1.) Because it always seems to have an outsized impact on adults. Then the predators get away with it because the platforms DGAF (for example, Discord has had a MASSIVE problem with illegality for YEARS, with boatloads of reports and evidence that was blatantly ignored, and yet NOW they need your ID?) And any gate design that COULD work without PII won't be implemented because data is too juicy.
> Maybe this is why we need protocols over platforms?
> If counter culture gets driven back to IRC, or gasp meatspace, then all the better.
2.) Yes on both counts. But protocols need to be decentralized, massively scalable, available across every platform including phones, and normie-grade easy-to-use (not everybody, and it's getting better now, but lots of devs tend to give up here, like it's a binary choice between a lobotomized barely-functioning bloated Fisher-Price app and a fully-functioning lean app with awful UI. Shockingly difficult, as I discovered trying to program, but both possible and necessary.) But as for meatspace...
> we went from a world where most everything was intermediated by parents
3.) If anything, the world is intermediated by parents like never before.[1] Not everywhere, not everybody, but enough freedom of movement and gathering has been lost by children and teens that it is killing meatspace. This CANNOT be ignored if you want to address online problems. The internet, awful as it can be, is the only "free" place left to roam for many.