[globular-toast]

It's supposed to get rid of stuff that makes people uncomfortable, like knowing about the existence of people in pain who want to end it. The bright, happy marketing of McDonald's is quite the opposite! Have it your way! Yay!

Look forward to animal welfare issues being hidden in the same way too.

[psd1]

While the bill is appalling, don't downplay the issue. Voluntary euthanasia is a total strawman.

"kys" is widely-understood netspeak nowadays. It means "kill yourself".

Children are cruel. Mostly because they are mentally insufficient - it takes time and mistakes to learn human values. (Although cruelty lingers into adulthood in some.)

The new(ish) problem is that, previously, ideally, bullied teens could come home and have respite from cruelty and experience love. But nowadays the bullying follows the mobile phones. And love is quiet but cruelty is vigorous.

And parents and schools don't have the equipment to deal with it - there is no parental rule or technical solution that can't be bypassed, and, if there were, it would separate teens from their peers. (At some point, children require their peers for their social development, and they need to get out from adult supervision.)

And I'm merely describing online bullying amongst children. I could go into the normalisation of throatfucking and gangbanging, or ideological grooming (which is also a problem amongst soft-headed adults such as boomers and incels).

For clarity - I don't like children, I don't have them, and this is not a problem close to my heart. I'm trying to see the other side's perspective here.

[globular-toast]

Get children off the internet. Seriously. This is an adult place and it's insane that we ever let them on. Children aren't allowed in adult places for very good reasons. Not just for them, but for us too. Children ruin adult places, as can be see here.

Letting a child on the internet should be considered abuse in the same way as letting them into a strip club or drug-taking establishment would be.

There must be ways to allow children to learn to use computers and information technologies without letting them anywhere near the internet. It's just extreme laziness on our part that we don't bother trying.

But, of course, the children argument is the real strawman here. Nobody is interested in the above solution because this is really about preventing adults from using the internet as they currently do.

Don't get me wrong, I think a lot of the stuff the internet enables is abhorrent and harmful but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater here.

[HeckFeck]

This is the real answer - we'd think it mad if someone proposed that children play with pedal cars on open motorways. And madder still if someone else proposed the solution to the danger was to make motorways 'safer' for children in their Smobys at the expense of every adult motorist.

[kulahan]

I wonder how difficult it would be to convince people that children only need access to certain sites, like wikipedia, encyclopedia brittanica, wolfram alpha, etc., and that you need to reach a certain age to get access to the wider internet.

Even if it's not something enforced, it would be a nice social opinion.

[john_the_writer]

My kids (mid teens) don't have smart phones. (both have a nokia).. Zero social and net access only at the kitchen table (while at home)

They have heaps of friends IRL, and hang out at the skate park, and in the mall.

They may have access to social at school, but when they're at home, online bullies have zero access.

Getting un-plugged is very easy. They've never been plugged. It's my job as a parent, and honestly nokia phones are way less expensive.