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Comment by npunt | Hacker News Reader

Any idea that is based on "If everyone just..." is wishful thinking. Describe the mechanism by which you convince everyone to just do something.

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Sure, but the ID solution is an "if everyone just gives up their privacy / anonymity / sensitive data" and the mechanism is by denial of service

In fact its worse. Every site must also implement this security check. Or everyone must agree to just use sites and services that follow this policy. Otherwise anyone can just use another, often 'less safe' website.

I'm not advocating for that either, I'm only pointing out that "if everyone just" is a collective action problem that is a non-solution because it doesn't describe the mechanism by which everyone does something.

Your example confuses the locus of control. The platform is making the choice and relies on user inaction rather than action. Users as a whole basically always descend gradients, and if they like / are addicted to the service, they'll descend with enough momentum to carry them over one-time friction like an ID check. The null hypothesis is they continue using the service. For it to be an "if everyone just" answer, it would be "if everyone just decided to stop using these extremely sticky services" because that is the de facto choice they are presented with. And it similarly suffers from an "if everyone just" lack of plausible mechanism.

The point of calling out non-solutions masquerading as solutions is to keep people's energy focused on possible but unstated solutions, rather than spending time blaming people for behavior largely determined by myriad immovable circumstances.

Pass a law that requires devices and software to support a per-device or per user account 'child' or 'minor' flag. The flag must be lockable with a password or another account. Pass a law that mandates that websites and content handle the flag appropriately, whether that means denying service or limiting access.

This would protect children while only minimally infringing on privacy.

The mechanism by which we make everyone 'just' is laws. The laws that are being passed are telling of the actual goals.

I too think this is likely the only workable solution. My bias is the OS/ecosystem layer is the right place to handle access to the digital world.

However as digital access becomes more and more essential to doing anything in life, this makes the layer even more load bearing, so I wish to see a legal framework for privacy/security as well as appeals process for the painful edge cases where people get locked out for whatever reason. That problem is even harder.

Apt username. I already have to deal with non-functional wifi because of frequency band restrictions. And instead of buying physical media (or streaming), I have to "pirate" content because of DRM.

Any hardware or software that disobeys the user is useless for the user. It just becomes a tool for power grabs.

Nothing in that description involves hardware or software disobeying the parent user. The parent has all the power. What's wrong with that?

It's fine if it's opt-in until the opt-in becomes opt-out and I get to use my old gear until it dies. That would still be fine with me except for the fact that my income and by extension wife and family depend on me using a computer. That would still be fine if somehow we could escape this system and still have food and shelter but that won't fly with the healthcare system we depend on.

I didn't see how one (admin) account setting a flag on another account could be anything but opt-in. It's really unclear to me what you're worried about, the whole world getting put onto child accounts or something? I don't think a law that bans the vast majority of online commerce would get any support, among other reasons.

In theory, yes. But the idea was:

> Pass a law that requires devices and software to support a per-device or per user account 'child' or 'minor' flag.

We already know how such laws pan out in practise. Vendors don't want to be sued for non-compliance and benefit from restricting their customers anyway so their products are designed to obey the manufacturer at the cost of the owner.

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