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Something remarkable and unsettling is how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU. With the same logical fallaci

• tmnvix 7mo ago
  Australia and New Zealand too.
• BoredPositron 7mo ago
  [flagged]
• simmerup 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • pocksuppet 7mo ago
    Why should that be our problem when we can just tell parents to parent?
    • fsckboy 7mo ago
      because parents get to vote same as you, and it looks like they are winning. there are many problems in the libertarian utopia that could be dumped on individuals ("if you don't like it, don't leave your house") but equally unfortunately many prefer a socialist utopia with lots of social and financial controls
      • dangus 7mo ago
        I don’t think any parents as constituents had anything to do with these laws. If voter priorities influence legislature so much, where is our healthcare reform that the obvious majority of people have been demanding for decades? Many parliaments and legislative bodies throughout the western world continually ignore their constituents’ demands because lobbying bodies with real money get their priorities addressed first.
    • School-Cotton 7mo ago
      “Tell parents to parent” is a nice slogan, but it means nothing in practice. Some parents won’t have the ability to police their kids, some won’t care, etc. What do you actually think it means to “tell parents to parent”? Be concrete. Do you think there should be legal consequences for people who let their kids on social media? Or just some kind of public service PR campaign? Anyway, why shouldn’t this apply to everything else? Should we repeal the laws against selling tobacco or alcohol to minors, or against an adult having sex with them? Why not just “tell parents to parent” ?
    • stirfish 7mo ago
      I know this wasn't your point (and I agree with you here), but I heard the exact same thing, word for word, when the Catholic priest was just breaking.
    • Eji1700 7mo ago
      There's a middle ground shockingly and I do think it's roughly why this all came up at once. "Just parent" isn't easy in an age of large numbers of families having to both work and kids having a computer in their hands at all times. The "please don't say you're 18 if you aren't" standard has NEVER applied for anything else flagged as adult. If you sell products or allow services to a minor without doing proper checks YOU are responsible as the company if it's found to negligent, to the point you can lose your license. The thing is, you also don't fucking store every single ID you've ever looked at because that's insane, or if you do, you do it for very short periods of time. If a kid gets a fake ID, fine, that's on the kid so long as the company is doing their best. It's why an "adult mode" local cred on the machine is probably reasonable? If the kid gets a fake cred, fine, that's on the parents, but at least sites can automatically look for the cred and if not provided just bounce. As it is ALL the onus is on the family, and there's a fuckload of preying on children (especially economically) that's not supposed to be remotely legal that we've just kicked open the doors to because its "hard" to solve.
      • deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
  • uniq7 7mo ago
    If the solution consists on me and my children sacrificing our privacy then I'm sorry, but I don't care about other people's children getting groomed. Your child, your responsibility, prepare him better for the world or throw the god damn phone to the trash, but please leave me alone. I had more sympathy for parents with this problem before, but not anymore. If they don't respect my rights, I don't see why I should care about them.
    • Waterluvian 7mo ago
      Other people’s kids aren’t your problem until they grow up and form a deeply unfit electorate and their country, representing less than 5% of the world population, makes an absolute mess of everything. Then they become everyone’s problem.
      • lazide 7mo ago
        So the last 40 years?
      • uniq7 7mo ago
        Today's electorate is unfit. Is it also because they had TikTok when they were children? Or are they unfit because they consumed fake-news and QAnon-like content as adults? If it's the latter, how is age verification supposed to help here exactly? Since you are asking me to give away my privacy under this promise, I'm interested in the details.
        • Waterluvian 7mo ago
          I didn’t say that, nor do I think these nonsense laws help. But “not my problem” is also nonsense.
          • uniq7 7mo ago
            Sorry, I clearly misunderstood you, I thought you were defending those laws. I am aware that uneducated children will become everyone's problem sooner or later, but my argument is that, at the end of the day, in practice, like it or not, this is mostly in control of the parents. The root cause is that parents fail to provide education, modals, and preparation for being a balanced and responsible person that can control its own impulses, and now these same parents want to externalize their responsibilities to malicious Governments, at the expense of everyone's rights. Giving away privacy for just patching one of the symptoms is a ridiculous ask, especially in this political environment, and especially when it could be tackled in different ways that don't imply losing privacy. In my opinion, people will be unfit and uneducated in the future no matter what we do, and they will choose malicious leaders, and having privacy in that future will be better than not having it.
  • Spivak 7mo ago
    Taking for granted that is really the purpose, how does age verification solve this problem? Adults won't have any trouble accessing online spaces meant for kids under these laws. And then why does porn get mixed up in this, it's not exactly a place where kids "hang out."
  • phendrenad2 7mo ago
    Well, this mandatory age input won't help with that, either. The parental controls are a much more powerful version. So I guess you're in favor of more strict version of this, and hope that we'll slippery-slope our way to it eventually? How do you propose to do that without ending internet anonymity for everyone?
  • sophrosyne42 7mo ago
    Are you talking about Epstein, or something else? Epstein largely built his network through word of mouth.
    • simmerup 7mo ago
      I’m talking about kids on discord and etc It was a problem when I was younger and now it’s a bigger problem
      • sophrosyne42 7mo ago
        I'm not really convinced that age verification is the solution to that, nor am I convinced that is sufficiently significant to be a problem that requires legislation, nor that legislation is the best means of addressing it if it were a problem. There are necessarily always risks to growing up. A legislator cannot regulate those risks out of existence. Parents are the only ones with the personal knowledge and responsibility to manage those risks.
  • lazide 7mo ago
    Cite?
  • lambda 7mo ago
    You're going to need to provide a source for that outrageous claim. Also, which sites that are impacted by the age verification laws are involved in grooming in any way? Please be specific.
  • dangus 7mo ago
    I don’t think software downloads, even downloads of software we might find objectionable, can be considered to be something that is engaging in “grooming.” That’s simply not what that word means. If your child takes interest in something you don’t like that they found online, they weren’t inherently groomed by anyone into liking it.
• pocksuppet 7mo ago
  Different people observed the same problem at the same time, and came to similar conclusions about how to solve it.
  • sophrosyne42 7mo ago
    We should not give these human rights violations the dignity of being called "solutions", especially as they are anything but.
    • pocksuppet 7mo ago
      [flagged]
      • alpaca128 7mo ago
        That is a very dishonest way of framing these laws. Parental control does not need violating the privacy of every computer user. Also sharing the user's personal information does not prevent gambling or protect children, it does the opposite.
        • pocksuppet 7mo ago
          These laws don't violate the privacy of every computer user. They say that a parent shall be able to mark a child's account as being under 18, and apps shall respect that.
          • alpaca128 7mo ago
            Assuming apps for which this is relevant respect users and specifically children in this day and age sounds naive. It's another free datapoint to collect, in the best case for targeted ads. Meta seems to be behind a lot of lobbying for this and they're the kind of company who does nonconsensual psychological experiments on their users: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook...
• alephnerd 7mo ago
  > how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU It's because of a mix of Barroness Kidron's lobbying [0] and companies trying to meet legislators halfway [1] due to latent legislative anger due to disinformation incidents that arose during the 2016 election, January 6th, January 8th in Brazil, the New Caledonia unrest, and a couple others. Civil and digital libertarianism is not a mainstream view outside of a subset of techies. Sadly, building and deploy a truly private and OSS authentication service was not on the radar in the early 2010s - that would have staved off the current iteration. [0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/14/british-baroness-online-safety-laws-00101854 https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/14/british-baroness-on... [1] - https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/11/exclusive-tech-groups-back-a-new-way-to-check-ids-00641336 https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/11/exclusive...
• brightball 7mo ago
  It’s not if you’ve paid attention to political trends for the last 15 years. Everything is happening at the same time in every country. It’s clearly being coordinated.
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • WJW 7mo ago
    Well obviously? It's literally being broadcast in the news when diplomats talk to each other. What do you think they are talking about if not policy discussions?
    • bananaflag 7mo ago
      Trade, wars, stuff like that. Foreign affairs, not domestic affairs.
      • bigDinosaur 7mo ago
        All discussion of foreign affairs is the discussion of domestic affairs somewhere.
        • themafia 7mo ago
          So it seems normal that a bunch of politicians, in the current climate, got together and decided that the weakest form of age verification imaginable absolutely had to get passed everywhere? That's incomprehensible to me.
          • deleted 7mo ago
            [deleted]
          • johncolanduoni 7mo ago
            I'm not saying there's definitely no coordination, but nobody had to get together to decide that 2026 was the year for 90s fashion to make a comeback. Human society is very prone to fads in all areas.
• nico 7mo ago
  And LATAM probably soon to follow, specially Argentina with Milei and now Chile with their new right wing president
  • sophrosyne42 7mo ago
    Milei is a libertarian, and would be very opposed to such a thing.
    • a_victorp 7mo ago
      I wouldn't bet on it
    • whattheheckheck 7mo ago
      Milei will do trumps bidding
    • macintux 7mo ago
      Running as a libertarian, and governing as a libertarian, are two entirely different things.
      • sophrosyne42 7mo ago
        He has been doing pretty well so far.
        • kevin_thibedeau 7mo ago
          Trump owns him now. He has to pay the piper.
    • sph 7mo ago
      Words don't mean anything any more. Libertarianism used to be a fringe of anarchism, yet it has devolved into a chimera of its own, especially when looking at American-style libertarianism that is very much pro-State.
  • Telemakhos 7mo ago
• eek2121 7mo ago
  So, firstly, before I dive into your comment; about the topic above, this is the result of a terrible headline gone wrong in a single state in the US. The language never required any changes to Linux, or Windows, or any other operating system, for that matter. Someone read the text, and made a clickbaity headline, and it went viral. then, another state made a similar bill, and it went viral again.Age verification isn't coming to Linux any time soon, and no, you aren't breaking any laws by either developing for, and/or using Linux if you are a U.S. citizen. It is literally illegal to pass a law like that thanks to the constitution. Outside the U.S.? well depending on the country, you likely experienced something better or worse, Regardless... It is pretty remarkable that it [age verification] has popped up in multiple countries at once. It is almost as though a certain few billionaires are interested in suppressing speech.I wonder who those folks might be? ;) The folks trying to shut down the masses via stuff like this should probably read some history, because that never works out...like ever. Doing the same thing over and over again won't make it work. It won't work this time either.
  • phyzome 7mo ago
    I've looked at the bill and it sure seems like it would apply to Linux. What's your case that it doesn't?
    • UqWBcuFx6NV4r 7mo ago
      [flagged]
    • AnimalMuppet 7mo ago
      As I understood it, the claim was that it wouldn't apply because of the Constitution, not because the text of the bill made it not apply to Linux.
      • phyzome 7mo ago
        In the sense that it compels speech, essentially? Hmm.
  • toast0 7mo ago
• ZiiS 7mo ago
  This is literally about making parental control applications work better. Nothing in the law requires a child setting up their own system to set their real age. It just lets a parent creating a limited account for a child.
• jiggawatts 7mo ago
  Meta, a multi-national corporation, seems to be behind all of these. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/ https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b... https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_appears_meta_is_heavily_lobbying_for_linux_age/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...
  • mschuster91 7mo ago
    And the groundwork was laid by very well connected think-of-the-children evangelicals, transphobes and sex-work-phobes over years. Never forget this. Meta just added nitromethane fuel to a raging fire.
    • deleted 7mo ago
      [deleted]
• awesome_dude 7mo ago
  People discuss policies all the time, and take inspiration from jurisdictions where those policies /appear/ to be implemented and "working" The idea that there is an age requirement (for certain content) has been around for a very long time (Facebook, for example has a no under 13s rule in their T&Cs, many porn sites have a 18 years or older declaration before allowing access, and so on) Australia has recently implemented law(s) that take the next step forward, and the other countries in the world that have been wanting something similar are seeing that, seeing that there haven't blowback from corporations or voters that makes the idea of the law unpalatable, and thinking that they too can implement laws that work in similar ways. If you actually pay attention to global politics you will see that this sort of behaviour occurs fairly regularly (look, for example, and the legalisationg of homosexual marriage, there was a law legalising it in the Netherlands in 2001, then Belgium did similar in 2003... and so on as more countries saw that their own voters were amenable to the idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_same-sex_marriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_same-sex_marri...) edit: There's no grand conspiracy at play Another example is the cannabis use laws, cannabis was heavily criminalised in the 70s, there was pressure from the USA for other countries to follow suit. BUT from the early 2010s several states of the USA legalised recreational use - this has also bought the debate back to the fore for many countries, with reassessments and changes occuring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._jurisdiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_cannabis_by_U.S._j...
• ekjhgkejhgk 7mo ago
  > Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. This is absolutely not true. Here in the UK schools are swarming with ipads and shit like that. They're given to primary school children because they're "more engaging". Children are supposed to practice their reading and even handwriting[1] on ipads. Naturally they're on youtube instead. It's really bad. As far as I can tell, private schools are even worse. Currently the only way that I know to escape this is homeschooling. Saying "it's a solved problem" is incredibly dismissive to parents who do everything right in their homes, but then send their children to school and schools exposed their children in this way. Saying that phrase in such a definitive manner caters to the interests of the companies who push these shit onto schools. Please stop saying it, it's harmful. [1] leaving this reference here because I'm certain that people without school aged children won't believe this is actually true: https://www.letterjoin.co.uk/ https://www.letterjoin.co.uk/
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • coldtea 7mo ago
    >>> Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. >This is absolutely not true.Here in the UK schools are swarming with ipads and shit like that. They're given to primary school children because they're "more engaging". Children are supposed to practice their reading and even handwriting on ipads. Naturally they're on youtube instead. It's really bad. And how does that refute what the parent said? Those school ipads could also have YouTube locked or restricted to a whitelist of channels.
    • ekjhgkejhgk 7mo ago
      > Those school ipads could also have YouTube locked or restricted to a whitelist of channels. There's so much wrong here. A) there's ways around that stuff that any child can figure out. B) schools aren't in fact obligated to enable those, and some don't. C) who decides on what channels are allowed? The school does. But teachers are basically people off the street that did some basic training and (from my experience) have zero critical thinking. This are not the best and brightest. D) big tech will tell you "this is age appropriate" and the only thing that means is that you probably won't see porn. Anything else, including gambling ads on youtube, you do see. You see, you're trying to discuss the specifics which in this case is a losing approach if your goal is to protect your chidlren from being victimized by the attention economy. The reason is that those benefiting from the attention economy have more lawyers and more engineers to deploy than any individual parent.
• coldtea 7mo ago
  It's part of a whole bundle of tightening censorship and increasing control in a pivot towards techno-feudalism, and militarization of society...
  • deleted 7mo ago
    [deleted]
  • rbanffy 7mo ago
    It's quite frightening when we see Oracle leveraging government contracts for hosting government data about the population on Oracle's infrastructure while Oracle infrastructure is used by the government to run AI, possibly on government's hosted data about the population funneling the money to build a media empire that includes CNN.
• tim333 7mo ago
  They all copy each other. Also some of it was set off by the book, Jonathan Haidt's The Anxious Generation.
  • teaearlgraycold 7mo ago
    That dude gives off such slimy vibes. Not like he’s evil. More like he’s unqualified to be in the position he’s found himself in. His presentations on talk shows gives me the impression he knows just enough about the topic of digital effects on society to throw together a book. The he lets people raise him up to the microphone and speaks for the sake of speaking. Hardly an expert, not an operator. Compare to people who have the means to build, modify, and test the systems they talk about. Maybe no one can be this kind of an expert in the field of sociology. But if that’s the case do not present yourself as confident. Answer most questions with “I don’t know”. Refuse praise. Exude humility.
    • dlivingston 7mo ago
      If you were familiar with his background you wouldn't be writing this comment, which makes what you wrote a bit awkwardly ironic. Short of it: 30-ish year career as a psychology professor and researcher focused on morality and emotions. If you follow the track of his popular science books, The Anxious Generation (on smartphone use in teens) is very much a sequel to The Coddling of the American Mind, which itself is something of a sequel to The Righteous Mind, and so on. There's a very clear linearity and progression to his works.
      • teaearlgraycold 7mo ago
        I am familiar with his other books. And it’s clear he has an established career. I just don’t think he should try to present such simplified narratives. “Coddling of the American Mind” is what first put him on my radar and set off alarm bells. At I said this might just be a field where normal expectations of expertise can’t be met. But that doesn’t mean you can rescale and match the confidence of other fields. He’s putting himself in a position similar to politicians running for office.
• pndy 7mo ago
  Not sure when exactly that happen but decade years ago or so, people were sharing this spoofed infographic in which the Internet was a cable tv-like service where you'd pick big media sites you'd subscribe to, IPTV/streaming, optional secondary sites - all of this curated and safe, free of any dangers. No lewd content whatsoever. And honestly, I can't get rid of the feeling that this is where we're heading into. These are last years of the wild Internet and its next iteration will be passive and probably in 99% generated corporate safe slop.
• HeavyStorm 7mo ago
  Same in Brazil. Economically and politically not nearly as important, but 250 million people affected by the same discoursem
• roenxi 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  • anthonyIPH 7mo ago
    Interesting,are either of those two orgs you linked pushing the age verification policies that the article is rallying against? I would assume so since you posted them here, but it's unclear from the links Wikipedia pages you linked.
    • roenxi 7mo ago
      I doubt they're pushing it; but if we're seeing roughly simultaneous introduction of similar laws in many countries then those organisations are probably organising the forums where the lobbying is being done.
  • thrance 7mo ago
    Neither of these two groups you mention hold any meaningful power anywhere, and have zero links with the issue of age verification: your comment is pure disinformation.
• nullorempty 7mo ago
  It reaches far out, not just the West. China remains relatively immune. S. Korea and Japan immune to some degree. Russia, unfortunately, is not immune at all.
  • pocksuppet 7mo ago
    The things that our politicians want to make illegal for children were already illegal for everyone in China. That probably has something to do with why China's economically outperforming us so much.
    • numpad0 7mo ago
      Everything appear to be illegal in China, but also everything illegal appear to come from there. Their chemotherapy dose table is calculated for diluted compounds. Coupling their law text to regular universal enforcement is just a suicide.
• dryheat3 7mo ago
  Might want to explore “Agenda 2030”. I don’t know for certain if it applies to this specific issue. But it does hint at a coordinated effort to build a completely new framework for managing the human species through technology.
  • bawis 7mo ago
    Can you elaborate please?
• eddythompson80 7mo ago
  Eh, it really isn’t that surprising. “Activists” in any country are quick to capitalize on a news cycle. You also missed AU. If you squint you would realize that they are all English speaking (or use English as a common exchange language)
• s__s 7mo ago
  It’s not a solved problem at all. Your take is very libertarian, which I personally sympathize with, but if we’re being honest it doesn’t align with reality. The truth is, there are a lot of bad parents that are, for various reasons, unable to perform these parental duties. We’ve always restricted children from accessing certain things without relying solely on their parent’s abilities or discretion. I’m strongly in favour in giving parents as much control as possible. That doesn’t negate the fact that the vast majority of children, for example, currently have completely unrestricted access to hardcore pornography. Shrugging it off, proclaiming it’s a parental responsibility, doesn’t solve the real world problem. Previous to the internet we didn’t allow free unrestricted distribution of pornography to children. We stepped in as a society and said, no actually if you’re selling that… fine, but you need to verify the age of the customer.
  • tosti 7mo ago
    Those parents were kids in their youth. Their kids may become parents someday. This is the mechanism that allows for a recovery process to occur naturally. Politicians have a limited duty cycle which entices them to act like the world is on fire. It's not. The real problems (deforestation, poverty, corruption to name a few) are mostly invisible to them.
• martin-t 7mo ago
  That's what I've been thinking this whole time. If you wanna surveil your children, surveil your own fucking children. You have no say in other people's lives. Now, as for solutions, it's also simple but unpopular. People shouldn't be so rich they have transnational power. All this is happening because we let a tiny group of mostly anti-social people get so much money the only way they can spend it is this kind of BS.
• comboy 7mo ago
  Eshittification (by Cory Doctorov) is a shitty book but it does explain how that dynamic works.
• nimchimpsky 7mo ago
  [dead]
• Barbing 7mo ago
  Seen today on fedi— vx-underground • @vxunderground “Yeah, so basically the current prevailing sch[*]zo internet theory is that Al nerds have destroyed the internet and created infinite spam. The advertisement goons are now incapable of determining who is a bot and who is an actual human. The advertisement goons no longer want to pay as much to social media networks. Social media networks, in full blown panic of losing potential revenue, decided to lobby governments saying "we gotta protect the kids! ID everyone to protect the kids from pedophiles!". The social media networks know this doesn't really protect kids. But, it does two things (and a third accidentally). 1. They now can identify who is human and who is Al slop machine, or enough to appease the advertisement goons 2. Advertising to children is a general no-no from politicians, or something, so with ID verification they can say with confidence they're not advertising to children because it's been ID verification. Basically, they can weed out the children and focus on advertising to adults 3. The feds can now tell who is human and who is Al slop. This inadvertently helps them with tracking people and serving fresh daily dumps of propaganda, or whatever they want to do. It's a win-win-win for advertisers, social media networks, the government, and any business which does data collections. It fucks over everyone else. Chat, I'm not going to lie to you. This is an extremely good conspiracy sch[*]zo theory and 1 unironically believe it.” Mar 13, 2026 • 11:33 PM UTC*
  • chatmasta 7mo ago
    In this case I think the schizos may be right. It makes complete sense. And $2b is peanuts to Meta, on par with the amount they’d authorize their lobbying department to spend over the course of a few years. I’m not surprised at all.
  • numpad0 7mo ago
    That _sounds_ somewhat plausible but it means those social media management is completely anemic to everything if true. We just all know that getting verified is how AI spammers get to do spamming. Or post unwanted yet kosher contents. Everything unwanted can be made legal though not everything desired can be made legal. Zuck wanting to build a centerpiece for his lair made out of resin fused copies of driver's licenses would sound more plausible.
• ekianjo 7mo ago
  > Something remarkable and unsettling is how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU. nothing strange about that. You have higher interests in control of the (national) governments in several countries, planning things at once. This is what you see as a result. It certainly did not involve democracy.
• 20after4 7mo ago
  This reddit thread¹ details thoroughly the connection to Meta (Facebook) and to a lesser extent Discord as being behind the push in the US. 1. https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
  • anon_shill 7mo ago
    Did you read it? It does neither of those things. It establishes that Meta is fighting to amend these regulatory bills to push onus onto operating systems and Discord isn’t named once in the OP.
    • 20after4 7mo ago
      Your username is appropriate. From rfk: “Rep. Kim Carver (R-Bossier City), the sponsor of Louisiana's HB-570, publicly confirmed that a Meta lobbyist brought the legislative language directly to her. “ That’s more than fighting to amend. I’m not sure where I got the discord connection but I thought it was from that link. I’ve read a few things on this subject recently so I may have mixed up two different sources.
      • enoint 7mo ago
        Obviously Discord is related. I can simultaneously support age constraints and also *not want my child’s 18th birthday leaked under any circumstances*.
• Markoff 7mo ago
  it worked with p(l)andemics, why it wouldn't with online verification? they always come with some noble reason how to force something down the population throat and majority still falls for it heck I don't see everyone boycotting and embarging US/Israel for their aggression against Iran, because they came up with good story once again, cough...Iraq WMD...cough
• latentsea 7mo ago
  > Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. Doesn't even seem close, but ok.
• EGreg 7mo ago
  It’s worse than you think. It’s not even coordinated by someone in the background — it’s just the emergent overton window thanks to technology, see: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-encryption/214 https://community.qbix.com/t/the-global-war-on-end-to-end-en...
• pbackx 7mo ago
  Personally I do not believe this is a solved problem. Technically maybe, in practice not at all. It is quite a job juggling the controls of the different companies. Microsoft even has two, one for Xbox one for windows. And then your child turns 13 and your only option is to take away the devices entirely. Another thing already discussed is school provided hardware. I know the schools try, but it is usually one person against 300+ students trying to figure out how to game/hack the system. Eg there's no reasonable way where you can expect one person to maintain a YouTube channel whitelist. I do agree that we might be solving this issue the wrong way, but there is a definitely a problem here.
  • croes 7mo ago
    It’s not even technically a solved problem.
• microtonal 7mo ago
  Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. Spoken as someone who probably hasn't used iOS/Mac parental controls. It is a hot buggy mess that randomly blocks whitelisted applications as well. We use it, but it is a constant pain. Also a lot of applications only work half, e.g., TV apps blocking off all content rather than only content that is not age-appropriate. By the way, we were initially firm believers of not using parental controls at all, by limiting time and teaching kids about how to use devices in a healthy way. But a lot of apps (e.g. Roblox, YouTube Shorts) are made to be as addictive as crack, making it very hard for a still not fully developed brain to deal with it. That said, I absolutely dislike the current lobby for age verification because the goal of Meta et al. seems to be to be to absolve themselves of any responsibility by moving verification to devices and to put up regulatory walls to make it more difficult for potential competitors to enter the market. It is regulatory capture.
  • duxup 7mo ago
    It’s not a parental controls / software problem. It’s a parents showing self control / parenting and monitoring their children in person thing.
    • wredcoll 7mo ago
      Do you genuinely not remember being a child?
      • muyuu 7mo ago
        tbf, when most of those posting here were children, access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connection wasn't a problem but i do remember my parents actually raising me pretty hands-on, taking care of me not watching stuff I shouldn't be watching which of course existed and was easily available
        • autoexec 7mo ago
          Access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connection is only a problem today when parents give their children access to smartphones/tablets with unrestricted internet connections. Cell phones and tablets don't spontaneously appear whenever a child wants one. Parents have the ability to hand devices over to children when they have time to watch them while they use it and remove those devices from them when they don't.
• thayne 7mo ago
  To be clear, I don't agree with these laws and think they are very much the wrong way to try to solve the problem. But it is not a solved problem. From what I've seen parental control software is generally pretty terrible. But this age verification stuff isn't really helpful.
  • subscribed 7mo ago
    It's a solved problem with a slightly flawed implementation on the end devices. You seem to be arguing that introducing the whole new class of legal frameworks, technical requirements and privacy scandals(1)(2) is somewhat better than fixing the end user software flaws. (1) https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/1-billion-identity-records-exposed-in-ai-verification-data-leak/ar-AA1YyJcM https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/1-billion-identity-rec... (2) https://proton.me/blog/discord-age-verfication-breach https://proton.me/blog/discord-age-verfication-breach
    • thayne 7mo ago
      I am not arguing for that at all! I specifically said that I don't think age verification laws are a solution. But I also don't think it is a solved problem, and think that parents need better tools to help protect their children online.
      • subscribed 7mo ago
        My apologies then, this is what I understand. I agree with "parents need better tools", but at the same time by "solved problem" I meant technical measures deployed by the parents. Not the surveillance and privacy hell for adults.
  • widowlark 7mo ago
    there is an exceptionally simple solve to the problem: Do not give your kids access to a cell phone or tablet.
• cultofmetatron 7mo ago
  They don't like what happened to their PR for what they did in gaza and they want to get ahead of the curve and stop us from seeing what they are going to do in IRAN without their SPIN. Its a poison pull to lay down the infrastructure for controlling narrative on the internet
• whatshisface 7mo ago
  I estimate we have two to three years in the English-speaking world to organize an effective lobby for the rights of the common man before changes to the speech environment and habitual methods of communication make it impossible. There's less than a year before the wave of lock-downs reaches normal internet users through announced policies like the Android software installation ban and through the growing effectiveness of algorithmic "Joy of TikTok"-style discussion selection, and one to two years after that before we run out of other avenues. The latter timeline could be too optimistic if the completion of the TPM-to-cloudflare chain of permission for desktop environments (steps had been made in the past but failed after public pushback) comes without a lot of advance notice. Don't forget - after each new constraint on the public, the next counter-reaction will be smaller, and the next change will be bigger or sooner.
  • tosti 7mo ago
    The cloudflare thing is insane. Like overnight a while ago, normal everyday websites are suddenly inaccessible (yes I have JS on, no it won't work.) Sometimes only the first page loads. Can't complain to CF either, because that too is walled off by their non-functional robot detector.
    • imiric 7mo ago
      This serves as a two-way filter for me. Any website I'm not allowed to access is not worth accessing. I'll take my attention and business to where I'm wanted instead.
• prohobo 7mo ago
  I'm completely baffled why anyone still engages with the "official" framing around this. Obviously, it's not for protecting children. Obviously, it's a technocratic trojan horse for increasing surveillance capabilities on digital systems. This is so cynically anti-democratic that they obfuscate the real purpose, don't even bother to make it plausible, and everyone is left talking about how "awful it is" that it's already legislated. I swear to God, if someone replies to this talking about how we need to protect the children I'm going to start requiring "age verification" from commenters, and I'll do a little background check to find out w̵h̵e̵r̵e̵ ̵t̵h̵e̵y̵ ̵l̵i̵v̵e̵ if they're over 18.
  • saturnite 7mo ago
    If this goes through, I wouldn't be surprised if facial recognition ends up being the "solution" to the problems this creates. I walked to get a sandwich today and I counted no less than ten cameras along the way. On an unrelated note, I'm thinking of taking up a laser hobby.
    • fc417fc802 7mo ago
      High power lasers reflect in unpredictable ways thereby endangering everyone around you. There are other options that don't risk bodily harm.
      • bartoszcki 7mo ago
        What are the options?
        • superkuh 7mo ago
          Most of the AI facial recognition cameras in the USA are from Flock and use small solar panels to keep the system battery charged. I've noticed that when I run small computers off small batteries and small solar panels even a bit of bird poop on the panel eventually causes the computer to run out of power. Bird poop, or bird poop simulants (like milk powder, black pepper, corn starch, water, wey powder) are non-destructive to solar panels or anyone's property. Sure would be cool if the birds would start helping.
• shevy-java 7mo ago
  Indeed. It is too suspicious how legislation gets cross-nation synced. A few get very rich right now. Pays well to be a lobbyist. > Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. This is just the ruse, the carrot on the stick. They hate us for our freedom.
• burnt-resistor 7mo ago
  Because it's manufactured consent and propaganda driven by deep pockets and ideologues. It was rammed through by the elites.
• 28304283409234 7mo ago
  Because the effects on our children is popping up simultaneously. Because globalization. Because every teenager is influenced by the likes of Andrew Tate and series like Adolescence. Either directly or indirectly. This is what we wanted. We wanted a connected world. Be careful what you wish for.
  • enoint 7mo ago
    That isn’t the cause of this phenomenon.
• kgwxd 7mo ago
  With every law we allowed in the name of child safety, we enabled the real goal, control. They barely have to even mention children in the new laws beyond "we have to legally cover ourselves against all the other child safety laws already in place."
• JasonADrury 7mo ago
  What's the point of even complaining about this? The reality is that nobody is willing to do anything to stop this. The people responsible will keep pushing for these schemes until they suffer direct personal consequences for doing so, that's the only way to ever make this stop.
• TacticalCoder 7mo ago
  > Something remarkable and unsettling is how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU. The nearly unique tune sang worldwide around Covid-19 was quite something too and I think this should be examined for it gives us information as to how they operate. As I've spent time in several countries, I took the habit to read the main newspapers' headlines of those various countries (in three different languages). I'll typically read headlines from major newspaper from France/Belgium/Luxembourg/Spain and the big ol' USA. When you do that, you realize how weirdly "synchronized" everything is. Not just the debate on age control. Some countries resist but nearly every media repeats the same thing, everywhere. And the sad thing is: most people here on HN (but certainly not me) kept repeating like parrots the same lies and half-truths the media were pushing everywhere. These lies and half-truth are now exposed in the official report by Congress on the origins of Sars-Cov-2 (link below). A few of us knew something was not right but every time we'd point it out it was to be met with downvotes. One investigative journalist pointed, very early on, that Peter Daszak was implicated and that this whole thing smelled of a lab leak. For the record: Peter Daszak has now been debarred. He's basically the "expert" who explained the virus couldn't possibly be a lab leak while... Being funded to do research on gain-of-function bat viruses. Here's the report and it's not "nice" to those who believed and repeated the media lies: - The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature. - Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels. - Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a COVID-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before COVID-19 was discovered at the wet market. I think that if we want to understand how the US/UK/EU and others all work together to lie to people, to scheme to advance their dirty pawns, we should look at the worst psyop in history (SARS-Cov-2 / Covid-19) and how it was handled. At what turned to be true, at what where lies, at what they fully know where lies and yet where presented at truths, etc. And that's only the lie about the virus. Don't get me started on that fast-tracked "vaccine" I got in my arms and which I now deeply regret. For all we know in a few years we'll also learn about the lies and half-truth around those various vaccines. > With the same logical fallacies. I think books could be filled with those logical fallacies we read about Covid. Including those we read in comments here on HN. I stand my case and it's here: FINAL REPORT: COVID Select Concludes 2-Year Investigation, Issues 500+ Page Final Report on Lessons Learned and the Path Forward [1] > Pretty telling about how transnational lobbies and their interests work. Yup I think so. And to me the SARS-Cov-2 / Covid-19 is a very interesting example of that and what happened should be studied more to understand how a select group people is scheming behind the scenes. [1] https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-select-concludes-2-year-investigation-issues-500-page-final-report-on-lessons-learned-and-the-path-forward/ https://oversight.house.gov/release/final-report-covid-selec...
• alance 7mo ago
  Australia as well.
• pushcx 7mo ago
  There's a lobbying group called 5rights that has designed and promoted the UK OSA, AU OSA, California KOSA, Federal KOSA, and more. This isn't some conspiracy. They take proudly take credit for these bills on their website, and in news coverage you'll see their same couple media personalities over and over: https://5rightsfoundation.com/our-work/ https://5rightsfoundation.com/our-work/ As usual for online censorship, Techdirt has had excellent coverage for years: https://www.techdirt.com/tag/baroness-beeban-kidron/ https://www.techdirt.com/tag/baroness-beeban-kidron/
• PurpleRamen 7mo ago
  > Something remarkable and unsettling is how the age verification debate has popped up almost simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU. Not really. Everyone wanted this for a decade or longer. They just waited for someone taking the first step, checking the reactions, to see how it will work out. > With the same logical fallacies. Same knowledge often leads to similar conclusions. > Controlling what children do online is a solved problem: Parenting and parental control applications. Do you have any relevant experience with this "solution"?
• smegger001 7mo ago
  It is Larry Ellison doing. He has been lobbying and trying to push the US and UK towards it for the last 20 plus years with plans on controlling the database and infrastructure behind it. https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/the-billionaire-behind-britains-digital https://thedreydossier.substack.com/p/the-billionaire-behind...
• Fervicus 7mo ago
  Also Australia and NZ.
• croes 7mo ago
  > Parenting and parental control applications. You have no clue what children. It’s by far not a solved problem
• hilbert42 7mo ago
  "Parenting and parental control applications." Correct. For the life of me I cannot see how this can ever work in practice. For such a scheme to work all users would have to be physically and electronically locked out from accessing any feature of a computer that would alter its function. This has to be sheer madness. Every general computing device from small embedded controllers, to Raspberry Pis to the most powerful desktop computers would have more in common with electricity meters and their embossed lead anti-tampering seals than present-day computers. Can you imagine the utter chaos of the state conducting regular anti-tampering audits of every state-registered PC? And what about the millions of legacy PCs that could not be adapted? Moreover, using such a computer would be more akin to using an automatic teller machine with its strictly controlled and limited functions, the notion of "general computing" as we now know it would cease to exist. The only practical solution is to make parents responsible—that is to ensure their kids do not have unfettered/unmanaged access to computers. Responsibility could be extended to all adults, anyone deliberately providing unsupervised/unfettered computer access to minors could be charged with child abuse. If parents aren't prepared to extend their parental responsibilities to also include computing devices, phones, social media and such then the state could impose penalties. Of course, for that to work society would have to agree as it now does over outlawing the physical punishing of children (not that long ago that wasn't the case). No doubt arriving at a society-wide consensus would take time but it's doable. Societal views do change, for example, when I was a kid we got the cane for misbehaving, caning kids is now outlawed often with heavy penalties. Finally, I also find your point about the age verification debate popping up simultaneously in the US, UK, and EU as very troubling. I'm not a conspiracy theorist but evidence suggests there are many lobbyists acting behind the scenes of whom we are unaware (same goes with the encryption debate). It's this sort of hidden subterfuge that's undermining and pulling our democracies apart. Little wonder that these days many citizens have little faith in institutions and those whose governance they're under.
• intended 7mo ago
  It feels like an exercise in futility to ring the alarm on HN. This is happening in India, Australia and will happen everywhere in the world. Tech is now the “bad guy”. Voters are tired of tech firms and want tech firms to be held accountable for the “bad stuff they do”. Actual research and evidence is held back because even if Tech is well meaning, they do not allow negative research results to be shared. While this information void is growing, Governments are champing at the bit to bring tech firms to heel within their jurisdictions. The alignment of incentives allows only one direction for things to go. We do not need global lobbying to achieve this result.
• chid 7mo ago
  and Australia?