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Comment by big85 | Hacker News Reader

We have parental controls on devices. The change forced by the UK government is to give control to corporations, instead of the parents.

Parents are much better at knowing their own kid's age than corporations are. Teens keep fooling the age verification (pointing the camera at a video game character, using fake ID, even drawing beards on their face with a pen). But they aren't going to fool their own mother, and they don't need to trust ID verification startup with photographs of everbody's teenage kids to do it.

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>We have parental controls on devices

That's irrelevant because social media regulation is a collective action problem. No individual parent can restrict their kids access to social media without ostracizing it, it only makes sense if all parents together get their kids off these platforms.

>it only makes sense if all parents together get their kids off these platforms

Yes, and the wishes of all parents together != the wishes of the UK government which has its own agenda at play in which to weaponize this public outrage for their own benefit(mass surveillance and mass censorship).

The UK government doesn't actually want what's best for all the children of all the parents, otherwise it wouldn't have allowed and even enabled the rape gangs and sweep the issue under the rug in a massive coverup.

>Yes, and the wishes of all parents together != the wishes of the UK government

This legislation has widespread support among British parents across the political spectrum[1]

"As YouGov has shown previously, such a policy would be widely popular with the general public. In our latest survey, looking more specifically at the views of parents, we find that 77% of those with children under the age of 18 would support a ban, compared to only 14% who are opposed.[...] Likewise, 76% of parents think the government needs to kick up their activity on this issue, although a much lower rate of 43% think they need to be doing “much more”."

I don't even have any idea what the last paragraph, other than being some generic twitter rant has to do with the topic of the thread

[1]https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/54969-eight-in-ten-parents...

>This legislation has widespread support among British parents across the political spectrum[1]

Because parents like most voters, are incredibly stupid, and just want to delegate accountability of their kids to the state, not that they actually understand the repercussions of what they're supporting. Same with brexit. Voters want a scapegoat on why their kids are stupid(er), and the government is happy to offer a monkey paw.

I'm sorry to tell you this but you'll have to decide between "The British government is doing terrible things that does not represent the British people" or "people are extremely stupid, democracy is terrible and we must in fact make decisions for them"

You can't actually bring up the first one because you disagree with me and then the second one when you realize you also disagree with the British people. Either you like democracy or you don't, you don't get to decide that based on what route you want to take in an internet argument.

Ah, yes. Whenever a policy that you personally dislike is widely supported, it's because all its supporters are incredibly stupid, because you are always right.

It's not just because I am right and they're wrong in this case, it's because as the saying goes, "The Best Argument Against Democracy' Is 5-Minute Conversation with Average Voter".

And British voters have proven that several times over that they're not good at making decisions which is why their country has been in decline. Again, see their Brexit choice as proof.

But sure, you go and personally attack me with no arguments as if that means anything.

This is a tricky one, but it actually gives control to the government, not corporations. The government now has rules which let them define what social media is and how big its market can be.

The government is, frankly, just better at deciding what's good for most children than their parents when it comes to matters of health. That's a controversial statement, but truthfully most parents are just not educated enough or strict enough to decide where the boundaries should be on their children's health.

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