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Comment by otterley | Hacker News Reader

When you’re young, the overwhelming and irrepressible desire to overcome society's proscriptions to satisfy your intellectual and sexual curiosity is natural and understandable. The open Internet made that easier than ever, and I enjoyed that freedom when I was younger—though I can’t say it was totally harmless.

When you’re older and have children—especially preteens and teenagers—you want those barriers up, because you’ve seen just how fucked up some children can get after overexposure to unhealthy materials and people who want to exploit or harm them.

It’s a matter of perspective and experience. As adults age, their natural curiosity evolves into a desire to protect their children from harm.

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> When you’re older and have children—especially preteens and teenagers—you want those barriers up, because you’ve seen just how fucked up some children can get after overexposure to unhealthy materials.

You mean that you shirk your responsibility to teach your child how to protect themself on the Internet, and instead trust the faceless corp to limit their access at the cost of everyone's privacy? How does this make sense...

If a business demands you reveal your identity as a condition of use, and you would rather maintain your anonymity, you can choose not to use that business. It's not like these companies are providing essential services necessary for life.

Heck, you can't even obtain housing -- which is an essential service -- without having to provide identity in most cases.

Some people would argue though that if the friend group is on Facebook/Discord or whatever, and they aren't going to move off to cater to the person rejecting those services, then those services are at least essential to maintaining those social ties. They decided that giving up their data was a tradeoff worth it.

What remains to be seen is if the outcome of teenagers becoming social pariahs is really worse than the alternatives.

If not joining social media with friends has been seriously detrimental to teens by making them social pariahs, I'm sure we'd have heard plenty of horror stories by now, as these services have been around for over 20 years. Compare against the horror stories we have heard about those who have gone down the dark roads social media has opened to them that ended in tragedy.

They may be looking at the societal level and saying: "I can attempt to teach my kids best practices, but I've learned I sure can't rely on my peers to do the same with their kids...", then feeling like the outcome of that, if left as-is, is societal decline... and then believing that something needs to be done beyond the individual level.

The only thing this is going to achieve is to bar unverified users form the vaguely reputable and mainstream places into the small, completely unregulated spaces, sites and networks.

I presume you prefer hard requirement of IDs.

I'm saying this will make kids go to i2p, tor, to the obscure fora in countries not giving a f* about western laws.

As a parent to the teens and teens, THIS makes me concerned. The best vpns are very hard to detect (I know, I try it myself).

> I'm saying this will make kids go to i2p, tor, to the obscure fora in countries not giving a f* about western laws.

Some will, but most won't. Similarly, most kids who are dissuaded from buying alcohol because they don't have ID are not going to break the law to get it, or switch to hard drugs as an alternative.

You can't let perfect be the enemy of better.

I my kids' school some 30% of the kids vape. They don't drink because it's no longer a thing in this generation. Those who want to get the alcohol still get it very easily (by the means of £10 tip for the bum).

I agree with your last paragraph but the current development (for example the intentionally imprecise OSA in the UK) is NOT aimed at "protecting children" (whenever I hear someone say "think of the children" Id prefer they stopped thinking of mine all the time, creeps).

Here's the long article unpicking it in details: https://consoc.org.uk/the-online-safety-act-privacy-threats-...

> Under the cover of protecting children – a catchphrase repeated as the reason for the urgency of the legislation – the government has already conferred on itself future powers to access end-to-end encrypted messages (as soon as the technology becomes available), as well as powers to restrict what can and cannot be said on social media platforms as regards “false communication”. The categorisation debate reveals a kind of mission creep toward the spread of information, and the government’s inability to control it – rather than the actual harm information may cause.

Notice: the stated lie is "we protect the children!" but the intention of the act is to access everything everywhere.

Predictably the MPs are ramping up the pressure calling for more https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8641/social-media-misi...

And more: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/uk-government-vpn-restrictions-onl...

And more: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/122234

And more: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/keeping-children-safe-onl...

And more! https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp82447l84ko

AND THEN: https://cybernews.com/news/and-then-mullvads-anti-surveillan...

Do you really, honestly, hand on heart believe that it's just about "protecting the kids"?

At heart, I do believe that the politicians are well-intended. It's difficult to argue that we shouldn't try to prevent the production and dissemination of CSAM. That traffickers in CSAM are more sophisticated than ever, and encrypted communications combined with the dark web help them cover their tracks are undeniable facts.

Freedom of speech is not, and has never been absolute. For example, it's unlawful to lie about the content of food and drug products. Fraud is unlawful. We also hold people liable for defamation.

You're right that technology would allow governments to cast a broad net over communication and open the door to certain kinds of abuse. It's a completely legitimate concern.

This is where legal and constitutional protections can come into play. The ability to collect communications should be coupled with safeguards to prevent people from being prosecuted for lawful speech. To have one without the other would be a tragedy. And, yes, sometimes despots need to be dealt with through violent means (politics by other means, see Clausewitz).

So you basically want to prevent your children from doing what you did at their age?

And you don't mind that freedoms of all of us would be restricted as a result?

And then, we keep blaming boomers for those restrictions.

Yes, in exactly the same way that my dad would want me to only use SawStop table saws so that I don't lose a finger like he did.

As for "freedoms," you're not free to vote or drink alcohol below a certain age. And before the internet, minors couldn't purchase pornography, either. Some people perceive this change as a return to normal, not an egregious destruction of freedom.

SawStop table saws still suffer from kickback like other table saws, which is arguably much more dangerous than losing a finger and can even cause lethal injury. The SawStop mechanism might provide an illusion of safety that results in users being less careful with their work.

I think the solution we really need is age verification for table saws. Of course, it goes without saying that the saw should also monitor the user's cuts to make sure they're connected with the right national suppliers who can supply material to meet their needs, and to ensure that you aren't using the saw to cut any inappropriate materials from unregistered sources.

Ah, yes, the old "safety mechanism doesn't protect against all dangers, therefore it has no value" argument. Right.

The door is over there. Take the baby out with the bathwater as you leave. -->

> As for "freedoms," you're not free to vote or drink alcohol below a certain age. And before the internet, minors couldn't purchase pornography, either. Some people perceive this change as a return to normal, not an egregious destruction of freedom.

I am not talking about pornography or alcohol at all.

I hope you are aware that requiring an ID to surf the internet leads to total censoring and self-censoring of the complete internet. There goes your privacy, anonymity, and right to free speech.

If your country's regime really wanted to address pornography or alcohol, I'm pretty sure they would be able to shut it down without requiring everyone's identity. The issue is, they are just using these topics to manipulate people, and you are failing to that trap.

> requiring an ID to surf the internet

Who's proposing this? I don't want to argue over a straw man.

Age verification === require an ID

Right. I meant the "to surf the internet" part. Who's proposing this, exactly? No government is mentioned in the article that is doing or considering this.

They are talking about it in the context of "high risk" services and social media, but not the Internet as such.

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