Look, the reality is that kids will be kids ...
Remember the pre-internet days when the porn mags were on the top-shelf at the newsagent ?
I'm sure many of that generation will tell you stories of copies of Playboy being passed around in the school playground.
Or back in the VHS or DVD days .... someone in the playground would be passing around some porn.
Or, a UK-centric example would be the famous Page 3 of The Sun newspaper.... "giggle giggle...boobies...giggle"
Moving swiftly forward to the modern day. You can legislate about it all you like, but kids know their way around tech and will soon discover what you can do with a VPN or any of the other many workarounds.
I think the reality is more that the government is trying to legislate for things that could be resolved by good old-fashioned parenting and teaching.
Educating your child properly is better than doing the helicopter-parenting routine and trying to smother little Billy in cotton wool.
Are you going to not allow the kid access to mainstream radio or TV incase they watch/listen to the news where you have eye-witnesses being interviewed, often live with minimal/no editing ?
Or not allow the kid to visit mainstream media news websites, because most mainstream media outlets copied the same social media clip you referred to and just edited out the exact moment. But the kid can still use their imagination for that half-second moment.
Are you not going to take them on public transport incase some adults start chatting about it in detail ?
Don't get me wrong, I see your perspective.
But the point is there are so many moving parts to today's fast moving world that you can't put them all back in the box, wave a magic wand and revert to the pre-internet days where there were only four TV channels showing highly scripted content.
Yes modern parenting is tough. But thinking everything can be solved just by throwing more and more broadly (and badly) worded highly-intrusive kitchen-sink legislation at it is not the answer either.
If you have read "1984", the story is fast.
I'm a korean, And a fake news censorship law has been drafted here. When We asked what the standard of fake was, the answer came back that "it was not important".
It's actually the case. Because they already have standards.
20 years ago was 2005. We were "here".
Oh, right..
Or three under 5?
There is a legitimate interest, but subtlety and critical thinking are some of the first things to go out the window.
Personally, it completely redefined my concept of ‘exhausted’, though the military veteran family of mine seemed to consider it a not entirely uncommon level of suffering. They were all enlisted though.
Maybe it'll die off in a generation or two, when cynical millennials and zoomers become the backbone of politics. But for now?
"Think of the children" is hilariously transparent to us, but it enjoys moderate support across population, and, much worse, it gets overwhelming support of geriatric politicians. Which is what makes fighting for liberties so hard.
If there was a way to prove one's identity/age online, double anonymously (so both the website doesn't know who you are, and the identity service doesn't know what website is asking) I'd be a 100% for it. It would prevent minors from accessing stuff they're not ready for (on average), and it would limit the amount of bots and foreign interference.
The dispute here is balancing people's human right to wank anonymously against the right of parents (and society's?) to limit access to (absurdly) age inappropriate material.
What does "ready for" even mean, when is anyone ready for 4k German BDSM.
There's also this slippery slope argument that preserving the former right is absolutely necessary to prevent creeping fascism. Which is absurd. Shouldn't it be the responsibility of the wankers to create some palatable solution to the conflict of interests, rather than demand the parents figure out how such wankers can preserve their anonymity?
Parenting is necessary for continuation and health of society. 4k German stuff is not.
IMO, so is the fight against active hostile foreign or local actors bot flaming on the internet to stoke tensions. These kinds of acts aren't only online (cf. Russia paying Moldovans and Serbs to commit anti-semitic and anti-muslim acts in France to stoke tensions between Jews, Muslims and everyone else), but they are drastically more effective online with the help of social media algorithms. To preserve healthy democracies, something has to be done.
> and for society’s constant fight against authoritarianism
And it pipes into this one. The people profiting the most from those tensions, which they stoke too, are wannabe authoritarians (cf. Trump).
How to fight against them and their tactics without giving them the tools they will abuse once they're into power to shut down dissent?