The number of people who are marginalised is... marginal. By definition it doesn't have a sensible impact on profit. That's precisely why it is a problem to be marginalised.
Even literal regulated electricity utilities aren’t expected to provide service to every last marginal customer.
For example, a poor old grandma missing many electricity bill payments usually will see leniency if she is polite, the utility eventually won’t try to collect cash anymore and instead put a lien on the home while continuing to provide service.
But if the billing department receives multiple threats from her, then they may just cut the service.
How does “freedom” relate to an electrical utility deciding whether to cut service?
Even if we take marginalization out of it, this is the same kind of system that let's Healthcare recklessly utilize AI Systems to automatically reject patients' care, with a Herculean effort required to find a human to talk to. Its easy yo shrug until you are hallucinated into their crosshair.
But sure, that's "freedom".
By definition, a billing department of a utility has to be able to “marginalize”… in order to function.
There’s literally no other way I can see for it to work.
Anyway it's generally a tradeoff: is it worth doing it? By adding very strict age verification systems and marginalising people, do we make society globally better or not? Will those age verification systems work to prevent underage people from accessing the stuff we don't want them to access in the first place? Not clear. If they do, will it result in underage people being better? Not clear. And if it does, will it have been worth the damage on the people it marginalised? Not clear.
I really doubt you are genuinely incapable of understanding what “regulated electricity utilities” or “expected to provide service” means.
I didn’t accuse you of downvoting. It’s literally not possible for HN users to downvote the comment they reply to.
Anyone with seemingly over 10k karma would know that.
I can't write more than 5 posts per day and I can have negative karma because people doing more downvoting than upvoting.
So there is no point to wonder, if it's coordinated trolling or not.