9 ms·

I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. The whole idea of the promise of

I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. The whole idea of the promise of the internet has been destroyed by newsfeeds and mega-corps. There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. This isn't a few bands with swear words, and in fact, I think that the damage these social media companies are doing is in fact, reducing the independence teens and kids that have that were the fears parents originally had. I dunno, are you uncertain about your case at all or just like. I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck.

pokstad 8mo ago
Social media is like tobacco. We went after tobacco for targeting kids, we should do the same to social media. Highly engineered addictive content is not unlike what was done to cigarettes.
- Gormo 8mo ago
  No, it isn't. Tobacco is a physical substance that alters users' biochemistry and creates a physical dependence. Social media is information conveyed via a computing device. You can criticize social media for what it is in its own right, without having to engage in these kinds of disingenuous equivocations.
  - bdangubic 8mo ago
    Comparing Tobacco to Social Media is like comparing me to LeBron James. I'd rather have my kid smoke a pack of day than have social media accounts
  - csmcg 8mo ago
    the mechanisms by which that information is being conveyed have been shown to be addictive as well, no?
    - Gormo 8mo ago
      No, addiction involves physical substances interacting with a person's biochemistry. Attempting to extend the concept of addiction to include positive emotions brought on by sensory experiences or behavior is a disingenuous rhetorical tactic. It's simply not legitimate to redefine "addiction" as anything that people might have an emotional or psychological motivation to participate in. People trying to use the same terminology to describe social media as is used to describe tobacco or alcohol are trying to sneakily attach the negative associations of those substances to something unrelated entirely to them. This is a form of deception, and a silly one, since social media has lots of negative aspects that can be argued against in their own right, without needing to engage in manipulative dialog.
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
      - foltik 8mo ago
        Whether you like it or not, addiction is most commonly used as a general term to refer to any sort of compulsive behavior that acts against one's own self interest. Not your strawman of "anything that people might have an emotional or psychological motivation to participate in." There are plenty of perfectly valid parallels between addiction to alcohol, gambling, porn, social media, junk food, etc. Are you denying that? You can't just declare anyone comparing them to be disingenuous or disrespectful to those who are addicted. In fact what really seems disingenuous is the huge volume of this kind of pedantry in the thread by you and the same few accounts. Feels like misdirection away from the actual discussion about how to truly mitigate these addictions. Would appreciate your actual thoughts on this.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - ozim 8mo ago
    Sounds like you need to read up on dopamine and addictions a bit more. Gambling isn’t introducing substance into user system it is making use of existing brain chemicals. Social media companies engineered every piece of addictive mechanisms from gambling to alter brain chemistry or reactions of users.
    - jajuuka 8mo ago
      You're blurring the lines a bit. Gambling isn't inherently an addiction. Just like a good TV show isn't inherently addictive either. Social media trying to be more engaging shouldn't really be viewed as an evil action anymore than HBO trying to create compelling content is. The problem with comparing social media use to tobacco is that they are completely different. It's like saying weed is just like heroin because they both make you feel good. It's reductive and not productive. The completely anti-social media stance ignores the good parts of social media. People can connect from across the planet and found others who shares the same views or experiences. People who are marginalized can find community where none may exist in their local area. So we should approach this more carefully and grounded.
      - Gigachad 8mo ago
        Nothing is inherently an addiction. You can smoke a cigarette without it being an addiction.
        jajuuka 8mo ago
        I don't think I implied that. Of course, but the ability to regulate usage is hampered by nicotine. That does not mean one cigarette and you're addicted though.
        Gormo 8mo ago
        No, nicotine is actually addictive in that it creates physical dependency.
      - tsimionescu 8mo ago
        You can make the point that social media has real positive benefits as well as negatives without minimizing the well proven fact that gambling creates a form of addiction in a significant proportion, though not all, of its users, one every bit as devastating as heroin or alcohol.
  - pokstad 8mo ago
    You’re right, it’s actually worse than tobacco. Tobacco simply makes your body sick, but social media attacks the most vital part of us. Even the CDC has studied this: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a3.htm
    - Gormo 8mo ago
      This is a normative cultural question, not a medical one. The CDC is far outside its expertise and its proper remit by involving itself in this topic.
  - fsflover 8mo ago
    Yes, it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
- fuzzfactor 8mo ago
  Yes, go after Facebook and their kind only, avoid collateral damage to the remaining regular old internet.
butvacuum 8mo ago
Screw over Meta then. Not everybody else. Meta is the bozo in a panel van with no windows. All The legit porn sites put up Big Blinking Neon Signs.
- chris37879 8mo ago
  I actually run an adults only community site and you are correct, I have it in a popup that appears on every "fresh" visit to the site, it's in the giant bold print you agree to when you register, and from a technical end, I send every possible header and other signal to let filtering software know it's an adult only space. If there is a child accessing that site, they are doing so because their parent didn't even attempt to prevent them from doing so. And now I'm having to look into ID verification services that are going to quintuple to costs of hosting this free community for people in a time where community is more important than ever.
  - direwolf20 8mo ago
    Can't you just get people to email you an ID photo when they sign up?
    - wizzwizz4 8mo ago
      Email is the digital equivalent of a postcard. I really want to argue that this is a bad idea (because it is), but depending how you set your email system up, it might actually compare favourably to using a third-party identity verification company. Better to use some kind of secure drop web portal (perhaps https://securedrop.org/ https://securedrop.org/) that's actually designed for that kind of thing, though.
  - seany 8mo ago
    Honest question. Why do you care?
Terretta 8mo ago
> ... start with fuck these companies. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. I'm not sure how those two positions connect. Execs bad, so laws requiring giving those execs everyone's IDs, instead of laws against twirled mustaches?
- cowboylowrez 8mo ago
  these are just bad arguments all around, including gov't with this upload id crap. Why aren't we making internet 18+? The only unrefutable answers I get are just downvotes which is ok I guess, sort of validates my point because there's no reason for kids to get unrestricted internet access and downvotes are easy.
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  - harshreality 8mo ago
    How well would anything like that work in practice? First of all, would we restrict all internet access, or just access to certain known sites and VPNs, letting everything else through because it's too insignificant even if it technically might merit being blocked for kids? I don't think a global internet block for minors is a good idea. On wired internet, restricting access for devices that aren't clearly tied to individual users is problematic. Imposing age verification overhead on anyone who runs a network is unacceptable and unworkable. Locking non-mobile devices to individual users, in order to have mandatory software that blocks or sends age signals to the ISP, is also unacceptable and unworkable. For mobile devices, maybe. There's a privacy problem if it's required for sim cards to be paid using credit cards, but if we do that, or if that's already effectively the case, I think it's fair that anyone who has an active credit card should be permitted on the "adult" internet. For multi-line accounts, we could make it a crime for the account holder to misrepresent age of the user of a line, i.e. to claim they're an adult when they're really a minor. Not very different from minors and cigarettes. It's not universally illegal for a parent to supply them, but it is in some places, and it should be.
    - 8mo ago
nefarious_ends 8mo ago
> There is almost literally documented examples of… lol
netcan 8mo ago
>Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. For me this is a crux, at least in principle. Once online media is so centralized... the from argument freedom is diminished. There are differences between national government power and international oligopoly but... even that is starting to get complicated. That said... This still leaves the problem in practice. We get decrees that age-restriction is mandatory. There will be bad compliance implementations. Privacy implications. Meanwhile a while... how much will we actually gain when it comes to child protection. You can come up will all sorts of examples proving "Facebook bad" but that doesn't mean these things are fixed when/if regulation actually comes into play.
butterbomb 8mo ago
> I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. No one. You’ll see a few politicians and more individuals stuck to their principles, but anyone with major clout sees the writing on the wall and is simply working to entrench their power. > Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. Indeed, what lolberts fail to understand usually is not a choice between government vs “freedom” it’s a choice between the current government and whoever will fill up the power vacuum left by the government.
dragonwriter 8mo ago
> I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. That’s because “freedom” is complicated and doesn’t precisely map to the interests of any of the major actors. Its largely a war between parties seeking control for different elites for different purposes.
- fuzzfactor 8mo ago
  Yes, seeking more control for themselves and completely at the expense of everybody else's loss.
ribosometronome 8mo ago
>I get your position ... There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. This isn't a few bands Their position was to compare it to alcohol, guns, and tobacco, not bands using naughty words. Alcohol and tobacco definitely enter mustache swirling territory, getting children addicted and funding misinformation on the harms of their product.
thegrim33 8mo ago
Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to use Facebook or whatever other site. I quit using most social media over a decade ago. If you don't want to use it, or you don't want your children to use it, then don't use it.
- bix6 8mo ago
  O yeah? Where’s that guy who couldn’t get a job 6 months ago because he refuses to use LinkedIn.
chris37879 8mo ago
Those execs were also using the tactics to addict adults, and while they may have targeted teens, the problem is, at its core: humans. So no amount of nannying by either the company nor the government will solve this issue. Who would be responsible if a child developed alcohol addiction? A nicotine problem? Any other addiction? Exactly. The same people that should be responsible for giving them unfettered access to an internet that is no longer safe. Even adults have to be wary of getting hooked on scrolling, and while I agree that the onus is on the companies, it has been demonstrated over and over again that they will not be held to account for their behavior. So the only logical choice left that actually preserves freedom is for parents to get off their ass and keep their child safe. Parent's that don't use filtering and monitoring software with their children should be charged with neglect. They are for sending a kid into the cold without a coat, or letting them go hungry, why is it different sending them onto the internet? And to your last point: You are dead wrong. No government anywhere in the world has demonstrated that they have the resources, expertise, or technical knowledge to solve this problem. The most famously successful attempt is the Chinese Great Firewall, which is breached routinely by folks. As soon as a government controls what speech you are allowed to consume, the next logical step for them is to restrict what speech you can say, because waging war on what people access will always fail. I mean, Facebook alone already contains tons of content that's against its terms of service, and they have more money than God, so either they actually want that content there, or they are too understaffed to deal with the volume, and the volume problem only ever increases. So in my view, you are the one against freedom by advocating for the government to control the speech adults can access for the sake of "protecting the children" when the actual people that are socially, morally, and legally culpable for that protection are derelict in their duties.
- techblueberry 8mo ago
  > Who would be responsible if a child developed alcohol addiction? A nicotine problem? Any other addiction? I mean, historically speaking, we blamed the tobacco companies.
  - chris37879 8mo ago
    Did we? I know they lost some court cases, had to adjust advertising and so on, but was any tobacco company actually held accountable for the harm they caused? The answer is no because they all still exist and are profitable entities. Corporations that cause the harm they did should be subject to dissolution. Also, if they were genuinely responsible, why can a child's parents be held accountable for them developing an addiction? The company was responsible, not the parent... do you see how ignorant that sounds?
rectang 8mo ago
> Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. why-not-both.jpg Maximizing corporate freedom leads inevitably to corporate capture of government. Opposing either government concentration of power alone or corporate concentration of power alone is doomed to failure. Only by opposing both is there any hope of achieving either. Applying that principle to age-verification, which I think is inevitable: Prefer privacy-preserving decoupled age-verification services, where the service validates minimum age and presents a cryptographic token to the entity requiring age validation. Ideally, discourage entities from collecting hard identification by holding them accountable for data breaches; or since that's politically infeasible, model the service on PCI with fines for poor security. The motivation for this regime is to prevent distribution services from holding identification data, reducing the information held by any single entity.
- AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
  > Prefer privacy-preserving decoupled age-verification services, where the service validates minimum age and presents a cryptographic token to the entity requiring age validation. This is the wrong implementation. You require sites hosting adult content to send a header indicating what kind of content it is. Then the device can do what it wants with that information. A parent can then configure their child's device not to display it, without needing anybody to have an ID or expecting every government and lowest bidder to be able to implement the associated security correctly. It doesn't matter what kind of cryptography you invent. They either won't use it to begin with or will shamelessly and with no accountability violate the invariants taken as hard requirements in your theoretical proof. If you have to show your ID to the lowest bidder, you're pwned, so use the system that doesn't have that.
  - rectang 8mo ago
    Your proposed architecture also achieves the goal of discouraging content-distributing entities from holding hard identification data, so it sounds good to me.
  - tsimionescu 8mo ago
    This solves some probelms, such as children accessing porn sites (oh the horror). But it doesn't solve other problems, such as predators accessing children's spaces. YouTube Kids is purportedly a safe, limited place for kids - and yet, there are numerous disturbing videos that get past the automated censors. Pedophiles stalk places like Roblox.
areoform 8mo ago
> documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted If you genuinely believe that this is about those moustache twirling executives, then I have a bridge to sell you. Have you ever wondered why and how these systems are being implemented? Have you ever gone why Discord / Twitch / what have you and why now? Have you ever thought that this might be happening because of Nepal and the fears of another Arab spring? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/15/more-egalitarian-how-nepals-gen-z-used-gaming-app-discord-to-pick-pm https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/15/more-egalitarian-ho... I think too many people on this platform don't understand what this is about. This is about power. It's not about what's good for you or the children. Or for the constituents. It's about power. Real power. Karp-ian "scare enemies and on occasion kill them" power. There are many ways in which such a system could be implemented. They could have asked people to use a credit card. Adult entertainment services have been using this as a way to do tacit age verification for a very long time now. Or, they could have made a new zero-knowledge proof system. Or, ideally, they could have told the authorities to get bent. † Tech is hardly the first industry to face significant (justifiable or unjustifiable) government backlash. I am hesitant to use them as examples as they're a net harm, whereas this is about preventing a societal net harm, but the fossil fuel and tobacco industries fought their governments for decades and straight up changed the political system to suit them. †† FAANG are richer than they ever were. Even Discord can raise more and deploy more capital than most of the tobacco industry at the time. It's also a righteous cause. A cause most people can get behind (see: privacy as a selling point for Apple and the backlash to Ring). But they're not fighting this. They're leaning into it. Let's take a look at what Discord asked people for a second, the face scan, If you choose Facial Age Estimation, you’ll be prompted to record a short video selfie of your face. The Facial Age Estimation technology runs entirely on your device in real time when you are performing the verification. That means that facial scans never leave your device, and Discord and vendors never receive it. We only get your age group. Their specific ask is to try and get depth data by moving the phone back and forth. This is not just "take a selfie" – they're getting the user to move the device laterally to extract facial structure. The "face scan" (how is that defined??) never leaves the device, but that doesn't mean the biometric data isn't extracted and sent to their third-party supplier, k-Id. There was an article that went viral for spoofing this, https://age-verifier.kibty.town/ https://age-verifier.kibty.town/ // https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982421 . In the article, the author found by examining the API response the system was sending, k-id, the age verification provider discord uses doesn't store or send your face to the server. instead, it sends a bunch of metadata about your face and general process details. The author assumes that "this [approach] is good for your privacy." It's not. If you give me the depth data for a face, you've given me the fingerprint for that face. We're anthropomorphising machines. A machine doesn't need pictures; "a bunch of metadata" will do just fine. We are assuming that the surveillance state will require humans sitting in a shadow-y room going over pictures and videos. It won't. You can just use a bunch of vectors and a large multi-modal model instead. Servers are cheap and never need to eat or sleep. Certain firms are already doing this for the US Gov, https://x.com/vxunderground/status/2024188446214963351 https://x.com/vxunderground/status/2024188446214963351 / https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/2024188446214963351 https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/2024188446214963351 We can assume de facto that Discord is also doing profiling along vectors (presumably behavioral and demographic features) which that author described as, after some trial and error, we narrowed the checked part to the prediction arrays, which are outputs, primaryOutputs and raws. turns out, both outputs and primaryOutputs are generated from raws. basically, the raw numbers are mapped to age outputs, and then the outliers get removed with z-score (once for primaryOutputs and twice for outputs). Discord plugs into games and allows people to share what they're doing with their friends. For example, Discord can automatically share which song a user is listening on Spotify with their friends (who can join in), the game they're playing, whether they're streaming on Twitch etc. In general, Discord seems to have fairly reliable data about the other applications the user is running. Discord also has data about your voice and now your face. Is some or all of this data being turned into features that are being fed to this third-party k-ID? https://www.k-id.com/ https://www.k-id.com/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattgardner1/2024/06/25/k-id-closes-45-million-series-a-in-quest-for-child-safety-in-gaming/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattgardner1/2024/06/25/k-id-cl... https://www.techinasia.com/a16z-lightspeed-bet-singapore-parent-tech-startup https://www.techinasia.com/a16z-lightspeed-bet-singapore-par... k-ID is (at first glance) extracting fairly similar data from Snapchat, Twitch etc. With ID documents added into the mix, this certainly seems like a very interesting global profiling dataset backstopped with government documentation as ground truth. I'm sure that's totally unrelated. :) - † like they already have for algorithmic social media and profiling, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley-the-new-lobbying-monster https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley... Somehow there's tens to hundreds of millions available for crypto causes and algorithmic social media crusades, but there's none for the "existential threat" of age verification. †† Once again, this is old hat. See also: Turbotax, https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...
AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
> I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. The solution would then be to break them up or do things like require adversarial interoperability, rather than ineffective non-sequiturs like requiring them to ID everyone. The perverse incentive comes from a single company sitting on a network effect. You have to use Facebook because other people use Facebook, so if the algorithm shows you trash and rage bait you can't unilaterally decide to leave without abandoning everyone still there, and the Facebook company gets to show ads to everyone who uses it and therefore wants to maximize everyone's time wasted on Facebook, so the algorithm shows you trash and rage bait. Now suppose they're not allowed to restrict third party user agents. You get a messaging app and it can send messages to people on Facebook, Twitter, SMS, etc. all in the same interface. It can download the things in "your feed" and then put it in a different order, or filter things out, and again show content from multiple services in the same interface, including RSS. And then that user agent can do things like filter out adult content, if you want it to. We need to fix the actual problem, which is that the hosting service shouldn't be in control of the user interface to the service.
- mentalgear 8mo ago
  Indeed "Interoperability" is what would hurt social media giants the most - Cory Doctorow recently held an excellent talk where he stated that back in the early 00s Facebook (and others) used interoperability to offer services that allowed to interact, push and pull to mySpace (the big dog back then) to siphon off their users and content. But once Facebook became the dominant player, they moved to make the exact tactics they used (Interoperability and automation) illegal. Talking about regulatory capture ...
- fc417fc802 8mo ago
  > ineffective non-sequiturs like requiring them to ID everyone. Is that really a non-sequitur though? Cigarettes are harmful and addictive so their sale is age gated. So too for alcohol. Gambling? Also yes. So wouldn't age gating social media be entirely consistent in that case? Not that I'm necessarily in favor of it. I agree that various other regulations, particularly interoperability, would likely address at least some of the underlying concerns. But then I think it might not be such a bad idea to have all of the above rather than one or the other.
conductr 8mo ago
I don't get your point, at least not in relation to the GP post. I agree with GP, parents need to be more accountable. We as parents, and We should all be concerned about future children/generations, should be demanding more regulation to help force the change we need on this topic. We as a society need to treat SM like those other addictive product classes. The fact SM is addicting and execs try to juice it more, is frankly to be expected. Vilify them all you want, but same has been done with nicotine products, alcohol products, etc. and to GPs point, we SM as a toy for our children to play with. We chose to change the rules (laws, regulations, etc) because capitalists can never be simply trusted to do what's best for anything except their bottom line. That's a fundamental law no different than inertia or gravity in a capitalistic society. That's why regulators exist. Until you regulate it, they will wear their villain badge and rake in the billions. It's easy to be disliked when the topic of your disdain is what makes you filthy rich (in other words, they don't care what you or I think of what they're doing).
- cowboylowrez 8mo ago
  not social media, treat the entire internet as fundamentally hazardous to kids because it is, just like cigarettes alcohol and porn. check IDs once when signing the contract that is required for internet access and all these problems go away.
  - conductr 8mo ago
    That’s fair. I do think they’re some point where it gets too broad though. The definition part will be a tough balancing. As an example, I’ve been a fairly strict parent with devices and content access. But, I do let my son play Switch games with his friends which requires the internet. I feel it’s ok in moderation, he plays no more than about 3 hours a week.
sigbottle 8mo ago
Centralization and standardization are going to be the topic in the 21st century.
commandlinefan 8mo ago
> Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. The state can imprison you. Zuck can't.
- m4rtink 8mo ago
  Yet! ;-)
rcbdev 8mo ago
For all the complaining some U.S.-Americans seem to do about the EU approach to these issues, things like the Digital Markets Act aim to fix exactly these types of issues.
p0w3n3d 8mo ago
The problem is that internet is used nowadays for democratic purposes. Once you introduce a globally unique personal ID, you will be monitored. And boy, you will be monitored throughoutly. In case of any democratic process that needs to be undertaken in future against government, this very government will take the tools of identification and will knock to the doors of people who try to raise awareness and maybe mutiny. And this is what Orwell wrote about
txrx0000 8mo ago
> I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. How about we reject all institutional nannies? It is much easier to implement user-controlled on-device settings than any sort of over-the-Internet verification scheme. Parents purchase their children's devices and can adjust those settings before giving it to their kids. This is the crux of the problem, and all other arguments are downstream of this.
- BikiniPrince 8mo ago
  My friends kids have access to his home servers. They don’t get to roam on the internet. It’s shocking to think parents might structure their child’s lives.
Aurornis 8mo ago
> I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. Wild times when we're seeing highest voted Hacker News commenters call for the nanny state. If you're thinking these regulations will be limited to singular companies or platforms you don't use, there is no reason to believe that's true. There was already outrage on Hacker News when Discord voluntarily introduced limited ID checks for certain features. The invitations to bring on the nanny state reverse course very quickly when people realize those regulations might impact the sites they use, too. A lot of the comments I'm seeing assume that only Facebook or other platforms will be impacted, but there's now way that would be the case.
- fuzzfactor 8mo ago
  OK, here's another one. How about taking all these websites that require PII onto their own members-only domain? This actually should have been in place and well fleshed-out before Google & Microsoft started pushing their "account" nonsense.
- roger110 8mo ago
  I don't even care about Discord adding ID verification to unlock certain features. Not going to give them my ID of course, just gonna use it as always. If they later tighten things to the point where it's unusable, sure, I'll quit Discord.
kooshball 8mo ago
> Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. This is a huge self own. I can't believe I'm reading this on a website called "hacker news".
- dfee 8mo ago
  while i'm sympathetic to your position, the truth is that /that/ is where this site is now.
- techblueberry 8mo ago
  Why? Hackers need something to hack. But you're right, 'twas a bit much.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
Computer0 8mo ago
You sound like someone that would work for the CIA or FBI if they offered you a job. Those are the types of people that I cannot and will not ever trust. I do not respect your opinion.
- techblueberry 8mo ago
  You don't have to, but hilariously - I would never work for the CIA or FBA (I mean I can't, I think they require a college degree) but the most paranoid conspiracy-theorist libertarian hacker I ever knew did, and said it was the best work of his life. Ironic? I'm going to move off-grid and become a sovereign citizen.
protocolture 8mo ago
>There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. Then close their business. Age verification just makes their crimes even more annoying.
- hkpack 8mo ago
  Yes, please close it! Ah, oh, decision makers are shareholders themselves and are benefiting from this too.
keybored 8mo ago
Heh, thank you. I appreciate GPs point about giving “parents strong monitoring and restriction tools and empower them to protect their children”. That’s good. That acknowledges that we can and should give parents tools to deal with their kids and not let them fend for themselves (one nuclear family all alone) against the various algorithms, child group pressure, and so on. But on the whole I’m tired of the road to serfdom framing on anything that regulates corporations. Yes. Let’s be idealistic for a minute; the Internet was “supposed to” liberate us. Now we have to play Defense every damn day. And the best we have to offer is a false choice between nanny state and tech baron vulturism? For a second just imagine. An Internet that empowers more than it enslaves. That makes us more equal. It’s difficult but you can try.
femto 8mo ago
Don't conflate the Internet with Social Media. Social media is a service, just like FTP. The death of social media will not mean the death of the Internet. There's an argument that reducing social media use, by age verification or other means, will lead to a more free Internet due to reduced power of gatekeepers.

pokstad 8mo ago

Social media is like tobacco. We went after tobacco for targeting kids, we should do the same to social media. Highly engineered addictive content is not unlike what was done to cigarettes.

Gormo 8mo ago
No, it isn't. Tobacco is a physical substance that alters users' biochemistry and creates a physical dependence. Social media is information conveyed via a computing device. You can criticize social media for what it is in its own right, without having to engage in these kinds of disingenuous equivocations.
- bdangubic 8mo ago
  Comparing Tobacco to Social Media is like comparing me to LeBron James. I'd rather have my kid smoke a pack of day than have social media accounts
- csmcg 8mo ago
  the mechanisms by which that information is being conveyed have been shown to be addictive as well, no?
  - Gormo 8mo ago
    No, addiction involves physical substances interacting with a person's biochemistry. Attempting to extend the concept of addiction to include positive emotions brought on by sensory experiences or behavior is a disingenuous rhetorical tactic. It's simply not legitimate to redefine "addiction" as anything that people might have an emotional or psychological motivation to participate in. People trying to use the same terminology to describe social media as is used to describe tobacco or alcohol are trying to sneakily attach the negative associations of those substances to something unrelated entirely to them. This is a form of deception, and a silly one, since social media has lots of negative aspects that can be argued against in their own right, without needing to engage in manipulative dialog.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - foltik 8mo ago
      Whether you like it or not, addiction is most commonly used as a general term to refer to any sort of compulsive behavior that acts against one's own self interest. Not your strawman of "anything that people might have an emotional or psychological motivation to participate in." There are plenty of perfectly valid parallels between addiction to alcohol, gambling, porn, social media, junk food, etc. Are you denying that? You can't just declare anyone comparing them to be disingenuous or disrespectful to those who are addicted. In fact what really seems disingenuous is the huge volume of this kind of pedantry in the thread by you and the same few accounts. Feels like misdirection away from the actual discussion about how to truly mitigate these addictions. Would appreciate your actual thoughts on this.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- ozim 8mo ago
  Sounds like you need to read up on dopamine and addictions a bit more. Gambling isn’t introducing substance into user system it is making use of existing brain chemicals. Social media companies engineered every piece of addictive mechanisms from gambling to alter brain chemistry or reactions of users.
  - jajuuka 8mo ago
    You're blurring the lines a bit. Gambling isn't inherently an addiction. Just like a good TV show isn't inherently addictive either. Social media trying to be more engaging shouldn't really be viewed as an evil action anymore than HBO trying to create compelling content is. The problem with comparing social media use to tobacco is that they are completely different. It's like saying weed is just like heroin because they both make you feel good. It's reductive and not productive. The completely anti-social media stance ignores the good parts of social media. People can connect from across the planet and found others who shares the same views or experiences. People who are marginalized can find community where none may exist in their local area. So we should approach this more carefully and grounded.
    - Gigachad 8mo ago
      Nothing is inherently an addiction. You can smoke a cigarette without it being an addiction.
      - jajuuka 8mo ago
        I don't think I implied that. Of course, but the ability to regulate usage is hampered by nicotine. That does not mean one cigarette and you're addicted though.
      - Gormo 8mo ago
        No, nicotine is actually addictive in that it creates physical dependency.
    - tsimionescu 8mo ago
      You can make the point that social media has real positive benefits as well as negatives without minimizing the well proven fact that gambling creates a form of addiction in a significant proportion, though not all, of its users, one every bit as devastating as heroin or alcohol.
- pokstad 8mo ago
  You’re right, it’s actually worse than tobacco. Tobacco simply makes your body sick, but social media attacks the most vital part of us. Even the CDC has studied this: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a3.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a3.htm
  - Gormo 8mo ago
    This is a normative cultural question, not a medical one. The CDC is far outside its expertise and its proper remit by involving itself in this topic.
- fsflover 8mo ago
  Yes, it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24579498
fuzzfactor 8mo ago
Yes, go after Facebook and their kind only, avoid collateral damage to the remaining regular old internet.

butvacuum 8mo ago

Screw over Meta then. Not everybody else. Meta is the bozo in a panel van with no windows. All The legit porn sites put up Big Blinking Neon Signs.

chris37879 8mo ago
I actually run an adults only community site and you are correct, I have it in a popup that appears on every "fresh" visit to the site, it's in the giant bold print you agree to when you register, and from a technical end, I send every possible header and other signal to let filtering software know it's an adult only space. If there is a child accessing that site, they are doing so because their parent didn't even attempt to prevent them from doing so. And now I'm having to look into ID verification services that are going to quintuple to costs of hosting this free community for people in a time where community is more important than ever.
- direwolf20 8mo ago
  Can't you just get people to email you an ID photo when they sign up?
  - wizzwizz4 8mo ago
    Email is the digital equivalent of a postcard. I really want to argue that this is a bad idea (because it is), but depending how you set your email system up, it might actually compare favourably to using a third-party identity verification company. Better to use some kind of secure drop web portal (perhaps https://securedrop.org/ https://securedrop.org/) that's actually designed for that kind of thing, though.
- seany 8mo ago
  Honest question. Why do you care?

Terretta 8mo ago

> ... start with fuck these companies. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. I'm not sure how those two positions connect. Execs bad, so laws requiring giving those execs everyone's IDs, instead of laws against twirled mustaches?

cowboylowrez 8mo ago
these are just bad arguments all around, including gov't with this upload id crap. Why aren't we making internet 18+? The only unrefutable answers I get are just downvotes which is ok I guess, sort of validates my point because there's no reason for kids to get unrestricted internet access and downvotes are easy.
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- harshreality 8mo ago
  How well would anything like that work in practice? First of all, would we restrict all internet access, or just access to certain known sites and VPNs, letting everything else through because it's too insignificant even if it technically might merit being blocked for kids? I don't think a global internet block for minors is a good idea. On wired internet, restricting access for devices that aren't clearly tied to individual users is problematic. Imposing age verification overhead on anyone who runs a network is unacceptable and unworkable. Locking non-mobile devices to individual users, in order to have mandatory software that blocks or sends age signals to the ISP, is also unacceptable and unworkable. For mobile devices, maybe. There's a privacy problem if it's required for sim cards to be paid using credit cards, but if we do that, or if that's already effectively the case, I think it's fair that anyone who has an active credit card should be permitted on the "adult" internet. For multi-line accounts, we could make it a crime for the account holder to misrepresent age of the user of a line, i.e. to claim they're an adult when they're really a minor. Not very different from minors and cigarettes. It's not universally illegal for a parent to supply them, but it is in some places, and it should be.
  - 8mo ago

nefarious_ends 8mo ago

> There is almost literally documented examples of… lol

netcan 8mo ago

>Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. For me this is a crux, at least in principle. Once online media is so centralized... the from argument freedom is diminished. There are differences between national government power and international oligopoly but... even that is starting to get complicated. That said... This still leaves the problem in practice. We get decrees that age-restriction is mandatory. There will be bad compliance implementations. Privacy implications. Meanwhile a while... how much will we actually gain when it comes to child protection. You can come up will all sorts of examples proving "Facebook bad" but that doesn't mean these things are fixed when/if regulation actually comes into play.

butterbomb 8mo ago

> I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. No one. You’ll see a few politicians and more individuals stuck to their principles, but anyone with major clout sees the writing on the wall and is simply working to entrench their power. > Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. Indeed, what lolberts fail to understand usually is not a choice between government vs “freedom” it’s a choice between the current government and whoever will fill up the power vacuum left by the government.

dragonwriter 8mo ago

> I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. That’s because “freedom” is complicated and doesn’t precisely map to the interests of any of the major actors. Its largely a war between parties seeking control for different elites for different purposes.

fuzzfactor 8mo ago
Yes, seeking more control for themselves and completely at the expense of everybody else's loss.

ribosometronome 8mo ago

>I get your position ... There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. This isn't a few bands Their position was to compare it to alcohol, guns, and tobacco, not bands using naughty words. Alcohol and tobacco definitely enter mustache swirling territory, getting children addicted and funding misinformation on the harms of their product.

thegrim33 8mo ago

Nobody is putting a gun to your head and forcing you to use Facebook or whatever other site. I quit using most social media over a decade ago. If you don't want to use it, or you don't want your children to use it, then don't use it.

bix6 8mo ago
O yeah? Where’s that guy who couldn’t get a job 6 months ago because he refuses to use LinkedIn.

chris37879 8mo ago

Those execs were also using the tactics to addict adults, and while they may have targeted teens, the problem is, at its core: humans. So no amount of nannying by either the company nor the government will solve this issue. Who would be responsible if a child developed alcohol addiction? A nicotine problem? Any other addiction? Exactly. The same people that should be responsible for giving them unfettered access to an internet that is no longer safe. Even adults have to be wary of getting hooked on scrolling, and while I agree that the onus is on the companies, it has been demonstrated over and over again that they will not be held to account for their behavior. So the only logical choice left that actually preserves freedom is for parents to get off their ass and keep their child safe. Parent's that don't use filtering and monitoring software with their children should be charged with neglect. They are for sending a kid into the cold without a coat, or letting them go hungry, why is it different sending them onto the internet? And to your last point: You are dead wrong. No government anywhere in the world has demonstrated that they have the resources, expertise, or technical knowledge to solve this problem. The most famously successful attempt is the Chinese Great Firewall, which is breached routinely by folks. As soon as a government controls what speech you are allowed to consume, the next logical step for them is to restrict what speech you can say, because waging war on what people access will always fail. I mean, Facebook alone already contains tons of content that's against its terms of service, and they have more money than God, so either they actually want that content there, or they are too understaffed to deal with the volume, and the volume problem only ever increases. So in my view, you are the one against freedom by advocating for the government to control the speech adults can access for the sake of "protecting the children" when the actual people that are socially, morally, and legally culpable for that protection are derelict in their duties.

techblueberry 8mo ago
> Who would be responsible if a child developed alcohol addiction? A nicotine problem? Any other addiction? I mean, historically speaking, we blamed the tobacco companies.
- chris37879 8mo ago
  Did we? I know they lost some court cases, had to adjust advertising and so on, but was any tobacco company actually held accountable for the harm they caused? The answer is no because they all still exist and are profitable entities. Corporations that cause the harm they did should be subject to dissolution. Also, if they were genuinely responsible, why can a child's parents be held accountable for them developing an addiction? The company was responsible, not the parent... do you see how ignorant that sounds?

rectang 8mo ago

> Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. why-not-both.jpg Maximizing corporate freedom leads inevitably to corporate capture of government. Opposing either government concentration of power alone or corporate concentration of power alone is doomed to failure. Only by opposing both is there any hope of achieving either. Applying that principle to age-verification, which I think is inevitable: Prefer privacy-preserving decoupled age-verification services, where the service validates minimum age and presents a cryptographic token to the entity requiring age validation. Ideally, discourage entities from collecting hard identification by holding them accountable for data breaches; or since that's politically infeasible, model the service on PCI with fines for poor security. The motivation for this regime is to prevent distribution services from holding identification data, reducing the information held by any single entity.

AnthonyMouse 8mo ago
> Prefer privacy-preserving decoupled age-verification services, where the service validates minimum age and presents a cryptographic token to the entity requiring age validation. This is the wrong implementation. You require sites hosting adult content to send a header indicating what kind of content it is. Then the device can do what it wants with that information. A parent can then configure their child's device not to display it, without needing anybody to have an ID or expecting every government and lowest bidder to be able to implement the associated security correctly. It doesn't matter what kind of cryptography you invent. They either won't use it to begin with or will shamelessly and with no accountability violate the invariants taken as hard requirements in your theoretical proof. If you have to show your ID to the lowest bidder, you're pwned, so use the system that doesn't have that.
- rectang 8mo ago
  Your proposed architecture also achieves the goal of discouraging content-distributing entities from holding hard identification data, so it sounds good to me.
- tsimionescu 8mo ago
  This solves some probelms, such as children accessing porn sites (oh the horror). But it doesn't solve other problems, such as predators accessing children's spaces. YouTube Kids is purportedly a safe, limited place for kids - and yet, there are numerous disturbing videos that get past the automated censors. Pedophiles stalk places like Roblox.

areoform 8mo ago

> documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted If you genuinely believe that this is about those moustache twirling executives, then I have a bridge to sell you. Have you ever wondered why and how these systems are being implemented? Have you ever gone why Discord / Twitch / what have you and why now? Have you ever thought that this might be happening because of Nepal and the fears of another Arab spring? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/15/more-egalitarian-how-nepals-gen-z-used-gaming-app-discord-to-pick-pm https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/9/15/more-egalitarian-ho... I think too many people on this platform don't understand what this is about. This is about power. It's not about what's good for you or the children. Or for the constituents. It's about power. Real power. Karp-ian "scare enemies and on occasion kill them" power. There are many ways in which such a system could be implemented. They could have asked people to use a credit card. Adult entertainment services have been using this as a way to do tacit age verification for a very long time now. Or, they could have made a new zero-knowledge proof system. Or, ideally, they could have told the authorities to get bent. † Tech is hardly the first industry to face significant (justifiable or unjustifiable) government backlash. I am hesitant to use them as examples as they're a net harm, whereas this is about preventing a societal net harm, but the fossil fuel and tobacco industries fought their governments for decades and straight up changed the political system to suit them. †† FAANG are richer than they ever were. Even Discord can raise more and deploy more capital than most of the tobacco industry at the time. It's also a righteous cause. A cause most people can get behind (see: privacy as a selling point for Apple and the backlash to Ring). But they're not fighting this. They're leaning into it. Let's take a look at what Discord asked people for a second, the face scan, If you choose Facial Age Estimation, you’ll be prompted to record a short video selfie of your face. The Facial Age Estimation technology runs entirely on your device in real time when you are performing the verification. That means that facial scans never leave your device, and Discord and vendors never receive it. We only get your age group. Their specific ask is to try and get depth data by moving the phone back and forth. This is not just "take a selfie" – they're getting the user to move the device laterally to extract facial structure. The "face scan" (how is that defined??) never leaves the device, but that doesn't mean the biometric data isn't extracted and sent to their third-party supplier, k-Id. There was an article that went viral for spoofing this, https://age-verifier.kibty.town/ https://age-verifier.kibty.town/ // https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982421 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46982421 . In the article, the author found by examining the API response the system was sending, k-id, the age verification provider discord uses doesn't store or send your face to the server. instead, it sends a bunch of metadata about your face and general process details. The author assumes that "this [approach] is good for your privacy." It's not. If you give me the depth data for a face, you've given me the fingerprint for that face. We're anthropomorphising machines. A machine doesn't need pictures; "a bunch of metadata" will do just fine. We are assuming that the surveillance state will require humans sitting in a shadow-y room going over pictures and videos. It won't. You can just use a bunch of vectors and a large multi-modal model instead. Servers are cheap and never need to eat or sleep. Certain firms are already doing this for the US Gov, https://x.com/vxunderground/status/2024188446214963351 https://x.com/vxunderground/status/2024188446214963351 / https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/2024188446214963351 https://xcancel.com/vxunderground/status/2024188446214963351 We can assume de facto that Discord is also doing profiling along vectors (presumably behavioral and demographic features) which that author described as, after some trial and error, we narrowed the checked part to the prediction arrays, which are outputs, primaryOutputs and raws. turns out, both outputs and primaryOutputs are generated from raws. basically, the raw numbers are mapped to age outputs, and then the outliers get removed with z-score (once for primaryOutputs and twice for outputs). Discord plugs into games and allows people to share what they're doing with their friends. For example, Discord can automatically share which song a user is listening on Spotify with their friends (who can join in), the game they're playing, whether they're streaming on Twitch etc. In general, Discord seems to have fairly reliable data about the other applications the user is running. Discord also has data about your voice and now your face. Is some or all of this data being turned into features that are being fed to this third-party k-ID? https://www.k-id.com/ https://www.k-id.com/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattgardner1/2024/06/25/k-id-closes-45-million-series-a-in-quest-for-child-safety-in-gaming/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattgardner1/2024/06/25/k-id-cl... https://www.techinasia.com/a16z-lightspeed-bet-singapore-parent-tech-startup https://www.techinasia.com/a16z-lightspeed-bet-singapore-par... k-ID is (at first glance) extracting fairly similar data from Snapchat, Twitch etc. With ID documents added into the mix, this certainly seems like a very interesting global profiling dataset backstopped with government documentation as ground truth. I'm sure that's totally unrelated. :) - † like they already have for algorithmic social media and profiling, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley-the-new-lobbying-monster https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/14/silicon-valley... Somehow there's tens to hundreds of millions available for crypto causes and algorithmic social media crusades, but there's none for the "existential threat" of age verification. †† Once again, this is old hat. See also: Turbotax, https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-fight-to-stop-americans-from-filing-their-taxes-for-free https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-turbotax-20-year-f...

AnthonyMouse 8mo ago

> I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. The solution would then be to break them up or do things like require adversarial interoperability, rather than ineffective non-sequiturs like requiring them to ID everyone. The perverse incentive comes from a single company sitting on a network effect. You have to use Facebook because other people use Facebook, so if the algorithm shows you trash and rage bait you can't unilaterally decide to leave without abandoning everyone still there, and the Facebook company gets to show ads to everyone who uses it and therefore wants to maximize everyone's time wasted on Facebook, so the algorithm shows you trash and rage bait. Now suppose they're not allowed to restrict third party user agents. You get a messaging app and it can send messages to people on Facebook, Twitter, SMS, etc. all in the same interface. It can download the things in "your feed" and then put it in a different order, or filter things out, and again show content from multiple services in the same interface, including RSS. And then that user agent can do things like filter out adult content, if you want it to. We need to fix the actual problem, which is that the hosting service shouldn't be in control of the user interface to the service.

mentalgear 8mo ago
Indeed "Interoperability" is what would hurt social media giants the most - Cory Doctorow recently held an excellent talk where he stated that back in the early 00s Facebook (and others) used interoperability to offer services that allowed to interact, push and pull to mySpace (the big dog back then) to siphon off their users and content. But once Facebook became the dominant player, they moved to make the exact tactics they used (Interoperability and automation) illegal. Talking about regulatory capture ...
fc417fc802 8mo ago
> ineffective non-sequiturs like requiring them to ID everyone. Is that really a non-sequitur though? Cigarettes are harmful and addictive so their sale is age gated. So too for alcohol. Gambling? Also yes. So wouldn't age gating social media be entirely consistent in that case? Not that I'm necessarily in favor of it. I agree that various other regulations, particularly interoperability, would likely address at least some of the underlying concerns. But then I think it might not be such a bad idea to have all of the above rather than one or the other.

conductr 8mo ago

I don't get your point, at least not in relation to the GP post. I agree with GP, parents need to be more accountable. We as parents, and We should all be concerned about future children/generations, should be demanding more regulation to help force the change we need on this topic. We as a society need to treat SM like those other addictive product classes. The fact SM is addicting and execs try to juice it more, is frankly to be expected. Vilify them all you want, but same has been done with nicotine products, alcohol products, etc. and to GPs point, we SM as a toy for our children to play with. We chose to change the rules (laws, regulations, etc) because capitalists can never be simply trusted to do what's best for anything except their bottom line. That's a fundamental law no different than inertia or gravity in a capitalistic society. That's why regulators exist. Until you regulate it, they will wear their villain badge and rake in the billions. It's easy to be disliked when the topic of your disdain is what makes you filthy rich (in other words, they don't care what you or I think of what they're doing).

cowboylowrez 8mo ago
not social media, treat the entire internet as fundamentally hazardous to kids because it is, just like cigarettes alcohol and porn. check IDs once when signing the contract that is required for internet access and all these problems go away.
- conductr 8mo ago
  That’s fair. I do think they’re some point where it gets too broad though. The definition part will be a tough balancing. As an example, I’ve been a fairly strict parent with devices and content access. But, I do let my son play Switch games with his friends which requires the internet. I feel it’s ok in moderation, he plays no more than about 3 hours a week.

sigbottle 8mo ago

Centralization and standardization are going to be the topic in the 21st century.

commandlinefan 8mo ago

> Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. The state can imprison you. Zuck can't.

m4rtink 8mo ago
Yet! ;-)

rcbdev 8mo ago

For all the complaining some U.S.-Americans seem to do about the EU approach to these issues, things like the Digital Markets Act aim to fix exactly these types of issues.

p0w3n3d 8mo ago

The problem is that internet is used nowadays for democratic purposes. Once you introduce a globally unique personal ID, you will be monitored. And boy, you will be monitored throughoutly. In case of any democratic process that needs to be undertaken in future against government, this very government will take the tools of identification and will knock to the doors of people who try to raise awareness and maybe mutiny. And this is what Orwell wrote about

txrx0000 8mo ago

> I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. How about we reject all institutional nannies? It is much easier to implement user-controlled on-device settings than any sort of over-the-Internet verification scheme. Parents purchase their children's devices and can adjust those settings before giving it to their kids. This is the crux of the problem, and all other arguments are downstream of this.

BikiniPrince 8mo ago
My friends kids have access to his home servers. They don’t get to roam on the internet. It’s shocking to think parents might structure their child’s lives.

Aurornis 8mo ago

> I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. Wild times when we're seeing highest voted Hacker News commenters call for the nanny state. If you're thinking these regulations will be limited to singular companies or platforms you don't use, there is no reason to believe that's true. There was already outrage on Hacker News when Discord voluntarily introduced limited ID checks for certain features. The invitations to bring on the nanny state reverse course very quickly when people realize those regulations might impact the sites they use, too. A lot of the comments I'm seeing assume that only Facebook or other platforms will be impacted, but there's now way that would be the case.

fuzzfactor 8mo ago
OK, here's another one. How about taking all these websites that require PII onto their own members-only domain? This actually should have been in place and well fleshed-out before Google & Microsoft started pushing their "account" nonsense.
roger110 8mo ago
I don't even care about Discord adding ID verification to unlock certain features. Not going to give them my ID of course, just gonna use it as always. If they later tighten things to the point where it's unusable, sure, I'll quit Discord.

kooshball 8mo ago

> Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. This is a huge self own. I can't believe I'm reading this on a website called "hacker news".

dfee 8mo ago
while i'm sympathetic to your position, the truth is that /that/ is where this site is now.
techblueberry 8mo ago
Why? Hackers need something to hack. But you're right, 'twas a bit much.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]

Computer0 8mo ago

You sound like someone that would work for the CIA or FBI if they offered you a job. Those are the types of people that I cannot and will not ever trust. I do not respect your opinion.

techblueberry 8mo ago
You don't have to, but hilariously - I would never work for the CIA or FBA (I mean I can't, I think they require a college degree) but the most paranoid conspiracy-theorist libertarian hacker I ever knew did, and said it was the best work of his life. Ironic? I'm going to move off-grid and become a sovereign citizen.

protocolture 8mo ago

>There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. Then close their business. Age verification just makes their crimes even more annoying.

hkpack 8mo ago
Yes, please close it! Ah, oh, decision makers are shareholders themselves and are benefiting from this too.

keybored 8mo ago

Heh, thank you. I appreciate GPs point about giving “parents strong monitoring and restriction tools and empower them to protect their children”. That’s good. That acknowledges that we can and should give parents tools to deal with their kids and not let them fend for themselves (one nuclear family all alone) against the various algorithms, child group pressure, and so on. But on the whole I’m tired of the road to serfdom framing on anything that regulates corporations. Yes. Let’s be idealistic for a minute; the Internet was “supposed to” liberate us. Now we have to play Defense every damn day. And the best we have to offer is a false choice between nanny state and tech baron vulturism? For a second just imagine. An Internet that empowers more than it enslaves. That makes us more equal. It’s difficult but you can try.

femto 8mo ago

Don't conflate the Internet with Social Media. Social media is a service, just like FTP. The death of social media will not mean the death of the Internet. There's an argument that reducing social media use, by age verification or other means, will lead to a more free Internet due to reduced power of gatekeepers.