[pembrook]

You can argue this, but if you hand over this authority to government, it will not be up to you.

Fundamentally this is an upvote driven social media platform no different from Reddit, which everyone agrees is social media.

If you live in Denmark, get ready to tie your State ID to your HN profile to login and hope that you don't say anything that would make the wrong official (or your employer) upset with you.

As we know from history, well-intentioned government laws have zero unintended consequences, always work perfectly every time, and are very easy to remove once they've been created...

[Reefersleep]

Happen to be a Dane and I fully agree with your sentiment. I happen to agree (I think) that keeping children away from social media on a large scale, to avoid social isolation for those who might opt out of choice, might be overall good for the children. But the means that will likely be required to do so are, like you say, essentially more steps towards mass surveillance. And like you say, laws that can be exploited so easily by a government in bad faith are so dangerous to allow into public law, even in times when exploitation seems unlikely, because they'll likely never be removed (hah) or even amended before it's too late. Like Chat Control (though it seems pretty clear to _me_ that that is set up for abuse to begin with). I'm so embarrassed we're spearheading that abomination.