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"The government says all children need to show an ID when browsing the internet in order to be safe" "The government says all children need to be vaccinated in

"The government says all children need to show an ID when browsing the internet in order to be safe" "The government says all children need to be vaccinated in order to be safe" I'm not saying these arguments are equivalent, but they seem equivalent because they induce the same feeling of loss of agency. And one cannot simply ignore and dismiss something like this.

matheusmoreira 2mo ago
> loss of agency That's exactly what this is. They want to build an internet where it is structurally impossible for children to be harmed in any way. This requires the destruction of the very concept of agency. You can't just do things. You need government approval.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  No they don't? Laws can't really make anything "structurally impossible" unless they criminalize a lot more - such as hosting a website without full government review (this is illegal in China). These laws are quite clearly targeted at the harm that is happening today and not at locking down the entire internet. You do have to take enforcement into account when evaluating these laws. Some HNers interpret this as you go to jail for not scanning an ID (which makes sense to programmers because it's a simple if/then), but most of them are actually written as product safety laws, so the government can order you to comply or take your product off the market.
  - matheusmoreira 2mo ago
    > Laws can't really make anything "structurally impossible" Require age verification. Kids lie and claim they are 18. Require better age verification, implemented at the operating system level so that only the parent's administrator account can override it. Kids install a live Linux operating system on a USB drive and boot it, and now they have full access to the web. Require computers to be cryptographically locked down so that only approved child-protecting operating systems may ever run. For the sake of the kids. Computing freedom has now been destroyed. It is now structurally impossible for you to be free. It's not your computer anymore, it's the government's, and you better believe they are going to do a lot more than just prevent kids from accessing harmful content.
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      read the next 6 words after the ones you quoted

matheusmoreira 2mo ago

> loss of agency That's exactly what this is. They want to build an internet where it is structurally impossible for children to be harmed in any way. This requires the destruction of the very concept of agency. You can't just do things. You need government approval.

inigyou 2mo ago
No they don't? Laws can't really make anything "structurally impossible" unless they criminalize a lot more - such as hosting a website without full government review (this is illegal in China). These laws are quite clearly targeted at the harm that is happening today and not at locking down the entire internet. You do have to take enforcement into account when evaluating these laws. Some HNers interpret this as you go to jail for not scanning an ID (which makes sense to programmers because it's a simple if/then), but most of them are actually written as product safety laws, so the government can order you to comply or take your product off the market.
- matheusmoreira 2mo ago
  > Laws can't really make anything "structurally impossible" Require age verification. Kids lie and claim they are 18. Require better age verification, implemented at the operating system level so that only the parent's administrator account can override it. Kids install a live Linux operating system on a USB drive and boot it, and now they have full access to the web. Require computers to be cryptographically locked down so that only approved child-protecting operating systems may ever run. For the sake of the kids. Computing freedom has now been destroyed. It is now structurally impossible for you to be free. It's not your computer anymore, it's the government's, and you better believe they are going to do a lot more than just prevent kids from accessing harmful content.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    read the next 6 words after the ones you quoted