerful open platform but because its permissions and capabilities system is decades behind the state-of-the-art and tools for sensibly managing any of that on a scale smaller than “fleet of servers” and in the context of user-session applications are nonexistent)
      - lapcat 11mo ago
        > It sucks as a parent because you get this from both ends: “parent better! (Putting in tons of work that our parents didn’t have to)” and also “lol what are you doing restricting kids on computers is impossible, give up you idiot”. I didn't claim that it's impossible, merely that it's difficult sometimes, as you also implied ("putting in tons of work"). The advantage of physically consfiscating phones is that it's a low tech, brute force method available even to the least technically sophisticated parents.
        jmathai 11mo ago
        heh...see my comment above about bypassing screen time limits on ios by simply deleting and reinstalling the app.
      - hellojesus 11mo ago
        To that extent can't kids just pop in a live USB and get a totally ephemeral and open os? I'd push the implementation to the router and force root certs on devices and have all clients run through your proxy or drop the packets. That way even live usbs will not get network access. Have some separate, hugely locked down network for kids' friends. Maybe put a separate honeypot network up with some iot devices on it with wifi and a weak password, and let the kids have some freedom once they figure out how to deauth and grab the bash upon reconnections. Idk. I'm some years away from this problem myself,but someone recommended this in another thread recently. https://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/SslBump https://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/SslBump
  - jmathai 11mo ago
    Found out last year that simply deleting an app and reinstalling it will reset time limits.
    - phantasmish 11mo ago
      App deletion and installation were among the first things I disabled :-)
- jmathai 11mo ago
  I'm not sure if you're asking as a parent or an observer of parents. But it's not such a clear option given how entrenched we've made devices into children's lives. My son's cross country team communicates via GroupMe and it's very difficult for him to stay up-to-date with the web version from a laptop. My daughter's friend group communicates via snapchat. This doesn't mean parents have to allow everything. My daughter doesn't have Snapchat, for example. But there are definite tradeoffs like her being left out of many conversations and slowly getting excluded from friend groups as a result. It's too much unnecessary complexity added to parenting and the motivation being profit by mega corps is why I suggest regulation is a valid place to start looking.
  - lapcat 11mo ago
    > I'm not sure if you're asking as a parent or an observer of parents. But it's not such a clear option given how entrenched we've made devices into children's lives. It doesn't have to be a 24 hour a day ban. A kid could be limited to an hour a day or phone use or something like that. > It's too much unnecessary complexity added to parenting and the motivation being profit by mega corps is why I suggest regulation is a valid place to start looking. The inevitable result would seem to be that all adults, parents or not, would be forced to present their identification online to use the internet. I think that's too much personal freedom to sacrifice, regardless of how noble the goal.
    - jmathai 11mo ago
      > It doesn't have to be a 24 hour a day ban. Limits help, for sure. But it's like setting limits for addictive products like "one cigarette a day". It's better than a pack a day but the impact addictive products have on kids don't stop once their limit is up. > I think that's too much personal freedom to sacrifice That's why I started by saying I don't have the solution. Regulation and fines for companies that target kids feels plausible. While not exactly the same, we curbed teen cigarette use by imposing marketing restrictions and issuing fines to tobacco companies (and drastically reduced adult smoking too for that matter). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_smoking_bans_in_the_Un...
phantasmish 11mo ago
Lack of something like SSO and centrally-managed permissions for families is a huge pain in the ass. Minecraft is notably insane due to this. I don’t know how normies get their kids playing online with it (ours is locked down to just-with-friends, and we gatekeep the friend list), I thought it was hard as a techie. Cross-platform play (outside of X-Box, I suppose) requires creating and carefully-massaging permissions on two overlapping but unrelated systems, both the account on the console itself and a Microsoft account (and their UI for managing this is, in modern Microsoft fashion, entirely nutty). Then, if anything goes wrong, the error messages are careful never to tell you which account’s settings blocked an action, so you get to guess. Fun! (Getting “classic” Java Minecraft working, just with a local server, was even harder) Your options are to go all-in on one or two ecosystems; to take on just a fuckload of work getting it all set up nicely and maintaining that with a half-dozen accounts per kid or whatever; or to give up. Then schools send chromebooks home with less-restrictive settings than I’d use if I were managing it and no way for me to tighten those, and a kid stays up all night playing shovelware free Web games before we realize we need to account for those devices before bed time. Thanks for the extra work, assholes.
- sethammons 11mo ago
  sso for the family :mindblown:. Tie this in with a real ID validation tool, and then integrating systems only know "is/is not allowed" and the parents can mind all the kid's stuff.

dilawar 11mo ago

Can't zero knowledge proof solve this problem? Submit a zkp that you are over 18 to the website that requires it. The proof need not be tied to the identity of the user. I personally don't think self-regulation works. It's harmful so the next best option is the government regulating it.

mikkupikku 11mo ago
Doesn't matter if they can, because that's not how any of the shot callers want it done.
- lern_too_spel 11mo ago
  That is in fact how it is being done in the US and the EU.
carry_bit 11mo ago
Problem? That's the intended result.
bootsmann 11mo ago
This is how the eu standard for digital ID works already, the above post is uninformed fearmongering.
- Lapsa 11mo ago
  reminder - you have been mind read. whole this privacy talk is ridiculous
  - aftbit 10mo ago
    tell me more fellow traveler - who has read my mind, and how?

tgv 11mo ago

It's bloody obvious how damaging social media, especially on mobile devices, is to everyone's mental state. Check out what teachers have to say about the attention span of the current generation pupils. But no, your access to whatever it is you're addicted to is more important. Anyway, the government can already take away your bank account. No need for them to introduce such a complex scheme.

TitaRusell 11mo ago
Pretty much every doctor agrees alcohol is bad for developing brains. But science doesn't always win against society.
- pfyra 11mo ago
  Is there any place without an age limit for alcohol?
  - graemep 11mo ago
    In terms of private consumption, effectively so. The UK limit for consumption at home is five. I have no idea how even that can be enforced.
riskable 11mo ago
Yes, but damaging adults is OK. It's only children that must not be damaged.
- barbazoo 11mo ago
  Adults are expected to think for themselves. Kids need help because they don’t have the experience yet.
  - epolanski 11mo ago
    If society and parents ban you from something and they do it themselves then the ban has virtually no effect.

boringg 11mo ago

Why are you lumping Canada into that group? Only UK and AUS are doing the digital ID.

alecco 11mo ago
https://www.biometricupdate.com/202508/canada-adopts-national-digital-identity-standard-to-advance-trust-interoperability https://www.biometricupdate.com/202508/canada-adopts-nationa... https://www.todayville.com/canada-moves-forward-with-digital-identification-for-federal-benefits-seekers/ https://www.todayville.com/canada-moves-forward-with-digital... https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/FINA/Brief/BR11976963/br-external/DigitalIDAndAuthenticationCouncilOfCanada-e.pdf https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/FINA/Brief/B... "Oct 7, 2022 — Recommendation 1: That the government drive economic growth by prioritizing and investing in the government's digital identity mandate."
- boringg 11mo ago
  If your making the slippery slope argument sure I can agree there is a risk. However its saying digital validation for federal benefits - I mean given the amount of fraud in the US social security system of recent years it seems like having some kind of protection is important to not waste our tax payers benefit. And if you cross the border you are immediately in a digital system in the US. That said this isn't saying digital identity for websites similar to what AUS is proposing.

jack_tripper 11mo ago

> It's amazing how coordinated it is. It's not really "amazing" at all, when you consider that the working class in those countries has finally woken up to the fact that their biggest present day issues, like housing unaffordability and low purchasing power, have been caused by the intentional fiscal policies of their governments over the last 30+ years, instead of the usual boogeymen (Xi Jinping, Putin, Covid, immigrants, etc). And now after 20+ years of constantly vote hopping between left and right, hoping "this time it will be better than last time" but in practice it always ended up worse, the people are trying to hold them accountable for it, so the elite are switching tactics now that the ye olde reliable tactic of gaslighting the people doesn't work anymore. If the carrot doesn't work anymore, time to move over to using the stick to keep the peasants in line.

barbazoo 11mo ago
There’s no evidence about this being coordinated is there?
- jack_tripper 11mo ago
  What?
  - barbazoo 11mo ago
    Coordinated
    - jack_tripper 11mo ago
      When you put all the points on a graph and they form a line, what more "evidence" do you need? Your request for evidence reminds me when the 3 telco operators in my country raised their prices simultaneously on the same day, and the nation's anti cartel watchdog said they found no evidence of price fixing lol Just because the system is corrupt, incompetent or ineffective at finding evidence, doesn't mean there isn't collusion going on.

Aunche 11mo ago

> And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job. When has this happened in the countries you listed?

pjc50 11mo ago
The Canada trucker COVID protests are the standard example.
- azernik 11mo ago
  They did a bit more than "criticize the government".
- DaSHacka 11mo ago
  Man, just imagine the pushback if Trump did something like that now. The word "facist" would be in the headlines for months. "Oh, but it was 'our team' so it's different." whatever
- Aunche 11mo ago
  That has nothing to do with online identification. Do you believe that those operating a vehicle that can easily kill people shouldn't require registration to prevent this from happening again? Also, that a was few dozen truckers who were actively blocking major highways, and the banking ban lasted less than a week for most people. Several orders of magnitude more people get arbitrarily unbanked for less. I had a credit card and bank account permanently banned while traveling and they refused to give me an explanation.

retsibsi 11mo ago

> And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job. We could have a real conversation about tradeoffs (and maybe this one isn't worth it!) but not if you just assume/pretend the worst-case scenario is real. I'm Australian and I'll happily bet that N years from now I'll still be able to criticize the government without being debanked or sacked. If we do ever fall to authoritarianism, I doubt this will have been a crucial step; it's already easy for the government to deanonymize most posters if it wants to, and an evil future government that wanted to go further could probably just... do it, regardless of precedent.

jajuuka 11mo ago
Governments never give up power. They will only take more. So considerations on what power should be given over should be done carefully instead of having knee jerk reactions based on "think of the children".
- retsibsi 11mo ago
  It's my impression that the shift from 'basically normal government' to 'authoritarian nightmare', when it happens, tends to happen quite abruptly rather than via the ratchet effect/frog-boiling. And there seem to be plenty of examples of democracies that have remained basically normal despite decades' worth of policies that libertarian-leaning observers would decry as the thin end of the wedge. I'm open to being convinced that the risk of a policy like this clearly outweighs its benefits, but I think I need a specific causal pathway and/or historical precedent rather than general arguments.
  - jajuuka 11mo ago
    The US is kind of an obvious example of this ratchet effect. The powers that have been given to the executive over the course of decades and consistent moving to the right for decades has led us to where we are now. Similar cases in Russia and China where more power is handed over to a centralized leadership role over time. I'm not a libertarian or follow the thin end of the wedge belief system. It's a simple observation that governments operate under the idea of growth of power. That is not to say an absence of government or reduction of government is good or better. But to recognize our role in maintain the social contract with the government. Abdicating that role entirely does not improve your life. The only benefit of this legislation is that VPN's will get a bump in revenue, the web becomes more unusable and critical information gets stored at third parties who become high value targets for hacking. Not to mention these data brokers can easily turn around and begin to monetize this data. I'm not a privacy nut by any measure, but this seems like the most obvious major hit to personal data privacy. Instead of addressing the problem that is being claimed to be resolved, it's just lining another corporations pockets who will sell your data. We've seen this story play out many many times already. but you think this time will be different? I don't think so.

everdrive 11mo ago

This is probably controversial, but this reason I would much rather things like social media and pornography be outright banned rather than age-gated.

frm88 11mo ago
That would have severe economical impact, so nobody dares to go there which is why all these salami tactic solutions are being thrown around. Personally, I think your suggestion has merit, since we can observe that not only children's mental health is severely impacted. Another advantage I see with this is that clear lines allow for clear enforcement that would then get a lot less expensive. I mean, the overabundance of malicious ads should also go into this pot. Another idea would be to put social media companies under strict rules and compel them to install human moderators to enforce them, think dang or tomhow. Edit: it works on HN (rule wise and moderation wise), so it could work on other platforms, too. Of course that would be expensive for the companies, but frankly, the companies are causing the current upset, so why not place the cost with the ones causing it instead of impacting everyone and even socialising the fallout like lawsuits.
AngryData 11mo ago
That may sound nice offhand but blanket bans like that on things that have widespread appeal have never been helpful because eventually you gotta start arresting people, and likely a lot of people, in which case the solution ends up far more harmful than the problem.

barbazoo 11mo ago

Children’s welbeeing being a dog whistle? You should go out and talk to real parents and teachers in the real world.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]

biophysboy 11mo ago

This is a speculative, intuitive reflex meant to derail an argument.

insane_dreamer 11mo ago

Meh, the gov can do this already. The effect of social media on our kids is a bigger evil at this point.

mvdtnz 11mo ago

Sorry what do you think is happening in New Zealand?

CamperBob2 11mo ago

Also Rahm Emanuel: "Let's take Second Amendment rights away from everybody on the no-fly list." [1,2] 1: https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/rahm-emanuel-hey-lets-strip-gun-owners-of-due-process-rights/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/rahm-emanuel-hey-lets... 2: https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/816qf/rahm_emanuel_says_if_you_are_on_no_fly_list_you/ https://old.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/816qf/rahm_eman...

pjc50 11mo ago
The harm from guns is far, far clearer, and they are far less essential or relevant to daily life, especially for young adults. Also the US is basically the only country which sees lethality as a "right".
- CamperBob2 11mo ago
  The harm from unaccountable governments who treat their constitutions like suggestions is far greater still, though. It's not about the guns, it's about the list. If you're an American who's not outraged by Emanuel's statement -- on guns or on social media for that matter -- it's because you feel privilege that you may not actually possess. On that subject, it's certainly a strange time to argue for government's role as the holder of a monopoly on the tools of violence, isn't it? The human consequences of this misguided philosophy ran well into eight figures in the 20th century alone. In any case... say what you will about the US, we won't shoot you at the border for trying to leave.
  - ben_w 11mo ago
    > On that subject, it's certainly a strange time to argue for government's role as the holder of a monopoly on the tools of violence, isn't it? The human consequences of this misguided philosophy ran well into eight figures in the 20th century alone. Sounds like you think the argument people are making is that it ought to have the monopoly? I think the argument is that whoever doesn't have that monopoly, can't call themselves a government… at least not for very long. Reason being, not having a monopoly necessarily requires someone else is doing violence and cannot be stopped by the so-called government, which means the so-called government is weak and at risk of being taken over, perhaps by the people doing the violence, perhaps by a outside "peacekeeping" force.

someNameIG 11mo ago

An an Australian, the social media ban legislation specifically requires than non-ID methods be available (it specifically says that also included digital ID).

duxup 11mo ago

Also in the meantime kids find their way to other sites / work around and they claim to be adults so now ... NO PROTECTIONS for the kids ... Completely the opposite of what you would hope.

stephenr 11mo ago

I would suggest that anyone who says modern social media isn't damaging to people in general, but particularly young people, either (a) has never used it; or (b) is being deliberately disingenuous. From that point I would view social media essentially like alcohol. As an adult you can choose to (ab)use it if you wish, but it's arguably the government's responsibility to protect children at large from social dangers like this. It's absolutely a thing that people are asked to prove their age to buy alcohol, or even to enter a licensed venue that serves alcohol. I don't think I've ever heard anyone except underage teenagers complain about the invasion of privacy to hand over your ID for beer/etc. Does the implementation around safe proof of age need work? Probably. Does that mean the whole thing is a not-so-subtle attempt to fire you for swearing? I don't fucking think so mate. People are already fired for saying stupid shit on social media, they're already debanked for being out-and-proud White Supremacists. Given the current political situation in the USA and how it got there, if you have any illusions of a continuing democracy, you should be champing at the bit for anything which reduces social media use.

graemep 11mo ago
> It's absolutely a thing that people are asked to prove their age to buy alcohol, or even to enter a licensed venue that serves alcohol. I don't think I've ever heard anyone except underage teenagers complain about the invasion of privacy to hand over your ID for beer/etc. If they reported verifying my ID to the government every time I bought a drink I would complain about invasion of privacy.

ForHackernews 11mo ago

We already ban children under 13. I think that's a good thing and the age limit should be 16 or 17. The rest of your comment is a non sequitur.

zarzavat 11mo ago
It's a good thing that children under the age of 12 don't know how to use checkboxes!
- ForHackernews 11mo ago
  Luckily the Australian law is written such that tech companies can't get away with a checkbox.

rayiner 11mo ago

Better to just heavily tax social media like we tax other harmful things like cigarettes. Heavily tax advertising while we're at it, too.

sethammons 11mo ago
can you describe how this tax would work?
- rayiner 11mo ago
  Collect the tax on social media companies per monthly active user.

atonse 11mo ago

We like to pretend that this is something new. Before free porn on the internet, what did people do? - They bought porn from stores (no anonymity) - They rented porn from hotel rooms - They paid for it on pay per view channels (how many kids growing up in the 90s remember watching the fuzzy scrambled Spice channel and trying to make out a boob somewhere in the garbled picture?) - They went to movie theaters for porn! I've never actually seen this but have read about it. NONE of those actions are anonymous. They're even documented and associated with real identities. If you're telling me that somehow adding some kind of verifiable age gates to things like porn (and social media) will lead to authoritarianism, we don't have to theorize. We ran this experiment already. And nobody had issues with it, realistically. We're still running this experiment. If you try to watch an R rated movie in a theater, they will likely ask you for ID if you're clearly under 17. They used to do that to me growing up. The current state of "Kids can access all this without any protection at any time" is abnormal. It's NOT normal. We can all have a reasonable conversation here without always bringing in the authoritarianism boogeyman.

jolmg 11mo ago
A store that asks for ID before letting someone buy a porn mag will have an employee check with their own eyes and then return the ID. By the time the person is out the door, any record of who they were is basically gone. The record is just in the fading short-term memory of the employee. If they turned right around that instant and went back into the building, they're basically as anonymous as they were the first time. If they interrogated everyone affiliated with the store, including the owner, nobody would know the home address of the person even though it was on the ID. The anonymity is even larger if you let a few days pass. Nobody will ever remember you for having bought that magazine or for having ever entered that store for that matter. They'll likely be different employees. With online services, the identity would be tied to your account forever. A government would have the ability to review every passing comment you've made in your entire lifetime and know exactly who you are, who your family is, where you live, where you work, what your bank accounts are, etc.
- Terr_ 11mo ago
  Right, the practical privacy outcomes are dramatically different when the digital panopticon is up and running. The expectation of privacy from random unaffiliated humans seeing me pass on the sidewalk is very different from being stalked by a drone swarm that follows me and whatever vehicle I'm in.

ben_w 11mo ago

> And, from now on, if you ever criticize the government you will lose your bank account and your job. The USA seems to be doing the "if you ever criticize the government [there will be consequences]" part before the rest of them? > It's amazing how coordinated it is. It looks coordinated to you? Then why is the USA threatening tariffs etc. for the rest of us doing these things, even when they're going further?

sschueller 11mo ago

Can we stop pretending Google and Apple don't already know exactly (probably down to the month) how old a phone user is? Digital ID is not required...