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No, age-verification IS bad and is a slippery slope that will always lead to surveillance. If we don't stop this now everything will get worse. And trying to lu

No, age-verification IS bad and is a slippery slope that will always lead to surveillance. If we don't stop this now everything will get worse. And trying to lump this in with other extreme rhetoric doesn't help. The answer is and always was "better parenting".

ian_holt 5mo ago
And in addition to that, it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing. As far as I am concerned most governments stick their collective noses in where they are not required. And, yeah, I do agree that kids shouldn't be on social media. Having sid that, even some adults shouldn't be on social media...
- p2detar 5mo ago
  > it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing The only effective tools parents have is to disallow or remove devices from their kids. It will work at the beginning but as they grow up it will become impossible, since at some point kids get influenced mostly by their friends' circle. So yes, I do agree that parents must talk to their children and explain what social media can lead to, including the dangers of internet predators and so on. But no, I don't agree that parental control is a general solution that will work for all kids out there. It never has.
  - ian_holt 5mo ago
    <The only effective tools parents have is to disallow or remove devices from their kids. It will work at the beginning but as they grow up it will become impossible, since at some point kids get influenced mostly by their friends' circle> Very true & having 6 kids of my own, I know that only too well. I still don't like the idea of Mr Government trying to tell me how to raise my family. Here in Australia the government seems to like that a lot...
    - maigret 5mo ago
      Well the thing is that people often love when the government tells other families how to live, and partly for good reasons including enabling basic education for everyone. Partly the wants of the parents and the needs of the kids might be at odds. Society is a complex construct.
- pocksuppet 5mo ago
  Governments are required to enforce that devices must give the choices to parents though, right? Otherwise devices won't give the choices to parents because it's more profitable if you don't.
notepad0x90 5mo ago
How is that the answer when even parents don't have the right tools for this. are parents supposed to surveil their kids 24/7 and monitor their internet traffic? Why is the internet special, do you also believe physical stores shouldn't check for ID for cigarettes and alcohol, because the solution is better parenting?
- jchw 5mo ago
  I never had to get my ID checked to be able to talk to strangers.
  - SiempreViernes 5mo ago
    Did you to talk to the strangers in the night club when you were 11? Or were there several completely separate reasons for why you couldn't?
    - jchw 5mo ago
      The internet has explicitly R-18 chats. Random IRC channels are not nightclubs. I am moving the goal posts back, if you touch them again we're escorting you off of the field.
      - chadgpt3 5mo ago
        Most things that happen at nightclubs are not R-18 either.
        jchw 5mo ago
        That doesn't make adult spaces equivalent to family friendly spaces, off the field now sir.
  - notepad0x90 5mo ago
    in real life people can see you and determine your age at a rough estimate and be able to tell if you're an adult or not. Do you support having to turn on your webcam and show your face in real time then, to talk to strangers on the internet? many age verification sites are doing just that.
deleted 5mo ago
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jenscow 5mo ago
I won't disagree with that. And "better parenting" is a solution. However, what about the children who don't have the advantage of "better parenting"? Rightfully blaming bad parents is reactionary
- coldtea 5mo ago
  >Rightfully blaming bad parents is reactionary So? Not all reactionary (if you mean "conservative") takes are bad. Sometimes they're better than the alternative: accepting bad parenting as some default and working around it with technological restrictions.
  - Nasrudith 5mo ago
    "Reactionary"'s origins as far are pure political DARVO and gaslighting anyway. It originated in the French revolution and basically declared "You are morally wrong for being horrified at my horrific and evil actions." That origin tainted the term for me personally. The actual modern reactionary meaning of "referrant to a mythical past as a standard" always felt like it deserved a better term. But nobody would get what you were saying if you called them a "fairytaleland resident" or similar.
    - pocksuppet 5mo ago
      I always read "reactionary" as "oh no, someone did something! now I have to react by getting angry!" and it seems to fit well enough.
- platevoltage 5mo ago
  If parents don't want their kids on social media, get them a dumb phone, or use the parental control features. Maybe some parents don't care, and that's their prerogative. None of this is about protecting children, it's about "protecting" adults from "bad ideas".
  - djaro 5mo ago
    The problem is many parents will not do that. Do those children then deserve to be taken advantage of by social media corporations? Generally, things that are harmful and addictive such as alcohol, cigarettes and casinos require age verification. We dont just put the onus on parents because a child with bad or absent parents still deserves to be shielded from alcoholism at 12 years old.
intended 5mo ago
HN is filled with people who are on the other side of an "internet best practices" information divide. For everyone else, the internet is already a shit show and a half. They want control, because it means putting a stop to being predated upon, or more nihilistically, harming the firms that are harming them. I don't know how to let other commenters see how bad it is, or make the gulf in view points clear.
- Nasrudith 5mo ago
  Giving up control is always a mistake - they never do what they promised and you never get back the control. There is never a refutation to this fac: just a childish "But I want it!".
  - pocksuppet 5mo ago
    I agree. That's why the government shouldn't stop toddlers from buying guns.
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armchairhacker 5mo ago
Everything good is a slippery slope: every step in the right direction is bad if you overshoot. Maybe age verification isn’t needed, and educating parents is important; but without more, they’d have to be ultra-helicopter parents to stop their kids from accessing social media. At minimum, parents need other parents in their local community to be educated; and better parental controls, so they can give their kid a phone and computer (for good reasons like safety and education) that won’t let them access social media (even unintentionally, some parental controls are that bad). Both can be done without laws, only social pressure and at least the potential for new (locked-down) devices. (In theory, kids should also be prevented from buying unlocked devices, like drugs and alcohol. And showing the local cashier your ID to buy a generic device (whose packaging is indistinguishable from other device packing, so it can’t be traced to you afterward) is technically a form of age verification. But in practice this may not be necessary, because hardware is too expensive for most kids.)
insane_dreamer 5mo ago
The slippery slope was ad-sponsored social media in the first place. Ban it at the source rather than trying to fix downstream problems.
djaro 5mo ago
Age verification has always existed in the physical world, such as at bars and casinos. I just dont see why the internet should be immune to real world rules we decided upon for good reason.
zrn900 5mo ago
> "better parenting" This has nothing to do with parenting. It's surveillance. They failed to do it through child porn argument. They are doing it through 'social media is harmful for children' argument. People did not bite on the former. They ate up the latter out of hate for social media platforms.

ian_holt 5mo ago

And in addition to that, it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing. As far as I am concerned most governments stick their collective noses in where they are not required. And, yeah, I do agree that kids shouldn't be on social media. Having sid that, even some adults shouldn't be on social media...

p2detar 5mo ago
> it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing The only effective tools parents have is to disallow or remove devices from their kids. It will work at the beginning but as they grow up it will become impossible, since at some point kids get influenced mostly by their friends' circle. So yes, I do agree that parents must talk to their children and explain what social media can lead to, including the dangers of internet predators and so on. But no, I don't agree that parental control is a general solution that will work for all kids out there. It never has.
- ian_holt 5mo ago
  <The only effective tools parents have is to disallow or remove devices from their kids. It will work at the beginning but as they grow up it will become impossible, since at some point kids get influenced mostly by their friends' circle> Very true & having 6 kids of my own, I know that only too well. I still don't like the idea of Mr Government trying to tell me how to raise my family. Here in Australia the government seems to like that a lot...
  - maigret 5mo ago
    Well the thing is that people often love when the government tells other families how to live, and partly for good reasons including enabling basic education for everyone. Partly the wants of the parents and the needs of the kids might be at odds. Society is a complex construct.
pocksuppet 5mo ago
Governments are required to enforce that devices must give the choices to parents though, right? Otherwise devices won't give the choices to parents because it's more profitable if you don't.

notepad0x90 5mo ago

How is that the answer when even parents don't have the right tools for this. are parents supposed to surveil their kids 24/7 and monitor their internet traffic? Why is the internet special, do you also believe physical stores shouldn't check for ID for cigarettes and alcohol, because the solution is better parenting?

jchw 5mo ago
I never had to get my ID checked to be able to talk to strangers.
- SiempreViernes 5mo ago
  Did you to talk to the strangers in the night club when you were 11? Or were there several completely separate reasons for why you couldn't?
  - jchw 5mo ago
    The internet has explicitly R-18 chats. Random IRC channels are not nightclubs. I am moving the goal posts back, if you touch them again we're escorting you off of the field.
    - chadgpt3 5mo ago
      Most things that happen at nightclubs are not R-18 either.
      - jchw 5mo ago
        That doesn't make adult spaces equivalent to family friendly spaces, off the field now sir.
- notepad0x90 5mo ago
  in real life people can see you and determine your age at a rough estimate and be able to tell if you're an adult or not. Do you support having to turn on your webcam and show your face in real time then, to talk to strangers on the internet? many age verification sites are doing just that.

deleted 5mo ago

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deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

jenscow 5mo ago

I won't disagree with that. And "better parenting" is a solution. However, what about the children who don't have the advantage of "better parenting"? Rightfully blaming bad parents is reactionary

coldtea 5mo ago
>Rightfully blaming bad parents is reactionary So? Not all reactionary (if you mean "conservative") takes are bad. Sometimes they're better than the alternative: accepting bad parenting as some default and working around it with technological restrictions.
- Nasrudith 5mo ago
  "Reactionary"'s origins as far are pure political DARVO and gaslighting anyway. It originated in the French revolution and basically declared "You are morally wrong for being horrified at my horrific and evil actions." That origin tainted the term for me personally. The actual modern reactionary meaning of "referrant to a mythical past as a standard" always felt like it deserved a better term. But nobody would get what you were saying if you called them a "fairytaleland resident" or similar.
  - pocksuppet 5mo ago
    I always read "reactionary" as "oh no, someone did something! now I have to react by getting angry!" and it seems to fit well enough.
platevoltage 5mo ago
If parents don't want their kids on social media, get them a dumb phone, or use the parental control features. Maybe some parents don't care, and that's their prerogative. None of this is about protecting children, it's about "protecting" adults from "bad ideas".
- djaro 5mo ago
  The problem is many parents will not do that. Do those children then deserve to be taken advantage of by social media corporations? Generally, things that are harmful and addictive such as alcohol, cigarettes and casinos require age verification. We dont just put the onus on parents because a child with bad or absent parents still deserves to be shielded from alcoholism at 12 years old.

intended 5mo ago

HN is filled with people who are on the other side of an "internet best practices" information divide. For everyone else, the internet is already a shit show and a half. They want control, because it means putting a stop to being predated upon, or more nihilistically, harming the firms that are harming them. I don't know how to let other commenters see how bad it is, or make the gulf in view points clear.

Nasrudith 5mo ago
Giving up control is always a mistake - they never do what they promised and you never get back the control. There is never a refutation to this fac: just a childish "But I want it!".
- pocksuppet 5mo ago
  I agree. That's why the government shouldn't stop toddlers from buying guns.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]

armchairhacker 5mo ago

Everything good is a slippery slope: every step in the right direction is bad if you overshoot. Maybe age verification isn’t needed, and educating parents is important; but without more, they’d have to be ultra-helicopter parents to stop their kids from accessing social media. At minimum, parents need other parents in their local community to be educated; and better parental controls, so they can give their kid a phone and computer (for good reasons like safety and education) that won’t let them access social media (even unintentionally, some parental controls are that bad). Both can be done without laws, only social pressure and at least the potential for new (locked-down) devices. (In theory, kids should also be prevented from buying unlocked devices, like drugs and alcohol. And showing the local cashier your ID to buy a generic device (whose packaging is indistinguishable from other device packing, so it can’t be traced to you afterward) is technically a form of age verification. But in practice this may not be necessary, because hardware is too expensive for most kids.)

insane_dreamer 5mo ago

The slippery slope was ad-sponsored social media in the first place. Ban it at the source rather than trying to fix downstream problems.

djaro 5mo ago

Age verification has always existed in the physical world, such as at bars and casinos. I just dont see why the internet should be immune to real world rules we decided upon for good reason.

zrn900 5mo ago

> "better parenting" This has nothing to do with parenting. It's surveillance. They failed to do it through child porn argument. They are doing it through 'social media is harmful for children' argument. People did not bite on the former. They ate up the latter out of hate for social media platforms.