5 ms·

IMHO the main point of these schemes is to make it hard for adults to use social media somewhat-anonyously. So the government can more easily identify those pos

IMHO the main point of these schemes is to make it hard for adults to use social media somewhat-anonyously. So the government can more easily identify those posting 'prohibited speech'. If there was a legitimate drive to protect kids from the worst of the Internet, there'd have been more of a crackdown on porn, gore, etc long before social media became such a big problem. And smartphones would have never been allowed in schools.

bamboozled 9mo ago
What major revolutions or important political shifts have occurred from people anonymously shitposting on Reddit or Facebook ?
- bluescrn 9mo ago
  The online right talk about 'the great meme war' that led to the 2016 election of Trump. Seems pretty clear that social media is radicalising people at both ends of the political spectrum, and it's not surprising that governments would want to restrict/police it by trying to criminalise 'hate'/'misinformation' and taking away the shield of anonymity.
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Donald Trump?
- JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
  None. Almost by definition, the folks who satisfy themselves waxing online drive complacency away from real action. That doesn’t, however, mean they aren’t self-importantly organized to later support an organized movement.
  - bluescrn 9mo ago
    Do you think the current anti-ICE movement would have happened without social media? Or Jan 6th, or all the Palestine protests, or even the election of Trump? The US has it's first amendment protections, but other countries seem rather more willing to crack down on online speech.
    - dmurray 9mo ago
      Why not? The Vietnam War drew plenty of organised protesters. The details would be different, but big popular actions can still be coordinated through traditional media and word of mouth. Lack of social media didn't prevent the French Revolution.
    - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
      > Do you think the current anti-ICE movement would have happened without social media? Yes. There is a reason Minnesota is effectively resisting in a way Los Angeles failed to. Once you have a movement, social media mobilizes. But if you’re building a movement, you need footwork and commitment. Not profiteers turning your cause into clicks. > Or Jan 6th, or all the Palestine protests Case in point. Support for each of their underlying causes dipped with notoriety around their online activity. If you want to drain a movement of effective energy, distract it online from its streets.
- thijson 9mo ago
  I know of one crowd sourced witch hunt on reddit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi A lot of the cancel culture is also crowd sourced on platforms like these.
digiown 9mo ago
You already basically can't use most mainstream platforms anonymously. Try registering a Facebook without a phone number (you need to give a passport to get one in most of Europe).
- direwolf20 9mo ago
  Do children have no phone numbers or do they use their parent's?
  - digiown 9mo ago
    You need a passport associated with it, you don't necessarily need to be an adult I think. Or the parent's is fine. Either way you will have to try quite hard to get a FB account not associated with a real life identity. And then they'd shadowban you.
    - bluescrn 9mo ago
      In the UK, pay-as-you-go SIMs are widely available. Not sure how much information you need to give to activate+use one these days, though.
      - MonkeyClub 9mo ago
        Up to a couple years ago you could get them included in a £10 Nokia in Tesco and pay with cash, no ID required.
- haght 9mo ago
  in my country you don't have to give a phone number to register a social media website when i was a kid, i always laughed at my internet friends from a neighbouring country, because they had to give their id to get one, which is very intrusive from the government turns out i was the odd one, as most of the world required an id from you
athrowaway3z 9mo ago
I'm very critical of all the schemes proposed but this is just a fundamental misconception on your part. > If there was a legitimate drive to protect kids from the worst of the Internet As with any disease, the impact heavily depends on virality. The worst the internet has to offer to children, is not the gore or porn for the few that look for it (usually individually). The worst it does to children is the attention algorithm that captures practically everybody.
- pfdietz 9mo ago
  "But think of the children" has always been the go-to excuse for tossing freedom out the window.
  - Noaidi 9mo ago
    So in this case, do we just stop thinking about the children in totality?
    - slavik81 9mo ago
      If manipulative algorithm are the problem, then perhaps we should consider regulations that would protect everyone.
      - XorNot 9mo ago
        Exactly. The problem is no one wants to address that maybe some of these business models just need to go extinct. Like maybe ad supported infinite feeds can't be done in a socially responsible way and just need to be banned. If that takes down or substantially limits certain web service sizes...so be it.
    - rudhdb773b 9mo ago
      In the context of government legislation on personal behavior, yes. Parents should be the ones setting up rules for their children.
  - 9mo ago
riffraff 9mo ago
90% of the people that spout racism, conspiracy theories, threaten people, etc.. on social networks use their real name and login with their phone number, there's no need to ask the social networks to get ID cards, if you are the government.
- phtrivier 9mo ago
  I really doubt bots are using legitimate IDs. The target for those age verification schemes (beyond actually preventing the kids' brains from being rotten by American ad supported skinner boxes) is probably to make schemes like IRA [1] just slightly more complicated. (I said "more complicated", I did not say "impossible" - I very much know that bot factories will find their ways around any kind of verification ; part of being on the defensive side of a conflict is about not giving up.) [1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/airbus_sovereign_cloud/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/airbus_sovereign_clou...
  - riffraff 9mo ago
    I think GP was concerned with forbidden speech more than bots, so solutions differ there.
hn_throwaway_99 9mo ago
> If there was a legitimate drive to protect kids from the worst of the Internet, there'd have been more of a crackdown on porn, gore, etc long before social media became such a big problem. And smartphones would have never been allowed in schools. Where are you from, because all of these things have/are being tried for a long time in the US (and, I'd note, received significant pushback from civil liberty advocates). Heck, TFA itself talks about how this social media ban is coming after a ban on phones in schools.
xixixao 9mo ago
Your argument hinges on the assumption that porn and gore etc. have worse impact on kids. I don’t think there’s a concensus on that. One might argue that porn and gore could have been found in print before the internet, but that social media have a more novel impact. I personally like the theory that most kids problems are actually attributable to family issues. That kids in solid family environment/upbringing will not be “destroyed” by computer games, porn, gore (2 girls 1 cup anyone?), or social media. But that’s also just a theory.
- mc32 9mo ago
  If things in the internet didn’t impact kids or people then people wouldn’t get up in arms about non-PC content, but we know many different kinds of people only want thrown own kind of content out there and would prefer to limit or ban ideas they disagree with.
- okr 9mo ago
  I do not think it is about seeing certain things, that exist in the adult world. That is surely a side effect that one wants, though, protecting minors from a world that they can not comprehend. I think it is about algorithms targeting you all the time for hours in favour of a company. We see the effects every day. No attention span. Instant gratification. The next kick.
Gigachad 9mo ago
Gore already has been cracked down on. All the old gore sites like Live leak have shut down, Reddit has removed all the related subreddits, and governments quickly scrub the internet of videos like the New Zealand shooting.
palata 9mo ago
> IMHO the main point of these schemes is to make it hard for adults to use social media somewhat-anonyously. So the government can more easily identify those posting 'prohibited speech'. We are talking about Finland here, right?

bamboozled 9mo ago

What major revolutions or important political shifts have occurred from people anonymously shitposting on Reddit or Facebook ?

bluescrn 9mo ago
The online right talk about 'the great meme war' that led to the 2016 election of Trump. Seems pretty clear that social media is radicalising people at both ends of the political spectrum, and it's not surprising that governments would want to restrict/police it by trying to criminalise 'hate'/'misinformation' and taking away the shield of anonymity.
direwolf20 9mo ago
Donald Trump?
JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
None. Almost by definition, the folks who satisfy themselves waxing online drive complacency away from real action. That doesn’t, however, mean they aren’t self-importantly organized to later support an organized movement.
- bluescrn 9mo ago
  Do you think the current anti-ICE movement would have happened without social media? Or Jan 6th, or all the Palestine protests, or even the election of Trump? The US has it's first amendment protections, but other countries seem rather more willing to crack down on online speech.
  - dmurray 9mo ago
    Why not? The Vietnam War drew plenty of organised protesters. The details would be different, but big popular actions can still be coordinated through traditional media and word of mouth. Lack of social media didn't prevent the French Revolution.
  - JumpCrisscross 9mo ago
    > Do you think the current anti-ICE movement would have happened without social media? Yes. There is a reason Minnesota is effectively resisting in a way Los Angeles failed to. Once you have a movement, social media mobilizes. But if you’re building a movement, you need footwork and commitment. Not profiteers turning your cause into clicks. > Or Jan 6th, or all the Palestine protests Case in point. Support for each of their underlying causes dipped with notoriety around their online activity. If you want to drain a movement of effective energy, distract it online from its streets.
thijson 9mo ago
I know of one crowd sourced witch hunt on reddit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi A lot of the cancel culture is also crowd sourced on platforms like these.

digiown 9mo ago

You already basically can't use most mainstream platforms anonymously. Try registering a Facebook without a phone number (you need to give a passport to get one in most of Europe).

direwolf20 9mo ago
Do children have no phone numbers or do they use their parent's?
- digiown 9mo ago
  You need a passport associated with it, you don't necessarily need to be an adult I think. Or the parent's is fine. Either way you will have to try quite hard to get a FB account not associated with a real life identity. And then they'd shadowban you.
  - bluescrn 9mo ago
    In the UK, pay-as-you-go SIMs are widely available. Not sure how much information you need to give to activate+use one these days, though.
    - MonkeyClub 9mo ago
      Up to a couple years ago you could get them included in a £10 Nokia in Tesco and pay with cash, no ID required.
haght 9mo ago
in my country you don't have to give a phone number to register a social media website when i was a kid, i always laughed at my internet friends from a neighbouring country, because they had to give their id to get one, which is very intrusive from the government turns out i was the odd one, as most of the world required an id from you

athrowaway3z 9mo ago

I'm very critical of all the schemes proposed but this is just a fundamental misconception on your part. > If there was a legitimate drive to protect kids from the worst of the Internet As with any disease, the impact heavily depends on virality. The worst the internet has to offer to children, is not the gore or porn for the few that look for it (usually individually). The worst it does to children is the attention algorithm that captures practically everybody.

pfdietz 9mo ago
"But think of the children" has always been the go-to excuse for tossing freedom out the window.
- Noaidi 9mo ago
  So in this case, do we just stop thinking about the children in totality?
  - slavik81 9mo ago
    If manipulative algorithm are the problem, then perhaps we should consider regulations that would protect everyone.
    - XorNot 9mo ago
      Exactly. The problem is no one wants to address that maybe some of these business models just need to go extinct. Like maybe ad supported infinite feeds can't be done in a socially responsible way and just need to be banned. If that takes down or substantially limits certain web service sizes...so be it.
  - rudhdb773b 9mo ago
    In the context of government legislation on personal behavior, yes. Parents should be the ones setting up rules for their children.
- 9mo ago

riffraff 9mo ago

90% of the people that spout racism, conspiracy theories, threaten people, etc.. on social networks use their real name and login with their phone number, there's no need to ask the social networks to get ID cards, if you are the government.

phtrivier 9mo ago
I really doubt bots are using legitimate IDs. The target for those age verification schemes (beyond actually preventing the kids' brains from being rotten by American ad supported skinner boxes) is probably to make schemes like IRA [1] just slightly more complicated. (I said "more complicated", I did not say "impossible" - I very much know that bot factories will find their ways around any kind of verification ; part of being on the defensive side of a conflict is about not giving up.) [1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/airbus_sovereign_cloud/ https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/19/airbus_sovereign_clou...
- riffraff 9mo ago
  I think GP was concerned with forbidden speech more than bots, so solutions differ there.

hn_throwaway_99 9mo ago

> If there was a legitimate drive to protect kids from the worst of the Internet, there'd have been more of a crackdown on porn, gore, etc long before social media became such a big problem. And smartphones would have never been allowed in schools. Where are you from, because all of these things have/are being tried for a long time in the US (and, I'd note, received significant pushback from civil liberty advocates). Heck, TFA itself talks about how this social media ban is coming after a ban on phones in schools.

xixixao 9mo ago

Your argument hinges on the assumption that porn and gore etc. have worse impact on kids. I don’t think there’s a concensus on that. One might argue that porn and gore could have been found in print before the internet, but that social media have a more novel impact. I personally like the theory that most kids problems are actually attributable to family issues. That kids in solid family environment/upbringing will not be “destroyed” by computer games, porn, gore (2 girls 1 cup anyone?), or social media. But that’s also just a theory.

mc32 9mo ago
If things in the internet didn’t impact kids or people then people wouldn’t get up in arms about non-PC content, but we know many different kinds of people only want thrown own kind of content out there and would prefer to limit or ban ideas they disagree with.
okr 9mo ago
I do not think it is about seeing certain things, that exist in the adult world. That is surely a side effect that one wants, though, protecting minors from a world that they can not comprehend. I think it is about algorithms targeting you all the time for hours in favour of a company. We see the effects every day. No attention span. Instant gratification. The next kick.

Gigachad 9mo ago

Gore already has been cracked down on. All the old gore sites like Live leak have shut down, Reddit has removed all the related subreddits, and governments quickly scrub the internet of videos like the New Zealand shooting.

palata 9mo ago

> IMHO the main point of these schemes is to make it hard for adults to use social media somewhat-anonyously. So the government can more easily identify those posting 'prohibited speech'. We are talking about Finland here, right?