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Comment by rho138 | Hacker News Reader

I’m pretty certain they understand that and are offering a workable solution instead of just repiping “age tech bad.”

You can't offer a workable solution to an excuse. Nobody pushing this wants to protect the children, therefore offering a solution that will protect the children is irrelevant.

While the powers pushing this aren't doing it for protecting children, there are many people who want restricting the internet to protect children. This is why it's a good cover instead of an obvious power grab, because parents want to stop their ten year old children from seeing porn or getting addicted to social media, but they don't know much about how to do it, the technology involved or who is pushing it. You might not want any child control, as many in HN don't, but in general the people do. And if you make parents choose between the current free for all and the government knowing the identity of every user, they will choose the second. Sure, the government would probably not protect the children even after requiring ID, but by then it would be too late.

I'm sorry, what?!

I have an 11yo. I know a ton of parents. And I don't know a single person - not one - who thinks this is a good idea. And I've asked.

Obviously this is just an anecdote and not a substitute for data. But... is there data on sentiment? I don't think it's actual parents who are pushing for this.

I have a 10yo. I know loads of parents too. I don't think I've ever heard the "freedom" position taken apart from on HN. To non-techies it just seems self evident we should block kids from seeing beheadings and donkey porn. They haven't usually thought much about how that would be achieved and what the knock on effects would be. But they do want it.

Yep, and the social media and other tech companies could have solved this 10 or 15 years ago on their own terms but chose to pretend that it was all just a "parenting" issue and not their responsibility. Now they are facing the heavy and clumsy hand of government regulation.

I'm a parent and will take the second option in a heartbeat.

But it's not because I'm cool with my government "[not] doing it for protecting children" or any other conspiracy theory nonsense.

It's because governments ALREADY have all this information if they want it. Most people freely log in to their favourite services, and corporations will hand over data when asked. There are vast amounts of hacked data available, which any government with a competent intelligence service has a copy of. Then there are all the existing laws and intelligence apparatus that can track people.

Age gates wont help the government find out what porn you watch, or who you message on WhatsApp, they already know if they really wanted. But they will create a social contract that letting your kids loose on social media and unfiltered internet is unacceptable. At the moment bad parents have all the power, drawing the line somewhere and enforcing it will give power back to parents that want to raise their children responsibly.

Raising a generation of kids not addicted to internet brainrot is the real way to make sure democratic governments don't overreach with the data they have.

Both groups exist. Some want to protect the children, others hop on the bandwagon to ensure that protecting the children comes alongside full mass surveillance, and we do ourselves no good by pretending the first group is the second group. Believe it or not, there are children and we are currently failing to protect them from things we need to protect them from.

Some of the citizens and nonprofits pushing it do,

and that’s what complicates the “debate” and “conversation”.

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