[taxyz]

This has become such a common trope that I think people fail to apply even a modicum of scrutiny: the internet is not the town square and whatever your idea of the town square is likely wrong if you think its as wild-west-y as the internet is.

Firstly, try to approach children in the town square while wearing a mask for anonymity; or try to hold up images of porn in your town square. You will not be there long, you'd likely be detained, and you'd likely be asked for identification.

Secondly, why do people think there is some sort of town square? I have lived in several large US cities and several small towns. In neither was there any sort of common place where we all congregated to address matters of the town. At best, there are city hall/city council meetings where the public can speak but at least in my town (and I know of many others), identification is required to prove that you live in the town!

Even the founding fathers, when writing under pseudonyms, understood that anonymity and circulation was incumbent upon them to maintain, not that they were entitled to it because "town square."

To address your last point: this is not simply some ill conceived moral panic/think of the children type moment. Go try to host - as an adult - an AA meeting or "computer meetup" with children that happens to be held in the local adult toy shop. See how well that goes for you. At this point, we know children are getting approached by adults at a large scale on instagram, we know children are getting exposed to a lot of adult content on twitter, and on the spectrum between innocent HOA meeting and damaging to society as a whole, its clearly more towards the latter.

[TeaBrain]

"Secondly, why do people think there is some sort of town square?"

Cities and towns in the US were once often built around town squares. Many cities have open public areas like this in Europe and South America where people can congregate. Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires comes to mind. Cities in the US haven't been designed around a central town square in a long time, but the term has stuck colloquially.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_de_Mayo

Below is a link to William Penn's original plan for Philadelphia, where the city would have a five town squares, with one in the center of each of four quadrants, and the largest in the city center. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gary-Libecap/publicatio...

https://lauriephillips.com/philadelphias-five-original-squar...

Boston long had a number of town squares, many of which no longer exist, such as Haymarket Square. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_Square_(Boston)

[taxyz]

My point is not that they NEVER existed, its that they no longer exist in the capacity most people mean when they use the term. As you mentioned, cities used to be organized around them. Most people now live in cities that are either don't have one at all or don't have one that is used in the way they were hundreds of years ago.

Furthermore, the behavior that was tolerated in the town square would not be close to what we tolerate online. And we don't afford kids the freedom in the real world that we do online. I am not sure why people think that requiring parental consent or age verification online is some sort of assault on personal liberty.

[macintux]

Requiring age verification online for adults is the only way to keep kids out.

And requiring identification to lounge on the town square is generally considered unconstitutional in the U.S.

I don’t know how to square this circle. Can you conduct age verification without requiring identification?

[taxyz]

I think this again comes back to the idea of thinking of it as some sort of digital town square.

We don't seem to have an issue with the government requiring businesses to check ID for alcohol, tobacco, porn (in the physical world), and firearms. Movie theaters check ID for rated R movies if you appear to be under 17. In fact, a lot of online retailers of alcohol and tobacco now require ID to be verified at purchase instead of at delivery.

Facebook/Twitter/TikTok/etc are not the digital town square; the most charitable analogy for them is they they are merchants in the town square. And the rules should still apply to them.

[macintux]

For the most part, those real-world ID checks do not involve keeping a record, or a durable storage of what you say, or see, or listen to while you're there.

[taxyz]

There's nothing preventing us from the law requiring the same for online verification. It doesn't have to be the case that Facebook or Twitter or whatever store any information other than at some point they did verify your age.

As to the other information, you're more making the case that online tracking should be illegal (which I'd agree with). For the majority of people, they are either unaware or uninformed about how to prevent online tracking to a sufficient degree. If you're signed into your Google and Facebook accounts and then surfing the web, theres a good chance you're getting caught up in cross site tracking. Hell, even if you don't have accounts explicitly, its not like Facebook isn't tracking non-users. In the real world, stalking is illegal.

Also, in my state (Washington), IDs now have barcodes on them. When I buy beer at the store, the clerk doesn't even look at my ID; he/she scans it and thats it. I'd hope the information about what type of beer and how often I buy it isn't being stored somewhere but I'm just hoping.

[Clubber]

>This has become such a common trope that I think people fail to apply even a modicum of scrutiny: the internet is not the town square

Where is the majority of politics and recent events discussed? Where are new ideas shared and accepted or rejected? Where is this topic being discussed? Case rested.

>Secondly, why do people think there is some sort of town square?

It's an international phenomenon, probably as old as civilizations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_square

The rest of your post sounds like moral panic.

[taxyz]

If actual politics reflected sentiment on the internet, US politics would look very different. The Overton window on the internet is very different from real life, there is tremendous bot traffic from outside the US, there are people with multiple accounts, and algorithms and "trust and safety" rules that promote certain views above others. You are confusing signal and noise. The majority of politics - that matter - is not discussed online, the majority of new ideas are not shared/accepted/rejected online - even in a business sense most founders know their cofounders personally, not from online chats. Case rested.

You idea of the town square is also outdated. Do you think the municipal government in Rome still meets at the Forum? And you did not address my point that even if it did exist as it did in whatever millennium you yearn for, would the behavior that is present on the internet be tolerated the same way? Was the Forum or Copley or Dock square known for adult men showing their genitalia to underage women? Your idea of a town square is antiquated and likely would not have tolerated the behavior you think the internet should just because its the town square. Case rested.

> The rest of your post sounds like moral panic.

Nice rebuttal there. If it's just moral panic, why does the data suggest that social media use its detrimental to adolescents' mental health and well being? Why is the effort to curtail social media influence on kids' a bipartisan effort in an increasingly partisan society? Even the misguided level of libertarianism you're probably advocating for understands that short of pure anarchy, there are some externalities governments have to address, chief among them are social media platforms that are evidently harmful to certain parts of society (young kids). Case rested.