What makes me extremely sad and concerned is that more recent generations simply have no idea or expectation of privacy online anymore. There will never be more of a fight against all this Orwellian behavior.
And once you step outside HN, forget it. You can save yourself, but there are thousands of people that do respond to the "think of the children!" nonsense and will call you a creep for objecting to it. It's game over now, you will fight against this for the rest of your life.
Which is funny as thats what I heard from my older family growing up. Except it's a lie and they have plenty to hide!
Above all, the LLM panopticon will watch us all.
Technology will not save us. Nothing will save us but ourselves and we're busy making rent and doomscrolling.
The information asymmetry between individuals and the powerful is permanently reversed.
Thinking about it in terms of the monopoly of violence being the root of power negotiations; typically a resistance movement has more information about the state/colonizer than vice versa, because power has to be visible - guerilla warfare thrives on this.
That's gone. The powerful will have complete detailed information and automatic analysis.
The medium is the message.
What's different is that, for a while, the early Internet age (and a little bit earlier - Usenet etc) made that underground very accessible. Now we're reverting back to the original situation where it was very much shunned and criminalized.
What is it you mean by this?
I see so many offhand comments about the dystopian UK here but AFAICT there’s a lot of noise and very little meat. The only thing I can think you mean is the UK is currently debating a bill to limit jury trials to more serious offences. While I do find that pretty offensive, there’s nothing fast track about any of its justice system at the moment.
On the contrary, people are waiting years for trial, which is bad for the accused because they have it hanging over them, and bad for victims who get no swift resolution.
For example:
>Courts will sit for 24 hours to fast-track sentencing under government plans to crack down on far-Right riots that swept Britain on Saturday.[1]
[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/03/courts-open-24-h...
There is also this:
>Only Australia arrested climate and environmental protesters at a higher rate than UK police. One in five Australian eco-protests led to arrests, compared with about 17% in the UK. The global average rate is 6.7%.
>The UK’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2021 and the Public Order Act 2022 transformed the relationship between protesters and the state, handing police extensive new powers to curtail protests and criminalising a range of protest activities. [2]
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/11/britain-...
Boot, face, forever, etc
And given the Southport riots were, well riots, it’s unsurprising they were dealt with harshly.
That said, I agree that what’s happening with protest in both the UK and Australia is deeply wrong. New South Wales in particular seems to be awful on this front.
It’s a shame that guardian article doesn’t link to the actual study.
It’s not especially surprising that there is a high rate of arrests in the subcategory of protests they picked - environmental (not climate) protests often involve things like blockading mine sites and blocking roads here in Aus. In some of the countries mentioned in the article you may just be physically moved, beaten or even shot for that behaviour. Which is not to say that the higher arrests aren’t concerning, but the picture isn’t exactly clear after reading the article, particularly as it mentions over 2000 environmental protestors were killed during that period, I’d hope none in the UK or Aus, which to me that even though the arrests aren’t rates are higher in these countries, to imply that they are the worst in their treatment of protest is probably wrong.
you didn't read or care to understand my argument at all, which is not about the target of the process, but the existence of the process and the process itself. Looks like I have to spell it out: next time won't be race rioters, next time will be protesters protesting the farage gov crackdown on immigrants and minorities.
>It’s not especially surprising that there is a high rate of arrests in the subcategory of protests they picked
the article mentions the rate of arrests is high COMPARED with other countries. And again you're getting lost in the details; this wasn't about what the protests were about, but the brutal swift crackdown AND the laws passed giving police more powers.
Yes, this time they hit your out-group, so all is well. fine. next time, (and this is the crux of my argument), _using the exact same tools_, it's your group, you, that will be targeted.
Yes, I know you think it’s bad that it exists. I don’t.
So long as it is carried out with proper oversight and people have time to prepare their cases, it actually appears preferable to endless delay which is the current hallmark of the British justice system. Do you disagree? Why?
Do you have a reason to think that justice served this way is less fair or rigorous?
Because frankly I’d rather get in the express lane at that point if I was on the receiving end, than have to live with the process over my head for 2-3 years.
> the article mentions the rate of arrests is high COMPARED with other countries.
Yes, and it also says some of those other countries are killing environmental protestors, so the picture is not as clear cut as you might like. It certainly suggests problems, but it also suggests that we may not be comparing apples to apples with these figures.
Seriously, maybe read it again if you think this is entirely un-nuanced. Personally I’d like to know more.
I agree with you that giving the police extra powers is bad. I agree the direction of travel is bad.
I disagree that faster justice is bad.
I disagree that a higher arrest rate than other countries on a subset of protests is as black and white as you think.
Or perhaps our current Home Sec in 2014 declaring "Rioters face years in prison as Home Secretary Yvette Cooper promises ‘swift justice’" [1]
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8695988/London...
[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/riots-prison-justice-l...
It's all part of making effective protesting illegal. You can justify each little step as you clutch your pearls (even me, to an extent if I don't think of the bigger picture), but then when you realise that the sum of all that is permitted is standing alone creating no disturbance for anyone, effecting no change, and you realise effective protesting is banned.
And the second article is about people setting fire to cars and buildings.
This is not “effective protest”, it’s criminal damage and arson and would be prosecuted as such in any western nation.
Are you seriously arguing you should be able to get away with setting fire to a community library because you reckon you’ve got a legit grievance?
Yeah nah, no thanks.
Are there any strawmen left or did you buy them all? Jesus
"Are you seriously arguing...?" style of discussion belongs to Reddit, not here.
Though it's clear that you are part of the pearl-clutching group that wants any protest banned and would support any law and any new law dreamt up by a Home Sec, so thanks for doing your bit. No doubt you believe "the law is the law" and any law is just.
edit: You're not British are you (based on your English – it's pretty good, but not quite good enough). Where were you born, out of interest? I always enjoy a foreigner lecturing me about my place of birth
Perhaps my English is so superior to yours that you’re having trouble understanding?
> Though it's clear that you are part of the pearl-clutching group that wants any protest banned
What were you saying about straw men?
Perhaps you could enlighten me here. If you believe that promising swift justice for arsonists and other rioters is a way to suppress effective protest, are you not categorising arson as a form of protest? If not, what is your objection to said swift justice for people who commit acts of criminal damage, arson etc?
I support the right to protest. I believe the UK state is on a bad path and has been for a long time with restrictions on this right. But it gives me no pause when rioting and looting is treated harshly.
"The UK has problems, but it's not very useful to throw all of these cases together to make a big number", "None of which is to say I think the UK has things right" – literally nobody native to the UK writes like that.
Again, nice try, but try harder.
I'm /actually/ from a home county ;)
edit: Home counties isn't hyphenated btw.
I have no reason to lie, nor do I have either a method or any particular desire to prove myself to you.
If you want to believe a foreigner is lecturing you on British society, you go ahead and live with that delusion I guess. :shrug:
> literally nobody native to the UK writes like that.
Have you hung around with many middle-aged ex public school types?
I thought a 'public school type' would know that.
> Have you hung around with many middle-aged ex public school types?
Yes, I've been unfortunate enough to live in the heart of Surrey
You're trying to call me uneducated to distract from your poor attempt at passing off as a native. Nice try ;) (They tend not to write ":shrug:", I might add)
I hope it's not too cold in Russia! Have a great evening comrade.
“Nor” doesn’t fit there IMHO, “or” is part of the nested either-or clause, so I don’t believe it to be incorrect.
Regardless, I lay no claim to perfect grammar, decades on the internet seems to have atrophied that skill. I also acknowledge my overuse of commas.
> You're trying to call me uneducated to distract from your poor attempt at passing off as a native
Funny, because to me it looked a lot like you started to throw doubt on my nationality when you didn’t want to deal with the subject we were discussing any more.
> I hope it's not too cold in Russia!
I hope it’s fucking freezing and Vladimir Putin freezes his balls off, personally. It couldn’t happen to a nicer dictator.
The fact you’re hoping for milder weather in Russia reveals that you are in fact the Russian troll in this conversation. Confirmed by your signoff calling me comrade. Major cockup there eh? Your handler will not be pleased…
It's so funny how badly you misunderstand English.
This is highly entertaining :)
You don’t get sarcasm then Ivan?
Of course, I don’t blame them. They haven’t lived in a context where they need to care. All of the reasons they’ve heard to care have come from stories of people who lived before them. But ignoring warnings for no good reason is still dumb.
A better thing to engage with is whether we can meaningfully change the situation. It might still be possible, but it requires an effective immune response from everybody on this particular topic. I’m not sure we can, but it’s worth trying to.
You might believe you don't need opsec, and then new laws are passed, or your national supreme court overturns the case that gave you your rights, or someone invades; and now suddenly you're wanted for anything from overstaying a visa, outright murder, or simply existing.
USA, right now, peoples lives are being destroyed because the wrong people got their data. Lethal consequences exist in Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran.
Certain professions per definition: Journalists, Lawyers, Intelligence, Military.
Certain Ethnicities. (Jewish, Somali) ; Faiths...
It doesn't need to be quite this dramatic though. But you might accidentally have broken some laws and don't even know about it yet. Caught a fish? Released a fish? Give the wrong child a bowl of soup [1]. Open the door, refuse to open the door. Signed a register; didn't sign a register. The list of actual examples is endless. The less people know about you, the less they can prosecute.
[1] A flaw in the Dutch Asylum Emergency Measures Act (2025) that would have criminalized offering even a bowl of soup to an undocumented person. The Council of State confirmed this reading. A follow-up bill was needed to fix it.
But turns out that if your opsec is decent, and even using mostly publicly available tools like Snowden did, you might survive even that.
In the nuanced case, normal people applying more normal opsec can handle more normal things, would seem to follow.
What bearing does that have on anything.
I don’t intend to give up or accept limitations on these rights because you consider yourself to have “privacy rights” or ownership interests in my records, my memories, my perceptions, or the reality in front of me. I find the notion of the government or another person interfering in this process, the perception and recollection of reality, to be creepy and totalitarian by itself.
In 1984, it is not only that the government is aware of Winston, but that it routinely tampers with or destroys evidence of the past & demands to control the perception of the present. I do not think we should let a government do that, even for a good reason like “protect your privacy” any more than we should let it destroy general purpose computing “for the children.”
> This obtains even when using electronic tools and even when working in association with others.
I think it is reasonable to place limits on public "speech" (ex uploading videos of people) without interfering with private (in the case of electronics E2EE) communications.
For example, it seems to me there is a whole lot of worry around megacorporations, often related to capitalism and the inequalities it brings.
In that context, if you don't place privacy as a priority, how are you not either stupid or ignorant? Is my premise just wrong?
It's really more just concluding that those corporations should be liable for their behavior. It also has nothing to do with "the Internet" which is largely unaffected. Except of course ideas for forcing OS behavior coming out of California which are obviously bad.
I actually think things could be a lot simpler if we just made the laws like alcohol: it's illegal (with criminal liability) for a non-parent adult to provide <restricted thing> to a child. Simple enough. Seems to work fine as-is for Internet alcohol purchases. Businesses dealing in restricted industries can figure out how to avoid that liability. That's entirely compatible with making it illegal for businesses to stalk everyone, which we should also do!
You can make intentional targeting illegal without criminalizing the accidental. And mandating self categorization of content by service providers would enable standardized filtering that was broadly effective.
The above won't get kids off of social media and it won't serve the purposes of the surveillance state but it will meet the stated goals of those pushing these measures.
Keeping children off of social media is a much trickier problem. I think we'd be better served by banning certain sorts of algorithmic feeds.
They're not actually owed a solution for how to make their business model work. They can just be told that what they're doing is unacceptable, and they can figure out what they'd like to do next. If you're worried they might react with some other unacceptable thing, we can clarify that that's not okay either.
> They're not actually owed a solution for how to make their business model work. They can just be told that what they're doing is unacceptable,
You listed a few different things previously. Which one are we talking about here?
I think the rest of us are owed a solution where we can still do what we want without having our privacy violated. Regulations need to take the end user into account.
I already proposed what I think would be a workable solution to achieve the stated goals without unduly eroding the status quo. Do you have any response to it?
We don't give kids special debit cards that detect and block purchases of cigarettes and alcohol and say "make sure your kids don't get cash". We make it a crime to sell those things to a child.
Why is online ID verification a problem for e.g. porn and gambling but it's fine for alcohol? Why should it be fully anonymous? Should we also allow anonymous porn and cigarette vending machines in person? Why is online special?
This whole idea of anonymous access can't even work in a world where you actually pay for things online, which makes the whole proposition even more dubious. If you're an adult and spending money online, you already told them who you are (modulo darknet markets with crypto). Or you could buy a porn gift card in person with an ID flash like other restricted physical items if you're uncomfortable with online payments. And treat the gift card as restricted as well: giving it to a minor is a crime. So then what's the problem exactly? Ad supported porn specifically somehow is important enough to be special?
More to the point: as far as I know, if you perform a sex act in plain view inside of a private establishment that's open to the general public with no restrictions, then that's public indecency/lewd conduct, a criminal act, even if the owner consents. If children are present it can become a felony and you're going on the sex offender list along with jail time. Why is an unrestricted public website different?
Why are you "owed" this privacy online when someone running an open to all, fully anonymous, unchecked porn theatre in person would be arrested? How about the privacy you are owed is that your business stays between you and whomever you interact with, and even they can be asked/required not to keep or share notes about you? But they can still be expected to know you are an adult before they sell you adult services.
Also I think you have this entire thing exactly backwards. It's not on the rest of us to convince the other camp that ID shouldn't be required. Rather it's on the other camp to put forward a convincing case that ID should be required - that there is no realistic alternative and that the tradeoffs are worth the cost. Otherwise the current status quo wins out.
> Self categorization has been the status quo since the 90s and has been proven to be insufficient.
What are you on about? Legally mandated self categorization has never been tried and would presumably work if there were penalties for violations. You don't even need 100% compliance, you just need high enough compliance that the default becomes to filter out any site that fails to do so.
Voluntary self categorization isn't particularly useful because almost no operators bother to do it. So you're left with no (workable) option other than whitelist filtering.
> have a third party come up with a solution that people can buy to filter us
I never suggested anything of the sort.
> The liability belongs on the people dealing in the restricted item.
The items are not currently restricted and I don't agree with you that they should be. However I would agree to changing things to make all providers liable for accurately self categorizing the content they serve up by means of a standardized header format or some other protocol.
> Why is online ID verification a problem for e.g. porn and gambling but it's fine for alcohol?
Presumably because you have to take receipt of the shipment so the vendor is already going to collect your PII.
Why is legally requiring that a gambling website send a header categorizing itself as such unworkable yet somehow it's all going to work out just fine if we require them to do the much more complicated thing of securely handling and accurately verifying identification documents? That seems like an obvious contradiction to me.
> Why should it be fully anonymous? Should we also allow anonymous porn and cigarette vending machines in person?
Don't we effectively do exactly that? There's no requirement for ID retention on sale of alcohol or cigarettes and until recently the norm was for the clerk to briefly eyeball your license. They also didn't used to bother checking ID if you looked old enough. (That's changed at the major retailers around here lately but that's a different matter.)
Anyway I never claimed the brick and mortar way of doing things was ideal so arguing as though I've agreed to that seems rather disingenuous.
> If you're an adult and spending money online, you already told them who you are
But I did not give them a copy of my ID or any otherwise unnecessary PII and do not want to be required to do so. Also there are plenty of ways to pay for things online without readily revealing your identity to the couterparty. I expect you are well aware of that fact.
> Why is an unrestricted public website different?
For practical reasons I'd imagine. Analogies are great and all but at the end of the day a global electronic communication network has rather different properties than a physical brick and mortar location that you walk into.
Regardless, the reputable services all seem to agree with you (as do I) and thus go out of their way to send headers marking them as adult only. It's roughly equivalent to a shop hanging a "no under 18 allowed" on the door but then not bothering to ID anyone. If parents can't be bothered to configure even the most basic of controls on their children's devices why should the rest of society be made to suffer for that?
There's no requirement for ID retention online either. In fact, unlike in person, it is banned. And a framework where you just say "you are liable for what you provide to children" actually allows for a site employee to briefly eyeball your ID or just look at you and decide you look old enough (though that doesn't really work with realtime video generation).
Record retention is a different question from checking. I think I and the actual relevant laws have been pretty clear that we should disallow that. No, we do not have anonymous cigarette vending machines (at least anywhere I've been in the US). They are always behind a counter with an ID check.
Except for crypto, I don't think I am familiar with any way to pay for something online without revealing my identity. I'm pretty sure 100% of online purchases I've made over the last 20 years have required name/address and usually phone number as part of payment details. Even with crypto, as far as I know common wisdom on darknet markets is (or was?) to use your real name/address as that's the least suspicious. I don't actually know a single place where you don't give that info to your counterparty. I can't imagine it's common.
What parental controls? As far as I know, Safari is the only modern browser that checks RTA headers (if it still does). There are no options for Chrome or more importantly Firefox, which is the only browser that's fit for purpose with malware blocking (especially for children). Similarly Android has no controls.
I don't see what part of being online makes it less practical to check ID. It seems more practical to me. It's just cheaper not to, and online businesses are big on avoiding labor. That's not some fundamental right of theirs.
Right now if you want to build out a filtering solution there's nothing to base it on. We could fix that via regulation and then filtering would just work.
> kids can get a computer/phone for $20 with no restrictions.
At that point ID checks are no good either. They can just visit a site from a different country that doesn't respect our legal framework or hop on tor or bittorrent or whatever else.
In fact when it comes to ID checks if you don't enable parental controls and filtering then they will be able to bypass it in the exact same way as above except using their regular device that you gave to them! No need to go purchase a new one!
So you're inevitably going to end up needing a client side filtering solution regardless. As I keep telling you, the solution you're gunning for here is strictly worse than content filtering based on mandatory headers.
> Except for crypto, I don't think I am familiar with any way to pay for something online without revealing my identity.
There are also virtual credit card services. Or gift cards (which you yourself mentioned earlier).
Of course anything shipped needs a name and address (and likely phone number) but there are plenty of services you can pay for that don't involve shipping a physical item.
> That's not some fundamental right of theirs.
Never said or even implied that to be the case. I think I've been pretty clear that I see it as a threat to privacy, that I don't personally want it, and that I don't think it's the best (or even a particularly good) solution for the stated problems.
It's bizarre to me. You are putting all this effort towards advocating for new regulation that would require a change to how services operate. Simultaneously you argue against a less intrusive solution on the basis that no one currently does it. For some reason everyone can start checking IDs but sending a header is a bridge too far? It's inconsistent.
That's called noncompliance. This is why a simpler framework is better: do you demonstrably serve content to children in this jurisdiction illegally? Then you'll incur fines and a warrant here. Better not have revenue or visit here. And we could put the same liability on advertisers funding it so there's just no financial incentive for anyone.
Bittorrent is trivial to block, other countries are easy to block on your router, and it would be simple enough to just say running an open proxy incurs liability for anything you front if you obscure the originating location or allow international traffic. Again the basic principle is "are you providing access to the general public with no gating to restricted material?" In any case, obscure Russian forums you can access through Tor are an afterthought compared to e.g. Reddit, which hosts both Roblox forums and porn today with no wall between them. There's no reason to allow that.
Note also that provider liability doesn't mean we can't also have filtering. Liability just creates the correct incentives for providers to help ensure the solution actually works. If liability with no prescription for a solution would lead to ID checks and not working with vendors to have working filters, that kind of reveals what we think would actually work.
As far as virtual cards go, do they not still require payment information? Surely business don't want to deal with anonymous purchases since that's begging for fraud? In any case, service provider liability is still compatible here. I didn't say they need to check ID. Neither does e.g. the Texas law. It says someone needs to verify age. They can use a commercial service for it. The virtual card provider or gift card retailer could provide that service and assume or share liability.
I'm not even necessarily advocating for a new regulation. I'm saying recognize public indecency/lewd behavior for what it is, and ban things like gambling in children's games. Recognize that public websites with no access gates are public spaces and act accordingly. And yes I consider checking ID for a handful of specific services to be less intrusive than everyone supporting some header. I don't consider the former to be intrusive at all really. The latter is basically impossible if for no other reason than there are already billions of devices that don't. It's a fantasy non solution that basically amounts to "do nothing".
The best way (and only way) to prevent retaining information is to not share them in the first place.
> You can be in favor of privacy while simultaneously thinking porn, gambling, and advertisers shouldn't be targeting children.
There are other method to achieve this without mandatory identification. You can force these content to be served with an HTTP header providing their legal minimum age of consultation or type of content, and blocking them browser side. Governments could maintain filter lists for different age bracket and release them to everyone, allowing easy compliance on the device parental control settings.
And actually I think it's a better world where kids can obtain e.g. a raspberry pi that they completely control no questions asked and free public wi-fi exists all over, and the onus is on service providers to not deal with children if they're not supposed to. Basically, a high trust society.
In any case, "don't retain records" is actually a pretty easy task. Trivial, actually (use a device with no disk to handle PII, an API that just returns yes/no to the rest of the system, and heavily restrict the firewall, e.g. no outbound connections). Or you buy a token/gift card in person with ID check. If you think the penalties aren't steep enough to get compliance, just raise them (e.g. business ending fines plus jail time).
The early Internet users weren't people who subscribed to AOL to look at porn in the 90's. They were the people who were granted access to the ARPANET to work in the 80's. The Internet was an exclusive community back then. You had government employees, knowledge workers, and elite university students who had all passed institutional screening processes. You were only allowed to use the ARPANET if you were using it to do something useful and aligned. Therefore you could feel reasonably assured that anyone you talked to online was going to be better than the average person you'd find going outside and walking down the street. If you wanted to know who they were, you could just finger their username. If you wanted to know who owned a domain, you could whois it, get their name and then even write them mail or call them.
People have wanted that old Internet back for a long time. i.e. the one that existed before Eternal September. Those are the people who run your tech companies. The ones who remember what it was like. These people understand what people actually want isn't always the same thing as what they say they want. They understand why the only truly successful Internet spaces on the modern Internet are the ones like Facebook that got people to be non-anonymous. Another example is the best places to work that folks desperately want to get into are the companies like Google whose intranets are much more like the old Internet. These are really the only Internet spaces that normal people want to use. Because people want to interact with other people who are similar to them. Because people want to know who other people are. Otherwise we can't operate as the social creatures that evolution designed us to be. I don't think any civilization in history has operated its public square as a gigantic red light district where everyone is required to wear a mask. So why should we?
Overcoming the anonymous religion problem that somehow glommed onto the hacker and cyberpunk movements is more important and urgent now than it's ever been, because the Internet has been filling up with billions of AI agents. It's gonna be Eternal September in overdrive. Humanity is really facing a tradeoff where you'll have to have gatekeeping again and won't be allowed to conceal who you are, or you can be gaslit by machines forever in your own robot fantasy.
Algorithmic feeds are propaganda tools. A foreign government being able to propagandize your citizens is a legitimate threat, not handwaving.
If anybody says that propaganda is a valid reason for censorship I say, censor thyself first.
> Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) are a form of equity compensation where employers promise company shares, typically vesting over time, offering a way to align employee interests with company performance
And this is why these arguments never translate well to mainstream politics.
By declaring a-priori that it is not about the children, and leaping straight to a deeper, more sinister motive that you're sure is there, even if you're right that there are people behind the scenes agitating for these sinister reason, you ignore that a lot of the general public and a lot of the political class genuinely do see this as a child protection issue.
If you can't even concede this, then you're missing large parts of the picture and your attempts to resist it will be that much harder.
It didn't take long for the CIA to sniff everything on everyone, early 2000's.
Maybe you're referring to the 90's but at that time the internet wasn't really that popular, it was a niche thing.
The digital age presents with it novel forms of danger for children, and for adults for that matter, and there is absolutely no way to effectively address these risks without some amount of reduction in privacy. And before someone inevitably says “where were the parents?” and wash their hands of the situation, a healthy society should care for and protect all children, especially those whose parents do not.
It’s one thing to hold the opinion “I am willing to sacrifice some number of lives, in order to preserve privacy”. That is an honest and potentially justifiable opinion someone may hold. But declaring the situation to simply be a facade to harvest people’s data seems to me like a reflexive response to avoid uncomfortable truths regarding the situation.
Roblox can straightforwardly require ID verification on their own, of both the parent responsible for the account, as well as the children directly (request documentation from their school, birth certificate, etc. Yes, high touch to verify these documents. But we're talking protecting children here, right?)
If anything this type of legislation is about absolving them of the responsibility of doing so!. Imagine a company making their offering "for adults only", with de facto kid usage as parents relent and just let their kid use an older age on the computer.
People are occasionally hospitalized due to self, family, or friends handling food improperly. That doesn't warrant a legal intervention whereas dining establishments do.
> before someone inevitably says “where were the parents?” and wash their hands of the situation
Nope, that's exactly what I say. The law cannot reasonably replace responsible parenting if society is to remain a pleasant place to live.
Many of us are pretty damn okay at beating back the flame and controlling the flow of the worst of things away from homes, but nobody is perfect.
We don't expect every family and parent in these areas to have fire fighting skills, self evacuation is recommended.
Parents every where now find themselves surrounded by the delibrately laid gasoline of addictive social media and grooming risks et al. and it's infeasible to expect every parent be skilled in defensive cyber secuirty.
It's reasonable to expect communities to want simple barriers and means of protection, the existance of reasonable control and throttling options for parents.
> It's reasonable to expect communities to want simple barriers and means of protection, the existance of reasonable control and throttling options for parents.
I agree 100%! However ID verification is not a reasonable (or even particularly effective) solution to that. I apologize if I've misconstrued your intended meaning but given the broader context that's what it seems like you're implying.
Realistically there's no way to prevent grooming other than keeping tabs on your child. The least labor intensive (but also most intrusive) way to do that is probably whitelist parental controls and watching for unauthorized devices. It is not even remotely realistic to expect a communication platform to detect that a child is speaking with an adult they don't know (as opposed to one they do) and also that it isn't a benign interaction (such as a gaming group or etc) and then somehow act on that information (how?) without manufacturing an absurd dystopia in the process.
When it comes to filtering I think it would be reasonable to impose a standard self categorization protocol on all website operators. That would make non-whitelist filtering much more reliable (a boon to parents, educators, and employers) without negatively impacting privacy or personal freedoms.
* there are very few urban population clump on the planet that don't face the threat of child grooming and exploitation, both before and after the digital device explosion.
* that threat vector significantly increased and morphed with the spread of personal digital devices for children; the threat comes no longer from potentially any personal with contact in real life, it has now expanded to include potentially the entire digital world and now can be automated via groomGPT
* A simple "where were the parents" response on a per parent basis is unfair in the sense that spotting grooming in a digital device world is a difficult challenge .. even a simple constrained playground with stock babytalk language construction can be socially backdoored (See: "I want to stick my long-necked Giraffe up your fluffy white bunny" )
* Concerned parents will look for solutions, communities, at local, state, and federal levels should devote resources to providing solutions in informed contexts and graduated levels.
* Unaware parents will exist, and will likely dominate the demographics, or not?
* Is the correct _default_ social policy here (answer varies by country and culture) to shield the less cyber aware from the worst of the worst with filters ... that the better informed can bypass or deselect?
I guess where we diverge on PoV is where the perimeter of swiss cheese protection should extend to.
Well, your example wouldn't be solved by age verification in any way. They could still legally access Roblox or a discord private chat (or even another private chat method) after this law.
So the example show how it is about irrational fear and not protection in any way.
And this is an tragic edge case, if you want to take this kind of edge case in consideration, you also have to take in consideration what the age verification would imply as tragic edge case.
After all, dating apps are an even more extreme version of this. If you're attractive enough, you get to have many one night stands and many murder opportunities.
There's always a chance of horrible shit happening, but we shouldn't put every single person under a microscope to ensure the one in a million doesn't occur.
At points Louis and whatever absolute scumbag he's with walk around the streets while the guy is filming his own content.
There are kids, literally 11/12 year olds, walking up to these predatory, evil, scammers on the street going "oh my god it's MC" or whatever their name is. Multiple times.
And he hardly gets to spend any time with these men because they clock pretty quickly they're not going to come off well.
In the space of like 3 days, Louis caught on camera at least 10/20 young kids recognizing these toxic people from videos they had watched. Even the ones who'd been banned from most platforms, because their videos get reshared under different accounts and insta/tiktok/facebook aren't bothering to catch these reshares.
It really is about the kids.
And it all comes down to these people convincing young men to spend money on scam courses or invest in scam brokerages by getting them to join telegram group chats. And suddenly it's really clear to me why telegram's under scrutiny.