I think minors shouldn't be in any store period unless accompanied by their parent or guardian.
But parents should be penalized/inconvenienced if they can't control their children, not the store/website.
In some states, bounty hunters can find violators of various laws and bring them to the state in exchange for money. Allowing bountry hunters to be on the lookout for underagers trying to enter stores and report them could be a profitable endeavor for both the bounty hunters and the state, providing a market-based incentive to protecting children.
Stores/websites should only be penalized if they are specifically targeting and inviting children to enter.
Certainly there are some types of stores that are very safe for children to enter. So, the exception should be structured like this: "Stores that only sell these items mean that parents will not be fined if children enter it unaccompanied." Additional conditions could be attached, e.g. "a safe store shall verify the ID of anyone purchasing alcohol." And maybe other benefits can be attached to being a "safe" store, like tax incentives, etc. If the store violates that condition, then it should pay a fine or lose any other benefits of being considered a "safe" store. But a business should have a right not to be a "safe store" and the duty to prevent children from entering those should 100% fall on the parents.
Isn't a reasonable approach to the internet, to have a protocol by which individuals can prove they have a state issued identity that proves they are above a certain age, and nothing more than that to the website? That way the website doesn't need to check anything other than presence of a cryptographic identifier and validate it. And parents as you noted are responsible, but only to make sure their state issued cryptographic secrets can't be used by their children. it could be as simple as having an NFC capable state issued IDs that can do a challenge-response with the browser/os. We already sort of do this with EMV payment cards. Websites have to validate a payment card is authentic by asking for the CVV code for example.
To me you and others' prevailing argument is similar to "well I don't want to go out of my way to setup HTTPS, I shouldn't need to pay a damn CA to host a blog", letsencrypt solved that and people were still saying they shouldn't have to do that, except the risks here are much more dire, impacting an entire generation of humans in severe ways.
In a way, the internet is a victim of its own success. Finally, it can be used to do just about anything you did in person, including work and learn remotely. But also a whole lot of other things. I was commenting in a sibling comment thread earlier how watching a striper at a strip-club, and watching that same stripper on a free live-cam porn site on a screen are the same bi-lateral sexual activity that society has decided should be between consenting adults. You don't have to prove your ID when you visit a random store, just like with a random site, but a porn site requiring your ID is the same as a strip club requiring your ID. I don't like it same as you, but at the same time, logically I can't argue against the same laws and norms of a country being enforced consistently. We live in a world with terrible people, and so long as ID requirements for IRL are the same as online, it makes sense. it makes a whole lot more sense than expecting social media companies to actually reliably police all content in real time, and if I can have a simple, secure and privacy preserving way of doing it, I'd prefer that over showing my face, my ID,etc.. to random third parties.
No child is accessing the Internet without something a parent allowed them (or a different child) to have.
Bad parents are the root of most of societal ills. This is an example of the "terrible people" you mention. Societies need to take a serious look at that. You can require all the privacy-preserving ID checks you want and completely hollow out all rights in the name of children, but you're still going to have the root causes that create bad parents who harm their children through neglect and abuse. ID checks won't stop bad parents from being bad parents.
I don't know what you're adding to conversations about this other than "it won't be so bad if done the right way, so just accept it."
Ok, parents should do better, whatever. By your logic, a strip club has no obligation to keep children out because that's the parents' job?
> I don't know what you're adding to conversations about this other than "it won't be so bad if done the right way, so just accept it."
I'm adding the discussion of an actual solution instead of burying of heads in sands.
I don't see how. Help me understand. Explain how kids with bad parents are suffering because parents might get fined or other legal action if they don't prevent their children from doing things they shouldn't with property the parents give them.
> By your logic, a strip club has no obligation to keep children out because that's the parents' job
It really is the parent's job. I don't have a problem with local regulations saying certain businesses can't attract minors, but unless people in the business are going up to children and saying "hey why don't you come here" or there is some other type of enticement, the far more important question is why you're letting your children go to or near a strip club.
> I'm adding the discussion of an actual solution
Hard disagree. All your preceding posts in this thread could be validly summarized "it won't be so bad if done the right way, so just accept it" and each post is simply increasing the amount of "think of the children" histronics. Looking at your other posts, I see heuristics of agenda pushing, such as posts consisteing of walls of text and repetition of key points. I won't engage this thread anymore as I don't believe you are discussing in good faith. Peace.
It's unfortunate you abandoned this discussion, but I understand. I'll defend my position nevertheless.
> It really is the parent's job.
Parents have a responsibility, but children are not property or machines that someone is responsible for that way. They are part of society, and society as a whole is responsible for protecting them. That includes protecting them from their own parents, as well as anyone else. There are entire suites of laws, courts and services established around this very principle. It doesn't even matter whose job it is, what matters is harm being reduced.
Your argument seems to be "a well, too bad, shouldn't be my problem, why should i be inconvenienced because someone's weird offspring is harmed"...sorry , I think you need to find another society without minors in it.
Honestly though, shame on you and everyone else on this thread! may the entire internet burn down before a single child's harm is justified for its continuance.
May this entire civilization burn if it continues to defend pedos and harm to the most innocent and defenseless. But I'm hopeful that reasonable voices win, and if they don't, I'd rather be inconvenienced and have this nice little status quo that's been around for only a few decades disrupted.