Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilekas | Hacker News Reader

The fact that these tools are 'active' centric, i.e : You must perform an action to validate you're NOT a child, these will never protect children. A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people.

I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have dropped. So I can only assume that this was the purpose the whole time.

View on HN

Sob stories about children are always weaponized for oppression.

It was used to bash interracial marriage, gay rights, suppress dissent, attack the first amendment, and now this.

Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.

The best way to protect children is to educate them to protect themselves, but that argument generally falls on deaf ears, doubly so when there's an opportunity to use "but the children" as a political cudgel.

Don’t forget the second amendment.

I don't understand your point. Can you quote the part of the second amendment that specifically addresses children, or schools for that matter?

> Sob stories about children are always weaponized for oppression.

This is common for opponents of the second amendment as well. "Think of the children!" etc etc.

While I think you and I would agree if I argued it was more about culture than firearms per-capita, it's pretty hard to say children aren't suffering some pretty real harms from said firearms (to say nothing of adult suicide statistics when firearms are kept in the house)

Reducing the number of guns doesn't solve the root issue (which I think we'd also agree on), but it should minimize the harms while being dramatically easier than changing the American ethos. Hell, America could likely get 80% of the results (no school shootings) with 20% of the effort (additional restrictions on firearms, more akin to Canada)

I further think the second amendment is causing Americans more harm than it's worth, though that's a seperate discussion; some examples include suicide statistics, accidental discharge, a lack of protection even when carried legally (such as in Alex Pretti's murder) and the fact that, when firearms could be anywhere, police must treat every interaction as potentially fatal - with all the force that requires

You're on HN. Expect downvotes.

whats incredible to me are how many useful idiots out there STILL fall for it.

___ said hamas beaheaded 40 babies and that turned out to be a complete fabrication. That fake info was used in part to justify killing thousands of kids in ____

meanwhile the recent strike on Iran resulted in 80 little girls getting killed (with plenty of evidence) and its swept under the rug while we get blasted about the 7 soldiers that died.

More useful idiots are born every day, most of them never are educated and do not see their past blunders as anything wrong happening, they are completely blind to the real implication of their actions.

I know some idiots that read newspapers and technical papers and yet would rather have company like discord providing safety for their new born daughter but would vote for small govt republicans (or democrats, i don't care, it's just a label that is applicable now. they are mostly all the same) and do nothing about calling out the actual child predators and taking proper action against them. It is bonkers

>whats incredible to me are how many useful idiots out there STILL fall for it.

That's about 99% of the population.

But none of us here, right?

We are special of course. Edit: Actually just me, I'm special

Age verification doesn't stop determined bad actors, it just builds a database of everyone who cooperated...........

Know they sheep, the better to keep them penned.

Exactly my point.. And all the industry experts who they must have consulted in to write the laws are coincidently invested in personal data harvesting. Who could have foreseen this happening.

Now do Covid… tracking the non-compliant is surely the smaller task.

A much better approach would be to hold platforms responsible if they allow a stranger that does not have explicit parental consent to communicate with or get information about a minor.

This would block the most common classes of abuse on platforms like Roblox, Fortnight, Lego (kids) Fortnight, YouTube Kids, Minecraft, and "educational" social networks / games.

Note that it doesn't require any centralized surveillance at all. Parents just need to control the kids' ability to create random accounts, by (for example) turning on parental controls as they already exist on most tablets/phones, and blocking app installation / email applications (or other 2FA vectors).

When the parent allows an account to be created, they just tick the "kid mode" box. This even works with shared devices that don't support multiple accounts (so, iPads and iPhones).

> A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people.

Roblox takes the sane approach with this: communication features are completely disabled for "unverified" users.

Minecraft is going this direction as well, at least for UK based users.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com